Sure, the characters and story are both pretty uninteresting, and the battles can take forever with all the unnecessary title cards and entrances. However, it was just fun to play. Learning abilities through weapons actually made it interesting and worthwhile to take an otherwise uninteresting mission for the rewards, location placement gave the sense that you were building the world around you, the class system and equipment trees were fun, and the overall tactical gameplay was enjoyable. It's not a short game, and it could certainly do with some QOL changes, but I had a blast with this one!

Twenty-second GOTW finished for 2023. Really surprised by this one. Still not even sure what the story was about, but the game was very fun. More of an exploratory approach than your typical platformer, which can be real annoying when you initially miss an informant, but certainly not something I'm used to seeing from a NES game with an action hero on the front. Weapon power ups are a little limited, but it feels great to get your hands on the Power Suit and then mow enemies down. Some pop-in enemies due to the system's limitations, but nothing felt unfair or cruel in it's difficulty or placement. Bosses were mostly pretty easy, especially with the Power Suit. The music is absolutely banging and real fun for each level. Overall, pretty pleased with this one!

Third GOTM finished for August 2023. Beat with the Unworked Designs patch to avoid the usual "Working Designs increased the difficulty for no reason" problem. The gameplay itself wasn't much to call home about, as it's mostly a slippery and clunky action-platformer with a good amount of unnecessary backtracking and bad level design. Movement in the game suffers from a head-scratching move to have two-thirds of the screen behind you, and the other one-third of the screen in front of you, often leading to running into enemies and potentially being hit from off-screen (though you can turn that around in your favor with some bosses). A later level in the game makes this particularly infuriating. The bosses were interesting, but once you got a certain party member in the group they primarily handled all of them, so they didn't feel all that cleverly designed or executed. In some cases, they were downright laughable. The schlocky 90's anime dialogue, while often given through terrible voice acting, was pretty funny and honestly felt like a strength of the game. One of the regular NPCs had me chortling on multiple occasions. It's not a great game, but it does have some charm in its characters and dialogue and the gameplay is serviceable enough to package that all up as an overall fun experience.

Third GOTM finished for October 2023. This game would've been downright miserable without a guide, as the mansion is easily the most difficult monster in the game. This building was designed by a lunatic. I genuinely disliked the constant back and forth traipsing through this terrible building, but the atmosphere definitely felt like a proper horror game. Playing this in October for "spooky season" felt appropriate. The alternate control style is definitely appreciated, as are the stunning visuals and redone environments. While I think it has plenty of flaws, I can see why this defined a genre.

Third GOTM finished for April 2023. I have mixed emotions. The flaws are obvious; plodding character and army movement, unnecessarily convoluted and frustrating selection-within-a-selection menus and UI, and some wildly inaccurate hit percentages aren't great. However, this game just clicked with me. I enjoyed hunting for randomly-appearing Pokémon with a greater than average link percentage with certain warriors, the limited move sets that forced me to carry certain Pokémon into battle, taking the time to level links and evolve every Pokémon I came across, the theming and character/castle designs, and how it was all wrapped in a comfy isometric tactical viewpoint. This game could stand from several QOL improvements, but at the end of the day I spent over 40 hours on just the main story by choice. That says a lot about how I feel towards this game.

So, I had never played a dungeon crawler before, much less an SMT game. Decided to start here, and was completely taken by surprise. What an awesome game! It's a SNES game, so hasn't aged perfectly, but the gameplay was excellent and the difficulty enough to make it feel challenging with feeling cheap or unfair. The story wasn't anything spectacular, but was certainly good enough to keep my attention throughout the game. That last dungeon was a SLOG, but didn't detract from my overall enjoyment of the game. Looking forward to continuing my journey with this series!