I first became aware of the depth the Tokimeki Memorial games are known for through the Tim Rogers video essay on the first game in the franchise. However, since my Japanese knowledge is nothing to write home about, I’m only capable of playing the DS releases of the Girl’s Side spinoffs, since at the time of writing those are the only ones with English patches available (barring a translation of the SNES port of the original, ie the worst version). That’s just fine; I like men and have been known to admire many 2D ones in my time.

But you know what? Even going into the experience expecting something much closer to an RPG than a VN, I was ill-prepared for the socially anxious labyrinth of a videogame that is Tokimeki Memorial: Girl’s Side Plus. It has this solid foundation of your daily actions building up or ticking down various stats based on RNG as well as more long-term decisions like where you work part-time or what club you join at school. The real meat of the game lies in what’s laid on top of these, though.

In addition to actually romancing the anime boys themselves, you can also befriend them to varying degrees in addition to 4 girls that you can hang out with at any time without prior planning (and apparently if you get close enough you can get a quasi-lesbian ending). You can also get a random chance of taking any of these characters to a cafe after school to have a casual conversation with them (that I think also helps out their feelings for you?) or to walk home with you (which offers no information about them but definitely makes them like you more), before which you can call out to them by one of 10 nickname and honorific combinations. Also if you’re close but not close enough with a guy and have befriended a girl well enough she might start to go after him herself and you have to either start being mean to her and chase after the guy desperately or give up on that guy ever dating you again.

There’s also an entire metagame where you can go out to buy clothes on days where you could otherwise be calling someone or going on a date, and you can improve your dates themselves by wearing outfits that are in fashion or give off a certain vibe that each of the boys will react differently to, but it has to be suitable for the time of year or else they’ll give you a funny look.

You probably get the idea by now: the game is just chock full of interlocking systems like these, it’s mind-blowing. Even though you’re only presented with a small number of options at any given time, the depth in considering what your optimal move is remains enthralling for the entire run of the game.

Its design is brilliantly mathy and some SMT-level nonsense clearly went into its balance. In the final month of the game I got totally checkmated where my best friend suddenly became a rival with my for Sakuya Morimura, my favorite of the crowd. I was on track to get at the end if I could avoid offending any of the other boys too badly. The event where she was scripted to take him from me was set for a date too close to any of my saves for me to be able to take him on enough dates to prevent it by making him like me enough. My avatar narrated to herself: “Well, Arisawa-san finally told Morimura-kun about her feelings.” I rolled back my save to play the final 2 months of the game repeatedly, the protagonist always gratingly happy for her dear friend Shiho Arisawa.

Ultimately, she got into a first-rate university and graduated without being too close to anyone romantically OR platonically. Story of my fuckin’ life! Jorge Luis Borges could never.

Shadow Hearts is a game that is honestly trying its best to impress.

It's got the oppressive horror vibes here and there. It's got some real banging music. It's got some wonderful and creative gameplay systems with the whole judgement wheel mechanic even if it doesn't change a shit load over the course of the game.

The story however is just a complete and total letdown. It really ends up being a fairly bog standard and generic story with some awful jokes, gross sterotypes and one or two interesting character arcs with a bunch of others that kinda end up half baked.

All of the elements to make something genuinely amazing is all there but nothing brings these elements together to bring this game to above anything other than just fine.

This is a story that wants to talk about the consequences of Japanese Imperialism/Colonialism but doesn't actually want to do anything meaningful with that as a premise. Instead boringly both sidesing the issue with the more sympathetic side made into literal anime caricatures in order to show how evil they are too. It's dumb and extremely fucking lame.

I really honestly believe this game absolutely should've stopped after the Asia section finished. Everything in Europe just feels like wasted time and potential.

It's a little saddening because there's a lot of potential here but it honestly has me more stoked for how they improved on things in Covenant and to see where that game takes some of the good ideas this game had.

I made a video on this if ya want to see more detailed thoughts. I don't think this game is horrible but it's so genuinely disappointing that it hurts more almost at what the first in this series could've been.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z0nL7ZO-z4

I love the Columns III guy. I think about Columns III guy all the time. Columns III guy's bizarre pose on a pile of jewels astounds me. Columns III guy's legs are comically long in relation to Columns III guy's torso, like a bizarro inversion of Tim Conway's Dorf character. Is it because Columns III guy's shirt is too big or of a weird cut? Are Columns III guy's pants too big? Is Columns III guy just relaxed and slouched atop his jewelled throne? On the cover, on the cart, on the manual, in the advertising materials, Columns III guy shrugs with a lackadaisical attitude which betrays the apparent mastery over Columns III that Columns III guy has, the jewels encircling him like the Chaos Emeralds in the hands of Dr. Eggman. Columns III guy does not need to sneer at us to convey his power, however, as his smile, wristwatch, and trainers let us know he is above traditional signifiers of strength. This is not to suggest Columns III guy lacks his own struggles. Columns III guy collaborates with his four doppelgangers in vague cooperation in a print ad for Columns III demonstrating Columns III's five-player multiplayer. Columns III guy labours therein while still being so sure of his victory that one Columns III guy recreates the cover Columns III guy's pose. Were his quintupled presence not enough to show the magnitude of Columns III guy's skill and importance, a sixth Columns III guy appears in the corner of the advertisement on the cover for Columns III, blown up to comical proportions so even this small representation can impart the critical role Columns III guy plays. Yet as necessary as Columns III guy is to the enjoyment of Columns III, he does not appear in any form in the game itself. His physical presence is not necessary, as Columns III guy has no doubt infiltrated the mind of the player already, leaving them knowing on a subconscious level that the game's AI is not some artificial faceless construct, it is Columns III guy. And despite the omnipresence of Columns III guy, we know nothing of Columns III guy. The only lead for an identity for Columns III guy is a single Reddit comment by a liar trying to besmirch the good name of Columns III guy. Columns III guy, my beloved, who are you, who were you? Are you there Columns III guy? It's me, Detchibe.

The game's okay.

Shin Megami Tensei NINE is a psychological horror game about a guy who gets attacked by a giant angry scrotum at a Taylor Swift concert, and then spends several months facing horrific hallucinations from the resulting PTSD. There are no rules in this game. In the first five minutes you shatter the boundaries of space and time when you try to leave this flower shop only to realise that you're trapped as this lady and her lesbian furry lover crawl on two planes of existence at once as she seemingly goes down the wall and towards the screen at the same time. The only way out is through this table down here and then you're back on the street where this guy yells at you, as if you just did all that shit on purpose. Sometimes when you walk down the street you literally walk down into it. I mean this looks like some kind of surrealist painting. Trying to imagine the perspective on this destroys the human mind so just don't think about it too much. Almost every building is empty and plays mildly disturbing music, except for this one where Jack Frost says welcome and promptly shows you a series of menus with no text. The whole game feels like you aren't welcome in its presence. It almost feels like the software is sentient and it's watching, trying to figure out why you're playing a Japanese Xbox game. I truly do believe that if demons can manifest themselves in lines of code, there's almost certainly one hiding in here somewhere. Oh yeah, and the battle system you can't really do anything it's like a movie. You can smack that ballsack all you want, but it's just not gonna go away. Overall, I have to say it's about as good as Persona 5 so check it out when you get the chance. See ya

(5-year-old's review, typed by her dad)

You get to go on a slide and at the end you gotta beat Bowser, because you get to MOVE and MOVE if there's turns, and also there's a slide in the snowy place!

[Dad's note: She would use the Wii U gamepad to go do the secret slide in Peach's Castle over and over again, every day for the entire summer of 2020]