Originally, I posted a review comparing this game to other titles with a ton of depth that demand a lot from the player (like IIDX, +R, etc). I deleted that review, because I wasn't totally sure where I stood on the game after a few more races.

And then after doing even more races, I realized I was right the first time. This game fucking rules.

The tutorial is still awful, but I'm really glad I did it because I would not have thought to use stuff like quick drop without it, and the dialogue between Tails and Robotnik is endearing. It's probably the worst part of the game, and it's irrelevant after the first 45 min outside of the on-boarding process for new players. "Oh, you think you're hot shit? Beat this max CPU level race then" is based, actually.

Otherwise, it's a kart racer that asks more from you than most other entries in the genre, and that's rad. The ring system is sick as hell. The courses aren't all bangers, but an overwhelming majority of them are, and they all look and sound so good that you genuinely forget that the game is a fan project.

The Brawlesque unlock system is only frustrating if you want all the content at once and don't give a shit about the single player experience. The actual process of unlocking everything is, much like it was in Brawl, a fantastic way to encourage new players to plumb the depths of the game, and the key system lets you skip over any challenge you find especially egregious.

Nobody's mentioned the little pets that you can have follow you. I love having a little guy around me at all times for emotional support. No notes, should be a feature in more games in general.

This game is not trying to replace SRB2Kart, and divorced from the context of that game, I don't think it would have nearly as bad of a reputation. The average rating on this page has gone up steadily since this game's release, and as I posted before, in six months after the rough patches of the game are smoothed out (as they have been already in some cases!), it'll be appreciated for the home run that it is.

Devil Survivor 2 is a slog, a train-wreck that manages to capture none of the magic of the first game. The cast is weaker across the board. The outcomes to each of their stories are weaker. The concept of the plot weakens the connection you have to the setting. The tension that the first game had is totally absent in this game. While the game mechanics have more depth, it wasn't like the first game was too simplistic (with the superboss encouraging abuse of revive loops). They did not fix the previous game's main weakness (kinda really bad map design), and instead made more gimmicky stupid ass maps.

They brought in an Evangelion artist to do the designs of the Septentriones, and these ice cream looking rejects lack the personality of Bels from the original game, or even the spectacle of Evangelion's angels. They never become more captivating obstacles to overcome, and most of the secondary antagonists come from NPCs doing stupid shit that's success or failure hinges on this jackass of a high schooler. Bunny is the only good thing about this game. In other SMT/Persona games, people like to extrapolate a personality out of potential dialogue choices for silent protags. If we do that for DeSu2's main character, he either does not fully understand what is going on in the plot or just can't be bothered to give a fuck.

As for the rest of the game's art, it's fine up until you hit the point where anatomy matters. Not only are there bruh character designs for high schoolers (like in the first game, to be fair), the other designs lack the modern, "this is just what I threw on to go to the grocery store" look of the previous game.

Devil Survivor 2's endings allow the player to reshape the world in the image of one of his party members. In one of the endings, the world is created in such a way that everyone on the planet unconditionally cooperates with each other. Those in power sacrifice their temporary comfort for those in need of their own volition, while still fully retaining their personality. In the game's on words

"It was a true utopia, the sort men had dreamed of for ages".

This is treated as a lesser ending than "reset back to the status quo of 2010s Japan", because hey, what if something bad happens? What if universal cooperation and acceptance isn't as productive as the ending where everyone is climbing over dead bodies? DeSu2 sucks shit outside of this ending, but over a decade after this game came out, this remains one of the most misanthropic moments in the medium.

I have more nice things to say about all the boring SPRGs everyone's rightfully forgot about like Feda or Stella Deus than I do Devil Survivor 2. This game's highlights are the moments it seems to have contempt for itself, instead of the human condition as a whole. Not recommended to fans of other Atlus games (including the first), strategy games or weebs in general.

This game owes more to noted "least funny man on the internet" Hideki Naganuma than Jet Set Radio Future. The music from the four different contributors in this Sonic DS spinoff carries the experience of what would otherwise be a "fine, not fantastic" mobile Sonic game for me. The ending of this Sonic game has genuine emotional impact, and the music playing during it might be the most underrated track in the franchise.

My major pros for this game are "I like the character they introduced and the music's really good" but that's a 4/5 sometimes, I don't know what to tell you.

LittleWing were a Japanese husband and wife duo who primarily made indie pinball games. Not only is this such an endearing backstory from a region that's track record with pinball been kinda spotty, they clearly know what makes a good board tick.

Mad Daedalus isn't my favorite board from them, on either a visual or rules standpoint, and the physics aren't as crisp as dedicated sims/recreations. There's still a competency and depth of ruleset that even modern Pinball devs struggle with. I had a ton of fun getting to the wizard mode on this board, and I'll be pushing heaven and earth to get those older titles working this weekend. Highly recommend to pinball fans.

A coworker of mine the other day was talking about Fallout, and I mentioned how I thought Fallout 4 sucked shit (in a much more polite way, we're cool). She asked why, and in response, I asked her to describe her favorite character in the game and why they resonated with her. I didn't get an answer, nor did I expect one.

As an open world game where you walk around in the woods for 40-80 hours and pick up used candy bar wrappers to repair your guns, Fallout 4 is totally acceptable. If they offered PS4 games on flights, there would be worse ways to kill a few hours.

As a narrative, it's a Bethesda game. I don't think there's any other developer that could do a worse job with the story of Fallout. Idea Factory would be a welcome improvement. The changes to the core setting of the game are, at best, lazy and at worst outright contemptuous of the themes of the previous games. None of the characters work. Their use of pre-war American iconography totally misses the point of the previous games. Even divorced from the previous games, the role playing aspect of Fallout 4 looks barren compared to even other flawed WRPGs like Mass Effect. It's a game that railroads you in order to tell a very specific story, and that story was written by hollow men.

This game set the tone that the franchise would take going forward. I think about other Bethesda games like Skyrim and laugh at their total ineptitude. Fallout 4 actively makes me upset. If there's any just and loving God, Zenimax will be bought out by a private equity firm and stripped for parts like Sears, or Toys r' Us.

The mid 2010s were so bad for gaming, it's insane how much better things have gotten.

Shadow Dragon is a great SPRG with tight, focused design trapped inside such a swagless, unappealing shell that it turned a game that should have reinvigorated interest of the series into one that almost killed it outright.

The turn to turn gameplay of Shadow Dragon holds up great. If you're in the mood for a "vanilla" Fire Emblem game, despite reclassing and reforging, this scratches that itch more than most other entries in the series. Maps are designed with the limitations of your party in mind, with a clear flow that still allows for creativity in how you clear them. The new mid-map save points mitigate some of the more frustrating and antiquated aspects of FE1. The game gives you a ton of cool tools to play with, and begs you to break them further with the reforging system It's a game that I've went from not getting past the few extra chapters, to one where if I have to kill an afternoon or a long bus ride, much like Final Fantasy 1, I can breeze through in about six hours and have a great time. I don't usually enjoy challenge runs in the Fire Emblem series, and I'll abuse save states/resets if my favorite units chip a nail, but Shadow Dragon's just built in such a way where death feels bad, but not something to avoid at all costs. While much of this praise can be levied towards the original, the remake doesn't get in the way.

I didn't know this until close to ten years after the game came out, because it looks and sounds like a Jagex game. This game's sound font sucks shit, if I could have an option to listen to the original NES version, it would stay on at all times. The concept art on the cover for this game (on this website) looks nice, but that's probably the only audio or visual element of the game I don't think fails. The art style's probably my least favorite in the series, including the Grannvale's yaoi chin epidemic. The color pallet is drab, to such an extent where I'll look at my individual units on screen and everything will just blend together until I focus my eyes. The battle animations are the nadir. Under no circumstances did they have to resort to these animations. There were no expectations for this pseudo-3D presentation. Final Fantasy Tactics A2 was a year old at this point with minor improvements to the artystyle, mostly consisting of putting the added screen real estate to use. Front Mission 1's remake was older, they ripped most of the assets straight from the original, and it was the best way to play that game until the recent remakes. This isn't a SPRG studio release done on $500, Marth was in Super Smash Brothers. What's the excuse?

The presentation of Shadow Dragon is something I harp on because it really did kill a lot of the causal interest in the series stateside till Awakening, and it didn't have to be this way. They put so much effort into the feel of the game, and assumed that people would understand how self evidently good the game is (or they'd see a portable Fire Emblem and gobble that shit up) and get on board. Shadow Dragon's reputation among the community, myself included, has improved considerably since the game's release, but it's really hard not to be frustrated with just how hard they dropped the ball. It's a lot of fun reforging a Wing Spear and tearing shit up across the countryside. Unfortunately, that fun is tempered by my functioning eyes and ears.

To gain the ability to save anywhere, you need to recruit a thief into your party, have her hang around luggage check at the airport and hope she randomly steals someone's cell phone. It was the among the best console JRPGs you could buy until Final Fantasy IV came out.

This game's rating would be much lower if all copies didn't ship with a comprehensive and handy hint book, complete with maps. Also, the ending goes so fucking hard that it's almost worth sitting through the kinda bad dungeon design.

One of the seminal entries in the "games Brian Griffin would make" genre, except the surrounding game is decent.

Papers, Please was a game that I really enjoyed when it came out, and I think the overall gameplay loop and presentation carry the game in a way that similar disasters like Not For Broadcast can't. Unlike that game, I really enjoyed most of the cast and following their ongoing stories.

The thing that brings those stories down is that the narrative is tied to a very confused and outright reactionary view of the eastern bloc. It's to be expected, I don't think Lucas Pope mentally has left the suburbs of Virginia since his birth, but the Red Dawn tier depiction of a vaguely leftwing, vaguely slavic rogue state that willingly deprives its citizens of basic needs based on the market is a disingenuous and purposeful political statement. It's also one that's very hard to believe once you have a basic understanding of the history of these regions, and going back to the game even four years after its launch, this stood out to me.

It's also just hard to find the despotic nature of the setting that gripping compared to the immigration system of the United States, which is significantly darker and more cruel than anything depicted in this game. We have the secret police, we have the "work or die" economic system, we even go a step further and have outright concentration camps. These weren't recent developments within the writer's lifetime either. He was around for the formation of ICE! There's a version of this game, if you absolutely have to set it in the "evil gommunism" of the vague east, that cuts so much deeper than this game comes close to approaching.

It really fucking sucks, because if this game wasn't such a cowardly and confused mess of a setting, it would make the individual stories of the regulars you meet at your desk job so much more engaging.

Like the previous game, Harmony of Dissonance is a solid game that's one little issue cripples the overall experience.

I hated the castle design in this game, more than any other Castlevania I've played yet. I think there are memorable elements to the level design. I'll outright defend the way the castle looks (and the color pallet in general). Navigating around the castle isn't even that bad in theory, with how nice the movement feels in this game (it's a very good thing I played CotM first, it would have been very hard to go back).

This game just doesn't respect the player's time in terms of navigation. Even with a map, I was constantly lost, hitting a dead end, and mashing my head against every wall I could trying to find the one rock I didn't turn over in order to progress. I don't think that, even with double the amount of warps around the map, the lack of signposting and flow would have been acceptable. It cheapens every unique location that the game has because either:

1) You've ran through it twenty times trying to find a different colored keycard in order to progress.

2) The thought of having to hike across the map to check it out will give you indigestion.

It's still a sizable improvement over CotM, and while it's probably on the "too easy" side of the spectrum, that's still preferable compared to the inexcusable difficulty spikes of the previous game. Harmony of Dissonance's issues seem unique to itself, and what it refines would be welcome going forward. It's just not a game I'd like to return to anytime soon.