Perfection. Not a single dull or uninteresting moment, this is exactly what I want out of an action-RE game. I love how they ratcheted up the horror and general pressure you feel during gameplay from the original. Adored almost every single change. Have a couple small nitpicks and I found myself wishing for just a tad bit more of Leon shit-talking the villains, but it's all just a footnote in an incredible 15-20 hour experience. Also shout-outs to the writers/localization team for this remakes, they clearly have a deep love for and understanding of the series at large. Possibly a new favorite of all time.

Might be inflating my score a bit here because I think this is the kind of thing that this series sorely needs: unexpected, strange, fun ideas.

Really good for a free thing, and a bit more chunky than I expected. Art is consistently great and while the writing dips a little into the "max quirky" visual novel area a couple times, it mostly maintains a solid fun and consistent tone with a decent underlying story to tell. Music was surprisingly solid too, and I was surprised to see the musical credits. Very glad they used more of the extended cast this time around. People who worked on this clearly had a love for Ace Attorney, and they executed pretty well on that.

I liked the gameplay segments a lot, though there were a few too many of them for my taste by the end (especially when they put them between every instance of presenting evidence). I wish they would have had sidestepping into lanes instead of free control so you don't step one pixel onto the spikes constantly. The mystery is also pretty straightforward; again it's free and ultimately a product for children so I didn't expect too much, but there is really no room for error or misinterpretation here.

More of this, Sega!

More than anything else I respect that Gust tried something new and interesting with the series after the somewhat unadventurous Mysterious trilogy. It seems to have paid dividends too, as Ryza 1 not only helped to expand the series' audience, but its interesting ideas allowed its direct followup to fulfill its ambition in a much fuller-feeling manner.

That said, when I look at this game on its own, I think it feels emptier and more barebones than most entries in the series while the standout elements like the super interesting battle system and tweaked gathering, while enough to give the game interesting flavor, are fairly clunky and unpolished. I think the dev cycle they're giving these games isn't near enough, especially with ideas like these... hopefully one day they can be given the time they need to deliver something truly marvelous.

There isn't much to say here that hasn't been said, but regardless, Octopath Traveler II is one of my new favorite turn-based JRPGs.

I have some small nitpicks and think it could have perhaps been a bit more adventurous as a sequel, but it made good on nearly every promise the first game couldn't. The game systems are much tighter and more well-balanced, the pacing is better, the writing is much more interesting, there's a lot more voice acting, the structure of each character's stories is much more thoughtfully crafted with a vastly improved extended cast... you really get the sense they put their all into this one.

And oh my lord the soundtrack. This is easily one of my new favorites, Yasunori Nishiki never goddamn misses. Some of the tracks in this game got such a visceral reaction out of me.

I feel as though a common complaint is that the stories still don't cross over enough, but between the excellent final chapter tying it all together, the countless unique voice lines between characters, the wonderful crossing paths chapters, and the leaps and bounds better written party chats, there was enough of a sense of camaraderie amongst the party to satisfy me, personally.

I could go on, but I'll leave it at this: the game is absolutely wonderful. Could not have imagined this being as good as it is. Team Asano, I kneel.

Wild Hearts isn’t perfect, but it’s probably the best, most well-thought out and decently polished take on the hunting genre that isn't from Capcom.

It's a bit of a technical mess (doubly so on PC), but overall the art design is great. Levels look great and are designed pretty well, give or take a few too many things placed throughout that inevitably block your view and/or movement. Gameplay-wise, weapons could use a bit more oomph and hitstop, but they’re all very fun and unique and give you some great unexpected tools. Building is excellent and adds a nice unique flavor to the game, I think it could maybe use a bit more polishing and tweaking but what’s there works and adds a nice uniqueness to the game as a whole. Story is fine too, maybe a bit above average. Reception to the voiceover in particular seems fairly mixed, but I think the Japanese/Asian casting was a great idea for what they were going for; in most games dropping random Japanese terms would be absolute deadly poison to a script, but I felt it really sold the universe and worked well, especially due to the authentic pronunciation of those terms.

I could do without the Souls-adjacent design elements of this game (Koei Tecmo just adores it in this era of gaming, don't they?), and that's really my primary complaint, I think the game has enough going for it without that as an additional bullet point. I also don’t mind some amount of grinding, I think Monster Hunter severely paring that back has been one of the series’ missteps over the years, but I think there is just a bit too much of a grind here in proportion to how fast the main story moves and how much content is there. Finally, I just hate how 3 player parties are such a big trend in gaming now, can’t even hunt with my usual 4-player crew. Shame.

ps i guess we can officially call strand-like games a genre because this is totally one of those, ya did it kojima ya made it happen

I often loathe to share my thoughts on a game here before I've played a good solid amount of it, but from the get-go Mato Anomalies is a bit of a mess, exceedingly overwrought and leaded with enough proper nouns to make FFXIII turn its head. Systems-wise there are some points of interest and ambition, rocking a slight twist on the usual turn-based battles and an alternative card-based system among other things, but everything framing it is erratically paced at best and completely jarring at worst. The presentation is rough too, if it were just the slightly uncanny character models I wouldn't particularly care, but with frequent random cuts to the swathes of dialogue on top of one of the worst soundtracks to a game in recent memory, I simply can't forgive it.

Maybe deeper in there is something to take away from this title, but especially now, in a sea of 2023 bangers, I can't justify putting any more of my time into it.

I like the verticality and openness of some of the levels, the parry is very well done and satisfying with a lot of sick situational animations, the aggressive style of play is great, the presentation is on another level in comparison to most modern Koei Tecmo games, and it just feels really nice to hit buttons despite the game’s simplicity. When it fires on all cylinders, the game can be quite fun. Unfortunately though, I feel it's very let down by other parts of that aforementioned simplicity and lack of encounter variety, among other aspects of the game.

You approach 90% of your fights the exact same way (on the exact same enemies past a point), give or take a deliberately weirdly timed parry to throw you off, and the remaining 10 are the hit and miss bosses that often feel a bit sloppily done, easy, and end up exemplifying the problems of the game as a whole (not to mention, unless I missed some sort of trigger or explanation for it, I continually experienced a glitch where back to back boss stagger gauges would reset for no discernible reason).The game has many strange design choices and weird changes I can only assume were solely done to separate this from Nioh and not for any practical reason. And speaking of Nioh, I couldn’t have imagined they could find a way to make that game’s loot system any worse, but they found a way with how seldom I actually earned anything worth a damn outside of side content.

There is so much promise here that feels squandered, promise that I could see being fulfilled by a few tweaks should they choose to make a sequel. But maybe the safer bet is to turn Nioh into a trilogy…

As someone who saw promise in the developer’s previous works, and after seeing the interesting flavor Wanted: Dead was putting on display in its advertising, I was truly hopeful that the game would finally squeak past that threshold of being just short of greatness and deliver something flawed but truly excellent or interesting in its own right. Unfortunately, this one just wasn't it for me, either.

Everything is just a tad too clunky for my liking, even by the standards of a game trying to evoke an era of clunkiness, and the mechanics feel like they needed another pass or two in making sure they all work together in a captivating and fun way. Yet again I get the feeling while playing a Soleil game that there might have been something here, because (very) occasionally everything clicks and I feel like I see the vision, but I don’t think it hits that point nearly enough unfortunately. Most encounters are kind of a mess of bullets flying and tenuously rushing in for your strikes, with every melee hit feeling like it lacks impact, and every gunshot floppy in aim and flat in delivery.

The story is being compared to Deadly Premonition or other "so bad it's good" games, but it instead feels like it exists in a weird middle space where they didn’t go far enough on either end of the spectrum. Yes, there are weird and wacky minigames that try to accentuate those aspects of the game and the sudden presentation bending into anime and the like does give the game some sort of flavor as well, but on the moment to moment story, I never felt it really went far enough in embracing its camp to truly sell me on it.

Maybe with whatever roadmap they’re working on they’ll sand off the rough edges, but for the moment, especially at the midway~ point where the story starts to drop off, I simply couldn’t bring myself to play any more of it. At least the soundtrack kicks ass.

This is what remakes should strive to be; I can't believe I'm saying that about a remake of Dead Space, a game that for all intents and purposes didn't need one. However, the team at EA Motive were clearly the right people for the task. This game was so passionately updated, keeping everything from the original, updating and rebalancing gameplay, and most importantly making changes that keep the spirit of the the 2008 game but greatly improve the game as a whole. I liked the original game, but this version I absolutely loved.

I liked it a lot! Gameplay is definitely king here and I would love to see some of the things from this game come back in newer entries, I found it all really intuitive, challenging, and fun. The presentation is also a series best, accompanied by a soundtrack that goes way too hard.

That said, I was actually surprised how much I enjoyed the story! Sure, the broad strokes are basically the most rote plot possible, but what it does, it does with solid execution, a decent emotional core, and good performances, wrapping up with an excellent finale. Plus, despite some prerelease worries, I enjoyed most of the cast about as much as any other FE.

Maybe it's because I'm not ride or die for the series, but this is one of my new personal favorites.

I know that there's been somewhat of a resurgence of Battle for Bikini Bottom love in recent years, and I respect it, especially as a champion of many games others would balk at. For the record, I think that game is good. But I would also say (without wallowing too much in negativity) I personally feel like the outpouring of love is less a product of the game itself actually being that much of an amazing hidden gem or legit timeless classic and more that it was released at a perfect moment in time, standing out as something "decent" and different during an era in which licensed games were near uniformly garbage, and at a formative time in many people’s lives to boot.

I, too, sung its praises from memories of childhood past, but when I returned to the remake (then subsequently, the original to be sure), I had that unfortunate realization that I simply did not like it as much as I thought I did. That said, I was hopeful that with a fresh slate and a decent foundation, Purple Lamp would be able to deliver something great. And… in some ways they did? I’m a bit mixed.

For how much people have complained about the game being over-referential or harkening back to “the glory days” of Spongebob and not much else, I have to say that’s one of the things I enjoyed about The Cosmic Shake; this game actually feels like it was created with either involvement from the show’s crew or people who earnestly really love the series. Every costume is lovingly rendered and detailed to be show-accurate. Not to say every reference or bit of writing hits the mark, but I think what’s there isn’t too overdone and the original content feels in line with something you might actually see in the series. Compared to BfBB which feels more like an adjacent to a bad or middling episode both in terms of writing and visuals, I think this is really where the game stands out as a major improvement. In fact, this dedication makes some of the holdovers from its predecessor like the awkward tiki heads and some of Spongebob’s weird animations feel out of place. I understand they probably want to give it a bit of connective tissue to its predecessor, but regardless, I wish they had been a bit more liberal there.

…Past that, it’s kinda difficult to talk about the game, because there simply isn’t much meat on its bones. It’s a polished licensed children’s game, for better and worse. Everything here is pretty simple. They upped the amount of combat and added a couple small complexities to it, but most encounters are still very simple one hit or hit and run affairs. The platforming is fine, moving around is a bit slow, they added an interesting homing attack-esque kick, but all-in-all there’s nothing here that has you itching to come back for more. Music is ever so slightly better, and the fully produced cutscenes are a huge improvement, but a lot of moments feel like they’re missing sound effects or didn’t have the budget to properly execute what they wanted.

But most of all, the biggest shake-up here is unfortunately in the game’s structure. Cosmic Shake switches out BfBB’s much more interesting semi-open levels rife with collectibles for a simple linear quest-based progression. Spongebob will have to do many an inane errand for an alternate universe friend, often ones that don’t feel like they’re progressing anything, which really exposes the shallow repetitive underbelly of what you’re doing in the moment to moment. Gone are the peppering of golden spatulas giving you a small hit of accomplishment to push you through, and every passing level feels more and more roundabout and mundane. The collectathon nature is a big part of what made the first game so beloved by fans, again something that made it so atypical to the usual licensed stinkers, so it’s an ironic bummer that they changed the structure to be more similar to said stinkers.

It might sound like I disliked the game, but in the end I had some fun and it got some smiles out of me; if I had to put a label on it I’d say it’s “completely fine”. If they make a third game I hope they return to the “series’” roots, or ideally go a bit more ambitious with it, but it does make me wonder if they’re just content to make this series into very safe children’s games (which is fair, but a bit weird considering it was borne of the revival of a cult classic).

... why did i write so much about a spongebob game. gdi

(also they REALLY need to tone down or remove the flashes in the paparazzi minigame lol)

It is crazy how effortlessly they managed to capture the feel of Wario Land 4 here, hell it might even surpass it. Just an insanely varied and fun platformer with lavish animation and a banger soundtrack. It's crazy polished and pretty much the perfect length, and the final boss sequence in particular really cemented this as a new favorite 2D platformer.
Only things I can knock it on are that because the visual style is so evenly applied across the entire game it can become hard to read the environment, especially in some of the visually busier levels (parts of the gnome forest (?) in particular felt like the worst of this). I also think that while Gustavo and Brick add even more fun variety to an already insanely varied game, they somewhat lack that anxious manic energy that really gives the entire game its identity and feel a bit out of place as a result.
But man, this game rocked.