Man, what a time to be alive, huh? Back when the original release of this came out in 2012, you wouldn't even be able to imagine Fate/Stay Night getting an official international release. Now a ton of visual novels are getting international releases with professional translations, including the newest version of FSN and the Tsukihime remake. I don't necessarily know if it wouldn't have happened if not for Mahobillions, but it's probably the best time to be a fan of the medium outside Japan.

And man, I had a great time with this VN. The stakes are definitely lower than a lot of Nasu's works that I'm familiar with; the primary conflict is a personal one rather than something that would threaten more than, say, three people. But you know, I actually kind of liked that. There were definitely some really great action scenes that utilized the VN medium in a really cool way, but the fact that it had more of a chill, slice of life vibe allowed the characters to engage in delightful sitcom hijinks.

Aoko, Soujyuuro, and Alice have wonderful chemistry with each other, and I really enjoy that the mage here feels the most equipped to exist in the modern world. I really do love Soujyuurou, too. I love how Nasu can present us with the most generic looking man and make him the weirdest fuckin' guy in the universe. Alice is also extremely good, I think she somehow ended up being my favorite of the three? She has the best comedic timing. I love her. The art's really good too, and all the characters have really good expressions. Soujyuurou probably has my favorite expressions out of all of them, though. His gormless smile, his little pout, :x... he's an adorable lad. Love him.

Of course, the supporting cast is great, too. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed a lot of the mundane cast and how actually important to the overall narrative they were, particularly in the extra chapters (like Aoko investigating Soujyuurou's shady new job...)

Though, I'll admit that the supporting cast is the part where the pacing baffled me a bit. I spent a significant portion of the game wondering why I hadn't even seen everyone on the front of the box... I forgot that this was actually supposed to be the first game in a trilogy. I found myself really wishing that there was more of Beo and Team Church, but I guess they would have been a lot more important in the next two games? Well, I hope those games come out sometime... I guess Nasu's suffering from success with how much his stuff took off. I'm sure FGO is funding the games getting translations in the first place... still, I wouldn't say no to him dropping FGO to make more Mahoyo.

Also the extra chapter is a delight, though the shift from kinetic novel to a more traditional VN experience with choices and shit threw me. It seems pretty unforgiving, too... that didn't stop me from loving it, though. Kumari was a character I really enjoyed in the scenes where she appeared in the main game, and Riddell was a delightful addition to the cast. The mystery and its rules were really fun, even if I ended up using a guide to figure out the choices I needed to make.

Outside of those things, the music is pretty good even if I wouldn't say it's Extremely memorable. Also, while I'd say the translation is flavorful and compelling to read, there are several grammatical and punctuation mistakes throughout. I don't really mind it all that much because there is SO much fuckin' text in this bad boy, but I do hope Tsukihime Remake and the FSN release get another editing pass in their releases.

Also since I bought physical I have to say I really like the artbook and the neat box. The artbook has a really fun story in the back of it, and it does not do anything to deter me from wanting even more of this cast.

Here's hoping! I know Nasu said he might make it an anime instead, but man, I don't know. The way this particular VN utilized the medium was really stylish and cool, and I think something would be lost in just watching an anime of it rather than going for the VN experience. I guess any continuation is better than none, though.

I was kind of surprised how Into this game I got, but I guess it does make sense. Adult coloring books are super popular, right? Maybe I should look into those because hot damn it was fun messing around with this game. When I was a kid and I got a coloring book, I'd go kind of crazy with whatever colors I liked instead of the colors that, well, technically made sense, and I felt like it was fun to apply the same philosophy to each screen. The fact that you get four colors for each area helps things still look kind of nice even if you decide to color the tree trunks green and the leaves yellow, you know? I ended up kind of approaching each screen as a puzzle to the point where when you get to make your own pallet, I ended up not really using it all that much because I enjoyed working with the tools I was given.

I probably ended up making things a little boring once I got the fill tool, though.... but at the same time, it made sense to me. I liked the bright, fairly uniform colors, and the only thing that ended up really frustrating me about the whole thing was that it could be kind of difficult to differentiate different objects with both controller and mouse. Sometimes I couldn't figure out how to target a trunk to color and would just color the leaves... and damn, the "draw a thing" segments were uh. Well, I'm actually pretty proud of a Dragon Quest slime I drew. But the "recreate these paintings" segments looked goofy as hell.

But I feel like that's part of the point, isn't it? I'm sure there are people who have made some fantastic works of art in this game, but I think bringing a sort of amateur-ish vibe to the game feels like it vibes with the Themes. Pizza (or whatever your favorite food is, I ended up naming them Sushi lmao) just kind of picks up the brush to be Helpful and isn't really a professional or anything. The themes here are real good, man, whether you relate more strongly to Chicory or Pizza.

I... kind of did art when I was younger, but I got discouraged because I didn't think I was any good. There were people who told me I was good, but like. They were family. Was it actually any good? I don't know. It was pretty How To Draw Manga flavored. I think someone was Real with me and that kind of discouraged me out of it, but was it Real or Mean? I guess Art is just supposed to be, you know, fun and personal expression... I feel like the art classes in this game actually did a pretty alright job of getting that across, haha.

But you do kind of want to live up to the Legacy of the artists you admire, right? Even if that might not be for the best? There isn't something as crazy as a Chosen One who colors the entire world, but man. There's good themes here, is all I'm saying. I Did Cry at the end. Both the Art Themes and the Depression Themes were Very strong.

On the more, uh, gameplay-ish side, outside of Coloring there's a lot of puzzles around trying to figure out how to traverse the environment, with the more abilities you get making it easier to get where you want to go and making it possible to find Secrets. I found it really fun! There's a lot of puzzle elements that interact with the environment in fun ways, like colored surfaces that touch the water bleeding into it once you gain the ability to start coloring in water, and clouds that you can use to traverse raining color out if you color them in. It's cute!!!

There's no combat outside of boss fights, which are Buck Wild, man. They start out Kirby endboss in terms of flavor and get wilder from there. You can say the game doesn't quite prepare you for them but they ARE basically still traversal based, more or less... the ones I found kind of frustrating ended up being the mirroring ones. Fortunately, the game isn't Mean about them and gives you generous checkpoints even if you don't mess with the difficulty options.

Anyway, I think it's a whole lot of fun! Definitely a recommend from me, whether you're Big Into Art or not. The world it presents is also really fun, with a bunch of cool ideas that it doesn't dig TOO deeply into but presents you in a cute way. Lotta good minor NPCs. My favorite location is Feast, which may be a bit of a Nightmare Area for some but was a complete delight for me, an insect lover.

"Ryukishi07 wrote such a long story just to tell you this. He must be a pretty poor writer."

mr. dragoon zero seven you are truly the best of us. i love you man. I actually cried during the Staff Message...

God this was such a wild fucking ride. We start with delightful shounen bullshit, we go to Rena Ryuugu Does Nothing Wrong, we get into ALIENS, and then we get back to the delightful shounen bullshit. And then there's the final punch to the gut in the tips! I thought it was gonna be alright, man!!!

Anyway, I really did love getting to see the different perspectives of the different characters, especially Rena. I don't know, man, I haven't gone through the same shit as her, but I definitely felt the descriptions of her anxiety and depression early on, you know? It was nice to have an actually empathetic look at a character like her once things got extremely bad, too. She was just Going Through It, man.

It's also great to watch the presentation evolve as the series progresses, too. The sound design has always been great, even before getting a fantastic composer on board for Kai, but it's nice to see the cinematic qualities being polished as well. I'm playing through vanilla with original sprites, and I'm sure mods with voice acting and less amateurish art add a lot, but it's fun to see an artist's craft evolve, you know?

(I did find it funny that last chapter Ryukishi was like "I was interested in the responses to Keiichi murdering Teppei. What if he'd decided to turn his life around?" and then he does this chapter and proves that actually lmao Teppei did deserve it, lmao)

Anyway I've been having a fantastic time with this series. I'm not really sure how I'm going to rank these chapters at the end, because this was a pretty wild swerve from Meakashi, lmao. I thought the intro description about this being a less serious chapter was ironic when the murders started, but it was actually an accurate description...

The only thing I can complain about... is Angel Mort. when will we move past the need for weird otaku bullshit....

Final Fantasy IV is a game that has been revisited and re-released a bajillion times over the years; I'm pretty sure it's the one that's gotten this treatment the most out of any Final Fantasy? Maybe VII's got it beat in terms of being an actual franchise, perhaps because uhhh TAY didn't. quite. do it for a lot of people. Maybe I'll visit that someday.

And yeah, sure, compared to future games it doesn't go quite as hard as it could. The melodrama is high, everyone's getting brainwashed all the dang time, your party is a revolving door of fakeout deaths... it's kinda silly. Like there's a particular instance in the storyline involving Edge's parents that's supposed to be fucked up and shocking but GOD the musical sting and the dialogue are so fucking funny.

But at the same time, I feel like I kind of get it, you know? It's charming as all hell. Much like FFIII before it, there's a cheeky playfulness to a lot of it that I feel has been present in pretty much all the Final Fantasies I've played. (Yes, even II, there were at least two goofy bits amidst all the grim insanity.) With perhaps one exception, every town has at least one NPC you can talk to in order to watch a goofy little dance sequence where the programmers did their damnedest to get the limited animation to do all it could. This isn't just limited to optional content, either; despite the High Drama of the main storyline, there's a bunch of out of battle story cutscenes where Palom and Porom squabble, Cid drags Edge around to make him help with the airship building, Edge pretends he's not crushing on Rydia... those kinds of things. It's really cute! Like, the way the story is conveyed through the gameplay is probably the star of the show, like the way Tellah's stats work or Cecil's battle against himself to become a paladin and so on, but I think they do a lot with a little in that regard.

I think they tried to do a lot with a little in terms of the Big Themes, as well. It maybe aims a little higher than it manages to convey, in that I feel like the Big Theme of the game as a whole is atonement and redemption. It does feel like the big themes of Cecil's arc comprise the bulk of the beginning of the game and kind of... finish with him becoming a paladin, but I gotta say, I do like that shit. I think it's pretty good, even if it feels like it goes a little fast. The way his relationship with Rydia, the child who he inadvertently orphaned, develops is pretty strong, and his return to Mysidia is good as hell. I love the way Cecil's interactions with the townspeople go in that segment! You get poisoned, you get turned into a frog, and you kind of deserve it, honestly. And Cecil is entirely aware he deserves it.

Of course, you can see it in other characters, as well, from Edward's guilt over his uselessness to Kain getting brainwashed all the time to the dang antagonist. I do feel like Brainwashing All the Way Down is a bit of a cop-out, but at the same time, it does feel like it's aiming at a metaphor. I think it ultimately ends up juggling too much to do any one thing justice as it hurdles to the end, but I kind of appreciate the ambition? I know the DS remake expands on the characterization more, so I look forward to that eventually.

The gameplay itself is kind of an interesting departure from the previous games in terms of giving you set parties with set roles rather than giving you the freedom to experiment. It's less "figure out which tools to use" and more "figure out how to win with the tools you're given." I still feel like there's a range of stuff to experiment with, though. When I played the game as a kid I got stuck at a very specific point (FUCK BAIGAN ALL MY HOMIES HATE BAIGAN) because I didn't really understand how to use the tools I was given, but now I have a better idea of how to deal with, uh, a party with one tank, one punch man, and three squishy mages, one of whom has a pretty bad MP stat because he's old. I didn't actually find myself that frustrated with Tellah on this go around because I discovered the wonders of Osmose, which was a helpful way to compensate for his shitty MP without using Ethers! Just steal it from enemies for free!

It's a little bit of a shame that the game pretty much tells you how to beat its puzzle fights right off the bat instead of giving you some time to experiment, though. There's some spicy fights before the endgame (rubicante... your hot leg distracted me into failure...) but the endgame yanks your training floaties off and tosses you right into the deep end. I was kind of tempted to ragequit on the final boss before I figured out the pro strats to beat him just because it was such a wild shift from what had been going on before and I'd already beaten Zeromus in a different game in a fight that was actually FUN even though I spent most of the fight dead on the floor because my internet died. I'm glad I pushed through, though, the ending was a lot cuter in motion than it was in screencaps.

Anyway, uh. Final thoughts. I wish they actually managed to capture the insane Beard Elemental energy of FuSoYa's Amano art because he actually looks like a weird alien and that's sick. I did like that his eyes flash red and green when he's casting, though, and his KO sprite is cute. Also I love that there's just a part where a robot bigger than a fucking castle starts stomping around and blowing shit up and it's extremely apocalyptic? I'm truly disappointed that's the one thing FFXIV didn't reference in its FFIV expac. Maybe they're saving it for later so they don't blow their whole FFIV Reference load in Endwalker...

Oh yeah and I think we should've been able to let Yang's wife join the party. She would have soloed Zeromus with her frying pan. She is the most powerful person in the game.

I haven't finished the game (even if I had been enjoying my time with it) but I do kind of want to give everyone a buyer beware in the event that anyone wants to buy the physical version. I do like my physical editions, so I did, indeed, buy physical!

I'm not entirely sure why this is the case, but it does not seem like if you buy the base physical version, you cannot actually buy the DLC on the Switch eShop. Like, if you buy the DLC it will not be compatible with the game that's actually on the cart. I think it might be because the physical edition of the game and the digital version have different publishers? I did a little recon and saw that this had happened to other people, as well, even if it was a little hard to find.

So uhhh yeah. Weird shit. I think there are physical versions that DO include the DLC, at least. But I would like to do my part to keep anyone from making my House Flipper mistake. I ended up selling the cart and buying the digital version later.

The Dark Matter trilogy is finished! I'm happy to have revisited them after all these years, even if I'm not quite as in love with them as I was back in the day. There's still some really cool ideas and vibes in these games, and Kirby 64 is probably the peak of the slower, more puzzle-y flavor of Kirby that characterized the Dark Matter trilogy in opposition to the faster, more beat-em-up flavored Sakurai games.

The Crystal Shards' central copy ability gimmick is probably the most memorable aspect of it, and it is REALLY fun to experiment with combos to see what you get. Some abilities are more practical and/or fun than others, which I feel is sort of an inevitability when you implement this many options... but it is kind of weird when you end up seeing an ability that got so much more love than anything else. It's definitely wild how crazy they went with Cutter/Rock! Like, they put in all the animal buddies from 3 as statues, even if they don't show up in person! That's sick. I love it.

There's also a weird... well, I don't know if it's a hidden mechanic or not, but it's kind of a weird bonus that doesn't really have much practical use outside of being Kind of Neat. You can hold an enemy above your head instead of swallowing them once you've got them in your mouth, and some of them have weird effects that you can use if you do that. Like, holding one of the little pterodactyl guys over your head will let you glide pretty quickly, while when you're holding one of the anemone guys it will shoot projectiles the whole time. Maybe they're used in some crazy speedrun strats, but I think they're mostly just a neat thing to mess around with.

I think I'm not as fond of the stage design as I am of the actual concepts here, though. 64 kicks it up a notch from 3 by hiding three collectibles in each level, and more often than not they involve babysitting a combo ability through a stage. I think the abilities aren't too difficult to use for the most part, but some of them can be a real pain in the ass to use (lookin at you, rock+bomb). It doesn't help that the abilities you'd need for the combo might not always actually be in the stage they're needed for. I don't think 3 was quite as bad about this? I know there was a level or two where you'd need to bring in an animal buddy from another level, but they usually had some sort of hint in the level select suggesting which animal you might need. 64 doesn't have anything like that, unfortunately, so a lot of it is trial and error. I also feel like while there's different dev DNA involved, 64 could've benefited from a "stage" like Superstar had with all the copy abilities that you could combine at your leisure.

Anyway, the cutscenes and story are extremely cute. Waddle Dee and Dedede are perfect, and I wish Ribbon and Adeline had more appearances outside of, like, this game and Star Allies... and of course, you get things going absolutely insane and bizarre at the end. Admittedly, Shiver Star has its own wild vibe to it, with a sort of proto-Forgotten Land feeling. The factory level is a pain in the ass but damn, the music and that one segment with the critters floating in the vats, though. I love that shit. I marked out extremely hard when the music showed up again in Canvas Curse.

Also, you really gotta pour one out to 02, because what in the fuck. I love it. I'm so glad Kirby goes so hard on having nightmarish horrors for its secret final bosses.

With the final piece of DLC out and another Legends game on the horizon, I feel compelled to do a retrospective on the whole project of ScarVi alongside Indigo Disk.

Engaging with this set of games has been a little weird, because I keep kind of wondering if I'm giving the game too much slack because I love Pokemon and if I'm being a corporate shill or something. Honestly, the analysis of video games as works of art is kind of weird when you get into something that's as much of a corporate merch machine as Pokemon, because there are definitely concessions being made in service of said merch machine. The games have had the same gaps between releases since the beginning, even though the games have gotten bigger and more complicated--and they were kinda held together with duct tape and chewing gum to begin with way back in Gen 1.

On the other hand, despite all the technical issues that have marred the game for a lot of people, I still feel like there's a lot of passion in these games! The corporation is hungry for money, but man, the devs care a whole lot about the things that I, personally, care about when it comes to Pokemon. I like the vibes! I like the direction the writing has taken within the past couple gens, even with SwSh being kind of unsatisfying! I like the new Pokemon and the fun concepts they've been doing inspired by real zoology!

And I'm gonna be honest here, Indigo Disk is probably peak Pokemon endgame for me. I have my criticisms that I'll get into, but this is probably the first time I've gotten multiple Pokemon to 100 through mostly battling since I was a wee baby with too much time on my hands back in Gold. I think a lot of the Battle Frontier type stuff has been kind of a miss for me because they... don't make number go up? I like it when number go up, and Battle Frontier encourages you to have number go up to the max, but the options to make number go up are limited. Like, I guess you're just supposed to keep fighting the E4 and gym leader rematches over and over when that's an option? But I don't... particularly like that. I like a little variety.

Between Teal Mask and Indigo Disk, there's a ton of high level content that will get you there, and Indigo Disk is really fun on the gameplay end. I think it's always been kind of a shame that for a game series aimed at kids, it doesn't actually bother teaching said kids how to engage with the official big competitive content. Not here, baby! Enjoy your double battles and examples of tactics you can use! The Blueberry Elite Four are fun characters and they provide fun challenges! I actually lost multiple times to characters in a Pokemon game and had to come back with better strategies! It was truly excellent. If I have any criticism about the battle end of things, it's that I kind of wish that Drayton's challenge had been a little more in-depth, because I really liked the concept of that one. I also do wish all the gym leader rematches you unlock through the club room were double battles, but it was nice to see Geeta actually use proper singles strategy by putting Glimmora first and sticking Supreme Overlord Kingambit last instead of doing whatever the fuck she did in the main game's story.

I also really enjoyed the Terarium! It was a really fun location to explore, even if I had a very specific problem with it that I'll get into later. I'm gonna be honest, I think I mentioned in my review of the Teal Mask that I preferred Area Zero and Kitakami's smaller but more dense maps to the big open world of Paldea, and the Terarium really drives home the feeling that I'd prefer a bunch of smaller (but still reasonably large), more detailed locations over an actual open world. I don't know, it's just more fun to explore, you know? I remember grinning in delight when I found fucking Pride Rock in the Savanna Biome and there was a male Pyroar standing at the top of it. There were cool locations in Paldea, but there was a lot of empty space between the stuff I actually liked, which is a shame.

Speaking of Area Zero, I really liked the actual character work going on in the story, but one of the things I wasn't... super big on in the DLC was the actual plot. I think it's kind of let down by the legendary, honestly. There's a lot of things about Terapagos I like (it's turtles all the way down!), but it feels like... a step above a mythical Pokemon in gen 6 or 7 where mythicals felt barely relevant to the games and were basically there to advertise the yearly movie. Like, it would have been fine in those, but these games have done such a good job making me care about all the other legendaries based on the stories surrounding them and the fact that they're so packed with personality that Terapagos really can't measure up to me. The epilogue makes this particularly stark, because after you catch the turtle that's just kind of cute I guess you get all the fun, crazy stuff that goes down with Pecharunt. (Also Archaludon is eh, Hydrapple Fucking Rules and is the Best Dragon-Type, and the new Paradoxes are great. I think I like the Paradox Musketeers better as weird robots than organic beings?)

The other big problem I have is... I actually kind of like BP, but I don't like how it was implemented. I think only being able to do the quests in the Terarium kind of sucked, especially given how much stuff you unlock back in Paldea. I wanted to try and get all the League Club Room character interactions and trades, but man, it made me end up feeling kind of bored of an area I otherwise really like and I kind of gave up after I managed to hunt down all the trainers in the Terarium. If I could have gotten BP in Paldea while tracking down legendaries and buying All The Clothes, I probably could've gone the whole way.

So I think... I'm actually kind of feeling positive on the future of the gaming end of the franchise? BDSP and the technical issues in ScarVi made me pretty concerned, but between Legends Arceus being a cool, experimental entry in the franchise and ScarVi really delivering on the aspects of the franchise I care the most about, I'm feeling... optimistic? It helps that the next game is another Legends game that seems like it has the potential to do something cool and different based on the little information we know. It also helps that it's getting more time in the oven instead of, like, coming out in November and being a little raw in the middle. Here's hoping!

A very cute little game with fun illustrations and outfits for the protagonist! You do platforming with the dog with the left stick and you tweak things in the environment with the right stick. I'll admit, I almost kind of quit early on because the right bumper didn't quite work for me, but the right trigger works a lot better? It's probably better if you play it with keyboard and mouse, but eh. I haven't played with keyboard and mouse yet! You can't make me learn!

It's a pretty short game and the puzzles aren't exactly brain-busters, but the first six levels ARE free, so you get a whole lot more than what you pay for. The two others are DLC and I might actually bother 100%ing it if I end up getting those. There's supposed to be a third one that hasn't released on Steam yet, apparently, but the base game came out in 2016 so I wonder if it ever will come out...? I hope so, it's a cute game!

When I was getting to the end, I found myself wondering to myself, "Well... this has completely recontextualized how I felt about things in Watanagashi, particularly the stuff that made me cry a lot. I wonder how those scenes will go this time."

Reader, I still cried a lot. That's Higurashi, baby!

First off, on the production end of things, there's been a pretty sharp uptick in sound and visuals. Well, mostly sound. The new songs are excellent by virtue of a new composer coming on, but I also do think there's a kind of an interesting dimension if you play with Ryukishi's goofy-ass original sprites in that you can actually see how his art improved via the new character portraits. It's still a little janky, but at the same time, there's something about getting to see a creator's skill being refined as you go through a series that makes me happy.

As I intimated before, I really enjoyed the story. As much as it was fun to see things from Akasaka's perspective in chapter 4, it was really cool to get to see things from the perspective of a character we already knew. Shion truly is the queen of Women’s Wrongs and I support her. There were definitely a lot of surprises, I think--somehow I missed learning about what Satoshi's actual character was like after osmosing a lot of information about these games, so I was really surprised to find out that Satoshi... was actually very different in personality from Keiichi. Between everyone drawing comparisons between the two and the fact that he's Satoko's brother, I thought he'd be a total gremlin, but no.

Speaking of things I had preconceptions about, there's a specific character death that I remember from the anime involving a knife that I liked at the time, but man. The VN really just blows that out of the water, huh? I really like Ryukishi's prose in that moment, and I don't think that would be able to shine as much if the localization team didn't do such a great job making it as evocative as it should feel. It was great.

I think my biggest complaint would be that we didn't get a cast party this time, even if I really did enjoy reading Ryukishi's actual message. I wanted to see Keiichi lord his character portrait over everyone. Ah well, perhaps in a future chapter...?

The 40k DLC landed at a weird time for me, so it was nice to have some nice relaxing soul-washing going on. I mean, I assume we’re washing some souls here. I don’t actually know all that much about 40k outside of some vague osmosis about the grim darkness of the future. Anyway it was a pretty fun DLC with some impressively huge vehicles and lots of fun crags to clean, but I did find myself a bit disappointed that it was all vehicles and no interiors. I would have liked to clean some [redacted] outside of a ritual chamber or something. Maybe they had to avoid things getting too bloody to keep the rating?

I do very much appreciate the little details placing our washer priest within the universe, though, which I think is what I really want from a crossover DLC. The dialogues flew over my head a bit although I got the basic gist of what was funny about them, but the modified pressure washer and the names that went with it were pretty fun, as was the modified equipment like the angry crab looking stepstool and the grim spiky scaffolding. I also liked that when you jump, it sounds kind of mechanical, because you are some sort of fucked up technopriest.

I think my actual biggest disappointment here is that the washer and the outfit aren’t added as optional costumes to the base game. I guess there’s something to be said for the fact that the Flavor is contained to the DLC proper, but it WOULD be fun.

I collected enough birds to see the credits and then some, but I didn’t quite feel as compelled to do literally everything as I might otherwise have. I think I found myself less compelled to try really hard to finish this one than Pushmo proper and I can’t really imagine why, other than that I had some real tough time with spatial awareness here. Maybe the inciting incident is slightly less compelling? Rescuing children trapped within Papa Block’s mildly existentially terrifying playground seemed like an urgent matter, whereas… like, these dang birds can talk. Why can’t we just tell them to fly back. Come on. Mallo is shaped like such a friend, I would trust him if he told me to walk into an incinerator.

I did have a lot of fun with it until the late game, at least. There were some fun little brain teasers, and I need a little puzzle game like this every so often for enrichment so I don’t start pacing in my enclosure. I will continue to yell that they should bring back the ‘mos! They’re good! At least I have Stretchmo to go.

It’s been a good long while since I played a 2D Mario that wasn’t just kind of banging my head off the old ones. Even when going for the more old school structure of a world map and individual levels, I’d say I had the most fun with 3D World, so I was perhaps a little apprehensive as to whether or not I’d like Wonder. I loved the style from the previews, but would I like actually playing it? Or would I end up just kind of shrugging and putting it down a few years in like I did with the New Super Mario Brothers games I tried, along with pretty much every 2D Mario except SMB3 and Yoshi’s Island?

Nah this rules I had a great time, even if I didn’t really feel compelled to 100% the whole thing. When it comes to platformers I’m here for a good time and not a long time, and I wasn’t a big fan of what the Special world was putting forward so I decided not to go through the whole thing. I did decide to go back and get some Wonder Seeds I missed, so that’s something!

Movement feels a lot of fun, and I love jumping around and going Wahoo! It just good to platform in this game, man, even removed from any of the Wonder stuff or the power ups. I do understand why people might be a little underwhelmed by the power up selection but I thought they were fine? Elephant is interesting in its weird situational aspects to me. I think having it as a thing that you can use to get water to dried flowers is a neat little puzzle element, though I’ll admit that I might’ve liked a Wario type charge to go along with it.

Wonder effects themselves are a lot of fun as well. There are some duds or repeats but I definitely found myself excited to see what the next level would bring. I find myself reminded of Odyssey’s transformations, where some were just kinda one minor puzzle solution whereas others I could see being refined and developed out into a full game, with the rhythm game wonder effects perhaps being my favorite. I wasn’t necessarily good at it, but I DID think it was very fun. The great music went a long way towards making that work, and it does feel like the devs knew they had something going since they made a badge out of it!

Badges are kinda neat, though I’ll admit that once you have all of them unlocked I feel like there are only a few I thought were worth using over the others, notably Go Fast, Double Jump, and Grappling Hook. (Grappling Hook is my favorite, I was so excited when I unlocked it…) There’s the passive badges too, which make the game a little easier like letting you know where secrets are or giving you a bottomless pit save. And then there are the challenge badges, which are pretty wild. I don’t think I got all of them, but trying to platform while invisible sure is something!!!

I feel like the only thing I really don’t care for is the character selection stuff. I do like the addition of Daisy, but I think it’s a bummer that instead of every character playing their own way you just have Standard Gameplay with different models and Easy Mode, with the Yoshis and Nabbit being consigned to Easy mode. I dunno, I like Yoshi best and I wish I could have seen Elephant Yoshi and Elephant Nabbit. I feel like the badges were probably designed so you could pick your favorite character and play them however you like, but I dunno, I’ve always kind of liked the different play styles the playable characters offer. Also I don’t know why we need two different colored standard Toads outside of them having been included in the New SMBs. Original Toad and Toadette are good by me.

But yeah, shit’s great! I had a WONDERFUL time, and I might consider going back to actually try and get everything at some point maybe? I am also pretty excited to see what they do next. It feels like Mario’s getting to be Weird again and that rules.

Pretty mixed feelings on this one where I’m not sure if an original controller would have made me like it better, to be honest. I think I decided I was done after I used up all my healing items and was tossed into a gauntlet with endlessly respawning enemies that had you trying to navigate flame jets while wind constantly blew you to the right. I kind of got the impression that it wouldn’t exactly get better from there, exactly, so I decided I was done.

I think the presentation here is really great, actually. While the plot itself isn’t anything groundbreaking it did its job to set me off on the adventure, and I was pretty struck by how nice the opening cutscene looked, and the soundtrack… is trying, even if the sound chip isn’t up to snuff for what this is trying to do. The sprites and animations are also really nice!

I’m not sure how I feel about the combat, though, as I’m not really used to beat ‘em ups. I think I had a little trouble figuring out what registered as quick taps and full presses, so pulling off some moves could be a little tough. The spirits were kind of a neat idea, but I found them a little unreliable both due to the genre unfamiliarity problems and the fact that they wouldn’t really keep up with Ali if you ran too fast. I only managed to get the first two, but I was kind of intrigued how differently they operated and was curious to see what the final two would be… but not enough to keep powering through. I also just kind of hated jumping, and the double tap run felt considerably weirder to control than other instances where it’s been the control scheme.

I think this game is definitely for someone, though, even if it’s not for me. I don’t know, I mostly wish there were a few more cute little towns and cities to break things up at a certain point… maybe that would’ve kept me going instead of just feeling like I was slogging through.

Honestly the reason I gave up on this one is more my fault than the game’s, because for a genre I don’t typically mess with that much (fighting games generally) I had a pretty good time with this one. There aren’t too many special moves and the ones there are aren’t too bad to pull off, though I’m gonna be real I’m bad at remembering and executing inputs for special moves and that’s probably why I don’t play fighting games. I do feel like this was relatively beginner friendly in that regard, though I feel like the gimmicks for the NPC fighters in story mode ramp up a not insignificant degree. Like one of those dudes turns invisible, what the hell?

I accidentally overwrote a save state before a boss that was kind of a pain in the ass, which is why I dropped it. I also do think it’s a shame that you’re limited to the eight playable fighters in story mode since there are some cool dudes, even if it does feel like there’s a lot of asset reuse. But I don’t know, I think that’s at least kind of clever.

I think my biggest beef isn’t the fault of the original game but how Nintendo handles releases that were originally Japan-only. This game has a lot of text, including hints on what the enemy robots are good at. Unfortunately, they don’t bother translating the roms before slapping them on NSO, which sucks! This game feels really charming and I think it’d be a lot of fun to actually understand the Mega Man-ass plot, but I guess that’d be work or something? Maybe there’s some weird directive from higher-ups. I don’t know, I just think it’s a shame.

It’s also a shame that this never got any kind of follow up that I know of. I guess not everything needs to become a franchise but this is cute enough that I wish it’d get a revival of some kind.