I haven't done every route yet
but this might be the funniest fucking VN ever made https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1156847812378628116/1218758562726281307/Untitled.png?ex=6608d45c&is=65f65f5c&hm=eefd55b36d8340c6e66f51f9c172437c2c24cf45b29fdd72418a83bd79614bb5&

All jokes aside, it's a cool and very important piece of history. Can really see how many VNs were inspired by it like its immediate successors including Kamaitachi No Yoru or Tegami, let alone later VNs. If nothing else, Otogirisou is an important history lesson to experience for any VN fan imo, and it's extremely easy to get the first good ending in ~2 hours without a guide.

Even in a silly group reading setting, I was scared several times by some of the pixel art and noises. The credits music in particular is rather beautiful.

I might type more when I read the other routes but anyways enjoy the fan translation title screen for now
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1156847812378628116/1218734760340226190/image.png?ex=6608be31&is=65f64931&hm=678cd0abdcbf0adbe13ca61b6a38b6aade5180cf40ecaa1cdbdae8afb7f108a2&

The first was a not very good search-action platformer, and now this one is a very okay run and gun with occasional shmup and “how many y’all like auto-scrolling levels?”

Everyone has their own level now, and their theme song only plays during that level, which, I mean, I’m not gonna sit here and pretend I didn’t ask for that last time. Also, you don’t really get to pick who you play as anymore, you know, an array of classic Konami characters each with their own strengths and weaknesses tailored to intelligent level design. What do you think this is, Little Samson? No, you jump on platforms and shoot, and hope that you get to play as Goemon or Contra man for sixty seconds instead of the baby. I hate that baby.

I like how Goemon’s level is a little drawn out and makes you wonder when it’s going to end, and the contra level takes less than two minutes, in nods to each of their original games. You also get to see a huge R-Type crawl for the classic Gradius enemy ship with barriers that you have to shoot through, and there’s a TwinBee level with Star Fox perspective. I can’t believe I made it to a day I got to see TwinBee ass.

Since I’ve gotten on this site I’ve been meaning to dip my wings into Anna Anthropy’s catalog. Before this, I only knew of the titular Jill from her cameo in Super Meat Boy, a title that I played a lot of. I’ve played a lot of indie platformers, considering platforming has never really been my thing. As in, I’m not very good at them. Mighty Jill Off is a game about platforming games; the desire we have for punishing challenge, all for a satisfaction we sometimes cannot even define. No matter how grueling the task or the obstacle, there is an end point that we so desire the company of.

“And what happens after you get to the end?”

“I don’t know… I guess, I’ll just do it again.”

Ufouria 2 is a genre of game that needs its own name. It's a real hollow nothing bullshit kind of game and I don't mean that derogatorily. The game has such a wonderful cast of characters and a beautifully simple aesthetic and all I want is to have a good time with that core appeal. It's what drew me into playing it in the first place. While mechanically the game is shallow, it is very modern philosophically. The different zones are randomly generated on entry which makes them fresh on revisits, which as a metroidvania, happens frequently. Upgrades are dished out at well calculated intervals. It makes me FEEL like I'm progressing. I don't need to master mechanical complexity in every game I play. Sometimes I just want to enjoy an aesthetic, exist in a world, play a role. But doubly, I dont want to be bored by the game. So while these tricks with the progression and level design may seem cheap (and they admittedly are) they serve the ultimate appeal of the game, which is it's charming aesthetic, and they provide the exact amount of satisfaction and engagement (for my monkey brain at least) necessary to make the short run time fulfilling from beginning to end. The newer Yoshi games could learn a lot from this game.

KIrby's Super Star Stacker is a very simple puzzle game where you link at least two animals of the same kind either vertically or horizontally as long as they are all the same or are a normal block. While the actual concept of this gameplay is simple, the actual combo system of Super Star Stacker is the meat on the bone. Combos are pretty much the only way you are able to do damage, and while it's certainly possible to get big combos with little attention, largely the game can't be beat on pure blind combos. This ends up making Super Star Stacker far more versus oriented over some of it's other puzzle game likes but not for the better. Arguably, Star Stacker is kinda boring without it's combo system, and it's further distanced from the usual make by the game trying to add more after your initial combo. It's certainly neat that sometimes after a two combo the game can position you into an undeserved 10 combo by constantly throwing boxes at your board, but it certainly doesn't feel earned.

While I certainly don't want to belittle this game, the truth of the matter is that it's nicer to look at than play. A lot of the story cutscenes are really cute, the animations of characters attacking each other give some added flavor, the menus are done nicely, the sound effects feel good, and the OST is certainly a pop. Sadly, these are all things that don't help Star Stacker's gameplay in a meaningful way, and largely it just feels like a rather half baked game compared to other puzzle games. While I certainly don't think there is no joy to be had, it really just boils down to "there are better puzzle games out there"; hell what probably hurts this game most is that there are better KIRBY PUZZLE games out there. This game is neat for a first run, but just don't expect much.

a lesser person would say "i'm speechless" when reviewing this. i am not speechless. i got the speech.

this is, somehow, really fucking cool. i love experimental and surreal shit, and this is obviously not exactly a "game" but more of an experience. you watch this weird ass footage while INCREDIBLE music plays -- no shit, this is going on my list of the best soundtracks of all time.

i played this purely out of curiosity. i watched a bit of a gameplay on youtube but i wanted to know how it actually controls, like what do you do while watching. basically nothing. but i still think it's something cool. and i must note, if these weren't images of a near naked woman, i would still love it, hell, i'd probably love it more. if it were bad early 2000s surreal cgi, it would be amazing. this is going on my list of "dream games".

i'll probably not watch this all the way through because i honestly don't care but i'm really impressed lol.

First rule of Dragon Warrior: you always let the beat drop on the title screen.

The king, the legend. Not a perfect game by any means, but a game that shames many later entries. Sure, the grind is… well, there's a lot of it. This is cribbing off of Ultima's bones: the walk around, get stronger, push outwards, delve deeper style. Equipment is linear, thoughtless. Secrets are simple, but required. The story is non-existent: save the princess, beat the bad guy.

But there's something about it. Tentative forays over bridges followed by hasty retreats, diving into a dungeon and trying to map out the maze before coming up for air. Not knowing exactly where to go, talking to everyone, taking notes. It's all almost entirely nonlinear. The princess? You don't have to save her. Towns? Optional, but filled with critical clues. You can go everywhere but the final castle right from the start. Surviving there is another matter, but the option is there.

It's truly open world, even if the open world is primitive. The handholding is minimal, the risk is real, the satisfaction palpable. It's a relic now, an artifact from a time when JRPGs were much closer to their western CRPG cousins in style. The years would sand off the difficulty, add progression systems and flash, become more linear and bolstered by stories that lived more on paper than in the mind. Which is all good and well. Evolution is inevitable. Still, it's worth remembering what we lost in the process.

Sacrifices genuinely great level design for what's essentially unfailable courses (outside of the extremely jank boss and trick courses), the soundtrack is also a massive step down over the original. There's almost zero sense of item management anymore as you're able to churn out 200+ on every jump (items still cost 100)

Genuinely don't get why this one gets gassed up so much more than the original, it's inarguably a shallower singleplayer experience for a slightly better multiplayer one (debatably worse though as the new tech the game introduces would make the gap even wider than anything the first game could've come up with (reflecting) )

Nearly completely sanded off of all edges that made this unique to learn, but I guess in the process that makes this more "palatable" as a multiplayer experience. Really I'm just tilted at how much of a downgrade this is over the original presentation-wise, they replaced the kids yelling "POINT" and "GO!!" and such with a generic stadium style announcer and most of the music sounds like an approximation of "good N64 music" vs the original's absolutely "going ham on the keyboard" that was so good it made the game go 6 for 6 on people assuming the og was a PS1 game rather than N64 when I streamed it.

The first thing I noticed about this game is that it kinda runs like shit compared to 2008. Everything seems to run at half the FPS. But then it gets really bad when a field starts getting more full, and if you play with/against a stall deck and the field gets full, you can expect very choppy gameplay and the opponent stuck in "thinking" mode for what feels like forever.

I guess it's lucky that this is the type of game where frames per second doesn't matter that much, but it's still a noticeable downgrade even when the field is relatively empty.

Another downgrade is the change of the top screen - what used to be a close look at the duel field, complete with the models of the monsters, has been turned into a generic screen that just displays the info of whatever card is being hovered over/activated. The only time it gets "interesting" is when a battle is made and high definition versions (for the DS) of the cards artwork shows up. It sounds dumb, and compared to being able to see close-ups of the holograms it is, but the quality of the art in these scenes is much better than anywhere else the card art exists, so you get to see some pretty nice shots of monsters that are otherwise just a clump of pixels at any other time.

The holograms do remain, but they're limited to the bottom screen, which shows a semi-birds eye view of the whole field, so the monsters are shrunken down so much you can barely make out any details. Basically it's the exact same as it was on the bottom screen in past games.

I can only assume they changed the top screen to improve performance, but since it's still crappy, why not also remove the little holograms. I really don't get any satisfaction seeing them in their shrunken form like I did with the top screen in past games.

Moving on from the actual duels, the story I think takes a portion of 5D's story - I'm not sure I've never watched it. But it really feels more like a story than any other DS Yu-Gi-Oh game I've played. World Championship 2008 had no real story and was more just a map with opponents to click on and duel to move on to the next area. Even Spirit Caller which followed the first part of GX was largely just clicking an area to find opponents until eventually you meet some vague criteria to move on to the next story event. But this game has you fully control your player character, walking around the city, finding treasure chests for loot, and even doing freaking moving block puzzles. It's crazy how hard it goes. And yet it still keeps the formula from 2008 - you can get through the story dueling only every story-related duelist once, but to unlock packs and characters to duel in "World Championship" mode - which itself will unlock more packs - you have to duel the non-important NPCs 5 times each. So it's as grindy or non-grindy as you want, but expect to use way less cards without grinding.

And speaking of packs, the distribution in this game is so dogshit holy hell. So many archtypes are spread across multiple packs that are locked to very different stages of the game. Oh and for some reason the first 4 packs you start with have 200+ cards in them, so getting a card you actually want out of them is much harder, and even getting to 80% pack completion (so you can use passwords to get the cards you want) takes longer and more money. Even the new synchro mechanic is massively underrepresented. Other than the 2 or 3 synchro monsters you start with, the packs to unlock more are pretty much all hidden between requirements you can't get until late or even post-game.

It just takes way too long to make any good decks in this game.

Back to story mode, since this is 5D's you have actual motorcycle mini-games too. Pretty much entirely "beat the time" ones. They're...fine? I mean I doubt anyone is playing Yu-Gi-Oh for them, but they're so novel for the series I couldn't help but be amused. What I'm not amused by is the fact motorcycle parts use the exact same currency as card packs. So as if it wasn't already hard enough to get a good deck, this game has you splitting your spendings between that and a what is essentially a non-optional freaking mini-game.

Oh speaking of the currency, they heavily nerfed the "wins in a row" bonus from the last game to cap out at 10 extra DP per duel. This means no more save scumming to keep a streak and get hundreds of extra points every duel. Now the grind is even worse.

Also it's not the games fault since I assume it comes from the anime, but what is up with speed duels? They're literally normal duels, except all spell cards are replaced by speed duel versions which use what is basically a mana system that you might find in other card games (a spell costs X speed points to use, you get a speed point every turn and for every 1000 damage you take you lose 1, if you hit an opponent when they have 0 left you get an extra one instead).

Why does this apply exclusively to spell cards? It's such a weirdly implemented system that turns 1/3rd of Yu-Gi-Oh into this system while keeping the rest exactly the same? Monster Reborn now costs 10 whole points to use, but trap cards like Mirror Force can still be used completely for free? The hell is the point? Even monsters would easily fit into this, by using their stars as their costs - it'd lead to a lot more 1 stars being ran so you can play monsters on turn 1, while the ever-present 4 stars wouldn't be nearly as dominating.

What this system also means is many decks become nearly unusable because speed spells are almost all generic ones that can fit into any deck. Any archtypes that rely heavily on a key spell, or more, are now unusable. There isn't even a Polymerization one, so that's an entire card type that is unusable.

So yeah, not the games fault, but it's just weird. Oh and you also have to buy every single speed spell separately. You don't get "Speed Spell - Book of Moon" just by having the original. So even MORE shit you have to waste your harder-to-earn currency on.

Also kind of worth noting that World Championship 2008 had its "story" mode fighting duel spirits, which unlocked more duel spirits and sometimes even anime characters for World Championship mode. This game of course has the Anime characters as a core part of the story, and you ONLY unlock duel spirits in WC mode. There's no GX or Duel Monsters characters to unlock unfortunately, which would have made perfect bonuses.

So this game is weird. The increased card pool from 2008 is nice, the story mode improvement is huge, but the increased grind and horrible card-to-pack distribution make the actual story mode a bit disappointing. I imagine if you played this a lot post-story, unlocked everything, you'd have a lot of fun using every deck possible, especially if you played it back in its time with WiFi. That's assuming you can tolerate the poor performance though.