Pretty damn good. As someone who could not play the original because of the wonky control scheme, I am glad this remake exists. Pretty much the only issues I had with it were the thermal and x-ray visors straining my eyes along with the annoying Chozo Artifact fetch quest near the end. It wasn't nearly as bad as I had heard people say it was, but it was still annoying. Despite those relatively minor grievances, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game but I don't think I'd put it above any of the 2D games.

Chained Echoes is a fantastic game with a couple issues that prevent it from being the masterpiece it could be.

At the beginning of the game you're introduced to your main cast of characters and get to play around with them a bit before their paths converge and are thrown into a conflict bigger than any of them. This leads the party into a story with tons of twists and turns that is just beautifully executed. The main focus of the story is the war in Valandis. This isn't a Fire Emblem game, this war is taken with the utmost seriousness and severity. War is cruel and dark and inhumane, and this game executes those themes perfectly. Because it's an RPG, there's also a lot of supernatural and magical aspects to the story as well. Those are great as well, but I think the war setting was the more well-baked of the two ideas. There are a couple things that go unresolved at the end, but they are relatively minor in the grand scheme of the story.

The main cast of characters consists of Glenn, Kylian, Lenne, Robb, Victor, and Sienna. There are a few others you meet down the road, along with some optional party members, but these are the main six, get to know 'em while you're here. Out of the six, Glenn and Robb end up being the weakest links. While Robb is just...annoying, Glenn suffers from being a protagonist with no agency—he simply lets the plot happen around him rather than being the one who drives it forward. That's just about the worst thing a protagonist can be aside from boring...but he suffers from that too, unfortunately. His backstory and motivations are cool, but his personality is just as stale as a rice cake. Fortunately, the other four get a ton of great moments during the story and are easily some of the best characters in the game. Also Sienna is gay. So like...always a plus.
The side characters don't get skimped either. The game has some incredible villains that are really good at portraying just how vile and desparate people can be under the wrong circumstances. I won't name names in fear of spoilers, but one of them is one of my favorite characters in the game.
The overall writing in this game is just top-notch, there were so many occasions where I would have to take a step back and let the words sink in. So many great conversations, monologues, and one-liners. Oh yeah, the game has a great sense of humor, by the way. There's this point early on where you can bet on racing turtles. It lasts like twenty seconds and plays the most intense metal music my poor ears have ever heard.

Gameplay is an absolute delight. The first thing I noticed upon starting the game up for the first time was just how FAST everything was. You move fast, picking up items is fast, combat is fast (and can get even faster if you press R2), talking with NPCs is fast, I can't sing enough praise for how much this game appreciates your time.
Something I was quick to notice was that the game doesn't give you EXP. Rather, you get what're called Grimoire Shards for defeating bosses or filling up a certain number of reward board squares (touch on that in a bit). Now for those of you worried that this'll be something like Paper Mario Sticker Star, allow me to alleviate those worries. I LOVE how levelling was handled in this game. It's not like SS where you can avoid battles and be better off without them, you're still rewarded for participating in fights with SP, points you can use to level up your skills. Also, fights are just mandatory most of the time. There are a handful you can skip by walking around the trigger for them, but why would you when combat is so much fun?
Combat is pretty standard fare, you got an MP bar, you can buff, debuff, heal, use items, and the like, but the main differences are that turn order is determined by speed—meaning a faster character could go twice before a slower character even gets to act—and the additions of the Overdrive and Ultra Move bars.
Ultra Moves are pretty self-explanatory. A big bar that everyone can build towards, and then you get a big attack with one character before building it back up again. But the Overdrive bar is the fun twist this game brings to the table. The bar is split into three sections, yellow, green, and red. Yellow is neutral, green is overdrive, and red is overheat. While in overdrive, your attack and defense are both boosted, but in overheat, both are decreased. You build this up by doing literally anything. Attack, magic, buff, you get the idea, go for a bit and you'll enter overdrive, but go too long and you'll end up in overheat. "But if everything builds up overdrive, how do you prevent overheat?" I'm glad you asked—all your moves have a chance of being given yellow text. These will decrease the overdrive bar instead of increase it. That, along with defending and swapping to another character and certain items will all decrease the bar, leaving you with a push and pull mechanic that you have to manage during combat. It's a lot of fun.

If you like sidequests, you're gonna have a field day with Chained Echoes. While there are only like...seven(?) eight(?) traditional sidequests in the whole game, they are all very much worth your time and have some great rewards tied to them. What fills the need for filler quests is in the reward board—this huge board with 150 little tasks that you can complete whenever you want—usually by accident. Because it's all right there, you don't have to talk to 150 separate NPCs to trigger all the challenges, you can just do them at your leisure. It's so handy and something that I think should replace traditional filler sidequests altogether.

I was bobbing my head to just about every song in this whole soundtrack. Some of the best music I've heard in an indie game, and that's saying a lot. I think I have like half the soundtrack in my mega playlist.

The two big issues I have with gameplay are crystals and Sky Armor combat. Crystals are basically Materia, where you can put them on weapons and armor to increase your stats. Problem is, the requirements are annoyingly specific, and if you fuck up and remove the crystal from your gear, they get big and lose all their purity, punishing you for making a simple mistake, or just finding better armor.
Sky Armor you get at the beginning of act 2. Basically just fights with bigger enemies and bigger numbers. They kinda screwed with the overdrive feature, there's no more overdrive, it's just default and overheat—remedied by the additions of the gears, where 1 is attack mode, and 2 is defend mode. 1 moves the bar to the right, while 2 moves it to the left. There's also a gear 0 that (if I remember correctly) is identical to gear 1 except for the fact you can't use skills and replenish MP at the end of every turn. This sounds cool on paper, but the execution felt a bit...wanting. I found that I was usually forced into gear 2 no matter what I wanted because enemy attacks still move the bar to the right, then I'd run out of MP way too fast and be forced to do nothing for a turn. Rinse and repeat. It doesn't help that, while you are still rewarded for combat, it's far less substantial than what you earn on foot. Depending on the weapon you're using, you get a set number of skills in a set order before you need to swap around your weapon to get new stats. You can't even keep the skills if you master them like you can with Class Emblems. Hell, you can't even master skills. It's super bare-bones and feels like a cool idea they had early in development but didn't know what to do with it and left it in anyway.

Despite those issues, I loved this game and am very glad my friend recommended it to me. If you like Chrono Trigger or any other classic SNES RPG, you're gonna love this one.

I don't say this lightly, I've only ever said this about maybe two or three other games—Please Be Happy is a masterpiece.
I'm not a crier, I've never been a crier. All the media that's ever made me cry has only done so once—and usually not very hard. On the other hand, this game slapped me upside the head and MADE me a crier. I honestly couldn't tell you how many times I burst into tears while playing—it was that effective. The team behind PBH should be very, very proud of themselves, because they've crafted the best visual novel I've ever played.

I am very torn on Scarlet and Violet. I enjoyed myself for the most part, but its very existence irks me on several levels.
For one, the very core of the Pokémon experience is still there and honestly better than ever. The designs are killer, the characters are wonderful, Area Zero is a great divergence from the usual Pokémon feel™, and the party banter is top notch... But on the opposite end, it's a buggy mess with a terrible framerate, missing features, a mediocre story, and an experience that was un-streamlined from their achievements in PLA.
PLA didn't even get a month to breathe before the announcement of SV was shoved down our throats. Its shelf life and the possibility of additional content would've been significantly increased if they had given SV another year or so to cook in the oven. Instead they undercooked both meals and shipped 'em out anyway.
Game Freak knows how to make good games—Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are proof of that, PLA was proof of that, a lot of their previous works are proof of that...but they are just not given the time nor the resources necessary to create the games that they want to create... And with how immeasurably well these two games sold, it's only going to get worse from here.

TL;DR: Cute premise, lacking in gameplay.

The game is framed as a grandpa telling a bedtime story to his grandchildren. That's the best part of the game, you get a lot of silly dialogue when the kids butt in and argue something was too easy or whatever.

Gameplay-wise, it's rather...repetitive. It constantly reuses the same four or five puzzle types, and they don't ever get thought provoking enough for the repeating puzzles to be satisfying. Combat doesn't fare much better. Enemies die so quickly and easily that they often supplement harder enemies for DROVES of enemies absolutely filling the screen. Bosses provide a moderate challenge, but I'm fairly certain most of them are seizure-inducing. Items you acquire are almost exclusively combat-oriented, further trivializing the combat. I hardly ever used the sword at all once I got some of the midgame items.

Pretty fun! It was pretty short, as well as pretty easy. That didn't bother me much, but your mileage may vary.

My favorite part about Transiruby is how quick and snappy Siruby feels. She's FAST, and it feels GREAT. Combat on the other hand is pretty simple, there isn't a whole lot going on. You've got a sword and a gun. Gun stuns enemies sword kills them. Kill enemies with the sword to get ammo, stun enemies with the gun and then kill them with the sword, and you get health 30% of the time. You've also got a down stab which kills every regular enemy instantly. Very handy.

I love the way combat and platforming are sewn together with the Element Gun. Letting you create platforms out of literally any enemy you come across creates some interesting platforming challenges.

Because this is a Metroidvania, there's also tons of items scattered about to grab. Unlike Metroid, however, only a handful actually power up the player character, the others are essentially useless, which was honestly pretty lame. You get some special art for 100%ing the game, but that's really about it. The Mega Tranchips and the Dark Quartz aren't even listed on the map, which makes it extra annoying. The abilities you get aren't even anything special, really—it's pretty standard fair. There is ONE, and I mean EXACTLY one ability that is super cool, but 1/13 isn't a great look.

The tutorial at the very beginning is a little intrusive, but it doesn't last long and the dialogue is pretty fun so it gets a pass. In fact, the dialogue throughout the whole game is pretty great. Siruby and her cat AI have some entertaining banter throughout the game, and there's a handful of other characters that add their own flair as well.

Occasionally they'll switch it up and give you an environmental puzzle, where there's a code is hidden somewhere in the environment. Now, this ain't no Phoenotopia, but some of them are pretty clever.

Music is pretty good, although there's only like... seven tracks in total. The last area's theme is easily my favorite. The last area in general is probably my favorite. It puts a unique twist on the game that I won't spoil, but it's a lot of fun. It's also super pretty. This whole game is gorgeous, really. I have like 50 screenshots of just the environment itself lmao.

My biggest issues with the game are that it’s a little easy compared to other recent Kirby games (especially the true arena), the camera is very wonky during multiplayer and boss fights, Bandanna Dee is very limited compared to Kirby, and it doesn’t list all the moves available for Copy Abilities. But despite that, Kirby transitioned very well into 3D! The exploration is better than ever with the returning missions from Dreamland 3, as well as a plethora of Waddle Dees scattered throughout every level. Combat is very fun and versatile with the added upgrades to Copy Abilities, the new Treasure Roads are a fun distraction, and Waddle Dee town is adorable, providing a plethora of mini games and other fun side things. So yeah, pretty solid, but I think Robobot remains supreme as the best Kirby title as of now.

The main draw of this game is absolutely the character interactions. The game is pretty fun, sure, but I probably would've never played anything like it if Yu and Kay weren't the main characters. (I also wouldn't have played it if they didn't update the game with gay pairings, but that's besides the point.)

These two are such lovable dorks, it's really hard to NOT like them. I was very impressed by just how much dialogue there was, and it's all voice acted! It's GOOD too. There's so much dialogue in fact that I think the most I heard a line repeated was like three times. There are a handful of stilted lines here and there, but nearly all of it is very well done and believable.
The story works well, it's not the best thing I've ever experienced, but it's effective and intriguing.

The whole thing about the Apiary and Flow and how their world works in general is something that you won't understand at first, but quickly catch on to because of how naturally the dialogue "flows" between these two characters. Yu is an engineer and Kay is a biologist, so they're constantly answering each others questions—and by extension, the player's questions.

Actual gameplay consists of exploring, combat, and preparation. Exploring takes the front row seat and strangely plays similar to something like Mario Kart (drifts included!). It threw me off a bit at first, but it's actually super fun to just zoom around these islets pickin' up food and clearing away Rust. Cleaning the Rust is the main thing I found myself doing. It's not necessary to clear up every bit of Rust to beat the game, but I did anyway because it felt good. There's also the Flow threads you'll see sprinkled about everywhere, they act as little trails that take you to different parts of the islets, typically out of reach areas. I... kinda don't like the Flow threads. They all look the same and you can't see the entirety of a Flow thread, so when you get on one, you have no idea where it's gonna take you. This is especially annoying when it's the only way to access the next area.

Combat revolves around you fighting the wildlife after it's been infected with Rust. The game was actually an RPG to my surprise, but it uses a real time system instead of a turn-based one. All your skills take a second to charge up before you can use them, and you have four of them. Burst and impact are your attacks, the former is basically magic, and the latter is physical. Then you have Shield, your defensive measure, and Pacify to... uh... pacify any enemy after you've whittled down their HP. Don't wait too long though, they will get back up again if you aren't fast enough. It's actually pretty tricky to get used to, since you can charge both characters' skills at the same time. If you're someone who's good at multitasking, you'll find yourself right at home here! If combat isn't really your thing or you can't quite get the hang of it, you can probably go the whole game only fighting five or six enemies since you don't gain much from completing fights other than a minuscule amount of EXP, which can be gotten via other means anyway.

The last major part of the game is preparation. Making food, medicine, and battle items, upgrading gear... sleeping. It's pretty simple but you're almost always greeted by a new conversation every time, so it's very worth it. Eating food and just finding little dialogue spots is also how you'll get the most EXP (I'm not even sure it's called EXP but just roll with me here). It isn't immensely useful, you unlock some extra attacks and get more health and that's about it, but they're pretty cute interactions.

Some miscellaneous thoughts:
• Music was fine. It all kinda sounds the same, but it's not bad so it gets a pass.
• The locations are all pretty same-y unfortunately. There's like three areas that aren't grassy hills and those are cool, but they aren't the majority.
• They have a pet named Oink.

Gameplay isn't super engaging, but overall, very worth it for just the characters alone.