Really fun monster battle gameplay with tons of neat ways to customize your team, with a very extensive synthesis system that will keep you busy for hours! However, the story was a pretty massive let-down. I’ve wanted a game where you get to see the events of Dragon Quest IV unfold from Psaro’s point of view for a while now, so I was stoked when this got revealed. However, you might as well hardly play as him. First of all, he’s a silent, nameable protagonist which… just boggles my mind, to say the least. He’s still very much the same character as the Psaro from Dragon Quest IV, so I don’t get why they turned him into a silent protagonist who hardly emotes instead of the extremely rash and hot-headed character he is in Dragon Quest IV. There’s also a lot of story changes to make Psaro more of an admirable anti-hero which I think is lame. He already was! His story is tragic! You don’t need to change events that already happened in Dragon Quest IV to make Psaro look like a good guy! He isn’t! He kills people for no reason!

Was going to 100% this one but got tired of grinding for the X Rank monsters, as much as I’d love to have Zoma and Estark on my team </3

Perhaps the biggest example of being spoiled by a game’s sequel. Star Fox 64 really is just this game but better in every conceivable way. I still appreciate this a lot though, if technology never advanced past 1993 and this was still the latest technology, I’m sure I’d be throughly impressed! However, being born 10 years after this game released makes it a little hard to get used to, simply because I’m so used to the standard of every other game I’ve played that’s released after Star Fox. This feels very slow by comparison. It’s still a good time though, the levels are good and flying the Arwing is still fun. I was disappointed by how many levels force you into a first person view and have you shooting that way, though. While you still control the ship, you don’t move it around in quite the same way, which destroys a lot of what I love about the gameplay of these games.

All in all, it’s still worth a shot, especially with how short it is. At the very least, I appreciate this game a lot for its impact on the industry as a whole. I can’t imagine how crazy this must have been at the time!

I wrote a review about this some months ago, but after some other people I saw review it change their minds (plus being reminded of it by having people tell me I'm wrong) I decided to give it another shot. I think the first time I came into this I saw the one line about 'girldick' at the beginning and I kind of turned my brain off after that because of how much I hated that one line. I'm not going to delve into this too much on backloggd dot com, but as a transgender woman myself I have a lot of issues with 'girldick' and the adjacent culture around it. It's gross and fetishizing and it genuinely makes me uncomfortable. But, after reading this again, I realized there's way more to this that I flagrantly ignored my first go around. (Also, as someone pointed out on my first review saying something among the lines of "there's only like one line talking about weird online stuff" and I will concede that they're right. My bad!)

As my boyfriend states in his review, while this is art it's not really something that's made to be talked about the same way as "proper games" (whatever that means to you) are. Which is why I'm not giving this a score this time as it's rather pointless to, in my mind.

There are a lot of thought provoking ideas in this work. I don't agree with all of them (I think the bit about writers being "obsessed with conflict" especially is very silly), but it made me think about games in a way I've not really thought about them before. Take the topic of violence; while I disagree about video game violence being nothing but filler or a power fantasy, I completely get where the author is coming from. When you take a look at video games as a medium, in most cases there is some sort of expectation for a combat system. Again, this is something that I never really gave much thought to this before as it's always been the norm for essentially as long as video games have existed, but having it pointed out puts into perspective how odd it is. In other artistic mediums, such as novels, paintings, movies and the like, while many of them feature combat of some form, it's not something that's expected because of the medium it was created in. In other words, I doubt anyone has watched Finding Nemo and went out thinking "Y'know, that was a good movie, but I think it's weird how there weren't any big fight scenes!".

I think this outlook of expecting games to have combat, or hell any pre-determined mechanic, as the author states, is limiting to the genre as a whole, and only serves to make games less unique. I think there are many other interesting ways to have the player interact with the world and the creatures inhabiting it that is more than just beating the ever loving crap out of them. To quote the author, "if u want to reinvent a medium u have to eviscerate it first. destroy video games from the inside out like an alien parasite." I agree. Games should be deconstructed to their barest parts, those parts should be turned over and examined, and subsequently thrown out and replaced with something entirely new in its stead. Still a video game, but something that disregards any and all preconceived notions as to what a video game is supposed to/should be.

When I first read this, I took this as "all video games are bad and I am so much smarter than you for realizing this" when that couldn't be further from the point. The author clearly has a deep love and passion for video games, as is made obvious throughout the whole work. It's this love, this passion that makes her want to change them. So they can grow. Video games can be, and SHOULD be so much more. This game is a love letter to video games and their potential. It's a message about why we should break down the barriers that only serve to limit the creativity put into games and the love that games make.

To close, I want to talk about a different game. A game that I had an extremely similar experience with, and that explores strikingly similar topics to this one. That game is moon. When I played moon, I was so incredibly bored. It felt like a complete and utter slog. I didn't feel like I was accomplishing anything at all. I hardly knew why I even kept on playing. It's only when I beat the game and put thought into what I had just experienced that I had realized the point of moon: to be a "boring" video game. moon, like Video Game Feminization Hypnosis, was made by people who have a deep love for video games and want to push boundaries. The purpose of both of these games is to make people think. They want you to feel challenged. It's by design. They're both extremely earnest experiences that pay respect to the boundless possibilities of the medium. And I think they both succeed splendidly.

I AM TRANSGENDER SO I CAN SAY ALL OF THIS AND YOU CAN'T GET UPSET AT ME

This is Black Panther for 4tranners. Everything about this game reeks of being made by someone who is completely and utterly detached from reality. I hope they've gotten help since making this.

As for the 'commentary' on video games, it's the most surface-level superficial garbage I've perhaps ever read about the subject. The only part of this game I remotely found interesting is the one singular page about video games being a system, and how unique that makes them.

Also a lot of extremely gross chaser shit in this. I know the author is trans, but that doesn't mean they can't also fetishize transgender people. In fact, I'd say some of the most heinous chaser things I've read have come from people who are transgender.

This game is a genuinely very sad showcase of delusionalism. Alternatively, it's moon if it was made by someone who is terminally online.

Edit:
THIS REVIEW IS AWFUL. I have made an updated review that expresses my opinion about this much better. If you liked this review, I implore you to please read my new one instead.

Also, I doubt she's even read this, but I want to apologize to the author of this game regardless. This review is extremely mean-spirited and accusatory, and I had no right to talk this way about someone I've never even met. This person doesn't deserve to have her ideas obsessed over like this and to be psycho-analyzed by random people online just for giving her opinion on video games of all things.

Fun multiplayer adventure! I played this start to finish with my boyfriend, and we both enjoyed it a little more than I thought we would.

There’s a lot here to love, there are so many QOL features in the game that made things very convenient, including: Missed collectibles on the Map, frequent checkpoints that doubly serve as respawn points, map indicators for when an ability you’ve unlocked can unlock a new area, area completion percentages, and at least a few others I’ve forgotten. The team clearly had the player’s enjoyment on the front of their mind with these decisions, and I greatly appreciate that.
The visuals are another thing that I was constantly drawn to. While none of the areas are particularly innovative in video game settings, they’re all visually gorgeous. The characters inhabiting the world– be it the playable characters, NPCs, or enemies– are excellently brought to life through gorgeous animation and a beautiful art style that looks like it was taken directly out of a sketchbook and put into the game. The dynamic soundtrack that subtly changes as you progress through areas pairs with the fantastic visuals to create a nice, serene atmosphere.
In terms of exploring the world, it’s pretty fun! If you’re an existing fan of metroidvanias, it will probably feel a bit bare-bones, but at the very least I think it’s still enjoyable. The platforming sections aren’t anything spectacular, but they’re engaging. The real highlight comes in finding the different collectibles, which was the highlight of the whole game for me. My favorites were the areas that take up the whole screen, and you have to go through a small platforming challenge/puzzle to get the secret. The Mickey Memorabilia is super cute, and very fitting with this game releasing during the Disney 100 celebrations. There are some deeper cuts, and it feels like they’re put in there by people who have a genuine love for the Disney cartoons. I wish the outfits you unlocked were actually wearable, but as I believe the game is hand animated, I get why they aren’t.
The thing metroidvanias are known for (well, one of the things), the abilities you unlock throughout the course of your journey are fun, as well. Like the level design itself, they’re nothing crazy (don’t go in expecting to pull off some of the crazy types of things you can do in Hollow Knight, for example), but they pair nice with the world. I wish there was maybe one or two more, though, as the movement does feel a little basic.
I also enjoyed the humor, albeit it’s a little hit or miss for me. Some of it wasn’t quite my cup of tea, but there were some jokes that got a chuckle from me. The best bits are with the main 4 bantering, especially anything to do with Donald. The running joke of Donald getting junky equipment is a pretty good bit.

As for the negatives, the first is the combat. Or, the lack of it. The enemy patterns in the game aren’t really designed around combat, so it doesn’t feel like it’s necessarily missing anything by not having it, but I feel like it could have really filled a gap in the very simple run and jump gameplay. Just tweak the enemies a bit, and let the players unlock some new moves or combos throughout the game, and I feel like it would have added a lot to the game.
The closest you get to combat are the boss fights which are quite lackluster. None of them are bad, but they’re not great. They’re just fine. They don’t really outstay their welcome, at least.
Probably my biggest issue with this game is the lack of fast travel, which is gated until the very end of the game. This game has so many great QoL features that I’m utterly stumped as to why they thought this was a good idea. It’s not like you can really sequence break in this game, even if you trekked all the way back to where you wanted to go on foot. I almost certainly would’ve 100% it if it had fast travel, but once I beat it I didn’t really feel like going back and getting everything, as I much rather would do it before I beat the game. I’d like to sometime in the future, at least, but man I would have liked to have that along the way.

All in all, I found this game fun. It fell considerably short of what I feel it could have been, though. This game has a fantastic framework, built by very talented developers who clearly have a lot of passion for what they’re doing. I just wish it was a bit more out there with its ideas. I’m optimistic that this game will one day get a sequel, as I feel like they could make something splendid if the team listened to feedback and improved on this game’s shortcomings. I’d still recommend it though, especially if you, or someone you play this with, is new to metroidvanias.