It's the middle child of the Persona Dancing franchise. Not as good as 4 but somewhat better than 5. Has the same problems as Persona 5 Dancing in that the note tracking just isn't as good and feels almost random at times. Using scratch notes to represent actual notes in the melody throws me off whenever I play. Also some remixes are a bit mid but nothing majorly terrible besides 1 or 2 exceptions. The Social Link conversations are a bit neat but often go on way too long and I would find myself skipping through the dialogue for a majority of them. The first person sections are neat but the camera is weird which ends with me being motion-sick if I play those sections for too long. Besides these complaints, I found myself enjoying it quite a bit since P3 has way more songs to select from compared to P5. It's good, but it just doesn't hold a candle to Persona 4 Dancing All Night.

Persona 3 Reload delivers a stellar remake that revitalizes the original Persona 3 with essential quality-of-life improvements, catering to both newcomers and veterans. The presentation truly shines, living up to the high standards set by its predecessor, Persona 5. The UI is sleek and responsive, seamlessly blending Persona 3's style into every menu. Character models and portraits burst with life, complemented by captivating animations that bring each character to vivid life.

The original Persona 3 is known for having one of the best stories in the entire series it feels fully faithfully recreated for Reload. Sure, while some of the 2D animated cutscenes have been swapped out for 3D real-time cutscenes you never really feel like you’re losing much from the original interpretation. Nearly every cutscene and dialogue is fully voice-acted now, including the social links. This really adds a connection between you and your party members and allows each actor in this new voice cast to add brand new life to each of their characters. I also enjoyed how each of the main party members had their own arc separate from their social link and main story. Each one was allowed to grow and learn without the Protagonist constantly being there. It gives them each independence and agency in their own story. That being said I don’t think this main cast lives up to my favorite group, Persona 4’s Investigation Team. But still, S.E.E.S. is still quite solid and enjoyed seeing them develop as the story went on. Honestly, my biggest disappointment with this game’s story is the fact that some of the features of Persona 3 Portable were not carried over to this new version. FemC and her accompanying social links are nowhere to be seen. While the male party members do have some minor conversations they never feel like proper social links.

Gameplay is where Persona 3 Reload truly shines. Tartarus, while feeling daunting at first with its whopping 255 floors, feels more manageable thanks to the exclusion of the fatigue mechanic. I can’t even imagine how annoying that must have been in the original. I do think the dedicated dungeons in Persona 5 were a bit better; I would much rather have designed environments over randomly generated floors. But, Tartarus is something the dev team had to keep faithful so I understand why it was unchanged. A new addition to Reload that I really love is the Thuergy system. It’s brilliant in that each character has a specific action that boosts this Theurgy meter more than the usual amount, and thus you must keep in mind what actions are best to use for each character. It incentives the player to pick certain actions over and others which gives an added combat depth to the game’s battle system. However, while the battle systems are generally great, Persona’s famous social activities feel undercooked in this one. Most of the activities are frontloaded into the daytime segment, so much so that you often spend your nighttime doing the same activities over-and-over since you have ran out of things to do at night. I wish there was the ability to enhance social links like in Persona 4 or even just more varied stuff to do during the night.

Despite these minor flaws, I still really enjoyed my time with Persona 3 Reload. It blended what I loved about Persona 5 and mixed with the original Persona 3 to create an excellent package that is worth playing for any fan of either game. Its blend of engaging storytelling, strategic gameplay, and stylish presentation make it a worthy play for any RPG enthusiast.

A great duology. Superb character animations that pair well the excellent character designs and their unique tics and personalities. While I have some grievances with the first game's pacing, the second game pacing is much faster and helps alleviate some of the slow pace of the first game. Writing is still top notch in both and the twists and turns that weave into both titles make the entire duology package into a great buy. While I don't think it's the strongest of the Ace Attorney franchise, I still believe that they still hold as strong entries in the franchise.

Much better than the first game. This game has the luxury of not having to introduce every character in the cast and instead gets to use the cast in more interesting ways. Susado gets to shine a lot more in this one and the side characters feel more fleshed out as we begin to learn their backstories a bit more. All the lingering loose threads from the first one are nicely followed up and concluded. In fact, this game's cases just feel more tightly written in general with less fluff and more brevity that really helps with the pacing. The game has an awesome conclusion that worried me initially as I felt it was going to tread familiar ground with its twist villain. But it did end up managing to do something different which I thoroughly appreciating. Everything that seemed like an obvious twist was lampshade by the game and not so obvious twists were foreshadowed enough to where I was very satisfied with this game's writing. For all the missteps that previous game took with its writing, it was well worth it to get to the sparkling conclusion of this duology.

Wasn't feeling it at first as it takes a while to get used to the game's controls and movement options. But as you play, you being to understand how to optimize your character's momentum and movement options it becomes real fun. Penny has various skills that makes traversal super dynamic and thrilling to speedrun through. There are various quests you can do in each level that are quick side objectives that you can blast through if you're skilled enough. By no means are they pace-breaking, they feel quick enough and easy enough to do without feeling like you have to drop everything to do them. Conversely, I would say that the first world is definitely the weakest world because it's weirdly difficult for a starting area. It almost feels like you're thrust into the game with very little forgiveness to the player just learning the ropes.

The graphics and presentation are absolutely captivating. The Sega Saturn-esque aesthetic is vibrant and colorful and while at times the game feels budgeted with character animations feeling stiff, it's overall easy to look past due to the simplistic artstyle. I was worried during pre-release that it would take TOO heavy inspiration from Sonic and wouldn't be able to forge its own identity but thankfully this seems like a non-issue. The music is also full of fun and whimsy. This soundtrack is thankfully less inspired by the Saturn and moreso jumps right off the back of Tee Lopes's excellent Sonic Mania OST. The songs are bouncy and full of life that really captures the energy of Penny. You can clearly tell that the presentation of this game is one of this it's greatest strengths.

In summary, I can say that this game, while it does have some hiccups here and there, is a blast once you finally understand the full extent of Penny's momentum-based gameplay. It's very much a speedrunner's dream and while I may not be a big speedrunner itself, it still a good time and definitely worth your time.

I'm a huge fan of the main series after playing it over the past few years so let me tell you I was excited to finally play what is heralded as the first part to the best pair of games in the series.

It's unfortunate that ultimately, I feel mostly mixed on this entry. None of the cases are necessarily bad but I often felt that the each of the cases stretched on for far too long. It feels like the characters will dwell on one particular plot point for far longer than they should have, often reiterating points over and over that just gets tedious to read. The outline for each one of the game's cases are all generally interesting too; I never felt like there was too big of a leap of logic that made them fall flat. It's just each needed a onceover in order to trim the fat and make them less long-winded.

On the flipside, I simply adore this cast. Naruhodo is a strong followup to previous Ace Attorney protags and his feeling of inadequacy that slowly gets rectified over the course of the game is great character growth. Susado is a fun assistant who unlike most assistants never feels unnecessarily and always contributes to the case at hand. The duo really feels like a team. I thought I would hate Sholmes when I first played but he does grow on you as the game progresses.

Ultimately, I feel this is the most disappointed I have felt with an Ace Attorney title so far. It's a shame because while the characters and setting are generally fantastic, the overexplaining of each case makes me rank this one as my least favorite of the series.

Metroid Prime is the game that made me fall in love with the Metroid series. I loved the original game so much that I ended up playing it twice back-to-back. I don’t think I have ever done that with a game before or since. With that in mind, you can probably guess my feelings on this remaster. It’s just as good as the original game with a beautiful coat of paint that is so good it honestly almost threads the line to being a full blown remake instead. Reflections look stunning and blast effects feel as vibrant and powerful as it felt using them in the original version. It’s probably one of the best looking games on the Switch and with a stable 60 fps it is a breeze to play. Most of my major complaints are moreso on things that weren’t changed in the remaster that were in the original. The Chozo artifact hunt is as arbitrary as ever without any way to mitigate the backtracking. An item tracker, which is something 2D Metroid titles have nailed down, still has not crossed over to the Prime series and thus going for 100% still feels like something I will only ever do once. Those complaints aside, this is still a great package and should definitely be the first entry any newcomers should try when playing through the namesake of the Metroidvania genre.

Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe feels like a celebration of the modern Kirby formula by reintroducing newer fans to the origin port of what we now understand as a "modern Kirby game." It's hard to state how important this game is to the franchise. And this remaster is a great showcase of this game's strengths.

The game is now finally in HD and runs at a nice 60 FPS which is a huge step up from Star Allies meager 30 FPS. The brilliant backgrounds can now be showcased in their full glory that are honestly still breathtaking for what used to be a late-Wii title. The newly added cell-shaded outlines was something I initially didn't love but I did grow used to them and eventually I do think it was the right choice for this remaster. Gameplay is just as great as it ever was with just snappier gameplay and sped up animations, like for the Super Abilities, and tweaks that make the experience just that little bit better. The new copy abilities such as Sand and Mecha are great additions to the series albeit extremely broken in terms of Arena runs.

Of course this remaster also includes Merry MagoLand which is a fun side mode to play with friends and the medal system does make it decently fun for singleplayer as well. I haven't played Magolor's Epilogue quite yet but I will update this review in the future whenever I get the chance.

This game is a definitive Wii title that paved the way for the Kirby series to gain greater recognition and this remaster preserves that experience immensely.

Shadow the Hedgehog should fundamentally be a good and fun experience but it’s bogged down by some baffling design decisions that keep it from being a great game. The things most people who have never played this game judge it for are actually probably the best part of the entire experience. Shadow’s guns are quick and snappy and are easy to aim and use in a variety of situations. You never feel like you NEED the guns to progress, but it's a nice bonus akin to picking up a power-up in a classic Sonic game. The edgy story and its many branching paths are nonsensical and don’t really link up to each other all that well, but I can’t help but unironically enjoy how hard Shadow tries to act cool. This game has plenty of faults but I can’t help but admire it’s good qualities that shine through the rough.

Though of course Shadow the Hedgehog has plenty of issues that do need to be addressed. The morality system is a neat idea, but the execution is entirely flawed. The branching paths are less narratively branching and more so gameplay branching. The story tries really hard to justify why Shadow would suddenly switch sides but makes no effort in trying to tie each morality choice together. Because of the amount of branching paths, each one feels more neglected then it really should have been. Gameplay wise, the branches honestly feel a bit tedious. Each choice is not created equally. Some of them you just need to get to the end of the level or find 5 objects in the level, other times you have to kill every single enemy of a certain enemy type in order to progress. It just completely bogs down the entire gameplay loop by making the high-octane Sonic the Hedgehog gameplay loop slow to a crawl. Like most of the harder objectives aren’t even that hard to complete, they’re just slow and tedious and completely antithetical to what this series is known for.

Fact of the matter is, Shadow the Hedgehog is cool as fuck, and there’s nothing anything a gaming youtuber can say to change my mind about that.

Started off pretty weak but ended with a bang. Yea, they are just mostly tour courses with a minor graphical overall and some minor changes but Mario Kart 8 is just a fundamentally solid game that adding more content only enhances the experience. Each of the many courses they selected are a great fit for MK8 and are done fairly well. The Booster Course Pass also brought in a bunch of quality of life improvements to the game such as a music player and item selection which is always a plus. They also just added new characters free of charge which was awesome. It makes Mario Kart 8 into one of the best games content-wise and it's hard to picture any future game topping it.

SteamWorld Heist is a decent tactics game that misses the mark a bit. Gameplay overall is decent, there’s plenty of mechanical depth in its movement system and positioning. Aiming your weapons and knowing where to stand and aim is crucial to understanding this game’s mechanics. This is inverse to most tactic games where hit chance is determined by stats, this game’s hit chance is mostly determined by where you are in the map and if you as the player can aim and hit your target accurately. This makes for a fun risk and reward system where you have to decide whether to move closer in order to get better accurately while at risk of getting hit, or to move further away, reducing your accuracy while gaining more cover. This is all well and good, but a big problem with this game is that its levels are procedurally generated. It makes every single level in the game mostly feel the same as the other. It’s not too big of a deal as the game is overall fairly short, but it does let me down a bit because the gameplay could’ve been way more interesting than it is. In addition to this, inventory management is a nightmare. I constantly feel like I don’t have enough space to store anything and you get lots of rewards after nearly every level. This results in the player having to sell something practically after every single level which gets annoying to do. Story is nothing to write home about, everything is fairly standard and quite honestly I began to ignore it as the game went on as it feels very superficial and shallow with not a lot of depth. In conclusion, this game is decent, but does take a few missteps that bog down the experience.