the best way I can describe this game is lovably clumsy. the combat, visuals, music, and voice acting are all at worst clunky, yet Haven's highest high is only somewhere around "above average" quality.

the combat could've been a lot more interesting, or at least engaging, if there were a few more options or moves other than a couple of attacks, a defense, and an 'end battle' move all of which take a lot of time to charge up. the combat and crafting UI also aren't the most intuitive things and take some getting used to. the game has you picking up and collecting various resources on the planet which you can use to either cook or craft which, again, because of the clunky UI ends up being more of a tedious task since you can only craft one thing at a time and every time you make something, a short cutscene plays. this ended up with me bringing next to no items on exploring since I didn't want to sit for 10+ minutes crafting despite only having 3 resources to craft with.

the characters were the highlight of the game since it really feels like you're getting to know them along with each other as they deepen their relationship further while being stranded. they genuinely feel like a couple who care about one another and who have their own interests and conflicts which they bring into the relationship. the game does attempt to bring more intrigue and mystic into the game, but anything remotely interesting outside of Yu and Kay's relationship is pretty much brushed aside, so if you're not feeling anything towards the two leads, there's not much else here for you.

all in all, despite how clunky the actual game part of the game is, I still enjoyed playing Haven and getting to learn more about Yu and Kay's world and lives.

I've not done the post-game but I doubt my opinion will change at all because of it.

This game is fine. Honestly, it's just a collect-a-thon with some easy combat sections interspersed. The boss battles are cool when they get slightly challenging. There not that much going on in the areas aside from some new pokemon. I enjoyed my time with it and wouldn't say I regret getting or playing it. I thought I might complete it at some point, but after seeing the requirements, no shot.

Pokemon has no reason to look or perform this terrible in 2022. It's the biggest franchise of all fucking time. I can only imagine there is someone really stubborn behind the scenes that is actively gimping progress, or they genuinely don't care about the quality since it sells anyway. I've come to terms with the fact that pokemon will be stuck in a shitty rut forever. Still sucks that getting a truly amazing pokemon game feels like a daydream when the potential is there.

So I finally got around to this! It's really good! The cases themselves usually weren't super investing (that being the 1st and 3rd) but were all put well together and everything else makes up for it. First of all, the characters are fantastic. Maya is adorable and Edgeworth has a very wonderful arc throughout the whole thing and is an incredibly well done character. I love his arc throughout and by the end he was definitely my favorite. The artstyle and no voice acting wasnt really something i was fond of at first but its really charming and I grew to like it a lot. it helps add to a lot of the humour and wackyness that takes place. The music is also very good, not exactly something I'll listen to in the car or anything but Pursuit Cornered when you find a contradiction in a testimony really gets that blood pumping. Other then that, my complaints are minimal. I played this as a part of the Trilogy, and knowing it is a GBA game its not a big deal but I feel like it could of benefited greatly from a text log and auto advance. You can hold down A for text to advance but thats kinda against the whole point, I cant eat cereal one handed im not an animal. Anyways, my only other problem is a slightly larger one that ultimately doesnt really change my opinion all that much, that being the new DLC case added from the DS version that now serves as the final case. First of all, its a very well done case. Not a favorite but its very good nonetheless. Lana and Ema are two really good characters and Ema is equally as adorable and fun to have around as Maya, but it just kinda feels unnecessary. I will say it gives more development to Edgeworth which is wonderful and only further cemented him as my favorite. However, its a set up for Apollo Justice, the fourth game in the series and considering how wonderfully the game wraps up with the fourth case, the placement cant help but feel a little odd. I think if it was labeled as such a bonus instead of the real final case things would feel a bit smoother, but even then its still a good case (if a little long) and doesnt hurt the quality of the game at all. Overall, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is a wonderful first entry to a series I can't wait to play more of. It really makes you feel like an attorney, lol.

Nancymeter = 93/100

This game is pretty good, even if its not as strong as the first! The first trial is quite frankly not very good, the second trial is really good, the third trial is a bit over-hated but still not great and the last trial is really good if a little too long. So where does that leave us? Fortunately, even when Ace Attorney is at its worst its quite entertaining. Franziska is nowhere near as compelling as Edgeworth, but she's still a pretty good antagonist (and also pretty) and Pearl is a great addition to the Maya and Phoenix duo, even if she should've been in it a little more. The strong character development shown in the first one is mostly absent here until the final chapter where Edgeworth shines once again and Phoenix gets a little arc of his own where in the end it ties itself together pretty nicely. Although I still have some more complaints. The presenting/investigating felt a lot more obtuse in this game, especially in the third case where you're supposed to guess something based on the lower portion of a character in a series where you are only shown half sprites. Things like that were really frustrating and made the game feel a lot less intuitive than the first. That being said, despite the complaints it was still another enjoyable chapter in the series. I'd like to point out that the character animations were very creative and had me laughing (or horrified) on several occasions. Anyways, Maya is cute.

Nancymeter - 85/100

Humanity's best efforts

I've never tried so hard to like a game as much as this one. Despite the fact I completed this game nearly a year ago to this day, I wanted to give this game yet another chance because I felt like I missed something. The Nier Replicant remake was something that I surprisingly enjoyed despite sharing a few things in common with this game including the way the soundtrack is. After putting myself through yet another 18 hours to get the final ending again, my impression of the game only raised a little bit. Nier: Automata is just okay in almost every sense of the word other than the soundtrack.

I'll start with what I think is good in this game: The soundtrack. Despite hearing Emi Evans in almost every game associated with Yoko Taro at this point, her performance here is amazing. Some of the areas actually look good and that's specifically the Amusement Park level, there was decent segments as well including probably one of the only bosses I even cared about here. Despite not caring for most of the characters which I'll get on later, there are actually some I liked and specifically Pascal. Pascal is actually likable and his development is pretty depressing as the game goes on and one of the few times I think the themes and writing manages to hit here. Playing this after playing the remake, I've learned to appreciate the references this game made which sort of improved my experience with it a second time around.

I'm going to talk about what is probably the main appeal of this game: the story. The story and world is actually interesting at first and then takes a nosedive after the first ending. The protagonists despite their development just felt completely boring, the one protagonist I was genuinely interested in started to be comically irrational at a point where I just didn't care anymore. I tried to care about them but nothing really latched onto me which also leans into the themes of this game which is considered the highest point for some people. The game tries to ask questions about what it means to be human, emotion and AI but these questions are very basic and simple questions. I keep expecting this game to make me think and it's throwing me philosophy quotes from a school poster. Now we move on to the game itself, it's really boring. The combat was easy and hits have no impact or weight to them for 2B. 9S has a different mechanic that you can hack into enemies and do a shooting minigame which I thought was cool until the novelty wore off an hour or two into his route. A2 has a berserker mode that reduces your health gradually for way more damage, I used this a lot actually to speed up battles since I was tired of the game at this point. The visual level design also leaves something to be desired as well considering this game is like 60% abandoned city ruins, 20% Forest, 10% Desert and 10% final area which is literally just white. Now I wouldn't mind this as much if the world itself was fun to traverse but it isn't and there isn't anything worth getting other then save and quick points and side quests that are also bland. This game also performs one of the cardinal sins of what I hate in gaming: replaying long sequences in order to progress through the story. Nothing kills momentum in a game than having to replay the first half of a game again just to get to the second with only a few different cutscenes during that whole segment and having to run all around the world again to do the same things again to see most of the same cutscenes again since you don't know when you'll get a new cutscene that will hopefully flesh out the story and made the game way more tedious than it should be. I don't want to speak much on the ending due to spoilers but despite the concept of the ending being sorta cool, it didn't really justify the entire journey to get to that point.

I think my overall opinion on this game has improved very slightly but my main concerns are still the same. I can forgive a game with a bad story if it had the gameplay and other facets to pick up the pace but this game doesn't. I can forgive a game with bad gameplay if it had a good story and characters and it didn't. There are better ways to ask the questions Nier: Automata tries to ask you and better ways to really make you think of humanism. But even then, what's left is an average action game with an amazing soundtrack. I really tried to like this one, beat it twice at this point and I think I'm done with this one despite it just being okay.

Luke kills more Sand People on his way to Mos Eisley in this game than Anakin did when he specifically set out to commit genocide against them in Episode II.

With that said, Apprentice of the Force is both more playable and more tedious than I had expected. You play through the Original Trilogy solely as Luke (thus skipping over any part of the films in which he didn't play a role), and there's an impressive smoothness to his movement and basic lightsaber attacks, even if some of his special moves simply don't work half the time.

There are other things this game handles well, like the MIDI arrangements of a surprising number of classic John Williams pieces. The endless levels in which you murder dozens of Tusken Raiders, Wampas, and giant bees? Perhaps less so.