"Because it's there." - British climber George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Everest (also me, when my wife asks me why I want to finish the burger and all the fries when I'm no longer hungry)

It's no Everest, but the world of Hallownest is huge, intimidating, and wondrous; in a game where the 'plot breadcrumbs' style of storytelling means a general lack of narrative thrust, the mere existence of Hallownest is reason enough to want to explore it. Hollow Knight is sensationally good at worldbuilding through level design, and even through the so-called "slow start" I found myself wanting to get down and dirty exploring every nook of the game world; it helps that a huge portion of the world is almost immediately accessible without extra movement abilities, meaning that my journey of discovering Hallownest for the first time felt unique by virtue of how Hollow Knight seems more open-ended than other Metroidvanias.

Better writers than me have discussed the mechanics in much depth, but I do have to mention them anyway. Combat and movement is tight, consistent, and refined - this is evident in the sheer depth that your relatively small moveset brings to the boss fights, but also in how each new movement option adds more fluency and expressivity in how you traverse each area, bringing a joy to exploration that even the game's slight over-reliance on 'gotcha' hits cannot extinguish.

The 3.5 score at the top of this entry is probably a spoiler that there is a pretty big caveat to my praise above, and that comes in the form of something seemingly inconsequential to anyone who hasn't played the game: the benches (reload points) are on many occasions placed so far from bosses that it feels borderline spiteful. My issue here isn't that the game is hard; I think the difficulty level of the bosses is perfect and it really makes you earn your victories! But punishing failure with 5 minutes of backtracking so you can try again, only to get your ass kicked in 30 seconds, only to repeat the process ad nauseam, is a really frustrating way to git gud. It doesn't help that a fair few of the pre-boss 'gauntlets' are rather unengaging (the tunnel mazes before facing Nosk, or waiting for the series of elevators leading up to the Soul Warrior + Follies).

And much like the affliction that has spread to even the furthest reaches of Hallownest, this 'little' issue of bench placement has infected many other aspects of the game. The bosses are one of the big highlights of Hollow Knight but the bench placement makes the process of learning how to beat them more frustrating than it needs to be. And even the exploration is not spared - backtracking from bench to boss reduces the wonder of charting a living breathing world to a perfunctory and linear commute through a series of rooms I've seen dozens of times before, its effect on my play experience not unlike a long unskippable cutscene in the way it kills my momentum.

It would be easy for me to sum up my experience as thus: Hollow Knight is an otherwise-nearly-perfect game which was tarnished by one small flaw. And yet it's not that simple either! After completing the game and watching the end credits, I found myself experiencing not relief (as I usually do on finishing long games I'm ambivalent on) but profound melancholy. I watched excerpts of speedruns. I watched some videos on the the lore. I reloaded my save and tried some of the challenges that I previously decided were not worth my time cough White Palace cough. Tried and failed, but still. It's hard for me to leave it behind and move onto the next game - there's something alluring about the ruined world of Hallownest and I feel it will occupy my mind for some time.

Because it's there.

(101% completion, standard ending)

This truly had the makings of a great game, and in some regards, it does shine. Unfortunately, this needed more time in the oven, as it didn't live up to the expectations of its predecessors.

This is still a fun game; the synthesis and monster fusion mechanics are the best they have ever been, the world is vibrant and interesting, and the combat is strategic and calculated. The biggest downside to this is the story and characterization. Not that I was expecting a glorious tale, however, Dragon Quest has a reputation for light-hearted yet deep stories of heroes and monsters in a fantastical world. On top of that, this was to be a retelling of an older title story, mainly Dragon Quest 4's story but told through the lens of one of the villains, Psaro.

What we get instead is what amounts to a fetch quest in segmented areas that don't add any nuance to the original plot. Psaro and his team just tend to change their minds about things on a whim, and very little is dedicated to certain plot points or character moments. It truly feels like going from one plot beat to the next.

It was extremely disappointing that the story was as bad as it was because otherwise, this game does play quite well. Which makes it even more unfortunate that this game has almost no post-game content to offer. There is 1 new area to explore and a couple of super bosses to face, but that amounted to ~3 hours more of gameplay. Dragon Quest is known for its sprawling post-game, so to barely have any is extremely shocking.

I can recommend this game to people who like the Monster Taming genre. By all accounts, it is better than most of the Switch Pokemon games in many ways. However, as its own game and by the standards of games within this series, it should be so much more. If it goes on sale, definitely check it out at least, but don't expect Dragon Quest 11.

This is a true story.

I was about 7-years-old when Donkey Kong Country came out. It looked insane, and more than any other game for the system, it was the one that left me the most jealous of SNES kids. I needed to play it, but the only one I knew who had a copy was a boy on my block who I didn't get along with. I tried to suck up to him, but he knew I had a Genesis. He saw through my deception.

One day while riding my bike, I saw him run out of his garage to go over to a friend's house. With the garage door still open, I saw a golden opportunity... And so I snuck into his home and made my way to his bedroom, popped in Donkey Kong Country, and started playing. From the hallway, I could hear his mother approach, asking him a question that I cannot recall, clearly assuming her kid decided to stay indoors. As she turned the corner and peered into his room, she saw me on his bed playing the Super Nintendo. I'll never forget how loud she screamed as she chased me around his house and out into the street.

Just me doin' a little B&E because I love Donkey Kong Country so much.

You ever played a game that unapologetically reflects the person who created it? That's The Wonderful 101 for you.

The Wonderful 101 is like if Hideki Kamiya gifted himself a birthday present, and for that reason, it's why I feel this game was naturally going to sway a lot of people off from it. I mean really, how do you market this kind of game? It's like a big melting pot of action game ideas from Kamiya work fit straight into a game about controlling a crowd of superheroes you collect to fight giant aliens or mechs. Casually looking at gameplay of it, you'd think it was just a Nintendo-published Pikmin clone but with more sensory overload.

Now imagine actually booting up the game and playing it for yourself. My first hour of this game was a nightmare of fiddling with controls and testing buttons while the game assaulted me with neon HUD elements and tutorial prompts, as the game also is presenting you new gameplay ideas such as new characters with their own weapons you got to draw, and not even 10 minutes in you start unlocking new moves for them and leveling up your health or your battery gauge that's used to determine how much you can use the Wonder-Liner. Despite how much tutorialization it throws at the player, the game doesn't give you the dodge or block at the start of the game which means you have to buy these very important moves from the shop. Granted these are cheap to buy, but it's also baffling they didn't just give you these from the start. Kamiya and his team shove a lot of stuff at the player from the start with barely any breathing room to really take it all in, so I can't exactly say TW101 has a very graceful start to its premise.

But man, I was so wrong lol.

It didn't take long for the game's combat to really click with me once all the tutorial prompts got out of the way. I was surprised to see how many elements Kamiya took from his old games and managed to make it work as well as it does. You got the juggling combo system from DMC and Bayonetta, Ukemi from Viewtiful Joe, Witch Time from Bayonetta, and most notably, the drawing system from Okami but transformed into the main gimmick of this game.

Rather than a traditional weapon switching system, TW101 asks the player to draw the weapon (preferably on the analog stick) to get the desired weapon. The bigger they draw the shape, the bigger their weapon will be, which will be slower but deal more damage, compared to a smaller one that will be faster but deal less damage, but also take up less battery gauge... you see the depth here offered already by this system? The biggest skill mastery is not only learning to draw these shapes (which the game is very intelligent at knowing since they are all distinct from one another) but you also have to know which weapon is useful for each situation, as some enemies will have certain strategies that are more effective for each weapon. But then you learn how to open up enemies with each weapon, and you learn that you can use your team, or Wonder Green's gun, to stun the enemy and then put them in a juggle state.

Juggling is really when the game turned into something special for me because pulling out certain weapons to keep the opponent in the air for a long time is when the drawing system becomes outright impressive. You never feel like you are going to do the same combo in this game. They are creative spectacles of skill mastery because of the flexibility offered by the game's freeform weapon drawing system. Masters of the game's drawing system can outright demolish a giant mech with their 100 man team, and it's probably the most stylish combo system I've ever seen. Not only for the fact a team of superheroes comboing an alien dragon mech is fucking rad, but it also asks more from the player while doing so, creating a combat system that's all-around more rewarding to master.

All the little niceties the game throws to the player too also make TW101 a very welcoming experience. As mentioned before, a lot of Kamiya mechanics from his older games return here, but there's also a lot more. You have very tightly designed enemy encounters that Kamiya is known for, along with gameplay systems Kamiya has explained he likes that return, with surprisingly good and fair boss fights all guided by probably the funniest video game I've ever played. I really vibed with what Kamiya was putting on offer here. The game oozes with passion all the way through and the more I played of it, the more and more I really appreciate every bit of it. It just kept getting better and better. Even the climax of the game was like 12 endings on top of each other. It's like if Kamiya took all of his favorite toys and smashed them together, which really highlights the toy-box like wonderment the game offers here.

My main critique though is because this is a Kamiya passion project, it also features probably my least favorite Kamiya trope often and that is introducing new gameplay elements from old arcade games. There's a punch-out mini-game, an isometric 3D shooter, some side-scrolling space shooters, and of course, the fucking space harrier level Kamiya just loves to put in. None of these are poorly designed mind you, but it wrestles time away from the main combat I ended up craving the most from TW101, and I really hope Kamiya's next project isn't as egregious with these as this game featured.

But despite that, going into TW101 was a very pleasant experience, especially given that I was already a fair fan of Kamiya's old projects. But this is elevated to a whole new level. Kamiya sought out creating a game that he wanted to play the most, and there aren't many creators out there that have the balls to do that. Clover Studio, the studio he worked at before Platnium Games, was a studio designed to create wild and new ideas, but none of those games ever found their audience outside of Okami, causing their eventual shut down. The Wonderful 101 is kind of like a Clover Studio game. A very ambitious action game designed solely to introduce a brand new experience unlike anything else. It wasn't designed for everyone in mind, but only for those who would appreciate these mechanics in mind... like a Kamiya fan. Maybe that's all it needed to be in the end. As for me, I say you should stick with it. It's pretty wonderful! ba dum tiss

The game is pretty good already, it has some REALLY big problems such as the item management. But I think what really makes the game is all the charm, dialogue, the stupid shit added for no reason but for laughs, and the fact it influenced so many things is just mind-blowing. The fact all this came from a game released in 1994 is crazy. Nowadays there are definitely better games with better gameplay and story, but the influence it had on so many pieces of media just cannot be ignored. I think that’s what truly makes this game an experience.

Gyms entirely replaced by bad boss fights that consist of tossing pouches until the enemy gives up? Fine.
Super shallow plot (even for Pokemon standards) with no obvious antagonist? Fine.
Not a single 6v6 battle? Fine.
Around 10 or less forced trainer battles in total? Fine.
Forcing you to throw balls at bidoof for hours just to level up to progress? Fine.
Bad battle system that's still slightly confusing to me at the very end? Fine.
Mostly just remixed music from D/P? Fine.
Pokemon still using their cries from the GBA? Fine.
Mind numbingly easy battles? Fine.
Ugliest first party nintendo graphics in a long time? Fine.
There is just one issue for me.
Where the hell is piplup

i came into this for the first time after 9 years thinking "man this's a solid 8/10!" i left it thinking "why did i ever think this was particularly great, let alone better than pikmin 1?"

this run was spurred in part by a conversation i had with someone else in the comments on this site, and in part because i really wanted to get to pikmin 3 but didn't wanna skip an entry. now i wish i had just skipped it and kept the happier memories from when i played it as a kid.

the first part of the game is pretty alright, just being a lesser pikmin 1 but still being solid because of what it's based on. the caves in the early to midgame are tolerable, too, since they're short and quick. it also helps give the game a little more direction, as the lack of stakes and the fairly weak premise give the player little motivation on their own.

i'll take a quick detour to go over caves. i think plenty of people have probably said this before, but the cave design often discourages multitasking and come across as lazy due to them being mostly created through rng. you're given two captains at once - perfect for multitasking! - but in any given cave there are often traps and enemies everywhere that mean you can't leave your captains anywhere but back at the ship whenever you want to "multitask". otherwise, you risk losing half of your platoon. it's just not a great time.

anyway, i'd say the game peaks in quality around the perplexing pool. the overworld is challenging but not ridiculous, and the caves are some of the better ones in the game.

however, it's when you finally relieve yourself of debt that the game takes a nosedive in quality and enjoyability. not only is the motivation for your collectathon dashed in a single cutscene, but you're now given an unnecessarily enemy-filled map with the worst caves in the game. if you don't already know which cave louie was in, you'll have to go through the absolute worst caves in the game for a process of elimination. long, boring, and full of unbalanced enemies or traps, these things were the bane of my run and cut my sessions short very quickly.

this would all be easily forgiven if the game allowed the collectathon to become optional after the first part of its runtime. however, to get the ending you need to get every single item from every single cave and overworld map. not only is this painstaking, but it also takes away from the open-ended nature the game seemed to take in its attempts to expand upon the first one. you can't just pick and choose high-value items to pay off your debt and then move onto the louie rescue. with pikmin 2 being significantly longer than 1, this becomes a lot more painful for casual players who wouldn't normally be completionists. no, 100% is an inevitability in pikmin 2, and it sucks.

i have a fair bit more to say about this game but i'm not in the mood to make another neo twewy tier review on it. the general story, atmosphere, stakes, and premise of this game are incredibly weak without even having to compare to pikmin 1, and as a sequel it does next to nothing to justify itself. its positives are almost entirely based on the fact that it's a mechanically improved version of pikmin 1 with reused maps.

i think this rating is pretty fair for the experience i had as well as for what i described in the above block. the game was pretty good for the first part and turned shitty in the second, had a solid base and was certainly functional. i didn't think it was good, but i don't think that it was bad or straight up unlikeable. i'd guess that people who think "more content = better" would get a lot out of this game, as would people who prefer saccharine nintendo comedy and wit to more hands-off atmospheric entries. it's definitely not a game for me. as a kid i trusted reputations deeply when judging things and thought more content was always good, which makes it pretty unsurprising why i had such a shitty time coming back to this game.

i'm hoping pikmin 3 is gonna be a better time than this one. i'd be sad to find out pikmin 1 could be the only one of the games i really like, as i thought once upon a time that this was a very me-core series. i'd really like to not have to deal with another animal crossing situation, but i guess we'll see.

The NES has a rather negative reputation these days for having a game library that is flooded with games that are either poorly aged by today's standards, lacking in quality, or have a merciless difficulty level. Often they have all three of these attributes. This leaves a manageable amount of games that can be enjoyed by more than just masochists like myself. And one of those games would probably be Kirby's Adventure, which I would call the most modern game on the NES. Conveniences like an auto-save function, unlimited continues and multiple checkpoints, are things that shouldn't have been a given until the N64 era, and yet are offered by Kirby's Adventure. It's kind of amazing that this game appeared on the same console as Super Mario Bros. 1-3. Kirby also scratches the next generation graphically. Several times I wondered if this game wouldn't find a more fitting home on the SNES.
After all, Kirby's Adventure still has to contend with the typical limitations of the NES. Be it sprite flickering, massive slowdowns when there are more than three enemies on the screen, etc.,
However, none of this detracts from the enjoyable gameplay I felt with this game. Some call this game Kirby's true first incarnation, and not without reason. After all, it was the first Kirby game with the copy ability.
By not stretching out its playtime with unfair mechanics like countless other NES games, Kirby's Adventure keeps its length very short by modern standards. Just under 2 hours and you've seen everything the game has to offer, including the 100% to reach, which unlocks the mini-games and a hard mode, which however only limits lives and robs the performant save function.
If you're curious about old NES classics, but don't want to be immediately slain by the aforementioned problems of that era should start with Kirby's Adventure.