Nearly 20 years of being an F-Zero fan and feeding on scraps like Captain Falcon being in Smash Bros or Captain Falcon's Twister Race being in Nintendo Land but at last, after all that waiting, after all that suffering, Nintendo has brought F-Zero out of retirement with F-Zero 99, seemingly plotting the best path possible to properly revive the series in the future.

F-Zero 99 marries the two concepts of SNES F-Zero (where every lap you must finish above a certain number of people or you're eliminated) with the 99 series of games (where 99 real people online battle it out to be number 1 like in Tetris 99 or Pac-Man 99).
So F-Zero 99 at its core is built on the foundation of the SNES game where it looks like how you would remember the SNES game only now in HD with various track elements like ramps and mines now built in 3D. You have the same four vehicles of the SNES game along with the tracks all being from that game as well but a few elements have been taken from later entries in the series to help make it play a little closer to F-Zero X and GX. The boost mechanic works exactly like those games where your health is your boost. Boosting requires a portion of your health to be activated and this core mechanic is exactly why I love the F-Zero series so much. When you can lose health from crashing into walls or being attacked by other vehicles, this mechanic brings a huge level of risk vs reward to every race, particularly towards the end of a race when everybody is going gung ho and the slightest tap could eliminate a number of people. To further add to this mechanic, if you knock out another player, you not only refill you own health but also increase your health allowing you to boost even more giving you an advantage over other racers. This is what peak F-Zero is, a thrilling race between life or death where the more aggressive you play the more you are rewarded. Being over zealous comes with the risk of being eliminated early but playing your cards right can lead to the sweetest of victories.

To help with aggressive plays, the other mechanic brought in from X and GX is the spin attack. As the name suggests, this allows you to spin and attack other racers, damaging them while protecting yourself. To accommodate for having 99 players on the track, vehicles are now less slippery than they were in other F-Zero games meaning the spin attack doesn't quite knock people flying and pinballing around like it used to, instead it does a better job at repelling racers around you who are trying to nudge you off course. Unfortunately the side attack hasn't been brought back where double tapping the drift buttons would jerk your vehicle to the left or right to knock other racers flying, but there is a new mechanic introduced that is tied to the spin attack to help pull those further back in the race up the pack a little.

Now many F-Zero fans are probably thinking "a comeback mechanic? In a game all about rewarding skill and punishing mistakes? Why have they Mario Kart'd my F-Zero?" Well that's where you're wrong because this new mechanic has also been designed around F-Zero's incredible risk/reward pull. By spin attacking other vehicles, these little yellow orbs land on the course called sparks. Collecting these fill up a meter that allows you to use a Super Boost which takes you up to a new part of every course called the Skyway. The Skyway is full of boost pads and corner cutting allowing you to fly above the rest of the racers and catch up. This boost lasts longer the further back you are and will not drop you off on a corner or an area where there is no track underneath so more smart thinking players will use it in the most optimal of places but that also comes with the detriment with not being able to use your regular boost so you can end up missing out on the most optimal place to use that boost while waiting for the most optimal place to use the Skyway.

Even with the Skyway catch up mechanic, it still takes skill to actually finish first in a race. The further up in the pack you are the more likely you are to find cpu machines designed to hinder you. Grey vehicles that bump you much further than usual and red vehicles that explode upon contact taking a large chunk of your health away truly test if you deserve to be leading the race or not. There's also blue player controlled vehicles for people who crash out early to cause mayhem for around 30 seconds with spin attacks before blowing up and people further back in the race can find a golden vehicle that fill up a good portion of your super boost meter when collided with. There's a lot of reaction skill needed to navigate these obstacles and they help separate the best from the rest.

Further pushing this as a skill based game is how you start a race. Rather than hope for a good starting point in a traditional racing starting line up, instead all 99 players a lined up across a super wide piece of track that narrows down as you drive along before jumping across to the start line of the actual course itself, meaning if you want to start the race in a good position you have to earn it by forcing your way to the front of the pack yourself. Another cool thing about these portions of the course is that they're sometimes changed up a little bit. Sand Ocean usually starts with two separate courses that cross over each other before merging into one for the jump but sometimes you'll get one that is a bit simpler and ends with a massive strip of boost pads.

In terms of game modes your main mode is the 99 mode itself where 99 racers compete to earn first place. A few racers are ranked out every lap and the course is voted on before a race via the two options given, currently selected from Mute City 1, Big Blue, Sand Ocean and Death Wind. It works for the most part but unfortunately people do tend to gravitate towards Mute City or Big Blue meaning track variety can be an issue in this mode depending on your luck from the choices given. In the 99 mode you're given 4 rivals based on your current level and rank and if you manage to beat any of them you will increase your rank slightly. It's a great expansion of the rank system in X/GX and it manages to give you some satisfaction even if you're struggling to compete for a 1st place finish. Doing well in the 99 mode will earn you tickets which can be used in the prixs.
The other modes rotate in and out and these include a team battle mode where you're put into one of two teams and your team earns points based on position, damaging opponents with spin attacks, destroying opponents, etc and at the end you get a Splatoon style totting up of the points to see if your team's bar makes it across the halfway point for victory. It's a nice side mode to dip into every now and then. There's pro tracks which currently includes White Land and Port Town II from the Queen and King leagues for players to test themselves on in a 99 race. These courses are included as possible finales for the mini prix mode in which you race across 3 courses earning points based on where you finish in a somewhat more traditional style F-Zero grand prix. Ranking out or blowing up eliminates you from the competition entirely so there's a test of skill to see if you can even finish the prix as it cuts down its racers to 60 and then 40 for the end. The rivals system changes a little here where your rivals become the two racers above and below you in the rankings, increasing the tension even further as beating rivals will most likely mean you're moving up the rankings table. Mini prixs cost 1 ticket and are a ton of fun to compete in but the main attraction for me is the mode that is always in a countdown on the main menu…
The grand prix currently cycles in once every hour or on weekends every half hour and currently takes the 5 Knight League courses from the SNES game and has racers compete to earn first place. It works exactly like the mini prix mode but costs 3 tickets and with 2 more races, the number of racers is eventually cut down to 20 for the final race where you start more like a traditional race with each player placed on the starting grid in terms of their table ranking with 20th at the front and 1st at the back. The grand prix is a true test of your abilities as even just making it through all 5 races is a challenge in and of itself. Any extra health you've picked up from destroying vehicles carries over throughout the prix allowing you to boost more and adding an element of strategy. Do you want to spend the first race building up your resources by hanging back a bit and picking off weakened vehicles or do you want to try and race normally, hoping you defeat vehicles along the way. It's thrilling stuff and you can really feel the pressure on yourself after having a good start and sitting near the top of the table. Winning the grand prix is the ultimate test of skill and what I would call the crowning glory of the game.

On top of all this, by completing challenges with each vehicle in the game such as winning a race or making it through a race without bumping off a wall, you can earn cosmetics to change up the look of your vehicle and decorate your user card. It's nice having a few options to give each vehicle your own identity. It is a bit of a shame that there are only 4 vehicles currently. It's hard to say if they'll add any more or not but they do have plenty of options from other 2D F-Zero games like Maximum Velocity and GP Legend on the GBA. Course wise all the SNES courses will be added eventually, which will be great. Seeing how many people who actually make it to the end of Fire Field will be a lot of fun. I think it would be wise to add in GBA courses as well, especially if we're just keeping easier courses in the main 99 mode. It would add more options and avoid the current predicament of the same courses being picked over and over again.

F-Zero 99 expands upon what makes traditional F-Zero so great, essentially feeling like what an online mode of F-Zero would have felt like. In its current form it does lack depth in vehicle and course options but aside from those drawbacks, this is the most thrilling, competitive, addictive, and true to its core series from the 99 style games released so far. It has given me optimism for the future of F-Zero and finally satisfied the craving I've had for a new F-Zero for nearly 20 years.

Peach finally gets another chance to shine in the starring role after Tose’s Super Princess Peach on Nintendo DS nearly 20 years ago. Good Feel (developers of Wario Land: The Shake Dimension and Kirby's Epic Yarn on Wii, Yoshi's Woolly World on Wii U, and Yoshi's Crafted World on Switch) have been given the chance to shine the spotlight on Peach again with Princess Peach: Showtime!

Heading off to the Sparkla Theatre to watch some shows, things take a turn when Madame Grape shows up and takes over the theatre and makes all the shows despair-inducing. It's up to Peach and her new ally Stella to save the Theets (really cute new Mario universe character design that is super simple but works really well) by going through all the plays and bringing the theatre to life again. It's a simple and cute set up and it's all brand new enemies and allies that help give this game its own identity which is greatly appreciated.

With each of Good Feel’s takes on Nintendo ip, the main thing that stands out is the aesthetic design. Wario Land was like a 2D animated cartoon, Kirby's Epic Yarn and Yoshi's Woolly World were yarn focused, and Yoshi's Crafted World was more arts and crafts focused. Princess Peach: Showtime! as the story suggests is very theatrical inspired with its artistic design. Every level takes place on a stage play of sorts where you can see a lot of the background elements are 2D cutouts being held in place by string. Things like horses are also held up by string and have a crafted look to them to give that feel of a stage play element. Stuff like fires are little cardboard cutouts and some stages feature elements like the whole stage rotating round to give a new perspective and it's all really cute stuff. It might not be the mose immediate stand out from Good Feel’s aesthetic designs because Peach herself is the standard 3D model instead of a yarn version but nonetheless a lot of attention to detail has been taken in giving this the most stage like feel possible and it shows.

So what's the gameplay loop with this one? Well, each floor of the theatre is home to four different plays which Peach needs to tackle and collect Sparkla’s in to open a boss door that shows up once each play has been beaten. Stepping into the first play, say the door at the bottom left, will see Peach enter a world based on that play, like a Swordfighter play in this case. Each of the level 1s play similar where Peach starts off hearing the plights of the Theets and using Stella to bring life back into the play and the Theets before eventually getting a transformation. Yup, Peach gets a very magical girl inspired treatment and each play sees her don a costume with unique abilities to take on the Sour Bunch. In the Swordfighter play, Peach becomes a fencer inspired Swordfighter.
To keep things simple between each play and not confuse players by giving them too much to learn and adapt to, each outfit is controlled via two main buttons. A to jump and B for an action which differs for each costume. There's also a pose button on ZR which is used for finding secrets in the plays and collecting hidden Sparklas.
The goal of each play is to make your way to the end by working your way through specific obstacles unique to each costume and the variety of gameplay styles on offer makes sure things stay fresh even through the relative simplicity of the gameplay on offer. There's 10 costumes in total, each with 3 levels to beat and things get a little bit more involved in each as you go, though always remaining on the breezier side of things.

Swordfighter plays as mentioned earlier sees Peach become a Swordfighter, allowing her to cut through enemies with ease as she traverses through the stage. She has a Matrix style slow time dodge that activates if you press either action button just before getting hit whichs makes her jump over the enemy and opens them up to a counter attack. Her lives are handled by 5 hearts and if she loses all of them you lose a few coins and go back to the last checkpoint. Swordfighter is a fun costume but due to the simplicity of the combat, it's also one of the more just alright ones. It's fun but not as memorable as some of the others.

Ninja Peach however is one of the more memorable ones. This one sees Peach sneak through levels by hiding up against walls, in grass, or in water. The animation for each one is really cute, she holds up little cardboard bushes in the grass, uses a bamboo stick to breathe underwater and holds up a piece of paper where the background blends into it on the walls. So Ninja levels are more stealth orientated where you have to avoid the enemies spotlights and take them out. These levels end with an auto run sequence where you have to time your jumps and then finish with a spectacular scroll special, like Peach riding a giant wave and crashing through enemies. It's simple fun but one of the more engaging outfits and the incredible attention to detail help sell this one more.

Patisserie Peach sees her basically enter bake offs. These include two types of minigames. The first is decorating cakes by putting cream on them to match a design in the background and the second is making cookies by tapping B over and over until you hit the rainbow section to build the best possible bunch. If you over do it, the bowl explodes and wastes time which is important because these minigames are timed and you're rewarded with more Sparklas the better you do, turning this into one of the more difficult outfits surprisingly. The cookies in particular see you having work out how to time building your own cookies and when to team up with a Theet to build quicker and it can be very tight trying to hit the score that nets all 3 possible Sparklas. Again it's simple but the time and score pressure helps keep this one engaging.

Cowgirl Peach is one of the more action based ones. These plays see Peach fight enemies by lassoing them or throwing barrels at them with the lasso. You also get sections where she rides a horse which are on rails and you have to time your jumps and lasso collectibles and Theets free from the enemies. These plays are just really fun for the spectacle and Western style music is so good in these stages.

Another highlight is Phantom Thief Peach. Using a grappling hook she can swing from hooks and zip line across stages and the fluidity of the movement here is just so much fun. There's pretty simple gate unlocking puzzles to do and then the plays end with a Metroid style escape sequence where the full fluidity of Peach’s movement is put to the test and you get a small paraglider sequence to wrap it up. This one's just a ton of fun when you're chaining together hook swings and zip line dashes to move through the stages in style.

Detective Peach sees her going full Sherlock in a rather standard point and click/detective style gameplay. Basically you just investigate objects and talk to characters to try and find the answer to a puzzle and then hold B to use your intuition on something you think is suspicious to see if you're right. It's probably the weakest of the costumes, a lot of the puzzles are really basic and the answers can be very obvious at times which is a shame. It does what it needs to but is a bit dull.

Picking up the slack though is Figure Skating Peach! Here Peach gracefully skates across the ice and you'll get into little shows where you'll find icons on the ground to spin or jump on. There's a mini boss as well where you spin him around and collect the possessed Theets he has to circle around him and bedazzle him into defeat with your grace and elegance and my gosh I love it. The music here is a bop too which really helps make the skating a lot fun and the movement fluidity is great too. This is one of my favourite costumes from the game, even if the gameplay is basic, it's just a lot of fun controlling Peach in this one.

Mighty Peach sees Peach donning a sort of Power Ranger/Mech like outfit giving her super strength. The scenario for these plays is that an alien invasion is happening and Peach must save the abducted Theets and drive back the aliens. This one is more action focused and you'll get some basic action game puzzles like using a bus as shelter from falling meteors to allow Theets safe passage. There's a few good spectacle moments where Peach gets to fly and take on a mini boss by throwing it around. It's good fun and basically a more engaging take on the Swordfighter being combat focused.

Mermaid Peach is an interesting one. Here she uses her incredible voice to guide fish in the background to solve puzzles and progress through the stage. It's a little to stop/start for me as Peach stops moving to sing. These plays end with a simple musical performance and a basic rhythm mini game where you press the direction the fish come from as they get near Peach. It's decent fun but ultimately on the lower end of the scale for the gameplay styles on offer.

Finally there is Kung Fu Peach, another combat heavy one. While the combat itself remains relatively simple, the level design is pretty fun here with poles for Peach to swing around and take out dozens of enemies at once. The mini boss fights are structured like a 2D fighting fighting game but you have to time your button presses to land hits. Again it's very simple stuff yet still manages to be fun and engaging all the same.

The boss fights unlocked on each floor are very inventive and fun. Each boss is themed after a stage play prop so you get things like a projector cat or a spotlight lion which is a really cute thing. The bosses are fought with the standard Peach using the Stella ribbon to send projectiles back at bosses a few different ways. They're not going to test your reflexes that much but they're a lot of fun to fight as you adapt to their patterns. I won't spoil the final boss but I will say it is a very cool spectacle fitting for a grand finale, giving Peach her true moment to shine.

For those looking for more of a challenge, going for 100% and collecting every single Sparkla can provide that. There's extra boss challenges that require no hit runs and as mentioned earlier, some of the baking challenges can be tough to hit the score needed to. It is here where you'll find the game's biggest flaw though. While levels do feature checkpoints for dying, there's no scene select if you want to start over at a certain point if you fail to get a Sparkla and when some sequences are automatic, even dying after doing those will only take you to the point after that sequence. What this means is if you miss a Sparkla, then quite often you have to restart the whole level again to try and get it which is quite annoying, particularly in patisserie levels where you have to do a whole set of cooking minigames over and over to get to the one you need to do. Luckily the levels aren't that long but it's still a basic thing that probably should've been included.

On the performance front there's a handful of issues. While the game looks pretty good, it is prone to stuttering during cutscenes and loading screens. During gameplay itself the game mostly holds up though I did notice dips around the final boss in particular. While the Switch is showing its age into its eighth year on the market, I think these issues are more Good Feel still learning to adapt Unreal Engine 4 onto the Switch which some devs have struggled with.

As I've said throughout the review, this is a pretty basic and simple game but I don't think that's automatically a bad thing. I think there's a charm and fun to be had that's unique to games like this that can be pretty relaxing to come home to after a long week of work. Just something cutesy and chill that you can smile at as you play through the game and that can be a rewarding experience in itself. Princess Peach: Showtime! might not reach the potential highs of each of the gameplay styles it dips its toes into but it does offer enough to be a fun and engaging experience that ultimately lets Peach be the star she truly has deserved to be.

When Persona 3 Reload was first announced, I was a little anxious and worried about it. I had gotten into the Persona series in 2017 when Persona 5 released and was completely enamoured with the series, playing through every title throughout that year. Persona 3 FES however stood out above all the rest. Its story, themes, characters, and the way they wove it all into the gameplay captured my imagination and heart in a way like few other games have or ever will. I also played through Persona 3 Portable and loved the alternative take through the eyes of the female protagonist, seeing new sides to my favourite characters and finding even more to love about Persona 3. It’s a game that I love so much that I’ve beaten FES twice and Portable twice (doing the Male MC route in the 2023 port release to see any more differences between it and FES). Persona 3 is a special game to me so when the remake was finally announced, it had a lot of expectations to live up to. I had worries that modern Atlus would try and inject P5 sensibilities and writing into the game considering how successful it was, I was disappointed to find out that The Answer from FES (which I know many don’t like but for me it is an incredibly important piece of the story that made Yukari my favourite character of all time) and that the female protagonist from Portable wouldn’t be included. The dream was always to have a definitive Persona 3 that includes all the content but I now realise how idealistic I was being. There will never be a definitive version of Persona 3 and that’s ok. Playing Reload made me realise that every version of P3 has its strengths and weaknesses, that each journey is its own unique take on the same incredible story and that your own tastes will determine which version will become your favourite.

Let’s get the elephant out of the room first. The omissions from this remake are disappointing and I totally get why many are disappointed from them but I also understand what Atlus have decided to do here. Reload is very much focused on the core journey story from the original Persona 3 and trying to make it the best possible version of that first and foremost. What that means is that while stuff like The Answer and FeMC did not make the cut, The Journey from the Male Protagonist viewpoint has been very meticulously expanded upon, including nearly everything that FES and Portable added to that portion of the game, like Aigis’ Social Link and people wandering into Tartarus to be saved. On top of that, there’s been a bunch of additions and tweaks that ultimately makes this arguable the perfect base to build upon like they did with FES and Portable in the past (and at the time of writing, rumours do suggest that The Answer is coming via DLC, further strengthening my thoughts). Reload is about remaking The Journey at its core to be the best it can be and while I share the disappointment in omissions, I think Atlus choosing to focus on the core of Persona 3 was ultimately the right decision, as much as missing out on the other stuff hurts.

Back to the initial worries and fear of how much influence P5 and modern Atlus would have on this remake. I am very glad to say that I was wrong on that front. While there are some fumbles and missteps here and there (especially if you’re like me and adore P3 to the point you’ll pick up on many nitpicks), the new content in Reload very much shows that the team on this understood and loved P3 like the rest of us. Yeah some things are lost in translation and effected by the evolution of modern technology, like how bright the dorm is now or how some things like having the option to choose swimming or kendo have been cut for just track and field but the new content, ooooo the new content expands upon my favourites that tickle the brainworms in ways that only Persona 3 could and that’s what I love.
The Male route had a few flaws with it being the first game to introduce Social Links, the most notable being the lack of Links for your male party members like Junpei and Akihiko. Reload has taken the opportunity to introduce new Linked Episodes for Junpei, Akihiko, Ken, Shinjiro, and Koromaru that will appear throughout the story. They’re very much character hangouts that expand upon each character in ways that are very much appreciated. Getting to have a closer look into how Shinjiro and Ken are feeling before their big Full Moon mission, hearing Akihiko talk more about his sister, and helping Junpei get through his rough patch are all wonderful things that make each of these characters more endearing and the writing fits right at home with these characters core identities. Yeah, a little bit of subtlety is unfortunately lost with Shinjiro and Ken but it’s definitely made up for with just how well these hangouts are written. Strega also get additional scenes in a similar manner that expands mostly upon Takaya’s character, giving him a new fascination with the Protagonist and his ability wield multiple Personas which I think really fits Takaya well, especially with how he views the Dark Hour and Personas as gifts bestowed upon the chosen few.
New night events have been added as well. The original P3 very quickly ran out of night time activities if you knew what you were doing, and so these new events are another great addition. Every party member now has two different night time hangouts with 3 events on each that unlocks abilities for them as well as expands upon their character. For example you can cook or watch DVDs with Yukari or attend to the plants or read manga with Junpei. I had a lot of fun reading Yakuza novels with Aigis and seeing Yukari want to become strong and kind like the female protagonist in the show she watches. Again, the writing expands upon the characters in ways that truly fit with the characters and that’s all I could ever ask for. The abilities you unlock for doing these include stuff like reducing the SP cost of healing for Yukari which is a nice bonus.

These new bonding events and linked episodes do not replace any of the old Social Links. The team at Atlus made sure to preserve all the original Social Links with minimal changes and yeah while some like Magician and Moon kinda suck, I have come to appreciate them more now. In life we don’t just spend time with people we like, we often find times where we end up stuck with people who we know are kinda awful people but I think it’s important to have those experiences as well as the good ones. Our journeys through life lead us to meet all sorts of people and they shape who we are. For every cult following advantage taking Moon, there’s a Sun whose brightness shines all the stronger because we can appreciate the good more from having experienced the bad. Persona 3 never shies away from showing us the highs and lows of life and I’m glad the remake chose to keep that intact despite all the shouts calling for some Social Links to be replaced by the male party members.
One thing I’m glad they did change with the Social Links though is the romance aspect. In the original, nearly every girl was written in a way that they fall in love with the protagonist and automatically enter a relationship with him by Rank 10. It was an incredibly outdated view of the world even back in 2006, where Katsura Hashino mentioned in an interview that he believed men and women couldn’t be friends. Thankfully now those Social Links have been altered, and while characters like Yuko and Chihiro still clearly fall in love with the protagonist, you can now guide the link towards a platonic outcome and with characters like Fuuka and Mitsuru, I think the new rewrites work pretty well. Outside of that though, the Social Links remain relatively unchanged and I think that’s a good thing.

Over to the combat side of things, Reload has modernised things for better and worse. I am someone who saw the vision with the FES battle system, where party members were controlled by AI and you could issue general tactics to them. Yeah it was kinda annoying early on when your options are limited but the trade off is a brilliant story/gameplay integration where, as SEES gets closer and closer through their battles and become more experienced, you gain access to more tactic options, allowing better control of the AI members and signifying the growth of the bonds in the team. Reload goes with the modern approach of full party control and the stripped back AI mode as an option, which while it is more fun gameplay wise, you lose that beautiful synergy between narrative and gameplay which is something I think the medium should be more confident in itself exploring.
Thankfully unlike Portable, the game's enemies and bosses have been designed around you having full party control meaning it isn’t quite a cakewalk. It’s still easier on FES and the new Theurgy mechanic is something else that tips the balance more towards the player’s favour. Theurgy attacks are special attacks that can be used when a bar is filled from doing certain actions (like using a Persona for the Protagonist, or using healing skills for Yukari). Once full you can unleash a devastating attack that does an insane amount of damage. I don’t think they’re quite as broken as the Showtime attacks introduced in Persona 5 Royal but when you can hold onto 4 of them between battles to unleash on a Tartarus boss to sweep it in a turn, the difficulty becomes somewhat of a joke. If you’re not playing optimally, I do think there’s still a decent challenge from Tartarus bosses but it’s definitely up to player discretion and you’re given more options than ever to just tear the difficulty apart if you wanted to.

Speaking of Tartarus, there’s been a handful of tweaks to it. While still randomly generated, the aesthetic has been given a massive glow up and the possible layouts are now much more varied compared to the original corridor-like layouts. It leads to a more engaging place to explore though you’ll start to recognise the randomly generated patterns of each block soonish if you’re paying attention. There’s a few new things added like being able to chase down a massive rare shadow, enemies on a floor being inflicted by a random ailment, and dark floors. The Reaper can now follow you up to higher levels and the new twilight fragments you can find lying around can be used to unlock special chests which will eventually spawn a massive clock to allow party members who have fallen behind in levels a chance to catch up now. The fragments can also be used on the P3P style clocks to fully heal HP and SP though it is pretty costly compared to P3P. As someone who knew about the trick of not being forced out of Tartarus when tired the night before a full moon and being able to restore SP by returning to the entrance, I’ve never had a problem with other methods being introduced to restore SP in P3 though I do understand how it undermines the balance of managing resources and exploring Tartarus. Reload’s way and my general stinginess with limited resources meant I did get more of that resource/exploration balance than I did in FES or Portable.
Full Moon missions remain relatively untouched. The bosses have a few tweaks in attacks here and there but otherwise each mission plays out pretty similar to how they did before.

Voice acting in the English dub has seen a changing of the guard with the main cast getting new VA’s but the old VA’s are still around in more minor roles as a nice touch. Like Akihiko’s old VA Liam O’Brien is now Kurosawa the police officer while Yuri Lowenthall, the old VA for the Protagonist is now Yukari’s dad. Tara Platt even manages to come back as Elizabeth despite no longer being Mitsuru. The new cast have the benefit of much better voice direction leading to a much better sounding dub. As iconic as Michelle Ruff’s performance as Yukari is to me, and as much as I did love the way she put a harshness in her voice for her portrayal, I do think at times it was a little too strong, leading people to misread Yukari’s more sarcastic playful side as a general meanness. It took me a while to adapt to Heather’s performance but I think it does fit Yukari better overall as a character. While it’s much softer, she still manages to bring out the harsher tones when it's called for and I think she hits the softer side to her in such a sweet and lovely way. Junpei and Mitusru’s new VAs are perfect fits while Fuuka’s new VA elevates her character to new heights. Akihiko and Shinjiro have much more difficult performances to improve upon and I think the new VAs there, while they do a perfectly fine job, don’t quite hit the highs of the past. Ken and Aigis also have brilliant new performances further elevating the new dub.
Another good change is making sure the main VAs aren’t doing multiple roles. Like Derek Stephen Prince has a pretty distinct voice and in the original game he voiced Takaya, the principal, Mitusur’s father, and some delinquents and it’s a bit much. Reload uses a much larger voice cast and is all the better for it.

On the music front, the whole soundtrack has been reworked, again for better and worse. New songs like the advantage battle theme It’s Going Down Now and the new nighttime song are brilliant additions that would fit right at home with the original P3 and that’s the highest praise possible. A lot of the old songs are remixed to a level where I’d say they’re about equal with the original soundtrack and then there’s Mass Destruction which has been given an entirely new verse where Lotus Juice shows just how far he’s come with his raps as he starts firing through bars much quicker than I’ve heard him do before. Lotus Juice however…. Has potentially been given a little bit too much freedom…. Perhaps. The new dorm lyrics are a step down from before (Minding my biz, so mind your own biz? Where’s my so dance, wanna put you in a trance?) Burn Your Dread - Final Battle sees him trying to do the heavy rap he does so well in Mass Destruction but I don’t think it works quite as well here, in fact I think I would’ve rather they just used the Future Arrangement included in the movie soundtrack instead. It might be one of those things where I hold the original stuff in such high regard that I’m nitpicking at any small change because the music is still good, it’s another great Persona soundtrack, I just think it’s a little bit weaker in some places and stronger in others.

That’s about it for new stuff so let’s talk a bit about why Persona 3 is the best Persona game. This game was designed with the calendar system in mind. Where in P4/5 you’re given a deadline to finish a dungeon and finishing it early puts the story to a complete halt, Persona 3 uses the Full Moon deadline to go, this is the date the next boss is coming, it’s up to you how you well spend your time preparing for this. It allows them to keep moving the plot towards that mission, giving characters moments of growth and tension as the plot slowly unveils itself. It’s a slow burn through design, letting you grow accustomed to its many mechanics and systems while also getting you attached to its cast. Having every party member staying at the same dorm allows you to speak with them every day, watching them grow, seeing them worry, seeing the little animations they do like Fuuka being on her laptop or Junpei playing videogames, paying attention to little details of how often Yukari likes to sit on her own at the beginning. Having characters become unavailable for Tartarus or Social Links when big events hit them hard because everybody is dealing with their own stuff and the world doesn’t revolve around you. Having Persona evolutions being tied to huge plot related character moments instead of Social Links, where those characters find a new resolve to push forward through their lowest moments. Having characters like Junpei and Yukari not only be relevant at the beginning of the game but also manage to keep giving them moments throughout the whole story right through to the end.
The core theme of Persona 3, memento mori - remember you will die, delivers a powerful experience. Death is inevitable, it awaits every single one of us at the end of our journey no matter who we are, but it’s what we do with the gift of life that makes the journey through it special. Persona 3 shows just how impactful losing someone is. Whether it’s a friend, a parent, or an acquaintance, losing the people you love is something we all go through so it’s important to remember to make the most of your time with them. It’s important to grab life and find the resolve to make it through the hard times and fully embrace the highlights. That is the power of Persona 3, every connection you make helps you grow on your journey and the more impactful your journey is, the more you can look back as the end arrives and smile through the tears, knowing that you’ve not only had a fulfilling life yourself, but also enriched the lives of many others. It doesn’t matter whether it’s FES, Portable, or Reload, that core is there in every version of Persona 3 and each game has its own unique take on the journey of life and I think that’s beautiful. There is no definitive version of Persona 3 because there is no definitive version of life, we all follow our own unique journeys.

For every step backward Reload takes, there’s two steps forwards that made re-experiencing Persona 3 for a fifth time worth it. I adore the additions to the characters I love, I respect the desire to keep as much of the original game intact as possible while expanding upon it in other ways that fit within its core themes. Persona 3 is one of my favourite games of all time and I’m glad Reload has given me a chance to refresh my love of this wonderful experience and given many new things to love in the process.

While it wasn't officially marketed as one, Engage feels very much like an anniversary title, one that celebrates the whole 30+ years of the franchise while also introducing a brand new cast to get attached to

Engage's big new addition to the series are the Emblem Rings. Each ring holds a main character from across the whole series. From Marth and Sigurd to Corrin and Byleth, each main entry has a representative here. While there may be some disappointment over certain selections, like Alm not being represented while Eirika at least has her twin Ephraim with her, each game has been represented fairly for the most part, with every character getting beautiful full 3D models and voice acting to represent them. It's a huge difference seeing the love and care Micaiah got in Engage compared to the strange artwork she got in Awakening for example.
Each ring can be equipped to any character, allowing for some skills to be shared over, like Sigurd allows Canter to be used by any unit using him. When using an Emblem Ring you can also Engage with them, where the unit and Emblem become one and get full access to the Emblem's weapons as well as a unique special attack that references the game they are from. Like Engaging with Celica means you can use Warp Ragnarok allowing you to warp like the witches in Gaiden/Echoes and deliver a powerful magic attack.
Each Emblem's inventory is also beautifully representative of the game they come from and as you increase your bond rank with each Emblem, you can eventually gain access to their signature legendary weapon. Marth's inventory starts with a Rapier like he does in Shadow Dragon but eventually you can gain access to his Falchion and my gosh it is so cool seeing all these weapons updated and modelled on an HD console.

On the surface, these Emblem Rings sound and look incredibly powerful, and they are, but somehow Intelligent Systems managed to beautifully balance the maps around their inclusion. Even with all 12 rings in hand, the game never becomes a cakewalk, often maintaining a steady challenge. This is help by skills being more limited and scaled back, like Canter is no longer on every mounted unit and has to passed on through Sigurds skillset, and bosses now carry revival stones meaning they can't just be swept away by one or two powerful attacks meaning you need to engage in these encounters prepared and that means having at least some Emblem Rings available to use. Emblem Rings can only be used for 3 turns while Engaged before needing to be recharged for use which means you can't just burn through them, you have to carefully select when is best to use them in the situation you're currently in.

As mentioned earlier, you can bond with the Emblem Rings and these lead to mini conversations with each one. These are small one sentence back and forths that can include some nice references from each character. It would have been nice to have a little more depth from each conversation but as every Emblem Ring has a support set with every single playable character, I can understand why they are short and sweet.

The next bit of celebratory stuff to gush over are the bond rings. Bond Rings are like basic Emblem Rings. These only give a few small stat boosts when equipped while a handful of S Rank rings come with skills. Acquiring these require summoning them through RNG and a special in game bond crystal currency which is fine, but what is cool about them is that every Emblem Ring has a set of 10 Bond Rings to collect, each with their original artwork for the character (or remake artwork) and have little descriptions about each character that unlock as you collect each rank of their rings. It is unfortunate that some characters selected seem to based solely off which ones had artwork available (looks over at Shadow Dragon not including Palla, Catria, and Est because Shadow Dragon/New Mystery does not have any artwork for them) but for the most part, these lists are organised in a way where important characters are top and bottom of the list and it's nice seeing little details like the Elincia S rank ring coming with her personal skill Mercy.

And the gushing of references to older titles doesn't stop there because each Emblem Ring gets their own Paralogue battle to allow for their Bond Rank to push past level 10. THESE ARE PEAK CARE AND ATTENTION TO DETAIL. Every single map comes from the characters original game. Lucina has Arena Ferox for example and talks about how she remembers fighting her father there, Ike has the defence map from Path of Radiance after he takes command of the Greil Mercenaries for the first time. These maps include remixed music from the original game, often a melody of several songs, like Marth's includes Trouble and Together We Ride, and they sound fantastic. The maps are also set up in such a way that it feels like you're playing something from the original game, like the Thracia one has its ballistae hit so much harder, or the Celica one includes enemies that can summon more enemies just like Gaiden/Echoes. Unfortunately there is limitations due to Engage's mechanics, so Micaiah's map lacks ledges that Radiant Dawn had and Sigurd's map is only a small portion of a full FE4 map but otherwise these are lovingly recreated, often including enemy units that reference characters from the original map and my gosh it is such a treat for fans like myself who have played every game in the series.

So yeah, Engage does a fantastic job at celebrating the series history but is also the 17th entry in the series and has its own original stuff to dive into as well. The story goes down the traditional Fire Emblem route of "evil dragon is awakening and must be stopped" which, while lacking the depth of something like Three Houses, I feel is fine for a title like this. It's simple, good fun and well voice acted with a handful of strong moments even if it fails to hit some of the heights of earlier titles. There's moments that seem to feel like reimaginings or references to older games. Like the start feels very Awakening, the bulk of it involving collecting the rings feels similar to Sacred Stones in a way, a lot of stuff surrounding Elusia's dynamics feel like a simpler Conquest arc, and Chapter 11 feels like it would fit right in with the Manster escape stuff from Thracia. By the end the story feels like a special crossover episode of something like Digimon or Power Rangers. There's a lot of talk of the power of bonds and stuff, and honestly it's something that's mostly just good fun rather than anything to analyse and take apart. Like it's just nice seeing all these Emblems together and I love how the final battle goes, it's something long time fans will really appreciate, and I think that's fine for a game like this.
Would've loved a bit more depth to the continent of Elyos itself but I did find a lot to love about Elusia at least to the point it's up there with some of my favourite Fire Emblem nations.

The new cast are a fantastic bunch too. Again, they're lacking the depth Three Houses brought but there's plenty to love about them from their supports and stuff. It feels like a more traditional FE in that sense as the story mostly focuses on the main royal from each nation and other characters pop up for their introduction and quickly fade out. Still, as I said there's plenty to love from Chloé and her love for folk food and fairy tales, or Hortensia and her persona she puts on in an attempt to be the princess she's expected to be and live up to her mother, or Ivy and Diamant whose kingdoms have been constantly at war learning how to forge a better relationship between their nations. There's a lot of good stuff here with the cast and it's great seeing them confide in the Emblems you give them and seeing those Emblems reminisce about their own lives. It was nice seeing Ike reflect on his days as a mercenary with Timerra or Byleth trying to guide Hortensia through her growth as a character.

Speaking of the new cast, I have a lot of love for the new protagonist Alear. It's hard to call them an "avatar character" because really all you're doing is picking a form and name for them, everything else is a fully fleshed character and I think how you view these kinds of characters going into the game can affect your perception and opinion of them. Alear is fantastic, they find the whole Divine One worshipping weird and awkward, are scared of the Corrupted and are very earnest in trying to be a good person. A lot of the late game story helps contextualise a lot of stuff surrounding Alear and it helps make them more endearing. The VA for the female Alear was a standout performer and helped sell the character to me even in moments where the story wasn't quite hitting what it was trying to convey.

There's a lot of new gameplay stuff in Engage too. The Somniel is like a reduced in scope Monastery but with just as many features. Visiting it between battles is entirely optional (thankfully handy for future playthroughs) and you'll probably want to visit it semi-regularly for the shops, stat boosts from meals and exercising, forming bond rings, and the arena. A lot of the other stuff is mostly just fun downtime stuff like fishing, changing costumes, and the wyvern ride minigame. It's small enough to make a little routine out of and speak to characters but I think Warriors: Three Hopes did it best with the base camp hub, that one felt like the Tellius camps brought to life and would be my preferred option in future titles.
Post battle you get to walk around the battlefield and talk to allies. These are nice for a little bit of world building, seeing stuff like Firene Castle in the background of an early Chapter is great for picturing how the nation is laid out in your head. I do wish the characters had more unique dialogue for these though, a lot of them say the same two or so lines. There's some maps like Chapter 17 where all the Firenese characters have unique lines about what happened and that is exactly what I wanted more of, just a little bit more depth for how these characters feel about what they're seeing.

Battle wise this is up there with the best of Fire Emblem. I've already mentioned the Engage mechanics and revival stones but there's other stuff to go through. Characters now have a type of sorts to their classes. For example Monks have a Chain Guard technique that allows them to take chip damage for allies one space around them. Some classes come with the Backup type that performs similarly to the attack pair ups from Awakening/Fates but in a much better in my opinion. Backup types can perform chain attacks when near an ally and rather act like a second full attack, a chain attack does smaller damage and at 80% accuracy so it's great for additional damage but not as substantial as the pair ups in Awakening/Fates. You can pull off a lot of damage if you line up your characters correctly, and my gosh how the enemies can punish you with it if you try to block off areas from them. The new break mechanic is also neat. Attacking with weapon triangle advantage now causes the opponent to drop their weapon for one phase of combat meaning they can't counterattack. It's a neat mechanic that isn't too intrusive and good for allowing disadvantaged weapons to get an attack in without fear of a counter.
Enemies in this game are also more aggressive than most FEs. Bosses in particular now will move and attack when in range or sometimes after a certain amount of turns. It's really good at keeping you on your toes, pushing you to be a bit more proactive in your strategy or risk being overwhelmed.
While objectives diversity is lacking (most maps are defeat boss objectives with one escape map and one sort of defence map) the more aggressive enemies can push you on the back foot, forcing you to hold your ground for a few turns before pushing out. The Ike paralogue in particular for me was a good example of feeling like a defence map without actually being one.
Fog of War has also been changed mechanically. Now you can't enter spaces you can't see in meaning you can't bump into unseen enemies while moving which is nice. FoW maps also include lighttable torches like the cave chapter in Radiant Dawn that can also be extinguished by the enemy. It helps make these maps feel a bit more dynamic and a bit less unpredictable.
Desert maps are another that have gone under a change. Instead of all desert tiles slowing your units to a crawl, now only certain tiles will slow you down so you can either push through the sand or take the long way round. It's another nice change that helps mitigate some of the frustrations these maps have caused in previous titles.
The maps themselves are also very well designed with no repeat maps showing up. There's a great visual variety between them as well which is really nice.

All of the mechanics and map design add up to one of the best Fire Emblem games from a gameplay standpoint. The game felt balanced throughout and I managed to complete my first playthrough without any grinding and without using any of the dlc emblems. Some of the Paralogues that opened up had higher recommended levels than the story ones at points and I challenged myself to push through them despite being underleveled and I found them to be very challenging but doable and fun.

Another thing I enjoyed was how limited things are in this game. Gold is tough to come by, units are weapon locked to two things max, skill points are hard to come by, deployment spaces are low for a lot of the game. I had to be careful with my money, plan what skills I wanted ahead of getting them, constantly switch up my characters as some fell off and new exciting ones appeared. It's working within these limitations that makes Fire Emblem so much fun for me and makes me excited for doing more playthroughs because I can experiment with different characters I didn't use and different ring combinations and that is so exciting.

Of course the music is fantastic as usual. Apart from the remixes from across the series, the new music is great with the Solm battle maps in particular being some of the catchiest themes ever. I don't think the final map music quite lives up to the extraordinary highs we've had since Awakening but nonetheless it's still a great one and one thematically fits this adventure very well.

Ultimately this was a fantastic experience. I think people who have played some of the previous games will get the most fun out of this as seeing the characters and references to the older games is really nice. The story does lack depth and has its flaws, like most FE titles, but the gameplay is up there with some of the best in the series.
I think the best way to sum this title up is: this is Fire Emblem heritage.

One of the best videogame experiences I have ever had. No game has made me cry so much, laugh so much, lose my mind so much, made me understand myself better, and appealed to my specific tastes so well.

I think one thing the AI series does well, is straddle the line between parody and seriousness. Like there is no other series where you can go from over the top action sequences with a character getting powered up by porno mags to experiencing a somnium where child experimentation happened. With Nirvana Initiative, I didn't expect to be bawling my eyes out over a character with a square head, or one that looks like he's in a Marshmallow man costume, or a mermaid girl but here I am, cherishing these characters with all my heart, thankful for getting to experience their stories.

The running theme of learning to love yourself and accept yourself despite your flaws, and learning to accept love from others is something that appeals to me on a deep level. It doesn't matter how bad you think you look or how much you think you disability hinders you, if someone tells you that your existence makes them happy and means the world to them, then don't push them away to try and confirm your own self doubts, accept that there are people in this world that would put your happiness above their own because seeing you happy brings them happiness.

As for the actual serial killing case, I don't think that aspect is as pronounced as it was in the first game. I feel like this game goes more for the mental aspect of the damage done rather than the more obvious gruesome damage. The twists and turns are all fantastic but this game feels more like it's about the experience of the journey rather than the conclusion of the story if that makes sense. It's something I think, that once you've beaten the game, and you take time to think back on it, the more you realise holy shit, that was really clever how did this and how this all fits together.

The somniums are much more thematically inventive here as well I feel. Trying not to spoil anything but there are a few that really appealed to me and I couldn't stop smiling until I got the information at the end of them.

There's also a really neat post game easter egg to check out if you want to and oh my gosh, it was one of the best pieces of easter egg content I have seen in a really long time.

So yeah, I adore this game with all of my heart. There are so many moments that truly made this a special experience for me and I can't wait to see what comes next.
Remember to always love yourself because no matter how bad things might be, there is always someone out there who will accept you and be the half to make you whole

Trails of Cold Steel II is a direct sequel to the original Cold Steel game and as usual with these Trails games reviews, talking about the story without spoiling elements from the first game is nigh on impossible so if you haven’t played Cold Steel I to the end, the best avoid reading this review for now.

Right with that out of the way, Cold Steel II (CS2) is the second Trails entry originally released for the PlayStation Vita. Its story picks up directly from where CS1 finished and in typical Trails fashion, this game heavily reuses assets and elements from the first game and builds on top of that with a few things to keep the game interesting and change things up a little.
The regular battle system now has the Overdrive mechanic, similar to the burst mechanic from Azure where once you build up a gauge, you can unleash a series of attacks without response. In CS2 it also guarantees unbalancing the enemy and allowing a follow up attack to happen as well as eventually giving you two Overdrive gauges to fill.
For those who finished CS1 you’ll know about a special kind of battle introduced right at the end of that game and here in CS2 we get to experience a lot more of them! Divine Knight battles sees Rean piloting a giant mech and clashing with other giant mechs in battles that are pretty simple in nature but something I loved because I am weak for giant mechs. Divine Knight battles basically boil down to figuring which part of your opponent to hit depending on what stance they’re taking. You can target the head, body, arms and if you pick the right part you can unbalance the enemy and hit a follow up attack but if you choose wrong you can end up missing and being hit with a counterattack. Eventually you’ll gain access to having a character assist you by using Arts and powering up your mech, Valimar, with his own unique Orbments but ultimately as I said, the battles are pretty simple and basic in nature.

Other new aspects include new towns like Rean’s hometown Ymir (a place where an event took place during the first game but only covered in a Drama CD and referred to multiple times in this game), plenty of new and well crafted dungeons to explore, and the best thing of all - A SNOWBOARDING MINIGAME! No joke, I beat every course for it because it’s probably one of my favourite minigames in an RPG ever. Aside from that, this game is more about continuing the narrative they built from CS1 than doing a bunch of new things.

So story, after C revealed his true identity, killed Chancellor Osborne, and occupied Thors Military Academy by kicking Rean’s ass so bad he had to flee for his life, the tensions in Erebonia have boiled over into civil war breaking out. The Noble Alliance led by Duke Cayenne has teamed up with the Imperial Liberation Front, Ouroboros, and Jaeger group Zephyr in an attempt to wrestle control of Erebonia from the Reformist Faction and in the month that Rean has spent out cold after fleeing Thors, the Noble Alliance have managed to occupy a large portion of eastern Erebonia as well as take the Imperial Royal family hostage.
It’s a very interesting set up to the story and one that sees many of Class VII’s families on opposing sides and leading to our characters having to make tough decisions. Jusis in particular has it tough with his brother being one of the key figures in the Noble Alliance and his father pushing his luck in trying to become the leader of the group.
As for Class VII themselves, they’ve ended up split up after having to flee Thors and the first portion of the game is centred around regrouping with Rean’s classmates. This is where the very long build up of the first game started to pay some dividends for me as I found a lot of the reunions to be very touching because of how much time I had spent with Class VII. Seeing Rean bear hug Machias put tears in my eyes and Alisa pouring her heart out to Rean was such an emotional moment. It’s also nice seeing Class VII out of their school uniforms and in unique clothing, being free to show off their own styles and personalities a bit more.
Aside from gathering all of Class VII, Act 1 of the game shows off a few clashes between the two armies at places like Garrelia Fortress (spotting a lovely new destroyed look after Crossbell annihilated it) and the Nord Highlands, and Ymir village gets attacked by some Jaegers. We also get to have some clashes with Ouroboros and the Noble Alliance as the game spends time introducing a lot of new characters like Ouroboros Enforcer McBurn who exudes a massive amount of power and Zephyr’s Xeno and Leonidas who are part of the Jaeger group that Fie was once a part of.
After the whole of Class VII have reunited we get an Intermission chapter which serves to let us find out a little more about the many people working with the Noble Alliance as well as get Rean to a point where he can control his unique power the game lovingly dubs “ogre power”. We caught a glimpse of it in the first game but it’s more prominent here. Ogre power basically changes Rean’s appearance to have white hair and red eyes and essentially it gives him a few turns of having boosted stats in battle.
Act 2 of the game focuses more on gathering up all the other students from Thors Military Academy and liberating places like Celdic and Roer from the Noble Alliance. These missions were my favourite part of the game as it was great seeing characters either rescuing their families from being held captive or standing up to their families for the atrocities they’ve been causing. It’s not perfect, the clashes with V and S sum up the Imperial Liberation Front as the biggest set of underwhelming villains I’ve seen so far (C is the only interesting about that group for me) but ultimately the freedom introduced from being able to go anywhere in the east of the country and liberation missions made this portion of the game a lot fun for me. I also really liked that the game allows you to walk from one town to another if you want to. You could see that the world was designed to be connected in CS1 but the field trip limitations meant the world felt disjointed while in CS2 as you progress further and further, the limitations on where you can travel are loosened and it really starts to make Erebonia feel a bit more like Crossbell and Liberl when you can walk (or use the motorcycle introduced as a transport option in this game) from place to place.
It ends on a high note with a great set of battles between Rean and C as the two fight for their ideals and we have to deal with Duke Cayenne’s mischief as he ends up feeling a little bit left out because he’s another kinda meh and backgroundy villain. The revelations and twists in the finale are once again fantastic and memorable for the most part (though I’m still struggling to take the revelation of Rean’s biological father seriously right now) and it quickly rearranges the whole civil war and the whole point of it in one fell swoop.
On top of that there’s a pretty meaty post game section that is a delightful treat for long time fans that have been playing the games in release order. The Epilogue is a nice send off for Class VII as they go their separate ways but that portion of the game drags on a bit longer than it needed (I’m not sure why they felt the need for a bunch of quests and another dungeon). By the end I had a few moments where tears had filled my eyes and when games can do that to you, they are a bit special. I loved my time with Class VII and I will miss seeing them all together as a group.

So the broad strokes of CS2s story on the surface is pretty solid and one I largely enjoyed but once you dig a little deeper there’s a lot you can pick apart here so this section is going have a lot of complaints about things that do kind of matter but at the same time didn’t stop me from loving the game.
CS2 is about a civil war but for the most part it feels kinda of…. Like a background thing? In the east of Erebonia the Noble Alliance have so much already under control that aside from a few skirmishes, there’s little to actually indicate a war is happening. One burning down of a town results in a grand total of 1 fatality and ultimately does little to sell the fact a war is happening. The Noble Alliance end up letting Class VII liberate so much of the territory they’ve claimed with no retaliation that it’s unbelievable until the bigger picture comes into view at the end. The war is apparently much more violent in the west of Erebonia and a few of the more powerful characters are off fighting over there but like CS1 that is something more interesting happening somewhere else that we don’t get to see. It’s just incredible how out of the way the game goes to limit the fact a war is happening.
Cast bloat. CS2 like CS1 has a cast of important characters to the point it doesn’t know what to do with them. Bardias and Le Guin are introduced in Act 1, leave a strong impression on Class VII and then don’t show up again until near the end of the game by which point you’re like who are these two again? Cedric, an Imperial Prince is almost completely forgotten about by the cast and even his own sister Alfin, as no one seems to care that he potentially needs to be rescued all the while Duke Cayenne is getting him ready for his schemes. Laura fades so much into the background in this game that she’s basically a talking sword. It’s just too many characters for the game to deal with.
Olivert, someone who is a very important character to Erebonia and plays a large part in the Liberl arc, is so underutilised here to the point he barely shows up in the game at all which is shocking to me. He spends most of his time fighting in the west off screen and has a couple of dramatic appearances but in a game with 17+ playable characters, HOW IS HE NOT ONE?
Class VII are supposed to be a third faction in this war but that only works if both the Noble Alliance and the Reformist Group are factions that need to be opposed, instead the Noble Alliance are the aggressor force in this war and as such Class VII is almost always working alongside the army to stop them that the whole third faction thing holds so little weight. We’re working alongside characters like Claire who has direct ties to Osborne while claiming to be neutral and having no one from the Noble Alliance side helping us outside of Rufus using us to help him deal with out of control members with the Noble Alliance.
For all the build up and importance given to the liberation of Trista and Thors Military Academy it is probably the most underwhelming moment in the game.
I understand Crow being a classmate and friend to Class VII but there's nobody wanting to hold him to account for his terrorist actions while Rean makes a big deal about trying to save Vulcan and Scarlet to make them atone for what they've done.
The story does well with what it explores and the cast of characters are fun enough to help carry it through the cracks that appear throughout. Yes, I have a lot of issues with how certain aspects were neglected but ultimately it didn’t detract from the fun I was having with the game.

On the soundtrack front this is largely the same OST from CS1 returning with a handful of new battle themes and a new opening song. The vocalised ending song was very powerful and was subtitled when it played to help drive home the emotions it was portraying.

So all in all, despite a few missteps with its story here and there, Trails of Cold Steel II was a step back up in quality after Cold Steel I for me. It manages to keep its narrative exciting and engaging throughout as well as throw in some really nice surprises for the long term fans. It manages to carry off its emotional moments well and use the foundation that Cold Steel I left for it to push most of its characters in interesting directions and leave an impact on the player.

The 5th game in the long running narrative of the Trails series and the second half of the Crossbell duology, Trails to Azure sets out to answer the unanswered questions left hanging at the end of Trails from Zero while also building towards a conclusion for the Crossbell arc.

It's easier to dive into the gameplay stuff first here as it's a continuation of what the four games before it laid out, with a few new additions here and there. Your core gameplay loop is still the same tackling of requests that come in while also progressing through the story. It's very much a continuation of the excellent formula the series has had for most of its games so far and it doesn't rock the boat there. We do have new additions to the battle system however, with the Master Quartz being the main attraction. Master Quartz are a fancier version of the regular quartz that the Enigma's use for casting arts, only these ones can be leveled up and provide a variety of stat boosts and include buffs when starting a battle. Once maxed out, the Master Quartz will give you access to a unique and powerful art. They also contribute towards your sepith totals that determine what arts you have access to as well and these totals increase as you level it up. It's a very cool new addition to the battle system that has remained relatively unchanged throughout the series.
The other new addition is a Burst mechanic accessible during climatic points of the story. A guage fills up as you attack enemies and when full you can use Burst to allow yourself multiple turns in a row without reply from the enemies. It's great for when you're in a pinch and need to turn the tide of battle or when you want to fire off arts without the enemy interrupting them.

Heading into the story, there is one pretty big blemish on the game as a whole and that comes with the introduction of a new character called Shirley. Her introduction sees her nibbling on Lloyds ear before moving behind Elie and groping her while everyone else stands in shock and Wazy makes light of the situation. It's horrible. Elie was my favourite character from Zero so seeing her being treated like that was really shocking and was difficult to move past and for many people it could be something that ruins the whole game for them. It's also an event that is annoyingly brought up again another 2 or 3 times throughout the story before being dropped around the second half of the game when things start going down and you start gaining a better understanding of Shirley's role. Thankfully I was able to move past it and enjoy the game despite it. As much as it annoyed me at the time, it's also the only real complaint I have with the game at all so for me personally it wasn't something I was going to let ruin my experience of an otherwise brilliant game so I was able to let it go. Still it is worth mentioning for those who might not be able to do that and give a fair warning of it.

Right, negative part out the way, let's dive into what makes Trails to Azure peak. Being a direct continuation of Zero, Azure is kind enough to include the backstory for that game in the main menu, so if for whatever reason you skipped Zero you can catch up or refamiliarise yourself with that. And it is important because Azure starts off by following up on the direct aftermath of Zero by having Lloyd, Noel, Dudley, and Arios hunt down the last remaining remnants of the DG Cult that have eluded arrest and are on the run towards the Calvard Republic. It's a nice intro sequence to introduce you to the new Master Quartz as well as get you straight into the action. It's also cool having a small part of Calvard playable after hearing so much about the nation. The end of the Prologue section also introduces us to a couple of familiar faces from Sky 3rd and you get that awesome feeling that very few series can give you.

After the Prologue, we're back in Crossbell City and familiar surroundings but a few things have changed since the cult incident. Randy and Tio are temporarily away from the SSS for other errands so we have a couple of new members to help round out our team of four. Noel from the CGF has temporarily joined the SSS on a recommendation to gain experience and Wazy, our gang leader has joined because…. He felt like it (don't worry, it does actually become clear later in the game)
It is a little weird seeing the SSS family change up a bit, especially with how much they actually felt like a family by the end of Zero but our two new members actually fit in rather well. Noel's sister Fran already worked as an operator for the SSS anyways and it's cool seeing this super dutiful and serious person trying to fit in with a group that is much less strict on formalities and more easy going, especially with Wazy bringing the exact opposite type of energy to the team. Wazy is extremely laid back and very quick witted, rarely resisting a moment to tease one of his teammates or flirt with somebody. Both characters greatly add to the dynamic of the SSS and continue to fit in even when Randy and Tio eventually make their return. It's also great that this game gives you so much more time with 6 party members to allow you to make use of the two support slots you have.

Other changes around Crossbell include the completion of the Zemuria's tallest building, Orchis tower, completed by new Mayor Dieter Crois whose ambition is clear from the off as he manages to push through some new reforms to Crossbellean law as well as push for an independent Crossbell free from the influence of its neighbours. Elsewhere the Empire has tried to restore the balance of power that was knocked out of their favour by hiring the most powerful Jaeger group around, the Red Constellation - the Jaeger group that Randy was a part of and includes familiar faces for him to test his resolve against. And let's not forget on top of all that, we have the return of Ouroboros who are putting into motion their Phantasmal Blaze plan which the first step involves Crossbell.
All of this makes for the most exciting paced Trails game yet as it wastes no time on a slow burn and starts setting up multiple threads of intrigue from the off.

Azure takes us through so many high points, from gathering so many powerful leaders and characters in one place for the grand opening of the Orchis tower, an assassination attempt from terrorist organisations working together from both the Empire and the Republic, devastating attacks on Crossbell that hit so much harder because of the attachment you have to the City from the first game as well as how incredibly well Trails does it's npc characters, meaning gut punches still hit pretty hard even when it's npc characters taking the brunt of the damage. There's so many powerful and incredible moments throughout the game that make it almost impossible to put down. They also pick an excellent point for an intermission chapter to let you catch your breath and see the party take a well earned break to rest and have some fun before ramping things way up again for its incredible finale.

Azure's finale is this stunning unravelling of a grand conspiracy that has been years in the making and it takes you this near unfathomable journey as the balance of power shifts in Western Zemuria and revelation after revelation is unveiled. Characters we thought that were allies are now dangerous enemies, and powerful foes we had been butting heads against make for the unlikeliest of allies. Answers surrounding KeA and exactly what happened to Guy Bannings are finally given and there's even some stunning weaponry on display that raises the stakes even higher. And while all this is happening in Crossbell, we're given teasers of what's going down in Erebonia to help whet your appetite for the Cold Steel games. The final dungeon itself is this incredibly large and beautiful labrinth, giving characters like Rixia, Wazy, and Randy some closure to things they have been through and of course the game carries on one of the main themes of the Crossbell arc, found family. There's just so many high points in this game that it helps make it a lot easier to move past the one blemish I had near the beginning of it. The ending does set things up for a difficult future for Crossbell and in turn leaves you wanting to find out what happens next. The door is left open for a return to this wonderful cast and setting with their fate so deeply intertwined with Erebonia.

I played this one on Switch and while for the most part it runs fine, there are somewhat annoying moments where the framerate dips, particularly around areas where the Plemora grass effects are in play. It's mostly like the frame rate dropping for a few seconds as it tries to adapt to a new area and stabilise itself. Not the worst thing in the world but worth mentioning as it is noticeable.

Trails to Azure is a fantastic boiling point of threads that have been woven throughout Crossbell culminating in a spectacular finale and a consistently intriguing and exciting story that few rpgs can maintain throughout 50-60 hours of game time. It knows exactly when to take the foot off the gas for a bit and exactly when to ramp things up again. For those that have played all the previous games, there's plenty of exciting appearances from characters past while those only familiar with Zero still get a lot of mind-blowing revelations that will completely reframe that game in a whole new light for you. It's another excellent Trails game and for me, it's right up there as one of the best in the series.

The first Fire Emblem to ever be localised for the West and my gosh did they hit the ground running with this one.

I decided to revisit this immediately after playing FE6 to see what kind of improvements the series made with it's 7th entry and I was surprised by how much they built off from FE6.

FE6 was Int Sys finding their feet after losing a huge influence in Kaga. You can see that with how limited the scope of the game is and how basic it feels in aspects. That game was mostly just getting something up and running on the GBA so they could build off that foundation and my gosh did they do that with FE7.

For the first time in the series we're following 3 Lords and each one has their own "mode" to play, unlocked in order when you first play the game.

Lyn mode is essentially a tutorial for all the newcomers to the series with it being the first worldwide FE. Each map introduces a mechanic and holds the players hand while they get used to everything. For newcomers this is perfect. At this point there was 7 games worth of mechanics to learn so dropping the West in blind would've been very off putting for a lot of people. I know that it's not the most fun thing to play through (though it is skippable after clearing it) but it is a very important introduction to the series.
The story itself for Lyn mode is only 10 chapters long but it's a really nice and personal story and one that I honestly have a lot of love for, so much so that I can't bring myself to skip Lyn mode on repeat playthroughs.

Her story also shows aspects improved upon over FE6. We have different map objectives return with defend and rout maps on top of seize ones. The characters are more fleshed out with a lot more personality over what we got in FE6. Kent and Sain alone are so much fun here but we also get Florina who has a nice relationship with Lyn too. There's also a new weather mechanic where rain or snow will pop up every few turns and limit units movement until it stops. It's an interesting idea but it's execution just makes a couple of turns slower and it becomes annoying. It only appears a handful of times throughout but yeah, not that fun.

The meat of the game follows in Eliwood mode which is the immediate story unlocked after beating Lyn's one. This is more of the standard FE campaign, with 20+ chapters and more in depth maps and gameplay on offer. Here we get a much more interesting narrative that is pretty ambitious for a GBA game as well as a good look at some stuff briefly spoken about in FE6 as this is a prequel. Seeing Zephiel and his abusive parents hits so much harder when you've seen what he's like in FE6.
It's a very solid affair, Eliwood himself is very much a typical FE lord but Lyn and Hector help bring an interesting dynamic and characters like Ninian and Nino play really good roles in the story. The Black Fang are also very interesting as antagonists and Sonia makes for a memorable villain (more so than Nergal himself unfortunately)
But yeah Eliwood mode is very solid and a nice step up from what came before.

After beating Eliwood mode, you unlock Hector mode which is essentially the same but from Hector's pov and more challenging. There's also a few exclusive maps and characters to help make the mode more enticing because it is a second playthrough thing.
Hector makes for a more interesting Lord character as well, so seeing his reactions and hearing more of his thoughts makes this mode a more interesting experience imo.
The cool thing about beating Eliwood mode is that you're free to pick Lyn/Eliwood/Hector mode when you start a new game which means you don't need to bother with the tutorial stuff if you don't want to.

Ultimately, I think FE7 is one of the best games in the series. It does everything it can to be the best possible FE experience on GBA, with a memorable cast and well varied map objectives as well as a decent amount of replay incentive without holding too much from those only wanting to play once

Before getting into Trails from Zero properly, I think it’s necessary to dive into its history in the West a little. The game was originally released in Japan in 2010 on PSP and due to how long localisation was taking with the Sky games, it was skipped over in favour of bringing over the Cold Steel games first. However due to Reverie acting as a finale to both the Crossbell and Cold Steel games, Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure were both quickly localised before the Western release of Reverie to allow fans to catch up. The localisation uses the extremely well done fan translation from Geofront as a base for its work and unfortunately skipped out being dubbed into English which is a shame having played the Sky games which had the battle dialogue dubbed. Knowing the reasoning behind this though does make it a lot easier to swallow so it’s not something I’m too hung up about and the Japanese cast are fantastic, it’s just a shame we miss out on the battle dialogue.

So, after the Sky trilogy Trails from Zero takes place in a new setting with a new cast of characters, acting as a brand new arc for the longer running narrative that the series has. There’s familiar faces and mentions of past events but otherwise the story here is very much focused on new protagonist Lloyd and the Special Support Squad he has become a part of in Crossbell City. The SSS act as a rookie branch of police who have come under fire from the public after not doing their jobs while the Bracer Guild have been gaining all the plaudits because they have actually been helping people. The SSS are basically the police version of the Guild, taking up requests to help people in need while also trying to solve crimes that the wider police force have been letting slip. While the core gameplay loop of solving requests and main story plot points is very similar to how the first two Sky games played, it’s also pretty cool seeing a rivalry form between the SSS and the Guild as well as the little differences in what both sides are allowed to do under their rules.

The SSS squad consists of four members: Lloyd, Elie, Randy, and Tio. Unlike Sky that had a constantly rotating cast outside of Estelle and Joshua for the most part, Zero starts you off with these four immediately and has a few rotating guest party members. It’s a nice approach as the main focus is on the four SSS members and their growth together as they try to take on bigger and bigger jobs to help unravel the corruption that Crossbell is drowning in. Zero has a more focused approach to its narrative dealing with a small party in a much smaller State and it works well with this. In true Trails fashion, the slow burn is real here. The game takes its time to slowly unravel more and more about each of its characters to ensure everyone gets their own moments to shine. Lloyd is the glue that keeps everyone together, often giving cheesy speeches to help lift the others up in their times of need. He’s optimistic and there’s a lovable charm about him as he overcomes the barriers he faces. Elie works hard and is serious about her job but also faces many doubts about the path she chose. Randy is our flirt of the group and is very fun loving, especially with gambling but as you start to uncover his past you grow to understand how hard his life has been. Tio is extremely reserved with her emotions but also incredibly smart with technology. She’s a character who has suffered much in her past so it hits hard when you see her growing more and more comfortable with the group. Together the SSS squad make a fantastic little family of characters and there’s a lot to love as you watch them grow closer throughout the game. However there is a minor nitpick with a new mechanic introduced in this game - bonding. Throughout the game there’s several events and ways for Lloyd to build up his bond with each member of the SSS, including three story events where you can choose a character to accompany him. Once you reach max bond with a character you’ll be able to view a special scene between them and Lloyd towards the end of the game, however you can only do this with one character per playthrough. These events include some important stuff for each character, including Lloyd, so it sucks that you have to be very particular with how you raise bond levels and maintain multiple saves if you want to see everything without replaying the game multiple times. Apart from that the character development is really good and it’s really easy to love each member of the SSS team, especially with how much time you’ll spend with them.

Crossbell State is an interesting setting. Instead of going round in a loop like you did in Liberl, your main hub area is smack bang in the centre known as Crossbell City with routes to the four compass directions leading to towns and other important locations. Because of this you spend a lot of time in Crossbell City and it’s easy to become attached to the place as you explore its various districts and meet its wonderful citizens. Whether it’s the nosy reporter Grace, or the eccentric gangs that grow to respect you, or the wonderful performers of the Arc de Ciel, Crossbell is a very homely place and one you’ll grow into wanting to protect. However Crossbell is also full of corruption and seedy dealings. It’s home to a unique political situation having been born from both the Empire of Erebonia and the Republic of Calvard. Due to this it’s political set up is balanced between those in support of the Empire or the Republic and they prevent any reforms from the Mayor coming through due to their need to not cede ground to the other. This is further emphasised by both sides having a mafia associated with them, Revache for the Empire and Heiyue for the Republic. Due to this, the government members are able to get corrupt dealings done while also having the power to put pressure on the justice system to look the other way. It leads to a wonderful dichotomy where there’s a lot of people who love Crossbell but there’s a house of cards ready to be blown over at any moment that could see the place crumble. It’s a state that is independent in name only as two forces struggle to gain control over it.
Crossbell is also a financially well off place, with Zemuria’s central bank being located here and technology being advanced enough for Orbal vehicles like cars available for the richest members of public and mobile communication being available through Orbments. It might be a small state but there’s a lot going on and it’s a fantastic setting for the game.

If you’ve played the Sky games then you will be aware of a few characters that had mentioned their intentions to go to Crossbell. Well a few familiar faces show up in this game and play a role in a secondary plot that runs alongside the main narrative. Without going too much into spoiler territory, Zero does an incredible job managing these two plot threads and superbly gets them to lead towards the same conclusion in a thrilling finale with a huge payoff for those who have been playing through all the games. I have seen people say you can start with Zero as it’s a new arc and features one of the more standalone stories in the series, which it does, it manages to wrap up with no huge cliffhanger and a few plot threads that the sequel can explore but at the same time, if you haven’t played the Sky games, you’re missing out on a lot of context for the secondary plot and losing out on a lot of impactful moments from seeing characters that you would’ve grown attached to or recognise from those games. I can understand the huge barrier a long running narrative can bring and wanting to find a starting point that doesn’t require a huge time sink but ideally you should probably play these games in release order for the best impact possible.

So Zero features another wonderful cast with a plot that slowly builds up into an epic finale and a supporting cast that are memorable in their own ways, leading to another fantastic experience. On the gameplay side of things this is a minor evolution on what came before it. You now have the ability to attack and stun enemies on the overworld allowing you to gain a better advantage in battle. New turn bonuses have been added, like the team attack where you get a Persona style all out attack sequence where everybody beats the crap out of the enemies on field. Some stuff from Sky the 3rd pops up in certain locations but otherwise it’s the same old Trails you know and love at its core with minor tweaks and adjustments. On the music side of things you’ve got another great soundtrack. I adore the hospital theme as it reminds me a little of the National Park theme in Pokemon Gen 2 and there’s an incredible track during the final day of Crossbell’s anniversary celebrations, so yeah the music side of things is excellent.

Zero is a wonderful start to a new arc, freshening up the cast and setting just as it was feeling a little needed. It manages to balance plot threads old and new and delivers another incredible experience carefully built up that explodes in a stunning finale. The focused approach on a smaller main cast and setting delivers a very cosy and heartwarming adventure where the found family and being accepted despite your past are the order of the day and it works so well. It doesn’t quite manage to hit the highs I had during Sky SC but it does deliver yet another brilliant RPG game to add to the library of Trails bangers.

This was my second Tales game (Tales of Berseria was my first) so it was kinda weird at first seeing how limited it was in terms of camera movement and the overworld but the charm of it eventually won me over. One of my biggest issues with ToB was how large a lot of it environments were which lead to the game feeling like it dragged on in areas, while with ToV the overworld in particular it was the perfect size to keep the pace going at a rate I enjoyed (though I did find myself getting lost more easily)

I've found with the Tales games that the gameplay isn't really that captivating, especially the real time battle system (it can be fun at first but for a JRPG the battles can start to drag after a while) but what really hooks you in with these games are the story and characters and my gosh did Vesperia hook me in

The story touched upon a lot of really interesting themes for me. Are the laws really punishing the worst people? Is it right to take the law into your hands? Are those at the top of class system only looking out for themselves? Could we give up a source of power that we've always relied on to save our world? So much of Vesperia's story was really interesting and I loved how they used the main party to explore some of the conflicts that can happen from these ideals. Yuri and Flynn, Judith and Rita in particular have really interesting clashes because of their ideals and it makes for a really good group dynamic.

Speaking of the characters my gosh they are so good. While I think Velvet from Berseria is the stronger protagonist, Yuri has a lot of really great moments that help his character shine. Judith came in and shook things up and I love the way she pushes Estelle to make up her mind on things. Rita was fantastic with her sarcastic attitude but also her dynamic with Estelle was so good. Ripede was a million times better than Bienfu. Karol was a really solid younger member of the group that really tied in the guilds well. Flynn was an excellent foil to Yuri. I can't really go into a lot of Raven's stuff without spoilers but I did enjoy the party calling him old man all the time and Patty.... well Patty had her moments but it was off putting having Yuri switch VA around her because Bandai Namco couldn't be bothered asking Troy Baker to come back to record new lines.
Finally there's Estelle who is easily my favourite character in the whole game. While she might be a princess, I found a lot her character to be really relatable. She has her wants and desires but tends to put herself behind others. The amount of times where it feels like she's just following the group decision because she feels like putting her opinion in can be a burden (I really love that Judith comes in and is immediately like "What do you want to do?" and Estelle is like.... i... i... dunno because she's so self conscious aaaaaaaaaaaaaa) I also love how when she's made her mind up on something it's near impossible to break her from it and her instinct to help others is so good. I love that the game tests her on that instinct with what I will call the "Estelle depression arc" that takes place in the game's second arc. Seriously, if you love Estelle as a character a lot of that second arc is gonna hit you hard, like I struggled through some of that my gosh.

I need to mention the ending. The majority of the game is so good and then the ending has to be one of the most anticlimactic and flat endings I've ever experienced. It doesn't ruin the game but it does leave with a big "is that it?" and that is the biggest mark against the game I have.

Overall, while I think Tales of Berseria has the higher highs with it's cast and story, I ended up enjoying Tales of Vesperia more due it's better pacing and that I ended up enjoying Estelle's character in particular a lot.
One last thing...... Ristelle is life

The third and final entry in the Sky/Liberl arc of the Trails/Kiseki series, Trails in the Sky the 3rd acts as a sort of epilogue for the trilogy while opening the doors for the future for other games to explore.

3rd once again changes little mechanically from the first two games, same battle system with the same orbment system for magic, etc. New turn bonuses such as Vanish (makes a character disappear when hit) and Death (one hit KO) have been added and these are great to encourage you to pay more attention to how you manipulate the turn order (you haven't felt true pain until you see an enemy hit all 4 of your party members with a Vanish bonus only to see your party disappear and Game Over pop up on your screen)
Other than those tweaks it's pretty much a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" which is fine by me when I enjoy the battle system so much in these games and messing with my orbments to see what spells I get.

What has been changed this time round is the core structure of the game and our protagonist. Following on 6 months after the events of Trails in the Sky SC, this game follows everyone's favourite priest from SC, Father Kevin Graham as he's called to investigate a mysterious relic that he may need to claim for the church with newcomer Sister Ries Argent accompanying him as his new squire. Shenanigans happen with a mysterious cube object pulling Kevin and Ries, as well as many other familiar faces into the mysterious world of Phantasma, a world full of creatures that look like they're straight from Gehanna (hell) and seemingly under the control of a masked new villain who goes by the name Lord of Phantasma along with their masked underling who looks suspiciously familiar. This story setup leads to the biggest structural change to the series so far, making it more of a dungeon crawler.

The world of Phantasma exists on numerous planes that alternate between brand new unique dungeon like areas and returning areas from the previous games that have become more dungeon like in structure. For example, Grancel, a major city in the previous games, has many areas locked off, no NPCs and enemies roaming the streets with chests to loot, turning a once bustling city into a dungeon-like area. This change in structure does mean you lose a lot of the charm I loved about the first two games, exploring the world and falling in love with its NPCs, which is a shame. It's also somewhat understandable as exploring the same world for the third game in a row would've been a bit tiresome so changing things up is welcome despite the drawbacks it brings. The goal of these dungeon areas is to explore and make your way through to the end where you end up fighting a boss and ultimately gaining a Sealing Stone which can be brought back to the hub area where the seal can be undone and a new character will join your party, with up to 16 playable characters being available to choose from.

The change in structure also means sidequests undergo a revamp. No longer are you travelling Liberl and helping out with Guild quests, side quests are now handled by three different kinds of doors you can find during exploration of a dungeon. Moon doors that contain lengthy side stories, Star doors that contain shorter side stories, and Sun doors that are more minigame based. These doors have certain requirements to unlock them (usually having the right combination of characters in your party) and they end up holding some important backstories to characters as well very interesting developments towards potential future plotlines. Moon doors like giving you a deep dive into characters' pasts and will have playable sections in them to help break up what are usually around an hour long story experience. I did find them a bit too long at times, disrupting the quick paced story of the main game a little too much for me, but I did also love seeing the past of characters like Kloe, Estelle and Joshua. What was even more surprising was seeing a new character from Kloe's backstory show up in Olivier's side story in a much more wtf role showing just how much thought has gone into these stories and the interconnectivity of them all.
Star doors are more to the pace that fit this game for me, usually between 15-30 mins and are purely dialogue focused. These tend to offer a view on some events with characters that happened within the 6 months this game skipped over and are pretty fun stories that give closure to some characters' arcs. Some of the later star doors however offer very important insight to events that happened off screen during the games that set up plot threads for future games to tackle. Like one goes through a report the Empire wrote up when their Guilds were being attacked by Jaeger's and Cassius had to step in and help out and seeing how some people high up in the Empire viewed Cassius was a very eye opening moment.
Finally we have the Sun doors which hold little minigames that are nice breathers to the main dungeon crawling gameplay. These are mostly silly fun little stories like Estelle getting caught up in a fishing challenge. The first one in particular offers a really cool minigame that I will leave as a surprise but it caught me off guard.
So aside from some minor pacing issues I had from the Moon doors, these doors offered a lot of compelling narrative elements and character moments that I really appreciated and that were difficult to find somewhere to put them in the main story.

Moving onto the change in protagonist, as someone who became very attached to Estelle from the first two games, I knew leaving her behind for someone else was always going to be difficult for me to adjust to. At the same time I can appreciate that the core element of Estelle's story was wrapped up in SC so moving her to the background a bit and letting someone new take the protagonist role was a very wise decision. Kevin was an interesting choice as he had shown some particularly interesting elements to his character that needed exploring in the end of SC. Three games in and I think I can say now that Trails is an expert in the slow burn when it comes to their characters and story. Things take their time to unravel again and you get little bits of Kevin's backstory with Rufina and Ries at the start of every chapter and little by little you grow attached to Kevin the more you learn. Having Ries with him throughout the story is very helpful as she knows him well enough that she can see through his facade and call him out on his bs as he struggles to be open with the people helping here. It's really compelling stuff and it all culminates in some really hard hitting revelations surrounding why Kevin is the way he is and what exactly happened to Rufina and my gosh it shook me to my core. Kevin and Ries had a hard time matching up to the heights Estelle and Joshua had for me but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I cared about them by the end. There was a lot of moments in the last few chapters that got me to tear up and I think it shows just how well they do the slow burn in these games.

As I mentioned earlier, the game features a playable cast of 16 characters which is quite a lot for an RPG and yet somehow they still manage to find a way to get you to use every single one of them. Even outside of doors requiring specific characters to unlock, throughout the story you'll have one or two characters you are forced to use that changes up every so often and as you find more characters you'll find yourself swapping one or two in or out. Particularly the order you find them in is very clever, with some of the less available party members in previous games being early ones here allowing you to spend more time with characters you otherwise wouldn't have. The finale also finds a way to get you to use every single character which is incredible for a cast this size.
One other thing to point out is the continuation of character strength through level in this trilogy. By the end of Sky FC my party was around level 30 so I wasn't too surprised to see my party start off at level 30 in SC. By the end of SC however, my party was above level 90 so I was genuinely surprised to see Kevin start this game at level 90, particularly when I'm used to games capping my characters at level 99 or 100. What was even more surprising was seeing characters go past level 100 and still level up! By the end of the game my party was over level 130 which outside of the missingno glitch in Pokémon Red/Blue, I had never seen in a game before. That coupled with some returning enemies the characters had struggled to beat in earlier games now being much easier to take down really sells just how much these characters have grown throughout the three games. It really was a pleasant surprise not seeing my characters reset (outside of orbments) having seen the likes of Metroid come up with so many excuses to reset Samus' skillset. It's just really cool seeing that level of care being put into something so small for a lot of people.

Aside from my minor issues with the game being more dungeon focused and some small pacing issues I had, Sky the 3rd is another excellent entry in the series and does a fantastic job at offering its own compelling narrative as well as wrapping up character arcs and moving the pieces in place for future story arcs. The fact it manages to juggle all of these story elements with little issue is a huge testament to what they've been cooking in this series and it has me excited to see how they continue this overarching narrative. I've thoroughly enjoyed every moment of the Sky trilogy as a whole and have loved getting into the Trails series. It will be tough to say goodbye to Liberl and its incredible cast of characters but 3rd certainly did enough teasing for Crossbell to have me very excited and curious to see where these story threads go.

1-2-Switch worked well as a launch title for the Nintendo Switch, demonstrating a lot of the unique ways the console could be played as well as the unique tech in the joy cons (HD rumble and IR sensor). It has obviously sold well enough for Nintendo to experiment with a sequel but another tech demoy experience 7 years into the Switch lifespan just doesn't cut it.
They did a similar thing with Wii Play and Wii Play Motion on Wii but those had the benefit of coming bundled with a controller to sweeten the deal, Everybody 1-2-Switch on the other hand has been chucked out at half the price of a regular Switch game without really offering any incentive to pick it up.

This is another collection of shallow minigames for a multiplayer only experience. The twist here is that by using your phone as a controller you can have up to 100 people playing at a time, which is pretty cool but when the games on offer are as shallow as a dried up puddle, it doesn't really offer much of a reason to gather that many people.

You have stuff like a game where you call an alien by moving in a rhythm, or trying to count to a specific number before flipping a cooking ingredient and these are like, cool, neat, they're functional but calling them fun is a stretch.
The best game on offer here is one where you hide your joy con in a room and the other team can press buttons on their joy con to make the hidden joy con vibrate to help find it. It's ripped straight out of Wii Party sure, but it's a game that is really fun, especially when you have a ton of places to try and hide your joy con.

My biggest issue with the game is it's all wrapped up in that corny over the top patronising American style voice over. You know the one where they really want you to have a good time and you can just imagine them asking you over and over if you're having a good time while telling you the lamest of puns and everyone else is putting on that fake over the top laughter. It's the type of thing I feel like you can only really enjoy when you're in a specific mood with a specific group of people. Heck having a horse mascot called MC Horace perfectly sums up the vibe of the whole thing.

Everybody 1-2-Switch is a functional game that is probably best enjoyed in the right setting with the right group of people and possibly a generous amount of alcohol. Otherwise it's a pretty shallow offering of mostly mundane games that get old pretty fast

It's been a pretty long gap between brand new 2D Mario titles with Super Mario Bros. Wonder releasing almost 11 years after New Super Mario Bros. U which launched with the Wii U just 3 months after New Super Mario Bros. 2 had released on the 3DS, the third and fourth entries in the "New" series of 2D Mario, which by that point had burned myself and many others out on the series, leaving us craving for something new and inventive with 2D Mario. Well Wonder is here now and it is exactly what I've been craving from 2D Mario for years.

In every single department, Wonder has taken steps to freshen up the 2D Mario experience, from music and art style, to animation and world design, there is so much new stuff to enjoy here. Starting off, we're now given a choice of quite a lot of characters to choose from. We have our New Super standards of Mario, Luigi, Blue and Yellow Toad as well as Peach and Daisy finally being playable. All of these characters play the same and the moveset has been stripped back a little bit, removing the triple jump but keeping stuff like the spin jump and wall jump. On the other end of the character select screen we have our "easy difficulty" characters which includes a variety of Yoshi colours being playable for the first time as well as Nabbit returning. These characters are all invincible, taking no damage though Yoshi does receive knockback and has his flutter kick jump for gaining extra height. Yoshi now being playable does unfortunately mean that he's no longer available as a mount unless you're playing in local multiplayer and someone picks Yoshi, which is a shame because I've been waiting for the full Super Mario World implementation of him to return since that game where he doesn't leave after every level.
Anyways, while the characters might all play the same now, you can earn badges to equip to your character that changes up the moveset. You want Peach's iconic float after jumping? You can equip a badge that allows a similar glide. You want the Super Mario Bros 2 crouch jump? There's a badge for that. You want to unleash vines to grab and stick onto walls like Spider-Man? THERE'S A BADGE FOR THAT! Basically badges allow the game to keep throwing fresh new challenges at you and change up the gameplay a little bit and I think they're pretty cool. I did stick with the little glide for the bulk of my playthrough because I love using it to guarantee hitting the top of the flagpole better but there's definitely a lot of cool options to switch to that could be better suited to your own unique playstyle and I think it's a great addition to the series.

Ok so for Peach to be playable, Bowser has to be up to something else as a villain so he's off to the brand new Flower Kingdom to steal the Royal Wonder Seeds and turn himself into a castle for some reason and it's up to Mario and the gang to stop him. Being in a new location means the developers have been able to be a little more creative with their level aesthetics so while on the surface you have your grass, desert, snow, lava level themes etc, they all have taken on fresh new looks with absolutely gorgeous background details helping to bring the whole thing alive. The characters are so much more expressive as they move through the levels and even the enemies can show fear when they see their allies stomped on before them or a shell comes flying towards them. These are all little details that yeah, they don't affect the core gameplay at all but they bring so much more life to the series, something that has been missing from 2D Mario for a while. Instead of rescuing Toads, we have new flower kingdom inhabitants to save and stuff like that just helps make this feel like a more unique experience.

Once again we're on a world map for a level select screen but this one has taken some cues from 3D World where there are points where it opens up and you can select whatever stage you want and find secrets hidden away. It's nice to have a more interactive world map and it helps break up the levels themselves a bit more. As for the levels, you've got your standard Mario affair here where reaching the flagpole is the goal. Hidden throughout the levels are 3 purple 10 coins replacing the big gold coins of the New games as well as 1-3 Wonder Seeds depending on the level having a secret exit or a Wonder Flower. Wonder Flowers can only be described as a wild trip as touching one of these completely changes up the level, throwing almost anything your way or even transforming Mario and co themselves into something else. An early one sees Piranha Plants popping out of pipes and seeing or a bunch of new bull like enemies stampeding through a level who can be ridden on to uncover secrets. There's stuff like becoming super tall and having to work through a level like that or even becoming a Goomba where your jump is really tiny but you're impervious to spikes though other things will kill you instantly. You can see a lot of inspiration taken from the Mario Maker games and the team have been very experimental with their level designs in the best ways.

So what are these new Wonder Seeds and purple coins for then? Well on the world map, progression is locked by certain levels needing a number of Wonder Seeds acquired to be unlocked. Each world has its own unique Wonder Seeds so you can't just collect a bunch in the first world and skip to the end but you can collect enough in each world to skip any of the levels that might be giving you a difficult time. Purple coins are used in the shops dotted around the world and can be used on things like extra lives or new badges but also each shop contains a Wonder Seed that can be bought and added to your total, just like the Moons in Mario Odyssey. There's also standees that can be bought but those are more for the multiplayer aspect that I'll touch upon in a bit.

Outside of the regular levels you have a few other types of level to play through. Break time levels that are nice chill bonus rooms that like to play music from a classic Mario title as you collect the coins. Enemy gauntlets that see you defeat a bunch of enemies and if you do so under a certain amount of time you can earn up to 3 purple 10 coins. There's badge challenges that test your skill with a badge and puzzle room levels which are designed more for multiplayer as each playable character can see unique hidden blocks so these levels work best with a group of four helping each other find the hidden blocks to collect the 5 pieces of the Wonder Seed and beat the puzzle together. Again, these levels all help keep the game feeling fresh as new ideas keep pushing themselves forward and it's brilliant.

Now I have mentioned the multiplayer aspect a few times now so let's get into the online side of that because I was genuinely surprised at how much I appreciated it. By connecting the game online, you'll find a bunch of other players playing the game at the same time as you and if you enter a level, up to 3 other players playing that level will be there in real time with you. However unlike Mario Maker or Mario 3D World where online multiplayer put you in the same lobby and relied upon an unreliable connection between players as you interacted with one another and lag kicked in, the players here are more like ghosts or shadows with very limited interaction on your game. You can see each other and emote to each other and stuff like that but you can't throw shells at each other or pick each other up or anything like that. No, instead Nintendo has borrowed a bit form Dark Souls and somehow managed to find a way to inspire cooperative play here. If you die near a player you'll become a ghost and be given around 5 seconds to touch another player to be revived, not losing a life and continue from that point. Now you can still be a menace and deliberately avoid a dead player until their time runs out and heck, some level design makes that almost impossible to avoid but my gosh hearing the little ghost screams and seeing someone desperately try to reach you, you'd have to have a heart of stone to ignore their pleas for help. The standees I mentioned earlier come into play when playing online. You can put these down anywhere in a level on solid ground and if someone dies within range of it, they can touch it as a ghost and be revived. What's even cooler is during my playthrough I saw people putting them down to hint at where there were hidden blocks. The first puzzle room level I found there was a group of us struggling to find one last part of the Wonder Seed but one person had left a standee in an area where a hidden block was so all we had to do was figure out how to hit it. And that's not even my highlight of the online experience because in the very final level, there was a red Yoshi player helping a group of us by waiting for us to catch up and placing standees in areas where we were likely to mess up. It was extremely heartwarming seeing a complete stranger just helping people through the toughest level in the game just because they could and I love that energy.

Moving onto power ups we have our usual staples of Mushrooms, Fire Flowers and Invincibility Stars and outside of that everything else is new. The main new one is the Elephant Fruit which turns you into an elephant. As an elephant you gain access to a trunk attack and you can store water in your trunk to use as a projectile. We also have the Drill Mushroom which is like a 2D incarnation of the drill power up from Mario Galaxy 2. Here you gain a drill on top of your head so you can defeat enemies by jumping under them and also use it to drill under ground or roof structures and move through gaps in walls to uncover secrets. Finally there's the Bubble Flower that does as the name suggests, lets you throw out bubbles. These can capture non spiky enemies and turn them into coins or you can use them to jump off if you time things well. All the power ups here feel very fresh and unique in a 2D Mario environment and I had fun using all of them.

It's been glowing praise so far but I do have one complaint with the game and that is the bosses. For a game full of variety and trying new things, it does suck a little bit that airship and castle bosses are reused every time. They do change up each encounter and I am extremely glad to see absolutely no Koopalings after their overuse in the Wii through Wii U era but at the same time, I was hoping to see a better variety on offer in the boss department.

It's been a long time coming but Wonder absolutely delivers on refreshing 2D Mario after the New series had grown a little tired and overused. As usual with Mario, you're getting a joyful experience that reconnects you with your inner child but you're also getting a top quality Mario game that manages to feel unique in a series that has been going for over 35 years now and that in itself is a testament to the strength of this game. I've managed to get through this review without dipping into the wonder puns but I have to end it with this: I had a Wonderful experience and time with Super Mario Bros. Wonder!

With the fourth mainline/numbered entry in the Pikmin series, Nintendo have chosen to do everything in their power to make this the most accessible and content rich game in the series. For those familiar with the Pikmin series, Pikmin 1 and 3 followed a gameplay loop that saw you exploring areas to collect ship parts/fruit to get off a planet before a deadline hit, causing a game over. Pikmin 2 saw you collecting treasure with no time limit and exploring caves as well as the overworld for that treasure. Pikmin 4 follows more closely to the formula of Pikmin 2 while adding plenty of its own new ideas into the mix.

So the core gameplay loop of Pikmin 4 sees you exploring areas and using your Pikmin to collect items lying around the world to collect its sparklium that can be converted into fuel for the characters spaceship that will allow them to explore other areas of the planet and eventually return back home. The story premise is that Olimar has yet again crash landed on a planet containing Pikmin and needs saving, however the Rescue Corps sent to save have also crash landed and it's up to you, a newbie Rescue Corps member to save not only Olimar but the missing Rescue Corps members too. Yes, for the first time in the series you play as a self insert character who you can customise with a limited set of options (which is nice, the character creator is nowhere near overwhelming) that can be changed at any point once you unlock the option in the game. So in addition to collecting treasure, you will also be finding Rescue Corps members to carry back and as the game progresses, random castaways that have gotten stuck on this mysterious planet too. What's cool about this is every character has a profile card detailing a little bit about themselves and what they came to the planet to do, whether it's to research the plant life or do a documentary, there's a varied bunch of characters to meet. They all help flesh out the Pikmin universe too as you meet characters from many different planets like Hocatate and PNF-404 and it shows the Pikmin universe is so much bigger than we realised. These characters once saved can all be found in the new hub area of this game where they will offer side missions to complete like make 300 Pikmin bloom or discover a certain amount of creatures. They're nice extra challenges that help make the smaller tasks you do while exploring a bit more valuable.

Right let's get onto the gameplay itself and all the tweaks Nintendo have made. When Pikmin came to Wii the pointer controls were such a natural fit for the series that it was hard to see an alternate way of playing that was just as good. The Deluxe port of Pikmin 3 on Switch tried to replicate this using gyro aiming but unfortunately the aiming would constantly need reset due to how quickly it would drift. With Pikmin 4 being designed for Switch, Nintendo have opted for a lock on cursor that works pretty well (aside from a few moments where multiple things are next to each other and it's hard to pinpoint what you want). Gyro aiming still comes into play but is only active when whistling or throwing Pikmin meaning you don't have to constantly reset it and you still get to quickly move your aim when needed. They've added a much more dynamic camera this time allowing you to get pretty close to the action on the ground as well as pulling out far enough to get a decent read of your surroundings and you've got shortcuts you can add to the d-pad for stuff like items and character switching which is really nice. While it's not quite at the same heights as the pointer controls during the Wii/Wii U era, Nintendo have managed to adapt the controls of Pikmin into something that is very suitable for both the TV and handheld playstyles of Switch with little compromise. The game also begins with a pretty heavy handed tutorial to help those new to the series and make sure that everything is explained in detail. It interrupts the game a little too often for me as someone who has played the series before but I can understand wanting to make sure people understand how everything works.

The biggest new addition to the gameplay this time around is Oatchi, your very own space dog companion! Oatchi can be used in a variety of ways. The main one I used was as a ride. Oatchi can carry your character and all your Pikmin on his back which is really handy and helps eliminate one of the main causes of lost Pikmin for me: the stragglers at the back being crushed or caught by enemies. Of course there's still enemies capable of knocking you and your Pikmin off causing chaos and leading to lost Pikmin but it is really handy being able to gather them all onto Oatchi's back to try and keep them safe. Oatchi is also able to complete many tasks that Pikmin can like carrying objects and defeating enemies and through upgrades he can become immune to various elements and carry heavier items. Thankfully he doesn't negate the need for Pikmin altogether, he's more of a handy helping hand for dividing up tasks or transporting Pikmin across water who normally couldn't.
We also have a couple of new Pikmin types with the Ice and Glow Pikmin. Ice Pikmin are impervious to being frozen, can withstand cold temperatures and freeze bodies of water if you have enough of them. They can also freeze enemies when used to attack them making fights a lot less riskier but when a frozen enemy is defeated they shatter and you don't get a body to carry back and grow your Pikmin population. It's a nice approach to risk/reward design that also helps make the game a bit easier if you choose to.
Glow Pikmin are mostly exclusive to the new night missions in the game but can also be used in caves. These Pikmin are impervious to all elemental weaknesses other Pikmin have but can still be killed by enemies. They can teleport to your character when they are done with their tasks and at the end of a night mission for every 10 surviving Glow Pikmin you have, you earn a glow seed that can be used to spawn Glow Pikmin in a cave. They're pretty handy if your Pikmin population is thinning out while in a cave and you can't find any more around.

Speaking of night missions, these are tower defence style missions where you are tasked with protecting a Luminol or two to collect a medicine for some of the castaways that are suffering a leafy transformation. These missions see you using Glow Pikmin to collect star bits to carry back to the Luminol to expand their numbers so they can defend against the oncoming onslaught of enemies throughout the night. As they can teleport to whoever you're controlling you can quickly switch between Oatchi and your character to manage defending multiple Luminol. It's a nice change of pace from the main missions and keeps the game feeling fresh. I do think it would've been cool if they had multiple captains like in Pikmin 3 so we could defend 3 or 4 Luminols because of how fluid the switching is with Glow Pikmin but otherwise it's a solid game mode and it's nice being able to explore at night.

The bulk of your game time is exploring the beautifully crafted environments and collecting the various treasures available. Nintendo have made a couple of tweaks to the traditional Pikmin formula. First is the limitation of just 3 Pikmin types at any one time which helps making sure each Pikmin type can have a chance to shine as areas are designed with this in mind and will offer recommended Pikmin types to bring along. There might be a couple of times where you'll want to swap out for another Pikmin type to accomplish a task but for the most part the game is extremely well designed around this, and in caves it is possible to find Pikmin types outwith the 3 you brought in allowing you to play with a larger variety at once for a bit. I think this limitation works well for preventing people from becoming overwhelmed by the amount of Pikmin types to choose from as well as making sure the player has to strategise with a limited amount of resources. Also different this time round is starting with a limit of only 20 Pikmin at once. This can be expanded by finding Farlic onions throughout levels, increasing the limit by 10 every time until you hit the traditional limit of 100. I assume this was done to ease newcomers into the series and not overwhelm them and I think it works well. It's another item to collect and it feels good watching your Pikmin limit expand, being able to accomplish more tasks and fight stronger enemies as your army grows. Another gameplay addition is the ability to rewind time to undo mistakes. It's a pretty comprehensive rewind allowing you to go back to specific points or even all the way back to the beginning of the day. As an optional tool it's great for accessibility and while I tried to avoid using it, it did come in handy during the final boss encounter after having my purple Pikmin wiped out from trying to figure out how best to hit the boss.

There's a very well done balance between overworld and cave exploration that helps keeps both feeling fun and fresh throughout. The overworld has all the usual Pikmin puzzles to solve, walls to break down, tunnels to dig, etc and caves can be found throughout these levels. Caves act much like they did in Pikmin 2, hiding treasure to collect and holding some of the more difficult enemy encounters. These areas have been tightly designed this time, offering very puzzle box like experiences as you work your way through them. They also tend to house the rarer Pikmin types allowing you to add new Pikmin to your army. The caves this time are often around the 5 levels mark so you don't spend as much time in them as you do in 2 allowing a better balance between the areas you're exploring. I loved the caves in this game as they were very fun and tightly designed areas that offer fun puzzles to figure out with your Pikmin.

I've covered so much already but wait, there's more! As well as being able to find caves through the levels, there are new Dandori challenges and battles that can be found too. Dandori, as explained in game, is the art of organising your tasks strategically and working with maximum efficiency to execute your plans quickly and by gosh the game does mean that. The Dandori challenges see you given a set amount of time to collect every single object within a level. You start out with a specific set of Pikmin and must act quickly and efficiently to grow your Pikmin army as well as defeating enemies and clearing paths to collect every item. These challenges are intense and you cannot stop for a second otherwise you're going to miss the target score. These are so much fun and really test your quick thinking abilities as well as how efficiently and quickly your brain can spot how to divide tasks up to get them done. I absolutely loved these challenges and getting a platinum score on my first try was always a delight.
The Dandori battles see you take on a mysterious leafling in a split screen battle to collect the most points before time runs out. It's a bit more chaotic and you can use your Pikmin to mess with your opponent and steal their items from them as well as pick up the traditional Nintendo style multiplayer items to turn the tide of battle. This is also offered as a traditional multiplayer mode in the main menu and it does its job well but the chaotic nature of them leaves them feeling a bit less satisfying compared to everything else on offer.

So yeah, there is an absolute ton packed into this Pikmin, taking me well over 20 hours to get to the credits while 100%ing every area on the way and Nintendo is like you thought that was it? Nah, here's even more content providing one of the meatiest post games in recent memory. We got more areas to explore, a new mode that caters to those who loved Pikmin 1 and a set of Dandori challenges that really test your skills. It's incredible just how much content Nintendo has packed into Pikmin this time around and the way each game style varies things up keeps things fresh. Despite having 9 Pikmin types and Oatchi available to use, they somehow manage to make sure each Pikmin type still has a role to fill without feeling pointless. The story mode also alleviates one of my main criticisms about Pikmin 3 by making sure that every single type of Pikmin sees use. 3 saw purple and white Pikmin go unused in the main story while 4 makes sure everyone gets their chance to shine, particularly through the caves that usually have challenges designed around specific Pikmin types.

The game is just a joy to play and very chill for the most part with late game providing some of the challenges veteran Pikmin fans might be looking for. Aside from heavy handed tutorials and a little bit of jank with lock on aiming, I don't really have much to criticise with Pikmin 4. It's an extremely well designed game that manages to expand upon Pikmin in all the right ways while finding ways to appeal to fans that love the style of Pikmin 1 or Pikmin 2. The sound design is as great as ever, with every Pikmin making unique noises and having cute footstep sound effects that differentiate over different material and there's one boss fight in particular that blew me away with how it played with the music. And of course the game carries the series usual charm with every item having a few logs to go through along with the funny names. It's always fun seeing these characters try to figure out what exactly a GBA SP could be used for.

Pikmin 4 takes the series to new heights while maintaining a delicate balance to try and appeal to as wide a demographic as possible. Nintendo have nailed expanding the various types of strategic gameplay on offer while also making sure that everything is balanced as finely as possible. Somehow they have managed to make this most content rich Pikmin title and kept it feeling fresh throughout making this my favourite Pikmin title so far and one of my favourite games of all time.

Trails of Cold Steel, the sixth entry of the Trails series and the start of a brand new arc taking place in the nation of Erebonia.

Originally on PS Vita, Cold Steel represents a leap for the series, going full 3D for the first time. While that leap to 3D is impressive, we'll focus on the smaller tweaks to the Trails formula first before diving into the bigger stuff.
First up the battle system builds off what's come before. Instead of using a grid based system for range of movement, we now have movement range limited to a circumference which is more natural for the full 3D environments. The new ARCUS battle orbments now allow two characters to be linked in battle which means characters are able to provide follow up attacks and earn Brave Points. Brave Points can be accumulated to allow for more powerful follow up attacks with 3 points allowing a Rush attack where the two linked party members can rush an enemy for a few hits and 5 points allow a burst attack which has moved from the Crossbell games as a bonus action on a turn to here. Burst attacks basically see your party go ham on the enemies doing a good amount of damage and great for tackling larger groups of mobs. Your links can also be levelled up for even more abilities, like at level two a finishing blow unlocks meaning if you use a link attack on an enemy and bring their health down low enough, your link partner will follow up and finish off the enemy. Other abilities include stuff like Auto-Tear and Cover and overall I think it's a fantastic addition on top of Trails already fun combat. It gives you more options to work with and helps speed up the flow of regular battles which is great.

Moving onto the Orbment changes, we're mostly building off Azure here with Master Quartz returning but other elements have been simplified. Quartz now comes with Arts variants that include an art or three on them so instead of building your arts by using the right elemental combinations in your orbment, now you just need to find the quartz with the art you want and hey ho, you can use Tear. With the larger cast this game has, I can understand why the system has been simplified. Constantly trying to remember set ups for arts you want would be a pain when you're swapping between 9+ characters so I can see why you'd alleviate that by just making quartz hold spells. I did miss the fun in experimenting with quartz layouts and seeing what arts I could get but again, I can understand why the change was made.

Another gameplay tweak that I greatly appreciated is that every area now has a map for it. It was always a weird thing in the previous games for me where most dungeons didn’t have maps for some reason but thankfully Cold Steel changes that. There’s also a whole new type of battle introduced at the end of the game that I am very excited to see more of in future games but shall hold off going into here and spoiling it. I’ll just say it very much appealed to my tastes.

The core gameplay loop is very much still Trails at its heart, exploring towns, doing quests, etc to progress the story but the choice of setting this time changes up the cycle a bit this time. The Empire of Erebonia is so much larger than either Liberl or Crossbell that we’ve explored previously and the decision made was to pick one core area to keep returning to as we explore different areas. That core area? A military academy - school. Now I know most people will roll their eyes at Persona comparisons but when it feels like the inspiration for the choice of setting and when Persona and Fire Emblem: Three Houses are my core references for school settings in videogames, I think being able to use them to explain what I feel this game does right and wrong with its setting is valuable. Now Thors Military Academy being, well a military academy means this feels closer to Three Houses than Persona for me. The students here are being taught with the expectation that most of them will end up joining the military someday so for the most part the setting works. Managing to find a third way to implement the Trails rank system where you gain more points for doing more sidequests by making it a graded study report is very cool, props to them for that.
Of courses, taking inspiration from Persona means we have a calendar system introduced here. Worry not, you won’t be playing every single day of a month, instead you’ll be playing a select few days in every month. The first day takes place at school and is mostly just story stuff before moving into the second day which is your free day. Free days are split into afternoon and evening sections where you’ll get your traditional Trails sidequests to do but also Bonding Points to spend. Every month you’ll get 3 or 4 bonding points to spend on having bonding events with your classmates where you’ll get to know them better. They’re kind of inspired by Persona’s Social Links but you’re not ranking them up and continuing a narrative through them, more just seeing an extra event with that character for that month that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. It does tie into your romantic partner of choice at the end of the game which changes up the final cutscene a little and who you can dance with at the school festival but otherwise, they feel very minimal and offer a little more insight to characters.
Your important quest for every free day is to visit the old school building. The old school building is a mysterious building that acts like a dungeon and every month adds a new floor to explore. Think Temple of the Ocean King from Zelda: Phantom Hourglass but without having to go through the whole thing every month, just the new floor. It mostly feels like something added to have a traditional dungeon experience for the school portions of the game and there’s very little given to the mystery to keep your interest in it outside of the fourth floor before the eventual payoff in the final chapter. It does make for a nice change of pace during the school portions and it’s also the only area for the bulk of the game where you have full control of your choice of party set up which is much appreciated.
Completing the old school building task each month transitions the day to evening and gives you one extra bonding point to spend before you return to the dorms for the day. The next day is always your Practical Exam. Basically here you’ll be given a battle to fight and often have side objectives to meet, like not letting anyone die or not using arts. These are fine and are mostly used to let characters who have tension with each other to blow off some steam and settle grievances while also building up bonds.
Finally after that you’re giving your field study destination for the month which acts as your more traditional Trails experience for the month. The class is split into two groups and sent off to different destinations to get a feel for what’s happening in Erebonia, meet the people who live in these places and help them out in a very Bracer like fashion by completing tasks. The field studies are where the more interesting story elements happen as the characters get to witness first hand the tensions between Erebonia’s Noble Faction and Reformist Faction as the flames of Civil War begin to build in the background of all the school bonding trips. The class will witness first hand the actions of the terrorist group The Imperial Liberation Front and will end up having to put a stop to them. It makes for an exciting end to each month but unfortunately because of the school system and the gameplay loop they choose to stick to so closely, rather than being able to escalate and build off these events, you’re immediately dragged back to Thors before you get to see or feel any of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on these areas and it completely takes the wind out of the plot. It’s a similar problem to what Three Houses suffer from in the first half of its game where things start to feel repetitive and the school portions start to drag on more and more as the game goes on and you want the plot to build up to something a bit more meaningful and longer lasting. It does eventually get there in the final chapter but having to go through around 60 hours of game before that point does take its toll. I think another issue comes from this game's story taking place from around late game Trails from Zero through to late game Trails to Azure. Basically throughout the game you’ll constantly be getting updates from what’s happening in Crossbell (and seeing this from the Erebonian perspective is greatly appreciated, especially with how its newspaper distorts facts to make Chancellor Osborne sound much more important to going ons in Crossbell than he actually was and dismissing the declaration of independence as a fools dream) but the issue is everything that’s happening in Crossbell sounds (and if you’ve played Zero/Azure it IS) so much more interesting than what you’re getting to see in Erebonia. So much of the political tension in Erebonia feels like it takes place off screen because these school kids are a bit too far detached from it. Sure there’s characters who have relatives who are very much involved with the quarrelling factions but they all feel like they’re kept at arm's length and are unable to give much insight to what’s happening themselves. Compare that to Elie from Zero, whose grandfather is Mayor of Crossbell and she herself has enough of an interest in politics to be able to explain to Lloyd and the player and the whole political situation of Crossbell, then it’s clear to see that we were missing someone like that in Cold Steel.

Let’s get into the cast itself then. The protagonist for this game is Rean, a young lad whose background gives him a balanced view between nobility and commoner. He ends up going to Thors Military Academy where a brand new class is being set up for a select group of students - Class VII. This class takes people from all sorts of different backgrounds and puts them together in an attempt to help people understand each other from different societal classes and try to bridge the gap between them. Including Rean the class features a total of 9 classmates to begin with which is a lot of characters to introduce at once and start building with.
We have Alisa who hides her second name and wants to take on everything herself while also looking out for everyone else. Elliot who is much more into his music than his military training. Laura, who is a noble incredibly dedicated to her training with the sword. Jusis, another noble who starts off more like the lone wolf of the group. Machias who absolutely detests nobles and wants nothing to do with them. Fie who despite being the youngest of the group, is so much more combat ready than anyone else. Emma who is the class president, top of the class but also has a mysterious air about her. And finally Gaius, a foreigner from the allied nation of Nord. On top of this we have our homeroom teacher Sara who very much opts for doing things unconventionally and loves a wee drink here and there. That’s just the opening group for the game and it’s a lot of people to manage and develop. The game does do well in trying to manage this by splitting the group up for field studies, allowing you to focus on 3 or 4 characters as well as forcing characters into groups where they’ll have to address their issues with each other (like Machias and Jusis or Fie and Laura). On top of that the field studies tend to take place in a character's hometown or somewhere where they have family connections which is great for their personal character growth. Despite the bloated cast, I did end up loving most of the characters with Alisa, Emma, and Jusis being my standouts while Gaius and Elliot unfortunately didn’t do much for me compared to the rest.
But wait there’s even more important characters! A group of second years becomes close to the group introducing us to the smartass Crow, student council president Towa, engineer George and way over the top aggressively lesbian Angelica. For the most part they’re a great bunch, I absolutely loved Crow and his dynamic with Rean though Angelica has some issues and leans way too hard into uncomfortable tropes that are yeah…. Just an overall bad representation of a lesbian character.
And hold up, there’s even more important characters like Elise - Rean’s sister, Patrick, a noble who has that noble superiority complex, Olivert and his brother and sister, more academy professors…..
Oh and we can’t forget our antagonistic group, the Imperial Liberation Front whose members like to call themselves the first letter of their name - G, S, V and the mysterious leader C who wears a black suit and mask like he’s some sort of Power Ranger fanboy (it’s cool though and he has plenty of charisma). For the bulk of the game this group really doesn't feel like much. They show up, get their asses beat off school kids and run away pretending like it was all part of the plan (which granted I’ll give C credit for his long game planning because he definitely threw me off his competency with those earlier operations)

Basically, if this feels like a lot, it’s because it is and it contributes to Cold Steel’s biggest issue - bloat. There is way too much here in terms of characters and locations to set up and in traditional Trails fashion, it’s done slowly and meticulously to make sure they truly build a world that feels alive and credit where it’s due, they do manage to accomplish that but at the same time it takes 60+ hours to do that. 60+ hours of world and character building is something that starts to drag on. I was craving for something of excitement and importance to happen because as much as I can appreciate taking your time to craft a world with great detail, I also need something to get me invested in the plot at large. I think part of the issue is the school sections take up a big chunk of play time and knock the wind out of the larger plot and bloat up the whole game while also killing the pacing. Like they are important for the camaraderie between Class VII but they do alter the balance of the traditional Trails experience in a way that I feel overall hinders the pacing. As someone who has played Three Houses the most apt comparison I can make is - imagine the academy phase of that game stretched out to 60+ hours and just as the war phase is about to begin the game ends and that’s going to be covered in the next game.
The finale of Cold Steel is fantastic, I loved the last portion of the game and everything that went down, it just took way too long meandering to that point. Take Trails in the Sky FC for example. That game is also very much focused on the slow burn of world building for the majority of the game but it does so through a much more manageable cast, with a strong focus on Estelle and Joshua at its centre as everything else is built around them and it’s last quarter gets into the exciting plot developments to make journey more memorable and it’s all done in around 40 hours. Cold Steel is juggling way too many characters without focusing on any one or two characters as its central focus and as a result everything takes so much longer to get going.

Jumping back to that transition to 3D, I will say the game does a fantastic job at bringing the scale of Erebonia to life. Cities are massive with the capital Heimdallr split into multiple districts full of massive buildings. Roer feels like Zeiss from Liberl reimagined into the full scale city it represented. The Nord Highlands bring a massive open area traversable via horse which is incredible for what is at its core a Vita game though I could’ve done with some fast travel points in that area as traversing constantly between the village and the military base to accomplish the quests in that area felt dragged out with how large it is. Ultimately though they did a fantastic job at making Erebonia feel like the massive Empire it is compared to Crossbell and Liberl. Each destination is only reachable via train as well further driving home just how massive this nation is. Some of the road areas have exits that are outside the field study boundary but signposts point out where those roads lead to which could be interesting for future games in this arc if travelling isn’t limited to trains later on.
All that to say is the world design in this game is well done and on top of that the dungeons are fun to traverse with their gimmicks like flipping switches to activate and deactivate bridges and stuff like that. The gameplay side of things really helps to keep the game being fun as it drags its heels with its narrative and for me that was greatly appreciated when my frustrations were building.

On the soundtrack side of things it’s another great offering. The upbeat sounds of school life, the atmospheric dungeon music, the heavy battle music - it’s all here to elevate the experience and help bring this world to life. The opening song is really catchy and the title screen music fits the mood of the adventure. Speaking of the title screen, I loved the neat touch of adding more characters alongside Rean on the train as the game progresses. It’s one of those little things that just make the experience a bit more special. And another little thing I think worth mentioning is this Cold Steel’s book collection Red Moon Rose - a thrilling tale of a vampire hunter and her encounter with a vampire who has been sucking the blood dry out of people during the night and I absolutely loved it. Again it’s one of those extra things that makes Trails such a great series and I love how much effort is put into those novels. On the disappointing side of things though, we do lose our funny little chest messages in this game which is a real shame.

Trails of Cold Steel is unfortunately overall, a step back from what came before it. Overly ambitious and bloated by its large cast and choice of setting, it takes way too long setting up things and not enough time paying off that build up. The finale is a great start to paying off the build up but that’s all it is - a start. Hopefully with this build up out of the way Cold Steel II can hit the ground running like the other follow up games have done in this series. The great cast of characters and fantastic gameplay makes Cold Steel still an overall enjoyable experience despite its flaws, just one that falls a bit short of what this series has managed to do before it.