Katsono
206 reviews liked by Katsono
Animal Well
2024
I'm not the biggest metroidvania fan, I normally get burned out playing them, but this maintained my attention the whole way through, can't believe I'm giving a game published by a YouTuber a four and a half star rating, and the last section is really damn intense! I'm not going to give any spoilers since I believe it's best if people walk in blind! The puzzles are largely straightforward if you stand still and think about them, but they can have some severe difficulty spikes in certain portions. The only negative aspects I can think of are that the ladder can be awkward to climb at times, and the spikes are difficult to see when doing platform jumping with the bubble! The jumping felt fluid and smooth and the world's colours and animal designs were fantastic. the game rewards discoverability with cool items to progress the map, The boss battles were enjoyable and some were even creepy! This is my favourite game of the year so far, which I was not expecting to say when I started playing it. It makes me want to play other greats of the genre, which is the highest compliment I can give it.
My first Castlevania game.
The movements were really responsive. Alucard isn't slippery, he doesn't gain a weird momentum as soon as he starts moving forward, or any other shenanigan. It just felt very smooth. The same can be said about the bat form.
It was such a sick ability btw, being able to fly wherever you want, dodging every enemy while backtracking. And I like the detail of the bat changing color depending on Alucard's outfit.
The soundtrack is extremely catchy. There are elements from multiple musical genres, including classical, techno, rock and metal. It fitted perfectly with the gothic aesthetics of the game. The atmosphere is just very charming.
The game has a good amount of teleporters that are well spaced between each other. I could reach any part of the map pretty quickly. It's too rare in those retro games.
While some of the Bosses were too easy, I still enjoyed them a lot overall. Many of them have a really cool chara design, like Granfaloon, Medusa, Scylla and Shaft. And honestly, I usually prefer too easy rather than too hard.
By the way, having to fight Doppelganger 30 minutes into my playthrough was a big surprise. It was probably the most difficult Boss in the entire game. Still a great Boss tho 👌
I liked the RPG aspect of the game, with the items you can drop on defeated enemies, or by finding them during your exploration. Whether it's weapons, cloaks or talismans to make Alucard stronger, or consumables to heal yourself and boost your statistics momentarily in battle. I wish we could use items without having to unequip our weapon or shield tho...
The sub-weapons I used the most were the knives for their ease of use & high damage, and also the stopwatch. I didn't use the other ones very often.
I like how there is a possibility of getting a bad ending if you rush to the top of the castle before doing the necessary to save Richter. I ruthlessly killed him even though he is a human, and immediatly realized my mistake.
Hopefully I was able to reload my save right away to get the true ending.
I remember being stuck at some point, and I found a clue while looking at the tactic for Dracula, in the Librarian's Shop. When you watch this tutorial where Richter is fighting him, you can see that he opens a secret path at the very beginning, right before the fight. So I was able to go there myself, and I found an item that helped me to progress. I just think that was a cool way to proceed.
At first, when I reached the Reverse Castle, I was excited about the idea to go through the same map but upside down.
But when I realized that many of the rooms were now filled to the brim with enemies, I decided to keep using the bat & mist to breeze through the map and reach the Final Boss a lot quicker.
This last segment in the Reverse Castle felt like padding to be honest. It wasn't as great as the rest of the game.
Still, I had a very good time with the game overall. I enjoyed it more than Super Metroid which I played right before SOTN. (I mention it because I saw that there is a heated debate between the fans of both games to decide which one is the best 😂)
Anyway, if I play another Castlevania game in the future, it's gonna be Aria of Sorrow! 👍
----------Playtime & Completion----------
[Started on May 8th & finished on May 10th 2024]
Playtime: 13 hours
I was at 88% after getting the first ending.
And at 150% after getting the true ending.
The movements were really responsive. Alucard isn't slippery, he doesn't gain a weird momentum as soon as he starts moving forward, or any other shenanigan. It just felt very smooth. The same can be said about the bat form.
It was such a sick ability btw, being able to fly wherever you want, dodging every enemy while backtracking. And I like the detail of the bat changing color depending on Alucard's outfit.
The soundtrack is extremely catchy. There are elements from multiple musical genres, including classical, techno, rock and metal. It fitted perfectly with the gothic aesthetics of the game. The atmosphere is just very charming.
The game has a good amount of teleporters that are well spaced between each other. I could reach any part of the map pretty quickly. It's too rare in those retro games.
While some of the Bosses were too easy, I still enjoyed them a lot overall. Many of them have a really cool chara design, like Granfaloon, Medusa, Scylla and Shaft. And honestly, I usually prefer too easy rather than too hard.
By the way, having to fight Doppelganger 30 minutes into my playthrough was a big surprise. It was probably the most difficult Boss in the entire game. Still a great Boss tho 👌
I liked the RPG aspect of the game, with the items you can drop on defeated enemies, or by finding them during your exploration. Whether it's weapons, cloaks or talismans to make Alucard stronger, or consumables to heal yourself and boost your statistics momentarily in battle. I wish we could use items without having to unequip our weapon or shield tho...
The sub-weapons I used the most were the knives for their ease of use & high damage, and also the stopwatch. I didn't use the other ones very often.
I like how there is a possibility of getting a bad ending if you rush to the top of the castle before doing the necessary to save Richter. I ruthlessly killed him even though he is a human, and immediatly realized my mistake.
Hopefully I was able to reload my save right away to get the true ending.
I remember being stuck at some point, and I found a clue while looking at the tactic for Dracula, in the Librarian's Shop. When you watch this tutorial where Richter is fighting him, you can see that he opens a secret path at the very beginning, right before the fight. So I was able to go there myself, and I found an item that helped me to progress. I just think that was a cool way to proceed.
At first, when I reached the Reverse Castle, I was excited about the idea to go through the same map but upside down.
But when I realized that many of the rooms were now filled to the brim with enemies, I decided to keep using the bat & mist to breeze through the map and reach the Final Boss a lot quicker.
This last segment in the Reverse Castle felt like padding to be honest. It wasn't as great as the rest of the game.
Still, I had a very good time with the game overall. I enjoyed it more than Super Metroid which I played right before SOTN. (I mention it because I saw that there is a heated debate between the fans of both games to decide which one is the best 😂)
Anyway, if I play another Castlevania game in the future, it's gonna be Aria of Sorrow! 👍
----------Playtime & Completion----------
[Started on May 8th & finished on May 10th 2024]
Playtime: 13 hours
I was at 88% after getting the first ending.
And at 150% after getting the true ending.
Rule of Rose
2006
It's a slog to play. Most of the time you just walk from one place to another. Combat is fine when there's a single enemy who don't require 40 hits to die, it becomes horrendous when you're forced to fight more than one.
It has a unique ambiance, some great moments, and the last hour is really worth getting to. It's the ultimate example of a game having bad gameplay but awesome narrative. If it had came out some years later it would have been an even shorter game and a walking sim and I think it would have been an unforgettable experience.
It has great elements, and I'm happy to have played it, but clearly I will never touch it ever again.
It has a unique ambiance, some great moments, and the last hour is really worth getting to. It's the ultimate example of a game having bad gameplay but awesome narrative. If it had came out some years later it would have been an even shorter game and a walking sim and I think it would have been an unforgettable experience.
It has great elements, and I'm happy to have played it, but clearly I will never touch it ever again.
Salt and Sacrifice
2022
There is a lot in this game that confuses me. Sanctuary was souls-like and this is monsterhunter-like????
Sanctuary was carried by being a split screen souls-like, and while Sacrifice still has that, it feels less suited somehow. Still fun with a good friend, but the hunt -> make stuff -> hunt loop was already a social game. It felt more novel and interesting when we had to reach "bonfires" instead of grinding bosses with a friend.
Toward the endgame the difficulty increases only due to mage/enemy health which was annoying. Certain mages have dumb fights that are either a pushover, or you can loose for no reason.
Kundry Khan is the goat tho.
Sanctuary was carried by being a split screen souls-like, and while Sacrifice still has that, it feels less suited somehow. Still fun with a good friend, but the hunt -> make stuff -> hunt loop was already a social game. It felt more novel and interesting when we had to reach "bonfires" instead of grinding bosses with a friend.
Toward the endgame the difficulty increases only due to mage/enemy health which was annoying. Certain mages have dumb fights that are either a pushover, or you can loose for no reason.
Kundry Khan is the goat tho.
Salt and Sacrifice
2022
Turns out hunting mages is pretty great. A Souls-like in every sense of the word, the Salt games provide all the mechanics and diversity of play one craves from a Souls game but on a 2D plane. The fact these are built by such a small team is astounding. While not in danger of pushing the genre forward, it hooked me from start to finish and gave me the tightly crafted mechanical fix I was after.
Incredibly agitating to watch other people play. Outside of that, the objective in this game remains super unclear and it doesnt do well to point out that one of the main functions is that its not exactly linear story-telling and that one of the main points is to do whatever, say whatever and see what happens, no matter how many times you die. This would've been SO MUCH better if it was just an interactive arg but nope, they made it into a confusing game instead. Couldve just made an analog web series or site tbh although with modern youtube, I'm not sure how an interactive aspect would work with no annotations and only captions.
This game knows what its trying to do, does it extremely well, and doesn't try to reinvent the wheel. And, yes, I am a person who advocates for constant experimentation with games as a medium, but honestly sometimes a game doesn't need to, and that's okay. Personally, it's lore/story wasn't very compelling to me. Amanda the Adventurer is, in my opinion, a great way to spend an afternoon if you're bored or something.
Ignoring my sheep bias, Amanda the Adventurer expands upon the demo/"Pilot Episode" with its compelling use of childhood nostalgia for pseudo-interactive kids media (Dora the Explorer, Blue's Clues) as actual interactive media, terrifying with notions of choice which disintegrate upon the whims of the eponymous antagonist. Wooly is right in his terror when unnamed, unspoiled horrors await him in the artificial light of the animated television show featuring his lovely, adorable, not at all scary friend, Amanda. The game has its clear production issues in terms of a rapid development (taking only about a year to create) which lessens the scope of its puzzles and environmental scares, but, in all, this is a wonderful time most suited for myself as it accomplishes what could never be conceived of when watching (and mocking, as older viewers will) children's TV shows of the late '90s and early '00s.
Mother 3
2006
This review contains spoilers
with longer games, after a first playthrough, it tends to be harder to retain everything that happened even just immediately afterwards. there's a lot of games where i'll remember some big moments and then go 'oh yeahhhhh' when i come back to them later
so what really struck me about earthbound was how i could more or less list its entire sequence of events in chronological order, the pacing is quite relaxed but none of it feels like filler, there's a lot put into making ever segment something that stands out, the definitive game about some scrunklies going on an adventure
mother 3 retains this quality and then some, now with marked chapters that have names, and perspectives from different playable characters, particularly at the start of the game, chapter 1 makes such an impression juxtaposing lucas' introduction being a calm and typical day playing with his brother, with his father and the people of tazmily village dealing with a forest fire in the middle of the night, it's such a unique way to introduce the game's characters and the tragedy that befalls flint afterwards is so unexpected given the way game started out just an hour before. deftly balancing all sorts of light and dark tones has always been one of my favourite qualities of the series, and mother 3 might be the very best at it. there are instances where the game's humour crops up at inappropriate times, such as the funeral near the start having a load of puns on the headstones there, and i generally don't find it as funny as the first two games, but it also evokes some of the most euphoric joy and deep sadness in me out of all three games, and also most other games for that matter
there are so many parts of this game i know will be etched into my mind forever, chapter 3 starring salsa the monkey would be an amazing short story on its own, my favourite part of it is how in the combat, you're very weak on your own, and rely upon your abusive owner to get by in a situation that he's put you in, the way that dynamic comes across organically through gameplay is just really cool. i also love the part where you have to deliver the boxes, you have to find the recipients' houses yourself, and everyone other than them that you talk to sort of turn their nose up and want nothing to do with you, you're promised a reward of a 'luxury banana' if you can deliver them in under 20 minutes or something, and whether you achieve that or not, you're denied it once you return, and fassad proceeds to take one bite out of it and throw it away, it's great stuff and serves as a microcosm of the kind of place tazmily village is about to become
lucas never quite fit in, and still doesn't after the town he grew up in becomes a dystopian hellhole. (you have to pay for stuff) after losing his mother and brother, and growing distant from his father as a result, he's completely reliant upon himself (and his dog) and isn't led astray like the rest of tazmily, which ends up making him the hero, along with the rest of his band of misfits, a tomboyish false princess, and a handicapped thief
this theme of outsiders saving the world continues with the characters known as the magypsies, but they aren't nearly as successful at supporting it and are definitely my least favourite aspect of the game, with their designs and personalities all being based on stereotypes of crossdressers, and quite a few poor taste jokes made at their expense which can also come across as transphobic. as a trans woman myself i wasn't terribly offended personally but i was rolling my eyes at quite a few parts and it's probably the only caveat i'd mention when recommending the game
you experience firsthand the horrible mundanity the residents of tazmily now endure, with a day of backbreaking labour, pushing people molded from clay to go get electrocuted back to life after effectively dying from exhaustion, then being sent right back to work, and going to club titiboo at the end of the day which the workers seem to be addicted to, and then you go on to break into various facilities belonging to the pigmasks and discover the horrible experiments that are being conducted, the ones you see most often are animals being taken apart and combined with parts of other animals or machinery to make chimeras, under the juvenile premise that animals are boring and they're being made much more AWESOME now, and once you eventually you meet the man at the very top, you'll find that he views people in the same way
after you take a 'break' with a more traditional video game quest of finding the seven needles, returning to the now abandoned tazmily village, and then later being chauffeured to the nightmare that is new pork city becomes even more of a whiplash, and you discover that the source of all this is an old man, with the mind of a small, spoilt child, with all the time in the world and everything he could ever want, now acting only out of nihilistic boredom, the way this is all built up to and paid off is absolutely incredible, the final chapter of this game is simply just one of the best in a video game
i won't spoil any more of the ending than that, mostly because it's 1am and i'm very tired and feel like i'm rambling, but also because it'd probably be pointless anyway; the experience of playing it is far beyond the scope of any words i could write, mother 3 is every bit the game i was always told it was, and i'm very glad to have finally played it and count it amongst some of my absolute favourites
so what really struck me about earthbound was how i could more or less list its entire sequence of events in chronological order, the pacing is quite relaxed but none of it feels like filler, there's a lot put into making ever segment something that stands out, the definitive game about some scrunklies going on an adventure
mother 3 retains this quality and then some, now with marked chapters that have names, and perspectives from different playable characters, particularly at the start of the game, chapter 1 makes such an impression juxtaposing lucas' introduction being a calm and typical day playing with his brother, with his father and the people of tazmily village dealing with a forest fire in the middle of the night, it's such a unique way to introduce the game's characters and the tragedy that befalls flint afterwards is so unexpected given the way game started out just an hour before. deftly balancing all sorts of light and dark tones has always been one of my favourite qualities of the series, and mother 3 might be the very best at it. there are instances where the game's humour crops up at inappropriate times, such as the funeral near the start having a load of puns on the headstones there, and i generally don't find it as funny as the first two games, but it also evokes some of the most euphoric joy and deep sadness in me out of all three games, and also most other games for that matter
there are so many parts of this game i know will be etched into my mind forever, chapter 3 starring salsa the monkey would be an amazing short story on its own, my favourite part of it is how in the combat, you're very weak on your own, and rely upon your abusive owner to get by in a situation that he's put you in, the way that dynamic comes across organically through gameplay is just really cool. i also love the part where you have to deliver the boxes, you have to find the recipients' houses yourself, and everyone other than them that you talk to sort of turn their nose up and want nothing to do with you, you're promised a reward of a 'luxury banana' if you can deliver them in under 20 minutes or something, and whether you achieve that or not, you're denied it once you return, and fassad proceeds to take one bite out of it and throw it away, it's great stuff and serves as a microcosm of the kind of place tazmily village is about to become
lucas never quite fit in, and still doesn't after the town he grew up in becomes a dystopian hellhole. (you have to pay for stuff) after losing his mother and brother, and growing distant from his father as a result, he's completely reliant upon himself (and his dog) and isn't led astray like the rest of tazmily, which ends up making him the hero, along with the rest of his band of misfits, a tomboyish false princess, and a handicapped thief
this theme of outsiders saving the world continues with the characters known as the magypsies, but they aren't nearly as successful at supporting it and are definitely my least favourite aspect of the game, with their designs and personalities all being based on stereotypes of crossdressers, and quite a few poor taste jokes made at their expense which can also come across as transphobic. as a trans woman myself i wasn't terribly offended personally but i was rolling my eyes at quite a few parts and it's probably the only caveat i'd mention when recommending the game
you experience firsthand the horrible mundanity the residents of tazmily now endure, with a day of backbreaking labour, pushing people molded from clay to go get electrocuted back to life after effectively dying from exhaustion, then being sent right back to work, and going to club titiboo at the end of the day which the workers seem to be addicted to, and then you go on to break into various facilities belonging to the pigmasks and discover the horrible experiments that are being conducted, the ones you see most often are animals being taken apart and combined with parts of other animals or machinery to make chimeras, under the juvenile premise that animals are boring and they're being made much more AWESOME now, and once you eventually you meet the man at the very top, you'll find that he views people in the same way
after you take a 'break' with a more traditional video game quest of finding the seven needles, returning to the now abandoned tazmily village, and then later being chauffeured to the nightmare that is new pork city becomes even more of a whiplash, and you discover that the source of all this is an old man, with the mind of a small, spoilt child, with all the time in the world and everything he could ever want, now acting only out of nihilistic boredom, the way this is all built up to and paid off is absolutely incredible, the final chapter of this game is simply just one of the best in a video game
i won't spoil any more of the ending than that, mostly because it's 1am and i'm very tired and feel like i'm rambling, but also because it'd probably be pointless anyway; the experience of playing it is far beyond the scope of any words i could write, mother 3 is every bit the game i was always told it was, and i'm very glad to have finally played it and count it amongst some of my absolute favourites
Intravenous
2021
A more stealth-focused tactical "Hotline Miami", tho you can go loud for EVERY mission, which I did. Graphics are great, really like the visuals of this game. Only complaint is that all the levels do look very similar. Not much variety there.
