There are some neat ideas here, but Towelket 6 is ultimately too slapdash to have the same impact as previous entries.

Let’s start with the good. I liked the increased emphasis on dialogue: it was often entertaining. Some of the developments from previous games were cool, like Conchelle becoming the caretaker of an orphanage, as well as Paripariume’s role as Minpou’s mother, which was incredibly heart wrenching and probably the best written section of the story. It also introduces Warawau and Nyanyamo, who will go on to star in a much better game. That's about it.

There’s much I could say about the writing or characters, but it was hard for me to focus on anything because actually playing the game was a true test of patience. I thought Towelket 1 found an elegant solution to the dialogue system, where interactions were condensed into conversation events, but 6 throws this out the window to pad out the game. To get the full experience, you have to talk to every goddamn party member on each screen. Possibly as a result, much of the dialogue in the second half became repetitive, where characters would state really obvious things or the same jokes from previous rooms. Some of the dialogue was broken, like, just literally empty text boxes. Also, and maybe this only bothers me, but sometimes a major character development would happen where their entire personality changes, and then you go back into the previous room and they say the same lines as before. The other games were not this lazy.

That's the key word. It just felt like Towelket 6 didn’t care. Say what you will about the other games in the series, but they made sense despite the very warped, surreal perspective the series provided. There is nothing to explain how Warawau was in space, and not suffocating from lack of oxygen. Or how none of the Pons seem to care that your party exists. Or why Pucchi couldn’t have just warped everyone to Nyanyamo (maybe I forgot the reason, but either way it’s a bad plot device).

Not to say the writing was devoid of substance: there’s still the trademark Towelket dark feminism, mostly focusing on showing the effects of conservative patriarchy on women’s mental health framed through a sort of subversion of magical girl plots (or Earthbound maybe?), but the developments in the second half were just so rushed and flaccid. If you really want this sort of thing, 2 and Fury exist.

Oh yeah, and that cliffhanger ending was so poorly done I had to double check whether I had the なんつって in my inventory.

"You ran. But I, who am accepting the sorrow of having lost my own important person, am different from you. I didn't run. I'm now only praying for the person who loved me. ...I am different from you."

It's hard to go in-depth for the Towelket series because by their nature, they are obtuse and hard to approach. Numbered at random, with occasional lack of direction, and its nature as a very underground series of RPGMaker games means there's barely anything on them online in the western sphere compared to other works that have more succesfully breached the culture barrier. But despite that clear lack of connection, there are still people dedicated enough to bring it over, people who put in the hours to read and play, and who feel passionate enough about it to share it with others. And that visceral nature of connection is what surpasses the language barrier for all art, even for the most niche of works and the most hidden of games.

Having seen that my Backloggd list was at 499 games played after I finished QP Shooting - Dangerous!!, another work of the same nature as Towelket, I decided to make my 500th game logged this; I had already gone through 3 and 2, and found a strong appeal for both in different fields, 3 in its more comedic nature and decent cast despite its low text and 2 in its horrifically depressing representation of femininity in the modern age represented in the angle of another alien invasion. This was also the game that had me get into the series in a sense; while I have more interest in a few other titles more than this, it was the one I had heard more positive towards compared to the rest of the series.

And I believe it's quite justified to be as well-loved as it is: Towelket: One More Time is another improvement on what 3 and 2 did, taking their comedic and surrealist natures combined with the dark and horror atmosphere that 2 nails to create an outstanding mixture of comedy and drama. One More Time's synopsis is silly if taken at face value with the use of a "curse of turning corners", but as you progress through the story do you truly start to feel immersed into the story and the role of you as the protagonist: being thrown into millions of years into the future and constantly antagonized, seeing constant reminders of your friends having been brutalized, One More Time is dark. But it's not just dark despite its imbuing misery, but rather it continues to have some levity with the Check mechanic; where the party constantly comments on your environments and the characters grow more attached to each other, these little nuggets of dialogue create some well-desired levity despite everything.

One More Time is also a more uplifting experience than 2 ever was: and while 2's misery and depression is not entirely to be discarded, I do think that Kanao's style here feels like some much-needed optimism compared to the embuing, nihilistic nexus that 2 prided itself on. Not to get into spoilers as this is a game that I reccomend you do play, but there's still a strong sense of acceptance here to the misery that 2 presents in a much more global scale, presented in a much more buddhist angle.

I write all of this, but at the end, to talk of One More Time is unnecessary. The more I speak and explain the less I do justice to this game; because words aren't enough. One More Time is pure communication and yearning distilled into a game that resolves itself in pure acceptance, and it is presented in a manner that only it could justify itself. And perhaps, for what I wished to do for a "500th game logged", little serves the role like One More Time does in the function of games as art, and art as communication.

"Sad people... I'm not the only one.
Happy people... I'm not the only one.
Everyone... is the same as myself.
...hardships and happiness.

I am the same as everyone.
Everyone is the same as me."

Towelket 3 is the first game in the long-running series created by Kanao, and it's a rather unknown little hidden gem of a series. It's an RPG Maker game that Manlybadasshero hasn't played, so it's got niche credentials, as well as an enigmatic appeal similar to Touhou, which led it to becoming popular in some Japanese subcultures. While the series would later come to be known for its heavy plots and unique comedy, Towelket 3 is surprisingly tame, more 'standard' compared to later entries, but that gives it a charm of its own.

One thing to appreciate about Towelket 3: it’s great at keeping the energy high with weirdass set pieces: an ant hill, inside electrical currents, the moon…I mean, the story literally begins inside a vacuum cleaner. It’s always mixing you up and finding some new narrative device to surprise and confuse you. The morbid tone seems to act in lockstep, occasionally reminding you how cruel the Towelket universe can be, painting the picture of a world fueled by that one Epicurus quote: "Is God willing, but not able...?" And yet it maintains self-aware wholesomeness in the face of painful adversity - this is what the series excels at. Even though I'm not a fan of turn-based combat, I appreciate that this game is actually trying to weave so many tones and plot devices while striving to be a straightforward, non-grindy JRPG adventure, providing a refreshing break from the typical view of RPG Maker as merely a horror game template. The characters and world are cute, yet the story is unpredictable enough to keep the stakes very high and the combat meaningful, allowing players to forge a fun little camaraderie with them all even though the characterization isn't deep. The only character that was somewhat sketchy for me was the Pon Groom, who's entire existence is just the shitty "uuoooohhh!!" meme. I'll give Towelket points for being early to the party in making fun of this archetype, but some may find his antics too unappealing to handle.

Towelket 3 is a very impressive work for the first in the series, and I feel it’s fairly overlooked for being the one to establish the setting and tone, and for being an adorable, surreal JRPG adventure that's a breezy length and has well balanced combat.

And also for featuring the most badass Pucchi of course.

"Reality has come in sight,
What did you see?
What did you hear?
What did you think?
What did you seek?

What did you do?"

Light and dark. Black and white. Left and right. On and off. Yin and Yang. 0 and 1. Almost anything in life can be reduced to a duality of opposites, and Ikaruga understands this not just from its famous polarity mechanic but the almost rhythmic flow of its level designs. Any shmup developer who's been there will tell you the importance of establishing a sense of flow to playing your game, and Ikaruga is the most striking example of this kind of design. Enemies will regularly be making you move to an invisible rhythm when playing Ikaruga, whether it be the starting enemies in stage 1 coming from the top-right/left corners of the screen, or the crushingly difficult "rose of madness" in the first half stage 4. Even the bosses embrace duality, such as the stage 1 boss shifting the polarity of its attacks between phases, the two-faced stage 2 boss which requires different polarities to take out each half, and the final boss' frenetic rush of overlapping bullet curtains.

This rhythm is amplified by the chaining system, which is much more proactive on the part of the player compared to Radiant Silvergun's one-colour restriction. Take out 3 enemies of the same colour in a row, regardless of which colour they are, and you'll add one chain to your current count. Each level and setpiece within is cleverly designed so that you can destroy every single enemy, including even extra enemies while not breaking your chain if you're good enough. Even though I'm not able to get S-ranks in any of the stages yet, pulling off the chains is very satisfying, with the maneuvers looking super cool when you time and position them just right. Ikaruga's chaining system feels more genuinely like building up a huge combo than any other shmup chaining system I've experienced, and gradually unraveling the chaining routes through each of the five stages is like peeling off the layers of an onion, giving the stages a new character and feel each time you get higher max chain counts.

A common criticism of Ikaruga is that the game is too slow-paced and "puzzle-like" for a shmup, especially in the first two stages, and frankly it's a criticism I agreed with for a long time, but this slowness withers away if you try chaining and get a greater feel for the polarity shifting. These slowly-scrolling setpieces become lightning fast, with you optimising frames in your movements even when going for A-ranks, let alone S-ranks. It helps that the ship movement speed in Ikaruga feels significantly faster than Radiant Silvergun's somewhat sluggish movement speed too.

You can't really talk about Ikaruga without bringing up its world-renowned presentational qualities. Although I like to avoid the rambling discourse over whether games are art or not, Ikaruga is definitely a game I'd consider to be oozing with artistic qualities. Speaking of art, this game is also blessed with some of the hardest going official artworks ever made, with a beautiful, grungy early 2000's cyberpunk anime kind of style. There's also the small but fantastic soundtrack by the director Hiroshi Iuchi, which while it doesn't quite reach the orchestral highs of Sakimoto's works for Radiant Silvergun, Iuchi's soundtrack perfectly matches the ebb-and-flows of the stages and bosses here, with a dramatic finish.

Admittedly Ikaruga can be a very difficult game to get into. It lacks the same immediate appeal of its predecessor, lacking the same scale in narrative, number of boss fights or even screen space taken by the game itself. The polarity mechanic is also even stranger than RS' 7-weapon system, with it feeling as though it's actively punishing conventional shmup gameplay patterns at points. Despite these idiosyncrasies of the game, for most of my time as a player of this genre, I've always respected Ikaruga, and as more time passes, I increasingly love it as well.

Sunbreak takes the already outstanding base that was Rise and trims the fat and further polishes a combat system that has been already shined to near perfection over the last several entries. Simultaneously it ups the difficulty substantially and adds several standout monsters, both new and old. New Master Rank armor gives a greater degree of control over player build options, and the new skill swap abilities gives an unprecedented level of expression and freedom. As far as combat in video games goes, it just doesn't get better than this.

I was pretty quick to dismiss Mario Wonder when it was originally announced on July 21, 2023. It screamed all style no substance; the revamped graphics compared to New Super Mario were no doubt some sort of improvement, but I thought it looked somewhat ugly, and the Wonder mechanic especially seemed like a shallow addition, compounded with the talking flower and the very plain level design made it feel as if Wonder, despite aspects of it being promising, would be a disappointment. I didn't really pay attention to the rest of the news cycle other than what I learned from osmosis, but when I heard of a totally legal way to play it early, I decided to give it at least the benefit of the doubt

Two worlds in, I shut off the game. Yep, classic Mario. I thought I saw everything it offered. And after a few minutes, I turned it back on and went back to play it. By the time I left to watch a play, I had left off at World 6 of 7 (sort of 8?), and felt a slight thirst to keep going. It was very small, but a very small part of me was hooked to the game, unable to escape from its appeal.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is both classic 2D Mario action and its own thing. Taking more cues from Super Mario 3D World than it does from the New Super Mario series, it's able to rejuvenate a dead style with a strong combination of excellent level design, new but familiar aesthetics and a new array of powers. A lot of emphasis must be placed on the level design of Super Mario Bros. Wonder as it is bar none some of the best the franchise has seen, with a wide variety of challenges to be encountered. The absolute large amounts of levels with branching paths and secrets to be found is immense, and the levels have a decent balance of challenge; none feel utterly hard, but they aren't always cake walks. If anything is amazing in this game and must not be taken for granted, it is how this game can cultivate such a strong sense of discovery through short levels, making every run through them interesting. The Wonder flower adds to this, as unlike my first impressions, it isn't a cakewalk to reach these always nor are they boring gimmicks, but rather fundamentally change your play style to bring upon a different challenge that couldn't be done without the game wanting to pull the rug from under your feet. A Wonder flower can change the plane to a Sonic 3D Blast ripoff, making it a top-down perspective, or it can change your character to a ball and implement more momentum-based platforming, or it can create a musical that has you play to the beat of it to succeed.

What Wonder does best, as you've probably assumed, is variety. The game is filled with ideas, making every level unique in some way with the unifying tie being the world's motif. World 5 comes to mind as the prime example; where the last few levels are a long stretch in-story of an old temple, and you're required to explore the level properly to find the Wonder flower, or else when you reach the "end" without it, it'll just end early with a "Course Cleared...?". Dialogue with the NPCs will also point out that this search is necessary, and you can't just bumrush your way through the level. Finding the Flower is never hard, but it did trip me up once, and more than anything I respect the dedication there is to making each World its distinct scenario, rather than all of them having Bowser Jr. appear and fuck things up. World 3 is another example, where rather than finding Bowser Jr. and kicking his ass, the leader of that area presents you with various trials to see if you are worthy of the Royal Seed as some sort of tradition. It makes the end goal feel less repetitive as each world is unique in its formation. World 4 had me scratching my head still, where most of the difficulty isn't in the stages, but actually finding the stages in the World Map. I still had a good number missing until postgame and had to ask for help to figure out the location of some.

The World Map in general is interesting as Super Mario Bros. Wonder does not attempt to have a linear structure after the third World, allowing the player to go through World 4-6 in any order, before ending with "World 7", which is more so a hub that connects the other worlds. Alongside that, Wonder introduces "breaks", which are more bite-sized levels that focus on a different style of gameplay other than pure platforming. There's a pretty large variety, but I don't find it too important to point all of them out since they're usually just about a minute or two long, with the exception of the Search breaks, which jesus christ yeah I was only able to do one the others I saw I could not fucking wrap my head around them. Regardless, they're nice additions that give you an extra Seed, and the Badge stages also give you a new badge if you beat them.

Speaking of badges, this is when we veer off from pure praise to more conflicting opinions. The Badge system allows you to equip one badge to vary your options, be it an extra move for traversal, a passive buff like a coin magnet, or one of the Expert badges. I'll be honest and say that for the action badges, I'm more confused on why these are optional equipments instead of proper upgrades to a base arsenal. Your character in this game is barren. Things like the Triple Jump are changed from a basic traversal ability to a badge, and for some like the grappling hook I never used because the level design simply didn't accomodate for it. Some of the passive badges would also be more useful if I didn't use my sole slot for higher speed; if there were more Badge slots than just one, or if you could equip both one action badge and one passive badge I would see this system as something more useful, but as is I felt it a waste because so much possibility for level design is limited by making these movement options optional.

I did think the expert badges to be more of a fun gimmick comparatively, though; I'm only missing one, but all changed the way the game played in a more unique way that makes it more logical that it is an option, and especially one aimed at harder play. I can see myself going back and utilizing the dash, for example. Regardless, the badge system is more of a minor complaint at some missed potential in level design; same goes for the playable characters playing basically the same? As I said, this game takes a bit more from 3D World's controls and style than it does from New, but one thing 3D World had that this didn't is the character variety in control styles. Wonder does have 6 playable characters, and an additional 6 that no one will play, but I do miss the idea behind the characters having more individual styles such as Toad's faster run speed but smaller range in jumps. Maybe it's a bit of wishful thinking to have both the great level design of this and the unique characters of 3D World... but it stuck out to me so I'm mentioning it.

Something else that stuck out to me is the power-up selection. Not counting the Wonder Flower because it's more similar to a Mega Mushroom than anything, there's only four, and only one is a returning one; the Fire Flower. No comments on that, you've played Mario, you know what it does. The other three are the Elephant, the Bubble, and the Drill. I'll be honest I only really liked the Bubble powerup; it goes through walls and you can jump on the bubbles themselves, and they move somewhat slow so lining up jumps with it is doable. It also instantly kills anything the bubble catches, so it's both a great addition to your movement and a great offensive weapon in most situations. The drill is one I would have liked to love, but unfortunately its implementation is a little off. It lets you dig into the ground and the ceiling, as well as being able to hit enemies with your head. It's useful for some stages, but otherwise just doesn't really do much. The Elephant is in theory pretty nice except I hate looking at it. Fuck it. It instills in me a sense of rage I rarely feel. It's also just a little off; it's more of a close range dealer that breaks blocks, but it can also absorb water to rejuvenate some plants, and yeah whatever it works? But I don't like it and I don't like using it.

I also don't like the talking flower. Nintendo strikes back with their my way or the highway mentality because you cannot turn off the flower completely. You can turn off the voice and it somewhat helps but it's still distracting to see text that does nothing but spout Whedonisms. YES I can see that weird shit is happening, I don't need the game to reaffirm that weird shit is happening. It's just an odd addition when the rest of the game is all-in on wanting you to immerse yourself into the Flower Kingdom, seeing the different groups and how you interact with them, to also attract attention to it in an odd, fourth-wall way. They don't give advice or hints. They're entirely there to just tickle your brain if you somehow enjoy the sort of dialogue it spawns.I don't like it. It do not tickle my brain. It does the opposite.

Another small disappointment I have is with the postgame levels in the Special world, only having nine stages and all of them being pretty short and the challenge coming more so from precise application of gimmicks than any strong platforming. I don't mind this approach for the normal levels because part of the appeal is the variety that sprouts from it, but the levels never really felt like a proper challenge because of it. I wish the last stage was longer and harder.

The bosses are fine, there's only really three; Bowser Jr., the ship's, and Bowser himself. Bowser Jr has a pretty set moveset that changes less because of him and more of what the world's general gimmick is. The ship's is more akin to Bowser's fights in Mario 1 where the goal isn't to kill him but to reach the ax. Bowser's fight was a strong and fun spectacle, but not really hard. I wish there were more? Not for every World, I think they all do a good job at variety, but I think there could've been a better way to implement a set piece boss alongside the Wonder flower's effects.

I do think that perhaps Wonder's biggest issue is that it is not a very deep game; not in terms of plot but in terms of gameplay. There's not much avenue for a strong application in gameplay since the game functions much less as something focused on Mario's movement kit and much more on a visual spectacle, pulling the rug off your feet. And Wonder is great for that! But when it also attempts to pose a serious challenge, it starts faltering.

Wonder shows a lot of wonderful spectacle, but stumbles in a few key aspects that still show promise for the evolution of 2D Mario and how it can change and evolve.

Now that I've actually finished the base game (I'll make headway into the postgame dungeons in a bit) I can actually talk about it in a much more deeper fashion. I've been a little disappointed personally speaking at the shift in direction that Shin Megami Tensei has taken with its third person press turn output for its mainline games. Little means little; I love Shin Megami Tensei V and consider it the second best of the series, but that small itch of wanting another classic, first person dungeon crawler with an emphasis on fusion and mapping. So in theory, ADiA should tick all those boxes, right?

I'd like to say that, but unfortunately. Artificial Dream in Arcadia actually goes beyond and above for what I wanted from a modern yet classic Shin Megami Tensei title. In very basic aspects, like its aesthetics, ADiA is an absolutely beautiful reimagening of Gensokyo and its surrounding terms, transforming a fantastic region to a fantastic but antiquated style. I would like to say that is ADiA's strongest aspect, but then I'd be wrong again, because what I do consider the best part of ADiA is not its beautiful graphics, but its mechanics.

ADiA takes queues from classic Megami Tensei, but more clearly does it take aspects from the modern renditions; most specifically, the way Sumireko is built with stats, skills, and affinities takes clear inspiration from Shin Megami Tensei V's handling, being able to use your Sleepers to inherit their affinities or their skills allows a much deeper variety of skills to be used, making Sumireko a real jack-of-all-trades. Byakuren's respec also allows the player to redo her as much as they want, so party building is never truly restricted to a single build. I personally went full World of STR, getting it to 99 by level 40 then juggling Luck, Agility, and Vitality (I had around 50 in Luck?), while then I had a dedicated healer/buffer, a pure magician, and a phys dealer/debuffer. However, because of its variety in not just Sumireko's building but also how Sleepers can also be constantly built upon and added upon by the sacrifice of other Sleepers, that ADiA is not as merciless with its requisites in fusion, and rather that it allows the player to use ANY units as they wish. I didn't do that; because I like fusion, so constantly changing my team was half the fun, however I do think with a New Game+ that using specific Grimoires and a specific team of your favorite Sleepers would be a fun exercise.

This does not mean that ADiA is a perfect game, despite feeling out of the base game completely satisfied with what it does achieve; there are some gripes I have with it. For one, hijacking's balance feels a little off. Some of them I found pitifully easy and I opted to specifically hijack to avoid fights due to the lack of an Estoma, but others (Izu and Yumemi come to mind primarily) are disgustingly difficult. Paired that with the lack of a clear hitbox makes hijacking somewhat unreliable. Worse off is the steep cost of Fast Hijacking, needing 75 SP to use. I understand the price, but when the discounted price of a base Hijack is 25, I'd rather take my chances than rely on Boosters or constant combat to regain that extra 50 SP. I'm also a little sad that the bracketed skills can't be gained through skill inheritance, because I simply never used one because fusing feels too closed off to be able to transfer these skills to the end, and because I used a physical oriented cast with three out of four Sleepers (including Sumireko) focusing on physical damage, that regaining SP was a hurdle due to the unreliableness of obtaining a crit. My fault? Sure, but it doesn't change the fact that I found SP to be unreliable despite the Special commands being debatably useful. I never used Pierce, for example, despite Pierce being an absolutely crucial skill in other Megami Tensei games and especially for physical builds. Part of it would also be that having elemental damage that scales off of Strength would have gone a long way in relying on SP and bracketed skills.

I'm also partially disappointed in a few concepts in the storytelling that didn't feel entirely done. Touhou 12 and 13 being just a small sidequest to unlock respeccing felt wasted, for example; I don't mind 13 not having much because it's not really a game that has the setup necessary for a pure dungeon crawl, but merging both of the games felt like writing a quick check to make sure no touhou game goes underrepresented. 7 also fell to this; the only part of it was the Prismriver mansion, which also falls under the same thing as 13 where it's the best that could have been done, but it's still a little sad not to see Youmu and Yuyuko properly have a role in the story. I'd extend this to 19, but it DID come out a month ago, so it would be unfair to have it as a gripe.

The TORIFUNE dungeon is another part that felt disappointing in a storytelling sense as it felt it had no real bearing on Gensokyo or its cast as the previous dungeons do. DO NOT take this as me not enjoying it because the Hifuu club stuff is my favorite thing that Touhou has made, but there's no real characters or dialogue or enemies that really fit TORIFUNE, especially since Trojan Green Asteroid makes a point that TORIFUNE is a lush enviorment filled with fairies. You could maybe say that the TORIFUNE in Gensokyo is the idea of what it is in the Outside World given shape, but... well, I like Renko and Merry, so not seeing them or being able to use them was a little sad.

I do make a point on how TORIFUNE is represented because outside of that, I actually think this is a pretty well written game? I have some gripes with how some characters are represented, it's not perfect with how I see them, but there's a genuine hilarity to the stark contrast that is Gensokyo against Sumireko's contemporary outlook. It might not be something that ages well, but to be fair, Sumireko isn't someone who would age well as a character. And that's fine; for now, the time period we are in, she's a very fun lead with that twinge of cringe you'd expect from a high school zoomer, and the dialogue options that go full with that are really fun. I did also really like the ending, which I won't get into because the dev said not to spoil, but all that's really needed to be said is that it's a very nice ending to who Sumireko is as a character and how that works with the ending character as well as just Gensokyo, which was the strongest part of Artificial Dream in Arcadia and just the process of exploring Gensokyo and the cast at large.

The only thing to really conclude with is that it's kind of a crime this costs 10 dollars. Having finished it at 25 hours, the amount of mechanical depth and unit variety with exceedingly great dungeon design is something that really deserves to cost, like, 20 dollars? I'd pay for that. It's what I wanted from a modern Shin Megami Tensei, delivering in even more spades than what I had originally wished for. I'm still gonna hound Atlus to stop making Persona 6, though.

The story is more of what you've come to expect from Scarlet/Violet. That is to say, heavily focused on individual character relationships which the main character, and also heavily relying on "cute" moments (the quotes don't imply sarcasm, it is cute). In this regard, the DLC is a success. It also sets up the second part of the DLC in a great way.

But I'm a bit mixed on the rest of it besides the new characters. I attempted to start a new team for this DLC, and while I night have just picked bad Pokémon for it, I found that the game was quite resistant to making a new team roll smoothly. Despite going out of my way to catch as many new (as in, not in the base game) Pokémon, and fighting many optional trainers, I still felt ill-prepared for the story fights - I can't imagine not doing the optional things and still trying to build a new team. Perhaps this is my fault? I mean, I certainly could have just threw a bunch of Rare and Experience Candies at my Pokémon and gotten powerful that way, but that sounds very boring.

It also kind of stinks how few new Pokémon there are. Only one new Pokémon line, one new evolution for a previous Pokémon, and a new form (an admittedly very cool one) for a returning Pokémon. Plus the four new legendaries, but you're already at/past the end by the time you can catch them (not like I use legendaries for my team anyway). I know this was the case for Sword and Shield's DLC as well, but I can still dream, right?

To end with modern Pokémon's favorite flaw, this DLC runs like shit. Look, I rarely complain about how games run, it usually doesn't bother me too much, but gosh, there was so much slow down, it became distracting. Avoid water as much as you can, I swear the game thinks it's in water.

I wish I could vote between 3 and 3.5 stars, but alas, I'll settle for 3.