Probably enjoyed this more than I should. The platforming is a little awkward, but for some reason I like dealing with these finnicky jumps and figuring out how to get up those platforms and walls. The movement had it's unique quirks that made it fun, although the camera made it hard to deal with.

Combat is what you're doing 90% of the time though and it's fine. I like the parry system and how flashy the combos are. There's also magic spells to find and use, and orbs to collect. Gotta love orbs.

The enemy design is pretty lackluster. Most enemies seem to only have one or two attacks and you can just wait it out with your block and then press the attack button to counter, no real timing required. Bosses made it a little harder since they have counters of their own, but jumping over them or to the side and hitting their backs did the job fine. Yakuza 3 tactics, baby.

Probably won't play this again, but had lots of fun in the 5-6 hours I spent with it.

(Played the Rebirth edition on PC, but thought the OG page for this game deserved a review, of which there are none at the time of this writing.)

Very insane that a shooter of this caliber was released exclusively for a handheld system. I'm not saying it was a bad decision--it kind of rules?--but imagining playing it with that sus Wonderswan four-seperate-buttons dpad on that tiny screen is downright painful.

This is a big-boy fuckin shmup, and deserved a place on a big bright 15khz CRT screen in the arcades. It's that good... and it's that difficult! For the most part, "handheld shmup" = "baby time", but Judgement Silversword is very much for the real arcade sickos, boasting 29 micro-stages of blisteringly fast and dense stg action, as well as a brutal final boss that, should you beat it in a single credit, gives way to an even more punishing TLB. (Luckily, as long as you're aggressive enough, the game is happy to flood you with extends.)

Score can be had in two main ways: keep your shield fully charged at 100% (aka don't use it) for as long as possible, which slowly creeps your base multiplier upward; or go nuts with your shield, plowing it into bullets to send the multiplier shooting into double digits, and then kill enemies quickly during the spike. Both, or a combination of the two, gratify intensely.

My scant problems are mostly due to its origination as a handheld title -- poor visibility in some instances, very basic graphics, and repetitive and unexciting music. Aside from that stuff, this is stg bliss.

For what it did, this game is immune to criticism.
You can just pick up any 5-star reviews written in backloggd and I would mostly agree with their points.

However, I really hated the late-game part.

My line of thoughts is that Rain World's strength is never a precise platforming action. Maybe it's the issue of playing the game with the joystick only, but adjusting the minimal movement in the corner or over the ledge always felt like picking a sticky rice with chopsticks, and the static camera shot didn't help the intuitiveness when it moves the screen vertically.

What I liked about this game was mostly about making improvisational choices while weaving through heavily detailed wild animal AIs, which is still pretty brutal, but has some respect for players, because the failure state isn't always black&white, and there are (most the time) plenty of solutions and prep time for given situations.

The continuation of Five Pebbles, Chimney Canopy, and Sky Tower was probably the lowest point of my overall enjoyment because there are slippery death pits everywhere. At that point, I felt like I was playing a trial-and-error platformer but with RNG vultures sprinkled over it. The fact that those levels are gated by the Karma gates didn't help it too.

Also if I had to pick two more nitpicky stuffs....
- I hated that the time limit for the day cycle is randomized but then it doesn't penalize you for resetting right away to get a better day cycle. What's the point of this, rolling a slot machine or something?
- Maybe the ending sequence is too long and too visually aimless. If you have seen the ending, you would know that it would be really difficult for players with darker monitor settings. I was that poor hypothetical player btw.

Basically, that minus one star came from my pettiness.

I've always had a harder time writing reviews for the Halo series than I do for most. My Halo 1 review not so much; it was a simple, more jokey review owing to the warthog's presence in the 2nd mission of the game and the finale, and the running gag it's served with my friends after I unceremoniously plunged it off a cliff while blindly driving around. Halo 2 was more an actual review, but still one I had a hard time properly formulating, and I think I know why now.

My blind playthroughs of Halo 1, 2 and 3 have all been in co-op, on Heroic at that. Im kind of dogshit awful at shooters, and I'll openly admit to it. As such, I'm not able to type up a well thought out piece about the world and atmosphere of the franchise that I'm taking in on my lonesome, getting my mind blown as I'm sucked into the lore. Likewise, I'm not one of those guys recounting the long gone days of 25 kill streaks from the comfort of the college dorm in the golden age of Xbox Live.

Not to say I don't find value in Halo's world, cast and gameplay, because I absolutely do! Halo 3, both in story and gameplay, makes for a great time; the gameplay's great as ever and the story felt like a really awesome bow on the series. It's just that, in what has to be a me specific quirk, I associate my playthroughs of the series with the multiplayer sessions therein, first and foremost. The laughs, the screams, the detouring or restarting of levels to find a dumb Easter egg, the annoyance I feel when MCC doesn't give me an achievement I rightfully earned. That's what I think of when I think of my time playing Halo.

Halo 1 and 2 gave me and my buddy Ian some memorable times and some great laughs, but Halo 3 offering a 4-player campaign allowed us to commit to a full-on, roughly 4 and a half hour marathon with the boys. No idea how we were able to shotgun the entire thing front to back, but we did. And it made for one of the best multiplayer experiences I've had, bar none. That's where the 9/10 comes from; the experience with the lads genuinely gives the game that extra boost, on top of the fact it's already a top class title that serves as a natural conclusion to both the plot and gameplay of the prior entries. It's those laughs, arguments, and everything else that I've had, that make my first time running through the Halo series as special as it's been.

Maybe my opinion on the games will only increase as I revisit them on my lonesome, learning to not be total dog ass at shooters. But as of now? The real Halo was the friends I made along the way, and I wouldn't ask for anything else.