INTRODUCTION
Plants Vs Zombies was in many ways a game that can only come out in 2008. Any earlier and it’d likely just be another dime a dozen flash game on some now defunct website you gotta find mirrored on www.definitelynotgonnagiveyouavirussoenjoythisfungame.com. Any later and it’s a free to play game littered with one dimensional skitterbox design shilled by B-tier YouTubers desperately convincing themselves Manscaped ad revenue and their obsession with Brie Larson will make their degree in digital media studies worth it. No, Plants Vs Zombies had to come out the same year as Julia & Julia to be what it is.

WE’RE COMING!
The game essence is that of a rather simple tower defense game with a surprising amount of depth under the surface. You have 5 lanes of grass that are entryways to your home (base) and you have to use your plants (weapons and tools) to defend it from zombies (enemies) while managing your energy to grow plants (sun). This defensive process can take several different forms and require different considerations that need to be mixed and matched depending on your circumstances. In short, Every plant type in your garden composition is a lever you must pull at the precise time. Is the zombie horde coming at your base composed of a bunch of digging zombies? Better use the David Cronenberg pea plant that shoots backwards in your garden composition . Are the zombies in the opposing army tanky? Gonna need to have some instant kill plants like the cherry bomb or chili pepper on hand. Fog in the area inhibiting your strategic view? Blow it away with the clover plant. I could go on and on but surely you see my point by now. The game has a shitload of flexibility with room for player expression without overwhelming its core demographic of casual players. One of my favorite anecdotes about this actually comes from my middle school years where I used to exchange tips with a teacher up the hall from my language arts class that hadn’t touched a controller since the NES. It bears mentioning this is a conversation that probably wouldn’t have been possible without the intuitive touch controls of the IOS releases. These controls made the game inviting to less experienced players while also making the gameplay ceiling higher by allowing for quicker on the fly reactions. Thus allowing the dev team to throw complex zombie configurations like the Zomboss fight and endless levels at the player by the late game regardless of skill level.

WE’RE GOING BOWLING!
The mingames of Plants Vs Zombies are pretty emblematic of a strength of this dev team to build a simple easy to understand formula and subvert it in basically any way they can imagine to give the player a shitload of varied gameplay to experience when going for 100% completion(even pulling from other Popcap titles at times for inspiration). From the more reflex focused walnut bowling to testing the players improvisation skills with the random convey belt levels George Fan’s team did an excellent job ringing out every angle they could out of this premise to the point this almost feels like the video game equivalent of lean gimmick set piece action movies like “Speed”, “Crank”, and “Hardcore Henry”.

I use “gimmick” purely as a term of endearment to the style of craftsmanship as I think it has its place.

ZOMBIES ON YOUR LAWN
Popcap games tend to be very “function over form” games in terms of presentation. This is to say they prioritize communicating a gameplay concept to the player or a decent frame rate performance over visual flourishes. This is a long way of saying the game’s enemy designs do an excellent job of articulating how they work to a new player. As a case study I’ll highlight the pole vault zombie. In 2008 there was a summer olympics games so the idea of pole vaulting would’ve naturally been in the public zeitgeist even if someone wasn’t a sports fanatic. Thus, when a player is first exposed to this enemy they are likely to infer the enemies ability to skip a tile and plan accordingly with plant formations. Sound design follows a similar train of thought with zombies sounds being used to signal a wave is coming soon so the player has a few seconds to rebuild their plant flanks or collect any sun or cash laying around the garden.

CONCLUSION
Plants vs Zombies is probably one of the best smartphone centric games ever released due to its intuitive controls and kirbyism like design philosophy. While I think the “free” to play aspects of the smartphone side of the industry often incorrectly paint deeper experiences as an impossibility for the sector. I believe this game shows that it is largely more a consequence of late stage capitalism optimizing everything into a grindset treadmill than an intrinsic quality of the platform.

Consider this post less a "review" than a "first impression" or "time capsule" of sorts of the 0.1.2 PC release of this game. At the time of writing this little spiel this weird mashup of BOTW world traversal, Pokemon Legends: Arceus style creature collecting, and survival/automation games like Factorio or Ark: Survival Evolved has gone viral and lit up the charts like its Woodstock. Is it worth the hype? Well my answer here is complicated and colored by my own (lack of) experience with the survival genre.
THE FIRST ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: EARLY ACCESS
First off I wanna address the reality of this being an early access title. Which is to say there three realities I can't ignore in this write up:
1) The game is in an incomplete state and all the "jank" and design imprecision that comes with that. This is to say several mechanics don't quite "click" as well as I'd like them to. The game's version of creature catching just isn't as satisfying as its Pokemon generation 8 equivalent for example. Often its not really obvious if I have damaged the creatures enough for them to not deflect the ball and I have even had the balls pass through the enemy models at points when engaging in close combat....which is an issue when your opening weapons choices are likely to be a club, repuposing a pick ax or torch for combat, or making a spear AKA close combat weapons. This means the players first exposure to catching is going to be through janky close quarters throws and that even putting aside the long range weapons being put front in center in trailers and such. Its a rough first impression to say the least.

2) The price will likely go up in the future to a full price release. As a $30.00 release? I think this is a good value proposition at that price considering this is effectively a $70.00 modern AAA open world title and the baseline level of polish that entails purchasable at roughly 43% of the total cost. As a full cost game? I think the gameplay loop might be a tad too simplistic for that price point especially when you look at the experiences being offered by many other indie and "AA" devs for less upfront cash.

3) The opening hours of this game can be a bit repetitive currently when you are just building up your wood, stone, blue ore, and yellow ore supplies and building the foundational tools/crafting tables/statues. Lots of walking back and fourth in the starting hillside base since you aren't gonna wanna risk undoing your resource collecting with an ill-advised combat encounter (when playing on default settings). A fact made worse by the very low early game weight limit. Despite my rather negative prose here I actually am of two minds about this setup. On one hand this makes the early game a bit of a slog but on the other it also does a great job of putting you into the shoes of your avatar building out his or her little boom town settlement from literal sticks and stones. This is all to say if this is your first survival game experience you might be in for a rough time if you just wanna jump into the creature collecting aspect but if you stick with it you can be very satisfying to fill out your base and build up a creature army.

THE SECOND ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: THE CREATURE DESIGNS ARE MAYBE PLAGIARIZED
TLDR: Someone on Twitter/X by the name of "Byo" compared the skeletons of the Switch era Pokemon models and several palworld creatures and found them to be eerily similar which may suggest the use of AI as a plagiarism tool given the CEO of PocketPair's very libertarian dudebro persona and pro-AI statements in interviews. To be clear the automation of digital art via AI is something that should be agitated against for several reasons (its a union busting/job killing tool, consolidates more cultural power into the 1%/ruling class, leads to worse art in most cases, etc.) but game development is a multi-disciplinary process. Simply put, is it fair to write off the work of the sound team, game designers, and programmers just because upper management, legal department and the art team screwed up on their ends? This is all to say I can criticize the ethical failings of the game's art team while praising what this game does well and not be contradictory. If anything the fact this team wasn't just a couple hacks doing an Steam asset flip makes the plagiarism accusations more salient and tragic. Had these guys hired a proper art team to their project's scope or hell even just went up to the IP holders of any of these big Pokemon competitors like Namco-Bandai's Digimon or Monster Rancher for the rights to plop in their stock assets and animations into this gameplay system we could be looking at the next big thing on the level of Fortnite or Minecraft. As it currently stands I see this getting blown the fuck out by TPC's lawyers and disappearing by the end of the year. Perhaps resurfacing in a year or two with even uglier looking characters and zero cultural momentum. A tragic fate given the very strong foundations here if the devs could get a chance to polish the early game and catching mechanics.

I am probably among the "easy to please" on the target audience spectrum for this game being a political science major and even I think this is a rather weak showing. Like I won't even make fun of the MS Paint art style much since its a strategy game and frankly I don't play these for the graphics but this really feels like someone took the basic conceit of a character centric strategy game and didn't think through what would be needed to update that crusader kings like premise to a democratic government system outside a very basic common sense application of realism. Like a lot of what you do here is a fine foundation for a prototype of the premise but so much more could be done conceptually. Like interest groups and intra-party poltics (stuff like super delegates or early primary Iowa/South Carolina retail politics endorsements) are such a big impactful thing in US politics for better or for worse and yet the trust statistic feels too simple to model those dynamics. This isn't the only failure though. Like how the hell isn't there a deal making and or black mail aspect of the game? Henry Clay, Mitch McConnell, New York era FDR, and so many other famous politicians in US history have used the levers of machine politics to get what they want and yet you can't really replicate that dynamic in game. Hell why isn't making a party that can cannibalize one of the big 2 and create a realignment/replacment party an option? Plenty of examples of that happening in US history. This just feels too simplistic for what it aims to do. Also for the amount of turns you can just automate in this game I feel like this could have benefited from a skip to significant week option.

Edit: There is a skip option but its rather hidden on the UI so I missed it at time of writing this review.

The camouflage (additional flexibility during stealth sections) and electricity (crowd control in combat) abilities serve as a decent extension on the mechanics of the first game but you can frankly see the pesudo DLC mini sequel budget creep in a lot at points (the Roxxon troops being recolors of silver sable's troops, same map largely, reused mission concepts like Howard's pigeon chases or the plumbing mission, etc.). I'd say this is otherwise fine for what its going for even though I wish the pacing was a bit better. There is a flashback right before the main fight that frankly feels like it should've been the opening of the game and the Prowler's short lived attempted betrayal kinda feels forced in since the Miles/Prowler familial ties are one of the few things differentiating the character from Pete (outside the multiverse shtick) to really stick long term. On related note I do like how they tie the side-mission system, main narrative themes, and ending cutscene together by changing who from Harlem shows up based on what missions you've done. Great subtle way of showing player agency and emphasizing the community protection aspect of the superhero power fantasy I wish more devs did.

Author’s Note: I wrote a decent chunk of this prior to 4’s release.

Introduction:
The year was 2013 and Pikmin was at a bit of a standstill. Only motion control centric re-releases were present on Nintendo’s biggest home system since the NES and it was nowhere to be seen on Nintendo’s lucrative handheld line. Whenever asked about Pikmin in interviews, series creator Shigeru Miyamoto would always give a vague promise of a third game coming “soon”. Pikmin 3 would ultimately release in North America on August 13 of that year (almost a full decade removed from its predecessor) on the failed experimental console known as the Wii U. Flash forward to 2017 the Nintendo Switch is a huge hit and Nintendo has a giant back catalog of Wii U titles that will effectively feel like new releases to the less informed public that just thought the Wii U was some failed controller add-on like the UDraw Tablet. Porting to recoup expensive HD era dev costs and build brand recognition for the more nicher IPs of the Nintendo stable on the cheap is just good business sense. Enter our primary subject for today: Pikmin 3 Deluxe. An expansion on the “hit” Wii U game that adds two additional stories, revamps certain mechanics, and includes all the extra DLC of the Wii U release. Is this a release that trends in the quality direction of Pikmin 1 or 2? Let’s find out!

Before We Begin:
I will assume you have read my Pikmin 1 and Pikmin 2 reviews before reading this review as I go into much of the series core structure in those writings. Also please keep in mind I played both versions of this game for the purpose of getting a feel for how certain mechanics and stylistic choices might have been impacted by the Wii U’s uhh.. “unique” tablet controller setup (Cemu in a two screen side by side setup for base game + Yuzu for Deluxe). I also went into the challenge mode a tiny bit more this time around as it felt high enough in production value to merit the extra effort. I also played through the additional Captain Olimar stories in Deluxe for the purposes of being thorough and to see how the main storyline plays in a more intense “arcadey” setting like the dandori battles coming to Pikmin 4.

Story:
Pikmin 3’s main campaign breaks series tradition by introducing 3 new protagonists instead of series alumni Captain Olimar. These player avatars are ship captain Alph, botanist Brittany, and military general Charlie. They aim to save their planet from malthusian collapse by examining the dangerous PNF - 404 for fruit that can serve as a source of food for their planet Koppai’s growing population. There's a decent goofy adventure here with decent banter between the three protagonists and some okay cutscenes before and after each boss fight but you probably aren’t gonna play this for the story.

Presentation:
This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion but the graphics here are leaving a lot to be desired. Pikmin 3 was the first HD Pikmin game and I feel like in spite of that its Wii prototype roots show. Lots of uncanny valleys in the environment design with low res textures in the first half of the game. I also feel like Formidable Oak reusing the cave sub areas assets for a majority of its runtime after giving you this great looking american southwest desert for outside area is incredibly disappointing. I get they likely used the dark cave aesthetic to gel with the slight genre shift to soft horror game with the Wraith chase sequence but I don’t think it was impressive enough to sterilize the personality and identity of the final area graphically.

Sonically the music and sound design fares much better with the boss theme being different based on the game state changing and the sound effects returning as a form of party management with regard to hazards and enemy attacks (see my Pikmin review for more details). The former has a pretty good explanation by the Youtuber “Scruffy” that’ll link in the end of this review as it goes into this from a musical composition angle much better than I can go into as someone not that versed on composition or music theory. Ultimately like the first game I think the music serves its purpose as a mood setter but isn’t super memorable on its own outside the aforementioned boss music.

Gameplay:
Pikmin 3 is a return to form gameplay wise as the time limit returns albeit in a less harsh form. Everytime you grab a collectable fruit your crew will juice it at the end of day and add to a total supply. Each day uses one unit of juice and running out of supply results in the game’s bad ending. This is a good idea in theory, it gives folks a sense of tension present in the late game of Pikmin 1 while also giving players a catch up mechanic but in practice I feel it comes into conflict with the game’s choice to be more linear and cinematic in its design. Since vast swaths of your time are assumed to be taken up by opening the singular path to each area boss the game pretty much has to leave a decent chunk of each area’s total juice supply out in the open. This leads to the mechanic feeling very tacked on sans one set piece in the game’s midpoint where you lose your juice supply. This is made even worse in a 100% run I have to imagine as the fruits on the linear track to the boss that are rather low effort acquisitions such as the plums underneath the pink flowers in Twilight River likely come off as filler content. Combine this with the further simplification of the combat via automatic lock-on and you have probably the easiest game in the series. In a strategy game where the brunt of the appeal is coming up with novel solutions to problems (in my opinion) I think an overly low difficulty is a problem. I think really two things save this game from being completely mindless: the three captain “go here” system and the robust suite of challenge maps that double down on the time scarcity aspect of the game’s design.


The concept of captains multitasking has received a great glow up from 2. The presence of three remotely controlled captains and the concept of captain throwing means both actual incentives for multitasking as well as vertical level design are added to the game allowing for you to think about your squad compositions on several additional levels. Should I keep a captain at base to ensure quick squad plucking or send them as insurance in case I run into a captain throwing section? How should I divide my Pikmin colors among the two to three squads? Should I keep a squad free for backup if something unexpected comes up or press on for quicker progress? Etcetera etcetera. Add in the intuitiveness of having go here mapped to the tablet touch screen on Wii U (in fact I’d say that change from tablet screen to a pause menu is the biggest downside of Switch over the failed console) and you have a very satisfying set of mechanics. While the aforementioned simplistic campaign design prevents this feature set from reaching its apex, the Olimar side stories and challenge mode map more than make up for this.

In Pikmin 3 Deluxe after learning about Olimar being kidnapped by a creature known as the Plasma Wraith you unlock a prequel story detailing how that scenario came to be. This is further complimented by a post game epilogue about Olimar repairing his ship. Both these stories are effectively “storyfied” challenge mode missions centered on beating a set of goals like growing Pikmin, collecting treasure, killing enemies, escorting a ship part, or reaching a point on the map in a time limit. Every mission is ranked on a bronze to platinum scale just like the typical mission mode segments elsewhere in the game. You also gain access to the two underground Pikmin species from 2 otherwise not accessible during the main game. Going for the platinum in these missions is some of the best time I had in the series up to this point with each segment of the level path needing to be optimized to a high degree for the coveted platinum rank. These three modes were the only part of the game that really kept the flow state you can get into in the original game. It's a shame that I can see less patient folks bouncing off this game before they get to this part given the earliest ones available are at the midpoint of the experience but as someone that unironically defends the slow burn beginning trope a lot of games use (JRPGs mostly) I’m not gonna be phased by the pacing much.

Conclusion:
If Pikmin 1 is the perfect bite sized game and Pikmin 2 a lesser sum of its parts perhaps Pikmin 3 DX can best be described as meeting someone with a prickly personality out in a public space and getting a very superficial vibe on their life only to be surprised when you start to learn more about them after a chat. Lots of depth under the surface if you put in the work.



LINKS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaBJ2C7Am6E

Author's note:
Played on Citra Nightly 1946.

This is probably the worst thing I've reviewed on this account and the first thing I've had to drop since New Pokemon Snap. The touchscreen controls feel awful and the level design is just a bunch of enemies with ether high HP (relative to lack of combat depth) or crazy reaction times and a few very basic puzzles that honestly feel like they'd be boring even for kids playing this in 2017 when you compare it to other touchscreen controlled games targeting that demographic in the late 2010s like Angry Birds, Cut The Rope, and the IOS port of Fortnite. Like I am baffled this made it out of playtesting session let alone shipped as a $40 release at launch. People are probably gonna argue I should have played more but if a game's fundamentals are just so plain and unpleasant it can be hard for a player to shake off this initial disgust (for lack of better term) and in my experience that will usually end up with a game being made a perpetual backlog slot that never gets touched again. I honestly don't even thinks this merits a full review with proper structured writing. Hence this rambly blurb. I hope the dev team grew from this experience and used it as learning experience to grow as artists because having this on your resume has gotta be rough.

Pikmin 2 is one of the worst sequels I’ve played that has received some degree of critical acclaim. For those not versed into the Pikmin series Pikmin 2 for Nintendo Gamecube is a sequel to the hit launch title that set out to address many of the contemporary criticisms of the first game by dramatically overhauling many aspects of the franchise’s overlying systems and presentation. In my view these changes to narrative tone, progression structure, and game feel don’t really coalesce into an overall completely satisfying package.

The story is centered on Captain Olimar and his assistant Louie returning to the Pikmin planet in order to find treasures that can help him pay back his employer’s corporate debt. I usually say with Nintendo reviews the plot is simple but works as a vehicle for the gameplay and to an extent that is the case here but I can’t help but feel as though more could’ve been done. The first game had this unique sense of isolation to it that gave it a fantastic atmosphere and the day system synergized with the ship crash plot to give the game a tense mood. Not saying the more comedic tone of Pikmin 2 wasn’t a valid direction to take the series. Hell, if anything I think the game’s light jab at capitalism with the treasure hoard being IRL product placement in this (implied) apocalyptic planet and President character being this incompetent shortsighted oaf that doesn’t understand the concept of predatory loans is neat. I just wish the game had tied this theme of destructive consumerist capitalism into the gameplay loop more but hey its a mass appeal kids game they were probably never gonna go that far. To me the biggest fault in Pikmin 2’s story isn’t necessarily this shift in tone or even an inability to fully capitalize on its anti-capitalist themes but rather how it fails to use its gameplay in a synergistic way with its narrative. To get into this I will need to address overall game structure and how things have changed since the first game.

Pikmin 2 has four main additions to the franchise formula including Purple & White Pikmin, upgrades in the form of the both consumable spicy/bitter berry sprays & permanent upgrades for your space suit, and an additional captain for multitasking. All these tools are promising on paper but never really come together into a cohesive package of interesting choices for one simple reason: caves.

Caves are basically combat oriented dungeons where Olimar will earn much of the treasure to pay off his debt. This cave system does not gel with any other choice the developers make even on a baseline level. The way the combat in Pikmin 1 was set up (and that is largely carried over here) is you throw or swarm the Pikmin horde in a vague direction towards your opponent and avoid attacks aimed at your captain and Pikmin using a combination of movement and whistling. This has a level of impreciseness to it that meant your Pikmin lost in combat were effectively a resource tax you had to play around in the time limit system to ensure you gathered the 30 ship parts in 30 days. Since time doesn’t run naturally in the caverns and the time limit doesn’t really exist on a macro-scale (in other words there is no alt ending system) sans as a form of leaderboard tracking you effectively end up with very basic combat with little gameplay tension. Losing a Pikmin is less “ NOOOO NOT MY REDS!” and “more ugh time to grind more Pikmin”. Unless you run low on troops this game can devolve into the very tedious pattern of killing a ton of enemies and playing 52 pickups with the treasures left behind. Needless to say this creates a ton of dead air. The developers must have realized this at some point in development as this game has assorted layers of mass Pikmin grave creators like roaming enemies, falling bombs, and various flavors of instant kill attacks to create tension via low Pikmin counts close to boss areas. Some of it a player can counter play (as an example: boulders are usually telegraphed with sound effects and a discolored ground texture even before the drop shadow reveals itself thus giving you plenty of time to whistle Pikmin out of the way) but a lot comes off as artificial difficulty on a first playthrough. A lot of falling bomb rocks only seem to trigger upon trying to pick up a treasure for example. Pretty much the only two of these hazards that felt interesting on a decision making level were the boulder which incentivized playing with a smaller squad to scout out a location before tracking down the loot and the waterwraith, an Aliens: Isolation or Metroid Fusion style instant kill enemy chase sequence tied to a timer which forces you to grab the treasure quickly. These are the few moments in the game that really have any sense of tension. In short, most of these hazards feel less like engaging gameplay challenges and more like a resource threshold you have to clear by grinding Pikmin.

Speaking of grinding Pikmin, doing that for two of the species in this game is a complete pain in the ass that shows the reason a lot of these stylistic choices don’t go together. New to Pikmin 2 are white and purple Pikmin. White Pikmin can dig stuff out of the ground, carry things around quicker, and sacrifice themselves to most enemies for a massive amount of inflicted poison damage while Purple Pikmin are the muscle of the squad that can stun enemies in combat by being thrown and act as strength equivalents to 10 normal Pikmin in the context of the carrying weight mechanic. I do actually like the game play choices they ask of the player in terms of party composition (you have a 100 slots, how many do you want allocated to these just as perishable excess utility Pikmin vs tried and true puzzle solving Pikmin species?). The problem comes from the rarity of these two new species. Since Whites and Purples can only be grown via underground transferring of other species troops via Candypop buds. You end up with a large time sink for dungeon preparation. Want more white Pikmin as prep for those annoying Pileated Snagret boss battles or a poison barrier in the Awakening Wood? Better be ready to take a trip to the Subterranean Complex’s third sub-level with any extra red Pikmin you have several times over. Want 100 Purples for that time sink 1000 carrying weight dumbbell in Wistful Wild? Dear god your poor soul shouldn’t have decided to go for all treasures.

Oh and did I mention that Yellow (due to electric gates, negating some instant kill attacks and the strength of being more able to easily hit various bosses significant more easily with vertical mobility) & Purple Pikmin (stun locking enemies with throw) are overwhelmingly more useful then Red, White, and Blue Pikmin (all of which serve as very basic keys to certain treasures) further exacerbating this design choice to limit Purple growth to caves as it sorta naturally draws a casual players’s eye to this bad pacing for dungeon preparation. Sure players might optimize the fun out of everything (a common retort I see to poorly balanced gameplay systems online) and balance isn’t everything but I feel like it's safe to say that a spammable combat unit you get during the first dungeon trivializing combat is pretty different from say saving great scientists in Civ 5 to exploit that game’s research payout algorithm. Both are pretty gamey and take away player expression but one is much more likely to be noticeable and thus employed by a casual player playing the game for the first time. Maybe if Pikmin 2 didn’t employ cheap design tricks with its falling bomb rock and enemy spam that heavily incentivized unfun, optimal strategies like purple grinding I wouldn’t be making this review but I guess what I am trying to say is that it isn’t just a case of Pikmin 2 being unbalanced it's that the unbalanced aspects are actively brought to the four front via its sloppy dungeon design which in turn is informed by a lack of temporal consequences to Pikmin grinding due to the lack of a day system.

I could go into more detail on other new aspects of Pikmin 2 that reinforce this point with the bitter spray and captain punching upgrades but I’d just be repeating both myself and other folks in the online discourse surrounding this title. Instead I wanna turn my attention to another aspect of the game I think hasn’t gotten as much attention as a gap between the designer's likely intent and the final product: the shoddily implemented multi-tasking system.

In Pikmin 2’s pseudo-midpoint (paying off the debt) you get a mock credits sequence in which Olimar accidentally leaves Louie to fend for himself on the Pikmin planet. In theory this should be a needle scratch moment after the player has gotten attached to Louie as this helpful partner that helped you grow your corporate bank account via the multi-task function. In practice this ends up being a bit of a wet fart of plot point that sorta makes the true ending feel less like a Lethal Weapon like capstone on Olimar and Louie’s unlikely friendship kinda and more just abrupt due to how little you need to use the multi-task function in game. Over the course of my all treasures playthrough of Pikmin 2 I can only think of seven places I was heavily incentivized to use the multitasking feature:

1) The Valley Of Reposes multitasking tutorial.
2)The three berry grinding locations in Awakening Wood, Perplexing Pool, and Wistful Wild.
3) A stone elevator in the yellow onion spawn in
4)The Perplexing Pool’s “Massage Girdle” treasure.
5) A boss known as the Ranging Bloyster that requires constant switching to stun lock him into vulnerability.

Since Louie can theoretically just be chilling at your base or cave floor entrance 90% the game with little repercussions (and generally I’d say sticking to one captain or treating the captains as a universal party is the path of least resistance most of the time) you as a player never really develop an affinity for the second in command thus you end up with a kinda ineffective climax with the only interesting stuff being the implication that Louie might’ve been controlling the final boss to cover up his role in the company going into debt. The game doesn't really do much with this so I don't really have much to add to that other than it sorta being emblematic of Pikmin 2 as a whole of a bunch of good ideas that never really come together in the end.

Pikmin 2 isn’t all bad. There is some nice quality of life changes with Pikmin party management, some of the writing in the treasure horde is generally pretty funny, the arcadey challenge mode is a huge step up from the first game but it just didn’t take into account how much of the franchises appeal and structure of its core mechanics resided in its use of time scarcity to create tension.

--
ORIGINAL GGAPP.IO review:
Played on:
Gamecube
A classic that is emblematic of the experimentalism of the PS2/GameCube/X-Box era of the medium. The time limit system and Olimar's journal entries were an excellent use of dramatic tension to keep the player engaged in the story and themes of the game.
--

New Review:
(Author's note: This play-through was of the normal ending with 29/30 ships obtained. Any commentary on the challenge mode predates this play-through and stems more from owning the game for years. This run was done on Dolphin emulator version 5.0 - 18498 on native hardware graphical settings. Additionally I will note that nothing strange really happened that would notably change the experience from original hardware.)

Introduction
Pikmin 4 is coming out later this year and in anticipation I would like to look back on the three previous games with a clearer head and more depth compared to that frankly poorly written one sentence review from GGapp.io. For those unaware Pikmin is a series of real time strategy games by Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto inspired by his love of gardening. The series started with duology on the Nintendo Gamecube and has since become something of a rarity among modern Nintendo first party IP by having been one of four post 2000 IP launches to really succeed for the company (the other three being Xenoblade, "Wii __", and Splatoon if anyone is curious on my math) spawning an additional two sequels on Wii U + Switch, a short film, several ports, and a litany of merchandise. This begs the question is Captain Olimar worthy of being this statistical outlier standing over the bodies of Issac and Captain Falcon like its that Grant Gustin meme? Let's find out!

Gameplay
Pikmin's primary hook is a time limit of 30 days. Each day has roughly 15-20 minute window in which you can explore to find ship parts (the game's main collectable) with your army of up to 100 disposable (but replenishable with enemy kills) units. These units come in three varieties throughout the game. Fire resistant Red Pikmin that deal extra damage, aquatic Blue Pikmin, and acrobatic Yellow Pikmin that also serve as demolition experts. Ship parts are hidden behind environmental puzzles and significant enemy encounters in each of the game five locales. Most of these environmental puzzles are pretty often basic to the point of feeling "tech demoy" in nature. Part on a tall ledge? Throw Yellow Pikmin to reach it. Part in the water? Use Blue Pikmin. While there are a few parts that require some creative thinking (the analog computer for example requires you to carry it with blues initially and switch to reds after pulling it out of the water to avoid burning your Pikmin to a pile of ash) nothing really that complex is really asked of the player and much of the gameplay loop is really about balancing growing/upgrading your units and going after ship parts in the time limit rather than the struggle of getting the parts themselves. Given the strategy genre's tendency to skew towards very lengthy, micromanagement heavy experiences I actually think the choice to focus on a arcadey time trial centric experience was for the best to help the game standout from the crowd. Some folks might not care for the trial and error nature that comes with the time limit system but there is nothing like getting into a flow state of a perfectly executed day where you bring multiple part back,have time to farm more backup units and also plan out a route for the next day.

With that in mind I can certainly see why the dev team were going for with the choice to include the bonus challenge mode centered around maximizing the # of Pkmin you can grow in a day but I found it a tad too minimalist for my liking. I think even changing the layout of the selectable levels slightly and having some built in scores to beat could have gone a long way towards giving some value to that mode. As it stand it sorta just feels like something slapped together with some debug tools. Not impossible given the crunch that was common with Nintendo's early first party GameCube titles (Mashiro Sakurai infamously was hospitalized during the development of Super Smash Bros. Melee for example). That criticism aside the core content during the main campaign is more than enough to be satisfying in my opinion.

Graphics
Being a launch title meant that, in order to showcase what the purple lunchbox could do, Pikmin went with a unique art style by being a mash up of (at the time) realistic environments and cartoony characters models (this is a choice made more clear by promotional art). This leads to a game that rests in an interesting middle ground with its graphical age. The environments look a tad dated nearly 20 years later obviously but the character models fair a tad better (thought Olimar and the Pikmin can look a tad glossy at points). Stylistically speaking I like the art style mashup since it helps sell the idea of Captain Olimar as this outside to the planet but it clearly has a downside with dating the game long term but hey time rots everything eventually.

Story
Pikmin's story premise, like most Nintendo games, is simple. The tiny space alien Captain Olimar crash lands on planet earth and must work with a local tribe like mobile plant species to repair his spaceship in order to return home before he succumbs to the toxic atmosphere. This Castaway riff plot by itself would be serviceable enough to give the game dramatic tension but Pikmin has a brilliant narrative device that gives things a lot more flavor. During major tutorials and at the end of each day Olimar will write diary entries that flesh out his backstory and thoughts on what is going on. This does an excellent job of both justifying tutorial speak and getting you more invested in Olimar as a character. Pikmin probably has some of the best writing from the Big N's non-RPG output.

Music & Sound Design
While I find the music in this game mostly forgettable (but atmospheric enough for what the development team was going for) outside the main menu theme I think the actual sound design is incredibly well thought out. Since micromanging is such a big part of the game having audio ques for say an enemy ambushing a ship part being taken to base (Pikmin screaming) or a Pikmin drowing/burning are vital to allowing the player to keep in mind what their squad is doing while they attend to others things without needing to pull up the radar screen 24/7.

Conclusion
For strategy game fans Pikmin is a must play especially if you own a GameCube, Wii, or Wii U. Just be weary of how much you pay if your are are on limited gaming budget.

Introduction
In the wake of my five star review of Kirby & The Forgotten Land for Nintendo Switch and the launch of the Game Boy titles on the Switch Online service I decided to give this game another shot to see if I was perhaps a bit too hard on these early Kirby titles. Baseline difficulty was played for this review.

Gameplay
Kirby's Dream Land is a 1990s 2D platformer centered on floating and using your enemies as projectiles intended for less experienced players for the Nintendo Game Boy. I think Given that development context and creative intent the game fairs remarkably well even if its not suited to my tastes personally ( to avoid repeating myself see my Forgotten Land for more details there). The floating ability is mostly carefully balanced and well suited to a small poorly lit Game Boy screen. That being said, I do feel that my character's hit box is a tad clunky at points with some of the maneuvering you have to do in the third and fourth levels being particularly spotty. That being said, when taken on a macro level everything done with that mechanic is serviceable. What is perhaps less well done though is the very bland and basic use of the sucking and spitting mechanic.

Most of what you can do with this spitting mechanic is exhausted by the second level and even what you see that basically amounts to "see an enemy? Suck it up and spit it into another enemy or "?" block". This not helped by level design that allows you to float over some of the more interesting enemy configurations that test the players grasp on the spitting mechanic. I can sorta see why this concept got deprioritized in favor of powerups (fire spitting curry and air shooter mint sections) in the late game and copy ability based exploration in the sequels. To the director Mashiro Sakurai's credit they were aware of the limitations of their stylistic choices and kept the game short with a normal difficulty run lasting thirty minutes to an hour if you play poorly.

The best use of both mechanics is probably the boss fights which are incredibly well done given that they have to convey and or balance:

A) what a platformer boss is to a beginner to the genre.

B) Making the bosses fun to fight without being brainless.

C) Something you can improve upon further exposure.

This is also why I actually like the final boss rush here while I tend to dislike it in something like say the robot master gauntlet in MegaMan 1-6's climaxes. Enemy patterns are actually decipherable to normal human reflexes so it feels like I'm applying skills learned in prior levels to finish something more efficiently and not just brute forcing the game with sheer endurance/patience.

Story & Graphics
Normally I discuss these categories separately but given how simple Kirby's Dream Land is story-wise and how much of the series's long standing narrative appeal is tied into these character designs I felt it made since to combine these categories together for this review.

Kirby's Dream Land is a very minimalist work narrative-wise. King Dedede has stolen his subjects food and its your job as Kirby to put a stop to his gluttony. This plot is a functionally fine for the target audience and style it is going for. Not much else I can really say.

Really the strongest, most stand out point here is the main villain and how he serves as a microcosm for the game's expressive graphics. You can tell the developers were really focused on pushing the Game Boy to its limit by making the sprite animation as expressive as they did with Dedede being the best example of how well director Mashiro Sakurai understands character design as a craft.

King Dedede parallels Kirby so well during the final boss fight with the monarch having riffs on the pink puffball's main two hooks in the form of a vacuum attack to punish players baiting out his hammer attack and a high jump to counter Kirby's glide. Both moves along with a tripping attack are also telegraphed slowly in order to show just how much of a powerful but clumsy oaf the penguin really is. Thus when you win it feels like a very satisfying "the emperor has no clothes" moment.

Music & Sound Design
Sound design was vital for getting the player to understand how to maneuver with this floaty character with Kirby having sounds effects for both puffing up and sucking/spitting that convey what form you are shifting out of at a given time. You can really see the beginnings of where Sakurai's audio philosophy would evolve in the Super Smash Bros series here.

Music in this game is legendary. Basically every track here is iconic and constantly reused and remixed in future entries for a reason. The upbeat and hyper active chip tune style used here really sells the cutesy but adventurous vibe. Honestly composer Jun Ishikawa doesn't get enough credit for how much of the franchise's identity is tied to their musical style.

Conclusion
Kirby's Dream Land is a fun romp and while I hesitate to say its a "must play" I think the fact that it now comes as essentially a free pack in with your Switch online multiplayer subscription you are likely to already have if you are big enough Nintendo fan to read a backloggd review for a game from 1992. I can say its worth checking out. Especially if you like seeing how auteur creators evolve across their portfolio.

Forgot to log this earlier in the year. Going to give this a shorter review as a result as I haven't played since March and can only remember the general experience. TLDR? Pokemon Legends Arceus is probably the freshest Pokemon game we've gotten since the XD: Gale Of Darkness. The changes to the battle system, mission structure, and catching are generally speaking a nice change of pace but I have some reservations with a few design choices. The noble Pokemon boss fights and stronger emphasis on catching is neat but both are kinda too repetitive to be a the large portion of the play time they are. Presentation-wise I'm also sorta conflicted on being incentivized to catch multiple of the same Pokemon for Pokedex completion especially with the true ending being tied to it. It kinda reduces the whole "bond with your magic pet" ethos the games are built on even if you ignore the negative externalities to gameplay. Music and sound design is good but not particularly rememberable and graphics/character design is generally pretty awesome (the new hisiuian forms are dope, UI is good and readable,)... with two exceptions: framerate and cutscenes. Framerate can start to chug and make Pokemon look like a slideshow from afar. Meanwhile a lot of in-game cutsenes look like badly staged puppet shows with the amount of unexpressive animation in them. Ashame given this IP was launched off the back of a successful animated show in the west. This could've used a few more months in the oven...so its a modern Pokemon game.

Introduction
Honestly I've never gravitated towards Kirby as a game franchise. The niche it occupies as a beginner's platformer series is important for the industry at large but that also tends to make the games really simplistic for anyone with experience in the genre. Most 100% runs that tend to be intended as a way to add challenge for more experienced players also tend to necessitate back tracking with specific powers to complete puzzles. This can get tedious quick as often your opportunities to pick up needed powers for a collectable are few and far between. As someone that has the fast paced and difficult Crash Bandicoot as one of his first exposures to video games this "easy unless you slow down" design always turned me off as a platformer design foundation. I'm happy to say that I think Kirby And The Forgotten Land has tweaked the formula just enough for the puffball to click with me without sacrificing the creative intent of a more casual platformer. In fact, Kirby's 3D Switch outing might dethrone Super Mario Galaxy for the best platformer made by a Nintendo developer.

Story
Kirby isn't know for having a complicated story given its targeted towards kids and this game is no different. Kirby and company end up in a weird alternate dimension where the waddle dees get kidnapped by a mysterious crew of animals. Its up to Kirby to save the day. Simple but it works as baseline motivation and context for the gameplay. I do like having the collectables being depicted as saving waddle dees as it gives you a much more personal motive to take down the "main villain" Leongard . I'm surprised more platformers don't go this route for justifying there collectibles. Outside of that loose narrative thread contextualizing the gameplay of the levels you mainly have quick boss introduction and defeat cutscenes as your main form of story progression. These have some decent cinematic flare to them (truck kirby vs the actual main villain is especially a great sendoff for the main story) and give you a nice bit of characterization for the wacky cast of characters (shout out to incel armadillo). These characters are further fleshed out with hub world dialogue as well as backstory tidbits from figurines that serve as a secondary collectables. As it turns out Kirby apparently has deep lore and some light social commentary on the destructive tendencies of industrialized society going on under the surface if your willing to do some research. It's cool to have that extra layer to things for those willing to explore a bit more.

Gameplay
Kirby is a series best know for two things: a floating based movement option and getting a variety of powers via consumption. The first of these has always been a bit of a sticking point with me in the 2D games. Again, I get why its there but in most cases I feel like it neuters what devs can do with level design. I honestly think this ability works way better here since the cool down effect from excessive floating largely prevents you from just gliding over everything and ignoring copy abilities outside of forced combat encounters. Combine that with the new mouthful items taking away the ability in exchange for different skills in certain instances and you have way more opportunities for interesting level design. There is a section where you dodge around meteors, an auto runner section with some light puzzle elements, and even a outrun style racing level. The amount of variety on display here is really incredible and speaks to how versatile Kirby is as a character. Combine that much more careful copy ability placement and a lot of issues I had were addressed pretty well. Its now a ton of fun to go hunting for the various collectable in each stage. The fact you also effectively have two copy abilities on hand most of the time due to mouth full mode also means you get some really creative puzzles that wouldn't have been possible in prior games. combine this with the money system feeding into power ups for you copy abilities and the backtracking isn't as big of a pill to swallow. This rambling is all to say Kirby And The Forgotten Land did a lot to remove some points of friction for me with this IP that allowed to sit down and fully get the most out of the rock solid conceptual bedrock that has been present since Kirby's Adventure on the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Graphics
KIRBY AND HIS WORLD IS SOOO ADORABLE. YES I'M A GROWN ASS MAN BUT I'M NOT MADE OF FUCKING STONE.

Music
Some nice jazzy remixes of King Dedede's theme and Meta Knight's Revenge aside I kinda find quite a bit of the music here forgettable (including the opening and ending theme), It works for the atmosphere the game wants in each level but I couldn't hum anything from the game if you held a gun to my head. Controversial statement I realize.

Conclusion
If you have been reluctant to give this series a try due to its reputation as being a bit too easy for older players I highly recommend giving this a shot. There's currently a free demo on the Nintendo E-Shop at the time of writing. If you are on the fence I recommend giving that a shot as it gives you a good vertical slice of what the game is like.

Not gonna lie this was a slog to get as far as I did (every main story mission sans final boss). Combat tries to be a spectacle driven muso action game like Hyrule Warriors or Dynasty Warriors and an action RPG like Kingdom Hearts 2 at the same time. It lacks any standout setpieces like the latter or the sense of combat fluidity of the former. The one time the games tries to have a distinct setpiece with a mirror match it just actively shows how shallow the mechanics are as your best solution is to just spam physical Persona attacks. Certainly a riveting solution for a challenge near the back half of the game! Only times I felt engaged in the combat were bosses (use baton passes to increase your DPS),the penultimate fights with the angelic creatures (only time debuffs came in handy). The lack of calendar systems means there is very little reason to not constantly leave dungeons for free HP and SP refills which trivializes the cooking mechanic outside of free bond point events. The environmental moves make for decent crowd control options and give the game some of Persona 5's sense of spectacle I otherwise find lacking in the title. Objectives in dungeons settle into a pattern way too quickly. Investigate a target by just talking to random NPCs. Fight trash mobs/mini bosses or hack into places to take down 3-4 jail keeps and reach the boss. Having a formula isn't a problem in itself but it needs to be executed well on a strong foundation. Something Persona 5 Strikers frankly lacks.

Writing is sorta OK for the lighthearted zero stakes affair its trying to be but like most Persona spin offs the characters end up slightly flanderized. The new additions to the cast are very one note but serviceable for the story they wanted to tell. Character designs and graphics took a notable hit due to the fact this is a lower budget spin off. The original music and sound design fits the world of Persona 5 well which makes the emphasis on remixes so disappointing. You are gonna be tired of hearing "Last Surprise" by the end of the game.

Overall a very disappointing experience I'd have probably been more annoyed if I hadn't used some random Amazon credit I had lying around to knock down the overall price. If you want a good action RPG or muso experience on Switch you have far better options available including several mainline and spin off Zelda games, and countless indie games you can likely get for a fraction of the price.

WARNING WALL OF TEXT INCOMING -
This is likely to be my longest review yet since it is going to go over quite a bit including:

1) My original review of the initial 2017 PS4 release from GGAPP.io for context/archival purposes.

2) A basic overview of how I feel Persona 5 Royal handles its themes.

3) An overview of general series mechanics and how I feel about them both as artistic/literary tools and as a form of entertainment.

4) Miscellaneous observations about JRPGs as a genre I feel Persona 5 best gives me the contextual opportunity to talk about in a public forum.

ORIGINAL PERSONA 5 REVIEW FROM GGAPP.IO

“Played on:
Playstation 4 (Regular Version)

Some cognitive dissonance with themes of the games (especially in regards to social links since that was handed off to a b-team) and Okamura's dungeon being a slog means I probably never finish this but out of the 100s of games released in the era of Trump and global rightwing populism resurgence, this is the only one that feels like it tackled the issues without kiddy gloves on. Worth a playthrough at least. Don't bother with the non-confidant sidequests though.”

SUMMARY
Persona is an anthology series of turn based Japanese role playing games centered around a crew of high schoolers coming of age in contemporary Japanese society with a tarot card/psychology motif. The plot of this entry largely revolves around a wrongly convicted high schooler on parole coming across a magical world of the collective unconscious and using it to fix injustices in Japanese society with a band of like minded individuals.

The main hook of Persona over its competitors in the genre is a calendar system used to interact with your party members and a host of non-playable characters outside of dungeons for additional narrative context, world building, and dungeon resources. Persona 5 specifically adds several interesting ripples to the basic formula first setup in the third entry. Most notably a revamp of the dungeon design to include flashier setpieces, a basic stealth mechanic to fit into the game’s heist motif, gun attacks, an upgradeable attack chaining system, status ailment chaining, and a revamp of creature acquisition to make it slightly more inline with the first two games.



GAMEPLAY & DIFFICULTY BALANCE
If this sounds like a lot to keep track of for as a casual player you would be correct and I suspect this is why I struggled upon playing to a certain point in my original run as I mention in that initial review. I am happy to say that the rebalance of the Okumura dungeon (Haru’s elemental attacks can kill the strongest enemies that you encounter in the dungeon and technical damage is more clearly explained during the Kamoshida tutorial) did wonders to the mid to late game portion of the story. Pretty much the only part of the game I found to be particularly unfair to the player this time around is the first phase of the true final boss (which given the narrative and design context is fine I just don’t have an issue admitting I lowered the difficulty to safe from normal for that fight).

That being said, the game is no walk in the park either. I’d say the game’s combat is very deliberately designed to make you pull every lever at your disposal ranging from elemental weaknesses to party member attributes. Kanesiro’s dungeon for example forces you to learn the importance of debuffs and status healing items in order to fight his pig robot without bleeding the additional SP and HP you’ll need to survive the direct fight with the head honcho and his enforcers. This might be one of the most satisfying turn-based systems I've seen in that specific regard. I can firmly say the battle system,while perhaps a tad repetitive during field battles for a 100ish hour affair (honestly though this is a statement I can attach to much of the genre and the stealth mechanic at least alleviates this slightly), gets the job done. I wish I could say the same for the calendar system though which I found to cause the game to suffer from story pacing problems.

TAKE YOUR TIME
As mentioned previously the Persona games are known for their time management mechanics. The protagonist can perform several activities in the real world that aid him in his vigilante work as a Phantom Thief. Persona 5 operates off a system in which you can largely do two social activities per day with dungeon exploration needing to take up at least the first slot if you chose to enter that day. When in the overworld you can either earn money for shopping via a part time job, build friendships with locals for combat buffs, craft items, or increase stats. Every story arc has a deadline of X amount of days to complete a dungeon before getting a game over screen. If you finish ahead of time you have a ton of spare days to do as you wish. If you are a skilled player that has prepared accordingly you will likely complete a dungeon in two time slots (dungeon bosses are almost always a second day).This causes two issues:a trivialized confidant time slot economy and repetitive dialogue. First of those is rather simple; it removes a lot of potential for interesting choices in the confidant system as the litany of time slots opened up by one day dungeon clears means you can easily get the social stats and rank up events for every confidant rather easily in a single playthrough (an issue exacerbated by Royale’s extra stat boosting events and extra semester of calendar days).

Often times during these dungeon arcs you will get messages and party meet ups pestering you to go to the dungeon on days where you haven’t finished the mission yet, in the event the player has finished these events effectively become victory laps where the other Phantom Thieves talk about how you dodged a bullet with that last target. Due to how the game flags story progress this means you could end up with large stretches of time where you are just button mashing through phone conversations that repeat the same plot points you just saw while you wait to gain control of your character for social activities. These events really do not add much characterization to any of your party members and do not respect the players time. These sequences could be cut and nothing is lost.

Perhaps the most annoying aspect of this is the fact it really doesn’t even feel necessary design wise outside the first arc. If a player has beaten Kamoshida chances are they comprehend the objective deadlines and don’t need to be treated like a kid playing his or her first JRPG for the rest of the game. This also extends to the various cutscenes that point out obvious puzzles inside dungeons. Yes, I realize the irony in an entire long ass paragraph for what effectively amounts to “Bro, get a better editor for your script!” but I felt it needed to be said. Especially when Persona 5 otherwise takes great strides with respecting the player in other aspects it just becomes a flaw made more glaring.

“LOOKING COOL JOKER!”
The game’s presentation has an incredibly snazzy graphical & audio design with a vivid pop art flair that does a great job of capturing the game's “rage against the machine” attitude. Unlike other flashy user interfaces this also mostly aids the game’s conveyance of information. I never really questioned why something was or wasn’t visible or under a certain category cough smash bros “games & more” cough. Plenty of quality of life shortcuts also are provided that are meant to reduce downtime during gameplay. You will automatically be prompted to upgrade gear when you find a better piece of equipment in a dungeon chest or shop for example and fast travel drastically cuts down on the tedium that might otherwise exist during the overworld time slots.

I AM THOU THOU ART I
Overall I’d say my biggest gripes with the game’s otherwise well thought out presentation come down to two aspects: the fusion system’s stylistic execution and the lack of soundtrack variety.

The velvet room gives you the ability to combine and edit various monsters under the protagonist’s control for extra strategic options and firepower. (There is more to it than that for analytical purposes this is all you really need to know.). This seems like a slam dunk of a mechanic right? Give the player a ton of levers to pull to create a party of creatures synergized for the needs of the moment. The problem lies in the way the player interacts through this menu system and lack of player intuitiveness in fusion results.

Simply put there isn’t really a great way to just work out what creates a given Persona without remembering a bunch of mythological creature names from the fuse by result screen. A problem further exacerbated by the eclectic origin of the monster designs. Since most of the creatures are pulling from real life cultures directly you end up in a scenario where most of the creatures don’t have an easy to infer crafting recipe to follow. How does a water yokai (Genbu) mixed with a jewish demon in a jar (Agathion) logically create an Irish ghost horse thing (Kelpie)? This is a type of clunkiness present in a lot of this system that can be directly tied to the choice to use super faithful mythological designs. Looking at other monster battling JRPGs it is usually easy to infer gameplay consequences of your party choices via the character design. What niche does Squirtle usually occupy in Pokemon Blue Version? Well given the blue coloring, turtle shape, and hard shell we can probably infer it’ll be a defensive water type by the end of its evolutionary line even if I haven’t seen a picture of Blastoise in my life. This character design choice basically heavily incentivizes you to brute force the entire system by just fusing stuff without much thought in a guideless run (or in a worse case scenario making you just skip the fusion process all together and opt to just use weaker negotiation encounters). This is honestly a shame given how I can see this system synergizing well with confidants to create a highly replayable game if the kinks with both systems were given more attention. Imagine a version of this game where you had to face bosses in radically different ways based on how you allocated your time before the end of each arc. It would’ve added an additional layer of replayability and playthrough individuality to the whole affair. This is without even going into how it makes the optional crafting focused strength arcana confidant that serves as a chekov’s gun for late game plot points into a slog that isn’t worth your time.

TAKE OVER
On a more surface level note the game suffers from a dismal track variety that is only exacerbated by changes in Royale that reduce the prominence of several tracks in favor of more instances of the song “Take Over”. When you are in battle you are going to hear that particular song a lot and it can get very grating after a while. This can be rectified somewhat with the game’s costumes for the previous protagonists that play past series battle themes but this comes at the cost of player expression as those custom’s must be equipped for the themes to play. These themes also inherently clash with the presentational cohesion Persona 5 strives for by virtue of being composed for games with different narrative themes, stylistic choices, and tones so they aren’t a perfect solution to the issue of battle track variety. This is rather unfortunate as what is here is generally pretty well made and catchy. I just wish there was more of it and what is there is stretched for 70 hours of play.

WINGS OF REBELLION
Persona 5 is kinda a fascinating mess on a thematic storytelling level. I don’t wanna dwell on this point too much as many have already beaten this concept like the dead horse it is but it bears mentioning. For 75% of its runtime Persona 5 focuses heavily on how nihilism combines with ends justify the means moral justifications to create self propagating cycles of internalized persecution. Every palace leader is basically someone that sacrificed everything for their desires in a broken system. Kamoshida gave into his vices to keep his reputation as a volleyball coach and thus his ego from his days as an olympian intact, Madarame needed to have every artistic success in his own name (regardless of how) to avoid being a starving artist, Kaneshiro constantly projected strength and hoarded wealth to avoid being branded a weakling by society. I could go on and on but you see my point. During the final two dungeons this sorta awkwardly shifts into an anti-populism message where the likes of Yaldabaoth and Doctor Maruki are presented as naive at best micromanaging narcistits for wanting to make society better. I guess according to Persona 5 if you legitimately want fundamental changes to make the world better fuck you. I play games to avoid shallow conservative and neoliberal dominated political discourse for a few hours Atlus.If you are gonna have overt political messaging in your games don’t be so milquetoast about it. It’s worth mentioning This is just one aspect. I could go whole hog on the games anti-populism message contradicting its treatment of female characters and LGBTQ+ issues in a right leaning populist way but there are several video essayists and journalists that have covered that topic from a far more informed angle then I can offer as a straight dude (links in bottom of review). The long and short of my point though? Persona 5 narrative addresses a systemic issue and offers no solution which gives off the vibe of Katsura Hashino and company being rather passive storytellers for 70+ hours.


If the game hadn’t done such a good job making the core party of phantom thieves into such a memorable cast with this motif of political corruption I might not care about this point much and would just chalk it up as another JRPG targeted at teenagers with vaguely anti-nihilism message but the fact the game comes this close to doing something different and chooses not to is frankly a little annoying. Especially when Persona 3 + 4 largely nail the deeper writing side of this memorable JRPG equation but fuck up in the gameplay areas Persona 5 largley excels in. It feels like we were a few writing tweaks and playtests away from the definitive game in the series and honestly that makes said flaws stick out more. I hope P-Studio learns the right lessons from this game and makes the next game the series’s magnum opus.


PLUGS FOR FURTHER READING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzdylKgPjNI
https://www.polygon.com/2020/3/31/21199516/persona-5-royal-edits-changed-scene-ryuji-homophobia-controversy

NOTE:
Original hardware and various nightly builds of PCSX2 from 10-1-22 to 10-8-22 were used as the baseline of the experience.

Katamari Damacay is a game with a rather simple premise: roll up as much shit as possible to grow your ball like object to a certain size in a given time limit. It is through this simple game-play loop that Katamari portrays a brilliant satire of capitalist excess as the player is forced to optimize everything to the enth degree to please a never happy authority figure that berates you regardless of how well you do. The "flow state" of 100%ing Katamari (an all comets run) almost feels like a fun version of the daily grind as you chip away at tasks repeatedly until you optimize your route down to the moment you make a sharp turn at a certain size. This flow state is further aided by sound design that does a great job of signaling concepts to the player in a few seconds. How do you know you got the object you are trying to pick up without checking the corner of the screen and risking a mistake? Listen for a sound effect related to the object like the boing of a ball or a girl screaming. Combing this with a relaxing happy go lucky J-POP soundtrack, sharp dialogue, and some surrealist low poly visuals makes for a very memorable experience. For as much as I enjoyed my experience with Katamari Damacay I do want to warn newbies of some first installment syndrome. Sometimes it can be hard to intuit when you can pick something up, pass through a tight corridor or can scale a wall and that can unfairly knock you out of the flow state of the game. That being said, if you own a PS2, Switch, or PS3* this is a must play. Very few "arcadey" score attack style games manage to have this level of moment to moment satisfaction from the learning curve and even fewer manage to have a deeper point while doing so.

Goes by the title "Katamari Damacay Reroll" on Nintendo Switch

*Katamari Damacay was released as a PS2 Classic on the PlayStation Store. Be weary this option might no longer be an option if you are reading this years later.

Note: MegaMan Legacy Collection Volume 1 for Nintendo Switch was used for this review. Some amount of rewind and saving was used that was not present in the original NES/Famicom release

"MegaMan" is an action platformer published by Capcom for the Nintendo Entertainment System in which you use a variety of ammo-limited weapons and gadgets earned by beating bosses to take the fight to evil scientist Doctor Albert Wiley. If I were to describe the hook of the MegaMan series to a casual player who is perhaps a tad younger and wanting to see if the series is for them I'd say the mainline series has three defining characteristics on the macro level:

1) Percision-based platforming with ranged weaponry.

2) Boss prep strategy/non-linearity in the early game.

3) weapon experimentation/light exploration (not exploration in the sense of a Metroidvania but more that you are rewarded for getting to hard to reach places usually in the form of extra lives or ammo).
Since this is my first time covering an entry in this franchise I'd also like to highlight a general shortcoming I find has come up when playing these games in the past. Mainly that I generally find Classic MegaMan bosses to be a tad plain to fight. The fights tend to amount to several "skill checks" in the form of:

1) Managing your HP/lives during the stage to ensure you have resources to burn on learning the pattern and fishing for weaknesses. (I generally like this part since it leans on the strength of the platforming by rewarding thorough and complete execution)

2) Executing on said pattern. This frequently turns into replaying a stage until you internalize the boss patterns to the point of muscle memory. I find this pretty tedious even if I can understand it as a quirk of this era of game design. I might be more open to this if the timings on certain bosses like FireMan and Yellow Devil weren't so strict.


With that context out of the way, I will say I find the original MegaMan to be a respectable prototype to the franchise highs of MegaMan 2 + 3. I'd certainly go back to it more than comparable entries in other franchises like say Super Mario Brothers or the original Legend Of Zelda though it still certainly has its antiquated elements. The art style for example feels slightly off here compared to the rest of the NES entries (mainly in the form of the color pallet feeling slightly off but this could 100% be all in my head). The game also features a rather superfluous scoring system as a quirk of the game releasing in an era where arcade gaming was still the most dominant form of the medium and console games were trying to sell themselves as the home version of that experience. Perhaps the most egregious of these outdated aspects is the non-linear aspects of the design lacking polish in certain regards.

In theory, you are meant to be able to tackle robot master stages in any order you want but in practice, you basically always have to go Gutsman first or second if you want to play optimally since the OP platforming gadget known as the magnet beam (which is basically required to finish the gun platform parts of Iceman's stage and literally required for Wiley Castle stage 1) can only be unlocked by using his weapon at the halfway point of Elecman's stage. Even putting that flaw aside Cutman being slightly weak to the default gun also means you are overwhelmingly pressured to pick him first by the game.

These misgivings aside though I generally find the game to be a satisfying and breezy experience held together by the rest of the level design being fair building on the design philosophy of introducing a platforming stage gimmick(s) and remixing them across several contexts. Spike free-falling and block platform segments have become a franchise staple and retro game meme for a good reason. Combine that with some solid music and an art direction ahead of many of its contemporaries and you have one of the NES's strongest first outings.