it's fine. not the best, but it's fine. I've never been a super big AC fan... and not sure I could see myself going back to past titles after playing this one. the graphics alone are incredibly nice in this game. there are upsides and downsides regardless of which one you're playing. but this game does have a lot of issues. item durability is nonsense. the lack of QoL is ridiculous. a friend of mine is super into this game right now and ended up... sort of getting me interested again? who knows how long that'll last. but it's been long enough that I forgot how slow things are. terraforming is neat, but it's so fucking slow. even slower if you're not standing exactly perfectly while doing it! while you can certainly change your whole island, it takes a lot of time and effort to do. the fact that you can move only one building per day... unless you time travel, holy shit, it'll take you ages if you're like me and decided you needed to move half the buildings on the island. yikes.
and then this game was ditched way too quickly. it's a real shame. I know, I know, pandemic. sure. it's an excuse, and a perfectly valid one. but I think that just makes it all the more depressing. perhaps the game shouldn't have released when it did, as perfect as that timing was.

young me back in 2007 really liked this game and had a massive phase with it. I was obsessed with Count Bleck in the most cringy way. a chunk of that definitely still exists in the depths of the internet.
anyway, while I haven't been able to play this game for myself in years... I remember that the last time I tried to, I ended up dropping it. so uh, I think that in and of itself is enough to say: I don't like it much anymore. while I haven't been able to play it in so long, I've relived the game 3 times through different people on YouTube. that's a lot more fun, because I'm not the one playing.
while I did once really like this game, I do know the gameplay was never my favorite thing.
it's funny, because thinking back, I am not sure why Past Me liked this game so much. while I've got those rose-tinted goggles on for lots of old favorite games... not so much for this one.
a lot of people say the story is good, or even great. I say it's really not that great and is outright pretty cringeworthy at its core. this is definitely partially because over time, I discovered I'm aromantic and despise sappy love story bullshit. and that's what the story of this game is at its core. sappy love story bullshit. bleh. though I do recall not really liking it way back when too. I was like, sort of captivated, but didn't really like it.
overall it's an ok game that I can't see myself ever replaying. happy to watch others play it tho.

holy FUCK I forgot how brutal this game is. haven't played it in a long time, but picked it up because a friend was playing and I just kinda... got into it and played it pretty quick.

FUCK Emperor Bulblax and whatever the hell he stands for. oh my GOD. such a shitty and ridiculous final boss. he jumps way too much and it gets ridiculously difficult as a result, because time is being wasted watching him jump. unless I was doing something wrong? I dunno tho. either way, wow, that pissed me off.

Pikmin, even flower Pikmin, are incredibly slow in all aspects. they are also incredibly susceptible to being knocked over. oh my god. it just kept happening. they kept getting crushed and eaten because they would not get up and run away. I was whistling, I was pushing on the stick, but it just kept happening. RIP all those Pikmin. I had over 500 Pikmin deaths. I'm sure I've done better in the past... though now that I think about it, I do wonder how. questions I don't have answers to. anyway.
still a pretty solid game but it is so fucking hard with only Olimar. the areas are huge and so you're trying to do many things at a time but it's very hard to manage that. it took me 21 days to get all the parts, and I know I've done it faster before, but I am out of practice and struggled a lot. not sure I'm interested in getting better at this game again, but playing it once again was ok.

for a game that had been hyped up to me for years... it was, uhhhhhhh, just ok. not bad. not bad at all. but... I dunno, I hesitate to say it's like, really good. it does what it was supposed to, and it does that well. it's not a bad remake. but many problems from original gen 2 still persist. problems from gen 4 are now added to the mix. I'm not going to go over all of that, lots of reviews already have. requiring Rock Climb for Mt. Silver was a mistake. absolute nonsense. wasn't required for anything else. why that one thing?

the biggest problem imo, is that the whole Team Rocket segment is still ridiculously long. maybe it feels even longer. it's been long enough since I've experienced gen 2 in any form, but that segment is the low point of the game because it's so excessive. breaking it up like how the gen 3 Evil Team stuff was broken up may have helped, but I dunno.

my personal experience can be summed up with one word: underwhelmed. I think the reason this game is beloved by many is largely a nostalgia thing. I was unable to get one of these remakes at release. just never had the money, sadly. growing up poor af as a gamer sucked, lemme tell you. I had to play this emulated because I wasn't going to pay the price for a physical copy, and my old 3DS is pretty junky now. even so, it wouldn't have compared to having it back then with the Pokewalker and perhaps people to really share the joy with.
I am not 100% sure how the reception for the gen 3 remakes was, but I know the gen 4 ones were... pretty bad. so I get why people would cling onto this, because it's really good in comparison. it just suffers most of the flaws of the originals.

I used a pretty weird team. Feraligatr(K. Rool), Houndoom(BlackShuck), Forretress(Nokama), Porygon(Dunsparce), and Gligar(Bitcrush). I did have a 6th Pokemon, a Nidoking(The Guy), solely for the sake of learning HMs so my Feraligatr didn't have to have 3 HM moves. and to keep others free of them. 3/5 of my Pokemon were... not particularly great at anything. Forretress and Gligar suffered the most in this aspect. a shame, really. perhaps I should have cheated in TMs to maybe make them better. ah well. I did things the hard way, and it never really paid off. I loved my team regardless. but I did struggle a lot. pretty constantly. I used a 2x exp cheat and had my Pokemon holding lucky eggs that were cheated in, to mitigate/avoid real grinding. about halfway through Kanto, I also decided I was done fighting every trainer because fighting them just took so much time.
at Mt. Silver, I chose to use cheated in rare candies to level my Pokemon to 70. should have gotten them to 75, probably, but it's ok. the struggle against Red was what it should be, and that's not a terrible thing.

the game looks great... I was giddy at so many things. I wish Pokemon games still had more unique sprites, or I guess models now... trainer types should have a couple of variations. even if they were just recolors with maybe very slight changes. but the NPCs in this game having more distinct overworld sprites than in the original made me happier than it should have. lol
the music, uhhhhhhh. well. it gets better in Kanto. I was not a fan of much of what you hear in Johto. I dunno why remakes/remasters mostly seem to ruin the vibes with the new music. anyway, while the vibes with the Kanto music are different, it works in that case. though overall, it's a bummer that most of the pep of the original non-battle tracks is gone. I know the GB sounds thing exists, but it doesn't work quite right because the DS can't play chiptunes correctly.

I am happy that a decent chunk of the reduction of Kanto was undone, Viridian Forest being an Actual Place again was so nice. I didn't expect it. I didn't really check it out because honestly I wasn't very interested but at least there was something to check out.
the amount of extra content in this game is a lot... I didn't bother with any of it because I personally don't care and it doesn't particularly add much to the experience imo. still, it's very cool, and definitely not something that'd happen in a more modern Pokemon remake.

gen 2 is my favorite, but playing this remake left me wondering why. perhaps it's just some immense nostalgia tied solely to the originals, I dunno. my lack of love for gen 4 is likely related to why I didn't enjoy this remake as much, honestly. something I could try to unpack at some point but not sure I really care to

this was my third playthrough. I chose to do it on hard mode, because I'm wacky. but uh, I dropped it because it's unironically too difficult for me. I might have fucked myself by also having random medals be part of this playthrough, but I'm not all too sure non-random medals would make a difference. the fact that hard mode was originally the game's intended difficulty is so wild to me. this shit sucks. every regular battle is ridiculously difficult. I know how to play this game. I'm not doing anything wrong. every regular enemy in chapter 2 can just kick my ass. I don't comprehend how this is so hard for me. I'm not new to this game at all.
not recommended on hard mode, unless you're one of those people that is good at like, Paper Mario TTYD challenge runs.

this game broke on my wedding day, the cutscene wouldn't load. and I'm still pissed off about that. as a result of such, I do not recommend this game to anyone.
apparently this is fixable if you remove the DLC, but this issue can happen with other parts of the game. heard of it happening with the egg festival, and also happening in the mines. also, what if you wanted to marry a DLC character? bullshit. as a result of such an issue, I say this game kind of sucks ass, and is really not worth your time/money. even if you're prepared for the possibility of a cutscene not loading and being unable to progress, I still don't really recommend it. there are better games you can play that don't have this issue.

aside from that big issue, this game is okay. it leans into being a Stardew Valley-like, but that was unnecessary. as a result, I will bring up SDV a few times here. this game feels like a successor to Story of Seasons 3DS in particular. but that's better and more worth playing.
material management and crafting are obnoxious. while ore needs to be processed into bars in Stardew Valley, it's the single most used material you need to process. less relevant, there's also cloth, but it's much simpler, and processing it is one step, from wool to cloth. in Pioneers of Olive Town, you need to process basically everything. this means you end up with a big accumulation of lots of different stuff. wool gets turned into yarn, which gets turned into cloth. there's 3 types of these things. logs have to be processed into planks. there are like, 4 types of logs. coal needs to be processed for some things. clay has to be processed into bricks. the list goes on. it is very excessive, and with the limited amounts storage boxes hold, everything for crafting ends up taking up a massive amount of space. makers only doing stacks of 10 at a time sucks too. I heard they could only initially do one item at a time. for all you have to manage, that sounds like hell. I'm glad they changed it, but they should have made it a stack of 99 or something instead.
also much like Stardew Valley, there is limited animal food storage in this game. except it manages to be much worse here. you will eventually unlock a second food storage, and with one silo and one silage, you can store about 300 fodder total. the silage converts fodder into Deluxe Fodder. these buildings also take up a fair amount of space. letting animals outside doesn't require anything, they just graze on the nothing that's out there. so fodder only ends up consumed on rainy/stormy/snowy days. a bit less bad, but the annoyances persist.
gameplay is standard fare and perfectly fine outside of the material management and crafting. this game has sprinklers. later you get access to ponds, which are mostly a waste of space. I really don't know what they're exactly useful for. maybe you can fish at them for something special? I don't know. honestly, of all the things, the one I barely did was fish. mining kind of sucks. there are 3 whole separate mines. there didn't need to be. you do have to use all 3 of them to get all of the ores and such. the mines add these moles that become an incredibly annoying obstacle. it starts easy enough, but the biggest mine has so many moles and there's shockwaves to dodge and it just sucks. orichalcum is ridiculously hard to get a hold of, even via using the safe mining area you unlock, it's going to take you a while to get what you need. if you ship one, you can then buy it from the store, but it's expensive. you can also unlock it from the sprite shop, but it's still expensive there too, and getting the coins is a slow process.
I played on seedling mode. seeds were still pretty expensive, some being 400G per bag. and it's one bag per one tilled square. eventually you'll be making so much money that it hardly matters, but in the beginning it's kind of an obstacle. an odd choice overall.
this game felt way too easy to "finish." I was basically done by the end of the first year. the single thing I hadn't done was get married, but I could have if I'd made the decision on who to marry sooner. I also kinda kept forgetting to give Reina gifts...
in terms of how this game looks, I am really not a fan. there's a weird smooth and matte look to everything that I really dislike. and everyone has massive heads. once you see it, you cannot unsee it. I actually thought it was only the player model, honestly, but I see upon looking at screenshots that it extends to most NPCs as well. it's bad.

I know people say the characters in this game have... no character, but personally I disagree. I won't say they're not bland... most of them are, at least the marriage candidates. but I feel like it's standard fare for these games for the most part. eh. and it's not much, but I do appreciate that they can say more than one thing in a day. yes the dialogue gets repetitive, but all games like this have repeated dialogue like that.
there's a lot of interactions between different characters, and that's one of the things I really liked about this game. and those interactions are not solely related to the characters you can marry. and if you don't like it, all the cutscenes are skippable. this is the one aspect that other games should take notes from. it makes the world feel more... like a world. more interaction outside of cutscenes would be great... someday we'll get there.
the sprites are weird little creatures in this game, and I kind of love them. I would, of course, choose the little elf-like sprites any day, but I do love the weird little critters in this game. I wish the spirit lady was better. more interesting? something. there's so little interaction with her, it's a bummer. you cannot befriend her and she has way less dialogue than anyone else. side note, her voice clips are also way louder than anyone else's.
related, I am not so keen on the voice clips. thankfully this game lets you turn them off, the player ones in particular got really grating.

Fran was my bisexual awakening, thanks Fran.

this is the single Final Fantasy title I'd be half tempted to revisit, but idk. these games are a time investment, and I found this one to be the worst due to how combat works. grinding sucks ass in JRPGs no matter what, but it feels even worse here somehow. I remember running into a roadblock in the forest, taking a big break, coming back, grinding... and still being unable to beat that boss. no idea what was up with that, the guide I used was convincing me I was supposed to be strong enough, but I dunno, I couldn't do it. I ended up cutting through some other area to get where I needed to go. thank god that was a thing, or I likely never would have finished this game.
but it's a slog, and with a story that personally bored me to tears. I have a friend who ADORES this game and its story. we're great friends, but incredibly different people in many ways. I suppose that's why he likes it and I don't, haha. I honestly remember so, so little of this game because of how fucking boring it was to me personally. I oughta find a good let's play or stream series of this to watch. I do remember it being a considerably comfy game. very aesthetically pleasing with nice music.

Churi's Pizza Tower review... 2!!! I played the game again on the second file and I decided I wanted to log more thoughts that came from playing it again. also spent some time messing around on my first file.

this game is good and fun if you're playing it normally, but it fucking SUCKS if you're going for S or P ranks. holy SHIT. I got S on John Gutter, Golf, and Fast Food Saloon. I suffered, namely with Golf, but still kind of had fun. I was going to maybe S rank Don't Make A Sound, but then realized that that level is just obnoxious enough to be ruined playing it going for S. so I gave that up. it's not fun. I was also going for Oregano Desert but gave that up 'cause I hit all the secrets and got the treasure and did all I could but was still like, 2k points off from S. idk. fuck it. probably requires some keeping up of combo, and it's not worth the effort.

this game feels so... at odds with itself sometimes. I know a few people have brought this up and been essentially dismissed for bringing it up, but... it's true. the game wants you to go fast and not get hit and keep up a combo, but then it also wants you to be exploring and keeping an eye out for secrets. this means that unless you're real big brain, getting S and P ranks is a process. it requires knowing where the secrets are. which isn't necessarily hard to learn, but it's dumb that a learning process is involved. it's easy to be going so fast that you miss 'em. the visual cues for the real hidden ones are often way too subtle to be noticed when you're running. I don't mind that the game has secrets, and I know you can play it without having to keep up a combo. but the game has the combo meter there for a reason, so it's a mixed message.
people could be dismissive and say "skill issue" and I'll admit that I am definitely not as good at this game as other people are. ADHD makes it hard a lot, the visual overwhelm combined with having to go fast means there's a personal struggle. I do not think that invalidates anything I said, though.

insane that, for only playing most levels once each, as well as only doing each boss besides Pepperman once(the only boss I did without the invincibility cheat originally lol), pretty much everything was a lot smoother. I expected to struggle in a few places, but I really didn't. I expected to bungle WAR something fierce, and yet I didn't. completed it first try, got the camo. bungled getting the treasure first playthrough, though, which was a lil embarrassing. u_u failed my personal challenge of only completing levels once with the treasure! oh well. second playthrough was only smoother, so it's ok. :V final boss is a bit overlong, imo, but Unexpectancy part 3 goes soooooooooo fuckin hard, I was like YEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH it was awesome. Pizzaface was the least smooth moment of my whole playthrough, with how he spawns all those enemies in... blah. hate it lol

as much as I like this game, it's still not something that I could give above 4 stars, and even that feels a bit too generous sometimes, but whatever. initially all I knew is that it was inspired by Wario Land, so I was taken by surprise when I actually played it. kinda wish it were a bit more like Wario Land in the gameplay department than it really is, but whatever. levels range from Good to ok to underwhelming, Crust Cove in particular can suck it. Fun Farm too. the bosses... are my least favorite part of the game. phase 2 Vigilante is so annoying. other than that they're just not much fun, minus phase 3 of Pizzahead, which is pretty fun.
I kind of wish this game had... idk, something there to make me feel more regarding the characters 'cause they're pretty likable, but never say anything or do much. u_u well, except Pizzahead, I fuckin hate Pizzahead and if my homies don't hate Pizzahead, idk if I trust them. anyway. uh. I suppose that's about it. I was thinking I'd end up being more nitpicky, but meh. I think I'm mostly over my nitpicks. OH. wait, except one: the music and sounds, I wish they were not so reminiscent of Wario Land 4. some of Mr. Sauceman's tracks in particular. drives me crazy. it's good music, but it annoys me that I'm often thinking about one of the game's inspirations rather than the game itself. there's one that reminds me so, so heavily of Wario Land 4 music. I can't remember what it's called. it's a fine track, but I dunno. it Bothers me anyway. ok. that's it, now I'm done. thanks for reading

finally considering myself done with this game. I did everything but complete the credits roll up and the royal reverie levels. uh. I'll do those sometime... I legit forgot. whoops! credits roll up, the king's dash rolls just fuck me over every time, and retrying is a pain in the butt because there's a long chunk of wait time.

anyway, it's We Love Katamari... again! one of my personal favorite games. in terms of praise, I don't have much to say. it's hard for me to be wordy when it comes to positives? idk.
inclusion of eternal levels feels kind of odd, since they're only as large as possible levels, which... aside from the last one, just don't have enough to feel worth having as an eternal option. but the other levels wouldn't really be worth including, either.
there are a few things in this game I'm not super fond of, namely the cowbear level... I'll never roll up the cowbear because the effort required isn't worth it to me personally. I'm also still soured from the time I was trying to do it on the original game and ended up picking up some stupid small bear because that's just too easy to do.
I'm also not fond of the cousin roll up, the paper crane one, and I wish they could have done something to make the million red roses rolling feel less terrible. the areas are just too small and you end up feeling dizzy rolling around and around the same spots. also not the fondest of the underwater level and the one where you have to roll up animals for the lonely dog. idk why, especially that animal one has never been a favorite. maybe I am just bad at it. never roll up enough friends. blah! also wish the cloud level felt better from the start, I don't understand why it's so terribly sluggish until you build up to have the view be above the clouds. was hoping they'd make that better somehow. racing level also... is annoying. I'd almost dare to say it feels worse than it did originally, but that may be faulty memory or my getting used to it back then.

but even with all my dumb nitpicks, I still quite like this game. it's still a favorite. it's still fun. worth playing, absolutely. the subtitles provided for the Song for the King of Kings are appreciated by me.

I have shelved this game, but I'd like to get back to it sometime. just too many things otherwise have been priority, whoops!

this remake is fine, as long as you're not expecting more out of it than what the original had. not recommended for people that got into farm games via Stardew Valley.

the qol is fantastic all the way around. it's easier to manage the fields, tools can be upgraded, and fishing doesn't completely suck now! whoa. I do feel like the dig site is somehow worse, though. feels... slower. annoying. I do appreciate the visual indicator, but also feel like it could be better. more distinct, perhaps.
I appreciate that animals aren't so temperamental, and despite the many complaints I saw regarding the way cows work now, I am glad they can continue to produce milk without giving birth. that process in the original game was a total pain. I've got a feeling it's easier in the remake... to some extent, at least... but not having to do it is nice.

character redesigns and renames are fine. most of the name changes are simply to be more accurate to their original names. in terms of redesigns, I do wish Gordy still had his mohawk. his new outfit is a fine spin on the old one, but imo, it leans a bit too sporty to entirely fit his character. but it's whatever. not a dealbreaker or anything. I appreciate the addition of Gordy as a marriage candidate.

the biggest bummer of this game, and the reason I had a hard time sticking with the original as well as this remake, is that you experience 95% of what the game has to offer in the first year. while this game does have that draw of seeing your child grow up and being an influence on them as they do so... it's just so slow, and with little dialogue, that it's never really pulled me in. being a person that's never wanted to have a family irl is likely also relevant for me and my lack of enjoyment/interest in this case... lmao

wahoo it's Black... 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
not much to say about this. a fine game, more gen 5, can't really go wrong. however, even if I do feel this is better than any other of the "second version" games, it's still hard to say this one's entirely worth playing. sure the story is a continuation of the original game, and for that alone, it stands pretty tall. but the story didn't really need said continuation. very little of interest happens, and the way it ends isn't much different from the conclusion reached in the first game.
there is, overall, even more to do... but most of it really wasn't of interest to me. had a bit of fun with the movie studio early on but it could have done with being a lot less of a slow process.

disclaimer: I only played the demo.

I really have to log this and put my thoughts out there. I love rhythm games. I am learning, though, that I don't like when rhythm games do... more. it's too much for me to handle. I thought I'd love Crypt of the Necrodancer. I... didn't. :( glad there was a demo of this. I was tempted to purchase it, but it was far too much money to spend on something I wasn't sure I'd like. the demo was longer than I expected it to be, so it gets points for that.
this game is SO cool stylistically and musically. like, it gets that all juuuuust right. but for me, the gameplay was very awkward. using different buttons really threw me off terribly. my shitty ADHD brain couldn't keep up and I didn't even actually complete the demo. embarrassing! but I'm glad I was able to try it.

back in the day, I did not play this. I was burnt out after gen 4. I am more than a little sad I skipped this. gen 5 is a million times better than 4. 4 is so bland, 5 is visually interesting basically all of the time and does some really neat stuff visually. as much as Castelia City makes my brain melt, it's very cool.
imo Black/White/2 are peak Pokemon.
I actually wanted to play gen 5 for several years. sadly, by the time I wanted to try getting a copy of Black, it was already quite tricky to get, and way too expensive. this was well before more recent shenanigans driving used game prices even higher. so I did the good ol' yo ho ho and finally was able to play this game on my current computer. awkward to join the gen 5 fans so late, but y'know, it is what it is.
I played this game with cheats so I could avoid any and all real grinding. because grinding in Pokemon games, more than any other RPG, really fuckin sucks. many people complain about current Pokemon games and how easily Pokemon level up... and while I think that should be optional, and even offer maybe a few options in that direction, grinding sucks.
while this game definitely has downsides, namely most cities and towns feeling a bit too small, there was nothing that actively ruined the experience.
I do not think the story is as good as many others do. it's certainly very ambitious, I will give it that with no hesitation. but it falls short with the "bad guys" being actually bad while insisting their way is right. no one ever even comes close to believing them. if they'd been not so overtly obviously bad, it'd work... better. and then you have N. I like N, but his whole thing is very underdeveloped. you get a few glimpses into his world to understand why he is... the way he is, and how it happened. it's beautiful to see him figure things out and break free in the end. there's a satisfaction in taking Ghetsis down. I barely knew who N was, but stories of abuse hit hard, even when they're as underdeveloped as this one was. so I felt very sad for N and very angry at Ghetsis. but the development comes and goes so fast, it causes a sort of whiplash feeling.

fighting the league champion after the insanity that goes down is so anti-climactic.