MsDolphin
I like the stories, but I just can't play these games.
2022
This game is fun but it made my fingers hurt and the story wasn't even the entertaining kind of fun. The primal thrill of beating the shit out of vampires with your bare hands is great, though.
The music and visuals are great, the voice acting is entertainingly goofy, and the gameplay works. I don't actually like the gameplay very much, but it's serviceable.
I actually played the Special Edition re-release, but it's built on the DOS version, so close enough. This game is pretty much the platonic ideal of point-and-click adventure games as far as I'm concerned. The writing, the visuals, the music, the puzzle design, they're all great. There's one puzzle I dislike, but that's purely because the way I played made it difficult to actually get the UI to do what I needed. If I was playing it the way it was designed for, I wouldn't have that problem. But the version I played had Armato voice acting, so I think that makes up for it.
I disliked some of the puzzles, the music wasn't really as great as I'd wanted, and the story was a bit weird-in-a-bad-way, but it's still a Monkey Island game. It's quality.
2018
I wouldn't call this game bad, but I wouldn't call it good either. The writing is kind of hokey, the music is unmemorable, and the gameplay is pretty by-the-numbers. It's a very pretty game, though, I'll give it that.
2020
This game has a clever core concept and is very pretty, but I feel it goes on a bit longer than it needs to.
2020
This game has a very interesting concept, but I'm not fond of the execution.
1995
I've never enjoyed turn-based combat, but Chrono Trigger got pretty close to making me enjoy it. Unfortunately, it did not succeed, and most of what you do in the game is combat. The visuals and music are great, though. The writing is fine, I suppose. I appreciate the little details in it, I just have the feeling that Woolsey wasn't given the ability to translate things as well as he could have in better circumstances, and it drags down the writing for me.
2021
This game has the best turn-based combat of any game I've played because it lets me skip the animations so I can just get through each turn and onto the next one without seeing the same animations and hearing the same voice lines a million times. Also it has Sakura Wars characters in it.
The writing feels phoned-in much of the time, the music is unmemorable, and the game is shorter than I'd have liked, but other than that, I liked it. The people at Insomniac know how to make fun games.
This game was great coming off the original's suckiness. It's not quite up to the level of other games in the series, but it still rules pretty hard.
2002
I can't recommend playing this game unless you have extremely specific tastes or are interested in the history of the series. It feels like a first draft in a really bad way.
There's a reason this game became Insomniac's template for future games in the series. It's a very solid formula they figured out for this game.
2005
This game is a weird one for the series, but it's a good kind of weird. It goes on a bit longer than I think it should have, but the basic gameplay loop is a solid one. The characters providing commentary while you play were pretty fun if a bit repetitive.