12802 Reviews liked by FrozenRoy


The Empire Strikes Back of sandbox games starring talking animals. Bigger, darker, more interesting, better laid out (if somewhat padded), Sly 2 is the perfect example of a game that builds off of the original while crafting a compelling place for its own.

kyle hyde why didnt you listen to the 1 star vs 5 star hotel tik toks

Hey, look! It's the coolest game I'll never own!

Panzer Dragoon Saga is, at this point, kind of the cult game - that one that a scarce few had the privilege to play at release and only slightly more have had the good graces to be able to play on the original hardware. To that end, it has something of a legendary status as an elusive but immeasurably important piece of gaming history. Plenty of other people have talked at length about how Team Andromeda busted their asses to put out a blockbuster RPG for the struggling Saturn, while also doing their utmost to keep their vision for the game intact. That, and all the tumult that followed, and the tragic loss of its source code as a result. It's never been officially rereleased and probably never will be, unless that semi-recent Panzer Dragoon remake is a sign of things to come. I won't talk too much more about the history of the game from here on. I just want to talk a little about how I feel it holds up on its own merits, through the eyes of somebody who'd never touched a Saturn before this past month.

The game opens with a young hunter named Edge coming across a mysterious girl sleeping in an ancient stone "casket". Shortly thereafter, a rogue agent of the Empire named Craymen murders the closest thing Edge has to a family before stealing the girl away. Assisted by a dragon with whom Edge seems to share an inexplicable link, the boy sets off for revenge on those who have wronged him - only to end up entangled a web of conspiracy and myth, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

Saga follows on from the Panzer Dragoon duology (the original game and Zwei), and while the decision to leap from a rail shooter ala Star Fox to something more akin to Final Fantasy was a bold move, the developers clearly did everything they could to retain the spirit and stylings of those games. Battles are staged much as they would be in any other game of its type: There are random encounters in the overworld, complemented by predetermined encounters and boss fights. The game uses a pseudo-turn-based system much like Final Fantasy's ATB system, wherein a bar fills over time and permits you to perform an action once it is full. In Saga, you have three such bars, with some abilities requiring you to burn two bars to use, and special effects activating when all three bars are full. Meanwhile, your foes take actions more or less whenever they feel like it (but are ostensibly on a similar timetable to the player's). This game, however, does eschew a lot of the other standards of its time. You can freely reposition yourself in a clockwise-counterclockwise fashion relative to your foes. An indicator shows the advantages your position provides you; moving to a green area keeps you safe from attacks, while staying in a red area opens you up to more damage. You can also move to get an angle on enemy weak points. Enemies can also reposition themselves, and as such, you will need to move frequently throughout a fight to perform well. While there is a standard menu, there are dedicated buttons you can press for using both Edge's gun and your dragon's lasers. Making use of these allows you to get a slight edge on your foes by letting you put out an attack instantly. Your performance at a battle's end is ranked. Eliminating your enemies quickly and while taking minimal damage will result in you obtaining bonus EXP and money, and even items on occasion.

There's more! There is no party system; Edge and his dragon are in this alone, but the dragon's myriad abilities give the player a broad range of options that make up for the lack of a well-rounded group of combatants. The dragon's stats can also be adjusted freely, boosting things such as attack and defense at the cost of magical potency and speed, or vice-versa. Utilizing this ability well can give you an advantage in certain fights, as well as permitting you to learn new abilities of a given category faster. There is no true equipment management in this game, either. You can customize Edge's gun with certain parts, some of which do effectively act as upgrades, but there are no sets of armor or other gear or accessories for you to equip. Instead, you simply grow stronger by either leveling up in the traditional fashion or by having your dragon's capabilities improved after certain plot-related events.

As you explore the game's world, you'll switch between two points of view. On the ground, Edge can explore settlements and towns much as you would in other RPGs. You can shop, talk to NPCs and investigate your surroundings. There's a large amount of dialogue and flavor text, and you can even get extra details by making observations from afar (i.e. eavesdropping on conversations between characters). In the overworld and dungeons, however, you'll instead mount your dragon and take flight. The juxtaposition between these two styles of exploration do a good job of making the game world feel grand in scope, even if it is ultimately fairly confined - more on that later.

Before I really get into it here, I just want to highlight what an artistic achievement this game is. Yes, it does look fantastic for a game of its time. Beyond just the base graphic fidelity, though, the art direction and attention to detail are superb. Panzer Dragoon as a series already does a grand job of feeling alien and fantastical, with a Moebius-inspired (and at one point, hired) post-post-apocalyptic world on display. Saga actually lets you see that world up close and personal, and it feels fresh in a different way than FF7's steampunk/cyberpunk blend did. The soundtrack complements the vibes from top to bottom. Even the cutscenes and the CG animation, which holds up about as well as any ingame CG from that era does, feels much more lively and, well, animated than a lot of other examples. All in all, the presentation is stellar, and it's obvious a lot of love and care went into crafting this virtual world.

Now as to the game itself - it's perfectly serviceable. I do very much enjoy the more active role you get to take in combat, and it does a lot to break up the monotony of the random encounters. Having specific actions mapped to dedicated buttons does a lot to make things feel snappy. Being able to modulate your dragon's stats is fun and the way it influences your available abilities is also kind of neat. With all that being said, it still isn't a particularly deep or challenging game. Not all enemies have weak points to exploit, and maintaining a solid position otherwise amounts to "red bad, green good". You only rarely have to look out for specific enemy tells to avoid damage, and sometimes you just can't avoid damage period, no matter how on top of things you may be. What's more, so many battles can be trivialized by simply letting your biggest attacks rip. Indeed, for all the abilities that are on offer, it's the damage dealing ones that really shine - the healing and support "spells" are cool on paper, but are easily supplanted with items and aren't as useful in the long run as a massive explosion that lets you evaporate a full group of enemies at once. Consumables are plentiful and so is money, so there's not much of an excuse to ever run out. I made it to the end of the game without seeing the game over screen once. Still, that doesn't necessarily have to be a deal breaker; my adventure wasn't hindered by any unreasonable difficulty spikes, which made the (fairly short) experience feel rather brisk and action-filled, at least until the last quarter or so.

The pacing does become an issue eventually, though, and there's an issue of scope as well. Things progress quite quickly in the beginning, with you encountering new characters and areas frequently. Towards the end, though, you start to realize there isn't too much more for you to see beyond what's already been shown off. It's blessedly light on backtracking, but some of the final areas are just mazes of same-y looking hallways and small rooms lined with enemy encounters. The ending is wrapped up fairly quickly and doesn't feel like it ever quite reaches a proper climax. On top of all of that, there's so much worldbuilding that this setting begs for, but even when you pick over all the optional dialogue and other secrets, I feel that you're likely to be left wanting. With all that being said, though, there are a good number of secrets to find, and somebody who is determined to pick over every little corner of the game world likely won't be left disappointed.

All in all, Saga does feel more than a little rushed. The narrative never fully takes flight, and neither does the gameplay. I still found myself enjoying it a lot, though. At this point, I think I just have a definite appreciation for games that don't overstay their welcome. Edge's quest was still a fun ride, and I was glad to be able to spend a bit of time in a world as rich as this one. Still, if you're used to RPGs with more sprawling or intimate game worlds, or combat systems with more meat on their bones, I think you will probably be a fair bit underwhelmed with this game. I don't know if it would ever have quite reached the popularity of those other famous 90's RPGs, but I have no doubt in my mind that if the Saturn had performed better, it would be broadly considered a classic.

And I suppose that really is the tragic thing about Saga as a whole. It's a genuine labor of love that never got the audience it deserved because it just had the poor luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that love never got to develop as far as it should have for that exact reason - I think that if Team Andromeda didn't have the weight of the worlds on their backs to put together a masterpiece, they easily could have made one. I don't know that Panzer Dragoon Saga is as excellent as its reputation might insinuate (at bare minimum, it isn't worth $1500 USD), but it absolutely deserves to be treasured and remembered. Panzer Dragoon Saga and its kin are gems that I'm glad to see are slowly but surely growing their audience, and Saga in particular is one of the best arguments to be made for why video game preservation is so important.

Don't really like the way Yoshi is looking at Mario on the cover art

There's a couple different starting points I could recommend for the Mega Man newcomer, and they tend to vary based on your ability to adapt to antiquation. If starting from the beginning is ruled out, then I'd recommend Mega Man 3. If you don't want even a sliver of antiquation, then you could try 6. If the NES series as a whole is not your forte, I'd recommend 7- (bursts into laughter)

No, but seriously. Up until now, the series has had its share of good mixed with mid, and a rough difficulty that alienated those who don't have the patience required for it (or aren't using save states, anyway). And in the case of games like Mega Man 7 & Mega Man X3, if playing those caused you to say "fuck this" to the rest of the franchise, I wouldn't be surprised. But I think that'd also be an unfortunate shame. Because you would've been THIS close to the short-lived "PS1 Capcom reneissance", which bestowed upon us such classics as Resident Evil, alongside Mega Man X4, Mega Man Legends, and, our main subject for today: Mega Man 8. The first entry in the whole series that I would feel absolutely safe recommending not just to seasoned run 'n gun players, but to anybody.

However, this leads me into a thought that - while I generally do my best to avoid on Backloggd - I just couldn't help but think "How in the world do people think this is a 3/5?" I mean, look, if a person gave it a shot and all they got out of it is "average", I'll just have to respect that, we're all knocking heads about something as trite as game opinions anyway. And I ain't expecting a perfect score either, y'know. Still, here I am scratching my chin, and thinking to myself "Isn't this... what people trying to get into Mega Man wanted?"

It makes me wonder just how much of that opinion stems from a case of franchise burnout, combined with the expectation that the series will eventually innovate and modernize itself. Only for the disappointment to hit, when Mega Man 8 could be jadedly summed up as "just another one." "A prettier Mega Man 7." Well, I'll have to face the facts too. I don't think Mega Man 8 is ground breaking in any way. But comparing it to 7 - and every other prior game for that matter - the difference in accessibility is night and day.

You're not gonna hit the same levels of bullshit here that 7 threw at you, for one. The difficulty is lax enough, that if you wanted to, you could do the final boss without the need for recovery items, because guess what! The attack patterns are actually fair this time, whoOAOAOoaAOaoA! The same goes for every boss, which telegraph their attacks a lot better, making learning them a lot more fun. Bass's boss fight is such a huge glow-up from the one in 7, and goes down as one of my favorite boss encounters amongst the classic Mega Man series.

I even think that something like the snowboarding sequences are really not as bad as some people make it out to be, especially now that Mega Man 8 sports a "permanent checkpoint" feature. Reaching the halfway point of each stage allows you to always restart at that halfway point, even if you lose all your lifes. No more getting booted back to the very beginning, means that the challenge is more reasonable this time around. I don't think the Dr. Wily stages have those halfway checkpoints, but they tend to be half as short, with only one stage testing your limits. But even then, I really have to stress that nothing can reach the disaster that were 7's Dr. Wily stages, so, c'mon. You can do it!

The currency system has also been revamped, so that the bolts you need for the shop can only be found in specific nooks 'n crannies now, instead of being dropped by enemies. To compensate for the lesser quantity, the shop is now dedicated to purchasing permanent abilities. (E-Tanks have been replaced by your robot dog, who you can order to refill your health per every checkpoint, and every death too I think?) It's definitely worth going for them, they'll help you in the long run, but it's important to know that you will not be able to buy every ability in a single run. It's better to concentrate on a "build", by purchasing only the stuff that you think will appeal to your playstyle. Me personally, I've never understood the usefulness of stuff like the Laser & Arrow Shots, but being able to buy stuff like "Start the stage with 4 lifes instead of 2", or being able to recover more health from energy capsules helps tremendously.

Okay, so far my entire sales pitch has just been "It's good because it's easier", but that may not be enough to sway anybody from a 3/5 rating. And I suppose I'll have to accept that if you just don't have interest in the Mega Man formula as it currently stands, period, then... maybe this one ain't gonna do much for you. But right now, I'm focusing on that one guy that DOES see the fun in Mega Man's gameplay, they just don't jive with the difficulty. And if you are that person, then this is the earliest example of a Mega Man title you should be able to enjoy.

On top of the accessible difficulty, I also think the presentation here holds up pretty well. Just because the series didn't transition to 3D, doesn't mean it's not taking advantage of the PS1's capabilities. The spritework and backgrounds took a step-up in detail, and every stage sticks out in its vibrant and distinct choice of color. It's nice to stop and soak in the visuals once in a while. The soundtrack's up there as one of the series's chillest, but still manages to capture the essence of what these games are known for, while going for a unique sound that's difficult to find in other places. Both of these elements contribute to giving Mega Man 8 its own sense of identity. A stark contrast from the 6 NES Mega Mans that all felt like expansion packs to each other, Mega Man 8 toys around with presentation and mechanical variety in such a way that feels entirely familiar, yet suitable for a new generation of console.

I really like the cutscenes too, and I will die on this hill. Not that I'm blind to just how objectively terrible they are, but you're no fun if you think that's a detriment to the experience! The way the dubbing on this came out is its own miracle to appreciate, just so utterly "we don't give a fuck" in its energy that it goes back around to being just as entertaining as the Resident Evil 1 cutscenes. There ain't that many of them, but each one is unforgettable. Shoutouts to Wh- Mega Man's actress for tanking that 30-second scream. As a kid, it made me go "jesus christ." As an adult, it still makes me go "jesus christ", but now I'm more baffled than unsettled.

I don't know, man, this game just hits right. This is a properly polished Mega Man, right here. I could probably set my standards higher and ask for more, but considering that this would be the last classic Mega Man game for over a dozen years, I'd rather appreciate that the series managed to get a pretty pleasant one in before it got shelved in favor of its spinoffs. I'm not the type who needs innovation. I need heart. 8 has mine.

Now, if somebody could get Mega Man out of that recolored Looney Tunes background in the cover art, I would much appreciate it.

Shoddily programmed and designed, reaches fangame territory with how damage spongey the encounters are as they lob heavily-scripted attacks that force you into safezones if you want to survive. Has one of the worst auto-scrollers conceived. And Axel's spread shot seems explicitly useless? It's supposed to be a 'destroy incoming enemies/missiles' type of weapon but has borderline nonexistent damage and less reliable hitboxes than the regular and homing shots. PAL version felt a lot more balanced - higher weapon damage and maybe slightly more HP, - but doesn't correct any issues with patterns or enemy placement. I owe it a full playthrough when the taste of the JP version washes out.

Between this, Spectacular Sparky and Xenogunner, it feels like any run-and-gun that tries to crib Treasure turns out to be a stinker.

When a friend first asked me how I would describe Final Fantasy II, I was about half way through the game, and had just met Leila. I didn’t really know how to describe it, it was something I couldn’t compare to anything I’d played before. It led me through the story like an early JRPG but with early WRPG mechanics. It was bizarre and completely threw me off from what I learned in FFI. So much of what I learned from the first game didn’t matter at all now, and what it was trying to teach me seemed almost alien. So of course, my natural response to my friend was a wary, “Have you ever played… Morrowind?”

Final Fantasy II is nothing like Morrowind. Well, it has its similarities, as comparing any game from the same genre to each other would, I guess. I came into Final Fantasy II having only the original Final Fantasy to compare it to… eh, within the Final Fantasy series at least, as I have played a handful of 3rd-gen RPGs before it. Maybe it’s why I ended up thinking of FFII so positively compared to others. Maybe that’s a negative, but I like to think of it as a positive. It keeps me thinking of FFII in the bubble it originally released to, but unfortunately that also lacks me being able to compare it to much else.

One thing I should warn before diving fully into the review is that I did play the game in Japanese, so some of the names for things might be spelled differently from my own personal transliteration vs other later official English translations (wait his name was Josef and not Joseph this whole time?!). The Famicom version I believe is also missing quite a few additions that future versions had added later on, including ones added even a couple years later in the Famicom dual-release of both FFI + FFII.

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From first glance, I could immediately tell that Final Fantasy II had improved drastically from its predecessor. The creators were able to expand A LOT on what they made with the original. Just to list a few:

• You’re now able to fully go into buildings and walk around. You can even see little Firion sleeping in the inn!
• There's a crazy amount of new magic you can learn (which you see early on thanks to Ming Wu).
• You can now see your character’s negative status effects play as a funny symbol on top of them in battle (black glasses for blind, green swirls for poison, they literally turn into a rock when hit with the stone status!). It looks great and makes it easier for players to remember what exactly the current status of their party is just at a glance.
• The character designs are more varied and more detailed, even if Firion is just the fighter sprite from the first game. With Maria, we can now see our first true playable female character in the series, rather than the assumed fully-male cast of the first (or at least that’s how the English guidebook describes the cast which uh, infamously got quite a few things wrong about the game, so take that as you will LOL). You meet a very colorful cast of characters right at the start as well, with a good amount having fairly unique designs (Ming Wu is my favorite)!
• Lastly, the thing I noticed and was so happy to see was that you can now save whenever you want. Well, whenever you’re on the overworld map. But, still! It’s a button that’s always on your menu screen. You don’t have to bank on having a hotel or cottage in your pocket so you can save before a dungeon, which can make expeditions infinitely less frustrating.

The story of FFII is surprisingly engaging for a 3rd-gen game, with it starting out with a 5 minute long interactive cutscene kinda thing. Watching it, you quickly learn that you now have a set story with characters that have a set destiny. You can name them and train them to be whatever you want, but no matter what, the story has a path it will always take with characters you can’t always predict. Oh boy, how you can not predict. About 2/3rds of the temporary party members who join you end up dying! Even NPCs you don’t interact with too often end up dying! But hey, the story does focus around war, and what’s war without loss. Though more realistically, I imagine they killed off a majority of your short-term party members as a way to cycle through different characters and show the player different builds they themselves could evolve on. My favorite non-player characters that I met along the way were Paul the Ninja, and Sid and his son, who offer a shuttle with their flying boat not unlike the one from the first game… hey wait, why does Sid have his clearly underaged son in a bar? Oh well, it works for the story. Just try not to think about it!

There’s little things I can nitpick though, of course. I absolutely hate the new map. I understand this map is WAY bigger than the last, and the illusion of the globe allows them to fit more with less, but holy shit its soooo slow - and if I just want to check what direction I want to go to reach a dungeon, I have to slowlyyyyyyy wait for the globe to turnnn and inchhhh and oooo we’re almost there, baby!!!! Well, this shouldn’t be a problem, right? Final Fantasy I, Dragon Quest, Legend of Zelda are all games that provide a full map for you in the manual to glance at, so there must be one in this manual- nope. Okay, what about the guidebook? You know, the thing you spend extra money on to hold your hand and show you how to get through the whole game- nope. There’s no maps at all actually, even for the dungeons! Remember how Final Fantasy I had big maps for the player to scan through for everything, all within the manual packaged with the game? Well, Final Fantasy II says “Fuck you, why don’t you figure out,” as they hand you Slowpoke Rodriguez’s favorite class globe.

The manual and guidebook at least are very useful in including every little detail about the new leveling system, and also informing the player on what all the new magic does. A stupid complaint, but skimming through this lovely mapless guidebook, I was excited to see Chocobos appear, which are like giant chickens your player can ride on! Unfortunately, I never ran into them once throughout the entire game. They seemed cute, and the book says you can find them in a specific forest if you wander, but I never found one, even when purposefully looking for them. Oh well, maybe I was just unlucky!

Wait, that’s it? Those are the only complaints? It seems like FFII should smell like roses in comparison to FFI after all that, shouldn’t it? Well, it does…! It does, except for one very small, very tiny detail…

GAMEPLAY AND RPG MECHANICS

FFII doesn’t level in the way that Dragon Quest or even the original Final Fantasy do. In fact, the closest comparison I can personally make to a game that I’ve played that came out before FFII is regular tabletop DND. When you want to level up, you have to focus on a specific skill or trait. It’s not as simple as leveling up your magic to improve your magic; you have to focus on what exactly you want to level up in your magic. Did you want your magic attack to be stronger? Then focus on using the specific spell you want to be stronger, as the more you use it the more it levels up. Did you need more MP? Then use more magic to get more magic! Using magic in general also helps level up your magic strength… but specifically your intelligence or spirit which correlate to your black and white magic respectively. See where I got the Morrowind comparison? It’s a lot, but as you can see with my magic example, a lot of it relies on each other, so if you play naturally, you should still level up naturally like you would in FF1.

That would be all fine and dandy, except you don’t level up the way the creators intended. I don’t know whose idea it was to go against the golden rule for JRPGs since Dragon Quest: Allow players to level up quickly with the game requiring more points to level up the further they play. For example, to get to level 2 in… let’s say using a sword, maybe you need to use it 10 times before it reaches level 2. After that, then you need to use it 20 times to reach level 3, and so far so forth. FFII doesn’t do that, and I think that’s where its biggest flaw shows. It requires you to use whatever it is you want 100 times each time you want to level it up, all from the start. It’s awful, to put it lightly. The great thing to remember is all the Final Fantasys on the Famicom are insanely broken! As a result, I quickly found out that you can input a move on a party member and quickly cancel it and do it again. It only takes one move but it still counts the first use, essentially doubling the points I get from it. Do this 50 times, and you just leveled yourself up in one battle. Though of course, it’s just that one thing you leveled up, whether that be a magic skill, your attack, defense, HP, MP, or whatever else you focused on. It unfortunately also can mess with the leveling a crazy amount as well. Ugh, just think! This would be significantly less of a problem if they just followed the guide of leveling-up starting fast only to slow it down the further you go. They did it in FFI, so they must have found an issue to force the mandatory 100 points for FFII… On top of that all, the same issues with magic in FFI still exist in FFII, with a nice chunk of spells being completely broken and not working the way they intended. Most infamously it affects Ultima, a spell intended to be the most powerful in the entire game. The only way to figure out what works and what doesn’t is through trial and error- how horrendous! Thankfully, we live in the future, so I was able to quickly find a guide online that lets modern players know what magic to not waste their time on.

This is the biggest turn-off of Final Fantasy II to players, and I don’t blame them. I especially don’t blame players who had to try and figure out everything without the manual guiding them through this incredibly involved leveling system. I found the manual and guidebook for FFII on Internet Archive, and even with that by my side I constantly had to look at it over and over to remember what exactly I had to do to level-up myself up. Eventually, I just wrote and drew a shitty guide just for myself so I could more easily memorize it. In the end, I got there! Then I had to read and memorize all the new magic spells! Oh, well. As someone who loves journaling and taking notes, I really didn’t mind it, but of course I can understand how unbearable it could be for someone who doesn’t like it. It reminded me, again, of tabletop gaming and how when I play that with friends, I often fill a whole booklet with my little notes. Maybe I was used to it? Maybe I just felt it immersed me better into the story, and helped me feel more understanding of how the gameplay meshed with the narrative. In the end, it helped me gain a bit of an emotional attachment to it all; characters and game mechanics alike.

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Well, how would I compare it to my friend now, after finishing it? I’ve been told the Romancing Saga series takes heavy inspiration from it mechanically, and by the time I finished I could see the Star Wars parallels loud and clear. Obviously, it has its Wizardry, Ultima, and Dragon Quest influences… What didn’t back then? But how would I describe FF2?

It’s broken, it’s unreliable, it’s confusing. But it’s also rewarding, emotional, and easy to get wrapped into. It tried crazy things for both the time and platform it released on, but it found its people, and its people found it.

Final Fantasy II is like Final Fantasy II. You wanna know what THAT means? Well, play it and you’ll find out!

4/5

It's a fine enough game but for some reason every time you brush against another car the camera zooms out in such a way that I swear it makes the experience to be incredibly annoying.

First person to review this game it seems. 8 year old me was absolutely obsessed with this game, I can't even begin to imagine how many hours I sunk into it

dawg the literal "master of breasts" was a lead character designer on this. it better be good.

A great turn based open world RPG strategy game that served as the predecessor for the Heroes of Might and Magic series of games. The visuals are serviceable and the interface is easy to understand. Gameplay has a decent amount of variety to it thanks to the varies types of units you can recruit and four hero classes with their own unique sets of skills.

Let it not be said that the Dragon Slayer games aren't creative. Unfortunately, the concepts in these games just don't land the execution.

Like its predecessor, it again plays with non-linear gameplay concepts, but this time it lets you build a custom party (with tons of classes) to dungeon crawling with. Having your party follow you around just doesn't make for very good combat, especially when that combat often consists of just getting swarmed by enemies. The dungeon crawling itself also gets repetitive and monotonous quite often. I do need to note that the music is fantastic and it's a shame that the rest of the game just doesn't come together well.

Princess Peach Showtime was a clever, cheerful, and entertaining game for the Switch late in its current lifespan. It’s a fun game aimed towards a younger audience, but my wife and I thought it would be fun to play together. We had a great time, and ended up really loving this little theater world. It took us about 4 days to play through it all, about 2 hours a day after work. It is a little short, but would be perfect length if it was made for a handheld like the 3DS. I can’t help but wonder if the people who made it were originally making games for the 3DS, and with the Switch being both handheld and a home console, sorta ended having to merge a handheld game into working as a home console game as well. It explains the short playtime, and Nintendo must have been so happy to have an excuse to slap a home console price right on top, too. That is really my only complaint, the pricing, but at this point I guess I should know that Nintendo is Nintendo… ugh lol.

Besides that, I had a very lovely time playing Princess Peach’s Showtime! It seemed to really know its audience as my wife was obsessed with seeing Peach in all her different outfits, and even getting to decorate her look when off the stage. I’m a bit more of a tomboy, but I still had fun! I like Peach (totalllyyyy wasn’t in love with her as a kid, what hm? Who said that?) and it was cool seeing her perform different roles when she’s often been typecast as the damsel-in-distress since day one. Plus, her outfits were pretty cute! I dunno, I liked it! But I can understand complaints people have had as well. Check it out if you really love Peach, but otherwise you’ll probably have more fun with something else.

3.5/5

In this game you slam your Joystick Up and Down to the music which results in it hitting the inner plastic edge of the joystick hole on your controller, making a clacking sound IRL to the beat of the music in game. They were think wayyy outside the box when they came up with that man. Phheww they were oh so clever!

Anyways Mojika is goated with her darthmaul twinbrush thing. When people say we need more strong female characters in media I hope they take notes yall.


I am grateful for the classic controller support but this game just felt completely unfinished. It felt like they just made the combat worse than the previous game for no reason. The post credits cutscene was pretty hype though ngl.