weh
1993
it's fuckin doom
if i were reviewing this based purely on how imporrtant, influential, and enduring this game is, it'd be an easy 5 stars. if i were reviewing it purely based on how much i enjoy playing the game, in the year 2022, it'd be 3 stars. so 4 feels perfect. the entire medium owes this game so much, but it's dated. however, you can run it on a refrigerator's touchscreen panel and play custom modded levels. so it's a forever game for many people, and i love that. doom is great.
if i were reviewing this based purely on how imporrtant, influential, and enduring this game is, it'd be an easy 5 stars. if i were reviewing it purely based on how much i enjoy playing the game, in the year 2022, it'd be 3 stars. so 4 feels perfect. the entire medium owes this game so much, but it's dated. however, you can run it on a refrigerator's touchscreen panel and play custom modded levels. so it's a forever game for many people, and i love that. doom is great.
2022
i got this at launch, and i held off on reviewing this. i've got it in my "finish first" steam category, and i stare at it whenever i boot up the app, knowing it's not very long and that i should just knock out the rest of it. but i feel absolutely no desire to, so i'm marking it as shelved.
most of the three stars i'm giving it come from its presentation and atmosphere. the environmental artists did a fantastic job, it's really breathtaking at times. the cat moves pretty well, it's clear the team fucking loves this cute lil orange fella. but moving is a little janky, there are visual bugs, 100%ing would be a drag, and the story isn't really hitting me hard or anything. idk, it's not bad but it's nothing to write home about
most of the three stars i'm giving it come from its presentation and atmosphere. the environmental artists did a fantastic job, it's really breathtaking at times. the cat moves pretty well, it's clear the team fucking loves this cute lil orange fella. but moving is a little janky, there are visual bugs, 100%ing would be a drag, and the story isn't really hitting me hard or anything. idk, it's not bad but it's nothing to write home about
excellent 2-hour vignette of a game, fantastic writing and characterization. the presentation is very cool, alternating between these fixed-point rotating camera angles and over-the-shoulder tank controls. it has a consistent tone, but hits a variety of emotional beats very adeptly. i highly, highly recommend this title
2022
this is a really fun one of these. i don't feel the need to 100% it in one sitting, but i definitely did play it for like 8 solid hours the first time i booted it up. it's not very deep, but finding optimal character/weapon/skill combinations is fun. and it's like $3, so i absolutely got my money's worth
this is one of my essential childhood games. when i saw previews for this game in stores, i lost my mind. i think it'd be really hard to love this game wholeheartedly instead of through a layer of ironic detachment unless you were a child when it came out. it's a terrible game that's also one of the best games of all time. does that make sense? i hope so. i love it dearly.
2022
extremely middle-of-the-road, to the point that there's not much to say about it
2019
i would have a hard time choosing between this, 4 (wii version), and 8, as the best resident evil game.
good god, this shit runs so terribly on switch. it's also systematically very much pared down from disgaea 5, and disgaea 5 runs perfectly on the switch, a platform where it really shines.
i am abandoning this switch version. when disgaea 6 complete comes out on steam, i may pick it up there because i'm stupid. it's rare for me to care that much about performance issues, but it's genuinely so bad that it makes me nauseous and/or causes eye strain, depending on how i have the graphics options tuned.
fingers crossed on that pc port, i would love to love this
i am abandoning this switch version. when disgaea 6 complete comes out on steam, i may pick it up there because i'm stupid. it's rare for me to care that much about performance issues, but it's genuinely so bad that it makes me nauseous and/or causes eye strain, depending on how i have the graphics options tuned.
fingers crossed on that pc port, i would love to love this
if they ever make a pc port of this i'll give it another shot. i found the characters extremely obnoxious, but the idea of a school setting and the more modern gameplay compared to 1 and 2 make this more enticing to me. i'm just not about to dig my ps3 out of storage to play this.
2016
you can see the beginnings of excellence, but it's really rough to play for the first time in 2022. there are other srpgs from this era that work better for me, and other disgaea games that work better for me. i may come back and give this another shot, but it just makes me want to play 5.
2019
i agree with this game's message and enjoyed my super brief time with it! unfortunately the third ending (there are three endings) is chance-based, and you can't skip dialogue, so i didn't have the patience to refresh until i got it. worth playing, though!
i find myself endeared to this weird glitchy surreal world, with its opaque theology and its cutesy inhabitants. i really love the art style, and all the individual images that come up during bad endings or cutscenes.
there are frustrating moments, for sure. save as often as you possibly can, because you never know when you'll examine something and immediately die. opened the wrong door? immediate death! i don't mind that sort of thing, once i know it's that type of game. additionally, there's a maze with a bunch of enemies with random movement patterns, and if they touch you you have to start over from before a scene where you need to select the right dialogue options, but it's just that one area so keep pressing on. i recommend looking up a guide (there's one on steam for ep1 and ep2, just have that open if you start feeling annoyed, it's very light on spoilers).
should you play this game? if you've played and enjoyed yume nikki and the games it inspired, and you find yourself drawn to the art style, absolutely. if you played nier automata and were delighted by ending k, absolutely. if you grew up in the newgrounds/deviantart/invader zim/keenspot era, absolutely. plus, it's free, and the other eps are only a couple dollars.
i'm looking forward to playing the rest!
there are frustrating moments, for sure. save as often as you possibly can, because you never know when you'll examine something and immediately die. opened the wrong door? immediate death! i don't mind that sort of thing, once i know it's that type of game. additionally, there's a maze with a bunch of enemies with random movement patterns, and if they touch you you have to start over from before a scene where you need to select the right dialogue options, but it's just that one area so keep pressing on. i recommend looking up a guide (there's one on steam for ep1 and ep2, just have that open if you start feeling annoyed, it's very light on spoilers).
should you play this game? if you've played and enjoyed yume nikki and the games it inspired, and you find yourself drawn to the art style, absolutely. if you played nier automata and were delighted by ending k, absolutely. if you grew up in the newgrounds/deviantart/invader zim/keenspot era, absolutely. plus, it's free, and the other eps are only a couple dollars.
i'm looking forward to playing the rest!
it's a lego game, but it's HUGE so if you already like this series, you won't be disappointed
2021
EDIT: original review below. i played it on pc with lightning-fast loadtimes and no performance issues, and guess what? this game still kinda sucks. it made the game playable, but it didn't make it good. my kingdom for another good fuckin rune factory game.
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oof, this is a tough one to write. rune factory 4 is one of my favorite games, ever.
i knew rf5 wouldn't live up to rf4. the only way to do that would be to make a game that is rf4 with a different story/characters/setting/etc. a huge reason rf4 works so well is because everything is very quick. you can knock out an entire day's tasks in five minutes if you want to.
this game, on the other hand, suffers from long load times and really intense performance issues on the switch. i'd love a buttery-smooth pc port, and i don't normally mind jank, but it really hurts this game's pace given the repetitive nature of farming sims.
i will pick this back up, i love rune factory too much to ignore it forever, but the switch to 3d environments was something i was dreading after the ps3 game, and i was right to feel that way. the combat is sloppy and also hurt by the framerate issues. the environments are huuuuge for no reason whatsoever.
here are a couple nice things about it: i have decent first impressions of the characters. i think i will be able to grow to like them once i get to know them more. also, the intro cinematic is clearly going for a persona vibe and it totally succeeds, i watch it every single time i boot up the game. and lastly, the north american release marked the addition of actual same-sex marriage in this series. no more having to switch your character sprite and being stuck with the wrong pronouns or whatever. wooooo
that said, you still select your gender at the beginning by answering a question either masculinely or femininely, lol. baby steps i guess.
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oof, this is a tough one to write. rune factory 4 is one of my favorite games, ever.
i knew rf5 wouldn't live up to rf4. the only way to do that would be to make a game that is rf4 with a different story/characters/setting/etc. a huge reason rf4 works so well is because everything is very quick. you can knock out an entire day's tasks in five minutes if you want to.
this game, on the other hand, suffers from long load times and really intense performance issues on the switch. i'd love a buttery-smooth pc port, and i don't normally mind jank, but it really hurts this game's pace given the repetitive nature of farming sims.
i will pick this back up, i love rune factory too much to ignore it forever, but the switch to 3d environments was something i was dreading after the ps3 game, and i was right to feel that way. the combat is sloppy and also hurt by the framerate issues. the environments are huuuuge for no reason whatsoever.
here are a couple nice things about it: i have decent first impressions of the characters. i think i will be able to grow to like them once i get to know them more. also, the intro cinematic is clearly going for a persona vibe and it totally succeeds, i watch it every single time i boot up the game. and lastly, the north american release marked the addition of actual same-sex marriage in this series. no more having to switch your character sprite and being stuck with the wrong pronouns or whatever. wooooo
that said, you still select your gender at the beginning by answering a question either masculinely or femininely, lol. baby steps i guess.
2022
just go play it, it takes less than an hour.
everybody loves splendidland's apple quest monsters dx, and now we've got that vibe but in a fun little adventure game. the humor is cute and clever, and genuinely got some laughs out of me.
everybody loves splendidland's apple quest monsters dx, and now we've got that vibe but in a fun little adventure game. the humor is cute and clever, and genuinely got some laughs out of me.