I think the main cast and story at the core of this are excellent and very compelling. It's a sweet narrative and the kind that's important to share and feels like it comes from a personal place. But my problem with ASFTU is that you mostly see those develop at the start and end of each chapter, and what's left in between is really tedious and mundane adventure game gameplay that becomes very frustrating after a bit. By the end of chapter 3 I had to look up a guide because I couldn't fathom wasting any more time running from one end of the game's word to the other in vain, having missed an important item or conversation necessary to continue the main path.

Unfortunately, on top of being tedious, the "filler" feels like it kind of ruins the cohesion between the main mechanic of the game and its main story. "Space diving" as they call it, is the protagonist's ability to enter the mind of NPCs to see a manifestation of their lives and struggles, as well as the power to manipulate what's inside in order to help them move forward with their lives. This works extremely well when it's used for actual key events of the narrative, but when it's part of a mundane fetch quest... Not so much. In fact, some of the less important space dive segments ARE very good, but the disparity in quality and seriousness can be bonkers: One moment you'll be helping a martial arts' teacher realize that his passion and vocation for passing his knowledge to vulnerable kids in order to improve their lives is more important to him than pursuing a more stable, but less fullfiling office job, and the next you'll be breaking apart a guy's alarm clock so that he falls asleep in real life and you can steal his step ladder. The tonal shifts aren't great and usually come from content that feels like a complete waste of time.

And yet, again, I did like the core narrative very much and can't just chalk off this as a bad game. But definitely one you're gonna need a lot of patience with. And it's a real shame because I believe it could have been a phenomenal, say, 4 hour long gem. But they went for 12-ish hour one instead with a lot of wrinkles.

A heartfelt story about identity and belonging with an immediately lovable found family cast.

Time loops aren't exactly a novel theme for games anymore, but ISAT still surprised me several times with its take on it and how it integrates the whole thing in its gameplay. The permutations that the time loop introduces to the classic command based RPG formula are genuinely impressive, especially considering this is an RPG maker game, and add variety and depth to what looks like a fairly straightforward adventure at first. You'll have to juggle elements such as being able to travel backwards /and forward/ and time, specific save points recording the current state of your party (including every member's level as well as your inventory at the time), a time travel currency that allows you to travel back or forward to specific floors of the main dungeon, with the option of selecting the version of it that has all normally locked doors opened, etc. And that's without mentioning the clever and sometimes harrowing ways time traveling is addressed in the story proper. It's brilliant stuff all around.

The premise itself is quite novel too. You're Siffrin, a mysterious, wandering rogue traveling with a party of heroes accompanying a chosen heroine tasked with defeating a villain that's been freezing the population in time. You're at the end of their journey, starting the day before the final confrontation, and the party has been traveling and getting closer to one another for some time now, so the group dynamic is already established, but all of them have their own struggles and secrets, which makes it so you'll continue unraveling new things about them as well as helping Siffrin break out of their own shell.

The cast is also racially diverse and predominantly (completely?) queer, which makes the found family aspect of the group hit all the harder. My favorite character was Odile, a japanese old lady (this is a fantasy world, but the story clearly takes place in fantasy France and a couple other real world countries are referenced as well) that's the defacto mom of the group. Always sarcastic and a bit jaded, but she'll never hesitate to put her life before the rest's at a moment's notice.

The combat uses ATB and a rock, paper, scissors system that's deceptively versatile and fun, and the dynamic character portraits you see at all times during battle help add further characterization to an already fairly charming cast.

The game does get a bit tedious and repetitive after a certain point, but never by accident, if that makes sense (your mileage may vary on how good of a justification the game's themes will be for that). It worked for me, personally, and honestly, my one gripe with the game would be that it allows you to ignore the critical path at almost all times, but exploring can often be a waste of time because some elements that will become important in further loops have no use before their respective story triggers come into play.

All in all, though, I thought the game was wonderful. It's clearly very inspired by Undertale, but it tackles very different topics, and those it shares with it are handled surprisingly differently. It has one of the most lovable casts I've seen in game in years too. Can't recommend it enough.

Very creative spin on a familiar formula. It may look like yet another Pokémon clone, but the dev team made sure to only borrow what works from it and carefully replace every other aspect of its design to ensure the experience is both meaningfully different and consistently challenging in a fun way. The double battles-format + fusion combo makes the game have infinite possibilities in terms of strategy and the fact that you do not own creatures, but have your two characters transform into them changes the way you think about things like buffs and status effects, as they transfer between forms.

The open world and complete freedom you have to tackle your objectives makes it so that the game is very replayable and your experience will be meaningfully different from others' as well, and that's without taking into account the neat modifiers you unlock upon beating the game, with multiple randomization options and even a bonafide nuzlocke mode.

And boy, that soundtrack. The dynamic integration of vocals in every battle theme (of which there are many) never gets old, and complements the game's style extremely well. The game is oozing personality.

Only real complaint I have is that performance on Switch can be really rough, but that's about it. Rest of the experience was superb.

2023

I was incredibly fortunate to play this while visiting my mom.

Lovely and very real game.

This has to be one of the most stylish, rich and tight-controlling Mega Man-inspired games out there. The grappling hook, while mostly optional, adds a lot of depth to your movement and the combat alike, as do the many unlockable burst moves you can customize your character with.

The melee-based combat can feel awkward at first, but you get used to it, and that one passive skill that furthers your attacks' reach certainly helps. Game is basically martial arts Mega Man Zero.

The levels are all winners too, which is super rare for this kind of game (even actual Mega Man ones). I think the only dud is the short, missile-dodging sections in the highway stage that mimic MM8's slide/jump ones, but that's about it. The level design is perfectly suited for fast gameplay and all levels are a joy to traverse, making you want to replay them to try and get through them faster right away.

Music is incredible too. Dominic Ninmark never disappoints.

But yeah, can't recommend this enough. I hope it does well so we can see a followup someday.

Painfully slow and perfectly safe roller coaster ride of mediocrity.

It's crazy and a little frustrating to me that this gem remained unlocalized for this long, ignoring the heavily altered DS remake.

Final Fantasy III is an expertly guided, breezy and charming adventure that takes elements from both of its predecessors to further solidify the foundation that would characterize later games.

One very impressive feat is that despite being a relatively short experience, its scope and ambition are nothing to sneeze at. There are moments that shocked me with how boldly it expanded its world, and the themes about growing up and the hardships and uncertainty that come with the process of finding oneself are cleverly represented in the job system, requiring you to adopt different roles depending on the situation and sometimes straight up forcing you to do so.

The overworld theme, Eternal Wind, really sets the sort of melancholic and uncertain tone of the heroes' adventure, but the game isn't shy to have some fun with some goofy scenarios that would become a staple of the series in the future. The fake warriors of light specifically had me in tears with how immediately funny they were. Final Fantasy III is daunting in its scope but still whimsical and strange, and it's all the better for it.

Returnal is an impossible game.

Not in the sense that it's difficult (and it is), but as a product and work of fiction it is full of contradictions, and yet the result is fantastic.

Returnal it's intense, action-packed and has Housemarque's arcade sensibilities all over it, and yet it's also has an incredibly engrossing atmosphere and sense of space.

Returnal is a rogue-like with a very high level of challenge, that expects (and wants you) to die dozens of times before seeing it through, and yet it's also very narrative-focused, making sure every single thing present in its world has a deeper meaning and purpose.

Returnal is has unbelievably tight controls, with some of the most satisfying movement you'll ever experience in a 3D game, which seems to signal it's all about its gameplay and the narrative may only be there to add flavor, and yet Selene's predicament and further struggles are very much at the center of it all and can serve as the main drive to encourage the player to keep on trying.

Returnal is brutally difficult, at times can even feel unfair in some ways, due in no small way to its unusual run times bordering in an hour per run, and maybe even two. And yet it was just impossible to me to give up on it, no matter how many times I got destroyed by the same mini-boss the game threw at me by surprise when I clearly wasn't well-equipped enough to stand a chance against yet.

It's incredible to me that after seeing its true ending after many struggles and a lot of incremental growth as a player, what drives me to go back to this outstandingly fun game is its story. It won't leave my mind to the point I just have to spend more time in the ever dangerous and merciless Atropos, because I simply have to see every nook and cranny it has to offer.

While I see why some would consider this a kind of lackluster collection, especially with the pricing in mind, I think as a compilation with arguably the best versions of each game it does a great job. The new animated intros and outros are gorgeous, adorable and funny, the restored cutscenes in Sonic CD look incredible, the 3D islands used for the menus are very pretty and the way the characters interact in them is great, and the museum has quite a lot of interesting material from the series.

I didn't encounter any glitches whatsoever in my back to back playthrough of all four games on Switch, but I'm aware other people are experiencing a lot of issues.

Some short thoughts on each game:

- Sonic 1: This is dramatically worse than I remember. I know it's pretty common to see people joking about how Green Hill is the only good level in the game but.... Maybe it is???? Kinda??? Lmao. I really don't mind too much when 2D Sonic straight up doesn't let you go fast. Yes, speed is his most well-known characteristic, but I've always seen it as more of a marketing thing than something that should be prioritized above all else in his games.

Sonic 1's levels though... They all feel like the team was still figuring out how to design fun levels around Sonic's movement and physics, and most zones have fun portions, but IMO none of them really feel wholly good and fun save for Green Hill, which is natural because it's the last one they designed.

- Sonic CD: Yes, these levels are kind of a mess, but with the years I've found that if you're not seriously engaging with the time travel mechanic purposely and instead treat the game like a roller-coaster that you just roll with it can be pretty chill. And if you really care that much about saving the futures and getting a good ending you can just do the special stages (which are good for once), get all the time stones and call it a day.

Gorgeous, beautiful game. The restored cutscenes look incredible too.

- Sonic 2: This game is still good and I had a good time, but it's bizarrely overrated, I'm sorry.

- Sonic 3&K: I genuinely love every bit of this game except for Sandopolis Zone, which is horrible, and I guess the bonus states (not blue spheres), which aren't great, but you have no reason to engage in them if you don't want to, so who cares.

Now that I'm older and I am interested in more than just the action in this I've gotten to love the game even more. The attention to detail to the environments, the backgrounds, and the way they're used to add to the storytelling is very impressive. A game like this having a cohesive narrative and a pseudo cinematic presentation despite being an otherwise arcade-ass console game is extremely cool. Love it.

Thankfully I got over the changed tracks in 3 too. They're actually quite good, except for the whack-ass instrumentation in Carnival Night Zone, what even is that, lol.

Replaying these has also confirmed for me something I've had in my mind for a couple of years, that platformers with restrictive or non straightforward jumps and/or physics are my favorites, because when done well the very act of jumping and moving around is engaging and can feel rewarding. I love it in GnG and Castlevania, and I love it in 2D Sonic. The momentum is just inherently fun to the point that just doing the most basic platforming challenges is entertaining. The lava reef boss in &K is s great example of that, and my love for this sort of movement is what makes me not care that much about speed for the sake of it, although I have to admit the absurd speeds you can reach in S3K when you play well enough is exhilarating, so I won't complain when that's done well, obviously.

Very conflicted about this one.

Visually it's very sleek and stylish, the music is wonderful, every single level is fun and well paced and the skill progression throughout the campaign is extremely tight; you won't even notice when you've gotten to the point you're using almost every single skill in the later levels effortlessly. Game design is just top notch.

The damn writing though. Ugh. What a shame. This could have been an all timer.

Depressingly broken and unfinished as it is, this is dramatically better than what people would have you believe. Would have absolutely become one of the most beloved in the series had it had the chance to be finished properly.

Still kino, baby.