Mars After Midnight oozes charm. The atmosphere, the character designs, the music, the sound effects, the attention to detail. I loved everything about it, except playing it.

I understand this is a simple game, possibly aimed at children, but I found the core gameplay loop very unsatisfying. There is no skill or nuance involved whatsoever, at the beginning of a session it may take a moment or two to figure out exactly what you're looking for, and then the rest of the evening plays out exactly the same. It's beyond trivial.

For the first few of sessions the game's incredible presentation was enough while I waited for some escalation of stakes or complexity, but that escalation never comes. The final session is as simple as the first, and when I reached the credits of the game I just felt relieved.

This game may just not be for me. I can totally understand loving it simply for how great it looks and sounds, and the subtle humour throughout. The designs of the various aliens are truly spectacular. I am a fan of other Lucas Pope games, I'm not sure if that made me feel more or less generous with this game. I know I really wanted to love it, but the initial charm wore off quickly and I was left with only boredom.

A decent game overall. On the surface it has a lot of RTS elements but the game mostly feels and plays like a multidirectional shooter. There is a bit of early game strategy in terms of getting geared up before your opponents, but your AI buddies mostly just seem to run off and get themselves killed.

The sense of humour on display is extremely of-its-time. This game was very clearly developed in the UK in the lately 90s. As someone who grew up in that era, there is definitely a sense of nostalgia here and I found the silly story and various soundbites to be pretty entertaining. They definitely lean a bit too hard on a few stereotypes though.

I only played the singleplayer campaign, there was quite a bit of variety in mission types. Many variations on "annihilate all enemies", but also some escort style missions and a few boss battles. I found my success or failure in tougher missions often came down to how to enemy AI behaved early on - sometimes they would immediately swarm me before I had a chance to react, and others they would seemingly do nothing at all and wait for me to gear up and seek them out.

A few of the late-game challenges can get quite frustrating, and boiled down to trying them over and over until you find a tactic that works alongside a bit of RNG luck. What made this most annoying is the tedious process of failing a mission and beginning a new attempt. There is no restart option on failure, or within the pause menu of a mission. When you die it shows a screen of your enemies celebrating, boots you out to the level select where you have to dismiss a message telling you that you failed, then you reselect the level, click through the brief, wait for the level to load and finally it begins again. I understand long loading is a technical limitation of the hardware, but I'm sure the waiting could have been significantly reduced by having an immediate retry option. Some missions see you being wiped out in seconds by a huge boss, so your ratio of waiting to actually playing the game can be agonizing at times.

Still, on the whole I enjoyed playing through the game. Although I got stuck in a rut on a few missions, the objective always felt just achievable enough that I kept trying again and again until I finally make a breakthrough. The sense of improvement I felt as a player was tangible throughout and satisfying.

I was surprised how much fun I had playing Zelda II. I'd heard a lot about how punishing and unforgiving it is - and that's true, but the game feels excellent to control. Link is responsive and mobile, and getting through a tough encounter with minimal damage makes you feel very slick indeed.

It's impressive how much you can achieve with just a d-pad and 2 buttons. Obviously, you have attack and jump. When link isn't attacking, he is blocking - either high or low depending on whether you're ducking. As the game progresses you also unlock the iconic down and up stabs from the Smash games - these expand your options greatly as there is a great deal of verticality in the movement.

The magic system also works well, although only 3 of them (shield, jump, life) see a lot of use. The rest are only really useful in specific situations (some of them only need to be used once). Jump is great, and even when not required can make difficult platforming sections much easier. It can throw off your combat timings, as well as using up precious magic, so it's an interesting trade-off!

Zelda II also has an excellent soundtrack, some of which will be familiar to many people. The dungeon theme in particular is incredible, but the whole score is very pleasant and catchy. Which makes the incessant beeping at low health in this game all the more torturous!

Now, don't get me wrong, the game can be very cruel, especially the lives/continue system. You get 3 lives, and after a game over you continue from the starting location of the game. It's not all that bad though, you keep your level (but lose all exp on your current level, which can be a lot in the late game) and any items you've picked up. It can be emotionally draining to respawn at Zelda's side. However, the world is very quick to navigate as you unlock new shortcuts throughout - so I don't think it's quite as severe as it feels.

Although Link gets stronger through the adventure, the enemies do also and appear in increasingly awkward situations. Still, by the endgame you can tank quite a lot of hits and restore your health somewhat frequently if you manage your magic meter well. Although I did struggle in places and get frustrated, in reality even with retries and a couple minutes of extra walking after a continue I was back in action fairly quickly. The game is still rather short by modern standards, so having to replay some sections a few times isn't all that big of a deal.

Zelda II is truly a worthy member of the Zelda lineage, and I think it gets a bit overlooked! Honestly I enjoyed this game more than the original, simply due to the feel of the movement and combat. The soundtrack will stick with me for a long time. Strongly recommended for those with the patience to put up with this game's minor annoyances!