This is the first time I play a Phantasy Star game and I am pleasantly surprised with how good this was. For a game released in 1987, the same year as Dragon Quest II and Final Fantasy, this game does a lot of things right. There are 3 overworld maps to explore, each with their own style and musical theme, there is no weird impossible-to-guess-cryptic puzzles to solve in order to progress through the story (there's always an NPC somewhere giving you info on what to do), I thought it was really impressive graphically, with how detailed each monster was and how they all had an attack animation (!!!), and there was a ton of tracks for an 8-bit JRPG of the time, with multiple battle, dungeon, village and overworld themes.

Of course the added features of the Sega Ages (what a funny name) remaster drastically improved the experience I could have had if I played the original. I thought the game was a bit easy with the new pacing caused by the better rewards, but the absolute game changer was the dungeon map. My god, I could have NEVER played the original if it wasn't for that. The 1st person view coupled with the fact that every dungeons look the same make it an absolute necessity to draw the map yourself, and I don't really consider that fun. Maybe it was a bit much to spoil traps in advance though.

One thing the remaster couldn't fix though was the battle system. Spells are basically useless, making fights extremely limited and completely stakeless. Also I can't say I'm a big fan of the whole science fantasy setting, I felt like it went too much into the fantasy side of things.

If you've bought TotK on the e-shop, you should have enough gold coins to get this game for free like I did. If you like or if you want to get into old-school JRPGs, this is a really good entry for you, and if not, try it out! It's only a few bucks anyway.

PS. Also out of curiosity I tried opening the web manual included in this and it didn't work? is it just me? why must everything be online nowadays that's ridiculous?

Game's good.

But I prefered BotW overall. Apart from the weapon fusion mechanic which actually makes the low weapon durability make sense, I don't think any of the new additions improve the formula of the previous game whatsoever.

Combat is still extremely boring, the focus on skydiving makes the exploration way less interesting as you can just go to the nearest tower or sky island from your destination and fortnite jump to it, all sky islands look the same and most of them even offer the same "challenge", caves are extremely generic and uninteresting for the most part, there's more enemies sure but because they're all evenly distributed throughout the map it still feels extremely repetitive (I have no idea why they don't just make some monsters unique to their regions like they did for the desert), the new nuts and bolt mechanic is of course a miraculous technical achievement but I never felt like using it except when the game forced me to do so, shrines are still way to short and uninteresting (my god why was there so many "fight the robots naked" ones I hated those) and I thought the temples were way less challenging than the beasts in BotW (they all had sick designs though).

It's also extremely strange how they seemingly scrapped any mention of the previous game's plotpoint, like the ancient sheikah technology, the champions and the defeat of 100 years ago, and replaced it with more or less the same thing but different, now the ancient zonai technology, the sages and the defeat of 10,000 years ago. It's like they rebooted BotW even though it's a direct sequel, how bizarre.

I still had a lot of fun with it and I was even extremely surprised how "new" the map felt. It's like they made the perfect amount of change to it without straight up remaking a new map... though they kind of did with the depth which I thought was extremely cool to explore, as it also actually offers interesting reward for exploration in the form of nostalgic armor sets and weapons from the previous games in the series.

Overall, I think TotK is a good sequel to BotW but doesn't actually bring any meaningful change to it. Despite how much critically acclaimed BotW was, it still had flaws and I wish they focused on fixing those and polishing what they had instead of bringing new content to the table for the sake of having more content.

Though I had a good time with it in retrospective, I feel Live A Live (2022) is an extremely conflicting game... literally.

When I played it, I felt like playing 2 separate games at the same time:

1) One being a somewhat closed and linear JRPG on the SNES whose fun comes from exploring and figuring out its mechanics and its world;
2) And another being an open JRPG released in the late 2010s/early 2020s which doesn't really care about immersing the player and is oh so scared of having them having to figure out anything: every item and interactible element is indicated visually, text boxes explaining you any form of new mechanics appear before you even have the chance to experience it, and there is even a mini map indicating where to go... at all time.

In other words, every quality of life "improvement" added in this remake of Live A Live feels completely disconnected from what you're actually playing, as well as being detrimental to the experience I think. And this is coming from someone who never played the original release.

I know for a fact that because the chapters are so self-contained and don't really offer much in term of world-building, battle system or other gameplay elements used by more traditional JRPGs to immerse the player in its world, the original release's enjoyment must have come from discovering the unique mechanics specific to each chapters, as well as their world.

Well this is completely thrown out in the remake. For example, there is no point in having to remember locations or memorize what might be of interest later, just follow the minimap. What eventually happens is that you end up only looking at the circle at the bottom-right corner of the screen, because that's the most logical and convenient thing to do if you want to progress. Adding to this, the world feels extremely empty now that items are highlighted. There is no more mystery or suspense like in other JRPGs where you're like "Will this closet have something inside?" as you just know it by entering the room a looking at it for less than 1 second.

I have so many other examples where the game just prevents you from interacting, engaging with it. All of this makes the game so much less interesting and memorable than it could have been. It's not a coincidence that my least favorite chapters were the first two ones I played... before I turned off the minimap and the advice boxes.

I feel like if they wanted to include all these QoL improvements, they should have completely remade that game, by making it bigger, more open, with more sidequests, longer stories and things like that, instead of making a faithful remake except with small dumb additions ruining it.

I still found enjoyment with though, especially after turning off the QoL things. I love the HD-2D artstyle (though I found the extremely slick, polished style not really suiting some parts of the game), the OST was great and didn't feel like simple arrangements of SNES tracks, I was surprised with how unique and varied the chapters were and the last part of the game was of course peak fiction.

But all of that didn't change the fact that I ended up really disappointed and even frustrated with this remake, which I thought would be the best way to experience Live A Live for the first time. I just wished I played the original instead.

I was rather surprised when they announced that the remake would be delayed because of the war in Ukraine but now that I've played the original for the first time I understand why they did so.

The fact they got away with making an actual war game so light-hearted and cheerful, where it's seen as a game even by the characters in-game really weirds me the fuck out. It's not like Fire Emblem where you control like one (1) singular knight and you fight a another singular soldier and they do a cool stylish strike, no, here you control whole regiments and troops firing at each other.

Beside that weird contrast, this game is rules. It's extremely engaging, you have a wide array of units to choose and control, the characters all have their pros and cons and are fun to experiment with, there's so many maps to choose from, the music slaps (that bass line literally does) and the pixel art looks topnotch. I also thought it was really balanced.

Though it can get a bit easy at time, with the AI sometime doing really dumb stuff, I still got a lot of fun.

Playing this right after Castlevania 1 really made me appreciate how great this game is.

I haven't played 2 (and I don't plan to for now) but this feels like the perfect sequel to 1. They took what worked in 1, refined it perfectly, whether it's the challenging level-design, the OSTs or the graphics, and increased its scope to such an extent this might very well be an SNES game, with so much levels - their variety too! - and multiple playable characters per playthrough.

Though there are also much more bosses, some might be disappointed with how easy and lackluster they can be at time. Imo I'm fine with it as long as certain bosses are challening, and some really are, to the point where I had to think about how and when to switch characters depending on their patterns.

All in all, a true classic which I hope Curse of the Moon will take inspiration from when I get to play it.

I enjoyed it very much. The artstyle is extremely charming and works so well, there is so much to explore and collect, the "tinykins" are all very fun to use, and most importantly, the character feels perfect to control.

There are some dialogues in that game and while some are pretty funny, they were mostly pretty uninteresting, though I have to admit I'd never expected this game to deal with serious societal issues like religion and inequalities.

However one thing I hated about the gameplay, though that isn't a big deal by itself but sticks like a sore thumb when everything else feels perfect, is the border acceleration system while on the soap. It is unnecessarily hard to achieve and is especially frustrating when doing the wasp races where I had to restart again and again and again because of how difficult yet necessary it is to have the best time.

Also, while most of my time with this game was superb, the last 15 minutes or so definitely left a sour taste in my mouth. The ending itself is fine, it's pretty good even. What bothered me is that I did everything this game had to offer and yet it wouldn't give me like 6 achievements I should've gotten. The team took notice of that bug since release but didn't release a patch yet to fix the issue. Fortunately there is a work around for it which requires research, but I think it's unacceptable to not fix an achievement issue when the game encourages you to complete it.

What is also unacceptable I thought was the lack of a "radar" or some sort for the last remaining thing to collect in a zone. As a collectathon, you bet searching for those last missing 3 tinykins in the zone will be the most miserable, excruciating hour in your life considering you can't possibly search that up on the internet.

It's good to finally experience a 3D mainline Pokémon game, they finally know what they are doing.

I'm glad they stopped doing whatever they were doing since XY a decade ago, which is trying to make 2D Pokémon games but inevitably failing because of all the content harder to make in 3D they thus wouldn't make because of tight development time.

XY was extremely short and lackluster in content, SM felt extremely restrictive and bland, and SS was like XY but with an uninteresting open area.

Scarlet and Violet on the other hand seems to aknowledge it is a 3D game and finally offers a "new" type of experience for the mainline series, one where the whole region is available for us to explore right from the get-go, one where everything feels so much free than before.

I loved exploring the Paldea region, wherever I was there was always trainers to battle, story events to unfold, sometime landmarks to discover, and of course new Pokémon to catch. There was in fact so much Pokémons in there I think no previous game had this much monsters available before the postgame. The new batch of Pokémons for this gen are my favorite since Black and White too, they was a lot and they all felt unique, with some completely straying from a "typical" pkm design.

I also really liked the art direction of this game, especially characters which were extremely expressive. Despite the outrage for the graphics, it never bothered me. I played the entire game in handheld mode so maybe it looked better that way idk. It also never lagged for me, plus I never encountered any glitch. I read it may had something to do with not letting the game rest by never closing it, which I always did regularly so maybe that's why I was spared from any issue.

One thing I didn't like about this game though is that while it is the most "open" game in the series, the movement and capture mechanics felt extremely stiff compared to Legends Arceus. I know they were made by different teams and all that, but I hated pressing ZR and having to wait a few (sometime precious) seconds before it locked on the Pokémon I was aiming for, or the gliding being strangely limited to like 15 seconds before dropping you down, or the catching system being strictly the same as the previous games. The latter issue was especially frustrating, because the catching mechanics is the one aspect of the series I absolutely hate, and Legends Arceus at least tried to change things up and make it fun.

Story-wise, I think this game had the best-written characters in the series, with extremely endearing backstories. Side characters like the gym leaders or the teachers were also pretty fun. I loved how the formers had their own activities beside battling, as well as seeing the more "administrative" aspect of that bizzarely weird society. Everyone also had godtier designs too but that has always been a staple of the series for some reasons. This game also has the best story of the series but that wasn't really hard. Some might argue BW was better in that department, but I admire how SV ties it with such an open gameplay loop, as well as having more than one character.

A game like this not being level-scaled, even for trainers, is absolutely insane lmao. I really like it though, I was either exploring areas or fighting gyms way underleveled or too overleveled. By the end of the game once every stories have been completed, I was overleveled but the game still managed to be challenging which I found amazing. Because the battle mechanic seems to solely rely on knowledge of type advantages, I can't imagine having to fight endgame battles as a newcomer.

It can get exhilirating at times but I just wished platinum ranks where harder to get, because there was many time I got them on my first try and I wouldn't have any more reason to get back to the level, even considering the ranking system.

Maybe the level rush mode will make me feel better about the game, but for now I found it a tad bit uninteresting despite having really fun mechanics.

Also is it just my laptop or is the opening cutscene not in HD?

Sonic Adventure 1 had many flaws, most of which you're probably aware if you've ever had interest in the Sonic franchise, but despite all of that, it stayed for the longest time my favorite 3D Sonic game for one main reason: the movement. Characters in SA1 were so fun to control and move around that I'd just wander for hours in the hub world or in the levels. Call it dumb nostalgia maybe, but when I played it again recently, it just felt right, and I'd keep wishing they would make a Sonic game that would be all about controlling a fast little guy in a huge world.

More than a decade after they introduced the boost formula, it seemed impossible for them to make a game that open. Sure, boost games felt great and were like a mix between platforming and a fast-racing game, which is rad af, but due to how quick the levels are traversed, they have to be short and there has to be padding in some shape or form in order for the games to have a decent beating time. So, beside the Lost World and Boom experiments, that's what they did until Forces and its catastrophic reception. While I think it was kinda overblown, perhaps it was necessary for pushing Sega to actually give enough development time to Sonic Team, and after 5 years of development they finally came up with Sonic Frontiers, the game I have long dreamed of.


The way Sonic Frontiers manages to have a boost-type gameplay without the usual shortcomings of the previous games is by incorporating the open-levelness of games like the recent Pokémon: Legends Arceus with your typical boost-games platforming sections. While traversing the huge areas the game has to offer, you will encounter a plethora of rails, boost pads, climbable walls, springs and other typical 3D Sonic elements, which will let you play for a short time what could be otherwise a short section of a typical boost-game level. While these aren't the most challenging things in the world, they still test your reaction-time by jumping over obstacles or homing attacking at the right time. This is the main gameplay element of the game as you will do it over and over again, making these areas feel like a never-ending boost-game level. Some will hate it I'm sure, but I personnally really enjoyed doing that throughout the game.


This is the core-component of this game, so as to not get repetitive, Sonic Frontiers also incorporate other gameplay elements.

The first one that comes to mind is the combat system, which when it got revealed completely baffled me but at the same time made so much sense. Attacks have extremely basic inputs and yet feel so satisfying to pull off, as you see the blue rat punching, shooting energy waves, stomping and parrying all sort of enemies. This, along with the bosses which I don't want to spoil but believe me are the raddest things the series has done in so forever, really makes Sonic a shonen protagonist which fucking rules and, like I wrote earlier, makes complete sense. The mini-bosses were fun too, as well as the enemies which relied on figuring out the winning skill against them.

The other main element the game has to diverge from the main gameplay loop are the Cyberspace levels. These felt like more open Forces levels, as unlike Generations levels, these feel very restrictive with tight lanes for Sonic to run, few (but still existing and sometime very cool looking) diverging paths, Sonic feeling more heavy when trying to turn (which isn't the case in the overworld so it's weird), and the lack of drifting and sliding which would make these levels and the ones in Forces feel more distinct. Nonetheless, I still had a blast going through them as for the first time, S-ranking levels is actually challening, and there is actual meaningful rewards for finishing levels with certain conditions met, which encourages replayability, or at least did for me. While it can be argued that the Cyberspace levels are more or less the same as the boost platforming sections in the overworld, seeing these incorporated within a level-layout, with differing textures and a godtier OST playing in the background made it different enough for me to distinguish them.


Despite how long I wanted a game like this and how much I actually like about Sonic Frontiers, its execution in some places is still left to be desired and just makes me wish the game was delayed, even if the 5 years gap between this and the last Sonic game is already unprecedented.

For one, while I had so much fun simply boosting around the map like it's nothing, whether I wanted to go somewhere or not, there was many instances where I would interact with a boosting pad by mistake and trap myself in a platforming challenge. This happened a lot and eventually got me really annoyed despite having fun just before running into that. When in a platforming challenge, the game sometime locks your camera and trying to flee if you don't want to do it can be really tedious, as the game REALLY wants you to go ride that rail for 8 seconds and pop a ballon at the end. This is especially hard to get out when the game becomes 2D and boy you can yell all you want at Sonic to go to the z-axis and that blue rodent won't care.

Another negative part of the game was how bland everything is. Yes, like I said earlier, running around and that was enough for me to have fun, but I wish the areas themself were more diverse and wouldn't stick to 1 extremely generic theme. Along with that, I also wished the platforming sections didn't use the exact same textures and models all throughout the game and varied depending on the areas. I don't even ask for them to be more naturally incorporated into the open levels, I just want for example the ones in the desert level to have a sand or stone texture, instead of the generic futuristic shit they got going on. Also why is there no good music in the overworld. I felt there was only one track per area and the only memorable one was the first one because it sounded like the BotW theme.


I feel this game has a lot of common with Pokémon: Legends Arceus: they're both open-level games which came out this year, at a time where their own series is considered at a low-point, and which heavily change their traditional series formula while incorporating its main elements. They also lack polish in many aspects, and they're both ugly too lmao but for different reasons.

Because of the monster-catching RPG nature of Pokémon, Legends Arceus felt more enjoyable as an open-level game than Sonic Frontiers. The latter, obviously more focused on action, can eventually get boring and stale. Though maybe all this development time would have gotten a better Sonic game if they focused on making a Sonic Generations with actual new levels, so a non-rushed Sonic Forces, this is still a breath of fresh air for the series.

Whether they continue down the path of open-level boost games, go back to strict boost-games, or experiment with an even newer way of playing Sonic, I think the real lesson we learnt today was PLEASE SEGA LET THEM HAVE ENOUGH DEVELOPMENT TIME LIKE YOU JUST DID, LET THEM COOK.