Have yall ever had a game where like you constantly hear gassed up by your peers and despite trying in your entire power to like the game and be a part of the cool game enjoyers club it just doesn't hit? yeah... I've seen both people I personally know as well as internet randos pour endless amounts of praise into this title, and I've always been curious to see what was up, but after playing through this game naw man it just ain't for me.

On a vibe level, this game is immaculate. Given the developmental lineage of this game being done by ex-Love de Lic members, that should be obvious. Characters have their own unique wacky designs with their own goofy chopped-up gibberish voice clips, the various other boss characters have a lot of personality thrown into them, and the story has a ton of thought put into it. The game isn't afraid to explore themes of colonialization and hierarchal government structures, and it does so in a way that's subtle enough to not feel overtly preachy about its themes, yet still heavy-handed enough to make its messages obvious. It's a game where you as the newfound ruler of this kingdom, must overtake all the neighboring kingdoms in a conquest to take over the world. How did you become king? It just happened. Why do you need to take over the world? Because the military minister said so. Are the other kingdoms actively hostile? Not really. Do your subjects and countrymen like you? Sometimes. Tonally it fits right in with pretty much any other Love-de-lic game, and if there's anything that you can absolutely count on from the people that used to work there, it's that the personality of the game shines brighter than pretty much most other games in general.

THAT BEING SAID, its the act of playing the game (and really more of finishing it) that is where the problems truly become apparent. For better or for worse, there aren't many other games like Little King's Story. Essentially the gameplay boils down to managing a crowd of people to help explore a large map, overcome the many obstacles held within, and use the treasures collected from combat and exploration to build your kingdom and upgrade your troops. I've heard the game be compared to Pikmin, but if there's anything that this game has done, it's given me an immensely deeper appreciation for how thought-out the gameplay in Pikmin really is. In this game, you can only send troops out one at a time, in a straight line from where you are facing. Troops don't continue doing their tasks and come back to you if you move a far enough distance away from them, and there's no way to call back particular members, with the B button serving to call everyone back at once, regardless of what they are doing. It makes multitasking in this game neigh impossible at times as the gameplay is designed in a way that emphasizes singular interactions one-at-a-time. Which makes pretty much any encounter with multiple things an absolute hassle! There is a large variety of different jobs for the troops, with each job having their own unique skills and weaknesses, some being designed to get past specific roadblocks like builders building bridges or lumberjacks to cut down particular trees, and others being more niche with their functionality like chefs that only exist to OHKO any chicken enemies that show up. Considering the fact that there are only so many people you can take with you, there's a layer of strategy and decisionmaking for whether or not to spread your crew thin but be able to handle anything that might show up, or to focus on mostly combat grunts in order to ensure any potential fights can be handled comfortably. For me though, I mostly spent my time running with the wrong crew composition unknowing of what lies ahead, getting my shit kicked in for not being prepared, then begrudgingly having to start over with a more optimized team given the foresight of knowing what's ahead. The fact that the only way to manually edit your squad is buried within 3 submenus that the game doesn't even really tell you exists is the icing on the cake too! Even things like how the large crowd of troops creating difficulty in movement as people constantly fall off ledges/get stuck on corners and how there's only one button to cycle through class types in your squad which makes getting a particular class sent out more work than necessary. The gameplay as a whole just felt like it needed a second pass to really iron out the kinks, and it does make me all the more impressed at how Pikmin was able to pull off a similar concept with so much more user-friendly execution 8 years prior on their very first go.

and the bosses. oh my god the bosses. I don't know how they did it but they managed to make 7 bespoke encounters that are just as memorable and unique as they are absolutely infuriating. Like being overwhelmed with enemies? How about playing pinball with incredibly dodgy physics? Do you remember what gibberish voices are used for each of your NPC job classes? How's your Geography? Are you a fan of boss i-frames? I'll certainly give them credit for making them unique but there were too many times where a boss fight throws something completely out of left field that I either wasn't prepared for or had little to no control over that it felt like I was wasting time trying to deal with the games nonsense. It's just all a bit too much trial-and-error for my blood personally.

All in all, yeah. Despite me not having a very good time actually playing the game, I can certainly still understand why it's so beloved. I can imagine that the games quirky charm and personality could easily leave a lasting impression on people, especially if they played it in their youth where they can take in the vibes and enjoy the game at their own leisure unbeholden to the desire to actually see the game through to its end. Maybe it's just me being fixated on finishing games that was why I couldn't enjoy this as much as I honestly should have. The game was certainly an interesting and memorable experience (for better or for worse), and I'm glad I was at the very least able to see what the game was all about, even if it did bring a lot of frustration. The game is fucking, but the vibes are amazing.

God Damn.

The first Tokimemo game was an honest stroke of genius. While it certainly wasn't the first gal game, Konami used their experience in game development to make a social simulator that gamifies the high school experience in a way that combines the snappy, quick, replayable nature of arcade games with the narrative and stat growth systems of then-contemporary console and PC games. With the sequel, Konami set their sights to the goddamn moon. and they actually delivered.

The core gameplay remains unchanged between this game and its predecessor. There's still the fun balancing act of having to juggle academic stats, personal health stats, and relationship stats within your 2 actions per week. The iconic bomb system is here, albeit nerfed a tad (I don't think I had more than one bomb at once to worry about on my playthrough here, whereas tokimemo 1 might as well have been mfin bombergirl). They didn't bother reinventing the game mechanics, instead focusing on bolstering those mechanics with a world as dense and alive as the Playstation 1 could possibly provide.

The cast of characters in this game is much more vibrant and quirky here than in game 1, for better or for worse. It can make the game feel a bit more tropey than the more reserved and down to earth vibes that the first game provided, but it also has a bit more spice in it because of that. There's even a prologue section to establish childhood friend relationships/give the player a personality test that influences stat growth in the proper game, rather than just throwing you into high school with no proper context of your classmates. Despite each character usually having a central trope or gimmick, none of the characters are one-note and have a myriad of different events and situations to enjoy. Each of them live different lifestyles, and as such require completely different approaches. Even the dude side character has gone from the comedic relief sleazeball homie that hooks you up but isn't a threat in the first game to two rival characters that look for love of their own, even potentially competing with you. Hell, they even managed to make a GOOD Ijuuin character!!! Characters are what make or break a game like this, and this game has an extremely strong cast.

The world and overall interaction with it is done with such a bespoke attention to detail, it's crazy. Characters have a myriad of outfits they wear depending on the weather and their affection with you. You can choose which honorifics to use with each character, where calling characters differently at different stages in their relationship yields different results. There's a seasonal brochure you get every few in-game months that lists various timed events and happenings in the area, whether you care about them or not. You can even sacrifice an entire memory cards worth of data to create voice synthesis data for a girl of your choosing to pronounce your name in dialogue. To put the amount of content this game has in terms of detail into comparison here, this game uses a whopping five discs to contain all the different events, interactions, and variations of everything, yet completing a run still only takes 8-10 hours. The world density also makes the game incredibly personal; no two runs will ever be the same. I highly suggest finding someone else to play through the game alongside you to compare and contrast how each of your playthroughs and school lives are going.

Overall, yeah. They took the already incredibly solid base the first game had, and polished it to a wonderful, glistening sheen. The technical culmination of the genre. The gal game to end all gal games. The Gran Turismo 4 of dating sims. With how modern hardware is and game budgets/manpower ballooning to the point they are today, I doubt there could be another game to challenge this games relative scope for its time. It really does feel like konami gave the tokimemo team a blank check to make the best thing they possibly could, and they succeeded. I can't say something like that could ever happen again. Did I also mention that the OST and its many arrangements are absolute bangers?

I have a pretty big backlog to the point where a lot of games I play are one-and-dones, but I can safely say for certain this won't be the last time I play through this game. I've only got Miyuki's ending, there's still so much more to do! An absolute must-play.

WE ARE SO FUCKING BACK.

After YEARS OF SLUMBER (five months), the weather has cooled enough for me to continue where I left off in playing some good ol' DDR, and coincidentally I just recently finished the banger that is tokimeki memorial 2, so this game being both a DDR game and a tokimemo spinoff that stars miyuki, bro the stars have aligned for me to play this.

Being a spinoff game focusing on the very small 2-week period that is summer break, this game is more of a VN rather than your simulator-y stat-growth time-management beats that are in the main game. The main bulk of gameplay is done through dialogue choices and the occasional round of DDR. The plot basically consists of Miyuki wanting to play some DDR with you at the arcade, where by playing she accidentally manages to do an all-perfect FC and get scouted to a local DDR tournament. In reality, she sucks at DDR and it's up to YOU to not only train her to not entirely embarass herself at the tournament, but also convince either Yae or Miho to be her partner. Hilarity ensues. Considering the fact this game is a much more straight-laced VN, there's not much else I can say in the gameplay department.

My only minor complaints with the game are that in the entirety of the main scenario there's only one song that you play over and over and over again on the basic difficulty, with the final song being the same song on Another difficulty. I get drilling one song over and over again to get better at it is part of the DDR gitting gud experience that this game seeks to portray, AND the one song is sung by Donna Burke of Metal Gear fame, but the repetition gets a bit old and the sudden difficulty jump at the end def caught me off guard a little bit. I also wish there was a way to actually play DDR with the characters themselves as player 2, as you can watch them play or play yourself, but never really both. If I could play DDR with tokimemo characters, my life would have been complete right then and there, but alas, some things are not meant to be. It is certainly amusing to play through an entire VN with a DDR pad, ngl.

What else do I really need to say? Tokimemo 2 is based, DDR is based, combine the two and I'm a happy man. It def is weird hearing the characters mention DDR by name though. Like I get that its all konami so there's really no issue, but it's still strange. Completing a run unlocks the full DDR TokimekiMix game to be played, which has 6 bonus songs to play through from previous tokimemo games. It honestly is a good way to slowly get me back and acclimated to the ol' mat again.

i miss when konami was good

After a tokimemo-themed warmup, I am officially awoken from true DDR hibernation for the fall and winter, baby. Getting back into DDR in the fall is always a bit of a slow start due to the fact that its at the peak of cold/flu season so I always feel like crap getting back into this not only from being out of shape but also from fending off disease. True dancing gamers push on through such things. No matter how I'm feeling, all I need to see is footage from ancient japanese freestyle DDR competitions of 20 years ago to motivate me to jump around on the ol pad for an hour before I collapse from exhaustion.

As for the actual game, it's aight. I'd rate the setlist just about as good as 4th or extra mix in that there's a handful of bangers I kept going back to scattered through a pile of eh. Shoutouts to Captain Jack doing an english cover of odoru ponpokorin, that felt like it was made specifically for me lmfao. This game also runs at 60 FPS compared to literally every previous game running at 30 and it feels GOOD. The stepcharts are also really well-developed, compared to other games I found myself popping off HARD after finishing songs way more often just because of how good they felt to step through. It really feels like Konami has been subtly polishing the core DDR gameplay throughout the series so far. Speaking about the series so far, this game also essentially serves as a tribute to what's been done, as not only is there a 200-image gallery of various characters, backgrounds, and merchandise from the series up to this point, but the game also includes a complete archive of the old DDR websites data bank of user-submitted custom charts for all the previous DDR games. There are over 3000 fan-made custom charts of varying quality you can download to your memory card to give a breath of fresh air to your existing DDR game catalog, and that's hella cool. I wonder if anyone has actually played them all.

It's kinda funny that the setlist is really this games weakest quality, as this would absolutely be a top-tier DDR game if it had the setlist of something like 3rdmix. Everything else is top-notch and a solid send-off to the PS1 era of japanese DDR games before the series moves on to the next generation of game hardware.

(And this game marks the debut of Alice!!! I always used the player 2 side so I could play as her, she's the best I hope I can play as her in all the future games)

Definitely not as cracked as I was hoping "dating party game by hudson soft" to be, but still pretty interesting nonetheless! It basically takes the concepts of stat/affinity/time management used in dating sims and puts it in a (comparatively) short competitive environment. You and 3 other lucky bachelors have 14 days to court the girl of your liking, and the first person to successfully confess their love and be accepted by any girl wins the game. Each day is split into 3 distinct times of day, and you basically choose where you want to go for each time of the day. There are items that can be used to cause shenanigans between other players and ruin their dates. Players have to manage a general looks and stamina stat by spending time staying home to bathe/rest instead of chasing girls. It's a bit of a handful to learn at first but once a few turns settle in things make a solid amount of sense.

My only problems are really from the games pacing and the cast of girls. The girls are pretty swagless all things considered, and the game kinda just railroads you down a particular girl (usually the first that you happen to bump into) to stay competing with the other players, personal feelings be damned. In my party of 3 there wasn't any particular character that got any real reaction out of us, which is kinda problem when the girls themselves are supposed to be the emotional motivators yanno? Each girl also isn't the most balanced, as I completely threw the game by going after a girl that barely talked and didn't follow any specific schedule. The game also definitely drags on a bit, a day takes about 10-20 minutes which makes a full 14 day run take several hours. My group got pretty exhausted by the end of the first week... Due to the dating simulatory nature of it, everyone's gotta do a lot of reading, which isn't necessarily something that everyone is gonna have the same attention span for unfortunately. Unless this game randomizes every girls personalities for every playthrough, I feel like this game would also absolutely favor those that play it more frequently as the girls generally have the same schedules which allows you to predict where to go, giving first timers a huge disadvantage. Lastly, there's the stereotypical ugly girl that functions as an FOE to be avoided at all costs, and while the game SAYS she targets whoever is in first place, I was in dead last the whole game and was stuck with her for THREE different days.

Overall it was okay. Definitely not as peak as I was expecting it to be, but still an interesting curiosity. I didn't even know this game got a full fan translation recently which actually allowed me to play this with my non-japanese-literate friends which was rad. That being said, if you want a more simple and fun party game based on the premise of being the biggest chick magnet, Koi Wa Balance on the satellaview is the way to go (and also miraculously fan-translated to english!)

Sonic Adventure 2 Battle is a rerelease of Sonic Adventure 2, which, if you know my thoughts on that game, means this is already a masterpiece from the start. However, this version in particular adds even more depth to the chao garden and more multiplayer modes, which makes an already perfect game even better. The PC port of this also isn't nearly as bungled as Sonic Adventure 1s, and while the cutscenes of this game definitely took a visual hit, it's still sonic adventure 2. I've spent at least 500 hours on this game, it's one of my favorite games of all time. Play it.

Holy shit. Where the first game walks, this game SPRINTS. Improves upon literally everything in the first game. New characters that bring an interesting dynamic to the gang from game 1 are introduced. The story pacing is sublime. The plot has much more serious stakes with more personal connections between the heroes and villains, yet the game also makes sure to provide plenty of downtime to fully immerse yourself not only in the game world but also just get more background on the cast. There's never a dull episode in this game. Add a fantastic soundtrack and a greatly improved battle system and you are left with one of my favorite games of all time, and a game that I know for sure that I will be replaying several times as the years go on. It's not out yet, but as of me writing this a fan translation is in development and I'm so stoked that more people will be able to play this amazing game in the future. I fuckin love this game, dude.

Definitely a peak DDR game. DDRMAX is pretty much a soft reboot of the series in a lot of ways. The setlist is almost entirely brand new, the announcer dude has been replaced, the rendered dancers have been replaced by FMV shots of various vibes, and the game has a brand new focused goal of getting players to challenge themselves and push towards new limits.

The setlist, while actually smaller than 5thmix, is way more dense with bangers to make pretty much a quintessential DDR setlist. They got funky grooves, sugary speedcore, eurobeat, J-pop, penis music, whatever the fuck you'd classify telephone operator as, the setlist is just fuckin LOADED dude. quality over quantity for sure. My personal favorite song in the setlist is www.blonde girl, that shit goes directly into my bloodstream dude fuck yeah

The biggest tonal change of DDRMAX just comes from its difficulty. This game is HARD, dude. I'm still not that great at DDR with my skill mostly capping out around the high 8-low 9 mark for heavy charts, and I found I wasn't able to clear a lot of the heavy charts in this game. I've noticed that compared to the earlier generation of DDR, this game is much more punishing with misses and it was extremely common for me to slip up and watch my entire health meter just plummet right into danger booing territory. Considering the fact that this is the 6th mix in the series and I'm sure that the people living in arcades at an eternal DDR grind needed something new to eat so konami had to deliver the goods, but it does come at the cost of feeling like quite a difficulty spike. The game doesn't even have foot ratings anymore, so you just kinda have to eyeball a weird 5 point graph to predict how difficult the song might be. Honestly I am fine with the lack of foot ratings because that lack of info definitely made me more willing to experiment and try things that I otherwise might have been scared off by a high foot rating to try.

Self-improvement is the name of the game here, and DDRMAX actually is genius in how it very subtly leads dedicated players to its true goal that they should strive to clear: take the MAX 300 challenge. The game slowly leads you on through notifications that there's something hidden in this game, and only by mastering the game can you find and clear it. By getting a final stage full combo on any heavy-difficulty song, your game will be greeted by the EXTRA STAGE, where MAX 300, the legendary 10-foot boss song, will be your only selection. It's an incredibly difficult song, moving at ludicrous speed and requiring fast reading and faster footwork to actually stand a chance against. Unfortunately, try as I might, I couldn't clear it myself, though I one day hope to be able to. I can read the notes just fine, I just have slow-ass gamer legs that can't keep up with the heat that song demands. I could clear it in training with the speed set to 2/5 though!!!

This game basically marks where DDR starts cranking up the heat, both metaphorically and literally. Despite the arcade versions remaining on system 573 hardware based off the PS1, the console versions are now on 6th gen hardware. I will admit, the slower PS2 saving times definitely give me some time to breathe after hard songs, so that's pretty cool. I've already been deeply sunk into the DDR realm at this point, and these games just keep staying as fun to play now as they were when I was starting.




(that all being said, pour one out for the redoctane ignition 2.0 pad I was using for all of my DDR sessions up to this point, the DDRMAX heat caused a tear in the fabric that my attempts to recover only ended up worsening. Shoutouts to Tom James, legendary game localizer and the tony hawk of dating sims, for supplying me with the dance pad that got me this far down the rabbithole, and I'm glad I was able to use it to play tokimemomix, but alas, she has reached the end of her times. Now I am using a DDRgame bootleg TX-2000 hard pad that I've coupled with an assload of penny mods and controller converters to work across all my consoles at a tolerable level. It was actually one of the lead directors at Epic Games of all people that helped me get this replacement pad, so I guess my DDR pads are always going to have some sort of game industry connections, for some reason.)

hoo boy where do I even start here? This game stands proud as one of the vibest of vibe games, and with good reason, because the vibes here are truly on another level compared to most games today, let alone on the PS1.

It's a game where in the grand scheme of things not much happens as you spend a month over at your cousins house in summer. What you do with your 31 days at their countryside abode is entirely up to you. It is your summer vacation, after all, so there's no real correct or incorrect way to spend your time, and the game is entirely developed with that in mind.

The game very obviously isn't designed much like a traditional video game, as rewards for exploration are more scenes that try to evoke a particular emotion rather than being any sort of progress-making videogamey reward. I guess a good example is a random well that exists in a corner of the countryside. It's a dead end, there aren't many bugs to collect near the well, nothing inside the well, you can't go in the well to a new area, all that you can do is examine the well. Doing so plays a cutscene showing Boku looking down the well in intimidation before taking a few steps back in fear. That one particular area really has very little significance in the entire map as a side route, and it's really not like that area has any real threat to it. But like, I'm sure there has been a time in all of our youths where we ended up wandering somewhere we probably weren't supposed to be unsupervised and getting psyched out from something completely harmless. Bokunatsu is absolutely chock full of moments like that from start to finish. Regardless of whether or not you actually have experience of being a child living in rural 1970's Japan, this game covers so many aspects of being a kid in general that there's bound to be tons of things to relate to in spite of its setting.

Another impressive aspect to me was just the design of the whole world and it's characters. It's probably one of the most peaceful games to ever exist, with breathtaking hand-drawn 2D backgrounds of natural countryside landscapes and characters that feel like actual people just living another month in their lives. The wide age disparity between the different characters also provides insight in how summer is spent at different points of life. Kids like Boku and his little sister spend their time completely free and at their own discretion, being curious about the many things in the world, generally playing around every day with all their free time. There's Moe, the older cousin in her teens, where she struggles with growing up, spending most of her days studying inside or sitting outside at night thinking more philosophically about her future as she is about to enter high school. And then there's your Aunt and Uncle, where to their adult lives August is just another month of the grind doing work stuff and housekeeping. This game just excels at being a window into this precise household in this precise one month in time, allowing you as the player to observe the countryside and the family living in it just the same way as Boku does.

I could honestly keep going on about all the various moments in the game and the many different memories they made me feel, but I think yall get the point. Would definitely highly rec to anyone even remotely interested in these kinds of peaceful vibes, as this game definitely hits in a unique way to everyone who would play it. Much like actual summer vacation to a kid, this game is entirely what you make of it. or something like that.