After playing some triple A games, an indie can feel like eating hand-made cookies at your grandma's house, maybe they aren't as good as cookies from a bakery, but they make you feel a sensation of warmth inside you.

Wavetale is charged with love, the game looks gorgeous, the artwork, character design and overall aesthetic of the game is really really good. And in the same pack comes a really awesome soundtrack that fits it perfectly and some very loveable and charismatic characters.

The protagonist Sigrid feels AMAZING to control, she has a ton of very fun mechanics to toy around and move freely that made exploring the world the best part about the game.

And as i said the best part for me by far, is the world. The worldbuilding is insanely good, the background of how things happened and ended that way isn't just told by the story, but just looking at the world itself and how well crafted it is. That's why it saddens me a little how simple and nothing sandwich is the story, like, it isn't bad by any mean but i almost everything is told at the end in long cutscenes and I feel bad that all the very noticeable work in world building gets used for almost nothing in a very simple and predictable story carried by their lovable characters.

And by the love of god, DO NOT PLAY IT ON THE SWITCH WORST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE, the game looks good and plays fine most of the time but the framerate is almost HORRENDEOUS in certain parts, my experience got tainted because of getting stuck in various floor clipping, bugged missions and bosses that makes your console a powerpoint slide, I know the switch is a difficult console to port games but the game plays really really poorly even for a Switch game and it's a shame because on other hardware the game looks way way better.

In conclusion, great game, not much else to say about it, it excels on anything except story and is a neat little adventure. Awesome characters, gorgeous visuals, lots of creativity and really great game overall.

Cute! This is precisely the type of revival I want to see more often - take something niche or traditionally considered "bad", iron out the wrinkles, and make it something presentable while still preserving its original essence. Better yet, do so without requiring previous familiarity without the source material. You could theoretically play this without prior knowledge of Faces of Evil/Wand of Gamelon and come away thinking of it as a weirdly eccentric but perfectly fine Metroidvania.

I love as well that the game doesn't have much in the way of winks at the camera. There are of course references for people familiar with YTP/Animation Magic to get - don't think I didn't catch that the mayor rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet like I.M. Meen, or that a couple cutscenes are clearly just rotoscoped 3D models, or that Arzette's proportions vary wildly based on the cutscene. But it would have been so easy for Arzette to wink at the camera and say something like, "Boy, what are with these camera angles, amirite?" No, the work contains its integrity, just being a very strange little adventure.

Which isn't to say there isn't acknowledgement of oddness if you look for it! Keep an eye on Arzette's facial expression during that one cutscene where she gets the Smart Gun - 100% my reaction to the explanation she was given. There are a ton of great takes here, even beyond referencing moments from Faces of Evil/Wand of Gamelon. But the game retains its fourth wall integrity, which is probably necessary for the couple times the game reaches for something beside absurdist comedy. Even so, while I thought the part in the middle worked well enough, I don't really get where the part at the end came from (but maybe that's its own joke?).

Ah, the gameplay itself is fine. Sort of a means to an end, but that's certainly an improvement over the source material. By the end of the game, once you get all upgrades, Arzette's kinda fun to run around as. Though I also think a lot of the mid-to-late game upgrades don't really accomplish much. Like, that crow step is cool and all, but I don't think does anything practical. Unless that's a reference I'm missing?

I was content just getting 100% in Normal Mode. I appreciate that the higher difficulties exist - especially that one that brings back the CD-i gameplay jank, that's a great touch - but I'm happy with my one-and-done for this playthrough.

Best incidental character? Univor. Could not tell you why, just something about how bubbly and eager she is to help out. Love the guy in the library, too.

When I was in 3rd grade my mom bought Shadow of Memories as a gift for my dad because the guy on the cover looked like "the guy from Resident Evil 2". My dad never did play it but my underdeveloped 3rd grade brain sure did.

As a kid this game blew my mind. I was obsessed with games where you just walked around and did shit (Shenmue, Morrowind, etc.). There was something about the mundane that was endearing to me. But then in this one you're stabbed in the back and murdered in broad daylight. That was different.

In Shadow of Memories you are tasked with stopping your murder before it happens thanks to a little brown Pokedex given to you by an MCR fan. After accomplishing this task you die again at a later date, finding out that you are forever destined to die until you dig out the rotten tree from its roots.

This sees Eike, Eike Kusch, traveling all over the damn timeline encountering friends, family, and a lot of men with male pattern baldness to try and stop himself from dying, changing his destiny.

The gameplay is a very simple walk and talk 3D adventure game, a la Shenmue, but its paced well enough to where you don't ever feel bored or lost. Another one of your deaths is right around the corner at all times so you never know what to expect. Poison fish? Very well could be.

The music has an unsettling joy to it. Creepy flutes, abrupt crashing drums, add to the ambience of this weird quiet small town where you can be comfortable enough to stab at 3pm.

The game has a billion endings, some of them outright goofy, but never disappointing. And the game is short enough too to where getting them all isn't a slog.

I recently replayed Shadow of Memories and enjoyed every second of it. It hasn't aged that gracefully, but not every game needs to. A ton of heart goes a long way. One of my favorite games from the PS2.

5 Eikes out of 5.

The most terrifying, oppressive, claustrophobic experience I've had in the medium is no surprise a stalking disturbing message of an encroaching patriarchal faith. Heather wants nothing to do with it, and neither will I. Monsters of repressed memories and physical/sexual trauma stalk the corridors, but catharsis is found in making them all Burn. Aborting god is probably the rawest turn on killing god tbh. I personally got lost in the woods of the threads near the end but I think on just initial reflection that there's a large point in there about an incomprehensibly massive societal issue that makes it difficult to form into something tangible (e.g. male gaze and abuse). It's also like a crystalized end to everything the series culminated in before, tying everything back together. Genuinely super well crafted, and a crazy good final message. That cycle of disparaging hatred is still overturned by the real spark of sympathy, we just want love.

bought and installed within the first minute of availability, which idk i will ever do for a game again, so feel free to take my autism with a grain of salt. but this is an exceedingly, endlessly lovable piece of art, one which reaffirms just about everything ive grown to believe about art in the first place. the source material , once uncomplicatedly loathed, has been slowly chipped away at by years of collective intimacy...sentences heard as groups of syllables, individual frames of animation immortalized, control quirks forced to be grappled with, npc requests and locations forced to be stored away in memory. this is to say nothing of the dedication it took to create an entire fan remaster, which leads directly into arzette via its lead developer. the result is a combination of nostalgic warmth, a grasp of what is compelling and memorable and striking about those games, and a melancholy stare at the parts that could have been better...a melancholy that could only be sated Through creation.

arzette will be described by many people as "the cdi zeldas but good." having enjoyed the remasters of those games, its more the final step in a process of escalation towards "the cdi zeldas, but there is less in the way of the good." the ultra-memorable quirk and expressiveness of the animation and voice acting are more widely acknowledged as boons now, but arzette also runs with the gorgeous background art, the lush and memorable music, and the miniature zelda experience via an interlocking spread of bite sized metroidvania maps. since its no longer on the cdi, individual screens are much meatier, which does make it slightly longer to recheck places (and rechecking places is what youre doing a Lot in all of these games, but especially this one with its more complex item progression), but it also allows for much more deliberate and satisfying level and encounter design. tricks from the cdi games have their most unpleasant edges sanded off, yet still retain their character. its by any measure an improvement on its inspirations, yet it never once feels judgemental or callous...instead it feels freed and joyus, the result of passion and time and effort and improved technology, chipping away at a dream created almost accidentally by people working with a bad console under tight time pressure.

and more then anything, even with some fun and dry meta jokes, i may not play a game more full of shamelessly earnest love this year. its close proximity with its source material allows it to share a bunch of discoveries its made that its so bubblingly excited about...yet its also an individual and distinctive piece of art carrying with it all the best sensibilities of contemporary metamodern media engagement, a plea to look closely at things that are dismissed and create beauty out of them. its most singular advancements are not its polishing up of rough gameplay ideas, but are in its disarmingly heartfelt and kind story and general tone. i know many people are cynical about pastiche, esp in a world where the same ideas are endlessly recycled over and over...but art should be about the free exchange of ideas, putting them out in the world for other people to respond to, feel about, and create on top of. it certainly cant be dismissed out of hand if it produces results like this even occasionally. hot moose man.