Giantmushroom
Review in progress:
A solid Mario RPG held back by severe pacing issues and poor quality-of-life.
A solid Mario RPG held back by severe pacing issues and poor quality-of-life.
Review in progress:
A massive letdown. Animal Crossing: New Horizons fails to innovate in any meaningful way and regresses in every area besides graphics. It falls flat on every level.
The villagers are extremely bland, even compared to New Leaf. All of the distinct personalities from Wild World are gone. They all feel exactly the same and have nothing interesting to say. The character backstories for some of the more significant NPCs were omitted as well. A lot of furniture sets are missing, including some of my favorites. Money is trivial to get and there are very few things to spend it on after you finish paying off your house. There's only one shop upgrade. There's very little to work toward, even for Animal Crossing standards.
The crafting and resource gathering is extremely repetitive and tedious. It doesn't enhance the core gameplay at all and feels like filler. The lack of quality-of-life in general is appalling. Everything takes way longer than it should. Want to craft something? Unskippable animation and only one item can be made at a time. Someone showed up at your island or left? Unskippable dialogue and loading. Want to go to another island? You guessed it. Want to buy something but don't remember if you already own it? Either check manually in the catalog or risk double buying. I could go on and on.
The game was missing key features at launch that were like diving, that were later added in as part of a "free update" (AKA actually finishing the game.) The online connectivity is abysmal, which isn't unsurprising given that it's a Nintendo game, but is nonetheless inexcusable. It takes forever to visit another island and there's a high probability of disconnects occurring. The fact that they're charging money and it's still this bad is insane.
The ambient, understated, and melancholy soundtrack from the previous games is replaced with forgettable tropical island nonsense. They even managed to mess that up!
The island theme doesn't really change anything gameplay wise and is just glorified window dressing. They didn't take advantage of the more powerful hardware for anything other than improved visuals.
The world feels so small. It's more cramped than cozy. Why not allow us to explore if you're going to add crafting and resource gathering? I'd much rather go spelunking or sailing for materials than collect seashells on the same tiny island for the 700th time. What's even new here besides the poorly-implemented crafting/gathering? A smartphone and tools that break? Oh boy! Tool durability feels completely out of place and getting the golden tools isn't rewarding anymore as a result.
I'm done with this franchise. They've probably learned nothing, given how much of a critical and financial success this is. Like Pokémon, Animal Crossing is too big to fail.
A massive letdown. Animal Crossing: New Horizons fails to innovate in any meaningful way and regresses in every area besides graphics. It falls flat on every level.
The villagers are extremely bland, even compared to New Leaf. All of the distinct personalities from Wild World are gone. They all feel exactly the same and have nothing interesting to say. The character backstories for some of the more significant NPCs were omitted as well. A lot of furniture sets are missing, including some of my favorites. Money is trivial to get and there are very few things to spend it on after you finish paying off your house. There's only one shop upgrade. There's very little to work toward, even for Animal Crossing standards.
The crafting and resource gathering is extremely repetitive and tedious. It doesn't enhance the core gameplay at all and feels like filler. The lack of quality-of-life in general is appalling. Everything takes way longer than it should. Want to craft something? Unskippable animation and only one item can be made at a time. Someone showed up at your island or left? Unskippable dialogue and loading. Want to go to another island? You guessed it. Want to buy something but don't remember if you already own it? Either check manually in the catalog or risk double buying. I could go on and on.
The game was missing key features at launch that were like diving, that were later added in as part of a "free update" (AKA actually finishing the game.) The online connectivity is abysmal, which isn't unsurprising given that it's a Nintendo game, but is nonetheless inexcusable. It takes forever to visit another island and there's a high probability of disconnects occurring. The fact that they're charging money and it's still this bad is insane.
The ambient, understated, and melancholy soundtrack from the previous games is replaced with forgettable tropical island nonsense. They even managed to mess that up!
The island theme doesn't really change anything gameplay wise and is just glorified window dressing. They didn't take advantage of the more powerful hardware for anything other than improved visuals.
The world feels so small. It's more cramped than cozy. Why not allow us to explore if you're going to add crafting and resource gathering? I'd much rather go spelunking or sailing for materials than collect seashells on the same tiny island for the 700th time. What's even new here besides the poorly-implemented crafting/gathering? A smartphone and tools that break? Oh boy! Tool durability feels completely out of place and getting the golden tools isn't rewarding anymore as a result.
I'm done with this franchise. They've probably learned nothing, given how much of a critical and financial success this is. Like Pokémon, Animal Crossing is too big to fail.
The worst version of a bad game. Kaizo Mario ROM hack.
Pretty boring. The other 3D flight combat games I've played are more interesting to me (not that there are many to begin with)
2001
Will try again if they add it to Xbox backwards compatibility list.
Valkyria Chronicles 4 is one of the safest "paint by the numbers" sequels I've ever had the misfortune of playing. It feels more like a half-baked DLC than a standalone product and fails to move the series forward in any meaningful way.
Aside from minor balance tweaks and introducing a new class, the gameplay is nearly identical to the original. The low accuracy of attacks makes combat feel overly luck-based and leads to a lot of frustration. To make matters worse, they still don't give you an accuracy percentage, which makes it harder to strategize effectively. Graphically, there are no visible improvements despite the ten-year gap between 1 and 4. The vast majority of the assets are ripped straight from 1 and the same can be said for most of the audio. Bafflingly, they decided to retain the much-maligned ranking system (only the number of turns to complete the mission matters). It was dreadful in the original and is just as bad here. You still can't skip enemy turns, which is a feature Fire Emblem added in 2012. Being able to speed them up a bit doesn't count.
The story and characters in 1 were subpar but tolerable. All of the core characters this time are exceedingly unlikeable, annoying, and childish. They've doubled down on the fanservice as well. All of this makes the juxtaposition between the anime bullshit and serious war themes even more jarring. Any attempt to tell a compelling story is completely undermined as a result.
This belongs in the graveyard along with all of the other mishandled SEGA IPs. Do they even have anything left at this point?
Aside from minor balance tweaks and introducing a new class, the gameplay is nearly identical to the original. The low accuracy of attacks makes combat feel overly luck-based and leads to a lot of frustration. To make matters worse, they still don't give you an accuracy percentage, which makes it harder to strategize effectively. Graphically, there are no visible improvements despite the ten-year gap between 1 and 4. The vast majority of the assets are ripped straight from 1 and the same can be said for most of the audio. Bafflingly, they decided to retain the much-maligned ranking system (only the number of turns to complete the mission matters). It was dreadful in the original and is just as bad here. You still can't skip enemy turns, which is a feature Fire Emblem added in 2012. Being able to speed them up a bit doesn't count.
The story and characters in 1 were subpar but tolerable. All of the core characters this time are exceedingly unlikeable, annoying, and childish. They've doubled down on the fanservice as well. All of this makes the juxtaposition between the anime bullshit and serious war themes even more jarring. Any attempt to tell a compelling story is completely undermined as a result.
This belongs in the graveyard along with all of the other mishandled SEGA IPs. Do they even have anything left at this point?
Review in progress:
A great 2D platformer. It lacks the difficulty of SMB3 and the secret exits of SMW, which is a shame. Like with other Mario games, boss battles are still too short and easy.
An option to disable the crying sound would be nice. It's really annoying.
It's unfortunate that this was never added to the virtual console. The GBA version doesn't count.
A great 2D platformer. It lacks the difficulty of SMB3 and the secret exits of SMW, which is a shame. Like with other Mario games, boss battles are still too short and easy.
An option to disable the crying sound would be nice. It's really annoying.
It's unfortunate that this was never added to the virtual console. The GBA version doesn't count.
1987
Cursed
Review in progress:
Addresses none of the problems of the original game. The story/writing and gameplay are awful. There's nothing of value here aside from the music and visuals, which apparently must've been enough to collectively woo over the gaming press. Did they even play for more than half an hour?
Addresses none of the problems of the original game. The story/writing and gameplay are awful. There's nothing of value here aside from the music and visuals, which apparently must've been enough to collectively woo over the gaming press. Did they even play for more than half an hour?
2002
The off-screen instant death pits are a dealbreaker.
1991
Baby's first puzzle game. The gameplay and graphics are on par with modern GameFreak titles.
Didn't hold my attention. The presentation is really bare-bones (even for Game Boy standards).
On an unrelated note, it's ridiculous that none of the old mainline Pokémon games are available on Nintendo Switch. My tinfoil hat theory is that the Pokémon Company thinks it would hurt sales of the newer (and vastly inferior) Switch entries.
On an unrelated note, it's ridiculous that none of the old mainline Pokémon games are available on Nintendo Switch. My tinfoil hat theory is that the Pokémon Company thinks it would hurt sales of the newer (and vastly inferior) Switch entries.
1983
Not as enjoyable as other Namco arcade games like Galaga and Toy Pop. It's too easy to get surrounded and there isn't a lot of depth.
no
2001
Seems like a mediocre and generic FPS from what I played.