Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is a marvelous introduction into the grand journey of the classic Ace Attorney series. It’s impossible to miss out on this as a gamer.

It’s a great mix of goofiness and serious intensity. I really enjoyed the caricatured characters with their own quirks and the absurd moments while solving the most intense murder cases and defending your clients. One of the best things is how the game leads you closer to the truth step by step and seeing your theories getting confirmed is one of the most satisfying experiences. I don’t think it’s controversial to say that the fourth case is just the most engaging one. The way this game and, especially, the fourth case developed on Edgeworth’s character was just fantastic and I really felt sorry for Maya feeling useless. I hope she has a great comeback in Justice for All.

I did love the soundtrack. However, I feel like it could’ve needed a little bigger pool of soundtracks. I also feel like the game was a bit too handholding, even in the original final case, case four.

Other than that, I loved it!

________________________________________________
NOTICE
I DID NOT PLAY »RISE FROM THE ASHES« YET!

I decided to play the trilogy’s add-on cases before playing Apollo Justice. They will not affect the scores I give the first three games and I will rate them separately down here as soon as I am done with them. Since they are add-ons, canon or not, I will see them as something on their own.

I finished Shin Megami Tensei V on Hard. I fused and got as many demons as possible in a first run. I aligned with “chaos”.

I always enjoy the ideology-based narrative in SMT, the hilarious humor when talking to demons, the harsh and satirical criticism on mankind and hierarchies, the most interesting symbolism, the world building and lore, the challenging combat and yes, the exploration.

The cutscenes are amazing, better than ever in the MegaTen series. It does have some qualities even a most modern JRPG like Persona 5 Royal did not have. In general, this game looks great, but suffers from performance issues a bit.

My biggest complaint is how same-y the four major areas are. The same assets everywhere: the same buildings, the same ruins, the same cars, the same sand, the same trees and the same streets. Almost no sights or points of interest. They just use different filter effects for each area.

Ginza is a commercial district, but you won’t recognize it as such, not even a little bit. Even after the apocalypse and destruction, you should be able to see that it once was a shopping district. But it looks like any other area in this game. It’s so normal that video games look varied in different areas that I’m actually baffled, disappointed and even a bit angry that a game taking place in Tokyo lacks variation. Honestly, that’s an imposition!

I also think that this game gets a lot easier after the Hydra boss battle. The Essence system, some Miracles and Magatsuhi are too broken. You are literally able to create an almost invincible Nahobino and almost invincible demons early on.

And while this game has two dungeons, I wish they would’ve given us some more for subquests and story. It’s a shame that we can’t enter the Tokyo Tower for example, one of the very very few known sights of Tokyo being in this game.

Sigh… I hoped it wouldn’t come to this, me saying this, but I even like SMT IV: Apocalypse more than SMT V.

When I first played Undertale in 2018, I dropped it, because I was too bad for the bullet hell-ish battle system and watched a Let’s Play instead. Over time, I forgot most of what I’ve seen, because I still did not like it. I was disappointed, because I expected to like it since I really love the Mother series, especially Mother 3.

After giving this game a second shot, I really have to say that I dislike it even more than before when I watched a LP and forgot most of it.

It’s not like I hate inconsistency in tonality. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It doesn’t work in Undertale. The humorous aspects of this game can be funny, but mostly they’re not. That wouldn’t be too bad if the darker themes would strike a chore, but they are too simple and shallow. The result of this is that I don’t care about the characters most of the time.

Papyrus can be funny at the very beginning of the game, but it is a bit too much later, Sans is solid and Alphys is probably the most annoying video game character I’ve ever seen and I say that with Teddy and Morgana from Persona and Navi and Fi from The Legend of Zelda in mind. Her quirky personality gets annoying real quick and it’s real torture when she calls and texts you every five steps. And I hate how she annoys you most of the time after the second half of the game. Undyne is the only character I don’t hate and that’s because she basically doesn’t say that much.

The soundtrack is god-like and I don’t think anyone is able to deny that. I also liked the visuals, especially the characters, even though many other areas look a bit bland; the town is an exception. Undertale also has a lot of troll elements and I love it. It breaks a lot of conventions. And while I became much better at this game, I still do not like the battle system. Though some of them were pretty funny.

Conclusion: Undertale is still shit, 3/10

Update:
I finished the Pacifist and Genocide route. I didn’t enjoy Pacifist that much, since it was too similar to the neutral run, but Genocide was quite fun. Even though the grind was a bit annoying and I would’ve loved to kill Alphys. Nevertheless, Genocide is a fun route.

I put the score up to a 4/10.

After Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda, Nintendo translated the Metroid series into the third dimension. And just like with Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, Nintendo created a milestone. Trying to convert a 2D franchise into 3D can easily go wrong, especially with a game concept like Metroid, which works perfectly in 2D. That’s why Metroid Prime is even more astonishing. The transition was a tremendous success.

In terms of immersion, this game was able to leave the 2D titles behind. The feeling of isolation and the ominous atmosphere of a game like Super Metroid reached its climax in Metroid Prime. The first-person perspective puts you right into the action and effects such as raindrops on the visor or malfunctions of the HUD shown on the inside of the helmet make the world feel authentic.

The world consists of beautiful ice landscapes, ancient ruins, rainy jungles, laboratories and lava caves, all accompanied by the best soundtrack the GameCube era ever had to offer.

Amazing controls and many well-crafted ideas cleverly merged with this game’s mechanics.

The visuals and soundtracks are boring, the difficulty is too easy and collecting 100 crystals to complete a level is annoying.

It’s not as good as the worst Donkey Kong Country, but it’s still fun. I wouldn’t say it’s worth 30 bucks, though. Wait for a good sale (at least 50% off) or just set sail.

Continuing the events of Persona 5 on a road trip with your old and embosomed friends and a new cast of allies and villains, Persona 5 Strikers adds up to the whole entire Persona 5 experience.

While being a Musō game, it definitely feels like Persona 5 by adding tons of Persona elements into the combat. Exploit weaknesses, execute all-out-attacks and baton passes, shoot with guns, buff yourself and debuff your enemies, use ailments, enforce technical moves and surprise your enemies from the shadows!

Like Persona 5, Strikers is oozing with style and grants you a variety of new tracks and remixes of old songs letting you jam while beating up shadows in the new palaces, called prisons in this game. Counter Strike might be my favorite soundtrack of this game.

If you loved Persona 5 or Persona 5 Royal, there is no way around this game. I absolutely recommend it, since it is so much more than just a Musō game. The characters get fleshed out more, especially those who came up a bit short in the original game. If you’re not into action games, there’s an easy mode as well, so you won’t have problems to get through this game!

This is probably one of the most insulting games I have ever experienced. David Cage deliriously compares the situation of damn robots with the situation of black people; the slavery and the apartheid policy of the US, even the Holocaust.

Funnily enough, it doesn’t even make sense to combine slavery and apartheid policy. When slavery was a thing, black people weren’t separated from white people, because they had to work for white people. Separating them would’ve been counterproductive. The apartheid policy was a result of the end of the slavery. David Cage obviously didn’t pay attention in history lessons, nor did he care to look that up or to come to logical conclusions.

This game plays down all the horrible acts Europeans and white Americans have committed over time. It’s straight up an insult.

How can you mess up that hard?

Transistor was quite an undercooked experience to me. I loved the stunning visuals and the serene soundtrack, but the story lacked depth and the gameplay wasn’t engaging enough.

What was this game trying to say? It promised a lot, but it couldn’t live up to it since mid-game.

I still had my fun with this game and only had to pay four bucks, so that was a steal anyway.

This is going to be a dishonest review.

The story is a snoozefest throughout 2/3 of the game and the finale and the final boss are severely forgettable, but Yuri carries. The combat system is a clunky and boring mess, but Yuri carries. Except a handful tracks, the soundtrack is extremely nondescript, but Yuri carries. The dungeons are streamlined corridors without any ambitious puzzles, but Yuri carries. Estelle is a stereotypically naive princess, but Yuri carries. This game bores me to death, but Yuri carries.

In the end, it was good enough to keep me going and to try other Tales games, so it was fairly and convincingly good. Yuri carries and he’s the reason all the other characters work so well in this story, due to his supportive nature. His vigilantism is the reason the dynamic between Yuri and Flynn is so strong. I mean it when I say that, because Yuri really does carry the entire game — in a good way.

My concerns have come true:

The relationship and thus, the dialogues, are inconsistently written, sometimes authentically convincing, sometimes horrendously cheesy. The writing is just good enough to keep you going, though.

The worst part is the unnecessary addition of gameplay. It interrupts what drives players to keep going with tedious gameplay and combat. And while visually appealing at first, the environments are boringly generic and don’t even offer some kind of points of interest. At this rate, this game should’ve been a visual novel instead.

Its soundtrack is powerful and beautiful, but I feel like I won’t remember it in a few days.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a game for content creators, stars and influencers.

It lacks of content and many updates just add stuff that should’ve been in the game from the start and that was already in New Leaf.

The NPCs have much less text lines and personalities than in prior titles and thus, feel absolutely soulless.

It is very polished and beautiful, though.