test2

Update 2/11/24 - I forgot about this website, maybe I'll start using it. Sorry for having one of the few reviews on this game be "test2" for so long.

This game is pretty sick! Really enjoy the two-screen action as you both manage a bullet hell and block puzzle at the same time. The game keeps giving you new gimmicks too, keeping things constantly changing. You've oftentimes gotta change up your playstyle with each new battle. This game isn't your average cut of meat, it's something!

The game has occasional difficulty bumps, and the writing is... in the game. It's not perfect or earth-shattering, but I enjoyed my time with this one!

This is gonna be a long one.

I played a lot of Bloons TD 5 when I was younger and absolutely loved the game. I considered it the pinnacle of the tower defense genre. So, when I heard that Bloons TD 6 was in production, I actively refused to look into it or buy it out of fear that it simply couldn't live up to the original. This was until January of last year, where, during a steam sale, I picked it up on a whim. It took a lot of getting used to since there were so many changes from the previous game, but eventually I realized something: this game is way, way better than BTD5.

It's a genuinely perfect sequel in a whole myriad of ways, one of the biggest being the sheer number of towers and upgrades available. BTD5 had two upgrade paths containing four upgrades, totaling to eight, and the towers in the game were splintered across a half dozen versions. BTD6 has three upgrade paths containing five upgrades, totaling to fifteen - nearly DOUBLE what was in the original game for EACH tower. And there is no more version exclusivity, the Heli Pilot, Engineer, Sub, all of them are in the game ready to use, while also adding brand new towers into the game. Not just that, but the fifth tier upgrades were almost all brand new, and by BTD5 standards, were CRAZY expensive, but this game is balanced so that you can actually save up money a whole lot better, letting you use these towers in a really fun cycle of holding out to buy an expensive tower so you can hold out and buy an even more expensive tower. Gotta buy a Double Shot so I can save to a Razor Rotors so I can save to a Summon Phoenix so I can save to a Bloon Solver so I can save to a Carpet of Spikes. That sort of deal, ya know?

The towers have so much more nuance as well. So many upgrades in BTD5 just flat out suck, hell, entire towers in BTD5 were sometimes just bad. In BTD6, though, the game is balanced enough that pretty much every path of tower is at least decent or useable, if not in one mode then in another. Everything can work well if you can find its use, it really feels like everything is viable. Towers are made even further interesting by the crosspath system. If you buy a Tier 3 upgrade, you can buy another path up to Tier 2, but once you do that, the other path gets fully locked out. For some towers, the choice is obvious, like if you're using MOAB Glue, you're running middle crosspath no question. But for others it's a real thinker, like the Biggest One. Do I want that massive napalm damage, or do I want the fire rate for more stuns and buffs? It's a super sick feature that gives a ton more nuance to the game since the best crosspath may not be obvious or can vary on the situation, and you never know when a balance patch will flip the script on it.

This game has such a rich variety of towers it's insane how cool they are on their own and how they pair with each other. Some pairings are absolutely beautiful, like Bloon Solver + Icicle Impale, others don't work as well as you think it would, like Plasma Monkey Fan Club + Primary Expertise.

There's an entire new class of tower added as well - heroes. These are towers which level up slowly over the course of a game free of charge, and end up creating tons of cool strategies just around them. Things like Striker + Bomb spam, using Geraldo with long saveups, Corvus + Bomb Blitz, Adora + sacrifice Energizer, they add an entire OTHER sick element to the game. So many things from BTD5 got fleshed out in great ways. Making money? There isn't just farms, there's like 10 ways to do that, you've got Rubber to Gold + Bloon Trap, early Monkeyopolis, Overclock + BRF, Central Markets + Merchantmen, Supply Drop farming. Discounting? Given a small but really nuanced amount of control between village discount stacking and support temples really making you contemplate the economics of whether it'll actually save you money or not and if it's the right thing to go for now. Tower buffing? There's all sorts of buffs and debuffs now that didn't exist before, including the super complex but super fun to use Berserker Brew. There's so many new additions to already existing features that you always have some towers you haven't used in a while that are good, keeping itself fresh.

The tower lineup is truly a thing of beauty, but this game DOES have flaws, most of which are outside of the game. Remember the heroes I mentioned? You get a few via rankup, but almost all of them come at the cost of the Monkey Money system, one of the game's biggest flaws.

Monkey Money is the in-game currency used to buy and unlock stuff outside of battle. It is earned in a lot of ways - boss events, race rewards, odysseys, all sorts of other sidemodes I'll get into, but you get the large bulk of it via map medals, AKA black bordering. These map medals are another place where I have a large problem.

This game has a LOT of difficulties. Easy, Primary Only, Deflation, Medium, Reverse, Military Only, Apopalypse, Hard, Magic Only, Double HP MOABs, Half Cash, Alternate Bloon Rounds, Impoppable, and CHIMPS. That is a lot. This sounds cool at first, but the vast majority of these are very easy and very boring. Unless you're completely new to the series, most of these are pretty much just wastes of time. You'll hop into a game and wait like 20 minutes to win while barely paying attention. I'll often tab out and only tab in occasionally to place something with my built up cash, not paying attention at all because I know I'll win. Half Cash and CHIMPS are the only hard difficulties out of those. Alternate Bloon Rounds and Impoppable are definitely a cut above the rest, but are still very easy unless you're playing an extremely hard map like Bloody Puddles. Recently, I got bummed because Apopalypse, one of the few actually kinda hard difficulties, was changed to give end of round cash, making it a nothingburger easy difficulty like all the rest, which especially hurts for me, because one of my first memories of this game was getting my teeth kicked in by Apopalypse.

This is actually a downgrade from BTD5, a game which had three difficulties: Easy, Medium, and Hard (and the optional reverse tick). These difficulties were genuinely true, and noticeably harder than BTD6. Part of this was the tower selection in BTD5 was much slimmer in terms of viable picks, but it also has to do with the rounds being sent out. In BTD5, easy went up to round 50. You had to deal with tons of camos on 42 and 47(?) and a large rush of varied bloons on 49. In BTD6, it ends on 40. You have to take out a MOAB and a couple ceramics and you're done. You can practically leak every camo bloon as well. Medium is the same, 65 in BTD5, 60 in BTD6, which is an important distinction, since Round 63 is a monster, containing three huge rushes of ceramics, absolutely wrecking a defense lacking proper pierce, followed by a deadly MOAB rush on 64 for any abilities not cooled down. Hard lacks the enormous rushes of MOABs and BFBs in BTD6, since it ends on round 85 in 5 versus 80 in 6. BTD5's difficulties were few but legitimate in their purpose, whereas in BTD6 they kinda just exist; they're easy and boring. Small gripe here: I really wish BTD5's fast-track mode was in BTD6. It's an optional setting that costs monkey money to unlock (a rarity in BTD5) that skips you to round 26 with $5000. That's less money than you normally would have at that point, so it's purely only good for knocking out easy stuff, something BTD6 could really use.

All of BTD6's difficulties are ultimately meaningless because they aren't difficult. But you pretty much have to do them to earn Monkey Money, because you NEED Monkey Money to unlock stuff. Want any cool heroes? Thousands of monkey money each. You want Corvus or Geraldo? 7000 buckaroos, pay up. That is not a small amount of money, each one is a genuine grind to get through, plus there's costumes that cost 2500 each, and a map editor that costs 7000. You need several tens of thousands of Monkey Money to unlock everything, meaning you'll pretty much always be broke. You'll constantly feel like you can never afford anything, and to afford things, you have to get through the boring ass non-difficulties to get there. And then once you do get there, you'll have very little to spend Monkey Money on, so you'll just amass it in large amounts. And then Ninja Kiwi will add something that costs thousands of Monkey Money, further putting new players into effective debt while older players can just buy it instantly.

That's my first gripe with the Monkey Money system. My second are paywalled modes. Races in particular. Races are literally THE most fun mode in the game. Sending in 30 rounds at once and frantically trying to push back the absolute hoard of bloons is super fun, I absolutely adore them. Why don't I ever do them? You get one, ONE free race entry every four(?) hours. Mind you, that's a single attempt, and brother, it is extremely easy to lose in races. It's a mode all about restarts. You want to restart? 100 monkey money a pop. If you're new, your pockets will drain fast, and you won't make that money back, and you'll be in further debt. You want to play without paying? Buy a race pass for real life money, or get it every FIFTY REAL LIFE DAYS from the daily chest. Oh, you wanna spend a bit of monkey money on a race without using up a precious race pass? Nope, you HAVE to use the race pass if you have one if you want to continue. Like what the fuck is this? Why are you gatekeeping the most fun mode in the game? Races aren't that popular among the community, and I guarantee this shit is why. Boss events fall under the same problem, but more on that later.

So, the monkey money system sucks. Let's move back a bit now to black bordering and map medals, because I want to give a special mention to CHIMPS. Back in the BTD5 days, there were acronyms dedicated for when you beat a map with certain self-imposed restrictions as a sign of legitimacy, in a way. NAPS meant you beat it without absolutely cheesing it. NAPSFRILLS meant you overcame everything and developed a truly foolproof legit strategy, and is deserving of respect. CHIMPS is an emulation of that, as it bans everything from farming to Knowledge to selling. It's a true no bullshit mode, if you're good you can beat it and if you're not you can't cheese it. It's one of the most fun modes in the game - in fact, most Bloons YouTubers you see will play this mode at least 50% of the time. Its unforgiving nature, great difficulty curve, and the way towers almost feel balanced around it make it a true staple of the game, it's genuinely awesome, and always the highlight of black bordering.

CHIMPS being as fun as it is puts Half-Cash in a really weird spot. Half-Cash is far harder than every other difficulty, but far easier than CHIMPS, so despite being a fairly cool mode with its own metagame, a lot of people hate it because they can't just turn their brain off like the other modes and clear it. Black bordering in this game to most is A Bunch Of Boring Stuff, And Then CHIMPS (Half-Cash Is Also There). Side-side note, why is Reverse even a difficulty? Like, it changes so little on most maps it really is pointless.

It's not just these maps difficulties that are boring though, a lot of modes in the game are either boring or unrewarding. Odysseys are super boring, like actual snoozefests, but at least pay decent trophies. Monkey Teams is a genuinely cool concept that gives depressingly low money, hurting the mode and making the pile of monkey money debt higher. Golden Bloons is unintuitive, frustrating, AND unrewarding.

A lot of other modes in the game are significantly flawed as well. Contested Territory, for instance, is a super awesome idea, but you basically need to play the game ten times more than you normally would for a whole week in order to use all your tickets. Each of the four tickets you get daily to take a tile often take a lot of brain power to figure out the best way to beat the challenge. It's cool, but good god is it time and energy consuming.

Boss Events are a mixed bag depending on whether it's least time, tiers, or cash. Least tiers is by FAR the most fun since it generally isn't laggy and is really fun to tinker with and figure out. Least time is the worst because you will sit there mindlessly farming on slow mode for hours just to see the boss die in 3 seconds and continue the cycle. Least cash is generally chill I guess, the worst part of it is getting very anal about cutting out a little extra money. The worst part of boss events is, like races, continue money. If you want a good score, you'll have to use a lot of continues, and they get more and more expensive as it goes. Wanna restart a Tier 5 boss? SIX HUNDRED A POP. Good lord dude.

Co-op is iffy because doing something actually difficult means you'll have to give all your money to one player to either farm or buy the important towers, and the split money means you always feel broke. There's no global chat like in BTD5, just emotes (which I am fond of, but still), and the netcode sucks absolute ass. I don't even know how you get bad netcode on a game like this, it's seriously unbearable so often. My personal wish for this mode is one where players get more cash per pop, but the rounds are harder instead, making it an actually unique and fun experience.

This game, at its most fun, are CHIMPS, Races (when you don't have to worry about continues), Least Tiers bosses, and Quests. The quests tab is some of the most fun in the game, and feels like a place where the devs can actually let loose and put an interesting challenge. Speaking of, another mode I'm fond of are Advanced Challenges. They feel like a chess puzzle where you're put in a losing situation and have to think out the solution. Oftentimes it's something easy like Carpet of Spikes or XXXL Trap, but still.

As stated in the beginning, the core of this game rocks. When you're just messing around having fun, this game is absolutely peak. This game has no story mode or anything like that, just gameplay, but the gameplay is so well done that it makes up for it and is extremely addicting. Trying to do a dumb 2TC/2MP, or doing some stupid self-imposed challenge like Primary Only Freeplay or building a Paragon in CHIMPS. It's just that a lot of the modes in the game really don't bring out this game's fullest potential, in fact, only a small subsect of modes do. That and the monkey money system are this game's biggest flaws. Make the Monkey Money system less grindy, overhaul certain aspects of the game modes to make them interesting (or overhaul the entire black border system), and that's a ton of this game's flaws ironed out.

I can recommend this game to everyone, it's absolutely incredible and, as stated, blows BTD5 out of the water in most aspects. I can say with certainty that if they ever came out with Bloons Monkey City 2 using this game's engine, I'm gonna play for 50 hours a day. I pretty much banged out this review without proofreading, so sorry if parts are illegible. I've put 570 hours into this game, done every mode and gotten every achievement, so needless to say, I'm fairly passionate about it. I really, really, really do love it.

The base game is really bad. If you include fan-made WADs, this game is really good.

It's the same engine as Doom with some sick new additions, like the super shotgun and Archviles. Unfortunately, it's held back by some absolutely atrocious level design. This game's levels feels like some dogshit from an old forum thread. Boy do I love softlocks, enemy spam, dumb gimmicks, stupidly long levels, introducing new enemy types in moronic ways, and camping. After falling in love with the first game, this one felt like a slap in the face.

This game has a tough learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, is a pretty fun little game! 100%ing this takes FOR-E-VER, and I may never get there. A lot of your success in the minigames depends on how responsive your Wii remotes still are. That, combined with some minigames being brutally unforgiving, like the deep-frying one, makes this game legitimately kinda hard.

Mama's voice lines are very charming, and I enjoy the friends from around the world. The fact that they all speak their native language is something that hits me in the heart, that's something I have a weakness for. They all have cute music too, which is nice, except the start of the British friend's song is super grating on the ears, and you have to hear it a whole lot.

You have to make the recipes using motion controls, which are responsive enough, but can definitely troll you sometimes. You have to discover a method to the madness. This is, for all intents and purposes, a rage game. You must stay calm on the battlefield and make mama proud.

Fighting against the friends around the world is very............... interesting. Sometimes the game will award a bonus and you'll never be able to replicate it. Sometimes they'll utterly beat your ass so badly it's shocking. Other times it's like they'll have a stroke in the middle of working and hand you a free win. The scoring for the minigames is pretty funny here: you have three main ones: a perfect, a good enough, and a fail. On some minigames, you'll rarely ever fail, and on others, messing up even a LITTLE will give you an instant fail. It's genuinely brutal.

Of course, that scoring system is something you only need to worry about in the friends around the world mode. For normal recipes, you just need all perfects, as harsh as it is. Challenge mode is incredibly silly, you just need a passing grade, but you have a super short time limit on each game.

It's a chill game! One I can pick up and kill two hours easily. It's not a masterpiece, but I think it's a game emblematic of the Wii era and is still fun for that if nothing else. Great game to get mad at with your friends.

This game is fantastic if you don't go into with preconceived notions. I thought going into it, this would be hardcore run-and-gun chaos. This is not necessarily true.

You will spend a lot of time getting lost. You will constantly look at the map wondering where to go. You will wander the halls of the levels back and forth and back and forth. And it rocks. Going into the game thinking it would be hardcore off the bat, this game was off-putting, but after staying with it, I was rewarded with a game that has aged incredibly gracefully.

Doom is a very patient shooter. After a while, I enjoyed wandering the vast, detailed levels, all the rooms and details, all the secrets I occasionally came across. I think there was one or two levels I had to look up what I was supposed to do, but most of the game can be figured out intuitively.

The real secret is that the run-and-gun madness part of this game comes a while after you start playing it. After you get a feel for the maps, you'll understand where to go faster, and start getting into fights more. For this reason, this game has a TON of replayability, just running through the levels killing stuff and having a blast. It takes a while getting to that point, but I honestly enjoyed getting there.

The only thing that I guess stands out as weird is the inability to look up and down, creating weird auto-aim situations where, if an enemy is very high or very low below you, you'll seemingly shoot at nothing, but still hit them. It's nothing too awful though, you get used to it after a while.

It's overall just a blast, getting faster and faster and fighting through the hordes of enemies, all of which I enjoy aside from lost souls, seriously fuck those guys. Definitely recommend! It's no wonder this game has such a strong community to this very day.

I figured I'd never play one a Persona game, but here I am after taking up a friend's recommendation. Was definitely better than I thought.

First off, this game is LONG. It takes four hours of prologue just to get into the actual game, and I put in 100 hours of gameplay to get to the true end. Naturally, this review is going to be pretty long, considering how much ground there is to cover.

The game is split into a "social" half and a "dungeon-crawling" half. The social half has you exploring your hometown of Inaba, talking to your party members, family, people around the town, and notable individuals whom have a "social link" (the game's way of saying becoming friends with them), which in turn give you insight into these peoples' lives and allow you to rank up an Arcana type, allowing you to make stronger Personas to use in battle. I really do love the tie-in here between the two worlds, it helps prevent the game from feeling like two isolated halves.

The social links vary in how interesting they are. Yosuke's is a pretty convincing display of grief, whereas a character like Yukiko's more or less feels like just hanging out. Nothing wrong with just being buddies, but sometimes the characters feel a little basic. That's one of the game's flaws - it feels like it really wants to SAY SOMETHING about people, but oftentimes feels too shallow. Sometimes it does decently, sometimes there's cool subtext, but again, generally shallow. I feel this the most within the first half of the dungeons in this game, where you see these characters' deepest, darkest parts of themselves they vehemently deny, and then after a battle, they just sort of go "actually, I accept my other half I've denied for possibly years" and voila, dungeon complete. Specifically, Kanji, Rise, and Naoto all have some pretty serious, deep-rooted themes in their character that gets really plainly addressed. It felt cheesy, like it was the end of an episode in a kid's show. Which is a shame, cause you could make some very interesting dialogues about all three of them.

At the very least, I enjoy how many social links there are in the game. I was in the last part of the game and I was STILL finding new social links I hadn't discovered before, and even after beating it, I know there are some I fully missed, like the Tower and Hanged Man arcana social links. At the same time, it kinda felt like a hassle running around town all the time looking for people to level up, especially considering I didn't know when I would be locked out of leveling them up (I was SO close to getting Adachi to a high rank before being locked out of it). This is a very busy game. You have to rank your social links up, fill out your compendium, read books, go fishing, go to work. Of course, I tend to love games like that, but this game's system of limited days and being limited to 2 time-passing activities per day really puts pressure on the player to get all this shit done.

Alright, I've talked enough smack. Why did I even rate this four stars? Well, despite all those gripes, I still love those pars. I enjoyed the various Social Link dialogues for the most part, the characters in this game are pretty loveable, except Yosuke, who's only tolerable during his Social Link cutscenes. The major cutscenes in this game - all the Junes outings, the festival, going to the beach, the culture festival, a lot of things you'd see in a Slice of Life anime now that I say it out loud. They're charming! Of course, anime humor will be anime humor, this isn't exactly a funny man's game (it did get some laughs out of me though), but it's enjoyable watching this little group of friends live out their very ideal lives (despite the murders).

The dungeon crawling is, for the most part, pretty fun. There's like, eight or nine dungeons or so, each around 10 floors. Occasionally they'll introduce a shitty gimmick like having to backtrack for a key, but mostly they're linear. The only good gimmick was the second-to-last dungeon, (you have to be on the True Ending route to access it) which was such a crazy place I absolutely loved it. I even got a tiny teeny bit emotional seeing it. I didn't cry or shed a tear though, I haven't done that in many years. Though I wonder when the next time I will will be. It'll probably be something major.

I had a small dislike of them around the middle-ish point of the game, but I think that's cause I got a tiny bit fixated on this game and kept playing it all day every day, so it felt nauseating going through these halls trying to find the exit again and again and again. The enemies of the dungeon are pretty chill, it's like Pokemon where you just use the move type that they're weak to, except that in this game, you can do All-Out Attacks if everyone got hit with a super-effective move (or crit) which can end battles faster. It felt like a chore sometimes, but that's just how it goes. I did really enjoy the overworld shadow system though, I love juking those dudes and running circles around em. However, I will say I got annoyed when later in the game, most enemies were just recolors of old ones, with new ones being a rare sight. I can't blame them that much considering just how many detailed 3D models were made for this game, but still.

The Persona aspect was really neat, combining them was very fun, even if it took me a bit to get everything about merging them. Izanagi, Jack Frost, Rakshasa, Black Frost, Siegfried, Kaguya, Scacath, Trumpeter, Zaou-Gongen, I will remember you all. You all served me well. Which reminds me, I love all the move types in this game, the scaling of them is quite smooth and customizing movesets ended up being very enjoyable. Getting that card during Shuffle Time that ranks up a skill was always a mixed bag, but damn it really came in clutch sometimes. Filling out the compendium was one of my favorite parts of the game, but then again, my favorite part of Pokemon is filling out the Pokedex, so maybe' that's just me.

If I had to give the game props in one specific area, it'd be music. As most game music is, (with some exceptions, like the great Tim Follin) it's pretty whatever unless you actually play the game where it's from and get context for it. That remains the case for this game, but it's something to say about it, cause running around the town, school, and floodbank with the game's soundtrack was an absolute joy. It's phenomenal background music, even if it had a limited number of songs, they were so good that I absolutely did not mind listening to them on repeat. The battle music and dungeon music, as well as cutscene songs, were also super good. Definitely a big point in favor of the game. In particular, I loved it when the background songs changed with the season. During summer, the game stops playing music in exchange for background ambience of cicadas, which, my God, was so fucking beautiful. It just really brought me back, it was so peaceful and relaxing and just... GREAT! And then, when Winter came around, the song that plays is so good, it was the one other part of the game that got me a teensy weensy bit emotional (DID NOT CRY). In short, it's stated from the beginning of the game that you'll leave next Spring, so the song in Winter is about getting ready to say your farewells. It's very lovely.

Alright, I've gotta conclude this wall of text sooner or later. Basically, the story, while nothing too crazy or insane, (well, the main twist did surprise me) held my interest to the very end. I enjoyed all the little things you have to do in this game, although I wish I started fishing earlier. Didn't manage to get a River Guardian, very sad. I guess that's one small gripe I have, there's a bunch of little time-based things that will just go away after a while, and you have no real way of knowing what or when it'll be. One other gripe I have - Rise was crying to me, and I clicked the option to comfort her, because what the hell am I going to do, stand there and stare? And then from doing that, the game was like "ah, you're in a relationship with them now" and it's like MOTHER FUCKER I'm already dating Yukiko why did you force that on me. I guess I'll write it here for archival sake, but the reason I dated Yukiko was cause I was ranking up her social link and the game said I felt hints of love toward her (or maybe it was the other way around?) so I was like "alright, sure." And then Rise had the nerve to act all sad on Valentines, like we're not like that!! Calm down!! Anyway I got off track.

It's a good game. Would recommend, although it is quite long, and having some hints about how to get the true ending is recommended. I enjoyed my time with this one!

Kanji x Naoto for life...

Giving this game such a low rating feels a little disingenuous, because in the nature of heavily DOOM inspired games, a lot of the fun comes after beating it for the first time. But for me, my first time going through, I've gotta say: god this game is mixed.

The level design varies so much in quality it's ridiculous. Generally speaking, the later in the game you go, the better the levels get. And, of course, when it's good, you're moving around, getting in the flow, slowing down and exploring, and having a nice complete lovely package of a game. But sometimes to progress you'll get hit with something so unintuitive it's shocking. E2L4 (Fusion Station) has a door you can't open, and you must to progress. To open it? Go to an unmarked secret door in the wall, travel down its hallway to a small room with powerups with a switch you can barely see on the wall to progress. If I had to compare this to the original DOOM, in that game when I got lost, I'd wander the map for a while before finding where to go. In this game, I'd wander and wander and wander, finally cave and look it up, and it's some bullshit.

E3L7 (Fahrenheit) also has some unintuitive bullshit to progress, but more prominently features another thing I hate with this game: Battlelords, which are kinda like this game's Barons of Hell from DOOM, in that they're the boss of the first episode which later become a semi-frequent miniboss. E3L7 puts one, along with several other enemies, directly in front of a required door, meaning if you don't know what's behind it, you will immediately die. Even if you do, it's such a brutal situation that you'll probably die anyway. Mind you this section is at the end of the level. This game does provide a modern reprieve in that once you die, you can rewind to any point in the level, meaning you can brute force through tough sections. Normally, I'm very against this, but this game has so many bullshit situations (mostly with Battlelords) that I eventually grew completely used to using it. Battlelords, I should add, are very, very strong. They have tons of HP and have a nearly instant hitscan attack that rips through your HP fast, as well as a grenade attack that is of some note. Buuuut, the Shrinker weapon works on it, meaning you can effectively one-shot it. And as a result I feel, the game sees that as an excuse to throw reason out the window and put Battlelords in the stupidest locations ever.

Battlelords aren't the only enemy I despise though, there's also Sentry Drones. God. Have you ever played classic Castlevania and had to deal with Medusa Heads, those annoying assholes that are hard to hit and wreck your shit? That's Sentry Drones. They lock onto you at fairly high speeds, have a surprising amount of HP, and explode once they hit you. If you're in the middle of fighting some enemies and a Sentry Drone comes out, you have to stop everything you're doing to focus on them, and if you slip up a little, whoops! You got blown up and lost like 30% of your HP! These guys often come in packs, too, so they can just shred you apart. I think part of the reason I started enjoying the later parts of this game was because the devs realized this enemy sucks and proceeded to put them in very limited numbers only.

Moving on, the first level is so fucking cool, with so many little things you can interact with, it's a beautiful introduction to the game. But it doesn't ride that energy at all, and fairly quickly becomes an average shooter with the occasional funny voiceline from Duke. Episode 3 (Shrapnel City) takes you back to Earth, but Episode 4 (The Birth) really plays into it, and some of the locations here are funny as fuck. Like Duke Burger, a burger joint themed after Duke Nukem ran by aliens (also one of the worst levels to play in the game). There's also a place called Babeland, which is like Disneyland (with a Mickey Mouse-esque NPC) but every attraction is themed around sexy women. The women in this game are pretty much exclusively done in a sexual connotation (some of them even flash you, which genuinely shocked me), but it's so over-the-top it's honestly funny. A large part of the aliens' goal is to capture babes, like come on, that shit is funny. It feels like it'd be easy for that sort of thing to quickly become gross to see, but the game spaces these bits out enough that it felt played out just enough.

A couple final sporadic notes:

- The 3D cutscenes that play after every episode (and at the start of Episode 4 I think?) are fucking 10/10, absolute peak. The highlight of the whole game.

- The last boss of episode two literally paralyzed me with fear when I first saw it, which I can definitely say is a rare thing for me.

- I completed E3L5 (Movie Set) in 52 seconds. The par time was 2:30, and the 3D Realms time (which is like a challenge time) is 1:04. Was a very confusing moment.

- I didn't complete Episode 5 because, like DOOM, it's basically DLC and is much harder than the rest of the game. But I did play level one (High Times) and the whole Little Green Man Coffee Shop is very fucking funny, especially the "no tobacco" bit on the menu. Also you can just get a Devastator with 75 ammo under the boat which is ridiculous lol.

- The Rocket Launcher's projectile hitbox is jank.

- I never figured out how to use the Expander correctly.

- YOU CAN'T FUCKING SEE WHAT CARDKEYS YOU'VE GOTTEN. THIS HAS FUCKED ME UP SO MUCH DURING THE GAME. IT'S IN THE ORIGINAL WHY IS IT NOT HERE.

Overall, a fun game when it's fun, but when it's not fun, good fucking lord.

This is a strong contender for my favorite game of all time. I spent countless hours on this game as a kid, and even replaying it found myself loving it again, and recently, I watched and helped a friend beat it all, and I have loved it once more. It's a special game to me, one with sentimental value. But not only is it one I love, it's a game I love to discuss due to how different it is from Pikmin 1.

There are a lot of types of video game sequels, and this one falls into the "experimental second game" category, where it takes what the first game did and completely spins it all around upside down. A lot of the things that defined Pikmin 1 - the anxiety-inducing day limit, the well-balanced Pikmin types, the loneliness of Olimar's situation, the time management of each day - ALL of this is absent from Pikmin 2.

The first thing to praise Pikmin 2 for is something of a "free point," something the game would have done regardless of direction, which is its stability and quality of life improvements. Pikmin 1 is both notoriously jank and has by far the worst Pikmin AI in the series (which are honestly charm points for the game IMO, but thank god it got better). Pikmin 2 has little to no debilitating glitches like the Crush Glitch; the most you'll see is a treasure (like the Unspeakable Wonder or Possessed Squash) get a little bit stuck, but you can get it out with a little effort. The only other one to come to mind is Pikmin can die out-of-bounds in caves if they go high enough past a wall (best place to do this is the Pileated Snagret fight). Furthermore, the Pikmin AI is VASTLY improved, they're so much more cooperative it's insane. Tripping has also been reduced in frequency and duration, which is highly appreciated. Not to mention the captains now have funny little idle animations and the Pikmin SING AND MAKE NOISES! It's such a small change, but it adds so much to the game, I love the little Pikmin songs they sing.

Additionally, this game has something truly remarkable: the Piklopedia. Pikmin 1's end-of-day journals and ending roll call are cool, but Pikmin 2's Piklopedia BLOWS it out of the water. Every enemy, every interactable object, all the bosses, even the fauna and grasses are recorded with Olimar's beautiful way of writing, with wording complex, yet without feeling convoluted or hard to understand. Every enemy has a funny little scientific name, and the new journal entries you get after getting every treasure are just delectable! AND YOU CAN THROW CARROTS AT THE ENEMIES! On the other end, you also have the treasure hoard, which you sadly can't throw carrots at, but is very entertaining nonetheless. Olimar has a ton of out-of-pocket stuff to say - things about hating his boss and corporations, talking about his (ungrateful) wife, his kids, the ship, Louie, and oftentimes talking about himself in the most ridiculous ways. Going through the Treasure Hoard is, well, like searching for treasure. Many of the entries aren't that notable, but some I genuinely couldn't believe what I was reading! Also, the way it scrolls through the list when you complete a set is satisfying. The treasure hoard also has Sales Pitches once you complete the set, but these are less interesting overall.

Alright, now into the meat and potatoes of the game. First off are the new Pikmin. Reds and Blues are exactly the same as the first game (although Reds got slightly indirectly nerfed since you can destroy Fire Geysers now), and Yellows have been repurposed to no longer wield bomb rocks but are now immune to the new Electricity hazard. The new Piks on the block are Purples, Whites, and Bulbmin. Bulbmin can only be obtained and used within dungeons, but in exchange are immune to every main element (Fire, Water, Electricity, and Poison). Good, solid, balanced, and reward a player for entering with less than 100 Pikmin, or help out a player who has lost a lot of their squad. Purple and White Pikmin can only be obtained via Candypop buds, which have been reworked to only convert 5 Pikmin before disappearing. White Pikmin are fast, small, can see buried treasures, are immune to poison, and will deal heavy poison damage to enemies that eat them. They're quite fun to use! You can sacrifice them to diffuse a strong enemy, they're great for carrying stuff back, and they're pretty naturally useful thanks to the Poison immunity. Good, balanced, solid.

And then there's Purples.

Full disclosure: I've never played Pikmin 4, and I've only played Pikmin 3 once, but I have no doubt in my mind that Purple Pikmin in Pikmin 2 are the strongest Pikmin type, ever. Good lord they're strong. They aren't immune to any element (they can't be knocked over by wind, but lose their flowers anyway, so it isn't worth much). But in exchange, they are VERY strong. They home in on enemies, meaning you don't have to aim that much. They deal heavy damage when they stomp on enemies, and deal a small stun in a nearby radius. Their actual melee attacks are way stronger than normal, and to top it all off, they have a decent chance to deal a LONG stun to an enemy, lasting around 7 seconds or so. They are MONSTERS. The game gives out very few of these for good reason, you only need about 20 to beat any enemy in the game without paying attention. They are obscenely strong. If I have 35 Red Pikmin versus a Red Bulborb, I'm not confident I'll beat it without losing anything. If I have 9 Purple Pikmin versus a Red Bulborb, it's going down guaranteed. Their strength is truly ridiculous.

So you just wreck everything in the game? What gives? Well, it's balanced by the fact that this game is actively vitriolic towards you. This game has "fuck you" level design. The first several dungeons in the game aren't anything too bad. Eventually you'll get to the Bulblax Kingdom, Glutton's Kitchen, and Snagret Hole and it's still nothing too crazy. The occasional bullshit but hey. But eventually the game really starts throwing curveballs at you. A Bulbear trap. Spawning in front of several Decorated Cannon Beetles. Dropping multiple Volatile Dweevils on you at once. Having to camp out next to the entrance to the next floor while Empress Bulblax's babies keep spawning while dodging falling rocks. This game has a lot. It will throw a floor at you with seemingly no respect for you and you'll lose 20 Pikmin, and you can choose to either reset the floor or hold the L. This game gets straight up evil, and that's not even mentioning bosses like the Man-at-Legs or Segmented Crawbster which are just diabolical. It almost paralyzes the player in fear, making them slowly take their time in a dungeon, not knowing when the game will throw something vicious at them. Or, alternatively, the player will just have to bite the bullet and run into something despite knowing it won't go well, like fighting a Fiery Bulblax while it's in water, or fighting a Gatling Groink on a pillar. Sometimes the game blindsides you with a Bumbling Snitchbug grabbing you as a bomb rock deploys on top of your now-dismissed Pikmin.

It's quite the dynamic! But what adds to the game's fun is outsmarting it at what it does. Activating the bomb rock traps you know will be on the floor, luring a Bulbear into a death pit, using White Pikmin to sneak by a pack of Careening Dirigibugs. And it's this very concept that gives the game some decent level of replayability (although the game's replayability is still weak due to its slow start and human capacity for bullshit).

What IS very replayable is Challenge Mode. The scoring system is pretty strange, but it's great fun to go through. Running around Red Chasm trying to get as much treasure as possible, or trying to just beat all 3 Bulbears in Subterranean Abyss, or 100%ing Cave of Pain, are all very fun, very tough challenges. Playing Bully Den on multiplayer is one of the funniest experiences I have ever had in a video game.

Back to dungeons in the main game, which are, after all, the main focus, it's certainly a strange design choice, isn't it? Time does not pass in dungeons at all, so you're able to go through and clear it as slowly as possible. If you really want to, you can even go with the captains alone and start punching most of the enemies on the floor. In fact, that's often the best play to not lose Pikmin. It may not be as strong of a setting as Pikmin 1, but it's still pretty cool, flawed and all. Pikmin 1's setting is based around the terrifying time limit and managing your days. Pikmin 2's is about going into the bowels of caves just for some extra treasure. It may not be a perfect fit for Pikmin, but I'll be damned if it isn't fun. Though I will say, the visuals can sometimes be lacking. Sometimes it looks nice, but the default dirt caves many floors have is very whatever to look at. Once you come back on the surface you realize how good everything looks. This game is actually very pretty graphically, and even has some nice touches, like sun flares on the camera or the heat warping the air around Fiery Bulblaxes, but there's a lot of times you can't really see that.

I still love it for what it is! Accept the game's bullshit into your heart, accept that it is trying to kill you, and just know you can repopulate your pikmin again. Sure, grinding purples at the Subterranean Complex (which you have to do for the Doomsday Appartus if you're going for 100%) is pretty boring, but just watch a movie or something in the meantime, get in a call with a friend. There's so many ways to make monotony in games bearable.

What can I say except the final boss of the game is fucking epic and the last cutscene is emotional. The game, despite me giving it full marks, is still deeply flawed. But that's what I love about it. The game really breaks the mold and delivers a unique experience. It treads new ground and does exactly what a sequel should do: expand out the ideas of the first game and see what happens. As an experimental, silly, occasionally bullshit game, I absolutely love Pikmin 2. It's totally unbalanced, Purples are way too strong, Sprays are too, and enemy placements can be downright unfair, and I love it to death. I hope I can play more games like it in the future.

This game's artstyle is beautiful man. I absolutely adore the way it looks, everywhere you go in the game is as beautiful as the last.

This is a super chill RPG, quite possibly one of the most chill out there. You explore a silly little world with Mario enemies and go through quirky little text boxes. Though basic, the game is very noticeably well-polished in this regard. There's a nice, easy skip text button that makes a cool sound, you can spin in the overworld to travel faster which is fun to do, and the way the game moves through areas quickly, the way the camera can sometimes panorama in large areas, it all feels so nice. It's a relaxing world.

The battle system is dirt simple and very fun. I absolutely adore the badge system, my only issue with it is that the game isn't really all that hard. It'll throw a curveball or two, but I don't think I died a single time (I'm pretty sure I popped a Life Shroom though). You don't have a lot you can sic your cool badge setups on, the most you can do is kill stuff faster, which is cool enough I guess.

I love the action command system, it integrates reaction times and execution into a turn-based battle system without feeling stupid. Honestly, fundamentals-wise, this is an incredible RPG. It's intentionally very basic and simple, so this game is "easy to digest" in a way. There isn't really a part of the game that sticks out to me as fantastic, nor is there a part that sticks out as irritating. It's a solid experience throughout.

I 100%'d the game on my last run of it, which was generally pretty chill... except for the genuinely shocking amount of recipes this game has. I had no idea how many there were.

Really, there isn't an extensive amount I can say about this game other than it's comfortable and pretty easy. It's just a solid little game you can play, not much more or less.

This was recommended to me by a friend of mine, and I can definitely say I'm glad she did. I know the term "quirky Earthbound-inspired RPG about depression" gets thrown around as a derogatory term, but that string of words doesn't necessarily entail a bad game, no?

The game is split into two "worlds," one is the "Earthbound" part of the game, and the other is the "depression" part of the game. The Earthbound part is chill, it didn't exactly grab my attention immediately; I do feel the start of the game is pretty slow. But once you get to Sweetheart's Castle, it picks up a lot more and becomes very solid, solid enough that I ended up enjoying the RPG part throughout. The game is full of silly character interactions and a TON of sidequests, including a couple badass hidden bosses. There's a lot of stuff to do in this game if you're going for 100%! It's all optional though, but I tackled a lot of it cause I like wandering. The battle system is chill. I didn't feel the game was that difficult, but it definitely threw curveballs here and there, and it's not like I didn't beat the game without game over-ing a couple times.

The "depression" part of the game is honestly pretty cool, and is definitely the larger appeal of the game. Weird, mysterious shit happens, and it leaves you wondering what is going on? What are all these details we're missing here? The story of the game is built heavily around concealed information that you'll only get trickles of.

The ending of this game is the true selling point. It was INCREDIBLY gripping, the final reveals and final boss were both... mwah. Beautiful. Of course, if you aren't enjoying the game at all, don't force yourself to slog to the ending. For reference, the game took me about 25 hours to reach the ending (with many of those hours being spent dicking around), so it's decently long but not overbearing.

The game has some minor flaws, like how the battle system and RPG-parts of the game are alright, but nothing super interesting. The emotion system is pretty neat, and it's not like it was unfun, it's just definitely not the appeal of the game. I guess that makes it pretty faithfully inspired by Earthbound, huh?

In addition, the game has two artstyles. One is hand-drawn, and is very nice looking, I always thought it fit the game quit well. The other is a pixel artstyle, which I didn't care for. Lots of 1x1 pixeling and most things just don't stand out that much to me. I'm not usually picky about artstyle at all, but the pixel art could've used a little work. In my eyes at least.

It's a solid game though! Enjoyed my time with it, and might even pick it up again at some point and go for full 100%. I could definitely recommend this to certain people.

Also Pet Rock is badass.

Edit: music's pretty good too

The original Zombies Ate My Neighbors had a ton of flaws, so I'm glad to see this game is even worse. Absolutely ABYSMAL tank controls, awful level design, and the graphics, while having a nice artstyle, are incredibly unclear, and it's difficult to easily tell what's going on in the level's layout. Instead of having a convenient minimap to tell you where the neighbors are, you instead have this cluttered, annoying, and inaccurate mess of speech bubbles going around the screen telling you vaguely where to go. The weapons feel much worse to use, largely because the game just feels unresponsive. This game has some nice ideas, like running (even if it is bound to the action button) and jumping are pretty sick additions, and I love the new transformation potion, but the game just sucks too much otherwise. Straight poopoo.

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Edit 2/11/24: Whoops I forgot to write my review. This game is really solid, I mean come on, it's Super Fuckin Mario Bros, this game is an important piece of gaming history and is well known for a reason. Even if it isn't as widely played as Mario 3 or Mario World these days, this game holds up. The game can feel weird for some with things like not being able to turn around while you jump or not gaining momentum during a jump, but you can get around those.

What I feel like most people don't acknowledge with this game is that it's secretly an exploration game. I reckon most people just go from 1-2 to 4-1, them 4-2 to 8-1 and beat the game. Hell no! Going from level to level, no warps, no continuing from last world, no save states or rewinds or nothing, gives you a whole new appreciation for the game. I'd be looking in every single ? box looking for coins, looking for hidden blocks, breaking every brick, and keeping in mind where the 1-ups and vines were, so that you can stockpile lives for the later worlds, where resources get a lot more barren. It adds a whole new layer to the game that is easily missed with modern luxuries!

And when you put it like that, with the exploration, all the little hidden secret areas, the speedrunability of this game, and even the playground rumors like World -1, you've got a really cool versatile game here! Definitely something real special here. Wonder if this Nintendo company will go on to make any more games after this one.