First purchase I've kind of regretted on Playdate. I really wanted to like it. A deep dungeon-crawling RPG on Playdate sounds great but this one just feels like it has no real depth and makes you waste a lot of time walking back to the same area over and over because there's no real strategy to any of the combat, at least early on. You just mash the attack button until eventually a fight kills you, you receive no punishment for dying, and you walk back to whatever killed you slowly and start mashing attack again. Rinse and repeat. Also has a really bad onboarding for a new player, just dropping you directly into a random shop with no instructions and making you fumble through menus until you find the actual game. Didn't care for it.

I did the exact same thing with this game that I did with the previous one, which is go insanely hard for about 50 hours before burning out hard. This game is incredible but oh my god it's so dense and it just KEEPS going.

I will say, as someone who only got into the franchise at 7, it's a bit of a bummer that at a certain point in the plot you start having to spend every other chapter hanging out with Kiryu and essentially just going through Yakuza fanservice that means literally nothing to me. I thought switching the protagonist to Itchiban was an intentional way to start fresh guys?

The stupid Animal Crossing island mode kicks ass

Another controversial playdate season opinion, but I'm not having much fun with this one. I'm 19 stages in and found out there's a whopping 50 STAGES. I think I've done enough to have an opinion.

I appreciate the weird aesthetic and really fun animation, and the way the game makes a unique use for the crank is really charming. I just find the actual puzzles often really frustrating. It's a lot more trial and error than actual puzzle solving.

I'm gonna keep trying here and there, but I feel like I'll end up abandoning this before the end.

Lucas Pope doesn't miss. An extremely charming and light-hearted take on a Papers Please style gameplay loop with a small narrative that builds over the campaign. It's simultaneously short and longer than you'd expect. I think it sticks around exactly long enough to not overstay it's welcome. I didn't expect to get emotionally attached to your silly robot friend and his little bit of character growth.

This isn't worth the price of a Playdate, but if you own a Playdate I think you need to play this. It's fantastic.

Had a good time with this one but couldn't bring myself to finish it off due to the very long final stretch of gameplay that wasn't adding any new mechanics to a very short list that had already gotten a little stale.

Love the visuals and aesthetics. Loved how this is the first game on Playdate I feel like has taken full advantage of every single feature of the little handheld (I haven't had to tilt the console literally once for any other game woah) and I thought everything about it was pretty fun.

One major complaint I'd give is just variety. Potion making comes down to about 4 minigames, and you repeat those minigames a lot. One of the minigames in particular involved watching an unskippable 20-30 second cutscene that did not change every single time. A very nicely animated cutscene but one I really started getting impatient having to repeat.

I think this is still one of the better season games I've played so far.