Fire Emblem is my absolute favorite Nintendo IP, and as such a huge Fire Emblem fan, I'm pretty easy to please. I even like Fire Emblem Heroes, and I'm notoriously prejudiced against mobile gaming (it's for peasants). As such, I absolutely adored Fire Emblem: Three Houses even though a lot of my friends either outright disliked it or were at least disappointed that leaned so heavily into the social sim aspects and put such an emphasis on the monastery as a hub world. Fire Emblem: Engage, however, I didn't enjoy just because it was Fire Emblem (and had an axe-wielding anti-religion cutie) like I did with Three Houses; unlike the previous mainline entry, Engage brings back a lot of the classic Fire Emblem feel that Three Houses lacked while still also feeling modern and fresh. The basic premise of the game feels very similar if you've played previously Fire Emblem games (or any JRPG, for that matter). You play as Alear (whom I renamed Rozemyne because my current hyperfixation is Ascendance of a Bookworm and whom the Internet nicknamed Toothpaste-chan since her hair looks like Colgate), the child of the Divine Dragon Lumera and thus a Divine Dragon herself (or himself if you're a loser and play as a male). You awaken a thousand years after a cataclysmic war with the Fell Dragon, but just as you're awakening (with amnesia, as is tradition for everything made in Japan), oh no, the zombie-esque Corrupted soldiers are appearing again! What could this mean? Surely the Fell Dragon hasn't returned (not-really-a-spoiler alert - the Fell Dragon has returned). So the story isn't original, but hardly anything in anime or Japanese RPGs are; what matters is the execution, and the execution is fantastic here. You still have a hub world called the Somniel where you can interact and bond with characters, shop, use your amiibo for some extra cooking ingredients, etc, but unlike Three Houses, the Somniel is like 95% optional. There are a couple of story segments that require you to interact with something there, but for the vast majority of the game, you can choose to go straight from the post-battle area to the world map and immediately to the next battle. This helps to keep the game's pace moving swiftly if you're not interested in the social sim aspects while also giving a relatively robust social sim element if, like me, you actually enjoy that. As for the core gameplay - the battle maps - it's exactly what you would expect from Fire Emblem. It's a well-designed and robust strategy RPG with balanced battle mechanics that invite - and eventually require - the player to develop strategies that go far beyond "send your single overpowered unit in as a tank." There are the usual mechanics that you're used to - the familiar weapons triangle and the weapons that are better against certain traits like mounted or armored - but there's also a new one, and that's Break. If you have the advantage in a weapon match up - swords against axes, for example - there's a chance that you can break the enemy's weapon, making them unable to counter attack during their next battle that turn. It only works during your turn - you can't keep them from attacking on theirs - and it only works once, so you can't just bum rush them with half a dozen units and have them all safe, but it's a great mechanic that opens up a lot of new strategies. As Fire Emblem games since the 3DS era have, Engage gives you a variety of difficulty options. First and foremost, you'll choose between Casual and Classic. Casual is how I always play on the first playthrough and removes the permadeath for which Fire Emblem is traditionally known. That way, if your character falls in battle, they're not gone forever; they can be redeployed in the next battle. Classic, on the other hand, keeps permadeath intact; if a stupid mistake leads to a character death in a random grinding battle, that character is dead forever unless you go back and redo it. After you choose which mode to play, you choose your difficulty. These two choices let you craft the game to be as easy or as a infuriatingly difficult as you want it to be. There is a pseudo-multiplayer aspect with the Relay Battles, but frankly, I have zero interest in those battles, so I did one token battle and then never touched it again. Still, though, it's a nice inclusion that's reminiscent of Awakening on 3DS. Something else that harkens back to the 3DS games (and all of the games before that) is your main gameplay gimmick, the emblems. Each of the 12 emblems represents one of the previous 12 Fire Emblem games (excluding Mystery of the Emblem, Shadow Dragon, New Mystery of the Emblem, and Echoes since they're remakes). There are also two DLC emblems if you bought the season pass. I know better than to pin my hopes on Nintendo's decision making, but I'm hoping against hope that this is an indication that they're preparing to either remaster or re-release some of the older Fire Emblem games because this is bound to get newer players (3DS and later) interested in the protagonists from the older (Wii and earlier) games. Fire Emblem: Engage definitely feels the much more like a "classic" Fire Emblem game than Three Houses did. I personally loved Three Houses, but Engage surpasses it in pretty much every way except maybe character design; I love Toothpaste-chan, but even my anime standards, her hair is kind of out there. It reminds me a lot of Path of Radiance as well as Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, and I mean that in the best way possible. This is, in my opinion, the best Fire Emblem game since Awakening. If you love Fire Emblem, you need to play this; if you love the Switch, you need to play this; if you love SRPGs, you need to play this. It's not perfect, but it's pretty damn close in my book, and I'm extremely eager to see what story content the upcoming DLC adds. My Rating - AAlso available on Android, iOS, and Windows There's a reason I'm deeply prejudiced against mobile games; most of the are rubbish. There are some genuinely good mobile games, for sure, but the overwhelming majority are garbage or, at best, mediocre. Modern Combat: Blackout is a mobile game that got ported to Switch, and even with a port to a home console - even an underpowered and aging one - only got it up to "mediocre," although with a generic search engine bait name like "Modern Combat," I can't say that I'm terribly surprised. The premise of the game is that your character works as a mercenary for a private military company (which is just a modern euphemism for band of mercenaries to avoid issues with international law) but finds out that the PMC is up to some shady and unethical shit. You know, like literally every PMC that's ever existed. So now you and your handful of allies get to play hero and try to expose the plot or whatever. Honestly, the story is paper thin; it makes Steven Segal movies look like well-constructed narrative events. This game is obviously a creative legacy of the Xbox 360 era where every game involved modern combat, a barely sensical plot, and various shades of brown and occasionally green (although, to its credit, this game does use a couple other colors, too). The game is your run of the mill first person shooter. When you're looking around or firing from the hip, you use the right analog stick to aim; when you're aiming down the sights, you can use gyroscopic controls. Since the stick aiming is jerky as hell, you're basically going to be using gyroscopic aiming 99% of the time if you ever want to hit anything. The game awkwardly has auto sprint enabled by default, so if you want to move while crouching - and you will - you'll need to disable that. Mechanically, the game runs fine. It only crashed once on me. It looks okay I guess, although it's painfully obvious that it's a cell phone game that got ported. The biggest problem is that it's just not that exciting. Some of the missions are fun, but the game as a whole is just extremely okay. The explosives suck, too. Honest to god, they feel like they have no more power than a slightly larger-than-normal firecracker. I got this game on the eShop on sale for $1.99, and truthfully, that's all it's worth. For seven hours of something to do - I'm not going to go as far as to call it truly entertainment - $2 is fair, and the online matchmaking will at least put AI bots in to fill gaps in the team rosters from the lack of real humans who actually want to play this game, but there's just no reason to go out and download this game unless you just desperately want a bad dollar store rip-off of Call of Duty 4 on your Switch. Given how cheap it is when it's on sale, I'm not going to say "omg avoid this game," but I'm most certainly not going to suggest that anyone go download it. My Rating - FAlso available on PlayStation 4, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, iOS, Mac, and Windows I first heard about The Pathless when I was doing a Secret Santa with my Twitter DM for the 2021 holiday season. My person had the game on her wishlist, and I saw that it was a fairly affordable PS5 game, so I ordered it for her. I thought it looked cute and wanted to give it a go, but I never got around to pulling the trigger on it myself; it's one of those games that I wanted to play but that always had something else get bumped above it on my priority list. Well, about a week ago, my buddy Danny gives me his copy out of the blue. He'd beaten it and knew that I was a big game collector, so he let me have his copy. What an awesome dude. Almost made me feel bad for having relentlessly shot him with paintballs earlier in the day. Almost. The Pathless is a super artistic puzzle adventure with some light platforming elements. You play as a hunter who is on a quest to defeat the Godslayer and save the world from his evil plan. Along the way, you have to lift the curse on the four Tall Ones, huge god-like spiritual beasts. To do this, you have to restore the light at three obelisks. To do THAT, you have to collect two glowing token things that you get by solving small puzzles that feel a bit like the shrines in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The plot is honestly just wrapping paper on the game to give some context to what you're doing; there are some very nice cinematic events voiced in some language - dunno if it's real or fictional, but it definitely isn't English - but the story itself is very shallow. You do get some neat little bits of lore from floating spirit orbs around the map, though, so that's a nice plus. Each of the four Tall Ones is in its own section of the map, so there is a lot to explore with some decent environment diversity. That said, exploration is more tedious than exciting as there's no map of any kind, so you're kind of just wandering around half aimlessly with only a red glow visible while using your magic spirit vision to guide you. It's certainly not difficult to find your way around, but it's definitely tedious. The game itself isn't terribly difficult, either; there's no health bar, so you can't die but instead just get knocked back if you're hit during boss fights, and while the puzzles definitely get tougher as the game progresses, I was able to solve every puzzle I came across within ten minutes of discovery. The puzzles are fun and definitely the highlight of the game in my opinion, but traversal just isn't as fun as it looks. I do have to applaud the graphic options, though. As is often the case with PS5 games, you can choose between Performance and Graphics presets. If you choose Graphics, the game will run at 2160p and 30 frames per second. If you choose Performance, the game will use a variable frame rate between around 1440p and 2160p to keep a solid 60 frames per second. As I always do, I chose Performance, and while the game itself may have been so-so, the gorgeous art style mixed with the buttery smooth 60 FPS definitely made for a sublime looking experience. I honestly didn't notice a big difference visually between Performance and Graphics whereas the frame rate difference was extremely noticeable, so I highly suggest current gen players stick to Performance. The Pathless is a cute and competent but ultimately mediocre game. Don't misconstrue that to mean that it's not good; it's definitely an enjoyable experience. It's just not one that will sink its teeth into you and have you itching to get home from work and play. If you're looking for a chill game to spend a Saturday playing, this would be a good choice as it only took me between five and six hours to clear. I'd spend an hour or two per night playing after work and finished it in three days. As a game so short with no post-game content, I definitely wouldn't pay more than $15 for it, but if you can find it for that price or less, it's definitely worth a pick up. My Rating - CSilver Falls: Episode Prelude from Sungrand Studios is a bite-sized budget game that marks the Silver Falls series's first foray into HD graphics. For the most part, if you've played 3 Down Stars, you know what to expect as far as mechanics and controls because this is largely the same type of game but on Switch (and only a tenth as long). It's very much a prelude in that it's a first chapter, not a full contained story, but it's a great look at what the future of Silver Falls could be. You play as Rominic, a young man about to start college who works doing construction for Million Dollarbuck (Silver Falls has the absolute best character names) and also works part-time doing delivery for Chunky Chicken. As he's making a delivery to a house in the area just outside of Silver Falls, he has two things on his mind - Mr. Dollarbuck's downward spiral via text message and the mystery surrounding the house to which he's supposed to deliver chicken. He's delivered here numerous times before, but for some reason, the property seems totally abandoned. Spoopy. To unravel the mystery of Mr. Dollarbuck's melancholy and the empty property fully (or as fully as you can in a prelude), you'll need to invest around an hour to an hour and a half replying to Million's texts and exploring the property for clues...and a way to defend yourself. While the story mode is very short - you could clear it in less than half an hour easily if you know what you're doing and ignore Dollarbuck's texts, or you could spend nearly two hours exploring everything - it's captivating. It might because I'm already invested in the characters having played other games in the series, but I was totally sucked in to the story and the locales. It also ends on a cliffhanger fit for a 90s TV drama's cold open which is tantamount to torture considering that the game has been out for over a year and still hasn't received a sequel (Jerrel assures me that he does have one planned; he just hasn't made it yet since he was focusing on Wii U and 3DS at the end of their digital lifespans). The environments are DARK, and while that can make exploration a bit frustrating, it also does a lot to add to the suspense and the tension, so it's a worthwhile trade off in my opinion. Once you finish with the story, that doesn't mean that you've seen all the game has to offer; there's also battle mode. This offers a chance to fight waves of enemies with different characters, each of whom have their own traits, in different locations. It's not as fleshed out as Frontier Fighters in 3 Down Stars, but it definitely adds enough content to justify the price of admission. With how much better the game controls than 3 Down Stars with the dual analog sticks rather than unholy C nub on the 3DS, I honestly prefer playing battle mode in Episode Prelude over Frontier Fighters in 3 Down Stars despite how much less content there is. It's just fun. Silver Falls: Episode Prelude is a very short but pretty good story. Think of it like reading 1408 vs reading Salem's Lot; it's really short, and that can be a bummer to folks who are used to long novels, but it's supposed to be short, and what's there is thoroughly enjoyable. Some folks have complained that $8 is too steep a price for a game that short, and if it were just the story mode, I'd agree, but the battle mode adds enough gameplay to justify that price in my opinion. It's not a full featured 12 hour horror experience; it's a bite. A morsel. An appetizer. It hooks you with just enough to make you say, "Huh, that was cool. I'd love to see more Silver Falls on Switch." I think it does that quite well. I absolutely wish the game were longer, but I'm also one of those folks used to long novels. I eagerly await the next Silver Falls game on Switch that continues this story, and I definitely recommend you check out Episode Prelude in the meantime. My Rating - BAlso available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows Banner of the Maid is like a game tailor made for me. It's a strategy RPG like Fire Emblem, but it takes place in France during the French Revolution....but if the French army was full of waifus. It's literally the most perfect game imaginable short of having Nazis riding dinosaurs as the main enemy. You play as Pauline Bonaparte, Napoleon's sister, as she follows in her brother's footsteps as a French general. What's cool is that Pauline Bonaparte was actually a real person, but Napoleon's sister obviously didn't actually lead French troops into battle, and if she did, it certainly wouldn't have been in a skirt. Still, though, while it's most certainly not a historically accurate game, the fact that it's (technically) historical fiction is basically my favorite thing. I absolutely love it when a game's setting is based in history even if an ABSURD number of artistic liberties are taken. Gameplay is actually pretty much just like Fire Emblem for the most part. Instead of a weapon triangle, you have a unit quadrangle; line infantry beats heavy cavalry, heavy cavalry beats light cavalry, light cavalry beats light infantry, and light infantry beats line infantry. Why didn't call it light infantry vs heavy infantry instead of line infantry vs light infantry, I'll never understand, but it is what it is. The whole game is awkwardly machine translated from Mandarin to English, so frankly, that's the least weird thing about the text in the game. That's not to say that the translation is nonsensical, but there are a handful of lines in the game that definitely just don't flow right in English. The game has three difficulty settings. General mode is the hardest and offers a seriously brutal challenge. Officer mode is "normal" and is a good challenge but not unreasonable. Then you have Story mode, which is my beloved Bitch Mode. I played on Officer mode, but I love accessibility and not that not everyone has the patience for the trial and error of strategy RPGs, so I always love seeing low difficulty modes. There are a couple of free DLCs that add some side quests and a bonus character - a cool Asian pirate chick - but for the most part, the campaign is the whole game. It does, however, offer a New Game+ to give some replay value, and you'll end up with more units than you can use at once, so you can always do a playthrough using different characters if you want to experience the game again. The game differs from Fire Emblem in two key ways. First and foremost - and this is something that modern Fire Emblem does with Casual mode - your characters aren't gone forever if they die. If you lose a character in a mission, they'll retreat for the rest of that missions, but they're there ready to go in the next mission. Depending on your difficulty, you may suffer a penalty to your rewards at the end of the mission, but that's it. Second - and this is the biggest difference from Fire Emblem - is that weapon durability resets every mission. You'll find some special weapons that have attributes making them super strong in certain situations but that only have a durability of 4; you can only use it four times in a mission, but it goes back to a full 4 out of 4 once you finish the mission and start the next. Any Fire Emblem veteran can tell you stories of saving a strong weapon throughout the whole game in case you need like it's a magnum in Resident Evil. Banner of the Maid definitely isn't a perfect game with awkward machine translation and a couple of difficulty jumps, but it's a very good game. The story is good with some cool fantasy elements woven in with the historical setting, the characters are interesting and likable, and the gameplay is fun and addicting. The art is fantastic, too, and that's always a plus for games that are slower paced like an SRPG. All in all, it's a pretty standard entry for the genre, but the French Revolution setting definitely makes it stand out. If you like SRPGs, definitely give this one a play. My Rating - BI am a huge fan of the Silver Falls series. It's the flagship series of Sungrand Studios, a one-man indie developer based on Australia, and over the past year, I've become pretty good friends with Jerrel, the man behind the games. Last year, I reviewed Silver Falls: Ghoul Busters for 3DS shortly after it launched on the eShop, but I recently went back and played the first game in the series to be released, 2020's Silver Falls: 3 Down Stars, now that it has its v1.69 update that fixed a ton of performance issues and dramatically improved the game's visual fidelity. Some of my feelings on the game are a bit mixed, but overall, I had a fantastic time with this game. All screenshots are courtesy of Sungrand Studios, and the screenshots are from before the v1.69 update, so the game looks better now than these screenshots suggest. If Sungrand provides updated screenshots (since I have no ability to capture screenshots from my 3DS), I'll update the review. The game focuses around three playable characters - Holt, a college student returning to his hometown for a fishing trip; Analise, a young Silver Falls resident taking care of her ailing father; and Moss, the sheriff of the town. I've played other games in the series, so Moss was already my favorite character of the three going into this, and the game didn't change that, but I really did come to love Holt as a character. That's the game's biggest strength in my opinion - the characters. The story is cool and has a Resident Evil meets Silent Hill meets Twilight Zone vibe, but it's the characters that really drive the game, and a lot of that is with non-playable characters you meet along the way and slowly get to know as story scenes unfold. The game is your standard third person horror suspense game, so it plays a lot like Resident Evil 4. You can equip a projectile weapon as your primary weapon, a melee weapon as your sub weapon, and another melee weapon as your emergency weapon. The difference is that sub weapons are used at-will and as much as you want whereas emergency weapons are only used by button prompt if you're pinned by an enemy and do enormous damage but break upon use. You'll want to keep one of each equipped with your stronger weapon as your sub weapon. The combat feels very reminiscent of Resident Evil 2 except that the New 3DS's C nub completely undermines it. That nub is utterly useless and the single worst design choice Nintendo ever made (and that includes the unreliable Joycons in the early days of the Switch). It makes gunplay a chore instead of fun. Fortunately, there are tutorials on melee combat in the Extras menu that can teach you be proficient enough with melee that guns are really only needed for the bosses, but still, it's a shame that the 3DS's design ruined part of an otherwise fantastic game. What most other reviews really hammer this game for have largely been fixed by various patches, but I do need to address those complaints because they're not totally gone. The visuals are criticized a lot in reviews I've read, and I can't speak for the game at launch, but as it is now, I don't think that's a particularly valid criticism. The game was made by one guy and is, especially for an indie game, a pretty big 3D world. For what it is and the hardware it's on, I think the game looks pretty good. The characters have a distinct style that is immediately recognizable as Silver Falls and that not everyone may like, but the game's visual fidelity is fine for a 3DS game. The performance, however, does hurt the game. Performance and stability have been dramatically improved with updates, but depending on where you are, the game will run between roughly 20 and 30 frames per second. This can be jarring and was, admittedly, something that took some time for me to get used to. The game also crashes a lot. The auto saves VERY frequently and keeps your most recent manual save and your most recent auto save separately selectable, so it's only an inconvenience rather than a game breaker, but it is worth noting that it's pretty frequent. It took me just under 20 hours to finish the story, and I probably had between 10 and 15 crashes. Unfortunately, that's just not really something that can be totally fixed; despite the New 3DS technically supporting Unity, it is apparently really unstable on 3DS and just will not ever produce a totally stable build in a game as big and complex as 3 Down Stars. Still, though, even with all the crashes, I never once had my fun broken. If you finish the main story and want more, there's a Frontier Fighters mode that has a total of 100 combat missions of varying difficulty for you to complete. Jerrel has put a lot of effort into maximizing play value in this mode, and it offers an enormous amount of options to power up weapons and characters so that you can customize your playstyle however you like. I haven't messed around a whole lot with this since I didn't really care for the combat thanks to the camera control, but there's definitely a lot of content here if that's your thing. Silver Falls: 3 Down Stars was the first game in the Silver Falls series, and you can definitely tell playing it and then playing the series's newer entries that Jerrel has learned a lot since he made 3 Down Stars. Still, though, the world and characters that he creates in 3 Down Stars is really great, and I loved every minute of the game. The puzzles that you have to solve to progress feel very Resident Evil, the game's overall vibe feels very Silent Hill, and the story feels very Twilight Zone. If that doesn't convince you to at least give the game a shot, then I don't know what will. It's a little pricier than most 3DS eShop games at $25, but with a thoroughly enjoyable 15-20 hour story mode and all the content in Frontier Fighters, it's definitely a fair asking price in my opinion. I've bought countless games made by a hell of a lot more than one person with way less content that cost me way more than this game. A full Switch remaster is in the works, but that's probably a year or so away, and while it will likely look, perform, and control better on Switch, it won't have that 3DS charm. I strongly recommend picking this one up on the eShop before it closes in March. My Rating - AAlso available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows Irreverent humor is my favorite type of humor. It got me nearly four solid months in Facebook jail, but damn if it's not funny. As the name suggests, BDSM: Big Drunk Satanic Massacre is exactly that type of humor. The basic premise is that Lucifer (who now goes by Lou) got overthrown as ruler of Hell when McDonald's (or the copyright-safe version of it) found a portal to hell in a toilet and expanded into Hell, quickly taking over entirely. Lucifer then becomes an alcoholic in a dive bar until he develops a murderous grudge against knock-off McDonald's and goes on a killing spree through Hell. BDSM is neither a particularly long nor a particularly complex game. It's a twin stick shooter that has you navigate through various levels as you make your way through Hell and to the McDonald's headquarters. You start with just a revolver, but as you progress through the game, you'll unlock other weapons like a shotgun, an AK-47, a giant penis-shaped laser, etc. You also get a solid for a one-time-use magic ability pick-up like a shield or minion summoning. I wouldn't say that it's a particularly strategic game, but you definitely have options on how to tackle any given challenge, and the bosses - especially the final boss (and the secret boss) - do occasionally need to be addressed smartly. Visually, I was actually fairly impressed with the game. It's definitely not a big budget game, but for an indie twin stick shooter, the environments were really interestingly designed. The humor, as well, was just fantastic. You'll come across various succubus women (plus a Nazi pony and "Not-Hitler") that you can trigger a lewd mini-game with, and that was just the icing on the cake for me as far as humor goes. I'll never understand why a fandom for a show totally built on "love and tolerance" like My Little Pony is SO infested with Nazis, but there's a TON of them, and this game pokes fun at that. BDSM: Big Drunk Satanic Massacre is a relatively simple game, but it's a great way to spend a few hours if you're not easily offended by irreverent humor. I wouldn't pay more than $10 for it, and I'm not sure what the regular price is, but if you can find it for $10 or less on your platform of choice, I would absolutely recommend picking it up and giving it a play. My Rating - CPokemon has had a bit of a troubled go lately as far as game quality has been concerned. Sun and Moon, which I felt were objectively the best of the series, failed to really “do it” for a lot of long-time fans, myself included. Let’s Go was an absolute treat as a laid back Pokemon adventure, but most fans hated how easy it was. Sword and Shield was absolutely perfect for online players, but it was a dumpster fire for single-player content. Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl were great remakes, but they were technical disasters at launch without a HUGE patch and made the controversial decision to go back to a 2.5D perspective. Legends Arceus was an absolute masterpiece, and there will be no mercy for its detractors when the revolution comes (although the lack of breeding and online battle was a point of contention for some). Then comes Scarlet and Violet. Will these games redeem Game Freak as a developer and finally satisfy Pokemon’s notoriously bitchy adult fanbase? Lmao of course not, but I think they’re great. So let’s address the elephant in the room first - the game is, to put it nicely, a technical clusterfuck. While the character and Pokemon models look great, the environments look terrible, the textures are genuinely god-awful, and the frame rate makes Doom on SNES look smooth and stable. To be fair, a patch that came out a couple of weeks after launch dramatically improved the frame rate, but it’s still pretty bad. I’d say it’s overall on par with being in the middle of Sword’s and Shield’s Wild Area with wifi on. Except it’s the entire game, and that’s your best-case scenario. There is one particular part of the game - a windmill - that, when viewed from a distance, literally moves at two frames per second. Most of the game targets 30 FPS. It rarely hits that. Get about three feet away from an NPC, and that frame rate is halved. Get about three or four feet farther away, and it’s halved again. It’s so bad that you’ve got NPCs running at like 15 FPS in cutscenes. I’d understand it if this were a visual showcase game like Breath of the Wild, Bayonetta 3, or Xenoblade Chronicles 3, but it looks nowhere near as good as any of those games, and it runs significantly worse. Now that I’ve addressed the unforgivable technical disaster that fanboys will never stop talking about, let me tell you why this might be the best game in the whole series. First off, your rival. Nemona is bae. She’s a perfect yandere goddess, and I love her. She manages to do what Hop, Wally, and Hau all tried and miserably failed to do - be a friendly rival that deserves to live. Every friendly rival before has been a terrible character flatter with less development than Port-au-Prince. Nemona is different. She seems flat at first, but as you progress through the game and get towards the end of her quest line (yes, there’s more than just “be the champion”), they actually flesh her out a decent bit and make her a relatable and sympathetic character. Then you’ve got the professor. Cryptic, interesting, and kind of a dick, the professor (there’s a different professor depending on your version) is hands down the most interesting to date. No matter whether you pick Professor Daddy or Professor MILF, this one has some genuine major plot significance. And let’s not forget the story in general - it’s the best Pokemon has ever had. Legends Arceus had a pretty interesting premise, but Scarlet and Violet manage to take a mundane and troped-to-death premise and turn it into a FANTASTIC adventure and story. You’ve got three main quest lines to finish before you unlock the final end-game quest. There’s the obvious quest to beat all eight gyms and then take on the Elite Four and Top Champion to become a Champion-rank trainer. You’ve also got the Starfall quest line where you go around and attack five different Team Star bases, and despite how it sounds, this isn’t just a rehash of gyms. Lastly, you’ve got the Titan quest where you take on five massively powerful Titan Pokemon to steal their weed. I mean Herba Mystica. If you can count, you’ve probably figured that there are eighteen main objectives (plus the Pokmeon League). If you’ve played Pokemon, then you probably also know that there are eighteen Pokemon types. Each objective has a type represented, so no longer is it pick-and-choose which types get represented in the gyms; every type gets some love here (and four types give double love thanks to the Elite Four). When you do all of that, then and only then can you enter Area Zero, the mysterious forbidden zone in the very center of Paldea. Here you’ll find powerful and rare Pokemon as well as the game’s final quest. Beating the Elite Four doesn’t get you to the post-game here; it just gets you to the endgame, and it’s this endgame that really sets Scarlet and Violet apart. While I’m sure everyone knows the big plot twist by now considering that the games have been out for a month, I’m not going to say anything about it because if you have - somehow - avoided spoilers and still haven’t played it, it’s worth discovering for yourself. While this may have been the worst-made Pokemon game to date, it’s definitely the best-designed Pokemon game to date. Game Freak proves here that, while they’re bad at making games, they’re absolutely fantastic at brainstorming them. The new Pokemon are almost universally awesome, some old favorites get fantastic new evolutions, and while there’s not a whole lot in the way of new forms, you do get some cool entirely new species that are based on convergent evolution; they look like they’re regional forms of old Pokemon but are actually completely unrelated. I, personally, would rather have just had regional forms, but I can’t deny that it’s a cool concept for new Pokemon. If you can look past the technical flaws and appreciate the game for what it DID do well, this is definitely a game with something every Pokemon fan can enjoy. My Rating - BAlso available on PlayStation Portable, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, and Windows Trails from Zero is the fourth game in the “series,” although defining what is and isn’t part of the series is a bit easier said than done since it’s like a sub-series of a sub-series of a late 80s series. The series we’re concerned with here is the Trails series (or Kiseki if you want to be a pedantic weeb), and that’s what this is #4 in. Despite that, it’s the 8th game in that series to be released officially in English. Life is hard for Trails fans. So the Trails series is currently broken into three arcs with a fourth on the way. The first three games are the Liberl arc, the three Trails in the Sky games. The sixth through ninth games - and the ones I’m willing to bet were, like mine, most English-speaking players’ first experience with the series - are the Erebonia arc, the four Trails of Cold Steel games. Games four and five are the Crossbell arc, Trails from Zero and the upcoming localization of Trails of Azure. So this is the fourth game in the series, the eighth game officially localized for the West, and the start of the second arc. Again, life is hard for Trails fans. Despite releasing on Playstation 4 and Switch, this isn’t a 3D game with mind-blowing grayfex. This is a pretty humble-looking 2D game because it’s not new at all; it’s a remastered port of a PSP game from 2010. It is, however, new to the West. Coming on the heels of Trails of Cold Steel IV, a fully 3D JRPG, it’s understandable that some folks would be a bit taken aback by the 2D sprites in Trails from Zero, but don’t let that dissuade you; there’s an amazing game to be found here. It is not, however, the game I would suggest newcomers to the series play as their first introduction to Trails. Cold Steel 1 is a good starting point, but you really ought to start with the first Trails in the Sky (sadly only available on PSP and PC in English). Picking up a few months after the events of the Trails in the Sky trilogy, Trails from Zero focuses on Lloyd Bannings, a rookie detective with the Crossbell Police Department, as he tries to make a difference in his hometown and slowly pull back the cover on the corruption festering in the city’s shadows. One thing to note about this game - and one of the reasons I say that this is a game for established Trails fans and not newcomers - is that it’s a very slow burn. You’ll be over halfway through the game before the drama really picks up. That’s not entirely unheard of in the Trails series, but while Trails in the Sky and Trails of Cold Steel both had slow build-ups, neither felt nearly as prolonged as Trails from Zero. That’s not to say that the build-up is pointless or bad, but be prepared to play 20 hours before it goes from an interesting police slice of life to claws-in-your-flesh drama that leaves you NEEDING to know what happens next. That said, I do think this is the weakest of the three arcs. This is, admittedly, only the first half of it, and the game ends in typical Trails fashion - a HUGE cliffhanger that has you chomping at the bit to play the next installment. The characters, though, just aren’t as interesting to me as Skies or Cold Steel. That’s very much a personal taste issue, and I know folks who say that Zero has their favorite Trails characters, so take that particular statement with a grain of salt, but I didn’t find Lloyd to be nearly as interesting a protagonist as Estelle or Rean, and I didn’t find Crossbell to be nearly as interesting a setting as Liberl or Erebonia. Despite that, though, if you’ve played either of those arcs, you’ll definitely want to play this one no matter what. For most of us in the West, we probably got a brief and somewhat confusing introduction to these characters towards the end of the Cold Steel arcs with their Crossbell cameos (which is why I suggest people play the Liberl and Crossbell arcs before starting the Erebonia arc), and that taste of Lloyd, Rixia, and KeA definitely made me excited to play this game and get to know those characters in earnest. Trails of Zero is a tough recommendation for me. For the record, I absolutely do recommend it, but that recommendation has a big asterisk next to it - play Trails in the Sky first. It’s totally playable without knowing anything about Trails in the Sky. Still, the context definitely makes the story more interesting and easier to understand, and I feel like it will be harder for players to stick with the admittedly very lengthy build-up the story has if they have some established interest in and knowledge of the world and universe. If you have that, though, while I found it the second weakest of the eight Trails games I’ve played (after Trails in the Sky 3rd), it was definitely a game well worth experiencing, and I’m super excited for Trails of Azure to come out in English next year. My Rating - BLike BOXBOXBOY!, BYE-BYE BOXBOY! is extremely similar to BOXBOY! and, at least initially, is pretty much yet more of the same. It even removes the two-sets-of-boxes mechanic that the second game added. That said, once you get about a quarter of the way through the game, you start to see some of the new mechanics HAL added for this game, and they make the first two games look like a warm-up. In the early stages of BYE-BYE BOXBOY, the game plays virtually exactly like the first game. You have one set of boxes with the size of each set varying from level to level. Progression is pretty much the same, and the puzzles are pretty simple. After a while, however, you start to go to different "planets," and the last world in each planet gives you a new mechanic - a special kind of box. The new mechanics are rocket boxes, bomb boxes, teleportation boxes, and remote control boxes. Each of these controls very uniquely and can take some getting used to, but they totally change the way levels play out and puzzles are presented. These mechanics make this hands down the best of the 3DS trilogy in my opinion. After the world in which they're introduced, these mechanics are not used again in the main game, and in my opinion, that's a good thing because it keeps them from feeling stale or overused. As with the second game, costumes you unlocked in the first two games are brought over into this game so long as you have the save file with them unlocked on your 3DS. In addition to this, HAL included some Kirby costumes that are unlocked by using the correct amiibo - Kirby, Waddle Dee, Meta Knight, and DeeDeeDee. You can also unlock a Qucy costume and some color filters with the Japan-exclusive Quby amiibo, but that costume and the filters are also unlockable by having the previous games' save data on your 3DS. As far as I could tell, none of the costumes have special abilities here like a few did in the second game, but that honestly isn't a problem for me as it means I could try out a bunch of different costumes without feeling like I was missing out on fun game breaking. BYE-BYE BOXBOY! is a great way to end the series's 3DS run, and I think it's definitely the best of the three games. The puzzles are immensely satisfying to complete, often more so than in the previous two games, and the bits of color added here or there really pop against the otherwise monochromatic game. I sincerely hope that these games are released as a physical collection on Switch or even as individual downloads because they're genuinely fun and relaxing, and they're about to become totally unobtainable once the 3DS eShop shuts down in a few months. Definitely make sure you download this game while you've got the chance. My Rating - ABOXBOXBOY! is the sequel to BOXBOY! and the second of the three games in the series released on 3DS. It is, for the most part, more of the same, but with a key mechanic addition that sets it apart from its predecessor. It also has some bonuses if you played the first game and have a save file on your 3DS, and I personally love it when game series include save data bonuses for having played the previous games. The major addition to BOXBOXBOY! is the ability to have to sets of boxes active at once. In the previous game, you could only have one set active, and if you tried to place more boxes, the previous set instantly vanished. Instead of being able to assemble a series of three boxes, for example, your limit is two sets of three boxes. This sounds really minor, but in practice, it drastically changes the puzzles with which you can be challenged and opens up new avenues for solving puzzles. As with the first game, the first few worlds are extremely easy, and even the first couple levels of a world where a new mechanic is introduced are easy, but by the end of the game, the challenge gets pretty legit. Having just played the original game, I had a feel for the game's physics and how HAL crafted the puzzles, so I didn't struggle with the last few worlds of this game the way I did with a few of the stages in the first game, but there were still numerous puzzles that I had to stop, look at for a minute, and work out in my head with some trial and error before progressing. My favorite aspect of the game isn't actually the addition of a second set of boxes but rather the bonuses from having played BOXBOY! It's relatively minor stuff, but if you bought the costumes from the shop in the first game, they'll be available to you in this game. What's cooler is that some of the costumes have some extra function to give you a boost in the game, the two best being the bunny costume that lets you jump two boxes high instead of one and the wizard which adds a box to your limit per set. It might sound a little a broken, and most of the time, it is, but there were a few occasions where I had to quit a level and change costumes because I had been using the bunny costume and level required that I make a precision jump under a laser or spike or something, and I physically wasn't able to make a jump that low. Nine times out of ten, whatever outfit you use won't be a hinderance, but I did like that those occasional elements discouraged using the OP costumes all the time. BOXBOXBOY! is definitely a step up from the first game. The game is still mostly monochromatic, the puzzles are still pretty simple overall, and the game is still short, but having two sets of boxes at your disposal makes for some more interesting puzzles than I saw in the first game, and even if it were literally just more of the same from the first game, that's more a fun, relaxing thing. The stages are the perfect length to play while killing time on a bus or subway or to unwind during a lunch break or bathroom break. Definitely check this out before the 3DS eShop closes. My Rating - BBOYBOY! is a cute puzzle game from HAL Laboratory with a super simple monochromatic style. As the title suggests, you play as a box. A boy box, specifically, named Qbby. The puzzles start out stupid easy, but as the game progresses, you'll have to think harder and harder about how to get past each challenge. Once you get to the post-game, it's downright tough. As you traverse the game's 17 worlds (22 including the post-game challenge worlds), each containing between five and seven stages, you'll have to master a variety of skills from arranging your boxes to timing your box placements to move past spike conveyor belts. You have to figure out how to cross gaps, ascend to higher ledges, depress multiple buttons at once, avoid lasers, etc. These challenges can take some thought and trial and error, but fortunately, you have infinite lives; checkpoints are frequently, and you respawn at a checkpoint as soon as you die. While it can get frustrating towards the end of the game, it's a great game to work your brain as it forces you think about how to tackle obstacles from different perspectives. BOXBOY! isn't terribly long, and there's not a huge amount of variety in the game, but it's definitely worth playing. It's only available on 3DS, though, and only digitally (at least in North America; there's a physical collection with the three 3DS games in Japan), so you'd better hurry up and download it before March, 2023 if you're interested in it. It's not going to blow your mind, but it's a solid puzzle game and well worth the six or seven hours you're likely to spend with it. My Rating - BAlso available on PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Switch, and Windows Outbreak is a retro-style horror game from indie developer Drop Dead Studios. It is heavily inspired by Resident Evil, and while it is a little bit on the nose with that sometimes, it does enough different to keep it from being written off as a copy. Outbreak bills itself as a co-op retro-style survival horror game. It has a top-down perspective that feels similar to Robotron, but it adopts tank controls similar to Resident Evil. It does have three variations on these tank controls to suit your desires, but given that every system's controllers have two analog sticks, the use of tank controls rather than dual stick controls just feels awkward and wholly unwelcome. That said, the controls do work just fine and don't take long to get used to even if they are far from ideal. I do have to give them credit for supporting not just co-op but local co-op, a feature disturbingly absent from many modern games and one that I always love seeing included. The story is told over the course of four or five levels by finding journals and notes spread throughout the world. The game's levels take you through a hospital and its underground facilities as you try to make your escape following an outbreak of a zombie infection of some kind. Pretty generic totally-just-Resident-Evil-2 stuff except replace the police station with a hospital. Still, though, while it does nothing to reinvent the wheel, it does what it does pretty well. One major grip I have, though, is that the "full" story is locked behind difficulty. There are three difficulties - Normal, Hard, and Nightmare - and to get the full story, you have to play on the hardest difficulty. As the patron saint of Bitch Mode, I call shenanigans on this entire premise. Your inventory is also woefully small - you can only hold a maximum of four items - but that's pretty standard for survival horror, I guess. The game is pretty short - probably around four hours for a full playthrough - but the fact that there's co-op makes it worth playing through more than once with friends. There are also some short self-contained story levels as well as endless horde levels to give the game some extra replay value. I, personally, didn't enjoy the combat enough to care about playing those horde levels solo, but I could see how it could be fun if you have a friend to play with. Outbreak is a competent indie horror game, but it's definitely not going to fool you into thinking it's made by a big studio or with a big budget. It wears its limitations on its sleeve. Still, though, for what it is, it's an enjoyable zombie romp. I'm not sure I'd use the term "horror" as I didn't find it scary at all, but horror is also my favorite genre, so it takes a bit to scare me; folks who don't play a lot of horror games might disagree with me on that one. If you find it on sale for, say, $8 or less, I'd say it's worth it. At the usual price of $10-$12, depending on your platform, though, it's a harder sell unless you're big into couch co-op. Wait for a sale, but if you're into couch co-op, this is a solid choice for the season of spoop. I will say, though, the couch co-op is what cemented my rating at 3/5; I was really torn between placing it at a high 2 or a low 3 without the local co-op element. My Rating - CAlso available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Linux, and Windows Amnesia: Rebirth is both a sequel and a reboot of sorts of the series. It's a sequel in that it directly follows The Dark Descent and A Machine for Pigs chronologically, and it directly references some of the characters and events mentioned in The Dark Descent; but it's also a reboot in that it requires no knowledge of the previous games to enjoy and understand, and looks and plays significantly more like a modern game. That makes sense considering it was released in 2020 whereas The Dark Descent was released in 2010. It takes place a few decades after A Machine for Pigs and follows Tasi as she wakes up alone and confused in the Algerian desert following a plane crash. As she searches for her companions, she finds evidence of their having passed through but seems always to be a step behind them. As you make your way through the game, you'll uncover some of Tasi's memories as well as notes and journal entries left behind, both of which serve to uncover the truth of the game's story. Pay attention to these, too, as the characters and their development via these memories are a major part of what gives the game its dramatic impact. Each of the Amnesia games seem to have a different focus. With The Dark Descent, the focus was very much on mood, ambiance, and an atmosphere of horror. With Justine, it was on moral choice. With A Machine for Pigs, it was on the overall narrative and the message of that narrative. With Rebirth, it seems to be on characters, although there's sort of a blend of the others, as well. Some parts of the game don't feel like a horror game at all, like wandering through the desert, but other parts feel just as scary as The Dark Descent if not more so. Like Justine, what determines your ending is a key moral choice in the game. Like A Machine for Pigs, the story - in this case, the characters specifically - are given supreme importance. As far as storytelling goes, I think Rebirth is hands down the best of the four. As far as horror goes, it still falls short of The Dark Descent, but it's a solid #2. Amnesia: Rebirth is a solid follow-up to The Dark Descent and A Machine for Pigs, and it's definitely worth playing for fans of the series. I, personally, don't care for the desert setting for the most part, but some of the interior environments you explore - a French fort, for example - are EXCELLENT and supremely creepy. Enemies play a much larger role in the horror than they did in A Machine for Pigs, and I honestly think the use of enemies to enhance the horror experience is executed better in Rebirth than it was in The Dark Descent. Overall, the Dark Descent is a scarier game, but Rebirth is still a fantastic experience, and given that it's a decade newer, it looks and sounds significantly better, and those are both improvements and enhance the player's fear. The price point is fair considering that it's the longest game in the series, at least based on my playtime, and it's on Game Pass as of the time of writing, so definitely check it out there if you've got a horror itch that needs scratching. My Rating - AAlso available on PlayStation 4, Switch, Linux, OSX, and Windows Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is the direct sequel to Amnesia: The Dark Descent and takes place a few decades after. The tone and focus of this game are a bit different than the first one, and while I personally think that's to the game's detriment, by no means does that mean that this is a bad game or a bad sequel. Rather than focusing on the supernatural as the first game did, Machine for Pigs focuses more on man-made horrors, and while it makes a very salient point, I'm personally more partial to supernatural horror (same reason that slasher flicks aren't as enjoyable for me as a good demonic possession film). The game takes place in London, and as the title hints, is focused around a massive and complex machine in a meat packing facility. I won't say more than that so as not to spoil the story - a story which is actually really interesting as you progress through the game and unravel its mysteries - but that machine is the root of the horror here. Machine for Pigs is much more focused on making a point than Dark Descent was, and as a result, the emphasis is put on revealing its horrors to you more than making you hide from them. There is no sanity meter to degrade from looking at enemies, so feel free to gaze at the game's monstrosities to your heart's content. There are also significantly fewer enemies than in Dark Descent. You'll still have to run and hide from some, but it's much common in Machine for Pigs. There's also no static health status here, either, so if you're injured, just hide for a few à la Call of Duty. That all makes it sound like the game isn't particularly scary, but that's definitely not true. The setting and atmosphere of the game is still extremely disconcerting, and while the enemy encounters are much less frequent than in Dark Descent, there's no indication when an enemy might appear, so you're pretty much always on guard. It seems like as soon as I got into the swing of things with puzzle solving, it would turn out to be a false sense of security soon the be shattered by the discovery of an enemy. Still, though, exploration and puzzle-solving are the name of the game here more than enemy and darkness avoidance. You have a lantern that doesn't run out of fuel, and there are no finite tinderboxes to light candles; if you see a lamp, simply turn it on. That, admittedly, does detract a bit from the horror, but again, the focus this time seems much more on unraveling the mystery of the story than on sprinting from light source to light source. To be clear at the start of this conclusion, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is a good horror game and absolutely worth playing. That said, it falls short of the original. Its story-telling and enemy AI are rock solid, but there just isn't enough danger to the player or fear-inducing environments to provide the degree of horror that the first game did. Fans of the original game will likely be disappointed with this one but not to the extent that they should skip it. As I said, it's a good game, and I thoroughly enjoyed unraveling the story and the message the game is trying to convey. It's definitely worth a play; just don't expect it to be more of the same. It's definitely its own beast that doesn't allow itself to be confined by the structure or design of the original game. It may not be "as good" as the original, but by no means does that make it "not good." My Rating - BAlso available on PlayStation 4, Switch, Linux, OSX, and Windows Amnesia: Justine was originally a self-contained story DLC for Amnesia: The Dark Descent now included in Amnesia Collection. It's a very short game - only an hour or two long depending on how quickly you figure out the puzzles - but it provides a fairly unique experience compared to the first game. Like The Dark Descent, you find yourself waking in a room with no memory. In the room is a phonograph with a recording of a woman named Justine who says that you're about to undergo a test of character. As you progress through the dungeon in which you find yourself, you encounter enemies similar to those in The Dark Descent, and like The Dark Descent, you're utterly powerless to do anything except hide. As you make your way through, you'll encounter three prisoners whose fates are tied to the puzzles you must solve. There are easy ways through the chambers of this dungeon, but those easy methods result in the prisoners' deaths; if you want to save everyone, you'll have to solve these puzzles the hard way. The aspect of character choice is what makes Justine stand out to me; I love games that have either a morality system or at least definite moral choices. Do I escape easily at the cost of a man's life, or do I put in extra effort and save him? Do I risk bloody dismemberment to save a man, or do I ensure my own safety by leaving him to die a horrible death? These sorts of choices make a game shine for me because it gives me some agency and makes me feel invested; even if they're just game characters, these men's lives are in my hands. Justine is extremely short and can easily be completed in a single sitting, but don't let that dissuade you; Amnesia Collection is already quite affordable, and its story is self-contained, so you don't need to play The Dark Descent first if you don't want to. It's a great little bite-sized horror game if you need a little spoop in your evening. My Rating - AAlso available on PlayStation 4, Switch, Android, Linux, OSX, and Windows Horror is my favorite genre of both movie and video game, and every October, I play at least a couple of horror games in the week or two leading up to Halloween as it's also my favorite holiday. I love to be scared, and when a horror game is done well and played in the dark, it can definitely get a good scare out of me. The games that rely purely on jump scares like Five Disappointments at Freddy's are trash, but good atmospheric horror is peak gaming in my opinion. Amnesia: The Dark Descent absolutely falls into that category. There are a few jump scares here and there, but they're not what the game relies on to scare the player. Amnesia is a fairly old game, so don't go into it expecting Resident Evil 8 quality visuals. That said, it looks extremely good on Xbox and even on Switch. It's the first game in a series of four so far, and at the time of its release, I remember hearing that it was a relatively novel type of horror game by relying almost entirely on atmosphere and lighting to build the player's fear rather than hordes of monsters and jump scares. I tried it back in the day on PC, but I got frustrated and gave up with the water monsters (if you know, you know). I wanted to give it an honest second try, though, and seeing the collection of the first three games on sale for $3 on Switch and included on Game Pass, I did the sensible thing - bought it on Switch to sit on my SD card and then proceeded to play it on Game Pass. You play as Daniel, a British man who's lost all memory except for his name and where he's from. All he has to clue him in as to the situation is a letter from himself before his lost memory, and all it says is basically "Shit's messed up, so find this dude named Alexander and gank him." Well, that's not helpful, but clearly this Alexander fellow is nefarious, so let's get our bearings and remove him. As you make your way through the mansion in which you awaken, you notice a lot of supernatural events - doors moving, disembodied voices, wind out of nowhere blowing out candles, and some weird red pulsating...tissue...of some sort covering walls and floors. That's where the horror begins as the strange goings-on continue and increase in both frequency and severity while you're left in the dark with no idea who or what is causing it. As you progress through the game and solve puzzles, you'll find diary entries from Daniel that fill in his backstory and how he found himself in this supernatural tribulation. Eventually, you do discover that you're not alone; the manor is also haunted by disfigured horrors that skulk around and will kill you on sight. You have no way to fight them, though; the game is an exercise in avoidance and evasion. That's another aspect of the horror - a foe out to kill you but against which you're powerless to fight back. Amnesia: The Dark Descent does seem to have start a surge in the "can't fight back" sub-genre of horror games that builds tension and fear from the feeling of complete helplessness rather than enemies that are just hard to kill. Writing that out, it sounds like a difference without a distinction, but playing these games, the difference is very real, and Amnesia is significantly scarier to me than, say, Resident Evil because of it. Because Amnesia walked, games like Outlast and the tragically aborted PT could run...straight into a broom closet to hide from hideous horrors. Given its relatively low price point and its widespread availability, Amnesia: The Dark Descent is definitely a game that all horror fans need to experience. My Rating - SXenoblade Chronicles 3 is the fourth chapter of the "Xenoblade Chronicles" sub-set of the Xeno series (which includes the completely unrelated Xenogears and the three Xenosaga games), and it's the end of the Xenoblade trilogy since Xenoblade Chronicles X isn't related at all despite sharing the title. Up until this game, Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 weren't related to one another, either, but this game bridges the two and ties them together into a (mostly) cohesive trilogy. I wasn't sure exactly how this would connect XC1 and XC2, and the fact that I haven't played either of those games since their launch years didn't help that. You notice pretty much right off the bat, though, that one of the two factions in the game - Keves - has races seen in Xenoblade Chronicles whereas the other faction - Agnus - has races seen in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Still, though, that doesn't necessarily mean they're connected; Final Fantasy games have a lot of references to one another (Cid, anyone?) without being directly related via narrative. Throughout the game, though, there are numerous other relatively minor nods to the other two games. I won't spoil it, but in the latter half of the game, the whole picture starts to take shape, and the curtain is slowly lifted on the overarching narrative and exactly how Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 tie together in Xenoblade Chronicles 3. If you haven't played the other two games recently (or just have a terrible memory like me), you may be grasping at straws to remember all of the details being referenced, but even then, there are some parts that you'll definitely recognize unless you straight up have Alzheimer's. XC3 makes a lot of improvements over the previous two games and continues some of the quality of life improvements that XC2 started. The music here is the best of the series yet (although I have a soft spot for the bizarre soundtrack in XCX), and the characters are right up there with XC2's character. Rex annoyed me a bit in 2, but Noah is a significantly better protagonist, and the supporting characters in 3 are every bit as fantastic as they were in 2. Especially Mio. Gotta love a girl with cat ears. The quests, while still a bit monotonous after a while, are a massive improvement over the previous two games. They're significantly easier to track and not nearly as tedious as in the first game. The strongest point of XC3 in my opinion, however, is the cast of supporting characters. They are all compelling with interesting backstories and are fully voice acted. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is definitely one of the best JRPGs on the Switch if not the best. It has pretty much everything you want in a JRPG - interesting characters, a fun world to explore, epic monsters to fight, and MORE than enough content to get your money's worth. My biggest complaint is that it's a little *too* massive in my opinion. I also think - and this goes for all series, not just Xenoblade - that they need a recap at the beginning of the of the series so far so I'm not depending on either having replayed the series recently or having a significantly better memory than I do. Either way, though, the game is absolutely phenomenal. It looks astounding for the Switch, and aside from a few performance hiccups, it runs extremely well, too, although the loading times are a bit excessive at times. If you have a Switch, this game deserves as spot on your shelf (or your SD card). My Rating - AAlso available on 3DS After the enormous success of Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow (plus Green in Japan), GameFreak got to work on the sequel games. In comes the Gen 2 games, Gold and Silver, that have you explore through Johto, conquer the Pokemon League, and then explore through Kanto. As was tradition until Gen 8, they then released an enhanced version of Gold and Silver - Pokemon Crystal. The Gen 2 games have you play as a kid in New Bark Town starting off on his (or her, if you’re playing Crystal since it introduced the first playable female protagonist) Pokemon journey in Johto. There’s a sketchy dude creeping outside Professor Elm’s lab who ends up being your rival (and a wanted criminal), but like Gen 1, the focus is on your adventure more than the overarching plot. You journey through Johto, catching legendary Pokemon and collecting the eight gym badges, and eventually challenging the Elite Four and becoming champion, just like in Gen 1. The big difference here is that you can then travel to Kanto and collect eight MORE badges. With all 16 badges, you can explore Mt. Silver and eventually battle Red, the protagonist from Gen 1. This is, hands down, one of the hardest NPC battles of the Pokemon franchise with Pokemon levels that top level 80. Crystal Version is, without a doubt, the definitive Gen 2 experience. As one would expect, there are some Pokemon from the Johto dex that can’t be obtained in Crystal, so you’ll need to trade with Gold and Silver if you want to catch ‘em all, and there are a handful of Kanto Pokemon that require trades with Red, Blue, or Yellow. The biggest change to Crystal from Gold and Silver is some story details; Suicune, as the cover legendary, plays a bigger role in the story than it did in Gold and Silver, and there’s a new character, Eusine, who shows up with a connection to Suicune. There’s also an opportunity to get a special Dratini that knows ExtremeSpeed, a move that Dragonite cannot normally learn. There’s also a new Unown sub-story with extra lore. By and large, it’s Gold and Silver but more refined, but there are some of those story additions that make it the definitive version for lore fans, as well. Most people consider the Gen 2 games to be the best generation of Pokemon, and I can understand why. You’ve got the nostalgia playing in for Millennials, but you’ve also got some genuinely good Pokemon designs. Ho-oh is one of my favorite legendaries, and the games also added the Dark and Steel types as well as the breeding and friendship mechanics (outside of friendship’s limited test run with Pikachu in Yellow Version). It’s the only generation where you get to explore two whole regions, and the battle with Red on Mt. Silver is an amazing conclusion to your journey. Crystal, especially, is a great game if you’re playing the 3DS Virtual Console version because it includes the Celebi event. Who doesn’t want to spend 30 hours soft resetting for a pink onion especially since you can transfer it up to modern games? It’s still got some QoL issues that got addressed in later games, but for 2001 on the Game Boy Color, this is as good a Pokemon game as GameFreak could possibly have made. My Rating - SAlso available on 3DS At the center of the late 90s’ Pokemon craze was the (in hindsight poorly dubbed) anime series following the protagonist Ash Ketchum and his overpowered Pikachu that refuses to evolve or stay in a Pokeball. To cash in on this, GameFreak made Pokemon Yellow Version “Special Pikachu Edition” to put a spin on the Gen 1 games that referenced the anime. At its core this is just another version of Red, Green, and Blue, but there are some aspects that make it distinct. Other than the routine variations in Pokemon availability, the first major difference becomes apparent as soon as you start the game. In Red, Green, and Blue, you have three starter choices - Fire-type Charmander, Grass-type Bulbasaur, and Water-type Squirtle - but in Yellow, your starter is always the Electric-type Pikachu (hence why it’s called “Special Pikachu Edition”). This Pikachu is special for a few reasons. For one, it won’t stay in its Pokeball unless it’s fainted; it always follows behind you. It also refuses to evolve into Raichu, and since no other Pikachu are catchable in the game, you have to trade with Red, Blue, or Green to get a Pikachu to evolve into the best Pokemon of all time. Most interestingly, it learns Thunderbolt much earlier than usual for Gen 1. Pikachu isn’t exactly an amazing Pokemon - its attack stats are middling, and it’s fairly frail - but it’s also illegal not to finish the Elite Four with your starter, so you make it work. As your rival’s starter was always the counter to yours, Gary also gets a set starter here - Eevee. What he evolves his Eevee into is based on whether you win or lose your first few battles against one another. My favorite change is that all three of the traditional Gen 1 starters are available. You can’t catch them, but there’s a person north of Cerulean City who gives you a Charmander, a person in Cerulean City who gives you a Bulbasaur if your friendship with Pikachu is high enough, and Officer Jenny in Vermilion City who gives you a Squirtle. This means that there’s a 99% that your team is going to be Pikachu, Charizard, Blastoise, and Venusaur by the time you get to the Elite Four with only two wild card spots (I used Alakazam and Porygon). The other big change of note is that Jesse and James from Team Rocket have been put into the game as a few new battles to further reference the anime. They don’t try to steal your Pikachu like in the anime, but there are a few references to “a kid with a really strong Pikachu.” Other than that, it’s pretty much just Gen 1 with color. You still catch all three legendary birds in the same places. Mewtwo in Cerulean Cave is still the only real post-game. The Old Man glitch was fixed, so that’s a bummer, but you can still pull off the Mew glitch on Cerulean’s City Nugget Bridge. All things considered, I’d call this the definitive Gen 1 game, but I’m partial to Red and Blue because of Raichu. I know I’m a minority there, though. It’s definitely worth picking up on the 3DS Virtual Console while you’ve got the chance, though, both just to play the game as well as to move a Pikachu with its Hidden Ability up to Pokemon Home. My Rating - BAlso available on 3DS When Pokemon Red and Blue first released in the United States, it was like a spell was cast on America's children. I remember being in first grade and hearing kids on the playground talk about this amazing new Game Boy game. I didn't have a Game Boy yet - I grew up pretty poor - but my best friend was fairly wealthy, and he did have one. As soon as he got Blue Version, I knew that I absolutely HAD to get a Game Boy and Red Version. I spent months begging and begging my mom to get me one (since I didn't understand poverty or scarcity in general), and eventually, she - with the help of my grandmother - managed to get me a Game Boy and Pokemon Red for my birthday the following year when I was in second grade. That's when Pokemon Fever really took off, anyway, after a year of advertising and playground jealousy. Pokemon Red and Blue have you taking the role as a ten year old kid (canonically named Red) as you set off on your Pokemon journey across the Kanto region. Because apparently giving ten year old children horrifically dangerous monsters and setting them loose on the world to fend for themselves is seen as a good idea. Anyway, you get to choose one of three Pokemon as your starter - either the fire type Charmander, the water type Squirtle, or the grass type Bulbasaur. If you don't choose Charmander, you're wrong. As you set off on your journey, you have two tasks - gather all eight gym badges so that you can challenge the Elite Four and become the Kanto Pokemon League champion, and catch all 150 (pssst it's technically 151) Pokemon in the Kanto region to complete the Pokedex created by Professor Oak, the guy who gave you your first Pokemon. Literally every single person who will ever read this knows all of that already, but I said it for the sake of thoroughness. The reason that there are two versions of what is, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same game is to facilitate trading. Also to take more of your money. It's mostly to take more of your money. Some Pokemon only appear in either Red Version or Blue Version, so if you want to "catch 'em all," you'll have to either find someone with the other version who's willing to trade with you, or you'll have to buy both versions and another Game Boy. There's also the issue of the starter Pokemon; you can ONLY find those three Pokemon by choosing them at the start of the game, so that means that if you make the correct choice and choose Charmander, you can never get a Bulbasaur or a Squirtle...unless you trade. It's an absolutely brilliant scheme, and a quarter of a century later, we still fall for it with smiles on our faces. Pokemon is really just a JRPG with a capture mechanic. You find monsters, you enslave said monsters, and then you cosplay as Michael Vick and make them fight to the death. Okay, so they technically "faint," but whatever, close enough. Being the first game in the series on an extraordinarily weak piece of hardware, it's a simple game with a number of flaws. Box management - where you store your Pokemon once you have six - is an absolute pain. There are glitches galore, although most of these are the player's benefit rather than detriment. Parts of the game just outright don't function like they're supposed to. Worst of all (at least from one perspective) is that the psychic type is absolutely broken and overpowered. Pretty much all of these issues would be corrected in future games, but going back in 2022 and replaying the 1998 games really highlights these shortcomings. It might sound like I'm not the biggest fan of Pokemon Red and Blue. This, while a reasonable conclusion given my mention of its various flaws, would be an extremely inaccurate assessment. On the contrary, I absolutely ADORE Red and Blue. I have Pokemon Legends Arceus, the newest game in the series, sitting in my Switch right now, but I still spent 48 hours replaying this on the 3DS Virtual Console. It's one of my top gaming comfort foods. I'm just able to admit that it's extremely rough around the edges. This may have gotten damn near every millennial in the world into Pokemon, but this is definitely not where Gen Z or Gen Alpha are going to want to start. The games are just too primitive on Game Boy unless you've got my nostalgia glasses or are already a fan of Pokemon and want to experience the game that started it all. Still, though, Red and Blue (or, in Japan, Red and Green) spawned the world's biggest multimedia franchise, and what started with 151 pocket monsters is now 905 and will break 1000 in a month and a half. Red and Blue may not have aged as well as JRPGs on the Super Nintendo did, but it's still an extremely nostalgic game that I can replay seemingly endlessly and never stop enjoying. My Rating - BAlso available on NES, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Switch I'm extremely familiar with the NES port of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game - it was one of my favorite NES games as a kid - but I've never seen an actual coin-op arcade machine of it, and I suspect most gamers younger than I haven't, either. Fortunately, both the NES port and the original arcade version were included in the recent Cowabunga Collection, and best of all, that version included online co-op and the ability to force feed more credits like cough syrup to a sick kid. Screenshots were captured on the Cowabunga Collection on Switch. For the most part, when you consider that it's an 8-bit port of an arcade game, the NES version that most of us are more familiar with sticks pretty closely to the arcade version, but the arcade original is, obviously, significantly better. There are some differences in the levels and enemies, and while most are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, some definitely stand out. The little laser whip robots at the end of the first level, for example, are small and numerous on NES whereas in the arcade original, there are fewer of them, but they're significantly larger. That's how the majority of the differences beyond music and visuals that I noticed are - enough to make the games feel distinct and worth playing both but small enough that you're not really "missing out," per se, if you've only played one or the other. As you progress through the game, you'll face a variety of types of Foot Clan soldiers as well as a variety of iconic villains from the comics as you pursue Shredder to save April. If you've somehow never played this game before, it's a pretty standard arcade beat 'em up, and like arcade beat 'em ups, it's designed to punish you in a multitude of unfair ways. I don't think anyone has ever 1CC'd this game, and if you have, you're a liar. Still, though, it's a great challenge (even if there are some boss attacks that I genuinely think are impossible to dodge), and the ability to just increase your credits with a button press if you're playing on the Cowabunga Collection keeps it from getting too frustrating. Unless you like being frustrated; I'm not here to kink shame. While it's not as good as the later arcade game, Turtles in Time, in my opinion, I do think that this first TMNT arcade game is one of the truly great beat 'em ups of the 1980s. The NES version is fantastic, but the arcade original really is the best way to play regardless of if that's on a legit machine, in the Cowabunga Collection, or on 1Up's TMNT cabinet. My Rating - ASilver Falls is a series I've become a huge fan of over the past year. It's an indie horror series made Sungrand, a one-man studio based in Australia, that focuses around the quaint little town of Silver Falls. This quaint little town isn't quite as normal as it looks, though; strange things keep happening, and strange creatures keep appearing. Each game in the series has a very distinct feel and style that matches the time period when the game takes place, and the fact that everything about the games from the visuals to the coding to the audio is all done by one person gives each entry a real labor-of-love feel that big studio AAA games just can't replicate. Ghoul Busters takes place in the early 1990s and, as such, has an aesthetic intentionally reminiscent of the original Game Boy (that's also why the game's initials are "GB"). It follows two young best friends forever, Starlin Allerdyce and Atticus Longdraw, on their adventure-turned-nightmare in the woods. The two boys had gone to the woods one night to play Ghoul Busters, pretending to be the heroes from their favorite television cartoon, but they quickly stumble upon real monsters lurking in the woods as well as adults from the town who seem to know more about the strange goings-on than they're willing to admit. Now their playtime has turned into a very literal fight for survival. The game is a 2D platformer although one that makes heavy (and excellent) use of the 3DS's stereoscopic 3D effect. It's totally playable in 2D, but like Super Mario 3D Land, there are obstacles - like blades swinging between the close foreground and the background - that the 3D effect makes easier to see and dodge. Each of the two characters - Starlin and Atticus - plays somewhat differently. Starlin is a bit slower in jumps, attacks with a hockey stick, and seems to deal a little more damage with more knockback. Atticus, on the other hand, moves much faster in the air, attacks with a slingshot, and trades some of that damage and knockback for attack range. Personally, I preferred playing as Atticus, although Starlin felt more useful to me in the last few levels. The action takes place on the top screen while the touch screen holds items in your inventory that can be used by tapping as well as a pocket pet toy that emits a sound that causes a particular spinning spike enemy to retract its spines for a brief period of time. The game isn't very long, but what it lacks in length it makes up for in quality. There are nine levels and three bosses (one at the end of each three-level stage), and they are, as one might hope, increasingly challenging. On level 1-1, for example, I only died once; by level 3-3, you'd have thought I was playing Super Meat Boy. By the time I had cleared the final boss, I had died 421 times during my playthrough, and it would have been a lot more if I hadn't had items to use. Between levels, you get the chance to spend the bottle caps you collected thus far to buy items for use later, and fortunately, you're able to go back and replay levels to grind more bottle caps if you find that you're in need of items but out of funds. There are box tops hidden throughout the levels, as well, and each level that you end with three box tops gives you a special item that you can't normally buy. The coolest thing, in my opinion, about the Silver Falls series as a whole is the connectivity between games courtesy of the Code Linker system. Jerrel, the developer, really went out of his way to make sure that his games connect with each other in some way. The way it works is that one Silver Falls game - let's say Episode Prelude on Switch - gives you a blue code in its Code Linker menu. You then plug that blue code into the Code Linker menu in Ghoul Busters on 3DS, and it spits out a yellow key code. Plug that yellow code back into Episode Prelude, and a character from Ghoul Busters is now playable in Episode Prelude. That's just an example - I'm not sure if that particular example is actually viable - but that's the gist of how it works. Jerrel designed it to be like amiibo but without the need for an additional purchase and as a sort of bonus for buying the other games, although he's stressed multiple times that he actively encourages folks' sharing codes with friends who may not have all of the Silver Falls games; he just wants people to play and enjoy what he's made. Silver Falls: Ghoul Busters is really an extraordinary platformer. It's short and extremely challenging at parts, but at no point does it ever stop being fun. It's got its moments where you can tell you're being directly trolled by obstacle and enemy placements, but it's never to the point where you rage quit; it's always just reasonable enough to make you say "One more try." There's also just this unexplainable magic that comes from a game made entirely by one guy who's genuinely super passionate about gaming and making games that people want to play. It's made in Unity for 3DS, so it's got some random and impossible-to-replicate-on-command bugs and crashes here and there, but the game's got a good auto-save system, so I've never lost any progress from crashes, and it doesn't take long to load back into the game. The music is absolutely phenomenal, and while you'll hear the low-fi voice saying "Bummer!" every time you die in your nightmares, it's a wholly satisfying, enjoyable, and charming platformer from start to finish. I enjoyed this game more than any other indie platformer I've ever played and for reasons I can't quite put my finger on, but regardless of why, I honestly can't recommend this game highly enough. It's gotten an HD remaster on Switch, but the 3D effect on 3DS really makes the game. If you have an emulator or CFW 3DS, find a ROM. At the very least, buy it on Switch. My Rating - AAlso available on DS You ever have a game with which you say “Wow, that game sounds awesome. Money’s tight, though, so I’m going to wait for a sale,” and then you wait too long and the game is suddenly $150? If you’re a JRPG fan and said no, you’re either rich enough to buy everything at launch or a liar. Well, Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology is that game for me. I’m a physical purist, but given how ungodly expensive it is on the second-hand market, I had to bite the digital bullet when Atlus ran a 3DS sale last Spring. This was a slow burn game for me, but I finally finished it, and while I absolutely loved the game, there are definitely a few aspects that weren’t my cup of tea. The game feels, to a certain extent, like Atlus’s take on Chrono Trigger. You play primarily as Stocke, a former soldier and current intelligence agent for the city-state of Allistel in its long war against the kingdom of Granorg. For reasons unknown, though, the intelligence director, Heiss, gives you a blank book called the White Chronicle when sending you out on a mission, saying only that it’s a good luck charm of sorts. Next thing you know, you’re on a quest hopping through space and time to try to save the world from certain destruction at the hands of global desertification. Along the way, you meet allies from Allistel, other human nations, non-human nations, and even Granorg itself to help you on your quest to save the world and unravel the secrets of the long-dead Empire. As this is a remake of a DS game - even if an enhanced one - the game only displays in 2D. No matter what your slider is set on, there’s no 3D effect at all. Bummer. It does look really good, though, with excellent character designs and sprites. There was a pretty big change to the character art between the DS original and 3DS remake, and while the fans seem fairly divided, I definitely think the 3DS art looks significantly better. There’s also added content to the 3DS version, so that’s the version to play if both are an option. The characters and their interactions were the highlight of the game for me, so the character design changes were a big factor in my decision to play on 3DS rather than DS. The added content was what pushed me over the edge to 3DS. The story and characters were great, but I have to admit that the time hopping got tiresome for me. It wasn’t the concept of time travel that bothered me but having to figure out exactly when to go and what to do there to progress the story and which universe - the “Standard History” or “Alternate History” - I needed to be in. That’s definitely a “me” thing, not a genuine complaint with the game, but it’s definitely not quite as linear as I generally like JRPGs to be. Still, though, the story and characters and world lore was more than enough motivation for me to get over myself and power through those parts. Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology is definitely a game that didn’t get as much attention as it deserved, and I’d love to see it get a 3D remake or sequel on Switch. It is, unfortunately, extremely expensive physically, so I’d highly recommend you download it on your 3DS sometime over the next six months or so while you’ve got the chance (unless you’re reading this after March 2023 in which case ya-harr, me matey). It may not have been exactly what I usually look for in a JRPG, but that story was a caliber that only comes a few times a generation, so if you’ve slept on this so far, go ahead and wake up. My Rating - AAlso available on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 Muv-Luv is, without a doubt, my all-time favorite series. I've played every visual novel released in English, seen all three anime translated into English, and have read the entire 400-500 page codex. I'm obsessed. One of the anime translated into English was an adaptation of Total Eclipse, and I've got that anime on Bluray and have seen it multiple times. When the visual novel of Total Eclipse FINALLY got released in English last month, I IMMEDIATELY bought it. Like, literally; it released at 2 am in the eastern US, and I was downloading it at 2:01 am. Muv-Luv, since the original trilogy, has always been about two things - waifus and a hopeless but determined struggle against the unspeakable horrors of an apocalyptic alien invasion. Muv-Luv Extra capitalized on the former, Muv-Luv Alternative capitalized on the latter, but by and large, the series blends the two wonderfully, and Total Eclipse is no exception. Of my top five Muv-Luv waifus, three of them are from Total Eclipse. It also has, in a manner of speaking, the most epic battle against the BETA of the series. The English language fandom seems split on whether Alternative or Total Eclipse is better, and while I'm in the Alternative camp, it's definitely close; they're both masterpieces. The protagonist of Total Eclipse is Yuuya Bridges, a Japanese-American test pilot who is arguably the United States's best surface pilot. At the game's opening, he's participating in the test flights and development of the F-22A Raptor, America's third generation stealth TSF and the undisputed king of anti-human TSF capabilities. He ends up getting reassigned, though, and sent to the UN Forces Yukon base in Alaska, positioned right between American-controlled territory in southeast Alaska and the northwestern part of Alaska that the United States leased to the Soviet Union after the BETA overran most of their territory. The reason an American army surface pilot gets reassigned to a United Nations base is because he's sent on secondment to participate in the XFJ program, a collaboration between the Japanese Empire and American TSF manufacturer Boening to improve Japan's third generation TSF, the Shiranui. He's assigned to Argust Test Flight, the test flight attached to the XFJ program. What makes this test flight unique among other test flights stationed at Yukon is that it's truly international; 2nd Lieutenant Yuuya Bridges is an American, 2nd Lieutenant Valerio Giacosa is Italian, 2nd Lieutenant Stella Bremer is Swedish, 2nd Lieutenant Tarisa Manandal is Nepalese, 1st Lieutenant Yui Takamura (Western name order used) is Japanese, and Captian Ibrahim Dogulu is Turkish. This all becomes relevant to the story and the characters' interactions as the game progresses. For the most part, the art in the visual novel is exactly the same style and appearance in this allegedly remastered release of Total Eclipse as the other Muv-Luv visual novels, but there is one distinct difference - it incorporates scenes from the anime in a few places (mainly during battles against the BETA). I'm kind of torn on this inclusion. On the one hand, it's definitely nice to see genuinely animated scenes in addition to the usual scenes of a 2D art asset moving across a 2D art background that you usually see in visual novels. On the other hand, these anime scenes look bizarrely low resolution and compressed. There's noticeable pixilation and visible artifacts in the scenes that aren't present when watching the actual anime. That really sort of puts a damper on the whole presentation of the included scenes. Still, though, it IS nice to see actually animated battle scenes even those scenes do get repeated a lot and are of low quality simply because it's something no other visual novel in the series has done. Like the rest of the visual novels, the dialog is all in Japanese with English text. Given the...questionable...quality of the English dub in the Total Eclipse anime, this is probably a good thing all around. Speaking of voice acting, though, even if I can't understand the voice lines, the actors do a fantastic job of expressing the characters' emotions and attitudes, especially Tarisa's voice actress. I AM annoyed that they localized Tarisa's nickname as "Tiny" in the visual novel instead of the much-cuter "Chobi" in the anime, but it's fine. On the topic of audio design, the music is pretty solid here, as well. It's not quite as memorable as the music from the Extra/Unlimited/Alternative trilogy, but the soundtrack is still a solid fit for the game's settings and events. As far as length is concerned, Total Eclipse is pretty beefy. l, admittedly, am very easily distracted by Discord and Twitter, so my playtime of nearly 80 hours is definitely a bit inflated, but from what other fans have told me, 50 hours seems a pretty solid average, although your mileage will obviously vary based on your reading speed and distractibility. Still, though, I think that's a pretty damn solid bang for your buck especially with how good the story and characters are. The last two chapters - especially chapter 17 - are substantial. 20% of the game is probably just chapters 17 and 18. They're EXTREMELY epic, though, and the climax of the story, Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse is a definite contender for my personal GOTY. Sure, it helps that I'm completely and totally obsessed with the series, but it's a genuinely fantastic visual novel and one that I've been DYING to have translated to English for a few years now. The setting, the characters, the story, the political intrigue, and - most importantly - the waifus are all absolutely fantastic and leave almost nothing to be desired. There are no H-scenes in Total Eclipse, so prudes don't have to worry about that, and anti-censorship fanatics don't have to worry about the infamous Steam censors. If you're a general visual novel fan, check this one out; if you're a Muv-Luv fan, you should have bought this two weeks ago. My Rating - SBonus Gallery of the Game's Three Best Waifus |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
March 2024
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