turns pokemon mystery dungeon into item mystery dungeon. what pokemon you use matters not at all compared to having 5 pages of reviver seeds and wand spam, completely sucking the joy out of using the 720 pokemon on offer. most late game dungeons i’ll take 2 steps and get sniped off screen by moves that hit the entire field or from 8 tiles away and do just as much damage as moves up close. it’s not even that it’s difficult because reviver seeds are easy to come by and wand spam is basically fool proof, it’s just not FUN in any sense

man what are we even doing here. ive played about 400 levels and this is one of the worst designed puzzle games as well as gacha games i’ve ever seen. there’s barely any replenishable resources which makes the gacha aspect basically worthless, the gacha system is expensive and also just kinda weird and clunky, the seasonal gacha gives so few pulls that you have barely any chance to get the premium items without spending (hell, i threw the game a few bucks and got basically nothing), and there’s way too many unfixed bugs and dev response time has been nowhere NEAR as fast compared to kingdom and ovenbreak. the worst of it all, though, is the level design. certain levels are nearly entirely luck based with there being so few matches possible that the game has to forcibly shuffle multiple times a level, also if you don’t beat a level it doesn’t count towards any progress in the like 5+ active events so if you get stuck you’re likely getting 0 event rewards. it truly seems like they just do not care about this game, which is a shame because the story, art, and voice acting are all top notch. unfortunately, despite that, this finished product is just inexcusable when you’re disrupting such an established genre of puzzle game. royal match, essentially the same game but with better levels and no gacha, has been on the market for years and does everything this game does but better. i cannot recommend this to anyone except the most die hard cookie run fans.

EDIT: the april update has made changes to make currency easier to get and i am not in fact immune to bribery so i bumped it up half a star. the core problems with the game remain but it’s a lot easier to be a gacha machine now

game of the year. i’ve seen enough. i don’t care that it’s february there’s no way this is getting topped. the gameplay is addictive, fun, innovative, and challenging. the amount of content is insane with 15 decks, 8 difficulty levels, dozens of achievements/unlocks, CHALLENGES??, endless mode, and a gameplay loop that doesn’t even need a motivation for me to want to play more. this game could have no progression whatsoever and i would still call it perfect, so the amount here goes above and beyond. all this for only $15 too when it could easily be $10 or $15 more than that. i am genuinely in awe of how perfect this game is; it was worth the wait and then some and it’s easily the best deckbuilder since slay the spire.

weirdly kind of ends up being a condemnation of AI, though not intentionally. when looking at games in the “fuse stuff together” genre popularized in the flash game days (little alchemy, doodle god, etc), those games were finite, but they were sensible, whereas this game is ‘infinite’ but only in the sense that it makes ai generated slurry after a certain point. “wow you combined rainbow dinosaur and steam train dragon to make rainbow steam dinosaur train” just utter drivel. go play little alchemy

i can’t lie they kinda knocked it out of the park on this one. my main gripe with hoyoverse for years has been a complete lack of originality and borderline thievery of other games’ ideas, but penacony feels like the first time they’ve made something that feels truly original to them. the world isn’t even complete yet and it’s already fun and filled with intrigue. not to mention all the QoL changes and great updates from 1.0 to 2.0. we’re not even at a year yet and HSR has already evolved into hoyoverse’s best project by far.

this is a review of world link revised the recently released remake that is not on here
a really good time that got me back into touhou a bit, but just horrendously balanced. every character has ridiculous speed and attack with paper thin defenses which makes everything a be first to attack contest rather than a natural pokemon battle. also the boss trainers are all ev trained and scale in level way faster than you could feasibly get to without hours of grinding, so i did rare candy my way through the elite four idgaf. a fun time but not a well balanced one