"This game series adapts to the choices you make. The story is tailored by how you play."

Wether you like these telltale games and the content they have provided for many years, the impact these few words have left on point and click games is undeniable and for me, it all started here: The Walking Dead.

Consider this a general review of the 4 seasons as a whole, I'm going to conveniently leave out Walking Dead Michonne as it felt like more of a convenience in this package to justify the "definitive" title than anything else. These games are really mostly held up by their story and characters, so there's no real point nitpicking the mechanics, or lack thereof, except with the final season, but we'll get to that later.

It's no point beating a dead horse, and in the same vein it feels redundant to repeat what's already been said a million times, but Season 1 is truly a masterclass in tone and narrative design. There's a reason it propelled these kind of games to such stellar popularity, and there's a reason all the characters are still talked about today. I truly believe all the praise is warranted for how boldly the game carries itself and the hopeless tone that is illustrated throughout. Every episode is dynamic, all the choices are brutal and the consequences are almost always dire. It could have been a perfectly self contained gaming jewel, and a real homage to Kirkman's work.

Maybe an unpopular opinion but I thought Season 2 did quite a good job continuing the story, it was almost always engaging and you can tell a lot of passion and energy went into making it a worthwhile successor. Making Clementine the playable character seemed like a logical choice and it really highlighted her growth and arc. It reinforces the foundation of the story and it turn, the game is engaging.

Enter season 3: a new frontier, and things start getting different. Be careful what you wish for is a common saying for good reason, and I think it can be applied here as well. For a game series relying so strongly on it's narrative aspect, it was inevitable that with success and popularity would come high demand and expectations, and I understand the bold(er) story decisions but I also see the flaws in story and game structure. Sure, it felt like these "decisions" that were once the staple of this series were more convoluted than important, but I was still invested and excited to see what happened next, despite a drop in quality and serious community backlash.

The final nail is (no pun intended) the final season, this is were The Walking Dead suffers it's biggest identity crisis in a desperate bid to "make things right". Fix all the things diehard fans didn't like about the direction of season 3, bring back the nostalgia and that unique feeling of stress and tragedy that the first two seasons portrayed so well, as well as modernize the gameplay to make the final story all the more dynamic. What happened instead was a product that feels like it wants to be 3 things at once, but instead only manages to do a couple things halfway. A whole episode chopped off, a plethora of plot contrivances, and half baked third person segments I just didn't see the point for. There's still an admirable level of heart that went into this send off, but I did feel like this wasn't the best direction.

It's almost ironic that a franchise based on surviving in a decaying would, in it's own way, decay into the lesser sum of it's parts, without the original magic that took pop culture by storm. For what it's worth, the graphic overhauls in this collection make it the best way to experience the full story in one package, and the story is still compelling enough to completely lose yourself in for a week.

Loses some steam, but I would still definitely recommend this to anyone who's lucky enough to experience this story for the first time.

I've always had fun with the Far Cry games I got (2, 3 and 4) but 3 and 4's formula in particular have always had issues I couldn't shake off. The AI is extremely dumb, the activities you get are made to waste your time, the stories are very mediocre at best when you look past their good acting and the games are just too long, with mechanics that stop being fun before I am close to finishing the game.

However Blood Dragon has a leg over those games because of one simple thing: It wasn't made to waste your time, it's a small and focused game. There's 13 outposts, less than 100 collectibles and just a handful of missions, I can get my fix of open world junk food without playing for 20+ hours. It is a small 4 to 5 hour experience and it doesn't need to be more than that.

Outside of that it's nothing special, there's not any boss fights or hugely developing narrative and the humor rarely lands, but because the game doesn't take itself seriously none of the dullness you'd have otherwise turns into a big issue, it's a decent budget game.

A decent sequel to the first game, with more polished gameplay, better visuals, better dungeons, and more traditional storytelling with more cinematic events. Sadly the soundtrack is a lot weaker this time around, I feel like I heard the same two tracks regardless of where I went, up until the second half, which has the only memorable track for the dungeons.

Most importantly, the alignment system actually works as intended this time! If you're unaware, mainline SMT has endings which vary based off the choices you take in the game, traditionally leading you into Law, Neutral, or Chaos endings. The biggest problem with the first game was how hard they fumbled the code for alignments, making it so even with a guide your alignment could shift wildly simply because you fought a few enemies in the new dungeon. That's gone here, and the only things that really shift you are the story choices.

Speaking of the story, it's okay. It's more of a "story" than what the first game had, but that doesn't make it better, and in some aspects I found it a bit worse. I kinda love the implications the sequel brings, as well as the reveals at the end, but the endings feel oddly rushed and unsatisfactory.

There are copious amounts of backtracking and several events that require you to go to very specific, previously empty rooms in one specific area you didn't visit since the start of the game, without telling you to go there. I had to pull up a guide only to find out I had to backtrack through the entire map, twice, to trigger one small event that would have me backtrack halfway through the map for one short dungeon. Stuff like that really hurts the game's pacing and made me feel more like an errand boy than a main character, let alone the Messiah.

Overall it's pretty good, but not as good as the first. I also kind of wished they reused the final boss's theme for the final boss seeing as he did have one, it would've been a lot nicer.

This is a short and cinematic game where you dive into a pro swimmer's childhood memories. The vibe is magical realism. The gameplay consists of being a magic cursor which can select objects and move them around. You interact with things by doing mechanical motions in order to advance through a series of scenes.

It's like someone made a movie, but between each scene they added friction. I actually enjoyed this friction more than I was expecting to. Some of the ways you interact with stuff is pretty amusing and satisfying. There were a lot of of small moments of random joy in something I was expecting to just be tedious. It's interesting how much this toy-like interactivity actually adds to the experience.

I was having 2 experiences: watching a series of creatively presented scenes obsessed with non-verbal story telling, and going through the motions of interacting with things. The latter prevented me from getting so bored that I stopped appreciating the former. To be clear, this was a danger because the story was pretty boring and uninteresting.

I can respect the intent of the story, but the real strength of the game is the diverse presentation of it's scenes. Some of the ways the trivial interactivity is implemented is neat. I repeatedly noticed an interesting bit of cinematography or scene construction and exclaimed "that's clever".

I love all the ocean & water imagery. Water is pretty technically difficult, especially for a small team indie game like this. Massive respect for all the shader and technical art work that was done here.

Well it's certainly different? I'm not sure what I was expecting going into this one, but it certainly wasn't this.

I have perhaps never seen a game with less polish; at times this feels more like an early alpha than a finished game. The graphics are crazy basic, the music is simplistic and the game has a tendency to generate softlocks around you every now and again. Most runs for me have ended by being pursued by an enemy until I hit some obstacle that was offscreen when I first picked the direction to run in, and this gets especially frustrating at the end of a longer run. And the game gates most of its zones behind collecting a certain number of collectables in the current run, meaning that you end up spending a lot of time just farming the same 2 or 3 relatively uninteresting zones.

And yet behind all that, there is a fascinating game at the core of it. Some of the later zones get extremely weird with each adding some new ruleset or geometry or both. It's a shame that these often aren't clear at all. So most of my encounters with a new zone go as follows: find a new zone, "ooh what's this one then?", die immediately, don't see that zone again for another 20 runs. It makes learning what goes on in these outer reaches nigh-on-impossible, which is a shame as these wackier zones are the best the game has to offer. Perhaps there is a zone selector or remixer somewhere in the settings, but the settings are the densest I have ever seen and are mostly written in high-concept geometry jargon.

Despite all of this, there is a certain addictive quality to hyperrogue; it is always interesting to get a glimpse of a new bizarre region, even if only for a second. With a lot more sanding down of the rough edges this could be a truly phenomenal achievement of gaming. For now its better to think of it as a very content-rich tech demo, but a very impressive one at that.

So I'll be blunt and say I have a huge bias for SMT, simply due to the fact that I find the gameplay to be among the most enjoyable of any JRPG series on the market, if not flat-out the most enjoyable. The combat has a lot of depth to it, and I don't think the potential is squandered here. There are many challenging encounters to face, even outside of DLC, and the demon fusion system allows for incredible flexibility in how you handle these challenges.

That said, I do think the endgame was a bit disappointing in a way that I can't help but compare to SMT IV. By the end game, you can have a whole team of perfectly-crafted demons with little-to-no weaknesses and all of the skills they need to handle most any situation, so if you know your way around the compendium, the final bosses will feel underwhelming, even on the hardest available difficulty, which I spent all of my play time on.

Despite this, my love for the series has not waned at all, and everything I love about these games rings true for this one. A killer OST, amazing gameplay, and a world drenched in atmosphere come together to create an experience you just can't find in any other series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBqiIMVXDlw (OG intro)
https://youtu.be/VQsCusQJQMw (PS1 intro, it's really bad)
A year or so ago while looking through PS1 Japanese releases I saw an interesting title “Dokomademo Aoku…” I tried it out, and found the opening had text that was illegible, and the audio quality was rather poor. Curious, I looked it up, and found it was the all ages version of a visual novel called “Hateshinaku Aoku, Kono Sora no Shita de…” I couldn't immediately find a good copy of it, so I let it sit for a while while I did other things (I couldn't have likely read it very well in Japanese at the time anyway,) until in March of this year I acquired a copy of the Complete Edition: an updated full voice edition. And so I started reading Hateao (the shortening I'm using for the rest of this review because the full title is long.)

The story starts with the announcement of the closure of Azumi Academy, due to a lack of pupils. The atmosphere is gloomy as the 6 students (it shouldn't be a surprise the main character is the only male student) realize that this year will likely be their last year together as a group. On his way home, Masashi (the protagonist) feels an inhuman gaze from the Homura Mountain, where the God of the Mountain is said to live, and later that night he is attacked in his house by Dojima, the ex-politician who is trying to forcibly develop Azumi Village after being forced out of politics for his alleged connections with organized crime. The students begin to be forcibly dragged into adulthood, the village into modernity, and something ancient appears to be watching over all of it. A very long, and cruel year begins.

Hateao is a bit difficult to place genre-wise, and I couldn't find any official genre for it. 伝奇 (denki, taken from the Chinese Chuanqi) is the term I've seen thrown around the most and I'll link a page I found that describes what that means in a Japanese literary context at the end (if you've heard of Teito Monogatari, it's that,) but if I have to explain what the genre means in the first place I probably need another description for this review.

I'm far from an expert on literary genres but I suppose something like "occult mystery" or "gothic horror" would be the best description of Hateao's contents. The languid country life of the characters being shattered serves mostly to drive the overarching narrative of the forgotten history and ancient pacts which have led Azumi Village to its peculiar isolation from modernity to the forefront, (I've seen theories that the game takes place in the post-war Showa era online, but I think it's meant to take place around roughly 2000. The village is just so old-fashioned it just seems like it could be in the post-war era.)

Before going into the routes, and how I felt about each of them, I’ll mention that while there is no forced route order, this game would be well-served by a route order. Some character’s routes simply have more of the mysteries of the village revealed (you could probably find out almost everything you learn from the Yuuka, Amane, and Ai routes just by doing the Asuna and Fumino routes.) I went in the order of Yuuka>Ai>Amane>Asuna>Fumino and I’ll be going over the routes in that order, but my recommended route order is Yuuka>Ai or Amane>whichever one you didn't do>Asuna>Fumino. The key point being that you do Yuuka’s route first and Asuna and Fumino in a sequence, and last.

I’ll be brief and mostly vague with these, but skip over this part for spoilers in case you want to go in (mostly) blind. The game is split into an opening ceremony prologue>spring>summer>autumn>winter chapter system. Spring narrows down your route choices, and summer is where you determine your route. Autumn is usually where the bulk of horrible shit happens, and where you’ll make the choices that determine the good or bad ending. Winter is: https://imgur.com/q2wC3Dh

Yuuka Route

Yuuka is the shrine maiden of the Homura Shrine and the childhood friends of childhood friends (kind of a weird character trait to have when everyone has grown up together besides Fumino, but whatever.) Her route doesn’t have a lot of mystery but it serves as a decent introduction to the state of the village, and some of the deeper mysteries peek their head in towards the end, (a certain area only appears in this route and Fumino’s.) Has probably the most unpleasant scene in the entire vn as well, if you make it through this route, you’ll be able make it through the rest, probably. Bad ending is ok.

Ai Route

This route is probably one of the most revelatory routes outside of Fumino’s. It’s got a good balance of character drama and mystery. I don’t really care for little sister types like Ai, but this was probably my favorite route. It didn’t feel clunky like the Fumino route, meandering like the Asuna route, and was much more interesting than the Yuuka and Amane routes. Bad ending is meh.

Amane Route

Torture, torture torture. Both physical, and emotional. Just a very difficult route to read, and not a lot is revealed. Probably the closest the vn got me to tearing up. There’s a lot of hopelessness and powerlessness in the autumn chapters of the routes usually, but this one in particular was painful. Amane losing her ability to speak, and having difficulty writing in the winter chapter probably just hit a bit too close to home for me. Bad ending is just kind of lame.

Asuna Route

Scooby dooby doo, where are you? Mostly just Masashi and Asuna getting led around by Fumino until Asuna disappears and nothing much happens until the climax, which either is meh in the case of the good ending, or one of the coolest scenes in the game in the case of the bad ending. Most of the info given here is just a summary of the Yuuka-Amane-Ai trinity, and the ending is very similar to the Fumino route. Bad ending is better than the good ending for this route only.

Fumino Route

The manipulation queen of Azumi Village negs you for roughly 7 hours. This feels like it’s meant to be the “true route” which wraps up everything but it isn’t really that, and as a result it neither manages to wrap up everything, or focus on Fumino. Clunky. Fumino is a fun character though. If you’ve ever played KOTOR 2, imagine a cuter Kreia. Didn’t do the bad ending.

So, there’s probably two large areas to criticize this visual novel. The first is the h-scenes, and the, to put it mildly, unpleasant nature of a lot of them. I suppose they manage to get the idea across of how horrible the human villains of the story are, but they tend to overwhelm the supernatural in terms of graphic content and as a result ended up being the part I ended up dreading more than the supernatural horrors. The Yuuka route in particular had a scene that was so nauseating that the supernatural horror afterwards was actually a relief. The Ai (both endings) and Asuna bad ending managed to balance this so I think it was possible, just didn’t really happen for most of this vn. Probably could’ve been cut down massively outside of the Yuuka and Amane routes and been fine, but it’s an eroge so it’s a bit of a requirement. Oh well, you can always skip them.

The second is that while the mysteries of the village are interesting, it never really comes together into anything in particular. There’s more or less enough information to figure out what the hell is going on, but you’ll probably figure it out before the final ending, and then you’re just left with a sort of half-satisfied feeling since there’s no real big “climax.” There’s a post-credits bit after you get all the good endings that’s cute, but it’s not really some sweeping conclusion scene. There’s a sequel however that likely does more with the setup, (and which features Fumino, who was kind of the “Mystery Solver” Character,) so this point doesn’t really drag the game down that much.

Overall, I enjoyed the roughly 60 hours I spent with the VN, and it ultimately turned out to more or less meet the expectations I had from finding the ps1 version a year ago. The atmosphere of Hateao is exquisite, with an excellent sense of location. Music is sparse, but used effectively, and sound effects (well, background ones, some of the “horror” sound effects are somewhat cheesy) are used very effectively. I have no idea when I’ll play the sequel, Atori no Sora to Shinchuu no Tsuki, but I will one day. Hateao seems to have a way of sticking with those that know of it, and visiting another one of TOPCAT’s cursed mountain villages is rather tempting.

On Windows 10 the vertical text option doesn't work properly, however if you use Fixmetrics from the following link it works http://albinina.sakura.ne.jp/ This also will fix the vertical text in Atori. Make sure not to have any compatability settings on it since that will cause Fixmetrics to not work properly.

Denki article I promised earlier:


https://jmystery.fandom.com/wiki/Shindenki_Movement

I, uh, finished this some time in April and just sorta forgot to log it I suppose. Ironically, something I think sums-up X/Y pretty well; overall skippable.

Now don't get me wrong, the games are well-made and function as they should. The graphics are great for the 3DS standards, the soundtrack is a bop, and the number of Pokemon available gives you a lot of potential teambuilding options. But just about everything else does not hold up... the story has interesting moments and lots of cool ideas (a fucking war happened and we're just not gonna talk about it for more than two cutscenes?) but is overall a huge nothingburger. It somehow feels both rushed and yet sluggishly paced at the same time, with events just sorta happening because... because. But hey, story is rarely (if ever) the main draw for a Pokemon game! So how about the gameplay? Shockingly enough, it's Pokemon. Big surprise I'm sure. But with all the species available to catch, there must be a lot of ways to build your team and be challenged by the game, right? ...right?

...the game is balanced about as well as a dysfunctional wooden beam in the middle of a hurricane; it's not very balanced. Whilst on paper the sheer variety of Pokemon you can use is great, you're given so many gift Pokemon that it won't matter to much of the casual audience. But even for someone like me who caught a number of Pokemon for my team, even rotating some out, the game's difficulty is a joke. I had overlapping weaknesses to a good number of types, no mega evolutions, my fastest Pokemon was a Tyrantrum (base 71 speed btw), was using limited battle items, and I went into the league with an underleveled team... the only battle I really struggled with was Drasna, more specifically her Dragalge. Not just in the league but for the whole game. This was the one time I felt like I was actually at a proper disadvantage, and even then I did it to myself by not accounting for poison-types too well. But my point is the game's balance is shit; the first battle against Lysandre, the BIG BAD EVIL MAN who is BIG and EVIL and WANTS DESTRUCTION gives him two NFE Pokemon. Murkrow is good enough unevolved, fair enough, but Meinfoo? In the endgame portion? Actually laughable. And it's not even consistent given the second battle with him barely twenty minutes later has both of those Pokemon evolved.

The difficulty is made even more pathetic by the introduction of megas. These behemoths either snap the game in two or are worth ignoring. Lucky for players, the game hands out broken megas like candy which does include one of the best ones; Mega Lucario. This stupid thing is already really strong in competitive, but in casual the game just becomes an absolute cakewalk unless you do stupid shit like try to hit ghosts with fighting moves. Mega Lucario shows my general issue with the design of mega evolutions as they were implemented; making already strong Pokemon batshit broken. Fuck, I love Tyranitar but even it isn't safe from this syndrome. Yes there are still other powerful megas such as Mawile and Lopunny but these Pokemon were aching for anything good for the longest time. Kangaskhan is the queen of this trope in fact, going from a decent Pokemon to batshit broken because of mega evolution. But these broken megas are the ones you only really hear about... because the rest of them are just sad. I don't know why we live in a world where someone approved mega Lucario, mega Sableye, and mega Kanga yet also decided mega Ampharos having 55 speed just wasn't allowed. Or mega Abomasnow being a slow fat fuck whilst still keeping its dogshit defensive typing... you get the picture. Megas are a cool idea, but very heavily flawed as it comes down to picking the ones that break the game in two whilst the rest of them sit crying in a corner.

So, I've been complaining for a lot of this review. Yet I did honestly still enjoy this game for what it's worth; it's the most standard Pokemon adventure you can get with lots of creatures to catch, battles to be had (however easy they may be), and a story-ish of some description in there to keep you moving forward. There's no doubt that this game did a lot of good for the franchise with it's re-balancing of certain moves and mechanics, making competitive training easier as well. There are good steps here... but the whole of this game is merely fine. It was a start to bringing Pokemon to the new generation, and a good start at that. But replaying it with a critical eye (as well as experiencing Gen.7/8/9 which all built on it so much) I can see how mediocre and flawed it is. It's a great point for newcomers to the series to start, because in spite of being flawed it isn't genuinely broken like OG Red/Blue are. It's just a decently enjoyable game with a lack of substance for veterans or returning players.

I was initially surprised as to why this game exists in the way that it does but after doing a little digging I found out that it takes after a mobile game that the devs previously did and by the dev's own admission, is a little side project to flesh out the back story. In that context, I don't feel like dunking on this game too much but I will briefly mention why I don't think this is worth playing unless you really liked the first game.

Mile 0 lacks substance in terms of story, what backstory explanation it adds is minimal and what new content it adds is forgettable. Primate reason is that the characters fall completely flat, barely straying from how they can be described in a sentence. Admittedly you can influence how the 2 main characters think but it hardly matters given how dull they are. To top it off, it caries over the juveline half assed political theme from Road 96 too.
The environment art might be alright but the character models look janky and oddly oily, to the point where Zoe looks worse here than the original game. On the gameplay side it combines bare bones exploration and subway surfer like minigames which are somewhat reminiscenet to Sayonara Wild Hearts, to its detriment I say cause it's nowhere near as good.
At least the soundtrack is good, they even managed to get a track out of The Midnight, one of my favorite bands!

Me and my friend often joke one of the biggest joys of Trails is busywork. CS1 does not seem to understand that this is a joke.
There is some truth to it (saying it as a completionist who is unreasonably upset about missing one enemy scan), but it's certainly not what most people come to the series for - they want a compelling, multi-layered character cast, tight worldbuilding, and an awesome soundtrack. This game only delivers on one of those at the absolute best.
The music in this game is leagues better than most of Sky, but still doesn't match the Crossbell games in overall quality (aside from standouts like Investigation and Path of Spirits.). However, the atmosphere it creates is refreshing.

Don’t walk away from this game… RUN away from this game as fast as you can if you value your time and money.

This game isn’t even a sequel, it’s quite literally the same exact game as the first game but without loot boxes. I liked the first Overwatch when it released but I stopped playing in 2018 since I moved on to other games. When I heard about OW2 with a PvE mode, that was the ONLY reason I was even remotely interested in OW2. And after years of waiting, OW2 releases without a PvE mode only to scrape it months later and it turns out that Blizzard already knew they were going to cancel it before OW2 officially released. So like what in the actual fuck have you been doing these last 4 years beside lying through you teeth? At this point, if your end goal for OW2 was a PvE mode, why even bother making OW2? And of course it’s because you’re greedy for my money, just had to repackage the same game, add “2” on the logo and shove season passes and cosmetics into our faces for RIDICULOUS PRICES!

I’m so sick and tired of your bullshit Blizzard. I held off on making this review just because I was waiting for the PvE mode that never came. The whole point of OW2 was for the PvE mode and then you have the nerve to say “PvE is still a focus moving forward”. Overwatch 2 pretty much is just a game meant to lock content behind paywalls. I just uninstalled OW2 and from now on I will NEVER buy nor play another video game from Blizzard since it will be nothing more but a waste of storage on my consoles. Not only did you lose any trust and faith I had left for you but now Blizzard is one of the best examples on how scum and greed can ruin your franchise. As the years came by you never did get better, you only went downhill and still are because there’s no such thing as “rock bottom” for Blizzard.

This game gatekeeping you with side quests to progress the main story is the equivalent as being told you can't go outside till you do some extra homework.
The story and battle system Torna has to offer is incredibly interesting, and I won't lie when I say the moments with Lora, Gin, and Mythra were very interesting - but it's all heavily guarded by side quests. You're told twice in the main game, but most notably just before the finale - that you should help the people of Torna, and you're actively forced out of story progress until you do.
It's horrible artificial padding, and it honestly didn't feel rewarding at a point because not much changed when you did them. I personally ended up skipping most of the enemies later on because the forced side quests kept me at a decent level anyway, and by then I was getting sick of the battle system.
I'm not saying Torna is bad by any means, but I am saying it has its heavy faults. You will still find plenty of joy in this package, however with Future Redeemed doing what Torna did wrong and fixing it - I think I can safely say in hindsight that this was Monolith testing the waters with Xenoblade Expansions, and I'm glad that the blunders in this campaign meant that the devs could learn from their mistakes and make side content actually worth exploring and doing in Future Redeemed.

The best way to describe this game would be "what if your uncle came back from a trip to japan and bought you a used famicom game you never heard about". It somehow perfectly replicate the experience of having no idea or context about what you're doing and you have to learn by trial and error, as well as guessing what the pictures in the manual are trying to convey.

That being said it's not all perfect. First of all I think the combat system was ok for a Zelda-like game. Not very deep, not very difficult. Enemies are just there as a distraction and not really a challenge.... until the game wanted to bad to be dark souls that it starts throwing unfair stuff at you. You CANNOT attempt to have a difficult souls-like combat with absolutely none of the depth from the actual game. Your options are so limited and overcoming the challenge isn't satisfying in the slightest. I'd rather focus on the exploration and brain teaser.

Speaking of brain teaser: the alphabet system is really cool and I gave it a shot at deciphering it. However i simply couldn't do it for the life of me. After attempting it for hours I gave up and looked it up online. Not a big deal if it was just flavor text, but it really soured the entire experience when the last 2 secret treasures absolutely required it in order to 100% finish the game. There is no cheeky subtle hints to do without it like all the other puzzles.

Still, one of the best game I've ever played.

I should probably start this review by saying that I co-oped this with my sister, and her favorite video game character is Kirby, so she played as him. I was Bandana Waddle Dee.

Anyway, it was a fun, decent game in my opinion! I don’t see what all the hype is about, yet I wish I did, and I have not dismissed the idea that the game may be a lot better as Kirby. I really wish more had been put into the co-op aspect of this game, like it was with Epic Yarn. Bandana Waddle Dee is very lackluster and barely packs a punch. The warping gimmick is a bit annoying, especially when it does this during boss fights. Overall, these areas of the co-op experience could really have been fleshed out.

The story was fun, and actually pretty dark for Kirby! I enjoyed it. I didn’t love all of the levels or the fact that they demand replay to get all achievements. Most of them were one and done for me. The copy abilities were cool, and I imagine playing as Kirby is fun. However, the game does not really tempt me to replay it as Kirby, since most of it was just okay for me. The post game was okay too, but didn’t really add much to the base game.

Overall, it was a good experience, and definitely better than Star Allies. I won’t be playing it again, but I am still glad I did once.