It has a character named Kino...

Future Connected takes place one year after the events of Xenoblade Chronicles and takes Shulk and Melia to an unexplored region of the Bionis, where they stumble upon two stowaways who help them against the seemingly untouchable Fog King terrorizing the local people. Yes, this premise is pretty basic, but it's more of an expansion to round off Melia's character arc than an actual story expansion.

The highlight and key aspect of Future Connected is the exploration of Bionis' Shoulder, a previously unreleased area that has been planned ever since the original release of Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii, but never made the cut. Now it has been repurposed as the central setpiece of the epilogue and I'm quite glad for this decision, as it's easily one of my favorite areas in the game now and I had a lot of fun exploring it. There are many great views and it looks particularly cool during thunderstorms (even better when there's a cutscene playing). Fairly early on you're introduced to the Ponspectors, a group of archaeologist Nopon, who have lost their boss and now are scattered all across the Shoulder, where you can pick them up (most of the times you need to do a short quest beforehand) and add them to your own personal Nopon army. This literal army of furball companions not only deals passive damage during combat, but also replaces the chain attacks with some QTE combos, which can be upgraded by adding more Ponspectors to your squad. They're also masters of taking a toll on the framerate, as things can get seriously laggy when there's a dozen Nopon hammering away on a bunch of enemies during a thunderstorm while several other flashy animations are playing. Despite this, I thought the Ponspectors were a fun change of pace in terms of combat usage, but there was something else I disliked instead in terms of combat, and that's the removal of vision attacks. This sounds insane at first, considering vision attacks only make your life harder, but the thing is that they're still in the game, you're just not informed when the enemy will hit you with them anymore. Always a pleasure to see a boss hit you with "Attack VIII" without warning just to survive with a mere sliver of health, so the existence of the Shield and Impulse Monado Art hardly justify themselves in Future Connected, as they are practically useless - you're better off using the Armor Art instead.

I don't think the story present here is that bad, just considerably weaker than the main narrative, which is to be expected from a free expansion that released 10 years after the source material. For me the main issues are the underwhelming villains (the fate of one major villain here is literally revealed in a sidequest) and the lack of any real stakes here, so the true highlight are the character interactions instead. The heart-to-heart mechanic from the main game has been rebranded to "quiet moments" and is now available anytime after certain points in the story have been passed, as long as the time is right and the party members you need for the support are in your current party setup. They're also fully voiced and do not require any previous affinity building between characters, which is something that would be very cool to see in future Xenoblade games (or atleast Xenoblade 3, considering 2 released before Future Connected), as voice acting alone in these moments can make them a lot more impactful and memorable already. While Kino's and Nene's supports help characterize Riki further, Melia's are particularly interesting as she as a person had to undergo significant changes after the events of the main storyline. Shulk takes the backseat here and is more of a mentor for the Nopon kids, which is sweet in its own way.

To wrap it up, it's a nice little bonus campaign after the grand scope of Xenoblade's main story and I'd recommend it to anyone who just wants more of the same. As far as I know, Future Connected is ultimately skippable, but there's no harm in giving it a try atleast - else you're missing out on some fantastic tracks like the Bionis Shoulder battle theme or the Fogbeasts encounter theme.

Mars After Midnight is a game I have been anticipating to play for around two years now, more specifically after completing another Lucas Pope- and now one of my favorite games ever made Return of the Obra Dinn. While not the only reason, the announcement of Mars After Midnight as a Playdate exclusive of all things, was a big contributor to me buying the console and I don’t think I’m alone with that, as their tweets about the game are noticeably more popular and comments about it riddle the sections of tweets that don’t even mention it.
After the announcement of the release date, around two weeks ago, even after playing through this game, it still doesn’t feel real to finally own it after this long time, so I probably don’t have to describe how high my expectations for this game were.

Did it meet said expectations?
Yes!
Did it exceed them?
No, but that should never be a standard to hold anything on now, should it?

Mars After Midnight is another entry in Lucas Pope’s paperwork series and is (to my knowledge) the first one based around a job that has yet to exist.
You will see yourself as the owner of a Martian-help-center and work at the reception while finding out which Martian, Robot or even Human needs help. The ways of going about this are relatively simple. Some you can deduce, for some you need to use a device and for others both, just know that there are always 6 Martians that need any given kind of help.
After letting someone in, they may eat some refreshments and may leave a mess, which you may have to clean up for the next customer to dabble in said refreshments. After the session is done you get two Mars-Dollars for every right customer. These Mars-Dollars can then be used to advertise, buy food etc. for the next Martians. They can also be spend on items or new treatments, sold by a merchant that shows up every day.

Planning out your next day is always fun, with you looking at the map of your colony, with the living quarters of the six Martians you want to attend being highlighted and picking out where to advertise and which food is most popular at any given place, every day. The only issue I had with this is that it disincentivizes experimenting with new foods, as the cleaning-up process, the only one with a timer, will be different with every item of food. Furthermore the first item of food doesn’t only cover a lot of area, but becomes the easiest to clean up with your dependency on it in the early game.

I’m conflicted on the amount of Martians you have to get right, as 6 is pretty much the perfect amount, if you fail, as you will have more than enough time to deduce what you did wrong, but it does get a bit repetitive if you instantly know what to do and now have to go through a random amount of visitors to pick out the six obvious candidates. This small issue gets heightened by the fact that this game is really easy, and I only had to redo two jobs, because I forgot what reading was; so the fact that six is the perfect amount in those cases didn’t really come up. Even if you fail the punishments are relatively insignificant as you get paid more than enough, for those 2 Mars-Dollars not to matter, if you only miss a few.

As I already mentioned, there aren’t that many ways of finding out which Martian needs a given treatment, but don’t worry, there is enough variation in these ways of deduction for this to never get repetitive, over it’s relatively short runtime of ~3 hours. The gadgets especially, even with them being simple in concept, were fun to mess around with, just to see the reactions of the Martians you try them on, which is even incentivized by the reactions acting as a collectible, with new phrases being registered in the blab-o-dex, a sort of encyclopedia of the Martian language.

Now I’ve tried to stay spoiler-free up until now, but there is one small gripe I had with the game which I cannot talk about without spoiling something that happens at around 2/3rds through the game, so I will write my conclusion here while everything after may be a spoiler.
Mars After Midnight is probably not worth you buying a Playdate, solely to play it, for, even with it being a quality, although simple game. If you are on the fence of buying one anyways, with this game just being a big contributor to why, then there probably is no better time than now, as they have now ended the preorder structure, with me waiting for around a year for mine to arrive in September and there currently being a sale on their online storefront going on; some of my recommendations of other games on Playdate to keep an eye on are Resonant Tale and Sparrow Solitaire

The spoiler(-y) section will begin here.

As I already mentioned something happens in Mars After Midnight at around the 2-hour mark, being that you will leave your colony and go to the people’s colony, which primarily serves as a way for there to be more visual variety. My problem with this comes from the brevity of time you spend there, as the previous colony had 78 Martians to provide help for, while this one has only 24, which also means it is way smaller, which then means even less variety in the food items to use and such. I also found the ways to deduce way easier in this section than some of the more difficult ones of the first colony.

Would you kindly read this review…

From the start this game pulls you in and thrusts you into an underwater city that is amazing to view. You go through this world, listening to audio logs to help build the setting and story.

The gameplay features several different weapons and abilities that provide multiple unique play styles you could go with. Constantly changing your weapons based on the situation.

You become invested in the story of Rapture, slowly unraveling its mystery until you reach the big reveal. The pay off for listening to all those the audio logs, and now you have some very important context for everything.

Reaching the end the final boss is not the best, but it doesn’t falter the game for me at all, because I felt deservedly powerful and the payoff in the end was great. I loved the good ending I got and felt very rewarded for playing the game in its entirety. Which is what I love to feel after playing a game. It starts strong, and finishes strong.

The best AC game in my opinion and easily the best pirate game out there, especially with how much of a disappointment Skull & Bones was at launch. The gameplay and story are both so amazing, while Edward is such an interesting and complex character who goes through so much growth.

The combat and the ship battles are so much fun, it is so easy to get lost in the game just sailing the Caribbean listening to sea shanties and boarding ships you come across.

Graphically the game is so beautiful and the setting and time period are of course great picks. The story is also perfect to me, even with the modern day story really taking a back seat after the death of Desmond. Seeing Black Beard and other pirates is so cool. The game is just such a blast to play and I could not recommend it enough.

I loved seeing the combination of Ezio's and Altair's stories. Showing their later years was so much fun to watch unfold and seeing the two master Assassin's stories end was very rewarding.

I enjoyed the new setting of Constantinople during the Ottoman Civil War was great and it was such a fun city to explore. This game was the perfect end to the Ezio trilogy and the perfect end to Altair's story.

The gameplay takes a step up with some new unique aspects to combat and to be honest, I really enjoyed the Den Defense missions. Just like AC II, this game does a lot right and pulls off what it sets out to do. The modern day story starts to really pick it up too, setting the stakes very high and showing the consequences of using the Animus so much.

AC Brotherhood carries over a lot of good from AC II, and it starts off very strong. The modern day story taking place based in Monteriggioni was very cool, and the ending was very interesting for Ezio and modern day.

The Ezio story is also very good and going against the Borgia family was an interesting aspect to the story. Combat continues to be fun and interesting, and Rome as the setting was very cool to see and a lot of fun. Although it did get a bit tiring at times as many parts of Rome didn't feel super fleshed out. For me personally, it just didn't do enough to join AC II in the 5 star tier. While it did do a good job of separating itself as its own and as an amazing game.

This game took everything good about the first game and improved it, while taking everything bad about the first game and fixed it. It is so easy to see where you are in the sequences and what you need to do next, the maps are easy to read. Combat is fun and engaging, you can upgrade a lot more, the setting is amazing with it being Renaissance Italy. I could go on and on about all the things this game gets right.

I will stick to the best parts though, and that is by far Ezio and his story. He is such an engaging and charming protagonist you grow to love him very quickly, and all side content really helps to flesh out his character. He always has fun or meaningful interactions with the other characters, and the moments with his mother and sister are always very nice. Following his story of revenge, progressively getting more matured and humbled along the way is great to see. It has a great ending and it is so fun watching him become a master assassin. Also his friendship with Leonardo da Vinci is great.

Modern day story also starts off strong and finishes strong, even though the parts in the middle don't feel like anything too special. It's never too much. Although the dream sequence in modern day was very cool.

All in all it is a very strong game with a beautiful setting and very fun gameplay to accompany an amazing story.

This game is the perfect start to the AC series and the Holy Land during the Third Crusade was a perfect setting. All of the maps and cities are very cool to explore and I enjoyed doing the side content to get all of the achievements and 100% the game.

The story is it's strongest part though, Altair is an interesting character who has to earn back his rank after making a costly mistake and having a set list of targets added to the fun of being an assassin. The ending twist was a very good one that really introduces you to the power in this world. And in hindsight I enjoyed the modern day story a lot, mainly in context of all the Desmond story over several games that made the first five games feel very connected.