A long time ago, a little company by the name of Namco released a small little game known as Sim Drive at the JAMMA 1992 AM Show. As the title would apply, it was merely just a simple racing game, primarily meant to show off the technology that the game’s system board, the Namco System 22, was capable of, using gouraud shading and texture mapping to creature 3D environments that, nowadays, may look like nothing but a bunch of polygons to us, but back then, was revolutionary for the genre. While it was impressive, it was simply just a prototype for a bigger product, one that would be completed over the course of the next eight months in an effort to compete against other companies like Sega. This title would then be released to the public, and would simply be known as Ridge Racer… you know, RIIIIIIIIIIIIDGE RACEEEEEEEEEER! Remember that one?....................... look, if I didn’t make the joke, someone else was going to, so I had to take that chance.

Back before I had started reviewing games on this website, I hadn’t really played any other racing games that weren’t named Mario Kart, so I hadn’t really checked out any Ridge Racer game before this one. I had heard about it on several occasions, hearing about some of the titles being pretty good, but for the most part, I had assumed it was just your typical racing series with nothing too grand or incredible to show for it. But hey, you can’t judge a book by its cover as they say, so I decided to check out the first game in the series to see how it has held up, and yeah, at least for this title, it is just your standard arcade racing game. For what it is worth though, it is still a good game, and one that I had a decent amount of time with, but it is probably not gonna be a racing game that I am ever gonna go back to because of how barebones it ends up being at the end of the day.

The graphics are incredibly dated, which is to be expected from an early 3D racer, but for what it is worth, it was the best looking racer at the time, and it still holds up in some regards to this day, the music is pretty great, with there being several tracks that fit the vibe that the game is going for, and it gets you pumped to leave your competitors in the dust and maybe even smash into them, the control is extremely basic for an arcade racer, but one that does its job well, and the traction, speed, and turning on the car does feel pretty good while being manageable, and the gameplay is extremely basic, not offering much in terms of content, but offering plenty in terms of speed and several other factors.

The game is your typical arcade racing game, where you take control of either just one car, or in the case of the PS1 version, MANY cars (you know, just in case you get tired of the color red), take on plenty of different races of varying difficulty all taking place on… one track (we’ll get more into that later), race against plenty of different opponents that will do their best to keep you behind them at all times, make sure to turn and brake at appropriate times to make sure you don’t slam straight into the wall and look like an idiot, and blast your way all the way to first place and finish all three laps before time runs out to prove that you are the ridgiest racer that ever ridged a race. It has everything you could ever want from an arcade racer while also lacking everything else that you could want from one, but to its credit, one of the things that it does have going for it at that point in time.

Before this game, there weren’t many other 3D racers that could reach this high level of quality. The only other really noteworthy 3D racer before this was Virtua Racing, which, while being a nice stepping stone for the genre to leap into the next generation, now looks like a bunch of angles and shapes trying to trick you into thinking it is a racing game. With Ridge Racer, on the other hand, it looks much, MUCH better, not only having plenty of detail given to all of the cars, but also the many different environments that you will be driving past and through. In addition to this, there is also a good amount of realism that was implemented into the game as well. There were multiple gears that you would have to shift through as you would go faster, the turning and braking feels much heavier in several occasions, and when you collide into another car, not only does the other car swivel around due to the impact, but you yourself FEEL that same impact, especially when you are in first-person view. This may not seem like anything nowadays, but again, for the time it came out, you have to admire what it did for the genre as a whole.

However, that does not save it from being one of the most barebones and basic racing games I have ever played, even more so than other ones released before it. In this game, you only get one track to race on. ONE TRACK. Sure, there are varying difficulties that increase the speed you go on on this track, and there are additional modes like a Time Trial and, for the PS1 version, a mirror mode that allows you to experience the track in plenty of different ways, but at the end of the day, it is still just one fucking track. This game desperately needs more tracks to make it more desirable to play, and they don’t even need to be that heavily different from this one. They just need to be there. In addition to this, at the end of the day, it is still just a very basic racing game. There have been plenty of other games ever since, even in the same series, that have taken what this game does and have made many better racers as a result, so there really is no reason to come back to this one at the end of the day. I guess it could be good for those who are big fans of the series, but really, they could just play future, better titles and get the exact same experience from it.

Overall, despite the limited content it has and its basic nature, the original Ridge Racer is still a competent and fun racer, one that can provide you with a speed-filled good time for a while, but it doesn’t do much to make players want to come back for more. I would recommend it for fans of the Ridge Racer series, as well as those who love racing games in general, but for everyone else, there are definitely much better titles out there that you could play over this. Although, for those of you who actually are wanting to try it out at some point, let me give you a warning: don’t look directly into the eyes of the people that are in this game. I may have done this with the girl who holds up the sign at the beginning of the race, and now I fear that I may be getting a visit from her in the near future.

Game #427

I love writing reviews for the games I finish playing. I try to write them as much as I can, especially for games that I end up enamoured with, not only to actively train my English (not my first language) and writing skills as a whole, but to reflect upon and solidify my undying love for this medium, which, despite my current line of work and research, has remained as my most important and magical hobby ever since I was a kid, discovering Pokémon on my Game Boy.

When writing my reviews, I usually aim at tangible and mostly objective aspects of a particular game that makes it good or not, because I think that’s what matters the most for people reading a review at the end of the day; however, I simply cannot leave my personal, emotional impressions out of the picture since, following the parameters of autoethnograpgy, which are what guide the methodology behind the work I develop within the walls of academy, these particular accounts work as an extremely valuable source of data to wholly communicate the situation that’s being discussed on. As such, when I find myself with the urge to review a book, a film, or a video game, I aim to balance the more widely palpable aspects of that work with my own personal experience, since that also, and undeniably, constitutes what I’m trying to convey through my words.
I also try as much as I can to not spoil anything or to express myself in a way that may guide the reader’s view towards the game in a specific way, so that’s another way in which I believe giving personal accounts (and recognising them as such, rather than flavouring them as undeniable truths) makes an effective strategy to discuss upon something.

In the case of Boku no Natsuyasumi 2, however, I may end up giving a little bit more of personal insights to this review rather than talking about how its formal and mechanical aspects contribute to build such a meaningful, unforgettable experience, since it sucked me in so deeply into its tiny, mundane and magical world that I simply can’t fully express what playing this game meant to me in a way other than spreading out my own emotions upon the table. So, well, that’s a disclaimer to one of my longest and possibly the most difficult review I’ve written here.

I first got to know Kaz Ayabe and Millennium Kitchen’s work through Attack of the Friday Monsters! A Tokyo Tale, which I was fortunate enough to grab at my late teens, years before the closure of the 3DS’ eShop in March 2023.
It was July 2017. I was 19 and going on a family trip to the countryside for my summer vacation. When I wasn’t at the beach, enjoying nature and interacting with my relatives, you could find me, 3DS in hands, playing that game. I instantly fell in love with its gameplay, storytelling and setting, and it left a huge mark on me, especially by how perfect that moment was for it to fall onto my lap. A year prior, I was facing a crippling depression case, and after going through therapy I could finally find myself living life to its fullest, enjoying small aspects of my everyday life, and even going through a bittersweet (but fun) summer love story. It all fell into place… BUT, the game was too short. Sadly, sadly, too short.

It was a part of Level-5’s ”Guild” series, a series of bite-sized games co-developed alongside various directors (such as Goichi Suda and Keiji Inafune) for the Nintendo 3DS, being released in the west exclusively via the eShop. Attack of the Friday Monsters was, at that time, the only Kaz Ayabe game officially translated into English, and it has mostly everything a BokuNatsu game has – except for its length. Yeah, the game is well-paced enough, and will stay for very long on your memory, but its story occurs in only a single day of the main character’s life. Needless to say, it left me craving for much, much more of that unique style of gameplay, and that’s how I ended up discovering Boku no Natsuyasumi – only to be immediately hit by the language barrier truck.

Since then, I have spent the following years with a bitter taste in my mouth, falling ill to the lingering urge to play Boku no Natsuyasumi haunting me every summer, always reminding me of that one summer in which I played Attack of the Friday Monsters. I’ve flirted many times with the idea of playing the first game with a guide by my side, but always gave up on it by thinking about how much that would end up hindering my own personal experience, since these games rely on their narratives, and I simply couldn’t find myself willing to discard a possible, remote way of playing them in a language I can read over playing them in such an suboptimal manner. And that’s when it happened – a fan translation effort was announced in 2021, and I was beyond overjoyed by this news.

Well, we are still waiting for the first game to be translated (respectfully sobbing here lol). But, as we were doing so, Hilltop, one of my favourite guys in the fan translation romhacking scene, gifted us earlier this year by announcing he was working on the second game, released in 2002 for the PS2. This translation was publicly released on November 1, 2023, and now we finally have means to play a game from this extremely special series fully in English.

After Attack of the Friday Monsters, we ended up getting the latest Shin-chan game localised in English and other languages as well, which is a bliss. Sadly, I played the beginning of it, and it didn’t make much to me. Gameplaywise, it’s definitely a BokuNatsu game, but stripped from its more grounded, believable setting in favour of a more fantastical, whimsical one; at the same time, it’s still a family-friendly cozy Japanese countryside story, which takes out a bit of Shin-chan’s depraved and acid character. At the end of the day, it’s still a beautiful and fun game, and it’s always great to have one of Millennium Kitchen’s games localised in the west, but I still have to give this one another chance, in another time.

Well, that’s when Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 comes in – and, gladly, these games’ stories are not connected and their gameplay is pretty much the same across the board, so we don’t lose anything by playing the second one while we wait for the first one to be translated. :)

As it was with Attack of the Friday Monsters, this game comes upon me in a huge moment in my life. Sadly, a bad one. Adult life sucks. For the past two weeks, especially, it’s become borderline unbearable at many moments. I’m once again going through therapy, after showing signs of having developed a panic disorder. Dealing with finishing up my master’s degree paper, coupled with relationship and economic issues with my partner have been beyond exhausting. It’s been particularly challenging since my partner is going through a series of severe mental health crisis – she’s diagnosed with BPD, and going through similar issues as me regarding work and facing adulthood in this broken, capitalist mess of a world we live in, and for this past week she had to travel alone whilst undergoing severe psychiatric episodes. Me, being away from her, and having to juggle between my concerns about her mental state and dealing with arranging flight delays for her to heal before stepping into a plane again, constantly staying on the phone with our families to share news on her, racing against my paper’s deadline… It’s all been damaging me physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually.

It was because all of that, despite all the work I have yet to do, that I decided to add BokuNatsu2 into my days. I did it for my own good – I just needed to breathe, I needed to feed on some lightness to escape a bit from the gargantuan pressure that my current life is being subjected to.

It was exactly what I needed. For better and for worse.

“Boku” [ぼく] is one of the many ways to say “I” or “Me” in Japanese, and it’s generally used by young and teenager boys. The title of the game, “Boku no Natsuyasumi” [ぼくのなつやすみ], means “My Summer Vacation”. In a fun way to direct the player’s experience, though, “Boku” is also the name of the character you play as, so as much as you can imprint your own experiences onto him, you’re also wearing his shoes and seeing the world as him – the child you can no longer go back to be.

Boku, at 9 years-old, is on the brink of becoming a big brother. In order to properly prepare for the arrival of a new member in the family, Boku’s parents decide to send him to expend his August 1975 summer vacation on the seaside town of Fumi, where his uncle and aunt live and run a guest house alongside their two boys, Takeshi and Shigeru. In this very small countryside town, Boku gets to know each one that lives there and what things they are going through, whilst also being able to collect bugs and having them fight against the ones your cousins have, fish, ride on a bicycle, walk through forests and mountains and swim on the beach, all of that to your child heart’s content. Time passes as you go through each area of the game, which are all beautifully and masterfully hand-painted, and your ultimate objective is to live each day to the fullest, enjoying your 20th century holiday in a time when things were only starting to change, but still went on a much simpler and slower pace.

I don’t think I’m fully able to collect here and put into words every emotion I felt whilst playing BokuNatsu2, even if I’m trying to do so. I got attached to every single person I got to know in that small town, deeply caring for each one of them, and grasping things that Boku, in his innocent interpretations of life, could only left for us, adults, to fully understand. Through the simplest of dialogues, I got hit and overflown by bliss, curiosity and sadness, especially by the end of my time in Fumi, when both me and Boku, as excited as he was to meet his baby brother, didn’t want that summer to end.

You can do as you please as you decide how to spend your time in Fumi – but, if I may, I’d recommend you not to stick too much to guides, and go with the flow of things, discovering things by your own. Believe me, by the moment you step foot into a guide, as helpful as it may be, it takes away a bit of the fun and sense of discovery inherent to BokuNatsu, as much as it would if I prolonged myself talking about its mechanics and specific moments. Instead, I’d rather share a collection of some things I found out by myself and by reading a guide, and which I think can be helpful for new players to enjoy this game as much as possible:

• Yeah, tank controls. Deal with them, they’re way simpler and intuitive here than it would be in, say, a PS1 survival horror game. Press X to walk, left and right on the d-pad to turn, down to turn back of face ahead of you, and O to interact with things and people.
• Press R1 to equip/unequip the bug net without having to open the pause menu every time.
• Talk to Hikari everyday and ask her for her origami fortune-telling. This is a spoiler-free way to know what to do each day, when and who to talk with.
• If you stay awake past 11 p.m., you won’t be able to wake up in time for the morning calisthenics – a small, cute cutscene that plays at the beginning of each day, which daily marks a stamp on an attendance card you have. Not missing these may lead to something special… but I wouldn’t know, since I only figured this thing out by August 10th! :P
• When talking to someone, talk to them again as soon as they finish speaking. Talking to someone twice is the only way to hear everything a character has to say.
• People have their own everyday schedules, doing slightly different things every so often. These are also dictated by the hours of the day. Pay close attention to their behaviours, since that’s how you’ll be able to talk to everyone, increasingly getting to know their passions, fears, stories and personalities.
• The game shows you the passage of time in more ways than just one, and very cleverly through the sounds of the insects in the wilderness surrounding Fumi. In the early morning you can mostly hear birds chirping, but after 10 a.m. the cicadas start to frolic. By noon and after it, you can hear different and louder cicada cries, and close to 5 p.m., the evening Higurashi cicadas start to sing their melancholic symphony, which remains imperious throughout the sunset. Pay attention to these as you’re planning where to go within the time that you’re given.
• That’s not the only way to check time, tough! Check the table at the guest house living room, right next to your bedroom, to find a small clock that you can borrow, and it will remain in the pause menu for the rest of the game!
• Beehives function as warp points: they are generally located on distant places, so if you want to be in somewhere else in town, interact with one of these and Boku will faint from the bee stings, sending you all the way back to the guest house without sacrificing time!
• The bicycle is near the guest house’s front entrance, close to where the car is, but it’s easy to not notice it since its silhouette has been dimmed out. Once you see it, though, there’s no way to unsee it. It’s fun to ride it and it can get you places faster than walking.
• Take care of the flowers every day!
• Give Grandpa Sagara and your Aunt shoulder massages every day. Doing so will grant you 20 Yen per day, which you can use to buy different snacks, a battle ship model to play with and Jet Ciders to get more bottle caps.
• Swim. Not only it’s one of the most fun parts of the game, and not only its lovely to explore an early-PS2 ocean floor, but its there where you can find most of the game’s collectible Jet Cider dinosaur bottle caps, which increase your stamina underwater. There are some very special secrets to be found in the ocean!
• Bug fights are also fun! I’d recommend you to turn your attention to Miyama stags and Rhino beetles as son as they are available, and train two or three as much as you can. When the time to face the last King-rank foe comes, keep your bug cage full of bugs that have a good balance of strength and stamina. Remember this! You’ll absolutely need a lot of bugs for this last fight!
• There’s simply no way to see every single thing in this game in a single playthrough. Don’t worry about missing a thing or two, really: it only adds up to its beautiful replay factor.
• Don’t rush. If you can, and as much as you can, try to play tiny bits of it every day, and it will leave an even bigger impact on you at the end. I sadly had to rush a bit because of my own responsibilities that needed to be taken care of, but I beg you to enjoy this one in tiny scoops.

The rest of it, I won’t spoil any further. This is supposed to be your summer vacation, not mine.

What I can say, though, is what Yasuko points out herself during a dialogue: it feels like the second half of summer is shorter than the first, and I definitely felt it. Personally, I think that’s the only aspect that’s in detriment of the whole experience, and the reason why I’m giving this game a 4.5 star rating instead of a 5 star one: the first half of the game was where I had more fun with; where things happened at a more exciting pace. In the second half, I found myself doing mostly repetitive stuff, not discovering anything particularly new, and just wandering around Fumi to extend my time on it. Don’t get me wrong: the game doesn’t cease to amaze the player with its masterfully crafted simplicity, and it wraps everything up beautifully by the last few days of August; I just wish the quirks of the in-game events were a liiiiittle bit more evenly balanced throughout the entire game’s lenght.

Despite this weak point, though, Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 is a masterpiece.
As pointed out by other users here, this game has the ability to send you back to a simpler time of your life, and remind you of how great it was to experience the world through the lens of a child. At times, the adult Boku’s calm voice comes in as a narrator, telling us, for example, how he felt the sunlight coming through and energising his entire body as he stretched the palm of his hand towards the sun, checking how see-through his flesh looked. Moments as these are the ones I treasured the most, since its exactly through these mundane and simple moments that the game conveys it’s most profound insights into everyday life, our struggles and our own important memories of our respective pasts.

With all the sh#t going on in my life, I can’t really put into words how important it was to me to allow myself to play tiny bits of this game throughout this last week. It reminded me of simple things, the things I treasure and miss the most in myself and in others. It reminded me of happy moments, of my summer countryside holidays with my cousins as we grew up together, of spending entire days watching cartoons and playing by myself in the backyard, of playing soccer with my grandpa, and hearing all sorts of stories from my late grandma, which recently left us, but had been away for a while by the hands of Alzheimer. It reminded me, as Yoshika tells you by the end of the game, that there is, indeed, true happiness, and we should strive to find it wherever it may be in the world.

On the other hand, by the end of it all, I felt utterly devastated. I simply wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Fumi and the summer of 1975. Having to face adulthood again is unbearably tough, and even before finishing the game, I found myself crying in bed a few times by thinking about it and my long-gone childhood – undeniably, the best and happiest time of my life.

As the end credits rolled, it happened – two years after playing Journey, Boku no Natsuyasumi took its crown as the game that made me cry the most. I kid you not: it completely liquified me. It was painful to wait to play this game in English, but having to part with it was extremely more.

I cannot recommend this game enough. It may not appeal to everyone, but it’s games like these that keep reminding me how special, meaningful and powerful video games can be, and its by reviews like this one that I try to share a bit of how much I love them; how much I feel this medium should be valorised and brought upon higher grounds, away from your typical video games that, as important as they might be to the industry and to us players, undeniably paint a limited picture of what games can do and are supposed to be.

As the end of summer draws near (at least here in northern Brazil), My Summer Vacation in Fumi is over. All that is left to me is cherish my time spent on it, magically living under a gentle, adventurously curious and caring 9-year-old boy’s skin, in a place far away from where I am, in a time long before I was even born. Being able to live lives such as these, turning something apart from my reality a part of it, is what makes video games so special and important to me, and as much as I’m eager for the first game to be finally translated, now, I can only think about my time in Boku no Natsuyasumi 2, and be glad that I had the chance to taste it in this lifetime of mine.

Having fun with it but it's perhaps a tad overpriced. It's £39.99 but feels about £24.99-ish. There are a lot of exciting features/unlockables and I think the game accomplishes its goal of making people connect through fashion and gaming even if they don't speak the same language well enough, but as others have said there's no story mode besides a tutorial and it does feel like there's a lot missing... which I guess there is, since they've already announced that there will be monthly updates (or at least updates in Dec/Jan) introducing new content. If this is how they keep players hooked then fine, and I guess there's not a big gap between them from what I can tell, but it still feels like there are missing features that should already be there. Oh, well, at least they're free.

Oh, and there are genderlocked clothes because of course there fucking are. Just lemme put a guy in a skirt, dammit! Literally your entire concept is bringing people with diverse tastes together through their own unique sense of style and you go to what I can only assume is the extra effort of genderlocking clothes? It's already possible for a male muse to request a skirt; why can't they wear one?

While it may have been a remake of the original Castlevania and not a completely original game, Super Castlevania IV was, without a doubt, one of the best Castlevania games ever made. Not only did it add plenty of content to make it the definitive version of the original game at that point, but it also made controlling Simon much more enjoyable and satisfying, with full midair control while jumping and being able to whip in eight different directions. There were no real complaints that I had about the game overall, and it is definitely the best way to bring the series to the 16-bit era. With all that being said, however… in my original review of that game, I did mention that it was not quite my favorite Castlevania game, or even my favorite classicvania game. That game would be released just a couple years later, but only in Japan, while us in the west would get the inferior Castlevania: Dracula X. Eventually, we would get the original version of that game released as part of Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles, where it would get fully translated in English as Castlevania: Rondo of Blood.

In many different ways, Rondo of Blood could be seen as nothing too extraordinary when it comes to a classicvania game, and in other ways, it could even be seen as a step back when compared to what Super Castlevania IV brought to the table. However, what it does add greatly outweighs what was lost in this title, making for what I would consider without a doubt to be the best of the classic Castlevania games. Even back in the day, when I was just playing it for the first time on my Wii out of curiosity, I knew that I preferred this over all the others, despite all the additions that they would bring to the series. There is so much to love about this game, as it manages to still retain the good ol’ Castlevania gameplay intact while still being pretty fun, while also adding plenty of elements that benefit it just enough to make it edge out over the others.

The story is, for the most part, exactly what you would expect for a Castlevania game, but it does add several other elements to make it seem somewhat more original, such as there being several maidens that were kidnapped to be used to bring back Dracula, which does add a little more flavor to the story other then it just being “dracula bad, go kill”, the graphics are incredible, with this definitely being the best looking Castlevania game at this point, and the designs of the enemies, bosses, and Richter himself still looking great all the way to this day, the music is as great as you would expect for a Castlevania game, with plenty of rocking tunes, as well as remixes of classic tracks that hold up extremely well, the control is exactly what you would expect from a Castlevania game, and it works pretty well, even if it isn’t as versatile as what Super Castlevania IV gave us, and the gameplay is also what you would expect from a classic Castlevania game, while also adding in several new additions to make it stand out from others.

The game is a 2D action platformer, where you primarily take control of Richter Belmont, take on a set of at least eight stages across plenty of different gothic environment, fend off plenty of different monsters, both classic and new, which will give you quite the challenge if you aren’t properly prepared to take them on, gather plenty of hearts, money, sub-weapons, and health items throughout the game to assist you in your quest to vanquish the unholy creatures before you, and take on plenty of different bosses that range from familiar faces, to all new foes that will test your strength and reflexes. For the most part, it plays pretty much like your standard Castlevania game, and it doesn’t really warrant any reason to play it over other titles, at least, on the surface level. But, what it does add to the series greatly benefits it in the long run, and makes it fun to come back to even now.

Like with Castlevania III, this game has plenty of different alternating pathways that the player can take, but unlike with Castlevania III, you aren’t just flatout given the option to choose between them, but rather, you have to find them in the stages for yourself. That may seem like a hindrance to some, but for me, I always love shit like this, where you are encouraged to explore these seemingly linear levels to see whatever kinds of secrets you can find, and it is all the more rewarding whenever you do eventually find them. And also like Castlevania III, this game brings back the option of being able to play as multiple characters. As you go through the stages, you can end up finding and saving the maidens that got captured at the beginning of the game, and while most of them are just there for you to save, one of them, Maria, ends up becoming a character that you can swap between at any point. For those of you who haven’t played this game, let me tell you, when you unlock Maria, you will not wanna switch back from playing as her, because she is AWESOME. Not only is her main attack pretty cool and very useful, but the sub-weapons she gets are extremely helpful in certain circumstances, especially against bosses. The only downside to her is that she takes double damage, but with all that stuff that I mentioned earlier, plus having the ability to double jump and perform a special attack on top of that, how can you not want to stick with her for the entire game?

In addition to those new features, we also get fully animated and voice acted cutscenes for the first time in a Castlevania game, and they are pretty well done……… or at least, I would say that, if I wasn’t playing the Japanese version, and I could understand what they were saying. I would play through the English version, but that’s only part of The Dracula X Chronicles, which I don’t have, and I wanna save those for whenever I do get around to that game, so for now, I will just say that the cutscenes do look and sound really good, even if I can’t understand anyone. And finally, this may be a tiny little thing, but I gotta mention it anyway: you no longer permanently lose sub-weapons upon picking up a new one. For every Castlevania game before this, whenever you picked up a new sub-weapon, the one that you were currently holding gets completely replaced, which does kind of suck in some instances, where you end up picking up a sub-weapon that you REALLY didn’t want. Any classic Castlevania player knows this struggle, we have all gone through it. Thankfully, this time around, whenever you do grab a new sub-weapon, the one you were holding gets tossed aside, and you can choose which one you want before proceeding forward. It may not seem like much, but trust me, that is a fix that I am incredibly thankful for.

With all that being said though, as much as I have sung this game’s praises, and while I myself don’t have any problems with it, I can see why people may not prefer this over the previous title. This game returns to the classic control style of the original games, meaning that you can only whip whatever is directly in front of you, and you have an arching jump. While I myself don’t personally mind this, as I am very used to this style of gameplay, those who didn’t like this style and loved the changes that Super Castlevania IV introduced will probably be disappointed when going to this game. But again, that would probably only apply to some certain players, as this didn’t bother me at all. And not to mention, you get a backflip and slide, which Super Castlevania IV didn’t have, so your argument is invalid either way. For me, this game was still great to play through even to this day, and with the added replay value of the many different pathways and the multiple endings that you can get depending on who you beat the game with, it gives the player many different reasons to want to try this game out and go through it again and again.

Overall, this is, in my personal opinion, the best classic Castlevania game ever made, as it not only is another round of that incredibly fun and satisfying gameplay that we all know and love, but the many additions that this game would introduce adds to the amount of charm and fun that can be experienced from it, which I’m sure any longtime fan of the franchise could appreciate. I would definitely recommend it for those who are fans of Castlevania, or even for those who want to get into the series, because even if it may not be as accessible as Super Castlevania IV, it has plenty going for it that makes it worth checking out. Just, you know, make sure you are playing the CORRECT version of the game, and not Dracula X. It isn’t bad by any means, but nonetheless, it should be ashamed of itself for even existing in the first place.

Game #412

Stopped playing not long after finding out characters can only wear what is gender-assigned to them, and as a woman whose fashion revolves around dressing more masculine, that for me was a bit of a big strike. A big part of fashion in real life is going against social norms, so it’s disappointing to offer a fashion game that forces you into so many boxes. The game is a bit boring from how simple it is, too, and having two characters feels impossible, as my wife and I share the game and found that when someone online makes you an outfit, you have no idea which character it’s supposed to be for! Adding an additional character seems to be just for having an extra face to dress up as the story progression is shared between the two characters, too. So weird.

2/5

As a free prototype tutorial thing for a potential full game, this is quite interesting. I like the aesthetics and the overall vibe, as the feeling I get from it reminds me heavily of ICO and Dark Souls 1. The gameplay itself has a lot of potential, with just blocks rewarding you with stamina regen and making it easier to land a parry. It feels very janky and unresponsive at times though, with the character doing shit that feels random at times. The checkpointing also sucks, because after death you have to redo everything (as in, find items and what not all over again). I definitely hope they can polish this and turn it into a full game, though, I would run it for sure.