I feel like you could lock Shouzou Kaga in a room with sticks and rocks and he'd have started making a new SRPG within a few days.

Despite some limitations of the SRPGmaker engine, Vestaria manages to perfectly capture the spirit of past FE games Kaga has directed. A charming cast, a focus on narrative events happening on the maps themselves, and of course busted prf weapons everywhere as has become common in his games.

When Vestaria shines, it shines extremely bright with both challenging and interesting maps. But along with the unrestrained creativity that makes these moments so good, there are multiple maps where the event/secret hunting devolves into tedium instead. Especially some of the later chapters, whose length and size manages to dwarf Fire Emblem 4 maps that spanned entire countries, taking multiple hours to complete even before things like resets. The last chapter specifically is a monster of a challenge, whose roughly 6 hour clear time must make it the longest in the series.

This all comes together to make Vestaria a mix of both the best and the worst the Kaga Saga games have to offer, but overall it comes out to an unforgettable experience that continues the FE legacy even 25 years since Kaga has touched the series officially.

So I finally finished Pokemon Shield. I am not really sure what to say. All around it was pretty disappointing. The story is terrible, Hop's whole thing could of been interesting but they fumbled that and made him the worst rival in the entire series. The ending is also super anticlimatic, and while Eternatus is cool everything else is just uninteresting. They dont give any time to flesh out nearly any character and the only one I liked in the end was Marnie. The game is also just really boring at times. The combat is still the same old, but with barely any animations or flare to it its just really quite dull. Also its about time this series gets some voice acting, its seriously jarring to just see a bunch of mouths moving with nothing in cutscenes. But its not all bad. Its pokemon so there is some banger music, depsite Hop sucking balls his battle theme is one of my favorite pokemon songs. The character customization is also really great, I dressed my girl up in the maximum drip, spent a lot of time on that and definitely made the game worth it for me. Also while some towns are kinda bland, some are really beautiful and seeing Pokemon on a larger scope makes me happy, hell even just being able to play Pokemon on the TV with the switch dock nearly made me cry but that's just more of a cool thing with the switch than a positive for the game lol. What else did I like uh.... the new pokemon designs are all pretty good? liked most of those... hm. Thats kinda it really. It's not a bad game by any means and I definitely liked it more than I disliked it but for Pokemons mainline debut on a home console it just kinda falls flat. This series has so much potential and so much fucking money that its absurd its getting this little care put into it. Pokemon can do better. Legends was a step in the right direction. I really hope they can do something better with this.

Champion Team
Inteleon lvl 60
Falinks lvl 60 (best boy, so cute)
Coalossal lvl 58
Hatterene lvl 59
Toxtricity lvl59
Corviknight lvl57

Time Played - 36 hours 53 Minutes
Nancymeter - 64/100
Game Completion #36 of 2022
April Completion #5

You know those video game picture frames you see in stores?
This game is like a playable one of those, it's really neat when things line up just right. It's a shame the Virtual Boy hurt your eyes and forced you to play in this super awkward way. Thankfully we're in the year 2024 where you can mod your 3DS to play Virtual Boy games in a way that doesn't hurt your eyes while retaining the intended 3D effects. Still docking points because that is not the state the game was released in, but it fixes a lot of the issues of every single VB title.

It's Wario Land! It plays closer to Wario Land 1 than 2 , with a focus on exploration and puzzles with a few hat power-ups. The artwork on display is really well done and you'll have to use your noggin a few times to find all the hidden treasures.

The gimmick here is foreground/background, much like the far later released Kirby's Triple Deluxe. But in this game, it's much quicker to switch sides and it factors into some of the puzzles and boss fights in creative ways. Scrolling between one side and the next is satisfying as well.

My main gripe with the game is like in Wario Land 1, Tiny Wario is absolutely useless and not fun to control at all, so you just pray to god you find a power-up so you can get back to actually playing the game. In addition, if you somehow manage a Game Over, you will lose the most recent Treasure you found, forcing you to backtrack to that level and grab it again if you want 100% completion.

Is this the best game on the Virtual Boy? I dunno, it's the first one I've played, and even then the Virtual Boy doesn't exactly have a lot of competition, but it's a pretty safe "Yeah probably" until I play more, and is at the very least a recommendation.

Yakuza but what if you were a law guy instead of a Yakuza guy?

The new detective angle allows for new methods of storytelling and a fresh cast of characters, all taking place in the same universe without relying on calling back to the games that came before it outside the main location and yakuza gang. And the story itself is a pretty solid mystery, with fantastic over the top action sequences that you just have to see for yourself.

The detective angle incorporates itself into gameplay too with varying degrees of success. The best of these are the chase sequences, brought back form Yakuza games but feel faster than ever. There's also lock picking which is a nice little distraction. This is the best of them though, the others tend to feel superfluous like selecting your keys to unlock a door, to drawn out and boring like tailing people which was tense at first but the further in the game they become too long.

You play as Yagami, not named Light, who in terms of combat I'd say is like Akiyama with a dash of Kiryu. He has the Crane and Tiger styles, which are best in mobs and 1v1 respectively, which generally makes it a simple choice which one to use at each given time but sometimes in mobs you can Tiger to focus on a specific one then back to Crane for the rest, so even in a simple system there's still strategy to be had.

This has nothing to do with anything, but I remember buying things at a Poppo, and I was given a record and the employee's thanks. Then I went into the office, put on that record to hear a jazzy rendition of Ave Maria. I just sat there and took it all in as the music played and Yagami healed, it was a moment that stuck with me.

All in all, Judgement is an interesting new storytelling spin with a fresh batch of characters in the Yakuza world. My Judgement? If you like any Yakuza game, you'll like this without a doubt.

it didn't got better.

The first DQ was simple and short, but here is just a convoluted mess that didn't understood what did right the first game.

Don't play de snes remake btw.

everything i like about dragon quest 1 is BACK and it's BIGGER AND WORSE

Wandering around an essentially open world with no direction that gradually expands as you piece together information you get from talking to the people you meet in towns and dungeons, collecting a few key items along the way that further broaden your horizons, keeping your adorable little hubris in check by slapping your wrist with tougher enemies when you get too big for your britches? sick shit, rad.

Okay but what if the world was like unmanageably large now, so getting anywhere is a huge slog, even if you think you know where you want to go? What if instead of a few key items there were, like, twenty, just kinda slapped aimlessly around the world?

The pacing of the whole thing feels off. The first chunk of the game, where you're gathering your party, is the most linear but also the most similar to DQ1, and by far the most pleasant for me, even though there's an ill portent early on where you go back and forth across the same three locations several times looking for a guy only to be told each time "oh damn you just missed him get fucked I guess go back to where you just came from." Little did I know that sequence is the blueprint for the entire game.

Even after this saggy, elongated, pseudo-open world experience, your reward is a protracted endgame featuring no fewer than three endgame dungeons before a really underwhelming final boss.

If there's one thing I'll give Dragon Quest 2 it's that the combat is handily improved over the first game (although that one's simplicity has its charms). Three party members and Fighting Lots Of Guys Per Encounter is a big change up and the game is a Proper JRPG now and it feels fully formed. Having your party members be the guy who hits, the girl who magics, and the guy who does both-of-those-but-badly-but-he's-the-one-with-all-your-environmental-spells-so-you-wanna-keep-him-alive is enough complexity to keep things fun for the game's relatively short length, and there are way more spells and they're actually useful in combat in this game so fighting is generally a lot more fun, which is good because there's more of it, it's harder, and grinding is less "the entire game" and more of a necessary evil in the vein of a classical JRPG conception of grinding.

Ultimately I'm glad the game is only like fifteen hours but on the other hand holy shit I can't believe the game was ONLY fifteen hours it felt like fifteen years in the moment. It's still dragon quest, it's still pleasurable most of the time, which is why I feel like it's so impressive that when it was all said and done I came away so sour on it. Honestly not sure how they pulled that off.

So, after playing all of the mainline Yakuza titles prior to this in release order, I’ve finally arrived at Yakuza 0. I do like this game, but I don’t really get it like most others. People online and my friends had kept telling me about how good this game is, but I didn’t always see it. For a while during my playthrough, I was skeptical of all the praise Yakuza 0 had received, although now that I’ve reached the end, I understand it a lot better now.
Starting with the combat, I found myself enjoying it as it feels very arcadey and flows well. Heat actions did feel overly long at times, which isn’t a problem exclusive to this game, however it felt particularly annoying here. Overall, I didn’t have as much fun with Kiryu’s new styles as I did in Yakuza 5. For the record, I didn’t bother with any of the Legend styles. I thought the grinding for them was a bit too much. Majima is simply fantastic though, with a varied moveset that’s very fun to experiment with. As for the bosses, most of them were pretty solid, with only a few that were… just okay. Kuze especially was a fun boss to repeat. Like I said, I had a good time with the gameplay, but I definitely prefer Yakuza 5’s or even Yakuza 2’s.
Moving onto the story, it was great and serves well as a prequel without needing to retcon past stories for fanservice. The pacing in the beginning is a bit slow, though I can look past that since the rest of the story is so engaging. Each of the new characters are also al interesting in their own right. I really love Tachibana and Makoto’s roles in the narrative. Characters are killed off in a meaningful way, which similarly reminded me of Yakuza 1 in ways. And oh boy the finale. It’d be difficult for me to put my thoughts on it into words, so I’ll just say it’s done extremely well.
Looking at the presentation, it is insanely colorful and stylish, much like the previous entries. I was wholly surprised at how consistent it performs on PS4 due to this too. Yakuza 0 doesn’t have my favorite aesthetics in the series, especially compared to Yakuza 2 and 5, but damn is it amazing nonetheless. The music has prominent electronic and dubstep, with some great themes on top of it. Although I would still say it’s not as memorable as 1-3’s to me.
In summary, I really do owe this game a lot in the end, as it’s the entire reason I even got interested in this franchise in the first place. Yakuza 0’s popularity is what sparked my interest initially, and it’s led me to this point where I absolutely fell in love with the series as a whole. While I may not have appreciated this as much as others have, it was still a blast to play through. It’s an excellent Yakuza title all the way through. Next I tackle Yakuza Kiwami. And boy, do I have some things to say about that fucking remake.