Reviews of other games: The deckbuilder combat is certainly enthralling, but I'm not sure if it synergizes with the roguelike structure or if it's just a cheap and trendy cash-in, similar to yesteryear's Soulslikes...

Reviews of P3R: When I was fourteen years old I would lay in bed with my eyes open and ask for God to kill me. My brother left behind a beat-up PS2 after he went off to college where he would later die of an OD

Halfway between a Shinobi game and a traditional beat-'em-up, The Ninja Saviors pushes you to master its wonderfully diverse roster's full movesets in a way that strongly emphasizes positioning and crowd control. Beautiful-looking remake, too.

Special Version's one-bullet shield and easy-mode first loop turn Batsugun into an excellent introduction to bullet hells as a whole, without compromising its identity as a blood-pumping Toaplan shooter. I love the bomb animation in this one.

Excels in the fan service, pixel art, and chiptunes departments, but its beat-'em-up combat feels truncated by unlockable moves, and in general the game slows to a crawl due to an over-dependence on RPG-style grinding. Probably more tolerable in co-op/for fans.

The story's whatever (and it has a painful "early-2000s" localization), but the character-driven episodes, toyetic low-budget art style, endearing writing, 30-hour campaign, and command-based active-battle system make it one of the best JRPGs of its generation.

A Showa coming-of-age adventure on a similar wavelength as BokuNatsu, its magical-realist storytelling ambitions keep grinding to a halt to make space for a pointless and annoying card-game feature. Otherwise pretty neat, though. Lovely prerendered environments.

Eversion's "secretly spooky" premise is actually made quite obvious from the start. As a puzzle-platformer only the bonus stage is interesting, but I have to give it points for its convincing bargain-bin graphics and creepypasta influence.

As a Simpsons game it's visually quite faithful and good-looking, even if it rarely nails the humor of the show. As a beat-'em-up it's dumb shallow fun that gets a lot better in co-op. Marge fighting with a vacuum cleaner is pretty inspired.

A gorgeous retro beat-'em-up with lots of color and fanservice, six-player co-op is chaotic fun, but unbalanced move pools and tacked-on RPG systems sour its replayability. It's no SoR4. A lot of character moves feel superfluous or overly-situational.

It's very funny that what is maybe the most mechanically-refined, forward-thinking, white-knuckle thrill-ride "proto-character action" beat-'em-up of all time has only been ported once: to an unwieldy, Capcom logo-shaped, limited-run arcade pad.