Absolutely fantastic game held back a bit by its age. Going into 4 as my first MH game I loved every bit of it, combat is really fun and rewarding, the progression system is super satisfying making new armor after every kill and all the extra stuff you can do is a treat. I got through most of the main story before playing MHR, and found that going back to it afterwards was a bit difficult. It’s still a great game, but compared to the most recent iteration of the formula it feels like it does everything to make the moment to moment speed to clunky. Why can’t I walk and heal, why do most monsters stun me for like a minute without any chance to dodge out of the way, why can’t you get honey from the merchant until the very end. Every animation takes so long, even sheathing your weapon just to finally heal up or run away gives enough time for the monster to stun you and whittle you down. Another thing that really hurts the movement is if I’m so damn slow all the time why do they make it so that I have to run around a massive map just to find the damn guy and if I don’t throw a specific item at it I’ll have to do it all again when it runs away after 10 hits. Aside from that I think a standout are the locations and characters, the fact that your shops and things are all part of a group that you travel with everywhere is really damn cool and I haven’t seen it anywhere prior. The sheer mountain of content is a blessing and a curse, there’s so much to do if you want to do it, but it leaves me feeling a bit unsatisfied with a clean cut end point. Once the big ending cinematic played I decided that’s enough for now and counts as a finish.

Starting off with the positives, I really enjoyed the world even though the only thing you can interact with are people. The people themselves are very charming and fun to talk to. The card collecting is very enjoyable and the fact that you do most of it by exporting the whole town is a joy. The story although very bizarre kept me guessing a little bit and encapsulated how weird kids can be. Now for the bad, this game kind of punishes you for wanting to see it all. Backtracking is very tedious and some areas have no reason to take as long as they do to walk through. Later on when you need to play the card game more and more it really starts to wear down on you, it’s mostly chance until you get the better cards. Finally if you want to 100% complete the game please just turn it off and go do something better with your life. I’ve never had a game say they hope I have fun with the epilogue before, and I can see why. Other than some unique dialogue you can squeeze out after lots of effort of running back and forth and talking to people in very arbitrary orders, you also have to play the card game and win every time in order to hear it from the kids. Every single time. And don’t get me started on getting that final card, it’s almost as if the game didn’t want me to beat it. Making the main episode finish by collecting all the cards is a cruel sick joke, especially since the way to get the pieces to complete the more rare cards is the worst rng I have ever seen along with very unfair card game AI. It took about 4 hours to beat the main game and honestly 4 more hours of endless grinding of the EXACT SAME card fight over and over and over and over just to finally get enough. I will never get that time back, and it doesn’t even give you any reward for 100%.

A delightful game with constant highs and very occasional rough lows. This game sheds light on many aspects of mid 2000s gaming that I miss; Developers weren't afraid of doing something goofy or acrade-y feeling in an otherwise serious game. You can have survival horror where every time you run out of ammo your life flashes before your eyes, while also having a wacky shooting gallery where you can win little figurines of the cast. It also embraces arguably one of the worst trends of the time: punishing quicktime events. Especially if you immediately die if you miss it and have to do a whole 5 minute long section again and again. Feels a lot like playing a classic 90s action movie, camp and all. Has some really stellar set pieces too. Time to go play bingo

Really delightful 2D Zelda, probably my favorite of the handheld games. I’m a big fan of Zelda 1 and I’d say this is the best successor that captures the same feel of exploration and dungeon crawling without over complicating anything. There are some frustrating parts where it’s very open ended where the game needs you to go and will have you running around the whole map to figure it out unless you use a guide. When you do know where to go it’s utter bliss, many unique characters and areas and dungeons with a good amount of difficulty. There was only a couple bosses I needed a guide for, because other wise you just kind of have to try every item until something works and that can be super frustrating. Another very frustrating aspect is the dark-souls like walk back to a boss/mini boss when you die to them started to drive me crazy. I tried to have as pure of a play though as I could without using save states, but a couple times caved because it was just too much time wasted. Overall a lovely time and can’t wait to play Ages.

Gaming junk food. Really have to turn your brain off and play with friends to have fun. On regular difficulty it’s so easy you don’t have to think about it, then on the hardest base difficulty it just takes 5 minutes to kill 6 guys then when you go into a dungeon you’ll die in seconds while trying to kill 5 guys in 6 minutes. The UI is tacky and the art style loses so much of the nuance that all the other entries have, even the crusty ass Diablo 1 has a better atmosphere. Would’ve keep chipping away if 4 hadn’t come out.

A game that animates full cutscenes for what’s just side missions is a sign of something special. Refreshing to play in a AAA open world game where every interaction you have doesn’t feel like a reskinned version of the previous ones. Even if it is the same kind of mission/activity they justify it with a whole new line of dialogue and character interactions. Making it feel like a real lived in world. The sheer extent of the freedom you have to play how you want can also be a detriment sometimes, like it only lets you play one of two ways when it wants you to. Which is most times, but occasionally I’d be frustrated because I’d want to lasso someone but the game wanted me to kill them and there was no wiggle room.