Very comfy TRPG with a fun cast of characters, great music, and good gameplay. I kept finding myself coming back to this one over and over, so it obviously drew me in well enough to keep me playing. A lot of the menus are terrible to navigate, and some of the area/map layouts are frustrating (why are there so many bushes blocking paths in towns!?). Having hordes of enemies in the late-game maps that do a set amount of high damage regardless of your characters stats/levels was also a bit annoying. Still, I had a good time with this game, and can't wait to see what's in store for the second one!

Second GOTM finished for January 2024. There were some bright spots here and there, and the depth of content available in this game was surprising and likely would've captivated me for days as a child. However, the core gameplay felt awful. Not being able to reliably target enemy parts (or enemies as a whole) left nearly every battle feeling like complete chance. This, coupled with a decent encounter rate, made for a painful slog. I'd smoke bosses, and get one-shot by scrubs. I'd get crushed by an enemy, fight them again with the same loadout, and obliterate them. Sometimes that process was 20 times in a row before it worked out. What's the point of spending all this time on collecting parts and building out an ideal unit if every time you use them you have no idea if they'll actually do what you want!? Arbitrary story checkpoints that lead to (or detract from) multiple endings isn't fun either. Apparently has some good postgame content, but I put this down as soon as the credits rolled.

First GOTM finished for January 2024. Both very charming and ultimately underwhelming. This one gives me excitement for the others in the series (especially the well-received DS ones) as it feels like a good base for a potentially better game. It's a fantastic looking game that somehow manages to not have terrible-feeling underwater levels, though sometimes the level design gets in the way. The constant "stop-and-talk" is very annoying considering the characters are borderline unlikable, and kills basically any momentum in the game, but the bones are here for a great game.

Forty-eighth GOTW finished for 2023. Not terribly dissimilar to another Christmas themed game I played (Santa Claus Jr.) in that it is actually better than it has any right to be. If there was a story, I didn't follow it, but there's some decent gameplay here and the sleigh levels were an interesting change of pace. Some terrible hitboxes (especially on the bosses), coupled with some other nonsensical story and gameplay characteristics, keep this from being a surprise gem, but there are certainly worse games to play.

Third GOTM finished for December 2023. Aside from some awful backtracking bits and enemies/turrets being placed in places simply to be an annoyance, this was a very good game. The gameplay was fun and has aged pretty well, as have the cutscenes, and the characters were interesting. The story had some strange plotholes, and the amount of fourth-wall breaking was borderline off-putting at times, but they did a good job of keeping me mostly engaged throughout. Very glad to have finally gotten around to playing this one.

Second GOTM finished for December 2023. Very glad I chose this version of MMBN to play, as I can't see how the GBA version would've been enjoyable in any fashion without a map. Card-based battles and grid movement was fun and felt unique, and the music was catchy, but the level design felt like it got worse as the game progressed. There were also a few arbitrary sequence of events needed to progress the story that made me feel like I had missed some steps on more than one occasion. Enjoyed the game overall, but I can see why some people refer to this as the weakest of the series.