I bought this because I don’t really have anything to play on Switch right now. I’m playing a lot of stuff on PC and 3DS, and I haven’t really bought a lot of new releases on Switch because I’m not exactly too liquid right now! I’ve heard a lot about these ‘Grandmaster’ titles and decided to try one out. The result was me sinking hours and hours almost everyday this week trying to get that top spot on the rankings. I usually try and watch something while playing whatever “““casual””” game I’m playing, however, and what I never seemed to realize was that Tetris requires 100% of my attention when I’m intensely trying to be the very best. A “grand master,” if you will. So intense, however, that I was beginning to get really frustrated as I couldn’t get over a wall I’d found myself at around level 399 with an S2 grade that I could get to around 5 minutes and change. So, I found myself irritable, distracted, and not really doing much else with the free time afforded to me by my being unemployed (and not liquid enough to purchase new vices and addictions). I think I’m gonna hang up the Tetris towel for the next couple of weeks, and when I do pick it up, I think I’ll get into something a little more light-hearted. Like, Tetris DS or something. Hopefully my Switch doesn’t miss me too much.

Definitely my least favorite ‘Layton’, maybe, though by only a smidge, but not for the reasons I expected. This game actually does a really great job on the transition from 2D to 3D, considering this is a series that, before this game, basically leaned mostly on the charm of their cartoony art style and animations that were made for 2D art and animation. The models in this game were not only very well done, but are well utilized to make some scenes a little more lively, with some non-2D-animated cutscenes using the models for some action scenes so that it’s not all the standard visual novel diorama. It gives the game a really great overall look that doesn’t veer far away from the established and well known style of the Professor Layton series.

Unfortunately, this game’s scenario and plot is just not even meeting its visual success in the middle. It is very interesting to dive into more of Layton’s past, after getting some insight into his love life in ‘Unwound Future’ and then seeing his early days at his current professor job in ‘Last Specter’. The scenario goes back and forth between past and present, as the professor recounts more of a story that’s directly intwined with the strange events that the gang is investigating. The thing is, the events of the present are not interesting after the very beginning and until the very end! It is a bit of a drag, pacing-wise, and the mystery just did not entice me. The chapters that make up the past are leagues more interesting, as we learn more about the stoic Hershel Layton’s closest friends of his teenhood. It made me wonder, constantly, of how this plot might’ve been better broken up or arranged in order to make for a better overall scenario.

Now, in these games, I don’t exactly hold a high standard for them to be extremely mind-boggling and surprising in terms of plot twists. Professor Layton games are very wacky and mystical and earnest, aiming for a wide audience of all ages. These games all revolve around Layton and his entourage unraveling a seemingly supernatural event, and not only explaining the phenomenon as a farce, but also uncovering the motives behind it. A problem in this installment is the game doesn’t really seem to be having any fun with the “explaining the phenom” part of the story. Professor Layton just seems to figure a lot of it out by talking about the events with others, and not a lot of investigating into each event happens, or puzzle solving, for that matter. There are less “a-ha!” moments and more “oh, okay,” ones, instead, I guess you could say. This is the fifth installment, and at this point, the audience knows that people magically disappearing or turning to stone might have some logic behind it, and the fun should be figuring out just how it was done, instead of figuring out that it was a trick in the first place.

Then, when it comes to motive, it is not exactly hard to connect the dots on what’s going on even as soon as all of the main players are introduced. The story, then, does not unfold with this in mind, and thus plays out as if we couldn’t possibly have a clue up until the last couple of chapters, when the professor himself begins hinting that he knows. Though, once you see even the first chapter that takes place in Layton’s past, I imagine any player could narrow it down a lot, and it becomes less about unmasking the masked villain of this story, and more about uncovering the motive. The game’s present story drags, mostly, because it takes a while to get to investigating a motive that might tie into events of the past that we still are dying to see.

The game’s finale also kind of falls flat. In my review of Professor Layton and the Last Specter, I fawned very hard over the climax of that game. The finale incorporates a lot of fun elements, and a lot of puzzles, and thus feels like a great finale, story- and game-wise. There’s only about a handful of puzzles even involved in this game’s final hour, and while they are fun I just couldn’t help but feel as if this game’s entire scenario was just really stringy, and wobbly, and not at all the kind of charming, woven quilt that most of the other installments share. For instance, part of the last chapter has you reading storybooks left as hints within a giant hotel so that Layton and co. know where to go to confront the antagonist. This amounts to you going to a room, finding the book after clicking around, then going to the next room. I feel like, in a puzzle/mystery game, it might be better to have the player be familiar with all of the rooms already, maybe by having already visited the area (it actually would’ve really served the story to have Layton be staying in this hotel during his entire visit), and then the player can figure out which room to go to themselves based on the hints instead of just, unlocking the room once you find the book, lol.

Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask transitions a landmark DS series to 3DS very, very well when it comes to UI and basic gameplay structure, and the visuals do not suffer from letting go of the classic 2D portraits and also switching things to the top screen to accomodate the 3DS’ hardware design. One of the most fun little reveals was actually that a chapter in the story is told entirely through a dungeon crawling segment, utilizing the game’s newfound 3D style to switch things up, gameplay-wise, and keep the series fresh and still inventive, and, thus, keeping the audience engaged. This game is definitely continuing from its predecessor and throwing in more ingredients into the pot than just a bunch more puzzles. However, the story’s execution just did not come together on this one, for me, and although I would still recommend this to any fan of the professor’s, as it still give some wonderful insight into the character, it definitely is the weakest installment, in my mind.

I am not a fighting game gal, but I watched EVO with some friends and it reminded me that I own this after finding it in a thrift store. My relationship to fighting games has always been that I wish so badly to be good at them, but I’ve never gotten the hang of a single game, lol. I played a decent amount of Street Fighter IV on Xbox 360, but never won a single online match. I say all this only to preface that this game feels good to me, someone who all fighting games feel wrong to. Hits feel good, the game works well, it never felt clunky at all! Also is pretty crazy that character sprites don’t look fucking disgusting, and the background twisting when you move up and down is pretty crazy. A great GBA tech demo, I guess, but I don’t figure it as some hidden gem.

One of the most stressful times I've had with a game in a while, and also maybe the most I've had to persevere through a playthrough in order to make it through some of the harder surgeries you have to do in this game. It is pretty fucking hard for a game without any difficulty settings (or, well, ANY settings, to be fair). To its credit, it does a good job, in that sense, simulating the life of a surgeon; getting you in a pressuring environment and in a stressed mindsight. Then, to its detriment, it does a really poor job in almost every other aspect.

The game takes a lot of liberties in simulating medical practice, both to simplify gameplay, I imagine, but also to simplify writing. Having this take place in a not-so-distant future (2018, lol) where nearly all diseases are cured just takes away a lot of grounding I think this game may have needed. In some chapters, it attempts to humanize patients you'll only know for about 20 minutes of gameplay, each, if that, but the writing is just not doing the work in order to make these virtual bodies that you're cutting up feel anymore than just that.

Then, once the plot about fighting off a terrorist-developed parasite named G.U.I.L.T. (exactly what I'd expect from an Atlus medical drama), the less and less important your patients' humanity becomes. So, it's not well-written enough to be an interesting medical drama that uses this exceptional medium of touch controls in order to experiment with dramatized surgeon simulation. But, also, it's a little too finicky to be a fun game. Each level's difficulty ranges wildly, in my experience. I would also struggle through all five minutes of a surgery only to try it again and finish pretty quickly, which, while I can't exactly say how, makes me think the level design is just a little off. There were just many times where I couldn't quite figure out how "correctly" I was doing something.

A lot of this game just feels off, in that way. While I do think it was an interesting and fun playthrough, as the levels that were well designed did feel so satisfying and accomplishing to finish, this is definitely a rough cut. I am very interested in what some of the newer installments of this series do, if anything, to smooth things out. Also, this was hard with touch controls, what the hell does a Wii version of this game feel like?

Also, what kind of surgeon is Derek Stiles? Ignore the fact that he is somehow 26-years-old and has finished residency in what is obviously a fictional version of Los Angeles, California, USA. This young man performs, just out of residency, general surgery, pediatric surgery, cardiac surgery, and trauma surgery. All four of which require four separate board certifications for, and, thus, require around 3-5 years of training each. Just thought that was a funny hint as to how intensive the scenario writers bothered to understand the medical field, lol.

Intelligent Systems, you beautiful bastards. The spritework here is absolutely insane, just so gorgeous here, some amazing portraits of the Johto gym leaders, along with a very cute sprite of the Gold & Silver protagonist. This is a great, great spin-off; not just one of those old spin-offs that take an IP’s name and slaps it on a puzzle game, this feels like an actual Pokémon game. A great companion to Gold & Silver versions, too, the way it highlights its starters and baby evolutions. It was just a real treat, and considering the console version of this is more of a Pokémon anime game instead of a Pokémon game, this is definitely the one to play. Between this and the Zelda ‘Oracle’ games, it’s really spectacular what some folks were able to do with the spritework on such limiting hardware. Like, this might be one of the best looking Pokémon games ever.

Makes an actual game out of the first virtual pets that were really passive, simple machines. Adds more stats, double the Tamagotchis (than were in a single device), adds more activities, and it also has some amazing sprite work! Sprites that add more than just a few extra bits to these Tamas and it makes them look so cute and lively. This game is worth it to try just to see all of the sprites of the adults, in my opinion. Can definitely imagine kids hanging out playing these together and keeping their Game Boys on until the batteries go. Only problem is the localization is so bad. In the main menu, the ‘Exit’ option goes to the main menu and the ‘Home’ option SENDS YOUR TAMAGOTCHI BACK TO THEIR HOME PLANET!!! Definitely would recommend getting a ROM for this if you can’t or don’t want to spend money on the newer devices. The "tournaments" aren't crazy deep, and the 'study' and 'sports' games are really simple, and the 'sports' game is a lot more random and frustrating than the other. Also, the deaths in this game are extremely violent (FLASHING LIGHTS WARNING, for one thing), which just makes losing a buddy a real grief-inducing event, lol. So, as much as I can imagine kids hanging out and playing this together, I can also imagine one having their first panic attack as the game violently beeps and flashes as their little friend sits there, flatlined, X's in their eyes, until the turn into an angel and go to heaven.

Anyways, they’re really wasting opportunities to do Digimon-style RPGs or adventure games with these little guys. They also only have one game on smartphones and it’s maybe the ugliest Tamagotchi game I could conjure up in the dark conclaves of my mind.

Look, I love this series like crazy, so it’s hard for these games to disappoint, but even I know this whole series is just loaded with exposition. The world-building is arguably, uh, terrible because it is purposefully made so convoluted as most of the mystery and drama of most of these games’ story scenarios comes from characters unfolding and connecting passages from their respective world’s Book of Genesis, until the cast of characters find themselves twisted into their world’s Book of Revelations. Tales of Berseria’s scenario does well, though, in pacing out their discoveries and exposition so it never feels like you’re being given important information so late into the game. There are plenty of moments of characters going “Ah yes, of course, it’s just like the earth synergy.” “Earth synergy? What’s that?” but it’s never to a point where it feels like it’s too overbearing, or lazy, or goofy. I played a lot of this game spaced out over the last seven months and never forgot the important details of how this world works, as it was given to me, and I think that’s a pretty good testament to how this game doesn’t overload you. Even in the last section, where other ‘Tales’ games might dump a lot of last minute stuff on you, this one feels like it’s trying to stay linear.

I also think expositional dialog works here because each of the main cast are of different backgrounds. Demons, priests, witches, pirates! Everyone has lived a different life and, thus, can bring different knowledge to a discussion about the world! This makes what could be heavy-handed expository dialog a little lighter as the cast converses like a bunch of strangers of different strokes coming together to play ancient history detective. Then, of course, we learn more about these characters that we like as we learn about the world and its mystery.

The characters are all great. The party of six are each hits, all of them just endeared themselves to me so fast and easy, and the perfectly consistent writing of their personalities and how they clash and interact just had me giddy during some scenes. Sometimes a family isn’t a nuclear family of parent and children, sometimes it’s a gay samurai and a gay pirate and a mean lesbian and a closeted youth group lesbian and a quirky trans girl and the cute little kid they all see as a little brother! And the mean lesbian herself, Velvet freakin’ Crowe, is such a great, great protagonist. She and this game’s villain are perfect opposite extremes of what this whole game is about: what is the point of hurting?

This isn’t the first text to tackle this subject matter, of course, we all know what the point of hurting is! It means we’re human! It means we’re alive! It is a quintessential part of the human experience to be met with pain, the hard part is processing it. The antagonist of this game (light spoilers) wants to rid the world of pain; it should be something that no one should experience, as it is only borne from faults that mankind are saddled with. Velvet wants revenge for her pain, it drives an all-consuming (pun intended, as the connection is made obvious in subtext) rage that she plans to use to remove anything in her path. Velvet’s costume, at first glance, seems a bit much; a very revealing mess of tattered clothing that someone might wear to a nightclub’s goth-themed event. Though, I think it serves a purpose. Velvet is also a daemon (sic), a blight on the world, seen as ugly and broken by the church that runs the entire world. Her outfit is just a reflection of how the enemy sees her, and any objectification made towards her revealing outfit just helps the metaphor that not only is the church disgusted by her, but they also see her as a tool.

Her arc is spectacular, and, like most JRPGs, the solution is friends. As a writer, though, I’ve grown less sensitive to the same kinda of stories, especially in games, and to me, what’s important is not whether your message is new, or even if the story beats aren’t familiar, it’s how you write characters and how you take them to where they need to be taken to. The path that Velvet goes on to see her friends clearly as they are is so great and so fulfilling, and so clear and beautiful, and in tandem, Laphicet’s arc and growth is so good. Ugh! I cried folks, I really did. This entire story had me in chains the whole time, and the ending was truly something else, and still has me thinking about it with a massive amount of emotion. I don’t think I’ll ever forget about Velvet Crowe. She’s up there with Guts and Maka Albarn as characters I will cherish forever.

“Your despair… how is it gone?”

Now, the video game part of this game was, well, less spectacular than the story, relatively. The combat in this game is maybe my favorite of the ‘Tales’ games I’ve played. It replaces mana points with a stamina meter made up of five points that get spent during your moves. It, for me, led to a much fluid style of play. High-hit combos are pretty easy, but still fun to land, the system was never too convoluted to the point where I found myself struggling to execute something, or was ignoring entire mechanics because I felt there was no need. The thing was, there were moments where I felt like I could just kind of brute-force a lot of situations. While I think this could be chalked up to the game being well-balanced to the point where, without me ever needing to grind, and I was the level I should’ve been throughout the entire game, I did feel like there wasn’t a whole lot of struggle, or strategizing. I just mapped artes to my buttons well, used the mystic artes when I could, and made it through pretty unscathed.

The struggle in this game, really, is dungeon design. When it’s not boring, it’s annoying, and the fucking two-hour-long final dungeon was plenty more enough for me! The dungeon “puzzles” basically come down to you walking from end-to-end hitting the right switches. I feel like, at least in exploration-rewarding JRPGs with encounters like this, the fun of dungeons can just be figuring out where to go. The final dungeon being this big fucking thing that was so annoying to navigate because of how the in-game map presents itself just drove me crazy, I cannot stress this enough. I detest the idea that the final boss needs this kind of carpet laid out for them, that you need to go through one final challenge leading up to the final battle. Buddy, the entire game was the lead up! Having already stayed up a couple of hours extra to finish the job, only to go to the location where I expected to fight the final boss and see a teleporter that took me to this huge complex with orbs and switches and bridges and doors and switches and warps and the most annoying monsters ever!!! It was a long night.

Though, the dungeons were my only gripe, and the very last one was the only one that was long enough to be a drag, to be fair. This is definitely my favorite tale that the ‘Tales’ series has ever told, though the video game itself didn’t exactly stand out next to other installments that I’ve completed.

Shouts out to Blargg! This, technically, isn’t my first game. However! This is the game I’ve had for the longest. I still have the same cartridge I got some twenty years ago for Christmas, and despite my young self having a knack for misplacing games and cartridges, I was quickly sentimental, and knew to never give this one up. It’s been a while since I’ve beaten this game. Like, probably not since I went and found every secret level back in my teen years, but recently I’ve been wanting to play it again.

I’m a huge sucker for world maps, probably because of this game. I mean, my two favorite Fire Emblem games both have world maps, I love the look of this game so much, and the look of the world, too. Rediscovering a lot of the secrets of the world map, finding all of the switch palaces, taking different routes through worlds. It’s so, so great. I’m not really into Mario games, all that much. They’ve never sucked me in at all or enticed me all that much. I didn’t own a single entry in the “New” series of 2D games, I’ve not even played Sunshine, Galaxy, or Odyssey, lol. Though, hoo boy, Super Mario Bros. Wonder looks absolutely so grand.

So pretty, so charming, so tricky, but never frustrating, for me, in an unfun way. Had a blast going through this. I am not a Mario game fan, I would say, but I feel very proud to be a Super Mario Advance 2 expert lol.

I got a bit of a hankering for some Pokémon Diamond & Pearl Versions for some reason and, on a whim, just started this up without much thought beyond “I wonder what this feels like after playing ‘Shining Pearl’.” These games are most definitely better, though, besides the original Pokémon Red & Blue Versions, these are definitely some of the most flawed the start of a new generation has been in this series. It is interesting to see how this game uses its ability to create a 3D space within this top-down angle to create more interesting areas (mainly the gyms are very interesting). These games do some interesting stuff with the Nintendo DS’ signature blend of 2D and 3D sprites, and I think these games’ overall look are probably the most interesting thing about them.

I didn’t finish this playthrough. The itch was scratched pretty fast, to be honest, and it was mainly due to the fact that I found it really hard to craft an intetesting team. We all know the memes about the classic Infernape-Staraptor-Luxray-Lucario-Garchomp-Bibarel joint, but I think those memes are the effect of one of the most boring regional Pokédexes fucking ever.

Look, I’m an advocate for smaller regional ‘dexes, I am. It’s one of my biggest complaints about newer titles that they jam pack regions with 400 Pokémon and it’s to the point where someone could have a full team of six that can cover all type advantages by the first gym. I admire this team’s attempt to stick to a nice, tight 151, but it is kind of hilarious the choices they make, especially considering all the ‘mons who got new evolutions that didn’t make the base game. Like, are we really cutting Ralts, but then leaving in Abra again? No Rhyhorn, but Geodude and Onix have just got to be there. It makes sense that you can’t have everyone there, and some of the cuts make sense if you think they crafted the regional dex around the actual region, but even then some of the choices are silly to me (and BORING!). Basically, I was having trouble using Pokémon that made me excited, and when I found out you can’t get Rotom in this game until after you get the National Dex, my interest shot through the floor, lol.

Because of that, I didn’t get much into the game’s scenario, but it still is just so crazy how much Platinum Version improves on this region. I mentioned earlier in regards to the upcoming Pokémon DLC that I miss third versions so much. It is such a cool thing they had going on to do a pair of games that introduce people to new Pokémon and new places, and then, a year or two later, refine the edges of that first pair and add a bunch more content. I remember, back during the sixth generation, I skipped ‘X & Y’ in order to wait for the next games in Kalos, since I knew the second games in each region are better, but it was to no avail, as we know. New Pokémon games still make me excited to see the direction of this series, but I don’t think we’ll ever get something like we did during the ‘00s with the third and fourth generations.

Sometimes it’s hard to grade a remake. See, the thing with Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town is that Harvest Moon is so fucking good. It feels so good to see the money coming in; to sheer a sheep, to collect an egg from a coop, to brush a horse, to harvest crops. Seeing a grey heart turn to purple gives me more serotonin response than most entire games do. It is really impressive to create a gameplay loop full of monotonous tasks that build to a big enough prize to keep me going and going and going. Because of that, it is undeniable: I think Harvest Moon is fucking good. However, Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town kind of stinks.

Now, when judging a remake it’s kind of hard, so let me set some parameters: okay, there’s really, mainly, only one. Has the team behind the remake made the quintessential way to play this game? With a remake, especially one that keeps so true to the gameplay of its origin as much as this game has, you can really only judge on presentation and added content. Now, I can't talk of all the additions to this title except for gay marriage, which legitimately accounts for an entire star of my rating. Mainly so because I honestly can see myself going to past Harvest Moon titles that have romancing only to disinterested in the romance portion of the game because there's no lesbians!

Okay, now presentation. While gay marriage accounts for an entire star being added to the rating, this game's presentation accounts for the missing two stars. The worst thing you can do is make an ugly Harvest Moon game, and from what I’ve seen of Marvelous’ modern work, this installment is far from its worst, but this art style isn’t doing the job for me. It’s that kind of smoothed-over 3D art that just squeezes all the charm out of designs that maybe would be cuter with less polygons, lol. I will say, though, the 2D watercolor-style portraits are really charming. Another big thing is sound design and response; something I can’t really put my finger on, but this is lacking a lot of polish, even disregarding plenty of small glitches that may or may not mostly revolve around navigating tight spaces while nearby an adult horse.

When I got a Playstation Vita, it was mainly in hopes to play, for cheap, all of the Playstation-exclusive JRPGs that had stayed away from Nintendo and Xbox. I played a lot of classics for the first time on that beautiful handheld that had such a thankless job. One of those classics was Harvest Moon: Back to Nature. I played a lot of it just willy-nilly, and the thing about this series is that it is not friendly to casual players (or teens with no sense of a series’ particular vibes). You better have a notebook, ready, motherfucker, and even with a walkthrough at the ready telling me what to give Ann everyday to get her to like me, I just did not have the discipline to live a successful farm life.

So, even though I thought this game, as a remake of one of the quintessential Harvest Moon titles, was just average, it still was such a joy to be able to tackle this as an adult and really develop the fuck out of an anime farm. I was racking up the coin, raising animals that loved me back, and I got freaking gay married, whores!!! It wouldn’t be the first time I sunk a bunch of hours (I had one day where I did 10 hours straight) into a fun game with rough presentation (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), but I wanted to clear this from my backlog, since I’ve had this for nearly two years lol, before getting into older installments that I hear good things about on here. I went through two full years in this game, and I definitely am excited to get into this series a lot more and see what's out there in its past installments after playing this one.

Not sure how much this justifies itself. Having had some more fun with Castlevania’s anniversary collection that packs so many more games and SO, so many more extras, I just don’t see the merit in a $20 collection of 3 Game Boy titles that marginally play exactly the same. If anything, I was impressed with how, between the first and second games, how much the spritework improves (only a year apart, as well). The border on iOS with the buttons and the smaller screen is also a nice touch that I think other old ports could benefit from, but either way you’re gonna get so much more out of other Square Enix releases at the same price. They even have more modern SaGa titles for cheaper on iOS. I give this a “Don’t Buy” amount of buckets of popcorn out of 10.

My save file got fried...

I usually switch in between playing Game Boy games on my Game Boy Advance and my GB Operator, since my GBA isn't backlit, I like to play on PC. Though, sometimes, I found, playing the same cart on different hardware can make the GB Operator a little finicky. Almost lost a Pokémon save file, too, but the Operator hadn't overwritten the cart before I took it out to test if it was really wiped. So, I think I might just take a break from this, even though I was really picking up steam and played a clean two hours just today. I was really, really enjoying this game so much, and wanted to talk about it as a way to mourn.

I played a lot of Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker on the Nintendo DS. Though, eventually, I got bored of the story and just bred slimes together to get new ones (I love Dragon Quest slimes). When I started this game, I did plan to spend a decent amount of time getting the coolest fucking slime I could get my grubby hands on, I also did want to actually spend some time and really finish one of these games.

Dragon Warrior Monsters had been on my wishlist for a bit, especially after getting back into this series a lot earlier this year. I finally got my hands on a cheapish (sub $20 before shipping) copy from a Virginia state Goodwill's eBay account. When I started it up, I didn't really know what I was getting into, having completely forgotten the premise to 'DQM: Joker', I just got into it. This game is quirky, but, it's maybe one of the most succinct and well-fleshed-out creature collectors you could get pre-GBA.

I mean, let's not pull punches, this is Enix's answer to Pokémon's insane success, and they answered well. Enix was probably a better-funded game studio than Game Freak, even with the latter heading into its mega hit's sequels, and also probably a better experienced studio, as well. The result is a Game Boy Color launch title that absolutely blows even Pokémon Gold and Silver Versions out of the water.

Before 'Pokemon GSC' could even hit shelves, Dragon Warrior Monsters had released in Japan with a mechanic that is the reason I think this beats 'GSC' anyday: link cable breeding. The breeding mechanic in this game cannot be overpraised; it is well explained and is core to crafting a strong team of elite monsters. You breed monsters and they basically take on one parent's monster "pedigree," and then inherits both parents spell and ability trees. The result is you getting new monsters you can't find in the wild through breeding, with a toolkit that you can craft by breeding monsters with a good pool of spells. The game even keeps track of a monster's parents and their masters, so if you breed through multiplayer, you'll have a record of which friend you got your monster's mom or dad from!

This level of experimentation and mystery when it comes to monster breeding is just something that isn't even found in modern Pokémon games. When you breed Pokémon, you know exactly what you're getting and exactly what moves it will learn (even if you're aiming for an egg move). They never even made it so you might get either the mother species OR the father species. Breeding in Pokémon is basically just there for shiny hunting, these days, because there's not really any incentive to breed Pokémon during a playthrough! They even stopped making baby evolutions, and made existing baby evos available in the wild to even more invalidate this mechanic's existence within that franchise.

The satisfaction of breeding a Healslime with a weird flower bird that I'd never seen in a Dragon Quest game beforehand and getting a Wing Slime as a baby that had a buttload of support and healing spells that it could learn and also was a cute and cool ass slime species that I'd not seen before beats anything I could get from discovering new species of Pokémon.

It's a real shame this series got kind of kneecapped in the west by releasing a month and a half after Pokémon Gold and Silver Versions over here, but, gosh darn it, does it just make me so excited for the multiplayer potential of a new installment in this series getting released outside Japan for the first time in, like, ten years.

Wini the Wing Slime... I will come back for you... I will come back to this game and reclaim my save.

Was wondering, during the playthrough of Fire Emblem: Awakening that I started earlier this year, “Why is this not clicking with me at all?” I was thinking that, maybe playing other titles in this series right after banging out two back-to-back playthroughs of Fire Emblem Engage was pushing it. Maybe I was feeling series fatigue. Then, after shelving my playthrough of ‘Awakening’, I boot up this game for the first time since the year it released and crank out three hours of playtime in the first session and I realize, “Oh, ‘Awakening’ is just missing a lot of how this series evolved after regaining its popularity, and is the least unique out of these modern titles, and thus is hard for me to get into.” Then my partner said, “why are you saying such long-winded sentences to yourself out loud while playing that game?”

‘Echoes’ was the first Fire Emblem game I was able to get in on the Collector’s Edition of on release. I still have the pins, the reversible cover, the soundtrack, and the wonderful art book. What really drew me to the series in the first place was the perma-death, because it raised the stakes of gameplay in a way that was lacking in a lot of media I loved, but also what I really appreciated was the story and characters of these games. Which, I’ve always been someone who valued story, since before I could remember I was obsessed with storytelling. Gameplay, level design, etc. were not things I really could consciously parse the particulars of when I was a teen, so when just looking at what was important to me back then, this game blew me away. It was only the fourth game in a series that soared to my favorites with having only played the two previous 3DS titles and what was the easiest GBA title to get secondhand at the time: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (which I got for $20!!! from GameStop back around 2015/‘16). I mean, you do not have to dig very much into my profile on here to see I appreciate story-centric, character-driven adventure RPGs still to this day.

The point of this is, since finishing ‘Engage’ I’ve been meaning to go back to this game. Despite adoring it after its release in 2017, I’ve only played this game once! So I dove in, and as I said before, this game stuck back to me so fast.

Though, most everyone really enjoys this game’s story. The real sore spot for people is the actual gameplay part of this game. It’s definitely a unique entry in this series and definitely threw a curveball towards a growing fandom after the pretty standard strategy gameplay of ‘Awakening’ and ‘Fates’. For me, though, and like I said, I can’t exactly parse the ‘why’ of it all, but I kind of really liked the gameplay. I hear a lot of stuff about ‘Gaiden’ and ‘Echoes’ map design all the time but I found it to be tricky in a fun way, even Celica’s maps along her route I found fun. It’s basic to start out besides terrain differences, and then you get to the Southern Outpost and that’s when it starts to pull the rug out. I also love the dungeons so much, and mini-battles as dungeon encounters is so interesting to me; for this playthrough I found myself regularly going back to dungeons in order to grind units that are recruited at lower levels or just to go back and complete quests and explore.

I was a little nervous to do the Hard difficulty for this game, since I struggled in both ‘Engage’ and in ‘Awakening’ to get through maps easily. Then I booted this game up and realized… I did my first playthrough on Hard! It is advertised as being for returning players familiar with the franchise, and by 2017, I very much was that. Though, on my first playthrough, I did lose a lot of characters very easily. I lost Faye really quickly, most of Celica’s mercenaries didn’t make it far, save for Saber. I lost Luthier during an ambush before I could even get to the sluice gate and then I couldn’t even get Delthea! Thankfully, I was able to remedy all of these mistakes, and characters I didn’t even get to use for more than a few battles were all-stars this time around (Faye, Jesse, Est, and Delthea, of course)!

Though, playthrough number two wasn’t without its losses. It never feels like an authentic Fire Emblem experience without sacrifices needing to be made, or mistakes leading to regretful losses. Different than my experience with ‘Engage’, the turnwheel offers a second chance, but never took away the tension. There were even times where I ran out of spins on Mila’s turnwheel and lost units I loved! In ‘Engage’, there were points where I had to artificially say to myself “I don’t get to use the time crystal for that mistake,” in order to keep the tensions high. Here, the game feels best balanced for the Turn Rewind mechanic than later entries do, funny enough. Though, the turnwheel can’t save you from every death. The world map ambushes are really clever, and I had completely forgotten how they work, so when Alm first got caught off guard, the enemy cavaliers made a bee line to my unit with the weakest defense: Silque. I love that girl, and I never made that same mistake again!

I love Celica; I love how she is not a case of a female fantasy protagonist holding herself back from violence and war because of their sensitivity or fragility that ignores their having lived in the real world. Right from the get-go, Celica is not afraid to fight, and that’s what makes her the ‘Caring Princess’. She is willing to sacrifice herself not only in the Christ-like way many ‘Fire Emblem’ protagonists find themselves doing, but also through the blood, sweat, and tears that the violence of this series’ worlds require from its leaders. Celica and Alm are the best. In fact, I love most, if not all the characters in this game. I like how, to make up for less support conversations, you can talk to characters in villages and in forts as Alm and Celica and have them confide in you, converse with you, and through that you learn enough background about them to find them all endearing. I like how Emperor Rudolf is not a psychopathic (literal) demon, and is a nuanced character with heart and humanity despite being a warlord. It is so hard to find delicately written bosses, but this game really cares to intelligently make the player come to terms with the realities of war that Fire Emblem characters routinely face. It cannot be exaggerated how special I think the writing in this game is.

I’ve always had a problem with how in newer entries in this series the protagonists were the gods, and, for lack of a better reason, I put the burden on my hate for the “chosen one” trope. Though, with experiencing this story I truly know what the problem is. Much like plenty of other JRPGs, Shadows of Valentia is a story about gods being destined to leave the world to man. Mila speaks to Alm and Celica in the final act and tells them of Naga making weapons that would allow mankind to put down the gods once they began their death throes against the fate that was sealed for dragonkind the moment they began to rule the earth. The good case of the “chosen one” trope is Alm and Celica being prophesized to kill the old gods and pave the way for man to inherit the earth. Thus, the bad cases that we see in Three Houses and Engage is that the gods are the chosen ones, and man must fight by their side to pave the way for god to continue a righteous rule over them.

It’s funny how my two favorite Fire Emblem games are the ones with split-path scenarios that follow two equal protagonists (though the series will always acknowledge the princess of the two the real protagonist), but I think, just because I adore the story and gameplay a little more, this is officially leapfrogging The Sacred Stones as my favorite Fire Emblem game.

I admittedly bought this on sale on Steam thinking I would laugh through a classically-dated ‘90s video game on stream, stunted voice acting and all. However, the more I sunk into this game, the more I started to realize this had a following for a reason. While it definitely requires the player to be on its wavelength, what’s waiting for open-minded players is maybe the most lived-in game that I’ve ever experienced, personally. After playing it through, I genuinely think this is one of the most important video games of all time.

I think it’s a crazy accomplishment to create an atmosphere like this, that places you in such a mundane world that promises big things, but it’s just so regular and run-down. A great dissection of the mundanity of capitalism and urbanism, even in the face of destined greatness. A father-avenging, martial-arts-action video game stuck in the gears of the laborer’s routine. All the while, it’s still telling an amazing story, one of feeling stuck on rage and grief, and even when you’re stuck and can’t move on from mountains of unprocessed feelings, the world keeps turning, and days go by, and lives go on being lived.

Maybe the most important thing about this game, though, is that it is not embaressed to be a video game. A lot of narrative-focused video games try so hard to be elevated because they’re insecure to be a part of this medium, but Shenmue isn’t. There are fun, colorful collectibles, there are so many mini-games that you could waste a whole day on, and so many references to Sega! When I found the Sega Saturn in Ryo’s house, my jaw dropped.

So many wonderful moments, a wonderful supporting cast, I just got so sucked into this world, and after thinking I’d just play this one and move on, I’m so on board to play through II & III. I’ll never forget about Nozomi for the rest of my life!