A perfect little game for when Mom is at the hair salon but there's no babysitter so now you are also at the hair salon. Not much in the way of challenge, but great for little mini-speedruns and with just the right amount of jank to feel a touch charming. Music is decent, control isn't bad. There's a bonus for time, you get score for pickups and kills, so maybe you want to do a little score attack. Maybe a deathless run. Go wild, that bleach is going to take a while to set in and Janice is talking Mom's ear off anyway.

Is it a great game? No. God no, go play the NES version. You're an adult, emulation is easy. I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to the kid in the hair salon.

I'm not too hot on Plat (and I'm probably never gonna play D&P quite honestly) but I'll admit its one of the more cozier feeling pokemon games I've played.

Tbh I feel a lot of nothing for Sinnoh as a region, the stand-out places really being the snowy areas leading up to snowpoint city (its very annoying to go through though) and the rainy swamp area between pastoria and hearthome. I don't really care much about the cities either. The main exception would be the whole area where the battle frontier and resort area e.t.c. are located, they had a nice look to them and felt cool to explore. Shoutout to the Distortion World, its just cool and actually hyped me up for the climax of the main story lol.

Speaking of which, while it seems like they were generally trying to put more writing in from gens 1-3 it feels a lot more apparent with gen 4. You get a pretty good amount of lore regarding Sinnoh's history and its myths and legends, which includes information on the legendaries, the lake guardians, e.t.c. Similarly certain characters have consistently notable story roles which also often neatly ties in with the lore surrounding sinnoh (does lowkey kind of become an exposition dump by rowan and Cynthia in particular but its whatever), definitely more than what previous gens tried at least. Same goes for more minor like gym leaders, who typically have a little more to their roles to at least leave a memorable impact on the player.

Barry got pretty annoying though admittedly. He was pretty charming at first and immediately made himself distinct as a rival but I got very exhausted from his typical gimmick by the end of the game.

Up to this point in the series, Team Galactic is definitely the most interesting villain team. Cyrus is genuinely a very interesting character, who while doesn't waste no time to make the player hate him you get a pretty good idea of his mindset and later on bits of his backstory that led him to be like this. What he does ultimately sucks, but I can't say I don't feel pity for him, or even feel like I've had similar thoughts to him when I was in a worse situation before. The galactic commanders are less interesting, moreso because they lack enough screentime but I expected as much going off previous villain team commanders. Still, Jupiter and Mars in particular were kinda cool.

A big issue I have with the story is how surprisingly early it ends. Usually I'd expect it to end before the elite 4 but here it ends before the eight gym lol. It kinda just messed the pacing for me, and I mostly lost motivation to continue after it wrapped up. It just feels not right, like I get that they felt this was the right pacing for them but still its like, too soon? its weird, bleh, i don't like it

The new pokemon are cool, probably some the best starters in this series and I had a bit of trouble making a finalized team because I enjoyed a lot of the pokemon I used.

Additional note I guess is that I liked the contests and beat them all (yayyy) and I'm still in the process of beating the battle frontier but its a lot less frustrating than emerald's. I've also been a lot more invested in the post game than I typically am for these games, no real specific reason besides that the new areas that unlock are pretty fun to take a look through.
Fuck whoever thought making glameow, the skunk and misdreavus or whatever D&P exclusive lmao hate that hate that

Este juego me representa tanto que me da miedo. Es pura nostalgia para mi, me recuerda a los veranos de cuando era un niño, esa semana típica de ir al País Valencià a un pueblo con playa y castillo olvidado. La combinación con la naturaleza y los pelotazos turísticos de la mano de los políticos más corruptos del Estado.

Está tan bien representado tanto por su arquitectura, como por sus npc que se les nota con su personalidad marcada a cada uno que te podrías encontrar en cualquier pueblo en verano.

Habiendo mamado un poco de campo todo resulta familiar, todos los animales que tienes que escanear.

Y por último sin hacer spoilers, el final del juego era una cosa esperable que por muy esperable que sea no lo hace peor porque a veces no hace falta un plot twist para que un final sea bueno.

Esta es una de las joyas ocultas y una vez más Ustwo ha hecho un juegazo. Mis dieces.

From wikipedia:
"During development, the game's story was originally about a character trapped in a dungeon by a wizard. After a few years of production, the project lead felt uninspired by it, and rewrote it into a love story."

From me:
Tech bros cannot write love stories to save their fucking lives. Their lives are already basically about being a wizard trapping people into dungeons of conversation. That'd be a more honest impulse to explore.

I bought River City Girls 2 day 1 but had to wait 6 months for a patch that made it run at the framerate advertised in the trailers without input lag. This unfortunately was foreshadowing for the overall quality of the game as a whole.

Despite its many issues, my friend and I very much enjoyed playing the first River City Girls game together. Its incredible soundtrack and beautiful pixel art really won us over, enough to look past the mediocre writing and repetitive gameplay. Thankfully, the short length kept it mostly fun and rarely tedious, in general making it a delightful cooperative experience.

RCG2 is more of the same, with "more" meaning "2-3 times longer" and "same" meaning "assets reused 1:1." The actual new content is sparse, failing to justify the sequel's increased length and higher pricetag. You will trudge through the exact same environments from RCG1 again with minimal alterations, then once again when you're saddled with several interminable collectathon side quests, then yet again when the devs decide to further pad out gameplay near the end of the main quest. There are a total of 2.5 new areas this go-round, with the rest being recycled from its predecessor. You better believe that most of the objectives, movesets, and weapons are more or less copy-pasted from the original as well. There are two new playable characters, at least.

So with River City Girls 2 gameplay-wise being a sequel in the same sense Overwatch 2 is a sequel, you're mostly playing this one for the aesthetics and, uh, story. Writing was certainly not RCG1's strong suit, but its script was downright Shakespearean compared to whatever they were going for here. 1 was cringey and a little too mean-spirited but ultimately all it amounted to was harmless, cheesy fun - until the ending, which, in trying to go for an obscure meta joke, managed to be insulting to both the characters and players alike. Everyone hated it, to the point where WayForward eventually patched a new "true" ending in to replace it. So, of course, 2 quintuples down on the miserable meta shit. You can't go 15 minutes without a character breaking the 4th wall to talk about the HUD or wink at the audience about video game tropes they're engaging in. The titular River City Girls (and their boyfriends/girlfriends because the other player characters don't have unique dialogue) no longer feel like people living in a world because there are absolutely no attempts to make their "second adventure" feel organic in-universe. Everything is a joke about how much better this game is than the first one, all plot beats now exist solely as set ups to obvious, obnoxious punchlines. This is further compounded by the new vocal tracks; in the first game, all these insert songs were sung in-universe by Noize, with lyrics relevant to her characterization. Here, they're all sung from the perspective of the bosses, I guess, despite the composition and vocals being exactly like the ones from the original, and Noize still being a famous popstar making music in River City. Again, credibility and believability are sacrificed for the sake of being meta.

The narrative doesn't even try to make sense or have any urgency, but that's okay because it means we get to endure an entire level built around "millennials always on they damn phones" "satire," complete with a head-scratching "social media bad" anthem playing in the background. Meanwhile, there are many, many instances of characters referencing things that either haven't happened yet or never actually happen at all, such as when they complain about their rubber mask disguises being hard to breathe in (they aren't wearing any) or lament helping someone who betrayed(?) them (they haven't even met her yet and she's not part of the main story). I can only assume the script and voice acting were created for an earlier build of the game and were never changed after a project overhaul.

The music is still pretty good, though almost all the best tracks are, of course, taken directly from the first game. That said, it does somehow manage to outdo the original's L33tStr33t Boys-style credits theme with a frown-inducing track that is, of course, about how you just beat a video game and it was a lot of fun wasn't it you really liked the game you just beat didn't you? Maybe that would've been cute in 2007? I dunno.

Anyway, I know it seems like I hated this game, and honestly I kind of did, but it's fine. It's serviceable. It's still fun to play, nice to look at, and pleasant to listen to (the music, anyway). There are a few quality of life improvements (EXP share) but just as many downgrades (loading screens every room). I hate being one of those guys who says things like "this sequel should have been a $15 DLC for the first one," but this sequel should have been a $15 DLC for the first one.

Sega bass fishing is the best game that redefined the sega bass fishing genre. Sega bass fishing games like sega bass fishing 2 have been trying to catch up for years but to no avail. Sega bass fishing is the quintessential game that was ever made by sega, so much so that even their other games have failed to top it. Sonic adventure, persona 5, and yakuza 0 have not even come close to this level of expertise. It has been so highly regarded that it got the company’s official mascot: ‘that bass from the cover of sega bass fishing’. That bass is a universal symbol that shows love, hope, and above all else: bass. And you can’t spell bass without the letter A. And A is also a letter that reminds me of the word perfect, and that describes sega bass fishing.

Sega bass fishing begins with your protagonist: ‘the guy from sega bass fishing’. As the game goes on this man learns the most valuable lesson that can ever be taught in life: how to fish for bass. Sega bass fishing gives time for the characters to really think about who they are and challenge themselves to their limit, by fishing for bass. They get more and more bait as the game goes along which helps them in their effort to discover themselves and fish for bass.

Gameplay is what makes this game the perfect game in the sega bass fishing genre. For the absolutely perfect and problem ridden Dreamcast version, you have the fishing rod which is the best controller to ever grace mankind. It even contains some of the best motion controls to ever grace the sega bass fishing experience. Even with a normal controller the game is still just as perfect as ever because nothing can change how perfect sega bass fishing truly is. It is after all, the best sega bass fishing game.

Bass, Bass, Lots of Bass, Can’t get enough of the Bass, Bass everywhere, Bass in your walls, BASS

Quando tinha os meus 8 anos e o meu Toshiba NB300-100D, eu gravei uma gameplay deste jogo, para o Youtube. Esse momento, ficará marcado para o resto da minha vida. Eu fiquei uma tarde inteira para descobrir uma forma de gravar o ecrã. Na altura, não era fácil como abrir o OBS. Depois daquilo tudo, eu fechei-me no escritório do meu pai e disse à minha mãe para fazer pouco barulho. Comecei a gravar. Acredito que estava a façar bastante alto, porque queria replicar o Heitor Games, na altura do canal de VcseLembra. Então lá estava eu, a gritar coisas como "uau malta, consegui as cartas para fazer uma ABOBRINHA" e o jogo a lagar completamente, porque o meu Toshiba não era bom o bastante para rodar um emulador de PS1 + Atube Catcher ou o caralho. Do nada, a emulação fica normal speed, no preciso momento que eu faço a fusão do dragão de 2800 de ataque e eu mando o "UAU, O JOGO ATÉ FICOU MAIS RÁPIDO". O que tinha acontecido? Eu antes de clickar no rec, coloquei para apenas gravar 5 minutos. Eu fiquei frustado, porque eu tinha jogado uns bons 20 minutos. O pior disto tudo? Foi a minha mãe, a falar com o meu irmão mais novo. A minha mãe só mandou um "O teu irmão? Ele deve ter um problema na cabeça, porque se fechou no escritório e está aos berros". Aquilo foi a carta final... Eu acho que a minha mãe acha-me meio autista...

Japan OCG: May 2001
NA TCG: Late 2002 with some Sprinking of LoN 2003 cards
(Imperial Format)

With the prior two games (im barely thinking about Dungeon Dice Monsters), I found myself interested but ultimately whelmed by the lack of engaging playstyles or cards to work with. What are rather interesting perspectives and introductions to the Yugioh card game don't entirely add up to accurate or fulfilling matches but instead grindfests with a snappy soundtrack. Thankfully by the end of the first year of Yugioh's introduction into the west, fans would be given a chance to play with a GBA simulator of the game, an English 'remake' of Duel Monsters 5: Expert 1 in Japan.
Finally, some good ass Yu-Gi-Oh.

The game plays similarly to Dark Duel Stories, being a 5-duelist 'wave' format, where upon beating each duelist of a wave a certain amount of times unlocks the next tier of hardened duelists from the YGO anime (two wins each, incrementing by one each tier). Thankfully this game does a lot more to substantiate a still early and juvenile format of the card game.
For starters: its actually extremely accurate to the actual format and rulings of the trading card game! Hallelujah. Chains, different spell and trap types, effect monsters, an actual backrow, tribute summons, etc. are actually represented in their purest state. The game isn't without its rulings glitches and mishaps, but its pretty damn close.

Additionally all of these actual mechanics can be felt from the very get-go. Tristan Taylor and Tea Gardner aren't just complete jobbers and will draw good cards. My eyes did bug out a bit upon seeing the ladder drop Gemini Elf, the single strongest vanilla monster at this point in the format. But they'll also drop mystical elves and graceful charities and man, does that remind me: the card pool in this game.

From here regarding later games I might review, I'm uncertain how in depth I'll go into them since early YGO games can get samey, some games might just be 'Its Eternal Duelist Soul' but in March 2003 or w/e format. I'm incredibly worried as to how interesting the GX games will be to talk about, now knowing how middling much of the meta for that was. Thankfully early Yugioh was broad and stupid enough to have incredibly powerful cards around almost each corner. In the prior two games it didn't seem like you had any chance whatsoever to engage with the truly powerful cards as those game's progression systems and mechanics didn't reflect how you would actually play Yugioh in real life. Thankfully two major changes added much to the depth of this:
1) One pack, every duel, 5 cards each. Also after so many matches you can get 'Weekly' magazine packs and tournament packs to add to your repertoire
2) The introduction of cards from the later OCG, or in the west Magic Ruler.
Tracking the release of cards within the Japanese 'OCG' compared to the North American TCG is somewhat nutty, for example 'Jinzo' as a card wasn't released in the TCG until Dec. of 2002, but was included in Dark Duel Stories, Dungeon Dice Monsters and this game prior to its release due to it being a card from 1999 in the OCG. It's why my header above mentions 'sprinklings' as cards like Gemini Elf didn't hit global TCG release until half a year later. The format minutiae is somewhat intriguing to... mostly myself, but its important to note as the prior two battling games either didn't have much of these cards, they were so hard to get due to the grindfest, or just weren't worth bothering with compared to beatdown strats.
It is so satisfying playing a game with:
The Forceful Sentry, White Magical Hat, Waboku, the Jars, Change of Heart, Confiscation, Delinquent Duo, Giant Trunade, Graceful Charity, Snatch Steal, Harpie's Feather Duster, etc. all in like, actual full force.
White Magical Hat is the funniest card and going through this game with even a single copy makes this so much more of a treat than anything so far. Being able to snatch steal an enemy's monster, swords of revealing for stun and attack with white magical hat to discard an opponent's card from hand is the most satisfying experience.
The only awkward part of collecting these cards is that it's incredibly unbalanced. You get card packs over time, many of which mirror real life (japanese) card pools, but its hard to figure out which cards are in what without a guide and a good chunk are duds. It is super fun coming up with strats prior to getting super broken cards, and I even had a Chain Energy/Toll burn strat going at some point, but it's best if you just look to see what packs contain what. Also, many of the card packs require a lot of battling of a random duelist to unlock. I'd say this is really just the game for a young aspirational duelist with a bunch of free time to get through these on weekends or after school, rather than someone going through these games on a whim like myself. But also some of these grindier packs are just not worth the grind (Celtic Guardian as a secret rare for beating Yugi 20 times? really?).
Also while the AI's do have really cool decks and can often put you into trouble, a bit of their 'cheating' nature does shine through near the end. But even weirder is how stupid the AI tends to be? Painful Choice is a funny card to include against computers. 'Pick 5 cards from your deck, show them to your opponent and they can choose 1 for you to draw to your hand. You discard the rest into the graveyard, shuffle your deck'. This card is already incredibly broken but the amount of times my opponent just picked the best card for me to have felt really funny, like yeah ill take that Change of Heart over the Rush Recklessly, thanks Bakura. It is a shame that the opponent kinda 'knows' when you have a Wall of Illusion and they won't bother attacking it because they know they can't kill it and they'll be set back on field advantage, but its not the biggest deal.

My only other complaint -and maybe this will be remedied by the later 'RPG'-ish titles- but it is really plain. I'm not sure at this point if im a big fan of the just standard 'fight this duelist X times' formula, even if its inoffensive.

Overall this is the game I recommend most to anyone that just wants to know the basics of Yugioh, no link summons/pendulums/hand traps/etc involved. Upon looking at Duel Monsters 5 I did wish the west received that game's 'D-Tactics' feature which helped explain some of the game's mechanics as I think that would also help to better explain some of the mechanics and stratagem at this point in the meta. But even without that function this acts so well as a simulator that just basic understanding of the game is all you need for the first two tiers. Really fun game, just really vanilla.

Okay, I understand games being hard, but why do they also have to be hostile?

Yeah, the boss can be hard, sure, but why does there also have to be stretches of spike traps and mantis sword bros and laser fuckmoths on the way to that boss because the save point is nowhere near that boss and every time you lose, you know, to LeArN tHe PaTtErnS and GeT bEtTeR or whatever, you have to traverse that path each and every time? Why does dying also mess with your coins? Sure, the bank feature might have been useful, if there was more than one! Why would I ever want to freely explore this place if it meant at any step I could bump into a boss or a bullshit Celeste spike corridor that will murder me and take away like a thousand of my coins because I also got murdered again on the way back to that boss? Why does difficulty have to be married to wasting my time? Why can’t the “consequence” of losing just be, you know, you can’t go any further until you win? Why do I need to be punished for the hubris of wanting to play Hollow Knight but not knowing how to do it exactly right the first time? Do you guys, I dunno, do you like that or something? Do you like games that are not just hard but also just give you the finger and laugh at you? Do you go on the switch store and be like hm, let’s see, what’s out there that’s not only challenging but also gives me a net negative amount of progress to effort? What’s out there that can actively mock my endeavors to experience something greater than myself all the way through by reminding me that I have limited time and then actively smashing that time right in front of me? Because I love that feeling, I really enjoy it and it makes me feel warm and cozy, I love it more than hot fudge sundaes, more than my girlfriend, more than even my own birthdays.

No no, that’s you, that’s what you sound like when you play Hollow Knight.

Thanks to early successes like Space Invaders and Galaga, vertical space shooters were one of the most popular game genres back in the 80s. There were many different games made by plenty of different companies that followed this formula, changing it up enough to seem somewhat original, and building their own legacy over the years, such as with Defender, 1942, Xevious, and plenty of others. One of these contenders, starting a little later on, would be Konami's Gradius.

For the first true game in the series after whatever the fuck Scramble was, Gradius still holds up extremely well from what I can tell. Sure, it is not my favorite space shooter from that era, and it has plenty of problems, but for what it did for the genre, it is pretty memorable. That being said, my time with it did go by better with a second playthrough.

There is literally no story other than "kill aliens", which is fine by me, the graphics are pretty good for NES, the music is good, the control is pretty much what you would expect, although I wish you could move up and down a little faster, and the gameplay is your typical space shooting goodness, with a little extra in there to make it interesting.

Like I mentioned, it is your typical space shooter, except what makes this one unique when compared to others at the time was not only the level design and progression, but also the fact that you now had powerups that you could acquire to make your ship more powerful. When you defeat enemies and get the weird orange things, the powerups will highlight, and if you use them, it will activate an upgrade for your ship, such as ground missiles, shields, more speed, and floating options which give you additional firepower.

This makes the game a whole lot more fun, as it is fun to mix and match what weapons and abilities your ship will have, and what makes it even better is that not every upgrade can be used at once, so you have to be strategic about what you activate when and where, and what you will lose upon dying. Speaking of dying, though, that's where my problems with this game start to come in...

THIS GAME IS FUCKING HARD. LIKE, I MEAN, RIDICULOUSLY HARD. It is without a doubt one of the hardest NES games I have ever played in my life, not the hardest, but right up there, even more so then fucking Ghosts n' Goblins. You can only take one hit before dying without a shield, and throughout practically the whole game, it LOVES to throw an endless string of bullets your way, and it extremely hard to dodge it all. You will die more then likely, and this is gonna be a recurring thing in the entire series, so it won't be getting old any time soon. Now, I'm not saying I can't handle it, or that the difficulty shouldn't be like this, but good lord, you better be prepared for it.

In terms of other problems with the game, it gets pretty repetitive throughout, not with the gameplay, but with the obstacles the game throws at you. Numerous hazards and enemy types, including mini bosses, are reused throughout the game, and in terms of one of the bosses of the game, you have to fight it SIX TIMES throughout the whole game. It gets pretty tiresome after a while. But hey, at least we officially got the Konami Code with this game, so that's pretty cool.

Overall, while it is insanely hard and can be pretty repetitive, it is a pretty fun way to officially start the Gradius franchise, and a really good port of the classic arcade game. Let's just hope the future games don't give me as much trouble as this game.

Game #88