I've just got to say, that whoever did the pixel art for this game - they really earned their paycheck. Nearly every NPC looks unique and detailed, even ones that serve zero purpose other than just dialogue. It is seriously impressive. The environments are also a treat, with so much life and care and personality put into every area. If there was any recycling of assets, they were hidden well enough to where I never noticed.

The gameplay, however, is extremely simple... a lot of the time, it just boils down to spamming the X button while enemies are against a wall. Bosses, while visually stunning, don't get too interesting either (with a few exceptions, of course!) I think it was around chapter 5 where I stopped going out of my way to find weapon upgrade parts in the world - why bother when the game is this simple and easy?

The story, along with the game's visuals, kept me playing until the end. The characters especially are memorable and fun. The game takes the MOTHER 3 approach (one of the many many things Eastward borrows from it) whereupon after major story beats, character dialogue changes all across the map - I found myself revisiting areas I was only required to visit once just so I could talk to the NPCs and find new dialogue. I love it when games do this, and there is even a fast travel option to facilitate it.

The story does meander quite a lot, though, with tons of dialogue and cutscenes that... really don't matter? Most egregious in Chapter 3, but Chapter 6 also left a sour taste in my mouth. I think whether or not this kills the game for people depends on if you like the characters - I loved them all, but even I had to question the pointlessness of the errands the protags were constantly going on when there are way bigger fish to fry, so to speak...

The music is also pretty great, catchy, though not particularly memorable. Standout tracks for me probably include the New Dam City theme, and the boss fight music.

Running out of things to say, having just beat the game tonight, maybe I shoulda kept notes! (...nah...) All in all, Eastward was a great game, and I'm glad I gave it a chance.

Bug Fables takes a lot of inspiration from the Paper Mario series, and then builds upon those foundations to create a fun and memorable game in its own right that easily rivals the very game it's taking inspiration from.

I love indie games. Nintendo might have abandoned and forgotten about everything that made the Paper Mario games worth playing, but the people who grew up playing them didn't.

Completed on Hard Mode; Vi really becomes a beast with the right medal setup, damn.

This game turns twenty years old this year, so I decided to do a replay of this classic from my childhood.

The gameplay still "holds up" I think. The forced doubles format means there's a lot of fun strategies some trainers use, which in-turn means you can use them too.

I'm not sure about how much of this is just nostalgia talking, but I still had a lot of fun. In addition, I feel like I have to mention that the OST for this game is really great. It's probably the single most praised thing about the Pokémon GameCube subseries.

First replay of this game since I was a kid, and I think XD still holds up very well. Compared to Colosseum, it improves upon the gameplay systems in almost every way. The game still plays really slow, but that's not a problem in the modern era thanks to emulation speedup. :^)

I remember reviews back in the day chastising the asset reuse, which include entire dungeons and exteriors that are almost unchanged. And coming immediately after playing Colosseum, the reuse did make my eyes roll a bit. However, there was a certain charm to revisiting areas, talking to the same NPCs from the previous game, and seeing what new things they have to say, or what their lives have been like in the five year time gap between the games. There's a surprising amount of continuity with the most minor of NPCs that I love.

XD also has a way lighter tone than Colosseum. There are jokes, silly moments, characters that exist just to create gags, and just a general atmosphere that wasn't there in Colosseum. Whether this is a good thing is a matter of taste, but the game did have me smiling at certain parts. I enjoyed the dialogue for what it is.

There's also a bunch of side content in XD! Battle CDs were a really neat concept, and I loved trying to figure out how to complete them.

All in all, a great game to look back on. It turns 18 this year, did you know? Old enough to vote!

I'm still playing it, leveling up alts and trying out some Mythic dungeons. It's better than Shadowlands, but anything would be better than Shadowlands, I think. On a side note, when are they just going to say 'fuck it' and retcon that entire expansion?

Regardless, Dragonflight has some cool new features, but it's still got that good ol' jank and general lack-of-polish that I've come to expect from modern day Blizzard. The main story is entirely nonsensical, as per usual, but I like some of the zones and side stories. My main class, Priest, feels pretty good to play too.

We'll see where it goes. I probably won't play for too long.

I really liked how a lot of the mechanics of the game are purposefully obscured. It made navigating the game world a lot of fun. There were a lot of moments where I obtained a new page, figured out some new mechanic of some sorts, recognized some kind of graphic or symbol from an earlier page, which led me on a huge scavenger hunt trying to navigate this strange world and find the things I noticed. I liked those moments a lot.

Unfortunately, didn't much care for the combat. It's just your cookie-cutter "souls" combat in a game that... didn't really need it? Some bosses were very frustrating, and in a game where the fun little discoveries were what I liked, getting railroaded into memorizing some big guy's moveset waned on my patience a bit...

I beat the final boss and apparently got the bad ending - you have to collect all of the pages to get the true ending, apparently. I didn't really bother. Had a few leads to follow, but I felt kind of "secreted" out by that point. Maybe a better fast travel system would have helped motivate me more.

This is one of those games that I played endlessly as a kid. I'm pretty sure I completed the Hoenn-dex when I was younger, and had a few Frontier symbols to my name as well!

Decided to replay it recently. It's been more than a decade, yet there's still aspects about the game embedded in my head even after all these years. A certain NPC's dialogue, the Pokémon an NPC battles with, or the Pokémon pool available on certain routes or caves. I tried catching and using some of the same Pokémon from when I was a kid too.

It made me somewhat emotional. I've been on a depressional spiral lately, and it was nice to reconnect with my childhood self for a small while. Maybe I needed it.

My whiney nostalgia bullshit aside, however, is it still a good game? Yeah, I'd say it's still pretty fun. Not perfect, and far from the best the series has to offer in my opinion, but I'd definitely call Emerald required reading for any Pokémon fan.

The GBA port for ALTTP is one of the first few games I got on the system when I was younger. I'd always just get all three pendants, and get lost on what to do next. I think I might have rescued one or two of the maidens, but that was always where the game stopped for me.

I decided to finally take the time to play through it start to finish on an emulator, since I was feeling a little bit "sour grapesy" from my inability to afford the new shiny Zelda game. I had a decently good time with it, and it definitely still holds up very well. I've never been too big of a Zelda fan, all things considered, but it held my attention all throughout. Maybe I should start giving the series a more thorough look.

Unfortunately, while I tried to play without a guide, I did cave during certain sections and had to look up how to proceed. These retro games can be pretty obtuse, man...

The Wind Waker!

-A classic. I think. I've never actually beat this game before tonight; both times I've tried it I stopped shortly after visiting Hyrule for the first time.

-The world map really loses its appeal when you realize there are only a limited number of actual islands - the majority of the spaces on the quadrant are islands you'll only ever visit once, be it for the plot or the collectible it contains. Sailing turns mostly tedious after this, as you sail by each and every empty island, though the Swift Sail added in this version alleviates it somewhat by making sailing fast and... Swift.

-But, it's very pretty. I'll always love the art style and it looks great in HD. The story is nice too. I love Tetra, she's such a cute iteration of Zelda.

-A very, very easy game. I spent a lot of time trying to get all of the heart pieces before I realized how little the extra health was helping. There is hero mode, but even after trying that appreciated extra, it's really easy to stock up on fairies or soup and faceroll the game with ease.

-Fun enough video game. Not perfect, and sometimes very disappointing, but has enough charm to still be enjoyable in spite of its flaws.

Crystal Project feels like a proof of concept in a lot of areas. The OST is almost entirely royalty free music, the game's graphics and pixel art have been bought from asset packs, and the story is barebones to practically non-existent.

However, the gameplay is where Crystal Project shines, I think. The job system from Final Fantasy is used to its fullest potential here, with a surprising amount of classes available to level and mess around with, each one feeling unique in some way. The subclass and passive skill systems highly encourage experimentation and the leveling of multiple classes. In addition, the threat/hate/aggro system translates really well to a turn-based combat setup. I had so much fun finding a new boss, figuring out their attack patterns or whatever gimmicky attack they had, and constructing a setup to deal with it.

The overworld exploration (another big selling point for the game) is not as unique or polished as the game's combat systems are, I think, but there's still a surprising amount of care put into it regardless. There are a lot of mounts to unlock that give you overworld abilities, such as jumping higher or gliding through the air. There's secret bosses and treasure chests and even some small side quests hidden in pretty much every corner of the map (which is quite large too!)

I had a lot of fun with Crystal Project. Great game and an easy recommend.

I had fun, but the story failed to grip me and keep me invested after a while. And with gameplay as simple (albeit flashy stylish) as it was, if the story wasn't keeping me invested, my interest was going to inevitably wane.

One of my biggest gripes was the fact that cutscenes just felt like they went on forever. Often enough, the only gameplay break inbetween cutscenes would be walking five meters to the left to talk to a story NPC to queue up yet another cutscene!

I thought I would be more invested in the game.

pokémon pokémon pokemon pokemon pokemonnnnnnnonononpokepokepokepoke
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What is there to say? Been a long time since I played Platinum. Everything feels really slow, from the framerate to the battle animations. It's not unplayable at all, but it was something I absolutely came to notice. Gameplay is the same ol' tried-and-true formula as any other game. I had some fun revisiting it.

...Though, I'm more of a Gen 5 person myself.

fun janky oldschool ps1 jrpg, good ost but couldn't call myself a fan of the graphics/aesthetic. story was nice and engaging though. i can tell why this one's a classic

also i found out there's a dupe glitch you can do almost immediately after getting the party together that lets you steamroll through the entire game with max stats. i swear i didn't do it the game is pretty easy without it

(okay, maybe i did after beating the game so i could kill the optional superbosses but listen i was not going to grind for like an hour)