Really wanted to tough it out and beat it but, god, it’s such a tough one. So aesthetically pleasing, both musically and visually, but just feels like torture to play, and level design is very anti-player. Made worse because after a couple of levels I realized that a Scott Pilgrim game should’ve been an Earthbound-style RPG and probably would be if they decided on making a game post-Undertale, lol. Will always love this as a novelty which is why I don’t regret getting the Limited Run of it, and maybe I’d give it another go doing online co-op, but, well. Scott Pilgrim, if your life was a game I would punch it.

Ten years ago, this game was mine and my friends’ Minecraft. We would play for hours and hours, and out of every game I own on Steam, ten years on, this game was the one with the most hours logged at 114 (low to many others, I’m sure, but a lot for me). I finally had an urge to go back and play this game, and when I did, I found myself intensely addicted. There is something to the exploration loop of this game that really tickles my ape brain to the point where, out of all of the games I’ve grown to love, this one has eaten up the longest play sessions. The way the caves are designed to be half-naturally forming allows for you to easily discover a path underground as you dig. With a small-sized world, too, a single player will find lots and lots to discover. For better or for worse.

I definitely appreciate this game’s exploration loop a lot more than its combat/campaign progression loop. It is so satisfying to be digging and discover another natural clearing in the map that leads you to different biomes, watching your map fill with the different colors of the different areas. There’s just something off about how one obtains better materials, etc. and how not-inuitive-at-all it is to craft things outside of the normal building/equipment that one might need during everyday gameplay. At first it’s simple but as soon as you see all of what you can craft you realize you’re dealing with a game with nearly 15 years of extra content inside of it. Once I found the first chest with a bunch of potions and bombs I realized how quickly this game can make you feel in over your head. Then I summoned the last boss on accident as I was exploring the lower depths of the world and that just made me feel a little intimidated. That was, until, after defeating only a few more bosses, I found myself in posession of items that made me feel incredibly powerful.

I guess something I didn’t remember from my youthful days of playing this is that the world of Terraria is incredibly hostile. While I didn’t have a lot of fun tracking down boss fights, there are enough surprises within the caverns of the depths of this world that even if you completely ignored every boss battle, you will still accrue a large collection of ways to die. Something I thought about a lot while playing this game is the fine line between a game that offers a difficult and sometimes-frustrating, but rewarding and sincere challenge, and a game that has at least the slightest disdain for its player base. Does a game you’re playing ever feel like it’s laughing at you? Does that make you have less fun?

Terraria is definitely having a chuckle to itself, especially when you activate the billionth boulder trap and find yourself hiking back meters and meters to wherever you lost all that coin. There is something to say about creating new scenarios and adjusting the entire game around the power creep caused, naturally, by years worth of new additions. I found myself constantly cycling through different weapon options throughout the game. Magical staves, muskets, maces, lances, lasers, yo-yos, bee shooters. That doesn’t even scratch the surface of all of the different accessories and equipment that you’ll cycle through, as you explore different biomes each with their own hazards and own personal hells.

I do have to wonder if the overall design of this game is a failure since the driving force of my play was revealing as much of the map as possible until it looked full enough that I was satisfied, and once I had I found myself a little tired of it all. Just for now, though, I do kind of find myself curious in playing an older version of this game on an older console without the latest updates. Though, for now, I definitely need to cut out this timesink from my life so I can focus on better things.

Not my thing at all, also not what I was expecting, though. SaGa: Scarlet Ambitions is not your average JRPG. What I found inside this more obscure Square IP is basically a visual novel with puzzle-like turn-based combat. It's not exactly obtuse, but I wouldn't call it intuitive. Very non-traditional character progression coupled with battles that can take more than a few tries just creates a scenario where I'm not really into a game at all. Not to mention that the story writing here is the really reason this isn't getting three stars. I was playing more for the battles and just couldn't be fucked to care about the story at all, even if the characters looked at least a little interesting. Maybe Urpina's story is the weakest and a different character's route might suck me in more, but that'll have to be down the line.

Has some really great monster design, first of all; would adore to see the team behind this do their own game instead of expanding on this. Honestly was just really nice, as someone who almost never meshes well with Pokémon ROMhacks, this was perfect for me. It’s a scenario I know well, the Crystal Version’s story, so I can kind of not waste time figuring out what to do because I already know, so I just get to enjoy this artificial simulation of seeing a new Pokémon for the first time over and over :)

A lot of hacks try and mix old Pokémon with “Fakémon,” and sometimes the clashing design styles of official and fanmade creatures is stark. So, why not just remix all of the Pokémon? Take an original design’s general idea and stir it up! Porygon is a computer duck, so why not mix it up by making him Normal- and Water-type. Now he’s just a funky duck!!! And it’s the best shit ever! A really great vibe from this one, some of the spritework is really amazing. I always hate composing a team on the fly, though, and I have other games I want to prioritize, so I’ll come back to this one when I can take a look at the Pokédex and plan a team and zoom through.

I primarily fell in love with role-playing games because I love storytelling. Since I was a wee child, I would always write stories. Even in early elementary school I found myself penning fanfiction for “Peep and the Big, Wide World.” It’s always been my calling, and while, now in my late twenties, I am getting more okay with the fact that it may not be my career, storytelling will always my thing. Dragon Warrior IV really caused me to be enamored with it very quickly, and it 100% has to do with how this game not only tells its story in a non-traditional way, Dragon Quest-wise, but also video-game-wise.

The way the scenario is split up in its titular chapters is perfect. Beginning with Ragnar, and telling a simple story of a normal soldier doing his job and protecting citizens and then having the main plot creep up until Ragnar is the first chosen to be called to a higher destiny. Having the protagonist and chief antagonist completely hidden from the player as they control a cast of supporting characters that one would normally encounter as the protagonist just is perfect. It shifts the player from controlling a singular role; this installment is simulating something a little more omnipotent. In the first four chapters, you find yourself piloting four different characters and setting them onto a path that would have them eventually meet with the Hero they’ve been told, by fate, that they are to soon accompany.

You aren’t just playing as these characters, the player is almost acting as fate, as one of the goddess’ upper servants, leading and commanding the chosen ones so that they will be able to cross paths with the Hero. It still plays like any other classic JRPG, but it shifts the perspective just a smidge to contort the role the player is in, and it just makes it that much more interesting to me. And, besides how it can be used to examine the relationship between player and game, it’s also just really cool to spend extra time alone with supporting characters so that when the Hero meets them, the player gets a little more excited than how one normally might be when gaining a party member. Having a larger cast of characters along for the ride just gives it a more fleshed out fantasy story feel. Along with the episodic format, it feels like I’m reading a series of novels, or watching a show, with a larger cast of characters than the 1-4 that this series has stuck to up to this point. Which, by the way, through the last half of Chapter 5 I was mostly using the Hero, Ragnar, Cristo, and Mara as my main quartet.

I wanted to play the NES version instead of the NDS version of this game just because I didn’t want every single Dragon Quest playthrough of mine to be played on either iOS or NDS, and this one seemed like a fun venture. The classical feel was just really nice. The emulator I was using (fceux) had some really nice video settings that allowed me to give this a CRT look that just made me lose myself in the charm of NES aesthetics, which I don’t usually do! This is, of course, a late NES title, which helps it a lot, but this is easily one of the best looking 8-bit games I’ve ever laid eyes on. The party members’ sprites are so nice, monster sprites look great (EXCEPT FOR THAT ONE), it’s just a real treat. The most interesting part of this playthrough was experiencing the localization differences between modern Dragon Quest, which I grew up with, and the elder Dragon Warrior script. There are tiny differences, of course, but it made it really funny deciphering online guides because every FAQ and Wiki is up to date with script from the Nintendo DS version, which might as well be the only one that exists in the west.

It was also kind of a blast playing an old RPG. This might actually be my first RPG where the version I’m playing actually pre-dates my life. I’m so used to playing older games through newer collections with standard UI and mechanics. The command screen, at first, made it feel archaic, but that kind of thing also helps in these old school RPGs because you’re basically given a list of options on how to progress. Did I talk to everyone? Search everywhere? Try every door? Town citizens give you plenty of information, and there’s a lot of good instincts that the game gives the player that helps out.

For instance, in chapter five, you find a seaside village named, well, Seaside Village. Villagers speak of how the tide gets high at night, and that there is a special item that the town used to have in its possession. At night, the tide rolls in and covers every tile of beach except for one tile. Obviously, the next morning you search that tile and, lo and behold, there’s a little village heirloom that’ll help you access another area. Though, a problem I encountered here that is definitely just a part of this series’ overall design choice, is that once you get access to a ship, the scenario becomes insanely less linear and I did have some moments where I encountered things out of order and it caused a lot of confusion. The country of Gartenburgh is surrounded by mountains, I travel around and find a place speaking of a flying vessel! Ah! That will get me there, surely. However, the person who makes said vessels needs a Gas Canister to build it. Right, right… Travel around with no luck and decide just to look it up. Oh, okay it’s in the mine I once traveled to in another chapter. Though, when I last went there in this chapter, nothing had changed? I look up maps and something should’ve changed. Turns out you hear how it changes in… a place I’ve never been? Apparently that place is accessible once you get the master key! Wait that’s in Femiscyra, that’s why… wait… Oh, turns out an item I got already was the key to get to Gartenburgh, and I just didn’t talk to the guy in Burland who tells the player that. Fuck. Oh, and the spot where you use this item was this little nook in the mountain range that I noticed while exploring and just knew was important.

So, yeah, besides those few hang-ups, this game flows really well for an old RPG without modern-day game design’s more player-friendly trends. Dragon Quest has always charmed me like crazy, it’s easily in my top favorite series now after replaying some of my childhood games and playing other installments for the first time. It’s always been tough for me to get through Final Fantasy, I even shelved a playthrough of ‘FFIV’, the Final Fantasy game that I’ve been most intrigued in, just because I got a hankering to play this instead. I’m a DQ-head through and through, and this installment is definitely a new favorite, although I’ve yet to play the game in this series that completely enraptures me to the point that I would call it an all-time favorite. Though, I did play this in anticipation for Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, which is my most anticipated new game of the rest of the year, and was excited to realize how much more of that game is connected to this installment than I initially realized just after that announcement trailer. Safe to say this is probably my favorite storyline in the series so far, and considering I grew up with the ‘Monsters’ spin-offs much more than the main series, I think ‘Dark Prince’ is gonna be a great time for me.

Visited this game's page again and noticed that I am still the only person who's logged this apparently, so I thought I should finally post a review. After seeing some other users review Melon Journey: Bittersweet Memories, I became very interested in the game at the same time where I was pining for physical carts to add to my Game Boy collection. I usually browse Limited Run Games' website to see if they have anything going on that I would be interested in, and after seeing this, I thought, "Oh! Well, I am interested in this game and would love a little cartridge, too!" So, I pre-ordered it.

I will say, the cartridge is absolutely gorgeous and super high-quality. I've gotten stuff from Limited Run in the past that didn't meet my expectations (I've found it's more worth it to get smaller packages from them than the huge ones), but the cartridge is not only pretty, but has a real weight to it. They didn't just 3D print these suckers, and the box and manual is really well done, too.

However, the game itself, at the end of the day, is really just a nice novelty. Meant to be played within one, hour-long session, it's definitely a de-make in the sense where it stuffs, what I have to imagine, is the original game's scenario into a bite-sized chunk. What I thought would be an entire experience sized down into the Game Boy aesthetics that I really love, is more just a (really high-quality) collector's item. If you're a big Melon Journey fan, you would love this for sure. If you're just a collector of Game Boy stuff, like me, I wouldn't spring for it.

Absolutely enraptured me when I had it on Nintendo DSi. A great little arcade with perfect pixel aesthetics and some of the best game feel I've ever gotten off of something like this. Is just as much about twitchy movements as it is about long strides and it just is so satisfying to reach out for a Bean and get 1000 points off of it.

I actually wouldn't get that this is kind of a WarioWare thing, despite being a huge fan of the franchise even back when I first played this, until last year when our little friend Pyoro would make an appearance in WarioWare: Get It Together! It would be the first new title in the series that I would buy in years and when Pyoro made an appearance in that game I went "Wait, what the fuck, that's the Bird & Beans guy!" Then, this past year in trying to 100% WarioWare Twisted!, I would unlock a mini-game called "Pyoro R," the 'R' standing for "Rotate," I imagine. I've had 'Twisted' for ages, and I can't imagine how cool it would've been to, somewhere along the line, unlock that game closer to when I started playing this.

Bird & Beans is the fucking bomb, and a modern release on iOS/Android with online leaderboards would steal time from me like crazy. Or, dare I say...

...Pyoro 99, when???

A really good little snipit of the Neopets experience. The “Create a Pet” screen will have you choosing between different species, all dressed up, in this game, as if to be ready for a fantastical adventure. But, really, you’re just playing a flash game with extremely minimal interest in presenting a visually striking, well, anything. This game is a visual novel, a really old visual novel that’s closer to the Meet ‘n’ Fuck games in terms of production value than it is to its Nintendo DS contemporaries like Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney and Professor Layton. Which fits, because this game is based on a browser game built almost exclusively on Flash!

I played a lot of Meet ‘n’ Fuck games as a teen— I mean, I played a lot of Neopets as a kid. Recently I decided to get back online to Neopets.com for a little bit just to see what’s been going on the last decade and change. I explored parts of the website that I never understood back in primary school and played a lot of stuff that I did understand but was just really bad at. I took good care of my couple of little guys before I got bored. Virtual pets can kind of be a form of masochism, to attach yourself emotionally to an artificial being as some form of entertainment to the point that, even after it’s outlived its ability to entertain you, you have this gnawing feeling in the back of your skull. Those sad, sad faces. They’re not real! What a terrible fate to befall me. You don’t get that stuff in Pokémon because monster collectors are never about perpetual care, and at least Tamagotchis have the decency to die—or return to their home planet—and put a point of punctuation on the circle of life. Neopets, though, they live forever. Even when poorly taken care of, they continue on, forever feeling a hunger and a sadness that only one person can access the means to end such a pain.

Through my recent experiences I’ve found that Neopets.com, overall, is an entirely convoluted game full of years worth of computer drawings that date anywhere from before 9/11 to after the arrest of former President Donald Trump. Convoluted not only in the sense that there is so much stuff, but so many ideas. Classical fantasy settings, futuristic sci-fi settings. Pyramids, castles, faeries (sic), dinosaurs, ghouls, goblins, space stations, mermaids. There’s also a good chunk of the world of Neopets that leans really hard on cultural stereotypes (this is very present in ‘Puzzle Adventure’, lol). All in all, there is promise of adventure, but really the best things to do on this site are play card games against computer players whose AI was programmed while you were in pre-school. It’s a museum, and because most of every activity that’s ever existed on the website is still in tact there really is SO MUCH TO DO. Not even including all of the forums, website design, running a store!!! Like some users run shops full of rare items with, like, custom HTML— I’m getting carried away, but, really, this shit is a monolith of internet evolution and it’s always been something that’s beyond me. As an adult, the games are still fun to play, but 90% of the site seems really only attractive to a version of me who kept up with this site all these years.

Neopets Puzzle Adventure is somehow published by Capcom, during what I believe was a short time where Neopets was licensed to Nickelodeon so that the brand could expand more. I actually first found the Wii version of this game at a thrift store where I’ve gotten some other gems I’ve reviewed on here before, but I was in fact lacking a Wii. I bought it more as a novelty, being a fan of Neopets, but then I found out there’s a DS version and I just had to. From footage I’ve seen of the Wii version, the handheld version is definitely the better-looking one. The artwork just translates better to the DS game’s limitations, while the Wii version has that weird cartoon cut-out look that some of its worst shovelware bears.

The titular puzzle is also not exactly stimulating, unfortunately, as it’s something you only really have to half-understand in order to stumble your way into beating all of the weird bosses. It actually does feel like a game that would be featured in a few puzzles in the Professor Layton games. The story is actually kind of interesting, and does a good job of feeling like an authentic Neopets story. Unfortunately, due to that poor production design the visual novel becomes a total snore to look at, and I found myself clicking through most of the fluff. Much like the series of Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop games, this little gem is just a borderline flash game with nothing much to write home about passed the fact that it exists within the orbit of a much greater phenomenon of nostalgia that I could talk about for ages.

Wow, what a bummer. Was hoping that this being developed by Intelligent Systems and having ‘Wars’ in the title meant this would just end up being Advance Wars but with monsters from the Dragon Quest series. Was also hoping this might have some sort of Dragon Quest Monsters kind of story, too, or something akin to ‘Rocket Slime’. Unfortunately, it’s just a little mostly-multiplayer game with the only single player being a training mode. The strategy element doesn’t feel right because the amount of strategy one might use is about the aame one might for any turn-based RPG. I might’ve bothered to complete the training mode as a stand-in for the campaign if the gameplay wasn’t intensely boring. Feels like a mini-game that might be included in a Mario Party-esque spin-off of this series. I guess I didn’t really remember that most DSiWare was designed around updating the DS with smartphone-style apps, so most of the games designed for DSiWare end up not really being full-fledged games. I have to go back and download those couple that I really loved on the DSi back in the day, though, and have some fun with some Real Shit.

Let me set the stage: you’re me, it’s, like, mid-2012. The only 3DS games you have are Kid Icarus Uprising and Fire Emblem: Awakening because you got the 3DS early because you thought the next Pokémon game after ‘HeartGold and SoulSilver Versions’ was gonna be on the new console. It wasn’t, and you should’ve learned back then there would never be any use trying to predict what the next Pokémon game would be. You’re also into anime, and your interest in JRPGs is skyrocketing, especially after said ‘Fire Emblem’ game and you’re looking for your next fix. Enter Tales of the Abyss. It’s a port of a PS2 game but you don’t know that. It’s part of a hugely successful series but it’s only hugely successful in Japan and only one game comes out in the west about twice a decade. You also don’t know that. You buy it pre-owned from GameStop because that’s how you buy every fucking game ever. But you knew that. This game would activate something in your brain that would never turn off, but it’s also something that wouldn’t click for a while, too.

I have a bit of a soft spot for this one because it was what got me into the ‘Tales’ series in the first place. This series would soon become monumental for me, both as an enjoyer of games and a writer of stories, as some of my biggest original fiction projects are very plainly inspired by some of the stories that make up the titular tales. However, I did get this game in a time where I was very bad at games. Especially JRPGs, I was undisciplined in properly leveling and growing characters, and really impatient about discovering where to even go. It wouldn’t be until years later, while struggling with Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition, that I would finally rewire my brain in a way that would allow me to conquer any RPG I set my mind to. Back in the day, after getting stuck on one of the fairly early bosses in this game, I discovered that this game has a full anime adaptation. “Oh, well, I’m playing this game only for its story, so…” I’ve watched that anime a few times, and still regard its opening and ending songs as top brass. I have a real soft spot for this one.

Though, I haven’t experienced Tales of the Abyss in either game or anime form for quite a while. After beating Tales of Berseria earlier this year, I was really into the groove, and wanted to not only try new installments in this series that intrigued me, but also finally roll the credits on a couple of a others that sat on the shelf for a long time. After getting back into ‘Abyss’ and meeting all of the characters once again, I absolutely fell back in love.

Before I get into anything else, let’s talk about how weird it is that this is on the 3DS. It wouldn’t be the last PS2 game to get a 3DS port but in a time where Nintendo was putting only their flagship N64 games onto this little engine that could, it’s kind of wild that Namco Bandai would spring ahead a generation and put this game on this console in 2011. I’ve often regarded the 3DS as a bad piece of hardware in my reviews, because it is! Some of its best titles run like dog-shit-ass and this game is no different. It utilizes the touch screen extremely well (every JRPG should have a second screen with the world map on it, lol), and being able to set abilities to the touch screen in battles is also a very good idea! It’s a good port because it utilizes its new home well, but there were more than a couple moments of slow-down, textures acting oddly, etc. Battles run smoothly, and only when intense artes are constantly being cast during late game bosses does it ever get rickety. During cutscenes and story moments, there are only some moments of text boxes appearing in the wrong areas every now and then.

At the end of the day, they are just minor technical flaws that most don’t account for in their rating of a video game, and I only do because I like to think about all of the factors that make a version of a game perfect. In this medium where games are constantly updated, ported, remade, and remastered, I often find that the technical aspects of every version of a game are pretty important to consider. If a new version of this game comes out (extremely possible after ‘Vesperia’ and ‘Symphonia’ recently got the treatment), I’d buy it in an instant (and even a new console if I needed to).

However, while this 3DS port is touchy, technically, this game’s design is hit after hit. Combat is really fun in this game. After Tales of Berseria’s absolutely lightning-smooth combat blew me away, I was still excited to go back to something simpler, and I did end up appreciating it a lot. Having simple neutral moves streamlines the combat without making it feel any less intense, and while I can really appreciate the fully-customizable move strings in ‘Berseria’, this game’s combat had a real easy rhythm that made it always feel satisfying within its own bounds. Leveling felt really well-plotted and balanced, and I never encountered an area with oddly-high monsters or a boss that felt unfair or impossible. Some great scenario-plotting by the designers here, really.

A big improvement from other titles is the dungeon design, which was a huge weak point in ‘Berseria’ in particular. While some dungeons had very middlinh puzzles that just were not tantalizing, ‘Tales’ dungeons never really felt like they were about the puzzles, and a lot of the times they feel almost like a formality. Because then you have dungeons in this game like the Absorption Gate, which at one point during it splits your party into three groups, having you switch between them to let each group progress through the dungeon, testing to see if you’ve been splitting your play-time between different characters up until this point (I did! For the first time in this series). It really felt well in-tune of other aspects of the series’ overall design ideas and it was a real high point for me, gameplay-wise.

Something I will say was, coming fresh off a different ‘Tales’ playthrough, I attempted this game’s Hard Mode, thinking myself up to the challenge. Unfortunately it was absolutely miserable. It not only makes battles difficult but it also affects how much gold and experience you collect with each fight, so you’ll be grinding more just to buy more items to get through the tougher battles. Absolutely struggled with it, and once I switched to Normal I was having a fun time, finally. Less of a Hard Mode or more of a ‘Not Fun’ Mode, in my opinion and I cannot imagine a fan of this game finding it an enjoyable challenge in the slightest.

One of the best thing this game does, though, is respect the player’s time. You know those moments in RPG games where they’re like “ah, shit we gotta go back to this location we’ve been before!” and they make you walk back through all that square footage of game to where the characters want to go? Well, this game just puts you where it wants you to be sometimes. I know. There were multiple times where a string of story events would take you back and forth between familiar towns and the game’s scenario just has a really good sense what to breeze over. Sometimes it worried me, especially when it gives you those “do you want to just go back now?” prompts. I usually decline those in games in order to grind along the way, but I would just let the game streamline things for me and still I never fell behind, level-wise. Just gives you the juicy morsels, so this isn’t anywhere near becoming those walking simulators that 3D RPGs risk becoming during similar moments. Tales of the Abyss’ world is small, with about only a dozen cities and towns that make up the entire planet, and you’ll go to each town about a dozen times or more, and before (and even after) they introduce fast travel, the game will very often transport you themselves and it was such a breath of fresh air, let me tell you.

The story picks up fast and thanks to what I’ve mentioned so far, it very rarely slows down. I found myself giving long play sessions to this title because I was just constantly engaged in the story and never bored of the gameplay. A story that really stands out, starring Luke fon Fabre, the son of a duke with only twelve years worth of memories, devoted to his sword teacher, Vandesdelca Grants (cool ass fucking name). Luke fawns over Van so much and it’s the crux of the entite protagonist/antagonist relationship, and while the game picks up fast, I wish we did get a little more prologue where we really see how Van grooms Luke to eventually obey him when the time would come. Luke, still, is an insanely good protagonist. A unique one, too, because while most anime protagonists are scruffy, talented, chosen ones, Luke is literally a huge brat, insufferable and unsympathetic for hours of game time, and is quite literally the opposite of a chosen one.

I just find it really ballsy and worthwhile to make your main character a gullible, pathetic moron, and then also make him have a panic attack when he kills someone for the first time. A moment that the game does not breeze over, because something this game handles very well is the weight of death and violence. Besides all the guilt that we watch Luke bear, I’ve never seen a fantasy game (outside of the actual war sims like Fire Emblem (though, even then, only the best Fire Emblem titles do this correctly)) handle and translate the violence of war like this one. There’s a certain fully-animated cutscene that depicts just a battle between two countries that involves zero characters that we know, but it feels so real, and the game makes you witness all the violence that the humans of this world inflict on each other in a gutteral fight for survival and for country. Eventually, every character has a heavy weight they have to carry, usually revolving around a death (or countless deaths, plural) that they were somewhat responsible for.

The growth that Luke goes through, and the bonds that he forms with people who didn’t believe in him at all upon interacting with him for the first time, is worth it enough for me. Couple that with an amazing story and a battle system that is in depth, but not overbearing in the slightest, and you have one of the best JRPGs I’ve ever played. One that conquers a hardware that holds it back slightly. This is easily one of the best games on this system and I will definitely be trying the PS2 version to see how it differs, and if there ends up being enough quality-of-life changes in this port to make up for its slight technical stutters. Though, despite it all, this is one of my greatests.

Gonna log a “first impressions” log and then review this again way down the line. Which, I hope there is a “down the line,” because I do think this is really fun. F-Zero was only, like 33% about going fast, and the other was managing your health and your boost and also turning. Bumping into things is BAD in this series, and I like how a big part of the almost tongue-in-cheek 99-racer installment is bumping into players and collecting the sparks that fly off of other players bumping into each other. It’s a great adaptation of this series to this kind of structure of multiplayer play, and so far, the five hours I’ve already spent with it have been a blast, and I’m excited to see if they give this a decent lifespan. Though, I figured this was released as a pulse check, to see if all the fans who hope for a new installment would actually buy it. Because, to be honest, I feel like people have more tricked themselves into thinking they want a new F-Zero, lol.

Everything about this installment makes the synapses in my brain fire off. A lot of people find this game easy, but I am not an intelligent, strategically-minded Fire Emblem fan, so even on this game’s Normal difficulty I receive enough of an interesting challenge where I’m always engaged. The characters are all the best; Neimi is my golden star, I actually enjoyed using Colm since I took care to keep him alive for the first time. I finally got to use Cormag extensively and he was a beast. Beloved fantasy character Kyle is also my favorite Great Knight ever. So many great characters whose supports are fun to explore and who are just fun to use as playable characters.

I adore this story, too. Lyon is the most impeccably well-written villain in any one of these games I’ve played. A poor soul, eaten up by his insecurity, so insecure that he cannot see how his friends try and lift him up, so insecure that he’s formed a pact with a demon king just to feel some tiny semblance of control over his fate. He only finds out he’s truly strong of heart in time to not have his essence completely consumed by the devil he’s let in. For his former friends, it is only through becoming unflinching in their self-assuredness that they are able to undo Lyon’s awful mistake. It’s an RPG for finding out that that you can always be sure of yourself when you know your friends will lift you up however much more you need to reach your goal, but you have to have your arms outstretched to your friends as much as you have them reaching out towards your desires.

I think, besides my eternally growing adoration for this cast, what really brings me back to this reserve to drink is the job system. Simple on paper, it has just the right amount of customization that has me always thinking of the next playthrough while I’m playing it. Same with the support system, which I think is so good in this game. Limiting each character to five support conversations per save file, done so that each character will be able to gain A Support with just one other character, and C or B Support with one or two more, I’m always thinking of the combinations I should try out during a run, and I as I get to know the game better with each playthrough it makes me excited to go back and try different things, different combinations, all for the pay off of having a bunch of units that are insanely fun to use. People complain about the maps, but I think they’re cool, and what this game may lack in maps it makes up for in units. These characters and classes and weapons are so fun to use. I love this game to bits.

Absolutely the best way to experience the Hoenn region, though this game has it's pushes and pulls when compared to its predecessors on the Game Boy Advance. One of the reasons why I don't love Pokémon Emerald Version is because it takes away most of the contest halls in exchange for Battle Tents. Which seems weird because there's also a Battle Tower, too. Oh, and that thing called the Battle Frontier that people treat like the best thing ever to happen in this series. I like contests! So I was very glad to see how they were enhanced, but I didn't love that you can compete at any level in any hall. The progression in the original versions kind of gave you an extra reason to stick around and return to towns that you might otherwise not find yourself in a whole lot. Push and pull. Some things are better, but some are not quite there. The best thing are the interior environments. Granite Cave with its mural, each gym with its enhancements, walking into that first one in Rustboro and knowing that it's going to be an all-new game. The Cave of Origin's deepest nook being a gorgeous room for the story's climax. A story that actually feels like a true RPG story, with a cohesive plot and arcs and fulfilled characters. The UI on the touch screen using some Game Boy Advance visuals is a perfect little touch, too.

The best lesson to be learned from this game is that it doesn't need to be so spectacular for this series. Fans of Pokémon expect a lot from these games, but playing this installment and seeing them nail a lot of the presentation but still being kind of small-scale just makes me think the direction they're going in with going bigger and grander with every generation is maybe taking things too far. The battles in these games don't need to be crazy. I really like how this game still keeps the little circles where each Pokémon stands within the battle UI. I like how you can't see the trainers, either. That's a change I kind of don't really think about, but, as I played this game, I kept thinking "they could just keep it simple and give themselves less work and maybe just polish the things they didn't get quite right instead of working from scratch with each new console they work with.

It stinks because there's no way they can go backwards in scale, but after seeing that article where some developers toil with trying to make great products within the unfortunate reality of their release schedule, it makes me think, that maybe they should regress a little. They can do a lot of cool things, presentation-wise, while still maintaining this classic feel with their worlds. I don't know. All I know is I really liked my experience with this game, more-so than any attempt at a more open world experience, that's for sure. The only reason this isn't a 4.5/5 is because this game, like every other Pokémon game on the 3DS, runs like shit in some cases. Which, makes me think, if these games were released on more modern hardware, and given a little tweaking in some areas, it would be the best game in the series by far. It's a shame a port like that is near unimaginable in this franchise.

It’s a little hard to tackle a beast like this, and I can easily chalk it up to trying this out for the first time co-operatively, but I think if it weren’t for playing with friends, I wouldn’t even have gotten into it at all. I actually know that to be true, because this has been sitting in my Steam library for years utterly untouched, even as I would get hard back into the Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon series. Something about it just turned me off, and I think it was the fact that I had soon gotten over the style of pixel-art used in this game, or maybe its reputation among the “cozy gaming” pseudo-genre that was probably borne of this game’s immense success (along with Animal Crossing: New Horizons). So much success that we’ve not gone a single Nintendo Direct over the last two years without a new cutesy farming sim being announced.

Though, I’m knee-deep into a playthrough of Harvest Moon: Back to Nature that also has me thinking about this genre a lot, so we’ll save that discussion for then. Right now, I just want to focus on what I think makes this game not for me, in particular. Mainly, it just feels really overwhelming. The town just felt impossible to navigate, especially at-first. Getting lost constantly going from and to my farm. In Harvest Moon’s Mineral Town, all the roads are straight, and it makes it pretty easy to memorize where certain things are, especially since the point-of-view allows you to see just enough to know where you are at all times. There’s also just a dozen more things going on here than in other games in this genre. There’s a wizard, dwarves, slimes. The Minecraft of it all definitely casts a shadow over it. I actually don’t get how this is “cozy gaming” because the amount of stuff there is to do and put time into is just crazy! I cannot imagine finding time to water an entire farm, harvest crops, go to the mine, contribute to the community center, get married! My brain just doesn’t have the capacity for it and if not for the fact that the role I was playing in this RPG was “assistant to my friend who was the host of the server” I definitely would not be having fun. The fact is, the whole time I was playing this I just kept thinking, “imagine if ‘Friends of Mineral Town’ had this kind of co-op play?”