Something that has become increasingly common in online discourse is the idea that if a studio makes a game with a certain feature or quality, another studio with a lot of money can easily, and is in fact expected to, replicate that success, delivering on a product with that and more. It's a truly baffling take, for a variety of technical and creative reasons, but more fundamentally, that viewpoint ignores that money isn't the only resource at play in the games industry: time is also in short supply. Between console cycles, trends, holiday seasons, to name a few, it's rather common for a project to be more pressed for days than it is for dollars.

No series demonstrates that better than Pokémon: it is the largest media franchise in the world, which proves to be both a blessing and a curse. Not only are they bound to all the aforementioned time constraints, but also, new generations are tied to new anime seasons, new card game packs, manga, all sorts of merchandise... All of which led to the puzzling decision to release the ninth generation on November 2022. That's less than a year after Legends: Arceus, with whom the new games share most of their staff, making it highly likely that they had less than a year of full-steam production.

The result was the most chaotic release in series history, games that were clearly unfinished, with broken features and a myriad bugs ranging from funny to game-breaking at release. There's still some lingering issues months later as Game Freak no doubt shuffle to manage patching and live ops while working on the DLC. This situation, understandably, led to a lot of frustration, but since Pokémon has been the internet's favorite punching bag as of the last couple of years, it got blown way out of proportion, with every texture and animation scrutinized and even emulator glitches farmed for clicks, not unlike what happened to Legends: Arceus.

It's that vitriol that kept me from writing about the game for several months now, the discourse surrounding the series having become exhausting to take part in (and puzzlingly, frequently dominated by people who haven't played Pokémon in years). But hey, if only to get this off the way, please indulge me as I get into why I'm personally disappointed in Pokémon Scarlet. As you may have noticed from the score, it's not "this is bad and this series is dying", it's "this game had so much potential and it pains me that it will never fully realize it".

SV introduces an open world to the mainline series: a real open world this time, unlike Legends Arceus, which had a series of open maps to explore. Paldea is a contiguous map that can be explored from edge to edge, no loading screens at all. It's also... barren. It features rather bland environments, defined only by the color of the ground and vegetation density (ranging from sparse to none). That it looks nothing like the actual Iberian Peninsula is a given, but that wouldn't matter much if not for a lack of natural beauty and a near total absence of landmarks. It's hard to even understand what Paldea's areas are meant to be, not to mention remember them in the long run.

That said, even though the map is clearly the weakest part of the game, it's possible to see some positives. The biggest irony is that, because so much of the world feels generic, it's very easy to get lost in, which is a feeling I hadn't had since the sprawling caves of Johto. It's common to take some random detour and wind up somewhere entirely different where there's something cool to find, with no idea how you got there -- a situation that yields a sense of adventure that was slowly lost as the series' graphics improved and its design became more focused and linear.

Of course, because this is Pokémon, exploration is almost always rewarded, if not with some useful TMs, with new Pokémon. The Paldean dex has a nice 400 of them, a regional dex count that has been more or less stable since Alola and that mixes old favorites with new mons at a ratio of about 3 to 1. These 400 mons are spread around the region in a way that you'll be finding uncaught creatures all the way to the end of your adventure, but also, because there's no linear path to follow and multiple areas close to the starting area, there's also unprecedented variety of Pokémon to catch while still in the opening hours. I suspect this will earn SV a higher replay value in the long run.

It's clear there was a vision to the map design, as even though biomes are not well defined, the shape of the terrain is, with the idea behind the game being to navigate that with your partner, Koraidon. Koraidon is introduced still in the prologue, and it also joins the player's party at that point, serving as a mount that is the main mode of transportation for the entire journey. As the game progresses, Koraidon gains more abilities, from jumping higher, to swimming, to flying, meant to open up new areas and change how the player approaches the map. And it works: the map feels daunting at first, but later on, Koraidon feels unstoppable. Revisiting locations from earlier on is also made rewarding as there are plenty of optional areas and items that can't be reached at first but become accessible the right abilities.

Because this design is successful, Koraidon is also a success. In fact, due to being so inseparable from the way the game plays, as well as being deeply tied into the narrative in a way that's almost poetic, and having lovable and expressive body language, sound design and overall behaviour as a creature, Koraidon is the best cover legendary to ever grace the franchise, and it's by a long shot. For many of the series' entries, cover legendaries feel bolted onto their entries and/or not developed past "whoa, it's the legendary thing!". Nebby, then later Zacian and Zamazenta, attempted to remedy this by being present from the beginning of the story, but this little sandwich-loving, drooly, motorcycle fellow won over my heart in a way none of the others ever did.

Cover legendary is not the only category SV achieves a best of in: it's also home to the best rivals in franchise history. There are three of them: Nemona is an enthusiastic young woman who's been successful as a trainer and is eager to have a new rival to battle with; Arven is the son of the region's Professor Sada, and also has a penchant for cuisine; finally, Penny is a young introvert who, along with you, gets pulled into the fight against Team Star. Nemona, Arven and Penny are my precious children: they're well developed characters that help propel the narrative forward and make the time in Paldea all the more worth it.

Each of the three is tied to one of the main quests, which you are free to pursue in any order, but are most likely to do more or less concurrently. The most prominent story is the Victory Road, the traditional eight gym gauntlet before facing the Pokémon League. Nemona keeps an eye out for you as you travel the region gathering your Gym Badges, with the occasional battle here and there to keep you on your toes. Much has been said about Paldea's Pokémon League and its Chairwoman being boring and bureaucratic, but that's actually the point: SV's take on the League is that of an exam, a bureaucracy, with the real spark being your growth alongside your friends. It's a refreshing take that nevertheless does not change much about the rest of the quest, with Paldean Gym Leaders being a diverse and fun bunch, ranging from cheerful artists to soul-crushed criticisms of our result-obsessed society.

Speaking of criticisms of society, since the flop that was Team Flare, Game Freak has been upping the ante when it comes to their antagonist teams, giving them a deeper meaning than just grunts to fight with. On that note, Team Star is up there as one of my favorites. Starfall Street is another main quest that has you visiting the strongholds of Team Star and fighting their five leaders in intense contests of strength, leaders who are not only extremely noteworthy character designs in a series known for having excellent ones, but are also, much like the rivals, fascinating characters on their own. Team Star's story is a relatable and emotionally charged one -- just as much as the third main quest.

Arven's Path of Legends closes out the starting trios of quests with his pursuit of Titan Pokémon around Paldea and the rare spices that supposedly made them that way. During that quest, you'll get to learn more about Arven's motivations for his search, his history with his mother and the origins of Koraidon, the latter of which is also the focus of the endgame. Once the other main quests are complete, Path of Legends gives way to The Way Home, the final quest, that looks into Professor Sada's research and how Koraidon came to be loose in Paldea. The Way Home is the best endgame questline we've had in a Pokémon game since at least the Delta Emerald arc in ORAS, cashing in on some setups that had been enacted still in the prologue. I won't detail any of it because it deserves to be experienced blind and firsthand.

And I didn't even get into how the faculty at Naranja Academy all get their own sidestories, or how much resolution is offered to other characters even after The Way Home is complete. The harm done by the evidently rushed quality of the titles does not stop SV's plot and characters from being unforgettable... but it has to be said, it's felt regardless, and one has to wonder just what heights could have been reached in a truly polished game. A similar feeling pervades the postgame content, i.e. raids and competitive play, and to talk about those, let's first discuss yet another best of achieved by SV in with Terastalization.

Since Gen VI, every generation has had its own battle mechanic, and Gen IX is no different, with Terastalization allowing a trainer to change the type of any of their Pokémon once per battle. Like with Dynamax, I had no faith in Terastalization from the moment it was announced, thinking it looked gimmicky and stupid. Like with Dynamax, boy was I wrong: Terastalization might not look as exciting as some of its predecessors, but it is the best generation mechanic we've had yet, adding unprecedented flexibility and strategic depth to Pokémon battles. It can be used offensively or defensively, it can make unusual picks completely viable, and it has kept the meta shifting constantly since the games' releases.

Terastalization also contributed to making raids much more interesting, though this is also owed to other changes more suited for a PvE mode. No longer can you just Zacian your way to victory every single time, with each raid demanding specific strategies and typings, motivating the player to keep a roster of different Pokémon builds. On that note, Scarlet and Violet have the most accessible Pokémon training yet, further enhancing the improvements brought by SWSH on that front. Almost every relevant competitive item can now be bought with in-game money or exchanged for easy to find items, from TMs to held items to even Nature Mints and Bottle Caps -- for us who suffered through Gen III/IV breeding, getting competitive or raid ready mons is unbelievably fast.

It would have been the best era for online play... but of course, it wasn't that simple. Raids were flat out unplayable at launch. They have since been patched, but event raids still have issues due to bad raid configurations being pushed to players, signaling a lack of a forced update mechanism as well as deficient live ops tooling -- yet another consequence of development crunch. On the competitive front, PvP battles are even more unstable than SWSH -- an accomplishment, no doubt -- leading to serious issues during tournaments that in themselves already suffer from the lack of a spectator mode. Let's not even mention the complete fiasco conducted by TPCi with the Asian region tournaments, which will no doubt further sour large swathes of the player base towards the game.

And that-- that's what hurts so much about Gen IX. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet were meant for the favorites' list. Had they been given six more months, maybe a year had Legends: Arceus gotten pushed forward too, these versions would have been set up to be the best Pokémon games yet. Instead, they're just... fine. Excellent ideas marred by an execution that came way too short, that will probably harm the franchise in the long run. I have no doubt about the creative vision behind it nowadays, but their technical roadmaps and release schedules need to be reviewed if the franchise is to be remembered by the young players of today as well as it is by us adults that started with earlier gens.

This is a very short game, so to get to the point: it's about a frog who is also a detective -- the second best detective from their agency, in fact. They visit an island who's supposed to be haunted to try to find the truth about the ghost. It plays a lot like old point-n'-click games aimed at kids, or a particular brand of old flash games, where the game progresses through a sequence of trades: find an item, find someone who wants that item and trade it for something else, repeat until game beaten.

It's fine. Like a flash game, it's short and sweet, taking about 30 minutes to complete, and it's probably great for kids, seeing as how it features super cute characters and witty, all-ages writing. It didn't win me over as much as I had expected, though -- maybe whoever recommended it to me overhyped it a bit.

Katamari Forever is one of those games that's so unique and so out there, it has to be experienced, as it's impossible to understand it just from reading about it. I know this because I experienced this first-hand, originally having bought it on the recommendation of a friend, knowing nothing about the series except that it was supposed to be incredible. Even with the game in my hands, reading the back of the box only made me more confused.

The King of All Cosmos bumped his head and lost all his memory. The Prince and his cousins created RoboKing to replace the King, but it went out of control and destroyed all the stars in the Cosmos. Now, you must clean up the mess made by RoboKing and bring back the King's memory by rolling up everything in the Cosmos!

Not that helpful, huh? Most of what it says regards the plot of the game. The King of All Cosmos hit his head while performing a stunt of sorts and fell in a coma. The Prince and company, unable to awake His Majesty, decided the best course of action would be to build a robot that would replace him in his royal duties; however, due to a bug, the robot went berserk, flew into the Cosmos and destroyed the stars. This leaves you, the player, with two tasks: one, rolling up new stars to refill the sky, and two, rolling up memories inside the King's head to restore his consciousness.

Rolling up is the keyword, the one piece of information on that text blurb that relates to the game's mechanics: in every stage, your character is placed on some kind of place from Earth -- a table, a garden, a city -- with a ball in front of them. Any objects touched by it stick to it, so long as they are smaller that what you currently, forming an ever-growing mass of objects that the game calls a Katamari (a word that literally translates to 'cluster'). Your job, as the Prince, is to take a Katamari of a certain starting size and grow it to a certain diameter so it can be flung into space to make a new star in the sky.

There are often special conditions to this that make the trip to Earth more tricky: it could be that there's a time limit, or a limit on the amount of objects that can be rolled up, or a certain type of object that must or must not go into the Katamari. This variety of different challenges combined with ever transforming stages where greater Katamari sizes open up new pathways and interactions, as well as a fantastic soundtrack about as iconic as the game itself, keep the game feeling ever fresh even after rolling dozens of Katamari.

Which is to say, just talking about Katamari Forever makes me want to go for a spin, or rather, for a roll, even though I've completed the game a couple of times on all of its modes. It's fantastic on so many levels, unique in all the things it does, from how it's visuals, to its sound, to how it tells its story, but it's the mesmerizing gameplay that really ties it all together. It seems simple enough at first, and its frantic pacing might make one think they can roll everything and win, but there's a lot of strategy into when and how to visit certain parts of the stage to get a good time.

And I do want to emphasize "mesmerizing": the game creates a bizarre spin on the idea of a power fantasy, turning the "I bet can kill that" thought that's so common in games into "I bet I can roll that". Every slightly larger item is taken as a challenge and made into a mental note, culminating into the amusement of seeing your ever-increasing ball of mayhem grow even larger by trapping household items, bikes, horrified screaming pedestrians, houses and so on. It's that Hotline Miami feeling of behaving like an absolute lunatic, and not even noticing it until the music stops.

It's such a thrill. Katamari Forever is one of my favorite games of all time, and even within its series it shines as one of the largest and most varied entries. I wish Bamco would port it everywhere instead of drip-feeding ports of older releases.

In my original review for Sakura Samurai, the game symbolized, to me, how Nintendo's curation had become too loose, leading to the 3DS store having way too many low-quality games in it that weren't worth anybody's time. Fast-forward to the Switch, and the shovelware on the Switch eShop makes the one from its predecessor look like gold, so I might have been on the wrong side of history there: at least, Sakura Samurai was a finished product that offered a degree of cohesion. That's the best defense I can muster for it, though.

The game follows the eponymous Sakura Samurai, a fledgling warrior who receives the title from a Kappa they encounter one day, with the creature also tasking them with rescuing a princess, who was taken... some time... by someone...? The details are hazy: the game isn't quite clear about what happened or how many people care, and just sends you on your merry way. This handwave-y style of storytelling isn't that uncommon, with many of Nintendo's first party games, for example, having been employing it for decades. The difference is that those games have the gameplay to back it up, while Sakura Samurai...

To call the game simplistic would be generous: it has one gimmick it stretches over the course of a couple of hours, and that's it. Each stage is a sequence of stand-offs against enemies in which you can attack with the A button and dodge using B + Circle Pad. Going on the offensive is not an option: the game forces you to play passively by having enemies block all your attacks if you try to strike first. Instead, you must wait for them to attack, dodge, get a few hits in, rinse and repeat. This goes for every enemy in the game, from punchbag grunt to final boss.

It's action gameplay distilled to its most flimsy essential, too barebones to sustain a game alone. It feels nifty for the first fifteen minutes; by the first hour -- that is, entering the game's second half -- you'll have grown bored of the mechanic already. And then, in that latter half, enemy tells start becoming confusing, or worse, the same gesture is shared by different moves. The experience is somewhat padded by the existence of special moves that require you to grind a few special stages, as well as the need for money for consumables, but it never leaves that very basic framework it's built on and thus only further contributes to the feeling of repetition.

Bottom line, if you played fifteen minutes of Sakura Samurai, you've seen what it has to offer, and you might as well not do it. It's a relic from the 3DS that's not worth revisiting.

You know that bit of Terraria right at the beginning where you shuffle to build a home before nightfall, for you're soon to be assaulted by the unspeakable horrors that prowl in the dark? It's a surprisingly tense moment that never lasts very long, as the next time you come above ground, you're likely to be decked out in at least some plate armor. What if there were an game just about that night? The fine folks at Bippinbits have you covered with their game Dome Keeper.

Dome Keeper puts you in the role of an engineer that opens the game by crash-landing on an unexplored planet, then begins gathering resources and whatever else they can find underground. Encased by the walls of their hi-tech dome, with the only exit being a mine shaft leading deep into the earth, they must make the best of their time to obtain metals to strenghten the base before a wave of monsters strikes. Once that happens, they'll power up the dome's defensive weaponry and hope for the best.

It's a fantastic core loop: mine, bring whatever you can back to the surface, survive the monsters' assault, upgrade everything, rinse and repeat until either the map is beaten or you are. There are only three types of resources, which you'll have to decide on whether to use to make your mining tools more efficient, or your dome, more resilient, an increasingly hard choice as the upgrades become more expensive the further you push into the tree. There are two modes to the game, one which has you hunting for an item somewhere in the underground, and another in which sending resources off-planet gives points, and the goal is to score as high as possible.

A short session length -- it takes 30~60 minutes to reach a victory screen depending on game mode -- combined with atmospheric sound design and gorgeous pixel art make Dome Keeper an excellent game to unwind to, as its frantic pace can take your mind off of anything. Do be warned, however, that you might end up staying for longer than initially intended: as runs are completed, new stages and items are unlocked, which beckon the player to try another run. A large amount of possible upgrades to your gear, some even mutually exclusive, also encourage new attempts with different strategies.

Puzzlingly, however, variety is exactly the game's greatest shortcoming. Most of the unlocks and upgrade paths are strictly worse than their competition no matter the situation, and you're likely to follow the same upgrade path every time. Notably, a second playable character that is completely different from the default was added at one point, was so universally rejected that he earned a rework update, and even then is still not worth picking over the default.

In some cases, this is a consequence of the starting kit being just too solid: the initial release was developed around it, after all, and the rest of the arsenal is an attempt to switch things up. It should be said, however, that there are multiple instances of overtuning in the game, the advantages of an item or upgrade being completely offset by downsides presumably placed there for balance's sakes. Regardless of the cause, it remains a common theme that a new item will have a much higher skill floor and/or demand a larger resource investment to get online while offering worse performance than the old one.

The game has been out for less than a year and is still under active development, with the developers being active on the Steam forums and listening to players' feedback, so it is my hope that these issues will be reduced in time, and I do believe Dome Keeper is worth giving a try regardless, especially if you have a Steam Deck.

It's not unusual for The Pokémon Company, whenever a new console comes out, to milk the franchise a bit with spin-offs instead of releasing the new generation outright, but the transition to the Switch presented us with a rather unusual instance of that trend: Pokémon: Let's Go Pikachu & Eevee is a Gen VII game that's kinda Gen VIII, but also it's neither, and it takes us back to Kanto in a remake... spin-off... Pokémon GO... something.

Okay, let's start at the beginning: LGPE is a mix between Pokémon GO and a sequel-remake-reimagining of Pokémon Yellow. It takes place in Kanto like the GBC game and following more or less the same blueprint: you play as an aspiring trainer from Pallet Town who, along their friend/rival, is heading to Professor Oak's lab to receive their first Pokémon. You are not Red: this is a world where Red, Green and even Blue do exist and have become accomplished trainers before you, but at the same time, it's not quite a sequel, as you're pretty much going through what was Red's story in the original games. And that's somewhat disappointing -- I would have loved to see a Red 2/Blue 2 style of game, an entirely new story taking place in Kanto, but alas, Game Freak wasn't feeling that bold.

As for how it remakes Pokémon Yellow specifically, if you're old like me and played Pokémon Yellow back in the day, you'll remember that it mirrored the anime in a few ways, most notably in that, unlike Red, Green and Blue, it didn't feature a choice of starters at the beginning of the game, with the character -- by default, named Ash instead of Red -- receiving a Pikachu who hated being inside Pokéballs. That Pikachu was the first instance of two mechanics in the series, the first being Pokémon that follow you around in the overworld, and the second being Friendship. Both of these together meant that you could talk to Pikachu and, from its reaction, gauge how it felt about the current situation as well as about you, its trainer.

This was extremely well-received, and it's a quality LGPE sought to bring back. Like in Yellow, your trainer doesn't get a choice of starter, instead obtaining either a Pikachu or Eevee who stays outside its Pokéball following you around, taking part in cutscenes, using HMs (don't ask me how that works) and just generally being your bestie. They can be pet, fed berries and even customized with clothing, accessories and hairdos, and like its 90s predecessor, will react to the environment and to story events.

Game Freak really pushes the cuteness of its mascots with these games -- and it works. LGE's Eevee is a lovable creature, and even though it lacks the slowly developing relationship Yellow's Pikachu had, it more than makes up for it in presence and charisma. To further tug on those nostalgic heart strings, other elements from Yellow and or the anime, like Jesse and James, some character designs and the aces for certain trainers, are also present, and while the story is mostly unchanged, interactions with major characters in the universe have been added or reworked in order to make them more memorable.

But do those changes make for the definitive way to experience the first generation of Pokémon? That's probably a "no". There are some definite advantages to playing LGPE, but one has to consider that they're more interesting to the nostalgic Gen I player than to a newcomer, as the context behind those changes is important for them to be appreciated. More importantly, though, as a remake, there are multiple issues with LGPE that make it less of an attractive package.

The most maligned one -- for good reasons -- has to be the Pokémon GO capture system. No longer do you enter battles against wild Pokémon in which they can be weakened, then caught or defeated. Instead, the GO system is recreated almost one-to-one: you, the trainer, face the Pokémon in first person and toss balls at it until it either stays in the ball or runs away. Much is said about the use of motion controls, and yes, they're bad, but they're more of an inconvenience instead of the core of the issue, one you can almost totally circumvent by playing with the Switch in handheld mode.

The real issue is that this system just sucks, full stop. Whether the balls are thrown by motion controls, swipes, button presses or mind powers, it remains shallow and uninteractive, reducing an iconic aspect of the franchise to a skinner box. I have strong opinions about Pokémon GO, and in Let's Go defense, at least it doesn't feel exploitative like that game does. At least, when one inevitably runs out of Pokéballs, they can run to the nearest PokéMart and get more. But it is still a bore, not to mention a source of frustration when you finally encounter that one mon you wanted and... it runs away after a couple of balls.

Worse is that this system is at the core of the game, since Let's Go places far more importance on catching Pokémon than it does on battling. Unlike every other game in the series, capturing wild mons gives more experience than fighting trainer ones; plus, there are no Effort Values, but there are candies earned from captures that fulfill the same role when used. The result is that your power level oscillates wildly over the course of the game, and that, other than the cash flow they provide, battles are virtually useless. This, in turn, makes the midway sections of the game a grind to push through, since you've run out of low hanging fruit Pokémon to catch, but trainers, on the other hand, become much more numerous.

The real kicker, though, is the removal of secondary mechanics and areas that might help break down the boredom. Fishing is the first one that the savvy player will notice, but it's the absence of the Safari Zone that hurts the most: the one area where the Pokémon GO mechanics could be considered tolerable was ripped out of the game to make way for a GO integration monstrosity, an unimaginative and laborious version of the Pal Park of sorts that allows one to bring in mons from the mobile game. If you're old enough to remember the Pal Park, imagine if it was just a flat plaza and you had to catch every creature you brought in for real, with your own Pokéballs and their real catch rate. It's pure pain.

Other cuts includes traits and held items, further reducing the depth of the game. Megas are introduced later on into the game to compensate, but they come so late, they hardly matter, and the lack of traits means they're mostly a stat boost. Furthermore, all extra content from FRLG is absent -- no Sevii Islands to speak of. Finally, and perhaps most confusingly, certain puzzles have been dumbed down from their original versions. Cerulean Cave's original layout was in conflict with the appearance of Pokémon in the overworld, so they just... removed the core of the dungeon from the game, replacing it with an open area. Similarly, Silph Co hands you the Card Key almost instantly, whereas the original recontextualized the level through that item, making for a much more interesting design.

It's the sum of all these factors, plus the game's pricing at $60 -- man, I miss the 3DS -- that makes it a harder sell over just playing FRLG, since as old as that one is, it is a remake with more depth and much higher fidelity to the original. That said, LGPE is not all bad: it presents a decent 3D rendition of Kanto, and the care given to the Pokémon, what with the overworld animations and the exceedingly cute cover mascots, is sure to at least warm the heart of long time series' fans.

It's hard to overstate how big Pokémon GO was at launch. Like many, I first played it at that time; also like most, I lost interest soon after. I only came back in 2023 because of Pokémon Let's Go Eevee and its dependency on this game to obtain Meltan and Melmetal. Because of that, I can't exactly claim to be surprised with what I found, but I still have to say that Pokémon GO is an egregious way to experience the Pokémon series.

Just imagine the most barebones Pokémon experience, starting with an uninteractive, straight-up skinner box of a capture system where you just toss Pokéballs and hope for the best. Whatever battles there are simplistic and akin to mashing the A button while hoping not to die. All that in place, make sure to monetize the crap out of everything: if the player needs items to heal their inevitably wounded Pokémon, or if their Pokéballs run out after tossing a few dozen at something that refuses to be caught, offer them a purchase of some with real money. Also monetize lures, exp boosts, eggs, the deliberately limited bag and box space... and don't forget to have battle passes and loot boxes and cosmetic items for sale too, all games do that!

That's not all there is in the shop, but those are the things I know the use of. As is the case with many mobile games, which focus on the short-term strategy of increasing revenue by further squeezing money out of their captive audience instead of trying to build a long-term, well-rounded product, Pokémon GO added lots of new and monetizable systems over the years, without having much regard for going back and creating a coherent new player experience.

The onboarding sections of the game are abysmal, showing popup after popup about random pieces of the game, presenting mechanics you cannot interact with yet, all accompanied by just-barely-trying levels of writing. All of this puts Go at a further disadvantage on the already uphill battle that is it trying to win over its player, as it is an incredibly uncharismatic game. Character models and designs look especially hideous, the AR functionality feels more tacked on than on Dream Radar of all things, and the whole of the game gives off bootleg vibes. Actually, it's not fair to say that: bootleg Pokémon games are often made with lots of love for the franchise, while this seems to not have much regard whatsoever.

As an example, the one thing I was looking forward to see was the implementation of Shadow Pokémon, a mechanic I miss from the GameCube games. In Colosseum, Shadow Pokémon were Pokémon whose hearts were artificially sealed, turning them aggressive to the point of self-destructiveness. They were used extensively by the evil teams in Orre, but were also valued for their raw power by lesser trainers in search of an easy way to win battles.

The protagonists of the Gamecube games would rescue Pokémon from those trainers and rehabilitate them in a process called purification, in which your growing bond with this abused creature slowly mended its broken heart and let it feel emotions again. Some people (especially those who didn't play the GC games) find the mechanic out of place for the series, which couldn't be more wrong: at its core, you'll find one of the major themes of the series: love over power, favorites over strong pokémon.

That mechanic had not been seen since 2005 -- that was, until Pokémon GO picked it back up. In Pokémon GO, Shadow Pokémon can be rescued from the PvE battles against Team GORocket, and the meta surrounding them is checks notes "you do NOT purify Shadow Pokémon under any circumstance, as it consumes the same resources you could use to power them up, and a 0 IV Shadow far outdamages a perfect, purified version of itself. It's better to train them and bring them during raids, as their DPS is highly valued".

...excuse me, what?

Truly, a gift that keeps on giving. I suppose there are far more nefarious mobile games, and that even with all its drawbacks, the social aspect of GO might be a draw for those who have friends living in the same neighborhood as them -- that's the one upside I can think of, but do note that they have to be in your neighborhood or else you'll have to pay for each raid. God, am I looking forward to transferring over my Melmetal and uninstalling this (t)rubbish.

The original Resident Evil 4, on the Gamecube, has a bit of a historical significance to me, being the first (and for many years, the only) survival horror game I beat by myself. I first saw it at a friend's house, thought it looked incredibly cool, and hey, sure, it's a horror game, but I'm old enough, I can handle it now! I was, of course, wrong, a lesson the Regenerator would soon enough burn into my mind. I was also terrible at the game and died a ton, as I'm pretty sure this was also my first shooter on console. Regardless, I pushed through, and the game earned a nostalgia-filled place in my heart.

So when the remake was announced, I was a bit apprehensive. RE4 was a product of its time, both in the sense that it could never be replicated and that it would never fly in today's industry, as it features mechanics and a storytelling style that major franchises, and especially, the Resident Evil series, have moved on from. How would they even go about remaking the game? Would a remake follow in the footsteps of its predecessor, focusing on delivering on an intense and satisfying action gameplay experience, or would it attempt to pull the series further back towards survival horror? And would it keep the cheesiness of the Gamecube game, the quips and trash talk, or would it play things more seriously and focus on the Resident Evil melodrama? Would it seek to replicate the highs of the original release, or would it feel like its own, separate thing?

The answer to all of those questions is yes.

It's unenviable how many disparate things RE4R attempts to balance, and even more shocking is how it manages to. Take, for example, the character of Leon S. Kennedy, the protagonist in this story. Leon is remembered by RE4 players as being this pretty cool guy who kills ganados and doesnt afraid of anything, but that representation, as fitting as it is for the pulp action ride that is that game, is at odds with his character in basically every other Resident Evil piece of media, especially Resident Evil 2. In all other places, he's a rookie cop turned US agent who's deeply traumatized by the incident in Raccoon City, which left him filled with survivor's guilt. How do you bring that element into RE4?

RE4R kicks off by presenting a slightly altered version of the opening in which, instead of Leon neutrally narrating the events that happened in 1998, focusing on Umbrella's downfall, he is more emotional and focuses, instead, on himself: the death of the policeman in the disaster caused by the T-Virus leading, almost unwillingly, to the birth of one of the US's top secret agents. This then cuts to him in the car with the two Spanish policemen, and the three exchange quips. It's an incredible decision, because it changes nothing from the structure of the original, but takes the opportunity to present both sides of Leon's personality, immediately establishing him as a much more layered version of the character he was in the original game. Which is to say, he still is that character from an external observer's point of view -- I have never been happier to hear the word "Bingo" in my life.

That opening also shows us glimpses of other characters, like Krauser and Ada, which gives more, much needed context to their appearances later in the story. Which is to say, pretty much everyone in the cast has gained from being remade in RE4R: Ashley now has more of a partner dynamic with Leon, through which we get to see more of her inner thoughts, and also his. Ada feels less out of place, being presented in ways that make her less of a surreal addiction to the story. Saddler and Mendez are now more cult-ish and intimidating, but there's also a human side shown to the latter; Krauser's relationship with Leon, as well as his motivations, are more clearly established, making the confrontations against him more satisfying...

The greatest winner, though, has to be Luis, who, like Leon, has had his backstory emphasized and got a more layered personality. Crucially, though, he now gets more time on-screen, time which is used to deliver on a more nuanced and satisfying character arc built upon his interactions with Leon, Ashley and Ada. Without going into spoilers, he is, at first, made more mysterious (not to say sleazy), which in turn causes Leon to not trust him, and the two have a much more rocky and thus more interesting relationship. There's a parallel made between him and Don Quixote, the overwhelming outward confidence of a man who wants to be a hero, not realizing the world isn't as simple as he thinks and that he is actually in way over his head -- it's fitting for the tragic heroism to this new Luis that greatly enhances the narrative of the remake. Incidentally, for those who like digging into the lore of the game's Files, he is now more integrated into the Resident Evil canon than his predecessor, which is also a plus.

People can change, right?

The way characters are treated is but a part of how RE4R understands what was great about the original and seeks to enhance those moments whenever possible. Another area in which RE4 was incredibly successful was the creation of horror through anxiety, the feeling of being trapped, undersupplied and soon to be overwhelmed, and iconic setpieces that played to those emotions are still here: take the village fight, for instance, which retains all the qualities of the original, but adds a couple more events that enhance the feeling of being cornered. It remains, in my opinion, the most brutal part of the game, though it is closely rivaled by the cabin fight, just a bit further into the village, which now has a new mechanic involving the windows that keeps the fight moving and the anxiety piling up. It also features much better scene direction and, even more importantly, sound design, both which drive home the point of how dire the situation our heroes find themselves in really is.

It bears saying, however, that although RE4 is notorious for that type of setpiece, it's not the only way in which it created horror: though less frequent, horror through dread also played an important part in the game. Here, I would avoid detailing specific sequences to avoid spoilers, but I will say that RE4R makes excellent use of the different types of plaga, and that old friends will be showing up again, like Verdugo and the Regenerators. Oh god, the goddamn Regenerators. I hate them so much. You know, when Leon said "What the fuck?!", I really felt it. Anyway.

And it's worth not going into spoilers, because as much as RE4R takes to enhancing beloved sequences, it's also willing to scrap ones that don't make a lot of sense. The original RE4 had a linear design in which some parts were unevenly paced (the Island, in particular, being notorious for this), and multiple sections felt like video game levels that were inconsequential in the long run. This may have worked in 2005, when we were all too eager to engage in more of the flashy combat of this new game, but is a way harder sell in 2023, when the bar is set so much higher. RE4R repositions, repurposes and even entirely replaces locations from the original game, and as such, it feels like a new game, with new surprises.

And does it hit that extremely high bar it sets to match? Yes. The remake retains the qualities of the original, but with modern enhancements that make all the difference. Most, if not all the original's guns are here, balanced further so that all of them feel like they have a niche, that they are exceptional at something. It's actually shocking how you can use anything if it fits your playstyle: even weapons I thought were memes, like the CQBR Rifle, have someone, somewhere, that swears by them and can use them to great effect. Central to all this is that one can now move while aiming, which improves their options during combat. Weapon shortcuts also exist, letting Leon switch weapons without entering the inventory screen.

The overall game balance, as well as the management of difficulty, was something the original RE4 was well known for. Similar systems are still, as far as I understand, being employed in all RE remakes, including this one, and as such, the game excels at making its player feel challenged, but never cheated; constantly running out of options, but never completely out. It also features a crafting system -- yes, I know, I too wince at the sight of those on modern games, but I promise, this one is actually good. The player is handed out crafting resources just like any every other resource -- it's not something that has or can be grinded for -- and at the cost of the inventory space they take, they give the player more flexibility in regards to the items they get. Is the RNG not playing along? You can offset that by using some of your resources. Would having more bullets help you out of this mess, or would popping a flash and booking it be more effective? Your choice. It's a simple and effective system that empowers the player without ever getting in their way.

And on that note, I have to mention the knife parries. The remake turns the knife into a resource which can be used to get yourself out of attacks that would deal high damage. Relying on that too much, however, will break it until the next visit to the merchant a time during which one misses out on the truly effective uses of the knife, which are stealth kills and knife parries. Through those, you can entirely avoid dealing with an enemy, or parry the attack and stun your target in the process. Parrying is an extremely rewarding mechanic with a high skill ceiling, and it's the final piece in making RE4's combat feel more fluid than ever.

What an incredible ride RE4R is. Its critics will of course say that it is not as revolutionary as its predecessor, but that was never the point: RE4 sought to create a new identity for a series that feared being forgotten, while RE4R seeks to rescue and reinforce that old identity, and reconcile it with the 2005 game. And on that goal, it succeeded, delivering an incredibly well-written and designed game, and highly polished to boot. I played it for almost 100 hours already, finishing it six times, each credits roll making me hungry for the next, and just writing about it makes me want to go for a seventh. In the end, that's what matters most.

Mahou shoujo, despite having an immense popularity in other forms of media, is relatively unexplored in games, limiting itself to existing properties turned game. Which is why, when Gust announced their new IP, Blue Reflection, I was into it from the first trailer: not only did it feature exactly that subject matter, but it was an incredibly stylish game to boot -- I was so pumped. The final product, however, was a game I had to drag myself through finishing.

The game follows Hinako Shirai as she returns to Hoshinomiya Girls High after a serious depressive episode. Hinako's life used to revolve around ballet, and she had a promising future in it... until she suffered an injury and was forced into early retirement. Her world having fallen apart, a chance presents itself: after an encounter with an oddly overemotional girl, then with the very eccentric pair of twins called Yuzuki and Lime, she ends up awakening to the powers of a Reflector, which allow her to see through her peers' emotions and help them navigate troubling feelings. Through those, she can not only help her colleagues, but there's also the promise that, should she fight off the monsters that threaten her school, a wish of hers will be granted, and in her mind, it's pretty clear what that wish would be.

The game is divided in chapters which tend to follow episodic formulae, at least until the later parts of the story: a new girl is presented along with her troubles, Hinako and the twins try to learn more about her, something causes tensions escalate to a boiling point, the girl breaks down, they use their Reflector powers and fix everything, befriending the new girl in the progress. In between these main story segments, there's free time, during which Hinako is free to go out with her newfound friends, help minor characters around the school and explore the magical world of Common, where their battles take place.

The ingredients are all here: There's a mystery: why was Hinako chosen? Who, or what are the twins? And why is Hoshinomiya a target for monsters? Plus, there's a wide cast of characters, consisting of the main trio and a whopping twelve girls that join over the course of the game and each have their own history and traits. Sure, one might say there's a lot of clichés in there, but that's like saying the baker uses a lot of flour: what matters, in the end, is how those characters interact and grow. Nobody at Gust needs to be told that, as they are experts in creating emotional character-driven stories with large, lovable casts, even if the premises seem like nothing much.

...and yet, that's exactly where Blue Reflection falters. While it has the makings of a good slice of life slash coming of age story, it lacks the character development to allow it to truly blossom. The main story's pacing suffers greatly from the long series of character introductions, and when it finally picks up, it mostly focuses on Hinako, Yuzu and Lime, not resolving a lot of the conflicts presented over the narrative and ultimately failing to justify the size of the cast. Past their introductory chapters in the story, most girls end up not having much relevance, the idea having been, I guess, for each of them to develop their characters over the course of the dates with Hinako as well as through specific character events but, well...

I suppose it's better to just talk about the elephant in the room: Blue Reflection was rushed out the door, and while the game is complete, it's severely unpolished. In no feature is this felt more than in the character relationships, which, for one, are not voice acted and feature shoddy animation and direction, resulting in very dry scenes. They're also formulaic to a fault: I mentioned that what really matters is how characters interact and grow, and the main issue here is that they don't do that. Throughout the character events, you'd expect the girls to grow in some way, to navigate some sort of problem or develop a part of their character, but instead, most character storylines don't lead anywhere: some loop back to where the character started, and there are a couple girls that come out worse than they started.

It does not help that all events have the girls interacting one-on-one with Hinako, who, save for the Achilles's heel that is her ballet injury, is on the stoic side, resulting in rather one-note conversations. Plus, when hanging out, Hinako takes every friend through the same list of locations instead of picking from those that would trigger more interesting reactions. Every girl has a scene on every location in the game, which include common points of interest in the city, like the station, the general store and temple, but also a few more... exotic picks, like the locker room, the showers, the pool scenes, as well as events where they stand under the rain, uniforms wet. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess the motivation behind those isn't exactly character study.

...so let's talk about the second elephant in room (yes, there's two, it's a big room): it's not unusual for Japanese games to feature some degree of moe, and there's a line between that and just plain sexualization. Some games trip over that line sometimes. Blue Reflection somersaults over it -- it is creepy to the point of being disturbing. Many people mention the panty shot of a character going through a moment of grief that happens in the beginning of the game, which is terrible, but it's also the tip of the iceberg. Throughout the rest of the game, we have magical girl outfits that would make a stripper blush, we have jiggle physics on 14-year-olds, we have skirt flipping, see-through wet uniforms in the rain, underwear scenes, sexual assault played off as a joke, sexual assault not played off as a joke...

That alone would Blue Reflection incredibly hard to recommend even if the characters and gameplay were properly developed. Which is to say, even forgetting all about the issues with the writing and judging the game purely based on gameplay, it doesn't fare all too well either. Yet again, there's something here: the game features an enticing and stylishly presented turn based combat system that is centered on a timeline gauge in which characters advance towards the center to take their turns: by using resources correctly and aiming for enemies weaknesses, the player can monopolize the time gauge and prevent opponents from even taking turns.

This system shines the most during boss battles, in which foes often consist of multiple parts that attack separately, further playing into the idea of denying turns. Other mechanics, like overdrives and supports, become available later on, expanding the possibilities during battle. Outside of battle, characters can be built in different ways, earning them different skills that can then be customized through the fragment system. Fragments allow the assignment of additional effects to characters' abilities and become critical in the mid to late game. Both of these systems are inherently capped in how much you can power up between main story segments, meaning you're always at an appropriate power level during boss battles -- never stomping, but never quite getting stomped either.

Sure, the normal enemy encounters are much, much less exciting, but that's the case with a lot of RPGs, and is not the real problem. The real problem is that the game is entirely lacking in level and quest design. The mahou shoujo part of the game takes place in the parallel world of Common, which consists of maybe twenty or so different rooms that are reused throughout the entire game. Quests are similarly lacking in variety, with there being three types of fetch quests that you are forced to complete a number of to complete the story. That is what makes normal enemy fights become unbearable in the long run: the sheer amount of repeat journeys into Common in order to perform the same tasks. Add to that an unhelpful and sluggish UI present both when learning and customizing skills, and there's also potential for frustration, with the player losing due to bad builds and not quite knowing what's wrong.

Gust, I'm a fan of your work, but... this is not it. Blue Reflection shows a lot of promise and delivers on some great ideas, but completely fumbles the landing, becoming a disappointment to anyone who got hyped for it on its announcement. I hear the sequel is much better, and I will give it a shot some time, but I'm less than hopeful it can make the time I spent with the prequel worth it.

Dorfromantik is a confusing one. It was advertised to me as a super casual, relaxing puzzle game. Thinking back, I should have had my doubts straight away from hearing "puzzle" and "relaxing" in the same sentence, but alas. I just had to find out the hard way.

In Dorfromantik, you begin with a pile of hexagonal tiles that you must place on a board one by one. Each of the edges in those tiles has a different type of land between meadow, forest, city, wheat field, train track and water, and each tile must be placed directly adjacent to another already in the grid. By connecting tiles that have matching edges, the player scores points; by surrounding tiles with perfectly connected edges, as well as completing other in-game objectives, the player earns more tiles to use. The objective is to stay in the game while scoring as many points as possible.

There are no timers, with the only limit being the depth of your stack of tiles. Accompanied by calm ambient music, over time, you'll see the game board forming an ever expanding idyllic scenery. Sounds relaxing enough-- what's the catch? In that it's still a puzzle game, and a rather cruel one: imagine you're playing Tetris, and you desperately need a line block. Except the game doesn't give you a line block. You get a square block. A T block. An 己-block. An x*sin(x²) block. You get a tile that's exactly like a line block, but somehow reversed or tilted, and thus doesn't fit the place you need it in no matter how much you spin it.

A lot of the outcome in Dorfromantik is decided by the RNG more than anything else, and as simple as your tile requirements might be, you might lose because the game keeps sending curveballs your way -- the tile mechanics give it an outstanding potential for doing so -- or because the quests it gives you are impossible or impractical. This is all fine for a casual game, sure... but that score counter is right there, staring sneeringly at you. And should fall for that taunt and try to get a high score, well, then you stumble into the second problem with the game.

Luck decides most games, but should Lady Luck be on your side and give the session a good start, so long as you have a good grasp on the game's mechanics, it's possible to reach a critical mass of tiles in a way that you have just too big of a stack to ever lose, and basically play Endless mode in Classic. I discovered this by accident on my seventh or so game, and what ensued was torture: my game lasted for thirty five hours spanning three weeks.

The issue is mainly that as the session progresses, your small island becomes a continent that takes a while to pan around, and at one point, the engine itself starts to struggle with the amount of tiles that are present. Putting down tiles becomes a painstaking task of inspecting everywhere on that landmass for an appropriate placement, especially when the game throws those curveball tiles with completely absurd edges at you. And you want to finish because you want to know what score you'll get, but at the same time, it's just not fun anymore.

I'm not sure how this can be fixed, or if it even is something to be fixed. Seems like most players don't play enough of the game to stumble upon it, and a small but dedicated community seems to enjoy spending hours on end getting millions of points. Even the official board game didn't deviate much from the formula, and instead, session length is more limited by the physical limit of tiles it can give you (it's actually a pretty odd board game).

Ultimately, though, I advise staying in the group that doesn't stick around for long. Dorfromantik a great game to play once or twice, then move along. It's aesthetically pleasing, it features an unusual style of gameplay that is worth getting to know, but the more you play it, the more likely it will be that its idyllic sights will turn into a prison and have the opposite effect you might have wanted from a game like it.

By the mid 2000s, EA had raked in massive profits with their SimCity spin-off, a game series you might have heard of called The Sims, and the publisher started looking into the possibility of making other kinds of spin-offs to expand the series even further. One such idea turned out to be Urbz: Sims in the City, a console game that sought to bring the Sims formula to the big city, introducing some new mechanics involving different cliques from the city. EA really hoped Urbz would make it big, not only planning sequels ahead of time, but also integrating the Black Eyed Peas themselves into the game to give it that sweet marketing push.

It flopped, and we never heard the name Urbz ever again. And all of that is, Black Eyed Peas included, is all a moot point, anyway, as that game has nothing to do with the one I'm reviewing. See, this was the 2000s, a time in which, if EA made a game, they made sure it was on all major home consoles, portable consoles and, sometimes, mobile phones. Naturally, it was impossible to have the same game across all three as it was too wide a range of technology, especially since smartphones weren't a thing yet. So instead, EA took care of the home console version in-house and hired other studios to make smaller scale games with the same title for the other platforms. In the GBA's case, they'd already developed a partnership with Griptonite Games for The Sims Bustin' Out, and they left them in charge of creating a similar thing for Urbz.

Why am I telling this whole story? Because there's a beautiful irony to it: EA went through all the trouble of creating and marketing a new franchise, with this new cool branding and these famous singers making cameos... and I found it all completely repulsive, causing me to never touch GBA Urbz until 2023. Had they just said that they'd made a sequel to The Sims Bustin' Out and marketed it as such, younger me would have quickly began saving her allowance, after all, Bustin' Out was a huge favorite. Of course, that's not to say that I wouldn't walk away disappointed, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Like its prequel, Urbz takes place outside of the house in a bit of an RPG-life-sim mix. Your sim lives in the city of Miniopolis and tries to get by as a window cleaner. Their life, and in fact, the lives of everyone else in town, is disrupted by the arrival of Daddy Bigbucks, who decides to buy all the properties in town to construct a giant theme park in their place. To fight back against the capitalist's domination and keep their beloved home intact, you'll join forces with your fellow inhabitants to disrupt his plans, staging protests and upending his partnerships around town.

The game is split into five chapters, all of which follow a quest-based structure: folks around town will show up with an exclamation mark on their head, meaning they have a mission to give you, each of which has its own miniature storyline and objectives that usually revolve around befriending people, obtaining items, raising funds and performing different actions that may or may not require a certain level of a skill. In true Sims fashion, your sim has motives that must be kept high through eating, peeing, etcetera, and also skills, like Cooking and Logic, that can be improved through practice.

To achieve all that, they will need a nice house and money, and in this, Bustin' Out and Urbz distance themselves from the parent series: there is no build mode, with pre-made houses that are made available as rentals in different parts of the story, and furniture that has to be bought from stores and placed from your inventory. Careers also work in a different manner: in true gig-economy fashion, there are no fixed jobs, with your sim being able to perform odd jobs (in the form of minigames) at set times around town for money. They can still get promoted if their performance and skills are high enough.

At first, I was completely in love with Urbz. You often hear people say that they wish they could forget a game and play it again, and that's what it felt: it's the same mechanics, multiple returning characters, the writing filled with satire about daily life, all in a completely different setting -- a sequel I never imagined existed, and never hoped to find. Cracks almost immediately began to show, however, and after the opening chapters, it was clear to me that Urbz had been pushed out in a lot less time than its prequel.

Game balance is completely out of tune, for one. Motives go down very fast in general, but more than that, you now get punished for running by having your sleep meter fall much faster. The alternative to running is using a bike, which handles quite poorly for the narrow city streets and ends up being much slower than going on foot, so in one way or another the game is made into a bore. There are obtainable skills called Xizzles that are supposed to help slow motive decay, but they don't help a lot, and to get all of them, you have to play multiplayer with someone else who's in a different faction than you -- good luck with that. Both Xizzles and the game's four factions -- Nerdies, Artsies, Streeties and Richies -- feel like a bolted-on holdover from the console versions that you can safely ignore to no penalty.

Also, massive shoutouts to the burglars in Miniopolis, who are working overtime all throughout the week. There's a random chance to get robbed whenever you go outside, be it for a minute or a day, and you can bet you'll be saving for a security system pretty soon, because oh boy, Miniopolis makes any major city on Earth look like a playground. The game isn't specific about the odds, but from my experience, the odds to get robbed are somewhere near 75%. I was robbed upwards of five times in a row, and in the early game, my character had to spend a week wetting themselves because their toilet got stolen twice and the store wouldn't restock those anymore. It would have been cheaper -- and less humiliating -- to just move to SimValley.

Now, all of these make some hilarious stories, and could be chalked down to funny quirks of the game. Towards the end, though, everything begins to fall apart. Jobs become more and more luck-based; mechanics begin to pop up that the game never explains and just expects the player to look up online; quest objectives stop making sense, requiring that the player guesses the means to complete them; finally, there are glitches and even a broken quest. Suffice to say, as I got to the final chapter, I was wishing the game would end sooner rather than later.

So in the end, Urbz came, and went, and I was left wanting to play Bustin' Out again more than anything else. It wasn't throughly bad, but I'm somewhat glad EA didn't market it directly to me, so I was free to spend my money on The Minish Cap or something else. Incidentally, I looked it up, and the other GBA Sim games lose the Bustin' Out gameplay, with Sims 2 being a bizarre movie sim with some pretty odd writing, while Sims 2 Pets is the very definition of shovelware. So I guess my portable Sims adventures end with Urbz.

I remember Shadow of the Tomb Raider being announced at E3 to... not much excitement. The spokesperson apathetically claimed that, in this thrilling conclusion to the trilogy, we'd get to see Lara finally become the survivor that she is. It was a baffling way to present the game, not only because it doesn't represent the final product at all, but because anyone who played either of the prequels knew that that subject was settled: Lara first kills someone within the first hour of TR 2013, and it quickly escalates so that by the midway point of that game, she's screaming bloody murder, leveling enemy bases solo and demanding her girlfriend back. Come Rise of the Tomb Raider, she was out and about, pulling the veil on Trinity and exercising the biggest death wish in the history of fiction.

And Shadow picks up where Rise left off: Lara is hot on the trail of Trinity's agents, and the game opens with her suffering a horrifying near-death experience, then cuts to a few days before when she was suffering another, even more horrifying near-death experience just to reach the interior of a cave she could apparently have just walked into. Her adventure, this time, makes her cross paths with that of the leader of Trinity, who in turn is chasing after two Mayan relics: the knife of Chak Chel and the Silver Box of Ix Chel, which together, legend has it, will summon the God of Creation and allow their bearer to remake the world.

Said to have had a budget of upwards of 75 million US dollars for development alone, it seems Square and Eidos really wanted to send Lara out with a bang, and aside from a beautifully realized game world and gorgeous cutscenes, the game boasts a handful of changes compared to its predecessor that, while probably not enough to bring in people who weren't into the series before, and while not necessarily for better or for worse, feel refreshing to a returning fan like myself.

One of the most prominent changes to the formula is that the game no longer follows a metroidvania-like design: items like explosive arrows are now used in combat only, and others like the rope ascender and lockpick are simply bought. Backtracking is now entirely optional, with the only reward being money and collectibles. Whether that's a good or bad thing is personal: I miss some of the exploration opportunities, but at the same time, I found that SotTR's environments are far easier to parse than its prequel's due to focusing more on a linear track than on openness.

In fact, on the topic of environment design, should you choose to play on hard difficulty, the game will entirely disable the white paint that usually guides you through climbing sections, and what a fascinating experience that was. At first, it's confusing, but over time, you start picking up on the more subtle cues and paying more attention to the environment, and thus, appreciating the level design a bit more. Curiously, an even higher difficulty disables Lara's detective vision, but that one, I don't recommend. Not because of that handicap, but because it removes checkpoints, making some sections a massive PITA.

Another way in which I enjoy Shadow's environments a bit more than the prequel is that they focus a bit more on nature -- the game mostly taking place in the Amazon jungle -- and on actual ancient ruins. Rise had this thing with the Soviets having found Kitezh first, and a lot of time was spent in buildings they made instead of the lost civilization -- that, and it also had a lot of firefights. Shadow, on the other hand, dials back on the shooting and has Lara spend almost her entire time either in lush environments or in Mayan/Incan buildings. Plus, the challenge tombs it brings are phenomenal: they include some visually stunning locations, as well as a bunch of real head-scratchers. Shoutouts to the Temple of the Sun and its great use of Tomb Raider mechanics to create a fiendish light puzzle.

There are, however, ways in which Shadow feels somewhat less polished. This is noticeable during normal gameplay with the odd glitch here and there, but the most painful shortcoming by far is in the narrative itself, which feels like different versions of the script got mushed together, or the major plot points were defined first and then had the gaps between them filled retroactively. Those are the only explanations I can muster for the weird pacing and awkwardly timed events. There are also bits of the story that feel too contrived even for the levels of suspension of disbelief the Tomb Raider series usually calls for. Reading the many lore items found throughout the game helps undo some of the apparent contradictions, but not all.

This could have all been forgiven if the main characters' development had been more consistent, but that also doesn't happen. The story seems to want to focus on the theme of guilt: on one side, we have Lara, crushed not only by all the deaths she witnessed in the past, but also by causing disasters through her search for relics in the present. On the other side, there's the antagonist, Dominguez, whose failure to stop his brother's death pains him greatly, as does his involvement in Richard Croft's murder. This latter event creates an interesting dynamic between the two characters: Dominguez's regret for taking away Lara's father makes him look at her with eyes of pity, and even compassion. On many occasions, he could easily have had her killed, but refrains from it -- his official explanation is that Lara is useful to him, but it feels like his true reason is that he can't bring himself to hurt her further. Lara displays a similar compassion towards him in some of the sidequests, an empathy towards another who also had his family torn apart.

At least, this is my personal reading of the narrative. This is where some might accuse me of reading too much into the game, as these are undertones the story never specifically addresses nor resolves, and thus, you kind of have to squint to see them. Maybe these scenes I'm finding characterization in weren't supposed to mean that much in the long run, like so many others. For instance, at one point, Jonah snaps at Lara, and what he says is... quickly forgotten for the next several hours. At another, Lara has a psychotic episode of sorts that's followed by a mental breakdown... and everyone forgets about it one dialogue later. Maybe that was just how it was meant to be.

This is especially painful because the actors and actresses absolutely carry those scenes: Camilla Luddington makes for a phenomenal Lara, as always, and the rest of the main cast delivers some stellar performances, with Earl Baylon as Jonah and Carlos Leal as Dominguez playing off Lara spectacularly. Plus, the scene direction, the use of lighting, the visual effects, are all stunning. The scenes are individually teeming with emotion, and watching some of them individually gives me chills... but sadly, their whole doesn't reach its full potential.

Nevertheless, Lara's adventure in the lush jungles of Peru is still a fun one, and I can't help but feel melancholic that it's over. I like the survivor trilogy's Lara: she has that lovable, gentle nature to her that contrasts with the darkness lurking under her character, the complete disbelief in karmic death and the will to just stab someone who threatens her or her friends in the neck. I don't think she's coming back, though. For one, the trilogy struggled to put that character to good use past the first game -- both Rise and Shadow felt like Lara had lower stakes and a weaker development overall.

Also, as much as the cost of these games increased over time, sales decreased as the trilogy went on, with Shadow not even reaching 10 million copies sold. That, in combination with the drastic changes between games, from mechanics to console exclusivities to DLC models, to me, tell a story of games that struggled to find a place in the market. With the franchise now in new hands, Crystal Dynamics and Eidos having been sold to the Embracer Group, I'm not sure the new owners will want to keep this concept going. But oh well. One can hope.

On the subject of the DLC packs... I'm not going to write separate reviews for each one, as few of them even exceed one hour length, and even then only barely. To summarize, all of them feel like sidequests to the main game that hit the cutting room floor since the cost of development was skyrocketing. They're all fine extensions to the main game. The Nightmare is a standout for its more experimental sequences and fantastic (in both senses of the word) challenge tomb, while The Forge dives into the backstory of Kuwaq Yaku, which is conspicuously missing from the main game. If you're playing this nowadays, chances are you have the Definitive Edition, so it's worth taking the time to do these additional quests.

If only that '2' hadn't come at such a prohibitive cost.

Rogue Legacy 2 is the long awaited sequel to 2013's indie darling Rogue Legacy, and it promises to be the first game, but better. The first impression left by the game indeed points to that: it has sharper, more modern visuals; it controls much better, with spin kicks in particular being a much more comfortable maneuver, and it even gives you the dash ability right off the bat, which is important since that was at the center of much of the movement and combat tech in the first game.

The defining aspects of Rogue Legacy are still here, with the same core loop of picking an heir on death, the same NPCs, the family estate screen, Charon, and the randomly generated map. Except now, instead of Castle Hamson, there is an entire kingdom to explore, with all-new areas filled with a variety of new challenges. It sounds like what every RL1 fan could wish for, however, inexplicably at first, the game feels slow, and is rather exhausting compared to its prequel. The reason for that is apparent if you take a step back and analyze RL and RL2 side-by-side.

Rogue Legacy is a roguelite where the player enters a randomly generated castle and attempts to find and defeat four bosses. During their time in the castle, the player obtains gold and blueprints: gold can be used to both upgrade your characters and build equipment you have blueprints for. Secret bosses that can be fought at the locations where defeated bosses once were. Optionally, after the credits, the player can start NG+, which is the same game with harder enemy placements.

Rogue Legacy 2 is a roguelite where the player enters a randomly generated kingdom and attempts to find and defeat a number of bosses (ten by my count, depends on whether you count void beasts or not). During their time in the castle, the player obtains gold, red ether, ore, souls and blueprints which, upon death... Gold is used to buy upgrades, Gold + Ether is used to buy runes, Gold + Ore is used to build equipment, Ether + Ore can be exchanged into more Souls, and Souls are used to level up the family estate and upgrade the shops so the stats and items in them can be upgraded further with the respective materials. After finishing the game, the player gains the ability to switch threads, which is moving back and forth between NG+ states with a series of customizable modifiers that change a variety of things about the game's balance, including but not limited to powering enemies up, increasing the map size and unlocking upgraded versions of the game's bosses. Not all modifiers aren't available from the start: most of them must be unlocked by beating higher numbered threads.

To say nothing of scars, mastery ranks, Unity levels, weight classes, Charon's tribute level and so on. A common occurrence when playing RL2 is to ask oneself "why is this here? How does it make the game any better?", and a lot of the time, the answer is "it does not": Many of its additions to the formula feel overdesigned to the point of being bothersome or poorly designed in a way they're plain skippable. The best display of the latter case is the relics, which are an evolution of the mechanic where you prayed for help in the first game and got a boon (or curse). RL2's Relics are items that add passive traits to your character. They're found randomly in certain rooms across the kingdom, and have a whole new stat, called Resolve, associated with them: Resolve is allocated when you take a relic, and having less than 100 Resolve reduces your Max HP to that amount as a percentage.

Relics are, aside from the revamped classes, the reason why RL2's main menu offers a glossary to help the player navigate the specialized vocabulary that comes with item and skill descriptions now. Much of the effects feel like reading TCG cards, and although a departure from the original, that's potentially a good thing: TCGs have these crazy interactions and combos that are part of the fun of playing the game. It must be fun to look for relic combos and... no, in reality, the drawbacks are far too punishing to pick relics up willy-nilly. Their effects seldom compensate the loss of HP, rarely match your class and even less frequently interact with one another. Plus, you can't even swap them out if you find a better set, the only way to get rid of them is to die, and yes, you do lose them on death, so when fighting bosses, unless you're planning to win first try, you can't count on them either.

Ah, yes, the bosses. What should be highlights are actually the most infuriating parts of the experience. The problem with the bosses in RL2 is that, individually, their attacks are fine: there's always a clear window, a clear movement pattern that spares you from the punishment. It's the overlaps of attacks that often leave the player without a place to run to. This almost always happens with bosses that are two or more separate entities that act independently, or those that summon minions, like Tubal, but is a frequent occurrence in other fights as well, where a low recovery period on bosses' attacks, combined with them being randomly picked instead of having triggers or patterns, makes it so they overlap each other and thus cancel their safe spots. Boss fights in RL2 basically force the player into playing classes with long invulnerability periods, and even then, feel less like a test of skill and more like a grind against the RNG.

Mind you, this is not a new issue! RL's bosses had the exact same problem, as anyone who fought against, say, upgraded Alexander will tell you. The difference was that the main bosses' patterns were simple enough that this never became an issue, and upon killing them, you were given enough gold so that the next area and boss's difficulty would be in a comfortable spot in your next run, if you happened to die. As for the upgraded versions, they were easy to unlock, and you could just rematch immediately if you lost, letting you focus on the fight instead of making the trek to the door over and over again.

RL may have been a janky game, but it's impossible to argue that it liked to waste your time. RL2, on the other hand? Upgrades rarely have an impact, bosses barely give any gold, there's multiple currencies whose only purpose is to stall progress... just think about it, the addition of souls is solely so you have to grind to unlock more grind. And to make things worse, the narrative is contrived so that you have to play multiple NG+ to get to the end of it. Take a wild guess at how many playthroughs are needed to get to the true ending. Two? Three? How about eight? You need to go all the way up to NG+7 to see the end of a story that could very effectively be told in three playthroughs, and even then, the pay off would not be worth it. The entire game is designed like it desperately had to justify two years of early access.

Like I said before, RL2 did bring a bunch of improvements with it. The vast majority of the game's issues lie within its balance, which could easily be tweaked; in fact, it seems cutting down on the grind is what most of the game's top mods concern themselves with.. But as much as I'd like to see this dream version of RL2, where its strong points are enhanced instead of its weak ones, that's not the game I played. RL2, as it came out, is a terrible experience, an unbelievably unsatisfying grindfest. I remember playing 30 hours of the original Rogue Legacy when it came out and having a blast: it amused me for a while, then left before it got boring. I played 60 hours of Rogue Legacy 2, all the while waiting for the fun part to begin, and it felt absolutely miserable.

Among Rune Factory games, Tides of Destiny is likely the most polarizing. While technically not the first console, 3D entry to the series -- Frontier precedes it -- it's a game that went its own way, with an original story and characters as well as reimagined mechanics that further distanced the RF series from its parent Harvest Moon, a direction not everybody took well to. I, myself, however, found it to be an important step forward for the RF series.

The first gameplay twist is pretty obvious from "Tides" being in the name of the game. Instead of the town you live in being on a contiguous landmass with the rest of the world, it is an island amidst many others. To progress the story -- in fact, to even be able to farm -- you have to explore the seas and find the correct islands. Notice that I don't use the word "sail" here. Everything is done atop your very own giant golem, Ymir, whose feet can reach the very bottom of the ocean. Ymir can be ridden into the sea, and he lifts islands from the seafloor so you can explore them.

The golem thing is somewhat confusing at first, but it serves its purpose well, adding this unique flavor to the exploration where the place you're looking for might not be there at first. And it's clear the designers put great care into the golem riding feature, as they even made it so you can fight giant sea monsters while on Ymir. Can't really have our character ride a giant construct without a kaiju battle, can we? Such battles are simple, consisting mostly of punching and blocking, but it's an amusing thing to do.

Combat in the main game is quite simple as well, as far as 3D action games go, but it's a bit more elaborate than the top-down RFs. There's a main attack button and a jump button (effectively used for dodging), and while you can get through the entire game just by using those, as you level up your weapon skill, some special moves become available. There are six different types of weapon, each of which has different damage, speed, range and special moves to suit different playstyles.

All weapons are viable if you take the time to learn them, and skill is not as important as keeping your gear up to date. That's where the crafting system comes in: crafting makes up for most of the time spent outside of dungeons, and through it, you can make food, weapons, tools, accessories, medicine and furniture. That happens to be not only the best way to get an edge in combat, but also, it's through it that you'll make most of the money you'll ever need.

Now, you're probably thinking "In a game with such well-developed systems, farming must be incredible!" and... well, hold your horses. I did say the game distanced itself from HM, and farming was practically a casualty. It's still here, but it's been mushed with the monster taming system: the player character no longer plant seeds themselves, but instead assigns monsters to work on the field, and the crops obtained will vary depending on the type of monster and how high their friendship is.

Farming is a secondary mechanic in the game, and it exists to supply crafting ingredients and to fulfill villager requests. On the latter... this is a 2011 game, and farming sims have come a long way since then, but back then, ToDs villagers were outstanding. They had relatively elaborate schedules; their dialogue was improved with them being made aware of festivals, past conversations with you and happenings surrounding other villagers; and they'd also comment on what you're wearing and even wear accessories you gift them.

What made them really special, however, is that all villagers had friendship events for every time you leveled up their friendship. During these events, you got to know that character better, either through a series of conversations on different topics, or through a storyline that developed as the friendship level increased. Again, this is not as impressive if you're coming from more recent games, but at the time, ToD really took it to a new level. It built a sense of living in a real community, and it made preceding games NPCs look like bots in comparison.

That being said, the writing is still far from perfect, and it leans into deeply troubling territory all too often. For instance, with sexism: male characters are told to "be a man" in their events, while female ones get to hear that learning cooking and laundry is "going to be useful once you're married". The absolute worst bits, though, come during the postgame, when romance starts being a thing. Off the top of my head, there's a couple of obvious gal pals whose friendship events revolve around their relationship, but who then suddenly forget about all that and decide what they really want is a piece of Aden. In addition to that, there's the bachelor who uses straight-up pick-up artist tactics on Sonja.

Poor Sonja. Yet another innovation for RF in Tides of Destiny was the ability to play as a female character, though the way it was done, it feels like an afterthought. As the game's main story goes, you play as childhood friends Aden and Sonja, who are going about their lives in Fenith Island until, one day, they find themselves teleported to a mysterious land. If that wasn't bad enough, they also find themselves sharing one body -- that of Aden. This means that, until the main narrative is done, you're forced to play as Aden anyway. And you might as well stick with him, since Sonja gets absolutely shafted when it comes to romance options. Aden gets a whopping ten bachelorettes to choose from, while Sonja gets only four (three when you cross out the PUA), and of course there are no same-sex marriages.

Maybe it's too much to expect for a 2011 game to take the series that far. Well, it's not, but anyway. Rough edges aside, Tides of Destiny was a very positive surprise -- the track record for this series is to fall face down when they try to be ambitious (cough cough Rune Factory 2 cough), but ToD managed to deliver a pretty enjoyable experience.

What a masterpiece.

I first played A Link to the Past as a young child and was obsessed with it, but it was playing the NES Zelda later in life that really made me appreciate ALTTP all the more. It is where the series really hit its stride, the power of the Super Nintendo having allowed developers to incorporate ambitious design ideas that were impossible before. This was also when the series began to have more of an established identity, with many of its staples being born here, like the Master Sword, the Spin Attack, the hookshot, bottled faeries, those text boxes that end in a "did you understand?" prompt... though in that latter case, the cruel practice of defaulting the cursor to "no" would only begin with Ocarina of Time.

It sounds like a minor thing, but the fact that the game started worrying about information conveyed to the player is in itself a sign of a major shift in the series. The original Zelda rarely expressed itself in words, and when it did, it was immensely cryptic. In A Link to the Past, information gathering is paramount: it's important to talk to NPCs wherever you find them, as they'll give key information that will aid in your quest. They'll also give important hints about the overworld in general, like the location of optional items and upgrades. If someone says "toss a stone into the river up north", you'd better start practicing those throws.

The game strikes a nice balance where it doesn't hold your hand, but also rarely has you making logic leaps about what to do next. On my latest playthrough, I put that to the test, pretending I didn't know where to go or what to do, and it made me appreciate why some people call Zelda an RPG: ALTTP punishes players who play it as an action game and ignore the world around them. It's a game where exploration and note-taking are as important to your quest as completing the dungeons.

Speaking of dungeons, it's another area in which ALTTP is a massive step forward for the franchise. The original LoZ may have had some sprawling dungeons to navigate, but each room was relatively simple: it had enemies to kill and/or blocks to push, and had up to four exits. They also only spanned one floor, with stairs leading to secret passages that connected two faraway rooms. LoZ's levels were groundbreaking for their time, but nowadays feel simplistic and, by the end of the game, repetitive.

A Link to the Past features a whopping eleven dungeons, each of which has a defined identity and hides an important piece of equipment for Link to use, and their design has been massively overhauled. On the room level, rooms come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and can be entered and left from multiple directions. Often, it's important not just to reach a room, but to enter it from the right place. The dungeons' structure in itself has been greatly overhauled, with levels now spaning multiple floors that offer multiple ways to move between them.

Despite being a 2D game, ALTTP expects its player to think of a maze as an object in 3D space, carefully minding which rooms are above or below others, as well as what paths around the level are possible. It's impossible to overstate just how devious the level design is: so many times, the thing you need is right in front of you, unreachable, making you scratch your head over how to get it. The game calls for plenty of observation as well as out-of-the-box thinking, with places like the Tower of Hera hiding the Moon Pearl behind a combination of stage contraptions, the Swamp Palace and its very first room exploring the relationship between worlds, and Skull Woods having multiple entrances, turning the surrounding overworld area into a part of the dungeon.

The overworld is almost a dungeon in itself now, its paths gradually opening themselves as Link's inventory fills up. The map has tons of nooks and crannies ready to reveal themselves the avid explorer, but also features notable landmarks and locations that make it feel like a world instead of just a grid of screens. The experience is further enhanced once the Dark World enters the mix, a twisted version of the real world that becomes accessible after the first few dungeons.

The Dark World changes how the player thinks about overworld navigation by opening up impossible paths in the Light World, and the duality between worlds is explored by a handful of puzzles throughout the game. Plus, the Dark World's atmosphere, enveloped in eternal twilight, filled with far more dangerous monsters than what you'd faced to that point in your adventure, reinforces the feelings of desolation that are central to A Link to the Past's narrative.

A Link to the Past is a true marvel. If anything, replaying it makes me slightly melancholic that the game gets pushed aside so often, along with the rest of the top-down Zeldas, as being outdated and obtuse. I've heard so many complaints that the puzzles are too hard, or that the enemies are too strong, or that it has too many dungeons. If that wasn't bad enough, I've watched a streamer ragequit over a puzzle that can easily be solved by looking at the in-game map, which he refused to do.

And the saddest part is that the Zelda series in itself evolved in order to accommodate these complaints, with some of the later games not respecting the player's intelligence and preventing them from navigating the levels on their own -- heck, the industry itself followed suit, with so many modern AAA games going as far as spoiling puzzles before you even touch them. ALttP is a throwback to earlier times, not too early that games gave you no information, not too late that they held you by the hand. A true Link to the Past.

...I cannot possibly end on that pun, can I? Uh... So, ALttP is really good and... uh... Hey, did you know there was this Japan-exclusive SNES Zelda game that was essentially a remix of A Link to the Past?! It's called Inishie no Sekiban, or Ancient Stone Tablets, and was released on an obscure SNES addon called the Satellaview. It has four parts to it, and plays basically like an official romhack of ALttP, which is a treat for all of us who love the game. If you're interested, you can find more info on the game and how to play it over on the BS Zelda (that's "Broadcast Satellite") section of the Zelda Legends website.