really great game! I went into it a little worried that trying to cram a whole game of story into one night would make it unfulfilling, but once I got a little ways in it was clear that wasn't the case at all. this game oozes charm so hard and every ounce of it is engaging and exciting. the overall story was great, and it always felt like it was keeping me on my toes - leaving enough head room to draw my own connections while also constantly surprising me, yet never feeling cheap or forced. I got really attached to the main cast as well. the gameplay is also really unique and fun, and the variety of puzzles is outstanding; there are a couple I was less fond of (see: prison. lol) but I think all those really needed was an undo button or something since it was just the constant re-doing puzzle setups to get back to a point to try something different that was a bit of a pain. but that's barely a stain on this wonderful experience - would love to see more games like this!

fewer terrible puzzles than the first game so that's nice! still too many sliding puzzles and the fuckin endless peg solitaire and chess shit can die forever.

also somehow the plot twist of this game is even harder to believe than the first game?? the layton universe really just does whatever it wants and rolls with it lol

still a fun game. also still pretty rough around the edges

as usual, another great ys game! i enjoyed it a lot, although it still is nowhere close to ys 8 (but really i doubt falcom will ever make a better ys game than 8, it set the bar so damn high).
story was great all the way through, basically no complaints there. gameplay was also great and engaging, though while I liked the new combat I don't think it was as fun as the previous combat system. It also felt like half the mechanics weren't explained at all so it took until pretty late in the game for me to fully grasp how everything worked. i also actually kinda liked the ship combat in the end which i wasn't expecting as i really didn't like it at first - the upgrades def made it much more enjoyable. really my biggest gripe with this game though is the simple lack of variety - and this was a problem with 9 to an extent as well - most of the islands blended together and only a small handful have any real identity. in ys 8 discovering a new area was always exciting, whereas discovering a new island in 10 was moreso just hoping for something new. the enemy variety definitely exacerbates the issue as well; it really feels like there are only 20 unique enemies in the game and so when most of the islands are not only visually similar but littered with a majority of the same enemies or basic reskins of them, it becomes really hard for them to stand out. that all said though, it was all still a lot of fun to play and explore, and i still came out of it having had a fantastic experience. hoping whatever's next is even greater! 9/10

really want to like this more than eo1u but the bosses really fuck me up man. i love the labyrinth again and the story characters are solid and the party dynamic is great and the general game mechanics are still great but nearly every single boss in this game is a godforsaken trial and error disaster that made me dread every new boss fight instead of looking forward to what was to come. trial and error! in a game series where failure is designed to be a punishment! and for most bosses, the amount of trial and error you'd have to suffer through without consulting a guide is completely unforgivable. I used the wiki extensively because there is frankly no way I would have kept my sanity otherwise, and nobody should have to play this game without it. that all said, i still enjoyed the game a lot as a whole because thankfully there aren't that many bosses and many of them are technically optional. fuck ur-child 7.8/10

I loved this game so much more than I expected to. It's relatively short, and the gameplay is fairly basic outside the novel part, but I'm perfectly fine with treating this as a regular VN with a few extra sprinkles. I loved pretty much every character from the start, and aside from the very first death each one really felt like a loss to me. The dialogue oozes with charm, and the development of the MC alongside best girl was really enticing, making it really hard to put this down sometimes. And, even though it all happened pretty quickly, the messaging throughout the final reveal definitely resonates. I would love to see a sequel that puts more emphasis on the gameplay, since I think there's plenty of potential there.. and I just want more of this world, honestly. 9.5/10

honestlyyyyy this game is way better than people seem to give it credit for, it's probably now my second favorite of the main series games (after AA3 of course). i thought going in that i was going to dislike the change in environment but i really ended up liking khura'in and the change of pace it provided after the slog that was dual destinies, and I didn't dislike any of the cases (though case 2 was by far the weakest). honestly my only big problem with this game is that it still suffers a bit of the oversaturation syndrome that DD did - we have all of phoenix, apollo, and athena's gimmicks at play and it feels like none of them really get to shine (it's kind of wild to still be getting mechanic tutorials in the second-to-last case...). that being said, story-wise, i loved everything that happened with those three. phoenix felt more like phoenix again, especially toward the end of the game. athena was more of a side role but the whole 4th case made her inclusion worthwhile. and it goes without saying that apollo's arc conclusion was fantastic. this just hit all the notes that DD completely missed the mark on for me, and maybe comparing this to DD directly is biasing my thoughts on it, but i don't care, i really enjoyed myself and i'm very glad to have finished off the main series (as it is currently, anyway) on a high note. 9.5/10

absolutely incredible in every way. even as short as it is, the story it tells is enthralling and tear-wrenching and it takes no time at all to become completely entrenched in the world. the music is phenomenally beautiful and the art is out-of-this-world fantastic. i love that the "jrpg" gameplay is a story-driving element in itself, and that it doesn't need to be super challenging to be as effective as it is, especially with the constant shifts in the ways the battles play out; every individual battle feels special, and makes the amount of heart and soul that went into this game abundantly clear. i firmly believe that everybody should play this game. 10/10

came into this having only played mystery journey so this was a pleasant improvement lol. the story is simple but effective and the small world has so much charm. the puzzles are also generally decent, although the slide puzzles are all terrible and there was maybe a tad too much repetition more generally. i would also say the pacing is kinda weird, especially when all the buildup resolves to layton just exposition-ing the whole plot at the end instead of like getting you to piece things together yourself, but maybe i'm just too ace attorney brained

anyway, still a very solid 7/10 i think

honestly a lot more fun than i expected it to be. i still have problems though

biggest issue for me is that everything is... well, too big. legends arceus did "open world" really well - each area felt distinct and open with plenty to explore, without being overwhelming. paldea on the other hand just feels massive and unwieldy, with way too much open space and next to no notable landmarks. the cities fall victim to this too; every single time i walked into one i felt immediately lost and there wasn't enough in each city to motivate learning the layout - i think this is also a fault of the giant open world, in that there isn't much reason to go to the cities except for the gym and maybe to buy new clothes; they don't feel at all like part of the progression, which really sucks compared to previous pokemon games. it doesn't feel like there are grounded objectives until the very endgame, and it doesn't help that there isn't any level scaling. i really really think if they want to go the open world route again for gen 10 that they should take more notes from legends arceus. area zero is by FAR the best area of this game and a big part of that is how self-contained it is

i also think the team star "raids" are really awful. i get that they wanted to force you to use the auto battle system but man its literally just "spam the R button for the next 2 minutes". on the other hand, the tera raids are a big improvement from the dynamax raids in swsh. still though, the shield is annoying and the fact that they can wipe stat changes and even uncharge the tera orb is total BS and makes the high level raids a lot less fun.

it's also really annoying that trading is still required in any way to complete the pokedex. like, they're already keeping the size of the pokedex pretty small to make it more accessible to fully complete, so why keep the biggest and dumbest blockade of all? either give each version its own pokedex with version exclusives, or better yet, stop making two fucking versions, the concept is way past its prime and we don't need it anymore!!!!!

and obviously performance issues. i actually didn't run into any major glitches (the worst i really saw was pokemon spawned inside a wall a couple times, and a couple really wonky hitboxes), but the fps is a whole other story. everything feels so, so sluggish, either because of the framerate or just because things take forever to load sometimes. the camera also controls really badly

a couple nice things to end off:
- the characters and their stories are great! while the main plot is whatever, arven and nemona and penny are all great. i liked all the different personalities at the academy itself too, especially clavell - it is really really nice to see an old man character in a position of power who is not just a good guy but also just really awesome - he's one of the best characters in the whole game
- the music is so, so good! i also was really impressed by how much effort was put into the transitions, whether going seamlessly from field to battle music or between gym leader phases or from battle to fanfare, it always felt shockingly natural, and the motif use is super super well done in this game overall
- it was still generally a very fun game, even with all its issues! i just wish game freak would get their shit together, really

i wanted to like this game but it just kept throwing shit in my face lol. some of the stages are pretty fun, others a bit bland, but pretty much every single boss is an utterly unintuitive and miserable disaster of game design, such that even the levels i thought were fun were left with a sour taste. of course this is also true of many megaman games, but i don't recall them being quite as bad as this. i gave up at the boss of iris stage 2; at that point i completely lost any and all desire to continue playing. the iris stages (well, 1 and 2, at least) are the most obnoxious, awful stages in the game too, with garbage bosses as the stupid, rotten cherry on top. if not for the handful of stages i did genuinely have fun with i would probably leave this at a 1/10. even with that factored in though, a 3/10 is more than generous

So, so glad we finally got this game in the west, and the remaster quality is shockingly good. Aside from quite a bit of frame dropping, I was very impressed, especially by the music, which did an incredible job of making a soundtrack I already loved even better. As for the game itself - every chapter is enjoyable in its own way, and I love how much variety and creativity is displayed between them. Distant Future and Near Future were definitely my favorites of the main 6 chapters story-wise, but they were all solid. The battle system is quite fun, though I would have liked the attack descriptions to be a bit more detailed RE actual attack power, what counts as physical vs special, etc.. I also think it would have been nice to have proper maps for each area, instead of just an empty radar with some dots. My only other real complaint is that I just wish the shorter chapters were a little bit beefier; Present Day had almost no story, for example, and I wish that character had more chance to develop.

But yeah, overall - really enjoyed this game. No idea what the chances of a sequel or spiritual successor are, but I would check them out immediately. 9/10