After my initial try at this back in 2016, today I have beaten STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. Well, actually, I made it almost to the end, but was backed into a corner with no way to beat the game. The last save being a few hours from there, I didn't want to replay it all, so I watched the canon ending on YT.

I both liked and disliked this game. I both am very excited for the upcoming STALKER 2 release, and also unsure if that game will be for me.

After hearing so much praise about the STALKER series, I have to say, I ended up being quite disappointed in this one. In case you want to know if this is for you, tell me how this description of STALKER sounds to you, courtesy of me.

A sandbox, open world first-person shooter with mostly unscripted shootouts, in a postapocalyptic setting, with a ton of bugs and the constant need to F6 (quicksave), because otherwise you will lose your progress or die thousand deaths due to a variety of reasons, often BS ones.

Now there is a ton of good and bad in that description. If the good parts sound really awesome to you, check it out. If the bad parts make you apprehensive about all this, then probably stay away.

First, the game is from 2007. I personally thought graphically this game looked more than fine, but it IS a game from 2007, so you might feel more sensitive there. However, graphics are definitely not an issue here.

The game does not hold your hand in this one. After you emerge from the intro, you are given a mission and make your way to a building, where you have to fight 8 bad guys. Immediately, you will realize that the game requires you to approach gun fights tactically, and that running in guns blazing will more often than not end poorly for you. Especially in this first mission, your weapon is terrible, which just worsens all the negative factors of running into a fight without taking cover.

From there, you are given main missions and a ton of side missions as well, as well as being told of dozens of secret stashes across the map. You can learn of these by talking to people or simply by looting bodies. How looting bodies gives you this info, who knows, but it does. These optional side missions and stashes are always the same. You go to a spot and have to either shoot enemies, or simply look around and try to find a stash that is usually well-hidden somewhere in the area. Both of these are important to do at the start, because they supply you with cash and loot.

Unfortunately, the game has a 50 kg weight limit, which you will hit very fast. And if my experience is anything to go by, you will never go far below it anymore. Even though I only carried a pistol, shotgun, AK and one more weapon with me, I never could go below 45 kg, which meant that whenever I wanted to loot something, the likelihood was very high that I would have to leave something behind as well. Since traders in this game are very few and are often very far away from your location at any given time, this meant inventory management was a constant worry.

This is the first part of the game that really wasn't fun to me. Why can't I increase my inventory space? Why can I carry almost nothing? What's the point of finding stashes all the time if they either give me almost nothing of value or are items that I can only carry if I leave something else behind? What's the point in exploration, when all I can stumble upon are enemies that I have to fight myself, or random gun fights between two AI factions? While the latter is always fun to see in an open world game, I just never understood what my incentive was supposed to be.

In this game, you can collect "artifacts", which are stone-like things that are in this game world and offer you boosts to some stats whilst reducing some of your others. One stone for example gives you a 200% health boost, if equipped, but reduces your defenses. Some stones reduce the amount of radiation you take in, but make you more susceptible to bleeding. You can equip five at a time by putting them on your belt, but they disappear after a while, presumable because they ... ran out of their powers?

These artifacts, I found, almost all suck, and those that don't are very hard to find. So you will likely sell almost all of them. Even if you don't, as I said, they disappear after using them for a bit, so you will constantly be needing to find more. There is durability on your weapons and armor as well, and while I don't mind these elements in a video game, the game likes to put you in dead-end situations, if you don't manage your inventory right, especially before a main mission. That's actually how I failed to beat the final mission.

When the penultimate mission ends, you don't get to visit a trader like in many other games pre-final mission/boss. If you want to do that, you have to backtrack for 10-15 minutes in order to trade. I decided to carry on to the final mission with my 10 medkits, 15 antirad items and 25 bandages, thinking I'd be alright.

Instead, after a very lengthy mission with hundreds of enemies coming at you all told, I had to use all my items (and all the ones I found off corpses), and to make matters worse, my armor was slowly but surely breaking, which means the effectiveness of it is reduced. My radiation resistance wasn't 89% anymore, but rather 10%. In an environment that was filled with radioactivity, this meant that I was fucked. If you are exposed to too much radiation, your health starts dropping. You can use antirad items, which get rid of all the radiation you currently have, but the meter immediately starts going up again, which makes me question what the point of these items is. Why isn't there something like Rad-X like in Fallout?

Or, of course, I could just keep using a suit that has high radiation resistance, but as I said, my armor is almost completely broken. I can't carry backup armor because my fucking carry weight is almost maxed out at all times without it, and I can't swap it in the battlefield because there almost never is any armor available. You can't just strip the clothing from your fallen enemies and put it on, but have to hope that you find some armor just lying somewhere. It wasn't, anywhere, on the final mission, so I just found myself dying endlessly.

This is precisely the reason why I wouldn't recommend this game to you, if you are not a hardcore gamer. This is truly a miserable experience, and per design. I don't find this particularly fun. It's not what I'm looking for in a video game. Or let me say it differently. If what this game strives for is realism, then why am I, one man, being sent out alone to fight 100s of enemies? Why don't you give me a fucking backpack so I can carry more health items, ammo and a backup piece of armor?

Now granted, this is mainly an issue if you plan on following the main story. If you want to simply enjoy the open world, sandbox nature of this game, you can easily do that without ever running into these problems. But as someone who likes to play the main story of games, Stalker's main story was really poorly designed. And as a sandbox, this game just doesn't offer enough for me. As I said, variety is very low in this game.

There are humans, dogs, and about half a dozen varities of mutants in this game as enemies. There are "anomalies" in the environment, which are basically fields that release different kinds of elements if you get near them, all giving you significant damage, whether it's lightning, fire or some sort of whirlwind. And there is radiation.

As I mentioned before, side missions always look the same. Go some place, have a shootout with a bunch of enemies. Win, go to mission-giver, get a few thousand rubles and maybe an item, and repeat this. Once you have seen all the dangers in this world, that's it. There is nothing more.

Having ranted a bit though, there are a bunch of positives here as well of course. First, the game is obviously very unique, even if not in a positive way all the time, and it's very ambitious. Take what this game has, fix the bugs, increase variety of the tasks in this game, how you can approach them and increase the amount of dangers in the world as well, and I could see myself enjoying STALKER 2 quite a lot. But as it stands, I think the game is ambitious but not really successful, in my eyes.

What the game does really well though is create a scary and depressing atmosphere. You can really feel that the Zone is a place that can just destroy you from one second to the next. While the variety of dangers is not awfully large, dangers are omnipresent and there are few people in this world who don't want to kill you and get to your loot. Plus, there is one particular mission in a sort of bunker in this game that was just scary as hell. In that regard, the game does a great job. Plus, enemy AI is pretty smart and gunfights do have plenty of tactical elements to them, though I would have enjoyed the ability to bring teammates with me and to have my teammates have more than 1 braincell during those fights themselves. I can't tell you how many times main quest-givers died because they simply refused to take cover like the enemies did. Bizarre.

But that said, these things the game did do well. The rest, I can't say I enjoyed. The story for the most part is go find A, so he can tell you more about this Strelok person you are trying to find. You go to A, he either is dead or sends you to someone else, until you get to person G, who tells you to go to a place and find documents. You find documents, which lead to knowledge about a different location, where you need even more documents, and you do that until you pretty much get to the final mission and learn the truth. Can't say I particularly liked 'the truth' and the story about the Zone, about you and your target and all that. But I guess the main story wasn't the point of this game anyway. A game that, overall, I appreciated for its ideas and for what it can spawn in STALKER 2, but one I didn't necessarily enjoy itself.

(This is the 44th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

The SNES just keeps delivering. Here, we have a game I heard way less about than the other SNES titles I have played already. This game is called The Legend of the Mystical Ninja and is part of the Ganbare Goemon series. The game released in Japan on July 19, 1991 and is the first game of the series to release in the West (in 1992). It doesn't move the needle necessarily in its gameplay, however in its presentation and in its content, where many other games would have to be described as lackadaisical copy-cats, The Legend of the Mystical Ninja proves to be an exciting game that tries and succeeds in offering a lot of fun activities outside of its core gameplay loop.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10

You are Kid Ying (or Goemon originally), and if you play this in two-player coop, the other player would be Dr. Yang (or Ebisumaru originally). You are two ninjas who go on a heroic adventure, which has the ultimate goal of finding and freeing Princess Yuki. On your journey, you will meet many characters, both named and simple NPCs, who will each at least have one line of dialogue, typical of most action adventures of this time. Some more important characters have a bit more to say, and in addition, the end of each level comes with a quick recap of what just happened and where Kid Ying and Dr. Yang are going to next. It's simple. It gets the job done.

GAMEPLAY | 15/20

I played this on my own, so I'm going to describe this through the perspective of Kid Ying. He has multiple weapons he can upgrade towards, starting with a pipe-type of weapon, which can ultimately transform into a yo-yo with much larger reach. An upgrade is made with each time you collect a cat item. Your main combat ability is to press Attack and swing the melee weapon. Most enemies die to one hit and that's what you do for the entire game combat-wise. There are also multiple types of Judo attacks you can learn in Dojo's. These are special abilities that usually don't last long and can only be used in the zone/level you acquire them, like riding a Tiger, flying yourself or shooting lightning that kills everyone on screen. It's a simple but neat mechanic.

All zones are interspersed with tons, and I mean TONS, of mini games to partake in. There is dice rolling, a memory game, a paint game, whack-a-mole, a lottery game, damn arcade games like Gradius, a quiz show and a lot more. These require you to pay a pretty big amount of money to play, and the goal usually is to do well enough to try and come out of it with more money than you put in. I can't say I wasn't vary of how this would introduce kids to gambling at a very young age. Some levels require you to buy items for up to $1000, whilst each enemy you kill would only give you $10. So to pass the grind, the fastest way to make money would be to try to double your money with dice rolling for example. Luckily for me, a loss isn't a big deal, because thanks to the power of emulation, I can rewind and try again, but for all the kids playing back in the day, this actually adds more stakes to the gambling by locking progress behind money, so I can't say I was a fan of all of these mini games. Notwithstanding that, most levels have no money requirements and you can kill a few enemies and play a bunch of different mini games to break up the monotony, which overall is a major plus here.

Finally, the absolute highlight here for me is the variety you find in the boss fights. Just do yourself the favor and go take a look at them. The amount of creativity put on display here with the technological availabilities at the time is just insane. The graphical presentation of the bosses just puts the icing on the cake. The only bad part here is that some bosses are very difficult, and unfairly so in my opinion, which is definitely a shame, but it doesn't take away from the fact that these boss fights have been among the most pleasant I've experienced since starting this challenge.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 8/10

There is no voice acting. The soundtrack here is truly wonderful, it has a great theme befitting a "ninja hero" adventure with lots of great tracks.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10

This is one of the first SNES games ever and the game certainly takes advantage of the 16-bit capabilities of the console by creating this colorful world that at times does lack in diversity, but makes up for it through attention to detail in many areas like the circus one. You'll find lots of environmental pieces to appreciate here, like in the bark of the trees or the water, which looks excellent for a game of this time. And as mentioned previously, the graphical presentation for the boss fights is top notch, and the same goes for the enemy design in general.

ATMOSPHERE | 7/10

The music, the art style and graphical presentation overall certainly makes for a great overall game from an atmospheric standpoint, however it does feel odd to have all these mini games present for the main character in an environment where he fights dozens of hostiles.

CONTENT | 8/10

Lots and lots of side content here to get distracted by. Minus points for not offering the same diversity in the main gameplay and for making certain levels too grinding or gambling focused.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10

You find yourself in many different zones, each with a few map slides that you can walk through and fight enemies or play mini games in. In most, you are free to choose whether you want to grind for money, play those games or move on to the platforming type area with the boss at the end. You reach these areas by finding a bear guarding the entrance to them. Before you enter, he warns you that you are about to approach a "dangerous area".

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 7/10

I haven't seen any other game that offers this many mini games next to its main content, and that's certainly a unique concept. Apart from this, the game plays like a basic adventure/platformer, which is not a bad thing.

REPLAYABILITY | 2/5

Apart from trying to beat your high score, there isn't any other motivation given to play this game again. You could certainly go back and play some of the mini games you missed the first time through or use more of the Judo attacks.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

The game worked well at all times.

OVERALL | 71/100

Definitely one of the few games in this challenge so far where I would recommend to go back and play it, though I wouldn't say it's a recommendation to all gamers like with Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake and Super Mario World, but rather a recommendation to those who enjoy retro games, as I'm sure plenty of retro gamers actually missed out on playing this game, which to me is pretty underrated due to what it has on offer here.

Crystalis is an Action RPG / Action Adventure game that initially released on April 13, 1990 in Japan for the NES. It was re-released for the Game Boy Color 10 years later and it's celebrated by many for being an "underappreciated NES gem".

The NES version is the one I played, and there are major differences in both versions in case you want to try it yourself. The Game Boy Color version has an almost completely new soundtrack that is worse in my opinion (1), from what I've seen it plays less fluidly and has lower resolution (2), a story sequence was altered (3) but most importantly, the Game Boy Color version is actually way more helpful in guiding the player and actually explains to you what the story is about (4).

STORYTELLING
So what do I mean by that last sentence? Well the issue I had with the NES version was that apart from a very brief introduction to the world in the menu screen, there was just about no explanation as to who you are or why you are fighting all these monsters and doing what these people told you to do. Every hour or two you'd get a line or so of information on what this game is about, but nothing substantial up until the end of the game, where all info would be dropped at once.

In the GBC version, there is a much longer intro sequence explaining why you were summoned and what the lore behind all those items and people is that you find and meet. Every time you find a useful item, one of the characters also would show up to tell you what it can do. Plus, characters also tell you a bit more about what to do next and there are much more intermissions filled with monologues on this world and its lore. Due to the other differences I listed which I actually dislike compared to the NES version, I still am glad I stuck with the NES version I guess.

So what's the story about? You play a hero that you name and that has been frozen in time for 100 years after a war in 1997 nearly meant the end of civilization. The survivors decided to abandon the ways and technology that led to this war and created a floating Tower, where they would live, gain power to control the world (to make sure no harm was done anymore) and to study the ways of magic. You and a companion of yours, Mesia, are now awakened 100 years after the war because an evil magician called Dragonia used his abilities to grow in power and fill the land with Monsters, to ultimately enter the Tower and control everything that is left of the planet.

Four magicians that will become your helpful companions in this world used their abilities to create four Swords of different elements. They used these to attack Dragonia, but he was able to take the Swords from them and scatter them throughout the land. With no additional way of defending themselves through magic, a safety put into place 100 years ago for a worst case scenario triggers and awakens both you and your companion Mesia. What you have to do now is find all four swords, which form the ultimate sword called "Crystalis", and use it to kill Dragonia and end his reign of power.

Throughout your journey, you meet these magicians and can use a skill called "Telepathy" to request hints from them. There are other characters as well that aid you in your quest, like the fisher that lets you use his boat if you find an item of his. There is also a guy called Kensu, who does help you out a lot but loves to play hide and seek and must be found many times to finally give you what you need.

In the NES version, you speak the absolute minimum with all of these characters, but in the GBC version, there is a lot more dialogue and detail to the lore. Since I played the NES version and won't play through the GBC version, I'm going to rate the NES version, which has none to little storytelling for most of the game, and not finding out the true reason for what you are doing for a long time isn't that motivating. It kinda pays off in the end though. There aren't that many twists and turns in this game, there is little environmental storytelling and overall, the package present here is average.

GAMEPLAY
As per usual for the time, gameplay interruptions are rare, so the action is pretty much constant. You start the game by gaining the Sword of Stone and you play the game by attacking the many different monsters with a thrust attack. Most of the enemies don't attack back but rather either walk in a pre-determined direction or into you, which damages you. Unfortunately, the enemies usually have a pretty tight hit box, so you have to do some positioning beforehand before you attack. It's not rare for you to do a 360 spin to try and position yourself in a way that opens up an attack for you without exposing you for damage by the enemies. Your hitbox sadly is much larger than it should be, so even if your character isn't actually touched, you will still take damage. This can become frustrating over the first couple hours as you try to figure out where the game wants you to attack from, but once you figure it out, it works most of the time as you want it to.

There are four swords of different elements to find in the game, and as a result, monsters with resistances and weaknesses to specific elements. While this is a good thing as it brings variety to the fold, it happens often that a room has two enemies with different resistances. Since there are no hotkeys, I would find myself equpping the Sword of Fire, killing an enemy, equipping the Sword of Water, killing an enemy and so on. This would not only throw me out of the action but also quickly become tiresome.

In addition, some enemies cannot be harmed at all until you reach a certain level. Worse even, bosses have the same effect. How does level 11 make you able to attack a character when level 10 means they are invincible? I don't know. But imagine my frustration when I tried my luck at a boss for 20 minutes, only to fail with each element because of a level difference. "Kill it with fire", a guide online said, which I used lavishly, though not only due to combat questions. When fire didn't work as well, I looked it up further. Turns out, I really had to be level 11 to hurt the boss, but my save state was right at the boss fight, so I couldn't back out. Luckily, I had a back up state from 30 minutes before, because otherwise that would have probably been the end of my run.

Leveling becomes harder and harder because the XP requirements grow exponentially, whilst I found that the XP you get by later enemies wouldn't increase quite as fast. This meant I had to grind for 30-60 minutes at multiple points to progress further, which even the most skilled walkthroughs incorporate online. Grinding has seemingly become a core feature of JRPGs since, and it's no more fun here than it is in Final Fantasy games for example, though at least here you don't have to load in and out of battles.

Dying in this game is very easy and checkpoints do not exist, so you have to save often to be able to actually beat this game. By now I'm used to it having played a bunch of other games from 1990 with similar requirements, but it's worth pointing out.

The game has a lot of different environments to explore, but often it requires you to do the same thing, just with a different element. There is however a snow area for which you will need Rabbit Shoes to be able to jump up a hill and most notably, there is a poison swamp, for which you will need to find a Gas Mask to not take damage from the poison.

Unfortunately, when I say "explore", I mean that you usually try to find a way forward and battle enemies. You do have to find "lost items" here and there, bring it back to someone and get something in return that enables further progress, however it's not like these items are shown anywhere on the map. A pendant for example is in a random spot in a cave and you find it by accident when walking over that exact pixel. There are some non-essential items to find, like healing herbs or teleportation boots, and secret locations to find those in.

Overall, gameplay is repetitive and exploration opportunities are limited, but it's enjoyable enough due to enough enemy variety and the core combat being fine once you figure out how to not take unfair hits all the time.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
There is no voice acting. The sound design is good, but nothing special. You hear the same sounds in dozens of other RPGs or Action Adventures from that time.

The music is really good, but this compliment is only for the NES version. The overworld theme simply sounds fun, cheerful and catchy. My favorite track has got to be on the "sea" level. An above average soundtrack that can definitely be listened to outside of the game.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN:
The game has solid graphics for the time and makes good use of color, but doesn't stand out beyond that at a time filled with games that look similar. There is a good variety in locations and especially the poison swamp is worth pointing out here again, but the majority of the game does take places in same-looking dungeons that simply use a different color based on the pre-dominant element.

ATMOSPHERE
The game mostly has a cheerful atmosphere in line with a lot of upbeat music, but it sometimes contrasts with the events in the game, like when a group of people are kidnapped and you wander to their desolate town with the same cheerful music as per usual. Even during the moments leading to the game's final battle it still felt too cheerful and sort of out of place due to the stake's involved per the game's storytelling. That said if you're looking for something to play that may have raised stakes but a more lax soundtrack, you'll be happy with Crystalis.

CONTENT
The game does take 10+ hours if you use guides here and there and are a first time player, but a few of those hours are spent grinding and you do hold the "attack" button for most of it. If you enjoy that, you'll probably enjoy your time with this game, which even with that playing time is much shorter than the RPGs of its time and therefore may be worth a try at least.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The game plays rather linearly even though you can visit multiple locations at once. If you do visit those locations, you usually can't hurt the enemies, so there is no point to deviate from the main road. That main road involves doing the same thing usually and often walking through the same-looking corridors that simple have a different coat of paint. There is variety in locations here and there and the sea level offers a unique battleground at least. The final few locations are also much more unique in design, but the way the final chapter is designed is not necessarily my cup of tea, as it's boss fight after boss fight after boss fight until you meet the final boss, but wait, it's not the final boss, here he is, the end.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION
Most of what this game does has been done before this game came out and not all it does ages well. It's a good game for mixing these elements together and making this an enjoyable adventure overall, but I wouldn't say it set a new benchmark or brought anything new to the table, though its graphics were praised at the time along with the "depth", as in how much there is to do. As mentioned previously, some of the depth is stuffed with repetitive filler and therefore not simply a positive, unless you really are enamored with all core concepts here and don't want the game to end.

REPLAYABILITY
After a first playthrough, there isn't much that you can really do differently.

PLAYABILITY
The game works perfectly fine at all times and plays pretty fluidly.

OVERALL
This is a solid Action RPG / Action Adventure with very catchy music, varied environments and mostly enjoyable, though flawed combat. It's definitely worth taking a look at if you've enjoyed similar games like Zelda games or Final Fantasy, but it lacks depth and logic to its storytelling even when it does get going late into the game, key items are placed in arbitrary locations making progress very difficult and tedious without a guide and there is a lot of mandatory grinding required.

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Martin Alessi for Electronic Gaming Monthly, Issue 13 (Aug 90): "A post-apocalyptic storyline with cinema displays mixes with one of the best search, solve and save the world games in recent memory."
- Chris Bieniek for VG&CE, Issue 20 (Sep 90): "the main thing that sets this title apart from most other [RPGs] is its tremendous depth. I've never seen a game with so many places to explore"

While playing through some longer RPGs, I longed for a short little 'snack' in between. A Mortician's Tale looked like the ideal candidate thanks to its short run time (30 minutes of my 2 hours with this game I have optionally spent with its rendition of Minesweeper) and its interesting theme.

In this game you play Charlie, who joins a family-owned funeral home as a Mortician. The game spans about a year and you 'spawn' once a month or two, go on your computer to read some optional e-mails from colleagues, friends and prior 'customers', and also to see the mandatory e-mail that tells you what your task for the day is. You either ready bodies for closed-casket (you just have to clean them) or open-casket funerals (much more tasks involved) or you cremate them, based on the families wishes.

These tasks are rather simple and each step is carefully explained every time, so the goal is not to do it right, it's just to do it.

I know nothing about funeral homes, so I appreciated the game for showing me how they operate, how different requests are handled, about the environmental effects of embalming versus green burials, and about corporations that exploit both employees and customers even in this business.

Apart from that however, the game doesn't really manage to be emotionally impactful regarding its main character, which has no dialogue lines during the game. Anything she feels and thinks about her job, about how she handles it and anything else that could bring the players closer to her, doesn't exist, which I thought was a shame.

So while I appreciated the game for its topic, it doesn't succeed in being more than a tutorial/showcase for the 'industry', and I'm not sure if there was any intent to do anything beyond that.

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light is a tactical RPG and the first game in the Fire Emblem series, developed by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems and released for the NES on April 20, 1990 in Japan only. The first official Western release happened on December 4, 2020 for the Nintendo Switch, however for whatever reason Nintendo made it a timed exclusive, meaning it is not available for purchase anymore since March 2021.

That baffling decision aside and disregarding the fact that the newest Fire Emblem game was just recently announced, this series was not an instant hit. The initial reception by some critics was poor due to "poor graphics" and the game being "difficult to understand". This resulted in poor initial sales, a situation that would improve over time through positive word-of-mouth (especially a positive Famitsu column on the game about half a year after release) and led Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light to sell well over 300.000 units up until 2002.

Since the Switch version is no longer for sale, I wasn't able to play with the official translation. The translation I got, as I noticed after playing for many hours, did not really fit with the official names for items, characters and locations. The main protagonist / the prince is called Marth, not Mars.

STORYTELLING
The translation differences on seemingly everything notwithstanding, it was still "easy" to follow since the different translation was used consistently. Unfortunately, the game throws around a bunch of names of people and kingdoms all the time so it takes a while to get a grasp on what is going on. At first, many names simply end up sounding the same, so I had to find my way out of that web of confusion.

There are 25 chapters/missions in this game, and before and after each, there is some text or dialogue progressing the story, plus a small monologue during missions when you would get near the more notable chapter bosses.

You play as the Prince of Altea, Marth, who was able to escape when Altea was under attack by the Dolhr Empire. Marth's sister Elice sacrificed herself so that Marth could escape. During this time, their dad had left an ally, Gra, to watch over his kingdom, but Gra betrayed them to the Dolhr Empire. Meanwhile their dad had left to fight the leader of the Dolhr Empire, the Shadow Dragon, but failed and died. He used a Falchion in battle, a divine weapon that had stopped the Shadow Dragon 100 years earlier and it was taken from Marth's dad when he lost the battle. It is needed to fight the Shadow Dragon.

At the start of this game you stop an invasion of the new home of Marth, Talys, and then move out with your allies to fight the Dolhr Empire. Before that, you visit and free many other kingdoms and find more allies to aid you in your quest. All characters that aid you are named and have their own little back story (once the game ends, there is a brief summary on what each character is doing after the story conclusion, provided they survive).

And this is where the game gets its uniqueness from. The dev team decided to build on their experience from war games such as Famicom Wars, and add "RPG elements" to them. I think this game pushes the definition of an RPG, but that's a different discussion.

Each character is assigned a class and can level up to increase their stats. While this has gameplay implications only at first glance, it goes way beyond that. Characters barely have any dialogue apart from when your first recruit them, so building a connection to them is only possible on a limited scale. However, it still happens as you find characters that increase in level over time and improve in their abilities. You're excited when they then get criticial hits at the right time to get you out of tricky situations or you love them for simply being consistent throughout. And ultimately, this means it can hurt for a short while when you lose them to the perma-death system. It's a feeling I only know from XCOM games, but in those characters don't even have that backstory like they do here.

It's a system that is very limited here but is effective in general, and I can only imagine how much later entries built on it.

The main plot itself is convoluted for a first time player because you get a lot of lore dropped with no way to read it again or look up any info on anything. In general, the game lacks a tutorial or codex.

Once you get to grips with it, it is a solid plot but basic storytelling due to the technical limitations of the time. In addition, it was pretty typical for the time. I have just played 9 games in 1990 through this challenge so far and more than a few included the concept of "divine weapon is the only way to kill final boss". It works for a game to give the player needed motivation, so I can see why this seems to have been a popular choice for the overall theme. You'll be content with the storytelling for a game this old and with this much content outside of it, it'll the do the job, but nothing beyond that.

GAMEPLAY
Lots to discuss here. The game is a tactical RPG. Back in 1990, you would have found a lot of strategy games and a lot of RPGs, but few, if any, that combined the two.

The tactical part looks like this: You control a battle unit out of a set number of characters based on the level. Often, you would have about 15 units on the battlefield at once. If you had more characters available than the maximum possible amount - through recruiting them - a level would start by making you select the specific units that you want to deploy.

Once you do that, battle commences on a grid-based map. Maps changed for each level and would add strategical challenges, but wouldn't really change anything graphically or of their tone. The game has a turn-based battle system. You select a unit, move it up a specific number of grids based on the unit's Movement stat, and then attack an enemy if it is in range.

There are 21 classes in this game that mostly are specialized in something. There are your typical Fighters and Mercenaries who wield swords and axes and have average Movement range. Then there are your Archers who can only use bows, Clerics who cannot fight but only use a staff to for example heal or warp units (send them to anywhere else on the map, very useful) and Mages who can use powerful Magic and have high resistances. There are also "Pegasus Knights" that are on horseback and can fly over obstacles on the ground like buildings or trees, which usually take an additional step to move past for ground units.

Weapons usually have multiple different qualities. The lowest is the "Iron quality" and the best quality that is usually accessible is the "Silver quality". As you make more progress in this game, you come across many enemies that can resist Iron quality weapons, making the upgrade necessary. Luckily, money is literally no issue in this game, so all you need to do is buy new items. Unluckily, there is no "safe hub" or anything like that to stock up. Instead, shops are somewhere on the map in levels and usually guarded by enemies. Often, there would only be one store as well, so you could only send one unit to buy something per round. So I would spend multiple rounds after a map was cleared to just get everyone new items. This is a typical QoL issue that is surely handled differently in newer entries. I haven't played any Fire Emblem game up to this point, so I don't know.

Another QoL issue is how slow progression in this game is. When you control 15 units, you have to move all 15 units at a time, of course, but that takes a lot of time. This is probably a thing in current Fire Emblem games as well, and not the worst thing to do, but it does take a while and gets kinda boring once you are 10+ chapters in. I prefer the XCOM games here, where you only have 6 characters to control.

But again, this isn't the worst thing in the world. What is much worse is the individual battles themselves. The animation for one attack takes seemingly ages and when you enter over a handful of fights in a single round, it will take minutes to go through them all. Luckily, my emulator had a fast forward function, so I could skip through these much quicker. I didn't finish this game (I made it to Chapter 22/25) but I think it's worth pointing out that I got there in just 17 hours compared to the 26-40 hours it takes on a normal playthrough according to HLTB.

Strategically, there are a lot of ways to play this game thanks to the different classes and their specialties. If you want to bring a Cleric, Thief and Archer for example, they will not be - or you don't want them to be in the Thief's case - in close combat. A big system in this game is the "counter", which means if an enemy character attacks you, your character can counter and vice versa. If the Archer is attacked in melee combat, he will not be able to counter, which can make a big difference. Clerics don't attack at all. Thieves barely have any strength and limited health, so they usually will only be part of your squad to unlock doors and/or open chests. Clerics heal and warp and Archers can be devastating in long range combat, so they all do provide arguments for why they should be included in the squad.

But bring a few more Mercenaries, Fighters and Paladins and you'll have a lot more strength in Melee Combat. So do you go for more of them, or for a more mixed approach? All strategies have their advantages and disadvantages and more than a few will work, so it's nice to see these options being available.

Bringing the right squad to do the job becomes more important however when different Chapters are filled more with specific enemies that can only be significantly damaged with specific weapons. Some need to be fought with Magic, some with Arrows and some with Melee weapons. Plus, maps have enough strategical differences that having Pirates or Pegasus Knights that can go over water or having Mages and Archers who can shoot over walls becomes more important.

On the flipside, you can quickly find yourself in a bad situation when the most useful units for a particular level are the most under leveled. The only way to level up units is by having them battle. Especially later on, bringing those low level characters with you can be pretty bad since you will need all the fire power you got when the game starts throwing infinite reinforcements in your face until you finally defeat the boss and send Prince Marth to the Castle, which is a location he must visit to finish the level.

There is a balance that must be struck here, but I would have liked to get more additional ways to train my units outside of battle (probably expecting too much in a 1990 game). Especially when my strong units started dying late into game and enemy units just started being filled with strong Dragons that would show up in the dozens, the game pretty much had me in an impossible situation. You can't now level your low-level guys, nor can you even get them weapons since you need to do that within levels. When never ending groups of enemies come at you, when are you supposed to find the opportunity?

Due to this, I didn't get to finish the game, but there is a lot to like here.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. There is nothing noteworthy to discuss regarding the sound design, it sounded average for the time.

The music was definitely one of the highlights for me. 3 or 4 tracks were playing for most of the game, so it didn't necessarily have variety, but some tracks just were bangers, especially the start of chapter track. Look for "Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light- Chapter Start" on YouTube.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Even back then the game wasn't considered graphically pretty. I'd say it has some strong colors and the varied character design is pretty good, but there isn't much else to it besides that. You see the same few assets on every level, maps are mostly green spots of grass and even battles take place in a black background with nothing else on it.

ATMOSPHERE
Once I got firmly into the gameplay loop, playing this game was rather comfortable thanks to the mix of a solid soundtrack, uninspiring but not-ugly graphics and simply being around a cast of characters that have a place in this world and start to grow into trusted allies. It is nothing special but to me the atmosphere was rather positive than negative.

CONTENT
25 chapters, each take about 30-60 minutes on average. Lots of repetition here but also a satisfying strategical challenge throughout.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
There is a good mix in the design of the maps, especially considering what technical limitations the devs had to battle. Map design and enemy placement means that challenges that players have to fight through are varied, but sometimes the enemy placement and especially reinforcements get so ridiculous that you have no way of progressing through them with the units you have on hand. And this was clear hours ago, you just weren't aware. Infinite reinforcements also mean that the amount of opportunity is limited to level up underleveled units and to stock up on weapons and other items in the lead up to chapters 20+, which was frustrating.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION
One of, if not THE first tactical RPG that started a whole genre. Due to that, this game already gets iconic status, and it's a mix of genres that works pretty well too (as evidenced by the series status even today).

REPLAYABILITY
This game can be played in different ways, but the hours and hours of watching animations and moving your units make this a hard sell for people looking for replayability. Apart from improved stats, there also is no incentive to play through the game and try to keep different units alive compared to previous runs.

PLAYABILITY
The game worked fine at all times.

OVERALL
Definitely worth checking out if you're a Fire Emblem fan and want to see its origins. There is also some fun to be had and mostly the game offers a fair strategic challenge. If you're a veteran of the series, you might also do much better than me in the first half of the game and go into the second half more prepared, which will make or break your chance of completing this game.

WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Japan-only release, nothing to find in Western magazines

As someone who just a couple months ago played through Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, which originally released for the MSX back in 1990, seeing this in the most recent Humble Choice Bundle (November 22) was the cherry on top of what I found to be a great group of games.

Unmetal doesn't hide the inspiration it takes from that game, just look at the name of the game, but it also has references to other media, such as the TV shows "The A Team" and "MacGyver". As far as its presentation goes however, this game is all Metal Gear. The game tries to stand out by injecting a lot of humor into its storytelling. Does it work? Most of the time, it does.

____________

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS
You play Jesse Fox, a simple man who gets arrested and put into a high-security prison for a crime he didn't commit. The story is told through narration by Jesse Fox, who is said to have escaped from imprisonment by the Soviets using a helicopter. He is shot down once he reaches Allied territory due to the fact that his helicopter belongs to the Soviets. He finds himself in an interrogation room and has to explain how he got into the situation he was in. And thus starts 8 hours of narrating the occurrences, which you as the player get to play through.

In the middle of your escape, you also uncover classified information about an "Operation Jerico" (sic), a terrorist plan involving nuclear warheads. You uncover more and more about it and have to aid a certain Colonel Harris in stopping certain disaster for all of humanity.

Now the important part to keep in mind about all of this is that every bit of storytelling is drenched in humor.

I'd say, in a positive way, that the game fails a lot, but it succeeds just as often. And that's where you will probably find out whether this game is for you or not. The game certainly won't hit everyone's humor, and definitely not on a regular basis. Yet, the gameplay is regularly interrupted by the narration by Jesse Fox, making it an essential part of the playthrough.

While the game is unapologetically Metal Gear, these two points is where it differentiates itself, for better and worse: A ridiculous storyline that is not to be taken too seriously, and a higher ratio of storytelling to gameplay.

Jesse Fox narrates the whole thing, and the way he remembers the events is not always going to be realistic. For example, every guard in the game is called "Mike", probably because Jesse is bad at remembering names.

Or for the boss fights, Jesse Fox has to fight a tank, a submarine and an octopus of sorts.

I thought this kind of exaggeration was fine and humorous, but some might of you will not be as lenient as me with the sort of edgy humor this game upholds for its entirety, though some of the repetitive jokes never landed at best and got slightly annoying at worst.

What the game does really well however is incorporate the player into its jokes. For example, on one level you need to pass through an area where fire comes up from the ground for a few seconds at a time. When you go through the area slowly but surely and reach the end, Jesse revels in his zen-like patience and great skill, only for the sergeant who interviews him to ask "couldn't you just have put on your thermal suit and run through the fire?". This is the player's fault for not figuring out, but makes Jesse look bad.

There are also a bunch of sections where the player can choose what kind of obstacles Jesse will face. Were there "no rats" or "a ton of rats" in the sewers? Does the octopus have 2, 4 or 6 tentacles? The answers don't always are what they seem to be and funny scenarios play out depending on what you choose.

The game is much more clever in its execution than I would have thought and despite its shortcomings as far as a lack of
a gripping storyline or a lack of interesting side characters goes, it does mix it up enough and is funny enough for me to have enjoyed it.

GAMEPLAY
In this pixelated 2D stealth game, you need to find a way to escape to freedom. This means using stealth, first off. This also means solving puzzles by using the correct items at the right places. If necessary, you need to combine the items in your inventory to create the correct one. For example, a circuit and an unencrypted radio make an encrypted radio.

And finally, this means getting into fist or gun fights, especially with bosses, of which there are plenty in the games 10 chapters.

The game does a good job of introducing new gameplay elements constantly, like different weapons, different gadgets, different means of traversal etc.

As far as stealth mechanics go, the game leaves a bit to be desired, as there aren't a lot of ways you can approach stealth. You mainly hide and try to stay out of the guards view, but really, the only way to do that is to simply stay behind a wall. Apart from coins there aren't any meaningful ways to distract enemies, there is no crouching, no moving stuff around to block enemy vision, no ability to turn off cameras and alarms (unless the story requires it) and no reliable way to hide after triggering an alarm. About a dozen enemies quickly circle you in, all doors get locked and 3 shots kill you, so your best chance is to find a wall that hides from all angles and then just beat up all enemies one by one as they approach your hiding spot.

So while it says "stealth" in the description, it does fall flat here.

On the other hand, you do have the puzzles, but you also are incentivized to explore the entire maps to find reusable equipment like medkits, and one time use gear to get past certain sections. You will for example need night vision goggles to enter a dark dungeon.

Then there is the combat, which the game mostly discourages because Jesse Fox doesn't kill, but it becomes useful against machines and bosses, as mentioned.

Boss fights themselves are aplenty and most of them are pretty simple to figure out, at least on Normal difficulty. Instead of their difficulty, it's the absurdity that these boss fights would exist within the framework of the story that Jesse Fox tells, that make them notable.

One boss fight is also just simply a dialogue where you have to choose the correct options. This one took a lot of trial and error and whether you're happy with the outcome (if it takes you 5 tries like it did for me) depends on your style of humor. If you enjoyed the humor up to this point, you should like the outcome though.

Overall, I'd say the gameplay is OK to solid. As I mentioned in the Storytelling part, there is a lot of back and forth between narrative and gameplay parts, so whether you enjoy your time here will depend on whether you like the humor just as much, if not more so. If you do, the gameplay does just enough to keep you invested.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
Voice acting is good, though most enemies have the same voice actor. I'm guessing for budgetary reasons? They've done a good job of making a joke out of it by calling all guards Mike.

I'm listening the OST right now and there are some good tracks in here. Some feel inspired by Metal Gear as well. It sounds like your typical stealth game soundtrack, though I feel like a bit more timid than it needs to be. Some of the tracks could have definitely been more aggressive to increase tension.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
As someone who played Metal Gear 2 from 1990 before this, I can obviously appreciate the jump in graphical quality where others would say that the game is a simple, pixelated 2D game. I'd say it looks relatively good graphically for the type of game it wants to be. Technological advancements obviously allow it to standout just in its color use compared to a game like Metal Gear 2. As far as creativity goes, I enjoyed how the devs decided to drop Jesse Fox into an empty level and then have Jesse talk all the details into existence. The level would be filled with everything Jesse would say.

ATMOSPHERE
This game feels like a less serious Metal Gear game, so mission accomplished in that regard. It doesn't stand out in this regard otherwise.

CONTENT
10 Chapters, 8-12 hours of gameplay for a single playthrough depending on difficulty, enough content to have you find new things in a second playthrough. There are a couple chapters that drag on, but all provide something new and aren't there for filler reasons. The length of the game is also very suitable for a game of its style, an hour or two could have easily been shaved off to make it a more tight experience.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
The game mixes things up by having multiple boss fights in a single chapter, while foregoing any boss fight in others. All chapters introduce new gameplay features and stay fresh enough to warrant their place in the game. Some levels and sections do become annoying at certain points though.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION
Very clever with some of the jokes and how it incorporates the player, plus a "choose your own adventure" style of giving options that do actually alter the outlook of levels are the two things the game does that make me want to call it "innovative" the most. Other than that, a bunch of stuff you've seen before and done better.

REPLAYABILITY
Definitely worth a second playthrough if you enjoyed your time with it. The game lets you change levels at multiple stages and seeing what the other options do should make a second playthrough viable. You can change the difficulty and hunt some optional challenges the game offers as well. The narrative as a whole doesn't change however.

PLAYABILITY
It works well from start to finish.

OVERALL
I think you figured out where I stand on this game overall and to whom I'd recommend it. It has fine gameplay that was very fun at times, enjoyable enough for the most part and dragged on here and there. Whether you have the motivation to stick with it however will depend on how funny you find the game, or how much of its humor you can tolerate. There have been games that I have abandoned because the gameplay wasn't enough to keep me through bad humor in my opinion (Borderlands series) but this wasn't one of them.

I didn't laugh out loud a lot, but I did a few times, which is more than I can say for most games that incorporate jokes, and it got me exhaling out of my nose a few times. I'd say check out the Announcement Trailer and go from there. As long as the humor works for you, the rest of the game will as well.

(This is the 66th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

The Fire Emblem series returns with its second ever game, Fire Emblem Gaiden, which released on March 14, 1992 exclusively in Japan for the Famicom. Unfortunately, well over a year after the release of the Super Famicom, Intelligent Systems did not decide to bring the series to the fourth generation console quite yet. The game's director is Shouzou Kaga, who would direct Fire Emblem games until 1999.

This game sold over 320.000 units as of 2002. I got a Famitsu score of 28/40, which is indicating that this game is a solid entry, though it is seen as a black sheep in the Fire Emblem series similarly to Zelda II and Castlevania II are looked at for their respective series. The game changes some things up from the original, of which I found some to be positives and some to be detrimental to the strategy aspect of the game, but overall I can't say I was overly negative on them due to the QoL improvements included.

The game received a remake for the Nintendo 3DS in 2017 called Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 5/10

This game features dual characters, including a female one. There are maybe 2 or 3 games per year for this challenge so far where protagonists are female, which is why I mention it as something pretty unique. The protagonists are called Alm and Celica. The game has five chapters. The first is a chapter introducing Alm's side of the story, the second is for Celica and the other three include both Alm's and Celica's path once per chapter.

Alm and Celica were separated during their childhood and meet during the end of Chapter 2, where a disagreement in course of action makes them go their separate ways. The disagreement is regarding the events forming this game's story. The story plays in two kingdoms, Rigel and Zofia. Zofia Castle's king is killed and the kingdom is taken over by general Desaix, which prompts a character called Lukas to ask Alm's uncle Mycen to guide the liberation army. Mycen declines, so Alm goes in his stead to liberate Zofia and save the continent of Valentia.

Meanwhile, Celica seeks to find out what happened to the deity Mila, whose blessings helped crops to grow on earth. Since her disappearance, crops stopped growing, and after three years, Celica had enough.

So Celica's journey of discovery and Alm's journey of liberation happen alongside one another and intertwine at certain points. The story is told through a bit of dialogue here and there like in the original, but it overall simply boils down to the names of kingdoms and rulers mentioned a bunch of times, protagonists promising to save people and antagonists promising to make them pay for it. The game does the, for the time, unique thing of telling a story from a dual perspective, rather than telling a unique story. Games at the time wouldn't and couldn't spend much time on story vs gameplay, so in that sense a dual perspective might be ahead of its time, in that it doesn't really work that well. You have a hard time getting to know a single protagonist in a game, let alone two.

Then there is the issue of pacing and time allocation. In Final Fantasy IV for example, I'd say about 30% of the time is spent with dialogue, "cut scenes" and general enemy-less exploration. This is almost required because the combat itself is not varied enough to offer you an enjoyable time without it feeling incredibly repetitive. Now mind you, I'm looking at this from a (young) adult's perspective, not a child's perspective, who wouldn't mind mindlessly doing the same thing over and over again, and who's perspectives therefore are not a benchmark for quality. Meanwhile, Fire Emblem Gaiden will take you 30-40 hours to beat and gets very repetitive even after a few hours. I'll go over that in the other segments of this review, but know that you don't get 30% of story rewards. You're lucky if it's in the 5-10% range.

Without this sort of reward consistently, this game becomes a slog to play through and the story suffers from it as a result. More dialogue and fewer stages would definitely not have hurt this game.

GAMEPLAY | 10/20

Fire Emblem Gaiden plays similarly to the original, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light. This is a turn-based strategy RPG with battles playing out on grid-based small maps. Each unit has specific stats like POWER, which is the value for damage output, DEFENSE, which controlls the amount of damage taken, SPEED, which determines how many steps a unit can take and a few more. Units also either have classes assigned to them, which seem to all be the same as in the original, OR they start as villagers for example and can then be upgraded a class after they level up. Unlike the original, where specific items had to be given to units for them to be promoted to a new class, here, you have to approach some sort of blessing fountain in one of the few caves you will find from time to time.

There are a couple of other changes in this game as well. In the original, to buy new items, you would have to move your units to a store on a battle map and have them purchase whatever they needed. For this, you either needed to clear out the map first to do it without being disrupted, or you would need to take this unit out of battle for the time being. Either way, it was annoying and just added a lot of additional turns to each battle/chapter. Here, items can easily be given to and swapped between units before and after every battle thanks to an overworld screen that is new here.

Another change is weapon degradation. In the original, iron swords for example would have 18 (?) hits in them before breaking. Here, no weapon that I found could never break, and from what I've read, only special weapons have limited uses assigned to them. The optimist would call this a QoL feature, the pessimist would say this reduces the strategic element of this feature.

Regarding the overworld screen, I don't particularly like it. On paper, it's a great addition, and the QoL improvements that come with it are appreciated. But what this overworld allowed the game designers to do is to make it optional to go back to areas you've been in before. And optional in the early 90s meant mandatory grinding based on my understanding. For example, there are caves you enter where you beat a group of enemies, which allows you to bless a unit with health/power/defense/speed buffs. You can enter a cave, beat the enemies and choose a unit to buff as many times as you want. I did not do this more than once after initially going through those caves.

At the beginning of Chapter 3 then, I went into battle and was met with a couple dozen enemies, most of which were strong Knights. The game gave me 5 or 6 units up to this point, and I had lost one prior. With the one's I had, it didn't matter what I did, I got demolished every time. I assume I had to grind those caves? Because there was literally nothing else to do. But here is my issue: Why is grinding included in a strategy game? Give me the same tools you give everyone else and let my decisions impact the outcome. Don't make me sit there for 10 hours and watch as the slowest battle animations of all time play out hundred times per battle. In fact, watching animations will easily be 70-80% of what you do in this game.

These difficulty spikes / grind necessitating encounters are in general demonstrative of two of the game's issues in gameplay. I discussed the grind part already, but the difficulty spikes coming in right after you breezed through the previous hours is also very annoying. This issue is only exacerbated by the fact that the map design in this game is really poor, at least for the first 7 hours I played. First, there is barely anywhere to go. A lot of maps include one staircase or bridge that you and the enemies can approach each other, which makes for awkward back-and-forths. A lot of maps also include enemies positioned in two or three locations, while you often start at the bottom right corner. Generally speaking, you move once and the enemies are already right next to you from at least two directions, and all of this just reduces the impact that strategy can make in this game. Add in that the game is very much RNG-dependent (I just love games where over half of the attacks during the first few hours miss) and you certainly got a turn-based fighting game, but limited strategy and even more limited RPG elements to make the title worthy of the genre it places itself in.

Overall, I felt like the original was definitely more enjoyable than this, despite some time-wasting shenanigans included there (stores in battle maps) that were fixed here. Overall, this game just feels bloated with not much to show for it, and I can't say it aged well in terms of gameplay. Hopefully, the move to the SNES in 1994 rectifies a lot of this.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 6/10

No voice acting. The sound design is typical for the NES, though of course very grounded compared to platformer type NES games, so I can't say it played any factor here, neither positive nor negative. The soundtrack, based on the time I've played, sounded generally OK but not all that impressive. Listening the OST, I did find a few tracks that I actually think sound pretty good. In the original, my favorite track had been 'Trouble', the opening theme for each chapter. Here, I can recommend giving 'The Slumbering Labyrinth' a listen. Apart from that, battle and chapter themes sound fine but uninspired, and some tracks sound like they've been copied from other games from this time period, though I can't name which exactly. 'The Fiends Rapture' and 'Warring Powers' for example I definitely heard somewhere else before.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 4/10

It's 1992 and the SNES has existed for about a year and a half now. This game is of course for the NES and at this point, graphically behind now, and it's noticeable both because I played games like Contra III, Super Castlevania IV and A Link to the Past very recently, but also because a game like Bucky O'Hare for the NES also is graphically much more impressive through diversity in environments and attention to detail. This game places you in plain grass fields and you enter battle mode with a simple black background. It's nice to see sprite animations while units simply stand around I suppose, but environments constantly looking the same and lacking both detail and color does not make for a great sight graphically at this point.

Then again, I had similar complaints for the original already. Just like I said for the sake of both story and gameplay, reducing the length of the game would have probably impacted graphics positively as well, as some memory space would have been saved up to use more than the handful of assets present here (I'm being facetious).

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 6/10

There are some things I liked atmospherically. Some characters apart from the main protagonists actually have a bit of personality, they say their final words whenever they fall in battle and there are some nice story scenes, like the first meeting between Alm and Celica. It also helps that there is an overworld where we can see the locations of the kingdoms. Atmosphere and immersion didn't receive heavy considerations here of course, but it's more than I expected.

CONTENT | 4/10

The game has 30 to 40 hours of content. What good does it do the player however if it is mostly the same stuff, and when 25 of those 30 hours includes looking at battle animations that play out slowly? There should have been fewer levels, quicker animations and a bit more story to strike a better balance like Final Fantasy IV managed recently.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 4/10

There are maybe 10 stages per protagonist per chapter, and a few towns and caves you can also visit to get distracted from the main path. In Chapter 2, there is also an optional dragon you can fight, and that dragon plus all bosses drop special items you can equip your units with. Unfortunately, the map design in this game I found to be very poor and restricting, strategic elements felt like they were less relevant at times as a result and I really don't understand why the game expects me to go backwards and grind in a strategy game. I can't explain any other way how the first stage of Chapter 3 destroyed me otherwise, as I had taken the correct path and had every unit but one alive at that point. In general, random difficulty spikes are additional proof that balance is not great in this game's design.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10

A strategy RPG has a lot of potential, and the Fire Emblem is obviously pretty popular in modern times. In this game, you have a situation where 1) there already was an original game which did nearly everything that this game does, 2) you have little innovation and not all of it is good and 3) you don't even make the jump to the next gen of consoles, even though it come out 1.5 years ago at this point. The game feels like the devs just at one point said "why AREN'T we working on an SNES game again? Ah you know what, just quickly make a few dozen stages and let's ship this, so we can start on the next one". Future entries in the series have a lot more potential here, but this one doesn't reach it.

REPLAYABILITY | 2/5

I doubt many people these days would be interested in playing this game again after beating it the first time. Strategy games usually should have a bit more replayability than this game has to offer though, as battles usually can be fought in different ways. Here, at least for the first 7 hours, it didn't feel like you could change up much because the map restricts you so much. And considering that most of the time spent is watching animations play out, I can't imagine many people want to go through that again.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

Works well at all times.

OVERALL | 50/100

Not great. There is a remake for this game, as mentioned, so if you want to experience the story (but in much more detail) and experience how the gameplay looked like (more or less) just go for that I would say. There wasn't really anything here that was memorable, and the most positive thing I could say is that it's clear that the mix of genres this game is going for has potential that is not being realized here. The next game comes out for the SNES, so I have higher hopes there.

Third attempt at getting out of the Prologue was successful. The first two tries ended because I got distracted by other games, not because I didn't think the game wasn't good.

Quite the opposite, actually. A long-running RPG series with deep world building and an increasingly convoluted, yet gripping narrative sounds awesome, so it was only a matter of time before I really got into this series. It only took me ...
nearly 6 years after acquiring it in a January 2017 Humble Bundle to beat it.

And I'm glad I did.

____________

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 8/10
The main characters in this game (and the whole 3-game arc) are Estelle and Joshua Bright. At the start of the game, Joshua is brought home by Estelle's father, Cassius Bright, under unknown circumstances, at least as far as Estelle's perspective goes.

The game fast forwards 5 years, where both kids reach 16 years of age and ready themselves for their final exams to join the Bracer Guild, a combat and investigative specialist group that aids civilians in whatever they may need help with. Sometimes that's retrieving a lost item and sometimes it's killing a strong monster that blocks the road to the next city.

Estelle and Joshua's father is one of the strongest and revered members of the Bracer Guild and at the start of the game, receives a concerning message via letter that leads him to leave their home town, Rolent. Estelle and Joshua are left under the guide of their mentor, Sherazard Harvey, and are tasked with completing requests by civilians that are regularly left on the Guild Blackboard. As new bracers, they only receive "Junior Bracer" status until they can collect "recommendations" by all 5 major cities in the kingdom of Liberl, for which they will have to finish tasks of extraordinary difficulty.

As Estelle and Joshua work on these tasks, they slowly start to uncover that something a bit bigger is going on on a national scale that they might not quite be ready for, but eager to prove themselves, they go on a quest to solve these mysteries anyway.

Thus, you embark on a 35-70 hour journey, depending on how much you can engage in side activities, to take on those mentioned large-scale challenges but to also achieve Senior Bracer status. Along the way, they meet dozens of side characters with different, interesting personalities and their own, regional problems that require assistance. Every stop in a major city also leads Estelle and Joshua one step closer to solving the mystery, which turns out to bigger than they thought.

The game, and essentially the entire series, is well-known for taking its time with storytelling. That doesn't mean that the story is riddled with "filler content". Instead, the aim of the developers is to immerse you into this deep world that they've created, 10 years after a major war had occurred in these lands and at a time where tensions between the Kingdom of Liberl and the Erebonian Empire are still pretty high.

So the game takes the approach of really introducing you to all these cities and countries, to all the characters you meet and to technological advancements in this world, like the Orbal technology, on a very deep level, pretty much unlike almost any video games series you've seen.

I can happily say that this is worth it if you stick around, at least as it pertains to the first iteration in this long-lasting series. I'm not gonna lie, there are times where I started to get impatient, and I think this would apply to many players. I'd say this has rather to do with the fact that the game teases you on 46 occasions throughout your time playing time and opens up more and more questions as you go along whilst answering very few, and it does not mean that the dialogue and little stories in this game are not excellent, because they are.

But this game in particular often focuses on small-scale problems and stories, and reduces the big guns to teasing most of the time, which I'm told changes in future games. Heck, I can tell you right now, the ending to this game is fantastic and absolutely worth the pay-off. But just keep in mind that if you can't find joy in the smaller aspects of story telling that this game is filled with, then you might have a hard time sticking with this.

One final note I want to make here is about the characters. Many of them were unique and quirky in their own way and whilst every stereotype is filled here, it helps that the game gives each of these characters plenty of time and lines to really turn into their own. They all do a great job interacting with the two main characters, both of whom are excellently written as well.

One character that is especially intriguing is Olivier. He has had one of the worst introductions I've had the displeasure of experiencing (making constant sexual remarks at two strangers, who, let me remind you, are just 16!) but has redeemed himself on each separate occasion that he appeared. There is a certain mystery and especially unpredictability to him that allows each of his appearances to go in any which direction, and I think that's a good thing to have for a game/series like this.

But if we wanted to talk about the game's sometimes weird sexual outbursts, I think it's also worth mentioning that Sherazard's special attack is called "Sadist Whip", and the game zooms into her chest before she stars whipping the enemy endlessly.

GAMEPLAY | 14/20
This is a turn-based JRPG with combat that takes place on a grid. One thing worth mentioning right off the bat is that the game does not require grinding, I'd say it almost actively discourages it even. This, I think, is extremely important if you create an RPG that is this long and asks you to stay very patient for a long time to get some big main story payoffs. There is also a Turbo Mode you can activate by holding ALT, which I think should be a feature in every turn-based RPG because it allows you to skip some of those Magic Attacks with long animations. You will shave hours and hours off your playtime by using this feature.

The combat overall is OK to solid. Each character icon is displayed on the top left to show you the attack order, and sometimes, certain rows have bonuses to them, for example a critical attack or health regeneration. There are certain things you can do to knock enemy's off their row if you want the Critical Bonus yourself, but this is one of the areas where the combat unfortunately is reliant on RNG a bit. Same goes with what attacks the enemy does, whether the harder enemies spawn a foe or heal themselves are all factors that play out differently if you battle them again and again.

But I'd say that overall, a good strategy is rewarded and you get enough battle-mates throughout the game that you pretty much have to mix things up in that regard as well, which I think is always a plus.

Some characters have Ranged attacks, some are better used for healing, some for tanking damage, so pretty much the usual assortment of fighters. What the game allows you to do however is to add and subtract certain abilities from all characters through a unique feature called "Orbments". These are placed into Orbment slots, devices that basically allow you to cast Magic (Arts). They also can improve basic stats of the character, and you open more and more slots as you go. There are Healing, Attack, Defense, Earth, Experience Gain and pretty much any other orbments that you can think of. You can add and remove them as you like and as I said, customize your battles this way. Pretty good stuff.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 8/10
The English version released 7 years after the game originally came out and only has voice acting during battles. There are mods out there however that allow you to add in the Japanese voice acting, which is very good.

The soundtrack of this game has a few highlights, like the final dungeon music, and overall fits the mostly light tones of the game very well. There are also your typical sad song, suspense song and confession song that you will hear constantly throughout your playthrough. I'd say it's a good but not great soundtrack.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
The game looks solid graphically but really shines in attention to detail. The cities all look unique and interesting, have their own themes and definitely had me excited to go visit them as a Chapter was nearing its end.

Roads outside of cities and dungeons on the other hand almost all looked the same, and not that detailed, but that's not entirely out of the ordinary for mid-2000s JRPGs.

ATMOSPHERE | 9/10
Each city has its own musical and visual theme, each city has its own dozens of own characters with their own stories and problems, their own homes, their own jobs and ambitions and the game constantly connects places to people, people to places and people to other people that you really feel like you're in a world with a proper history.

CONTENT | 8/10
There is a lot of content here, up to 70-80 hours depending on how often you use Turbo Mode, how many optional dialogue options you pursue with random NPCs, how many of the optional tasks you complete and which difficulty you play. It took me about 42 hours after I did all side activities in the first 3 cities and talked to many NPCs over that time. For the final 2 chapters, I mostly mainlined the story. I figured out Turbo Mode about 1/3 of the way through and it definitely sped up my time through the combat which obviously got a bit repetitive against the easier enemies that would run into you on roads. I'd say the majority of the game was of high quality, and whether you enjoy the content will depend on how OK you are with a 50/50 story/gameplay split.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
The game is pretty formulaic in that you visit a place, work there until you gain the recommendation you're after and move on to the next. This is not to its detriment but takes away some of the surprise factor of "holy shit, where am I?", especially when many dungeons do look pretty similar.

That said, the game gets a big plus in my book for not requiring you to grind at all and it always offers you enough items and material to face the challenges each Chapter has in store, whichever difficulty you end up playing. The 50/50 story/gameplay split also meshes well here.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
The game does not try to innovate a whole lot. On a surface level, this is run-of-the-mill JRPG design, and that's more than fine for an introduction to the series. It will make it harder for some to get into the series however.

What the game does specialize in is world building and dialogue. It does a great job of having its dialogue actually feel "realistic", at least as far as a video game story goes. Especially Estelle is written in this ditzy, clumsy way that is more endearing than being a typical video-game "comical relief dumby" (looking at you here Dorothy). There are also orbments that allow you to customize your characters and a constant mix of which characters travel with you, which necessitates change in strategy, especially on higher difficulties.

REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
There aren't really many secrets to uncover here apart from somewhat hidden chests, but these do include some great items that allow you to mix up your battle strategies. The secrets are usually in form of "hidden dialogue" by going to an Inn for example, and finding one of your friends having a drink on their own. You can then engage them and have a pretty lengthy, optional conversation with them. This is the kind of stuff that lets me know that the devs really care about building deep characters and worlds.

But the story plays out the same every time and the game is pretty long without enough variety to present replay value if you've already been pretty thorough on your first playthrough.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5
It works well from start to finish.

OVERALL | 78/100
As I reached the final hours of this game, I thought this was a good introductory game that doesn't surprise you much in terms of its narrative than it does with its depth. And I was fine with that. So I thought I'd beat this and return to the series some time before Summer 2023, so about half a year after this review is posted. But those final hours were so intense and exciting way beyond what I was expecting, that I definitely want to get back to this series sooner than later.

20 or so hours of dialogue only and 1.5 million total characters (dialogue) does take its toll though, so I do think it's worth it to keep a few week/month break in between these games. But if you really want to feel engrossed in a world and are a fan of turn-based JRPGs, Trails in the Sky is absolutely worth the recommendation.

Spaceship combat sims are games that I did not grow up with and that are not really for me. Since I wouldn't do their legacy any justice by rating them as someone who is not in the game's target group, I'll just give quick random thoughts on games like this but otherwise leave them without a rating, in case you were following my challenge to go through as many games as possible starting chronologically in 1990. This would be game 21.

Controls felt pretty complicated and it didn't really feel enjoyable to play with a mouse + keyboard and at the low framerate that was offered, which I don't think was unusual for space combat sims. I'm not sure if people played this with a joystick back in the day or it didn't simply bother them, but I would have been overwhelmed even if the game played at double digits, so this only exacerbated my problems.

That said, I did get through two missions before calling it a day. The vet who accompanied me somehow died after the first mission and while I still have no idea why (she just said "my ancestors await me" as I was trying to figure out how to dock), I could tell that the interaction between the player and other characters - in addition to the neat cinematic story telling - was a big deal. If I had grown up with this genre, I can imagine my experience with this game being positive. That said, the missions already felt repetitive very early on and I can imagine that this is a common complaint about this game, and not a surprising one due to the game's age.

It's always a good feeling, when you come back to a game that you've figuratively shelved years and years ago, only to realize that it is actually a very fun game. That's how I most recently felt with Guacamelee!, a Metroidvania melee-platformer game by Drinkbox Studioes (devs of Nobody Saves the World). I beat it in 6 hours on Normal difficulty with some exploration, though there are parts that will add significant play time to your total and actually affect the ending.

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STORY(TELLING)/CHARACTERS | 5/10
The story of this game is not the highlight here, but I'd be lying if I said that it didn't enhance the overall experience somewhat. There is a great Mexican theme here that keeps the game in a fun, charming sort of mood pretty much throughout, even if some of the story points can actually get a bit dark.

You play Juan Aguacate, a farmer-turned-luchador at the start of the game when an evil skeleton called Carlos Calaca destroys your village, Pueblucho, and kidnaps your childhood love interest, who turns out to be "the president's daughter".

This all happens on the "Dia de los muertos" (Day of the Dead). To turn into a luchador, you are killed and get a luchador mask from someone else, after which you are brought back to life. Carlos Calaca has a few main partners who stand in your way as you try to find and fight him. Since he did kill you effortlessly during your first encounter, this is all OK, because you're going to want to increase your abilities before facing him once more.

His main partners or followers rather, all have their own back story and their motivations for following him. It's not much, but it's always nice to learn a bit more about the bosses you will be facing. The back story of Carlos Calaca is more interesting, though told very quickly. In general, story parts are few and far between. Most of the dialogue is limited to talking to a chicken, who teaches you combos, talking to half old-man half goat, who teaches you new abilities, and talking to side quest givers.

The theme of it all definitely gives positive vibes here overall, but again, it's not a big part of this game. A lot of stuff remains unexplained or brushed off to "the world is magical, that's why it works".

GAMEPLAY | 15/20
This is one of the few Metroidvanias I've beaten. I've played many more however, and this is definitely the game I'd recommend to newcomers to the genre the most. Metroidvania-type features are in many types of games, like the idea of finding things that are interactable, but not having the necessary abilities to interact with them until later. This blocking of exploration until later is not a key component of those games though like it is in Metroidvanias.

Even amongst Metroidvanias, this is of course handled differently, but for beginners, Guacamelee handles it best. Instead of making you make both a mental and physical note whenever you find something that you're going to want to remember for later, Guacamelee offers waypoints at all times, so that you don't really ever have to worry about where to go next. Backtracking is included here still, but at least it's not a long session of going through every corner to see if you find the right path forward or something new to interact with.

The combat in this game is melee-focused and apart from the boss fights, which are unfortunately very few, fighting in this game doesn't ask much of you. On Normal difficulty, you can take plenty of hits and have enough time and ability to dodge most attacks pretty easily. Even if you die, you instantly spawn at the last checkpoint with no loading time, and those checkpoints are usually right next to the place you died.

One thing this game does really well is combine combat and traversal elements. You learn how to do uppercuts, headbutts, frog slams and more, which you can both use to fight and create new combos, but also to break colored blocks blocking your path forward. A very resourceful way of doing things, and pretty fun.

So yes, the other big part of this game next to the combat is traversal. You'll be platforming a lot and challenges will be gravity, thorned vines and, later on, much more complicated things that I don't want to spoil. What's important to know is that if you die to gravity, you instantly respawn where you were the last time before you fell, so frustration is kept to a minimum here. It does get frustrating sometimes anyway, but it's not that bad at all. The main issue I had was that, as you learned more and more abilities and had to use almost all of them to go past specific sections, my brain pretty much refused to think that fast, so it took me more tries sometimes than I care to admit.

But the mix of platforming and combat is pretty good and while it does get slightly repetitive at times due to a lack of other gameplay systems (and variety in attack patterns is mostly kept for the boss fights, which are good), it's a game that, purely for its gameplay, I can very much recommend.

Finally, there is a good bit of exploration to be done. I'm on a 2nd playthrough on Hard difficulty and the amount of secret areas I'm discovering now is crazy. Obviously I will have to relearn the abilities to enter them later, but at least know I know what I'm looking for. And you're going to want to explore these places for multiple reasons. You'll get more money for upgrades (of which there really aren't that many though), you'll find upgrade parts for more health and special attacks, and most importantly, you will full secret worlds that you're going to want to complete before you take on the final boss. I didn't and it's not necessary, but I'd recommend it.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10
No voice acting. I understand that for budgetary reasons, but some of the characters definitely deserved one. Sound design is good. In general, your auditory experience will be very much inspired by the Mexican theme. The soundtrack gives off that vibe right off the bat, with a great (great!) track for the first area you find yourself in, Pueblucho. I played this for the first time years ago and that track immediately sounded familiar when I got back.

In general, the OST is good, but there could have been a bit more variety/quantity overall.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
The graphical quality of this game is not the impressive part. It's the attention to detail and the art design. Its great use of color complements the vibe this game constantly gives out and the intricate details in pretty much all the locations available in this game are definitely the highlights.

ATMOSPHERE | 8/10
The game has the Mexican culture thing going on and it sticks with it throughout. The soundtrack, the visuals, the colors and everything else combines to make for one cohesive and enjoyable experience from an "atmosphere" standpoint.

CONTENT | 8/10
The game took me 6 hours to beat. For 12.50€ at full price, this is OK, and on a discount, it's definitely more than enough to have a couple fun afternoons playing this game. However, there are two good things and one bad thing I want to talk about here. First, the good. The game has no game over screens, it doesn't send you back for minutes after a 5-second struggle with a boss that goes sour only to pad its playtime and there is no incessant backtracking involved unless you're a completionist. So a 6 hour playthrough here is much more focused one and with less of the filler and annoying parts of other, similar games. Second, there are multiple secret worlds that I didn't discover myself, so one can easily spend 10+ hours on this game if you were to finish those up. You will get rewarded with a different ending later on.

The bad thing here is that, whether you play for 6 or 10 hours, there is plenty of repetitive stuff going on the further you go into it due to the limited variety in enemies. Especially those secret worlds will not introduce you to too many new ones, and as far as challenge goes, the game pretty much keeps throwing more and more enemies at you the farther you go, instead of making their attack patterns more varied.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10
The game has two types of content mainly, which would be melee combat and platforming. This mix stays how it is throughout, and it's a good and fun mix. Later sections and the secret worlds have more of a focus on arenas with increasing amounts of the same enemies you've faced all game. This is the substitute for a more varied challenge, so not always so great, but since the combat in itself is pretty enjoyable, if also repetitive, it's not that big of a deal.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
As I mentioned, I think this is THE game for Metroidvania newcomers. You never are really lost, even if traversal sometimes can get a bit difficult due to the platforming challenges. There is a charming theme throughout. You are introduced to a bunch of typical Metroidvania-mechanics that aren't too advanced to ever get complicated.

And to top it off, the game does a great job to combine combat and traversal mechanics, which, among with its theme, I think is the most positively unique part to this game.

But other than that, yeah, the game doesn't move the needle a whole lot of course, but it doesn't need to.

REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
You're unlikely to finish everything that is worth finishing by the end of your first playthrough. Plus, you will probably underutilize some abilities, miss out on some costumes you can unlock, and once you're on your second playthrough, you will keep finding these small little areas that you can only enter when you unlock those late-game abilities. So to put it short, a second playthrough will definitely be worth it, unless you use a guide to find everything on your first run.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5
It works well from start to finish.

OVERALL | 73/100
I'm going to give it 8/10 because my rating system has a 73/100 actually as much more positive than Metacritic/Opencritic would see it. This is a very fun Metroidvania and a short, focused game that you can bang out in two afternoons and still have some fond memories of later down the line.

If you're new to the genre and want to check out an easy to get into Metroidvania, I think you found it with Guacamelee!.

It's not that common for me to have played and finished three games in a series, so it felt extra special to hit that milestone with the Yakuza series. Yakuza Kiwami 2, a remake to Yakuza 2 released in 2017, is exactly what you would expect if you have played the first game or the prequel, so my recommendation to you starts and ends there. Did you enjoy the previous ones? Buy it. Did you not enjoy them? Don't buy it. As a fan of these two other games, I've had my expectations met, though Yakuza Kiwami 2 does not top Yakuza 0 for me due to some issues I had with its story and its combat.

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STORY(TELLING)/CHARACTERS | 8/10
Yakuza Kiwami 2's story builds on the ending of Yakuza Kiwami directly. I'm not gonna go into it too deeply in case you haven't played Yakuza Kiwami, so let's instead go over whether I liked it more than the first game's. And the answer is: Yes.

I wouldn't say I liked it a lot more though. The main story has its usual strengths. Kazuma Kiryu as the main character is great. Ryuji Goda as the main antagonist is also great. In between, the game brings some familiar faces back but the majority of the cast is actually made of people that weren't in Yakuza Kiwami, so it took a while to get to familiarize myself with them. There are police officers, detectives, the Omi Alliance main players and more, including Kiryu's main 'partner' throughout this, Kaoru Sayama, a police officer who puts Kiryu in "protective custody" to learn more about her past, as she had learned that her parents were killed "because of the Tojo Clan". I thought her story was really interesting and fleshed out, with some pretty depressing moments throughout. She and Ryuji Goda definitely were the best parts about this game's story.

Ryuji Goda is an Omi Alliance patriarch who is not at all a fan of the rival Tojo Clan. So he obviously instantly objects when Kazuma Kiryu comes to their headquarters to ask for an alliance. Again, no spoilers, but things happen from there and Ryuji Goda and Kazuma Kiryu don't get along that well.

Ryuji's motivations are well explained and the game dives deeper into his emotions than you would expect for a game to do of its villain, and that's exactly what I loved here. Unfortunately, Ryuji Goda didn't appear as often as I would have liked.

Same, unfortunately, goes for a bunch of side characters, especially from the Omi Alliance side and a foreign group that Ryuji works with to fight the Tojo Clan. A major story point that I won't go into further.

During the first few chapters of this game, you assume that you will learn more about these guys as the game goes along, but it's unfortunate that this doesn't really happen at the end. I'm not sure what the reason for that is, whether the game just introduced too many characters in one game and couldn't find the time for them all or the story couldn't be extended for budgetary reasons. The game's story is "only" 18 hours or so long on its own, so it's not nearly as long as the story of 0. But whatever the reason is, the game's ending didn't feel quite as impactful as a result.

The game's ending in general is just bat shit crazy on another level and while I obviously very much enjoy the Yakuza silliness, otherwise I wouldn't be playing them, I think they may have gone a step too far without giving good enough of an explanation.

Apart from the main story, there is also obviously a bunch of side missions (sub stories), of which there are 76. These are funny and silly and very enjoyable as per usual and remain the unique factor about these Yakuza games. A major contrast to the main story, and some of them also are among my favorites for the series. The baby one especially is worth a look on YouTube.

Finally, the game also has a few chapters included in "Majima's story". Three chapters in fact, and they take us through what happened shortly before the start of the main story and why Majima, in the main story, works in his own Construction Firm all of a sudden. Plus, there is a very nice surprise for fans of Yakuza 0.

But overall, I just want to add that the game had plenty of highlight scenes that are extremely memorable, none more so than the bridge scene in Sotenbori when he is smoking in the rain and ... well, play it to find out.

GAMEPLAY | 16/20
Gameplay is pretty much the same as in the first two games. This game is a Brawler, so you do a lot of brawling. The two main differences here compared to Yakuza Kiwami would be that, instead of having four styles, you now have one. And instead of upgrading combat skills with experience points and open world gameplay stuff with Completion Points, you now collect points for four different colors. You use those colors to unlock everything. You gain them by consuming items as well, and a Hunger Meter fills up when you eat or drink, which increases your point gain after fights. I wouldn't say I preferred this over what we had in Kiwami or 0, but it's different and not bad or anything, so I did like it.

But yeah, other than that, you're still punching and kicking, grabbing and throwing and using Heat moves to brutally annihilate your foes.

HOWEVER: The game uses a different engine compared to the other two games, and this is notable for two reasons. First, it makes combat kind of more floaty. It doesn't really feel as brutal as the other two games in how the kicks and punches hit. Second, the new engine comes with a whole lot of ragdollin'. Throw an enemy into a bike, and he will suddenly fly a few meters up into the air like if shot out of a cannon. Or have an enemy take you down with a pistol shot or something and often you will do the same.

I don't know, this just felt kind of out of place for a game like this and I can't say I really liked it. It always remained a slight distraction but I did get used to it at the end.

Apart from combat, you still explore Kamurocho (and Sotenbori), you still play a bunch of mini games and you do a bunch of sub stories.

For mini games, the most notable thing here is the return of the Cabaret Club mini game from Yakuza 0, where you run your own cabaret club. It's incredibly addicting and comes with so many features, that it could almost be its own game. You compete in four different leagues and have to do 3 minute "runs" where you try to collect as much money as possible. Collect a certain amount, and you will be able to challenge the League Champion to a Title Match.

You have to partner with shops and keep playing more and more to grow your fan base (and income), plus your hostesses gain experience as well while you're doing so, further increasing revenue. You scout for new hostesses with different skills, you can actually dress up your best hostesses to change around their stats, and after a while, you actually unlock 10-15 minute long dates with them where you learn more about them and, if you reply well, increase their level a bunch. To beat this mini game, you'll easily put a dozen+ hours into it if you want to.

Definitely surpasses Gwent as my favorite mini game ever.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
Voice acting, as per usual in this series, is class. I still would like to actually have everything main story related be voice acted, but the most important scenes are, so it's fine. Whenever drama increases, the best of the voice actors comes to show, and the impact they're leaving is definitely felt a lot, especially for Ryuji Goda's character, who has a fantastic voice actor.

I enjoyed the soundtrack here as well, it was used nicely throughout and especially the Outlaw's Lullaby Battle Theme in Sotenbori is top class. Really liked the song choice for the bridge scene in Sotenbori I mentioned above.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
The world needs more modern, realistic, grounded games. Not because the other games aren't great, they are, but I feel it's a style of game that has become almost forgotten over the past decade apart from the Yakuza series and a few select games that fit this style here and there, like Mafia 3 and the Definitive Edition and RDR2. Anyway, while Yakuza's combat may not fit my description, the design of Kamurocho and Sotenbori certainly does. The graphics are even better in Kiwami 2 than in the other two games chronologically before it, and it's genuinely been a treat to look at throughout. If I have any complaint it's that the faces of some characters looked a bit too dated compared to the rest of this game, like Kaoru Sayama's.

ATMOSPHERE | 9/10
Just like with the graphics, the atmosphere in this game is fantastic and I love to see a modern and grounded world like this. Yakuza's atmosphere would of course also not be what it is without its unique mix of serious main story and silly sub stories, and this game nails that once again.

CONTENT | 9/10
As per usual, there is a ton of quality main and side content here that will entertain for 20-40 hours depending on how much of the side stuff you wish to do. The only issue I have here is that some of the main story stuff unfortunately feels a little bit like filler to me.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
The filler I mentioned for the main story is something I do kind of have an issue with here as well. There are multiple parts where you have to go to a guy to go to a guy to go to a guy and I just don't really see the point in that, especially when it's done more than once. There are also many times where you are tasked to "go waste some time until you get a call" and sometimes this leads you to some forgettable side-but-main story sequence that I'd personally like to keep separate.

Other than that, the design in this game is the same as with the other two games, and it's a fun gameplay loop here too.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 7/10
The concept of this series remains unique and will do so for all entries I presume. The Remake is really well done and I'm really glad they did it, because I wouldn't have gotten into this series without one.

REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
Plenty of replayability due to its plethora of side content, but not necessarily replayable for its main content, as its pretty linear and for good reason obviously.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5
It works well from start to finish.

OVERALL | 83/100
Another great entry into the Yakuza series. The main story has a lot of depth and, while not everything works in the end, it created multiple emotional and dramatic scenes that I loved. The side content is fantastic as usual and especially the Cabaret Club sim adds a whole extra game to the package. I would say it's better than Yakuza Kiwami 1, which is how it should be for a sequel, but I'd place it behind 0, which in my opinion had a better overall plot, a big advantage by giving you Majima as an additional protagonist, and slightly more satisfying combat.

(This is the 91st game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)

As part of this challenge, I've been going through these Sonic games as fast as, well, Sonic, and just like that, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is the Sonic series' fourth attempt to make me a fan of the franchise. It's not like I think these are bad games, definitely not, but there are some pretty key things about Sonic games that do not align with my tastes, and that has been the case for Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic CD, though Sonic CD has been the game I enjoyed the most so far.

I'm going to explain my likes and dislikes about the Sonic series below and whether this game does something different in those regards, but going in, I didn't really expect anything different here than what Sonic fans got up to this point. And that's more than OK, considering that this is a beloved series of many gamers. Additionally, this is the 4th Sonic game for the Genesis / Sega CD in just 3 years, so I imagine that innovation will be kept to a minimum simply due to time constraints. Looking at this game's wiki, that seems to be the case, as Sonic the Hedgehog would not only not include certain features that would later be turned into Sonic 3D Blast, but there is also a large part of the game that was simply cut and later republished as Sonic & Knuckles. Sonic & Knuckles' cartridge has an adapter that lets you attach Sonic 3 to it, which turns both games into Sonic 3 & Knuckles, in case you are interested in that. I'm only reviewing Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10

At the beginning of the game, Sonic has the Chaos Emeralds but gets them stolen from him by Knuckles the Echidna, a new character in the Sonic series at this point in time. Knuckles is the last of his kind living on the "Angel Island", on which the Death Egg of Dr Robotnik crash-lands prior to the start of this game. Knuckles guards the "Master Emerald", which gives Angel Island its levitational power, so Dr Robotnik uses this opportunity to pit Sonic and Knuckles against each other by telling Knuckles that Sonic is attempting to steal the Master Emerald.

For the game itself, that's pretty much it. Knuckles makes life harder on Sonic during the game but there is very little in terms of story here, not unlike other Sonic and platforming games in general at the time. As per usual, this is fine, as it is not expected, especially for a game in 1994, where story cutscenes would likely damage the experience more by interrupting it than enhancing it.

GAMEPLAY | 9/20

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is, to me, the worst Sonic game to date in terms of gameplay. On the one hand, it innovates very little from the formula of the other Sonic games. If you enjoyed those, you will enjoy this game too for the most part, so no need to read on. In the following however, I will explain what exactly irked me more than usual in this game, especially since it is coming off the heels of Sega CD and Sonic 2, both of which are games that I praised for innovating enough in terms of controls, gameplay and level design.

The core gameplay idea behind this Sonic game is the same as with the others. Enter a large level with multiple ways to traverse to the exit, explore to find secret areas, defeat a boss at the end of the zone and in between, learn the flow of the level to go through it without losing one of your limited lives. As per usual, Sonic has a lot of speed, and as per usual, you are supposed to use this speed during appropriate times.

Because, AS PER USUAL, this Sonic game has terrible enemy placement and enemies appearing a millisecond before you can process them as you speed through any area of any level. So, while controlling a fast character, you once again tip-toe around levels once you realize that no matter where you go, unfair threats look to take your rings from you. You then have to recover those rings, because carrying at least one ring means you won't die from your next hit. Unfortunately, in this game, rings are unrecoverable for a good 2-3 seconds after you get hit, so I found myself either recovering very few even if I had dozens on me, or recovering 0. For example, there is this one enemy that has spikes and shoots three balls diagonally upwards. Almost always, it hit me. Half the time, I couldn't recover any rings. This means I had to tip toe next to it to wait for it shoot the balls in order to jump on top of it. Sonic moves like he is gliding on ice however, so the controls are not nearly as tight as you would want them to. Plus, input detection is not as immediate as you would need it to be either. Ultimately, you need to get close enough to time the jump, you need to stay away far enough to not touch the enemy and you can't stay away too far, otherwise you won't time the jump within that short time frame between the three balls that are shot. This would lead me to die countless times to one of these things as I try to do a very simple thing of just jumping on top of this one goddamn enemy.

Enemy design in this game is horrible in general, but there is no enemy more infuriating than that fucking piranha that tries to bite you underwater. It won't let go, you can't do anything about it, so 100% of the time, this means you are just waiting 10 to 15 seconds until Sonic can't hold his breath anymore and dies. Fucking terrible. You fall downwards a lot and can't see these piranhas, so if you jump downwards unfavorably, you literally cannot do anything against them. One of my biggest gripes in any video game is having to jump down from somewhere without seeing enemies/obstacles, and this game's challenge is simply made out of this trope.

Two other things I dislike in Sonic 3 are 1) the special stages, which I think are the worst of all Sonic games so far (you collect blue balls and have to quickly change direction, where you fight the game's controls more than anything) and 2) Tails now being completely forced on you. In Sonic 2, you could go to the options menu and remove Tails, but here, you can't. Tails does almost nothing in 1-player mode but constantly die and distract you. Tails for example cannot breathe underwater, and has his own timer appear for whatever reason, which confuses you into thinking that you need air yourself. The worst fucking part is when I stood near the air bubbles with 2 seconds to go on my own timer, jumped up to grab one of the air bubbles and have FUCKING TAILS STEAL IT FROM ME. I died after those 2 seconds and quit the game right after.

Again, Sonic games are not objectively bad, despite the overwhelming negativity here, but at their best, the 2D platformers are tolerable to me, and at their worst, like here, they're downright terrible to play.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 8/10

The saving grace for Sonic games comes from their soundtrack. As with all other Sonic games (minus the Sega CD boss fight theme), this game has a good soundtrack as well. From what I've listened to, the save select screen's theme is funnily enough my favorite. The worst track here by far is the one for the new special stage, which makes the special stage even less tolerable than it already was to me.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10

I can only really say the same thing here that I was able to for the other Sonic games. They are some of the best-looking games on the Genesis, some of the better looking games of the 16-bit era and all that applies to Sonic 3 as well. At the same time, Sonic levels often have a cluttered quality to them and can be overdesigned visually, which is not as bad herre as in Sonic 2, but still present.

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 7/10

Not much to say here for this game. It plays, sounds and feels like a Sonic game. The only thing I dislike here in that sense are the underwater levels, which are a lot more present here than in the other Sonic games unfortunately, and they usually are my least favorite part.

CONTENT | 5/10

The main content is similar to what you have come to expect from the other Sonic games, only worse in my opinion due to the issues I mentioned under 'Gameplay'. The special stage here is the worst out of the 4 16-bit Sonic games in my opinion and this game doesn't innovate in any way here, a far cry of the effort that was put into Sonic CD in '93.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10

Levels are long as per usual and you can go through them in multiple different ways once again. There are a lot of rings to collect, Chaos Emeralds to find through the special stages and bosses to battle, but the in between issues of enemy placement and the terrible way through which this game achieves its difficulty makes this game a step down from the other Sonic games, where I had complained about the enemy placement as well, but never at the level of Sonic 3.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 3/10

Play Sonic 1, 2 and Sonic CD instead of this. Sonic 3 innovates the least out of all these games and feels like a step back for the most part. Knuckles' debut is cool but that's really all you get here.

REPLAYABILITY | 3/5

Less replay value than for Sonic 2 and CD, but Sonic games always have plenty of secret areas to find and Chaos Emeralds to collect, so replay value is present at usual levels.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

Works well at all times.

OVERALL | 55/100

Sonic games eminate high production values, and there certainly was a lot of money poured into making them once Sonic 2 took off as it did, but money can't buy creativity, and Sonic 3 to me is the proof of it. The core system for Sonic games is in place, and Sonic 3 feels like those were simply re-used with little thought given to how the levels work. Based on the very good reviews the game got at the time, I realize I'm in the minority with this thinking, but I truly did not have a good time with this game. Its above-average visually and through its soundtrack as per usual, and when the game actually flows well it's fun like the others can be, but the annoyances that enemy placement and pop-ups present are more discernible here than they ever were.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis by LucasArts (Release Date: June 1, 1992) is among the most popular classic point and click adventures out there. Ask the majority of adventure game and Indiana Jones fans who have played this, and you will receive praise for the game and how true it stays to the Indiana Jones franchise. As someone who enjoys his fair share of adventure games but didn't grow up with the classic ones, and as someone who watched Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time a couple days ago in preparation of playing this game, I have mixed feelings.

While I invite you to read on to find out my thoughts, let me share some facts about the game that should entice you to play the game regardless, instead of reading my opinion as if it were the gospel. Indiana Jones received multiple "Best Adventure Game of the Year" awards in 1992. Granted, it wasn't the most packed year for the genre, but the game brought home some GOTY awards too. It sold over a million copies by 2009, which may not sound like a whole lot, but was one of the most successful graphic adventure games for LucasArts.

MobyGames has it at 8.2/10, reviews at the time had the game at roughly 9/10 on average so, needless to say, this was a critical success as well.

That said, here is my review on the game and on why I didn't gell with it quite like I would have liked.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 6/10

You play the eponymous Indiana Jones in 1939 and at the start of the game, look for some small statue in university archives for a visitor that goes by the name "Mr. Smith". When you deliver it to him, he steals the statue and the "bead" that was inside it. As he escapes through the window, you manage to pull out his jacket and inside find his ID. His real name is Klaus Kerner, a Nazi agent. Turns out, the Nazis are looking for the lost city of Atlantis and the power it bears.

A magazine article from the past that was also in the Nazi's jacket has a picture of Indiana Jones and also of a woman called Sophia Hapgood, who joined Jones on an expedition to Iceland, where she stole artifacts that Kerner is now after. This prompts Indy to find her, as he fears Kerner will go after her soon. When he arrives at her location, Kerner indeed already took off with some Atlantean artifacts she had in her office. The most important artifact, a necklace, is still on Sophia's person though, which has the spirit of the Atlantean king Nur-Ab-Sal within. The spirit then gives Sophia a message, telling her how to find the lost city of Atlantis.

So now you're off to find Atlantis, discover the hidden power and make sure the Nazis don't get their hands on it to use it for world domination.

Having watched Raiders of the Lost Ark only, this general plot idea seems immediately familiar. 1930's, long lost powerful treasure, Nazis, a woman by Indy's side with a medaillon to help find the way, a trip down the Mediterranean, it all follows that formula. If you want to please a fanbase, that's certainly the way to go.

Through your journey, there are some small homages to the movie franchise, but from what I can tell, it doesn't appear to include any characters from the movies. The characters that are introduced here pretty much exclusively are "nuts" as Indy so lovingly puts it, reminding you of LucasArts witty humor rather than Indiana Jones more, mostly, grounded one. These characters talk funny, have seemingly lost their marbles or make some dumb suggestions (one character gives you a mask for free, but will later trade you something for it). Apart from them though, the presentation is generally much more serious than all LucasArts games I've been subjected to over the years. Personally, I'm more at home with the humorous point and click adventures, and this game felt like it couldn't decide between that and between the Indiana Jones 'feel'. Having the main character and Sophia take themselves more seriously most of the time than, say, Guybrush Threepwood, Manny from Grim Fandango or those three brains from Day of the Tentacle, is something I didn't particularly enjoy in the "talkie" version I played, because the lines coupled with the deadpan voice acting just didn't work for me, especially on Indy's part.

The plot itself works because it is more or less what you would expect from an Indiana Jones plot, but it's predictable and slow-paced due to both the nature of this being a puzzle game and puzzles being so heavy on backtracking and, especially in the latter half, on mazes.

One thing I did really like though is that you have multiple approaches you can take in this game. For example, in one part, you can manage to get through it by doing a dialogue 'puzzle' or, if you don't want to or fail that puzzle, you can do an object puzzle instead, both of which get the job done equally.

There is also a point where you can decide to bring Sophia with you for the rest of the game or go through it on your own. There are multiple path names for this choice you make. Bringing her along is the Team path, which has different puzzles and solutions, optional and non-optional dialogue that can provide somewhat entertaining banter from time to time and a "hint system" that allows you to ask her what the next course of action should be. I found this to be useless though, since she only states the obvious. Going solo is called the "Wits" path and while I didn't take it, it comes with many differences, such as different puzzles and different characters to meet as a result. There is also a "Fists Path" according to the game's wiki, but I personally did not figure out how to choose that option. Apparently, this leads to fewer puzzles and more action / fighting scenes.

Finally, this game has multiple good and bad endings, which I think is very nice. Overall though, due to the pacing, the one-dimensional characters and the flat voice acting for Indiana Jones in particular, I can't say I really enjoyed my time with this games story for most of its duration.

GAMEPLAY | 9/20

LucasArts point and click games almost all have the same "Verb Interface" that you use to 'Pick Up, 'Use' or 'Open' items, among several other options. You explore your surroundings to pick up items, to use them on other interactable items and to talk to people. There are puzzles in this game that need to be solved by using the items you find or by picking the right options in dialogue.

Games like this are hit and miss in terms of the puzzles that you need to solve. They don't shy away from having solutions be contrived from time to time, or for input to be needlessly specific at times. For example, at one point, you need to point a surveyor's instrument on a right and left side "horn". That horn has several points you can line the instrument up to. You'd think that the solution would trigger whether you place the line on the left, the right, the middle, the middle-left or middle-right of this relatively wide object. But no, you need to place it at the corner of it to trigger "this is the right side horn" line and solution instead of the "this is dirt" line. It's things like this that I will always find annoying about classic graphic adventures, but it's something I can deal with overall.

What made me resort to a guide to lead me to the finish line though was the overuse of mazes throughout the game's second half. The cave you explore in Crete is a labyrinth and Atlantis has multiple literal and non-literal labyrinth-like parts as well. Each include a bunch of puzzles that had me go mad at one point because it's constantly walking slowly from one point to another, picking up tons of items and having tons of options as to where to put them, and having to constantly backtrack back and forth. It was not fun at all and had me yawn uncontrollably, especially in Atlantis, which was supposed to be this mystical place that the game was leading up to.

There are also a few sections where you need to control things, like a hot air balloon or a submarine. Imagine Mass Effect's Mako controls but 90.000 times worse, especially on the submarine. Instead of having these epic Indiana Jones-like set pieces, all I had was fights with controls, which often just killed the mood for me.

I can't say this was a fun graphic adventure to play from a gameplay perspective (the basic gameplay loop of puzzle-solving itself is generally fun though), which is something I can only say about this LucasArts adventure so far. I played Secret of Monkey Island games, Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle and Loom before this.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 8/10

Voice acting exists in the talkie versions, which came out a year or so after the initial release. While the voice acting was not bad overall, I can't say I gelled with the voice acting done for Indiana Jones. For most side characters, voice acting certainly was a plus versus no voice acting at all.

The soundtrack consists of the main Indiana Jones theme of course, plus an assortment of tracks that fit the locations this game plays in or the events that occur rather well. I wouldn't say it's fantastic, just a good adventure game soundtrack.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10

The game has an art style befitting Indiana Jones, but what I liked the most about this game in terms of its graphical presentation is the animations. Sophia letting her hair down, Kerner brushing through his, the struggle between Kerner and Indiana Jones at the start of the game, it looks pretty clean and adds a lot of charm.

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10

This game could have used more disgusting caves, but overall, this certainly has Indiana Jones written all over it, from the graphics to the storyline. If you're a big Indiana Jones fan, you should definitely play this.

CONTENT | 5/10

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is 10 hours long, which is quite long for a LucasArts adventure game. Unfortunately, I found the second half dragged way too much, so I can't say I found all 10 hours to be a lot of fun.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10

I have a hard time deciding how to rate this. On the one hand, I enjoy the fact that there are three routes with their own, distinct puzzles. On the other, second half of the game, at least in the Team path, is just chock full of mazes that didn't accomplish anything but bring the yawns out of me. I didn't find it fun and actually quite bad to have the same style of levels multiple times in a row like that.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10

This is a graphic adventure in the same style as the others that LucasArts developed before it. The only innovation I've noticed here is 1) the control schemes for the hot air balloon and the submarine, which was terrible and 2) the addition of multiple paths and endings, which was a really nice addition.

REPLAYABILITY | 5/5

There are three routes to take and multiple endings, so this game has quite a bit of replayability for its time. These routes also come with their own unique puzzles of varying degrees of difficulty, which is very commendable, even if I personally didn't enjoy the game enough to care about replaying it.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

Works well at all times. The beginning of the game had a weird issue for me though. You are supposed to find a small statue. While checking out the controls, I clicked both the left and right mouse button at the same time, which led to the whole introduction to be skipped. Indy had found the statue on his own and the game jumped to the scene where he gives it to "Mr. Smith". Weird.

OVERALL | 65/100

While the review has been more negative than I would have thought before starting this, I have to praise the game for the amount of freedom it offers the player in choosing which paths to take, and the difference that makes. The general gameplay loop of brainteasing puzzles is also enjoyable on some level still, but personally I didn't enjoy the level design in the second half and the tone of the game quite as much as I did previous LucasArts graphic adventures.

(This is the 71st game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

(This is the 99th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)

I'm constantly hearing great things about Earthbound or "Mother 2", a 1994 JRPG developed by Ape Inc. and HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo. Admittedly, when hearing of the game's Japanese and Western titles, I had a totally different type of JRPG in mind. One with a much more sad tone than I was met with.

It doesn't take long for Earthbound to show you what kind of game it is, and it won't take you long to figure out whether you like said tone or not. As a child, I would have absolutely adored it. As an adult? I absolutely adore it. The humor hits a lot but it misses quite often as well, at least for me. Depending on how that balances out for you, you might be more or less inclined to play on Earthbound once you start.

However, there are other reasons to continue or stop playing this game, which I want to go over in my review of this game.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 7/10

You're playing the character that you can give your own name, but is canonically called "Ness". It takes place after the events of the first Mother game, which I haven't played, but I didn't ever get the impression that you need to play that. (That one got first localized in 2015 under the name "Earthbound Beginnings")

The game is set in the fictional country "Eagleland", which is a parody of the USA. The word "parody" should already give you an idea about the tone of this game. This is not a medieval / fantasy JRPG. The game's setting is themed around a parody of Western culture, which is why you can enter burger and pizza joints, go to ATM machines to withdraw cash, rest in hotels, heal in hospitals, are able to go to police stations and much more. There is a humorous tone to nearly everything in Earthbound, and it's what drives the game's charm.

The story has you investigate a meteorite crash in your home town. You figure out that an evil creature has engulfed the world with his evil nature and turned lots of creatures hostile. A bee from the future tells Ness that he is prophecized to save the world and that he has to collect melodies in a Sound Stone to put a stop to the evil.

On your journey forward, you visit several other towns, forests, a desert, swamp and more. I spent 12 hours with this game, so I didn't see everything, but expect quirky characters, odd obstacles to overcome and eccentric bosses to fight.

Characters that have stuck with me are apple and orange kid (one who is deemed smart and capable, and who isn't, among which you can choose to help one), a man who interrupts your gameplay to take a photo of you (which I hope is then shown at the end of the game), a boss who wants to turn everything blue and created a cult over it and several more. Lots of NPCs have funny one-liners you can read through alongside the usual lore dump they are used for in RPGs.

I've read up on how the story ends, and it seems to take things into a very interesting direction. So if you see it through, I believe you will be satisfied with it. For me, the reason why I didn't stick with it can be read through just below.

GAMEPLAY | 11/20

Earthbound does a lot of cool things that are pretty unique for its time and have stuck with the genre until today. Most of these things are related to the game's setting and quirkiness, but I found some interesting things to highlight in its gameplay as well.

Just recently, it was announced that Like a Dragon 8 would introduce a feature that lets you win battles automatically, if enemies are a lot weaker than you are. I don't know if Earthbound was the first game to do it, but that feature is in here.

Additionally, the game does not use an overworld. You seamlessly move from town to town in this game world. For random encounters, you can see enemies placed on the map, which I've last seen in 1992's Romancing SaGa. When these enemies run towards you, additional enemies can run up to you before the encounter starts.

The game does cool things with its times as well. Buying salt packets or ketchup and eating food with these items in your inventory leads to boosts to the food items, like additional health recovery. Not all "enhancers" work well with all foods, which impacts the boost you get.

Finally, each time you win in battle, you don't just get money from it, but rather a money deposit from your father to your bank account. Since money on your person is halfed whenever you die, you can choose to keep money on your account until you want it to buy stuff. I can't say that I think this is a good unique feature, but it is certainly unique.

So Earthbound does a lot of interesting things and many of these are pretty neat ideas. In its basic form though, the game employs similar gameplay mechanics to other RPGs of its time. The game uses a turn-based battle system in which battle order is chosen randomly each turn. This means you can use a healing item, but die if the enemy is chosen to attack first. That part in particular was really frustrating to me during my playthrough. With the help of an emulator, you can easily rewind and get different outcomes, but I've noticed just how RNG dependent the gameplay is during tough fights.

For example, say you are on low health. You can choose to heal, but if the enemy does an attack, you will lose all or most of that health again anyway. Or you can use a powerful PSI attack, but if the enemy activates a PSI shield right before that, you just waste a turn and PP points (yes, PP points). If you attack and the enemy attacks, you may die, if you haven't healed. Healing items and PP points are limited, so you can easily run out before killing a tough enemy. Or, alternatively, the enemy uses buffs or PSI shields while you are attacking, which lets you kill them before they get a chance to get enough hits in.

I got the impression that RNG dependency is too high on the one hand and/or grinding requirements are on a level that I'm not interested in engaging with.

Inventory management is also not the best and much more tedious than it needs to be. You can carry few items until you get additional party members, at which point you can carry twice as much and the issue is not nearly as bad. But for the first 10 hours or so, with all the key items you have, I found myself hard-pressed to be able to carry more than one food item, which made battles unnecessarily harder.

I've seen some people say that the game gets much easier as you go, so sticking with it may be rewarding in that sense. To me, the games 30+ hour runtime meant that I wasn't really too motivated to grind through the gameplay for that much longer.

Outside of combat, progression is also achieved by doing some light puzzles here and there or finding proper items to progress, such as figuring out a way to get past pencils that block your way forward. How could that be done?

Overall, your tolerance for the combat will decide how far you will take it with this game, and as is evident by this game's cult following to this day, the journey has been worth it to many.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10

When I played a few hours, I couldn't believe how recognizable and nostalgic the music sounds in this game. I have never played the game before, and only after a couple hours did I realize that I actually have heard one track in this game in particular many, many times over the years without knowing that it's from Earthbound. "Sanctuary Guardian" or the What Meme is what I'm referring to, and if you give it a listen, I can guarantee that anyone spending more time online than the average person will have heard of it (listen to at least 20-25 seconds in).

This track's weird, quirky, confusing and oddball vibes are exactly what the whole game sounds like though, and not only does it make the game's sound immediately recognizable no matter how many years later you think back on it, but I also found it to add to the wackiness of the game's moment to moment gameplay, and in a positive way for sure.

Sound design overall is very good in this game, with unique sounds at a time where a lot of games use very similar sounds for most actions, so overall, I had a pleasant time listening to the game.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 10/10

The grounded, albeit parodied, real life setting is always very pleasant to me. Yes, there are humans and animals in control of evil who come after you like zombies, but seeing the setting and the design of the various towns be grounded like this is getting more and more rare these days where fantasy and sci-fi is included in nearly every single AAA game, so I appreciate the visual treat Earthbound ended up being in that regard.

In general, the look of the game is very distinct. You control kids who look like kids, in a world filled with your average modern-day adults (with quirky personalities), and run around from burger joint to flea market on your quest to save humanity. It's a pretty funny combination and works really well. So the art design I find to really be fantastic in this. Lots of stuff feels like it was drawn or written by children and then added into the game, so they really embraced this vibe and went for it.

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10

Few games have the same vibe as Earthbound. I've read that Undertale is one inspired by Earthbound. Even there, I can't say I ever got the same vibe from it, and I don't think that was intended either. The closest modern games to me that have this vibe are the South Park RPGs, and according to the South Park creators Earthbound apparently was a game they took inspriation from for those ones too. Considering the South Park RPGs, especially the first one, are some of my favorite games ever, you could see how I dug Earthbound so much, though I'd say there is one big difference between those two in terms of the vulgarity of course.

I've described it a few times in this review already, but quirky, whacky and weird will be common adjectives that will be used to describe the game. For example, early on, a bee of all things comes to you to tell you that you are to save this world and that it will follow you until you finish your journey. Minutes later, you get to your neighbor's house and the bee unceremoniously is swatted down and dies. Can't say I've played a big budget game during this time where things like that ever happened. It's unexpected, it's funny and even today, I was caught off guard by it.

CONTENT | 8/10

The game takes roughly 30 hours to beat if you mainly focus on the main path. There is plenty of distractions on top of that, and lots of those hours are spent talking to people and finding your way forward that way. There are lots of items to find, buy and get to use on key things, lots of unique characters to meet and many different enemy types to fight. It being an RPG however, it also means that many of those hours will be spent in combat, which, as described above, has not aged very well.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10

The unique world map (no overworld) is a nice change from other RPGs for its time. Seeing enemies and being able to dodge random encounters at times is a good approach to them in my opinion.

In terms of the mission design, for the most part, it's your typical RPG affair. You go from town to town, dungeon to dungeon and beat boss after boss as you get stronger and stronger. While the dungeons I've seen all looked pretty much the same, towns are where a lot of work has gone in. Sure, you get the same main areas in all of them, but in layout and non-key buildings (hospital, burger joint, hotel..), there is enough variety there to give towns a distinct feeling.

In terms of the dungeons, as mentioned, they have all looked the same in the first third of the game. You enter caves and either come out the other end in a mountaineous arae or something similar, or you find yourself in the bigger part of the cave and have to move upwards to find the boss. Gets the job done, but not much creativity here.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10

The tone and setting of this game are both very unique components of it, and there are plenty of QoL improvements the game brings to the fold. Unfortunately, the combat system is too RNG-dependent for me to really say that all changes from your typical RPG work well here, and overall, Earthbound still is a 90s RPG in its core, and uses a similar formula for the most part.

REPLAYABILITY | 2/5

Early on, there is a choice to go with one of two kinds of kids to help them. Maybe there are more of those later on, but other than that, the game is not gonna offer you branching paths in key areas.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

Works well at all times.

OVERALL | 79/100

Earthbound is among those dozen or so games from the 99 games I've played as part of this challenge so far that I can recommend everyone to at least check out. There is a reason it remains this popular, and it's one of the most unique games in terms of atmosphere that you will be able to play from the early 90s. The SNES is a console that keeps (kept) on giving and Earthbound is one of its many highlights, though the combat might be unendurable for some at this point in time.