I know a lot of people really despise this game, and honestly I can sorta see where they are coming from. but for the first game with the Princess as the main character.... it's not that bad.
It's a decent enough title created by the same creators of Starfy (aka THE GIGACHAD), and it's kinda surprising that it got released slightly before the resurgance of 2D Super Mario Bros games. But even without taking New SUper Mario Bros into consideration, Super Princess Peach does its own unique thing.

The Princess is fun to control as a 2D platform hero, and her unique mechanic that combines 4 distinct powers (actually 3, I dunno what's the logic about the green one) makes for some cool level gimmicks and interactions. Nothing is really well expanded and used at the strongest potential, but for what it is it's fine.

I know most people dislike the use of EMOTIONS to showcase the princess power, and I can see where these complains come from.... but also I kinda disagree with those statements since these powers are not just relegated to the princess: enemies of past titles are back afflicted by these emotions, and makes for some fun twist to all of them: you get Koopas that sings while walkings, goombas that cry and zooms into your face, and boos that are so pissed that they work the opposite as opposite boos...... also REX from mario world is an enemy, I love Rex. Overall all of thiese twists and recreations of past enemies and bosses brings for me a lot of charm to the title, thanks to the cozy vibes, great music and adorable artstyle and sprite works.

The addition of the differen forms for the parasols and a kinda decent collection of minigames (except the pre-boss ones) offer a bunch of variety that is always appreciated (even though the implementation of forced microphones to move around can result into some annoying phases).

The game overall is totally fine...... until you reach the final level and find out that "Yeah, remember those toad boxes that you imagined being optional to complete the story? NONO GO BACK, free ALL the toads only to get a chance against Bowser". That is one of the worst decisions you can do for a game, forcing an almost platinum completion only to have a chance against the final boss.
That alone drops the quality of the title immensely, since it forces you to replay over half of the pasts levels if you were not careful, dragging a small innocent title for way too long... not to mention that more unlockables shows up in each level after the credits, so you technically gotta come back a third time if you really wanna 100% it

Aside from that, this is not a horrible title: it works, it's fun and Peach I am sure had a good time.
Also this game teach me that if my mother laughs a lot, maybe a "magical sceptre" is hidden somewhere in my house..... thanks guys, I really needed that info when I was 10....

In retrospect, it seems that during the mid-late 1980s developers weren't sure what video game sequels were supposed to be. Many maligned NES/Famicom sequels ignored what made their predecessor successful in favor of trying something completely different. Super Mario Bros. 2, Zelda II, and Castlevania II all come to mind, but perhaps the worst of the bunch might actually be the infamous Final Fantasy II.

When the game starts, instead of creating a custom party of any class like in FF1, the characters are all pre-set with only the name able to be changed. Hironobu Sakaguchi always wanted to create a great, epic story in the Final Fantasy series, in this was his first real attempt at that. Unfortunately this ambition proved to be too great for the primitive hardware of the time. The story is nothing special of course, there's a "password system" involving learning keywords from NPCs, then asking other NPCs about them to learn new information. This is a cool idea, but in practice boils down to the player asking anyone important everything they can to finally progress the game forward.

The most common complaint with FF2 is the levelling system, as opposed to traditionally levelling up like in FF1 (or damn near any other RPG for that matter), the playable characters level all of their stats individually through repeated use. Use bows, the bow stat increases and eventually levels up, it makes sense. This is how skill progression works in later games like The Elder Scrolls series, and it works there, but in FF2 its slow as molasses, progression is tedious and incremental, with improvements not particularly noticeable. Magic is the worst offender, with every spell having to be levelled up individually. This results in a single spell having to be furiously spammed to level up even once, and many of these spells are terrible and buggy in the original version, to make the process feel even more futile.

The player is given freedom to make the characters excel at whatever weapon type or magic they want, not that any of these really stand out from each other. The fourth party slot is different characters constantly swapping out with each other for plot reasons, and levelling these character's stats feels even less rewarding since they all inevitably leave before too long. And too long it is, as random encounter rates in this game are painfully high, think walking through a cave in Pokémon and getting spammed by Zubat but worse. Dungeon design exacerbates this problem, overusing the gimmick of having 4+ doors next to each other, with only one door leading to the correct path forward. Entering the wrong door teleports the party right into the middle of a room where the random encounter rates are ramped up even higher, sometimes only taking one step causes another battle to start.

I wish I could actually tell you any character traits of Firion, the main character, but I can't. Maria wants to find her brother, Guy speak beaver, that's about it. The main villain is mildly interesting but we don't get to see him until about 75% of the way through the game, and it takes a real masochist to not quit ages before that point.

The original version of FF2 is probably a 0.5 star experience, but I want to show a bit of lenience since the developers genuinely tried to be ambitious here, it just failed. FF2 is just one of many lesser video game sequels of this era, and I respect a swing and a miss in the RPG genre's infancy more than I would a carbon-copy sequel that barely changes anything. If for some reason you absolutely must play this game, then once again the pixel remaster is the way to go. Turning off random encounters at will makes the experience so much less painful.

1.0/5.0

Oh great, I’m reviewing Final Fantasy. A game that has been talked about for decades. While I do sometimes talk about popular games, it’s stuff like this I’m inexperienced with that makes me feel I shouldn’t really be one talking about the subject. I want to someday talk about a lot of the entries in this series. Besides the spinoff Seiken Densetsu, I’ve never beaten a Final Fantasy game. After all of these years I’ve finally done it and here is my story…

It all started with that blue screen that gives a small amount of story with a nice song to accompany it. I guess to start weirdly would be the music as I wanna get upfront and say the OST as a whole is amazing for the Famicom. It was composed by Nobuo Uematsu and it’s some amazing stuff, probably some of the best of the 1987 catalog of the Famicom. Once you start a new save I got to pick my party. If you’re wondering who I chose and will probably determine if you’ll keep reading or not. I picked a Fighter, Red Mage, White Mage, and Black Mage. Really wish the letter limit wasn’t four letters so I just ended up using the closest canon names they had. So began the journey of Zest, Puff, Floe, and Teol!

Surprisingly it starts off pretty basic, saving a Princess from a guy named Garland. First I had to get ready and it can feel pretty daunting for me as I’m not really told what’s helpful for my team. Even weirder is you have to buy magic and not get it from level ups so it’s off to grind. Battles seem pretty simple but wow you can fight a lot of them at once, it feels like it can be daunting at times but with enough skill, It’s not too bad. The one nice thing about having mages is I can rely on both offensive and defensive magic. Though this weird spell charges mechanic is something I’m not a fan of and I’ll go over why later.

The first dungeon is short and you can’t even get every treasure in here at first and even the first boss Garland is a joke. So I beat him and save the Princess but obviously that’s just the beginning. A new bridge is constructed and when you cross it, one of the best things happens in the game. You’re given a bit of text as the title of the game and credits are shown, really giving me the feeling of “Yes, I feel so ready to save the day!”

Now I’m off doing things following the plot, going into dungeons, and even getting multiple vehicles to ride in. You get one pretty early which is the ship which is pretty cool. The world isn’t too big but it still feels like a big world especially once you get more into it. Then I eventually found what would be the first main dungeon that wasn’t a floor only dungeon and wow I wasn’t having the most fun. I kept having to leave the place to heal and I began to realize having spell charges really limits what I can do in fights. Though later on you’ll learn Cottages can heal spell charges which is nice. Since I wanted to preserve spells for bosses, I ended up just running away most of the time which isn’t the most fun thing to do in an RPG. It also doesn’t help that the Black and White mages are as frail as a piece of glass. It can be a bit frustrating at times.

Still going through the world, there’s some cool things here and there and beating bosses with relative ease, even ones like the Kraken. I gotta praise the design of monsters too, they really look nice and there’s a nice variety of them and while there are recolors, it’s understandable. The art for stuff like the box is also legendarily great as well and they are unforgettable. Even the player sprites are good looking too. The world also looks pretty nice too and I like how some parts like the Town of Melmond show the decay of the Earth thanks to one of the Chaos Four. I got a little sidetrack there, my bad.

The more I went through the game, I did start to really appreciate all of the magic I could use and even grinding wasn’t too awful as I didn’t do too much of it even for getting Gil. There’s also a cool airship you can ride late into the game and it’s so fast and fun but landing with it can suck sometimes. You even get to upgrade your characters with brand new sprites and abilities and it feels so good to see this happen! There are still some issues that pissed me off. The worst thing in the game has to be the poison status. It’s not even poison being annoying but it screws with your team placement, I hate rearranging it every single time! This is also one of those early RPGs where you can miss if you direct a character to hit an enemy that dies to someone else which can lead to strategy and thought but can be annoying when you feel it’s too RNG at times who dies at what. I wish it was easier to view stats for weapons and armor as it ends up being easier to use a guide for comparisons. I also struggled with inventory management and ended up throwing a lot of weapons and armor away. The game is also known for being buggy but I didn’t really have any issue with this regard.

By the time I got to the end of the game, I was ready but nervous. I was at level 34 and ended at 35. This dungeon isn’t too long but enemies can be dangerous so more running but you have to rematch all of the Chaos 4 again and they’re harder. Oh that reminds me, some might wonder did I fight the Warmech? No, I didn’t. Sorry. Oh yeah I forgot that place also took place in space? That’s really cool. This final place also takes place 2,000 years in the past which is something I would have never expected to see in a FF game. Finally I got to the final boss and wow it’s actually that easy first boss from the beginning but now he’s Chaos. This fight is rough and worse of all he can heal all of his health. I thankfully had a lot of buffs on so I was eventually able to defeat him and the game ends with the world saved. It was weird to see the game end on the characters getting amnesia? Like should I not feel happy it didn’t all end well? Maybe I didn’t read it right, oh well the world is saved!

I feel on and off about this game. I want to think I enjoyed it, regardless of the issues. I could have talked about more moments and I know this feels a little too small of a review but I just don’t want to bore people. In the end, I think it’s a good game. I find it such an interesting game for 1987 especially since it could have failed had Dragon Quest III not receive a delay. FF would become one of Square’s biggest IPs. Two sequels would get made on the Famicom and I’ll play through II sometime this year. FFI also got some remakes which first started on the WonderSwan Color. It also has a MSX2 version with a fan translation. Though I’m sure nowadays the Pixel Remaster is the go-to version for people looking to play the game. It was a good start but I’m wondering how the sequel will fare. Guess I’ll have to wait and see. Thanks for reading!

It's Euro Truck Simulator 2 with 70% more freedom.

Most things that could be said about ETS can be said about ATS. It's being continuously updated with more content- we're only up to the Midwest at this point in time- and the older stuff is being brought up to modern standards with reworks. It's not something I play all the time but it is a comfy game to play when I want something low stress to play.

It does a fairly good job at giving states their landmarks, and at least from what I've seen it does a good job at giving every state its own mood and vibe.

It's a fun game but I definitely understand why you wouldn't want to spend full price on it. It goes on sale pretty often so it's worth waiting until then.

Wow, I did not expect to enjoy this as much as I did.

I’ve always been a Nintendo first guy. The most mediocre Nintendo titles are still a league above all other competition. I thought this would just be a serviceable remake of a GBA game from 2 decades ago, but it’s more. It’s a celebration of what makes Nintendo so great in the first place.

My man Reggie said it best; “If It’s not fun, why bother?” Words to live by. Mario Vs. Donkey Kong is just that. It’s fun. It’s fun without being mindless, it’s fun without being overtly challenging, it’s fun without sacrificing the other quality aspects of a first party Nintendo IP.

It eases you into its maze-like environment one baby step at a time. World 1-1, 1-2, 1-3. etc. As most Mario titles do. Getting progressively more challenging as you progress, so it’s not just a time test of how quickly you can run through it.

This soundtrack is just fantastic. World 1-2 hits you with the flutes, 1-3 hits you with the trumpet, just when you think it can’t possibly get better they throw out this relaxing jazz mimicking a detective at work, and it doesn’t stop. World 2 takes the soundtrack of World 1 and shoves it even further down your throat, with a combination of that classic jazz feel in the first world and adding a faster tempo piano and extra drums to make you feel like you need to think faster. My man, my man… they added… the xylophone.

That’s just the first two worlds, what do you think happens in the next 6? The same thing. It’s reminiscent of the Tropical Freeze soundtrack where every level had its own unique sound to express what that level would sound like.

As for functionality, it’s fine. Works how it’s supposed to, plays how it’s supposed to. Mystic Forest sucks though. 8/10.