NOWITSREYNTIME17
1995
The first time I ever beat this game was back in 2022. After playing Forgotten Land when it launched, and really enjoying that, I was still in a Kirby mood and decided to beat one of the few mainline games I haven't already. While not bad overall, I found this notably weaker than Dreamland 1 for several reasons. I was a bit generous back then tho and gave it a 6 like I did Dreamland 1. Well coming back to it again, yeah It's still weaker than Dreamland 1 and I'm dropping it to a 5 now.
That's not to say there aren't some things this game improved on compared to 1. Overall, Kirby feels better to control in this one which is nice. While I'm nostalgic for the first game's ost, this game might have it beat overall. Sure it reuses a lot of tracks from Dreamland 1 and Adventure, however it's original tracks are actually really damn good. Coo's Theme is the real standout here, goddamn is that some good shit. Visually it also looks nicer than Dreamland 1 I'd say, though still doesn't look that great overall since it's still a Gameboy game.
The main thing this game added though were the animal friends. The aforementioned Koo the owl, Kine the fish and Rick the hamster are the three buddies in this game. They're a fun addition and change the gameplay up. Since copy abilities are back, each animal friend actually has their own version of each one. They greatly vary in usage though. Koo with parasol is amazing while Rick with needle is most of the time awful. It's a cool idea, that gets expanded on way more in Dreamland 3, however the execution here is very hit and miss.
Something you can use these animal friends abilities on are copy ability specific blocks. These usually block the main collectable in this game, the rainbow drops. To get 100% in this game, and fight the true final boss, you must get them all. Let me tell you, some of them are a huge pain to get. Not only are the later ones cryptic, the one where you have to use Kine + electric is just straight BS sometimes because of what you have to do to get it. If you know you know, but either way you most likely won't be getting these without a guide.
Other than that, the game just goes on for way too long I feel. To beat Dreamland 1, it takes around and hour or less (most likely a half hour) which is perfect for the type of game this is. Dreamland 2 might improve on 1's controls a bit, but it's still a Gameboy game and it's around 4 hours long to full complete everything. That's way longer and as such it just drags on near the end. That, plus the level design can be very hit or miss. Most of the levels are passable I'd say, however the game really loves its auto scrolling levels and these can be a bitch sometimes with it being a Gameboy game. And of course there's the infamous auto-scroller with the instakill dead ends that is pure trial and error and yeah that one is pure dogshit.
Along with the rainbow drops, to get 100% you have to also do these star collecting minigames and also find the female Gooey once. Gooey is this blobby guy that replaces an animal buddy if it gives you the one you already have. He just gives you some health back if you collect him. However there's a 1/8 chance it'll be a female Gooey instead and finding her actually contributes to 100% which is weird but easy to do in a certain level luckily. The star minigames you can do after going into the boss door again after you've beaten them. You have to collect every star and get a perfect in every world because this contributes to 100%. The minigames themselves are fine enough, however if you get hit or miss a star, you can't play it again until you go and beat a stage. I get why they do this as it's easy to grind lives if this wasn't in place, however the fact you have to do this for 100% just means it wastes time if you lose which isn't fun.
This is the first in the Dark Matter trilogy and so after we defeat Dedede at the end, we get to fight Dark Matter for the first time. Get used to doing that as he's a regular throughout the trilogy ofc. I remember the fight being more frustrating back in 2022, but here it wasn't too bad. Decent introduction to them as a main antagonist of the trilogy.
While I quite like Dreamland 1 and 3, I don't have much of a connection to 2 at all and I personally think it's a lot more flawed compared to those two games. It improves on some things from 1 but is also way longer and drags on because of that. Not to mention it's annoying to 100%. It's not a terrible sequel but I personally think it's a downgrade compared to 1 even if the animal friends and copy abilities being here are nice. I'll take 1 any day of the week over this.
That's not to say there aren't some things this game improved on compared to 1. Overall, Kirby feels better to control in this one which is nice. While I'm nostalgic for the first game's ost, this game might have it beat overall. Sure it reuses a lot of tracks from Dreamland 1 and Adventure, however it's original tracks are actually really damn good. Coo's Theme is the real standout here, goddamn is that some good shit. Visually it also looks nicer than Dreamland 1 I'd say, though still doesn't look that great overall since it's still a Gameboy game.
The main thing this game added though were the animal friends. The aforementioned Koo the owl, Kine the fish and Rick the hamster are the three buddies in this game. They're a fun addition and change the gameplay up. Since copy abilities are back, each animal friend actually has their own version of each one. They greatly vary in usage though. Koo with parasol is amazing while Rick with needle is most of the time awful. It's a cool idea, that gets expanded on way more in Dreamland 3, however the execution here is very hit and miss.
Something you can use these animal friends abilities on are copy ability specific blocks. These usually block the main collectable in this game, the rainbow drops. To get 100% in this game, and fight the true final boss, you must get them all. Let me tell you, some of them are a huge pain to get. Not only are the later ones cryptic, the one where you have to use Kine + electric is just straight BS sometimes because of what you have to do to get it. If you know you know, but either way you most likely won't be getting these without a guide.
Other than that, the game just goes on for way too long I feel. To beat Dreamland 1, it takes around and hour or less (most likely a half hour) which is perfect for the type of game this is. Dreamland 2 might improve on 1's controls a bit, but it's still a Gameboy game and it's around 4 hours long to full complete everything. That's way longer and as such it just drags on near the end. That, plus the level design can be very hit or miss. Most of the levels are passable I'd say, however the game really loves its auto scrolling levels and these can be a bitch sometimes with it being a Gameboy game. And of course there's the infamous auto-scroller with the instakill dead ends that is pure trial and error and yeah that one is pure dogshit.
Along with the rainbow drops, to get 100% you have to also do these star collecting minigames and also find the female Gooey once. Gooey is this blobby guy that replaces an animal buddy if it gives you the one you already have. He just gives you some health back if you collect him. However there's a 1/8 chance it'll be a female Gooey instead and finding her actually contributes to 100% which is weird but easy to do in a certain level luckily. The star minigames you can do after going into the boss door again after you've beaten them. You have to collect every star and get a perfect in every world because this contributes to 100%. The minigames themselves are fine enough, however if you get hit or miss a star, you can't play it again until you go and beat a stage. I get why they do this as it's easy to grind lives if this wasn't in place, however the fact you have to do this for 100% just means it wastes time if you lose which isn't fun.
This is the first in the Dark Matter trilogy and so after we defeat Dedede at the end, we get to fight Dark Matter for the first time. Get used to doing that as he's a regular throughout the trilogy ofc. I remember the fight being more frustrating back in 2022, but here it wasn't too bad. Decent introduction to them as a main antagonist of the trilogy.
While I quite like Dreamland 1 and 3, I don't have much of a connection to 2 at all and I personally think it's a lot more flawed compared to those two games. It improves on some things from 1 but is also way longer and drags on because of that. Not to mention it's annoying to 100%. It's not a terrible sequel but I personally think it's a downgrade compared to 1 even if the animal friends and copy abilities being here are nice. I'll take 1 any day of the week over this.
2000
As I stated in my Kazooie review, I replayed the game two times back in September of 2023. With Kazooie, that doesn't seem too crazy because it's about half the length of Tooie. However, I also replayed this game twice as well. And with it being twice as long, or maybe even longer for some people, as Kazooie? Seems a bit nuts right? Well, I really went Banjo crazy that month because after beating both games once, I couldn't stop thinking about them which led to me replaying them again right away. The thing is, that whole time I couldn't stop thinking about playing them again...I was thinking about Tooie pretty much. I don't know what happened to me because I went from thinking this game was just decent and definitely worse than Kazooie, to thinking it was amazing and super addicting and better than Kazooie overall. After replaying both games yet again, do I still think this? Probably, tho it's a bit complicated.
If you played Kazooie prior, the first thing you'll notice with Tooie is just how much Banjo and Kazooie's moveset has improved. The roll attack lasts longer, is more mobile and has a nice visual of Kazooie shielding Banjo. The normal attack you perform by standing still, which before was a simple claw move by Banjo, is now replaced by a more effective stationary rat-a-tat rap. The swimming is now WAY better naturally and doesn't require you to hold the R button for it to be good. In fact I don't think the R button does anything when swimming lol. You can now flip-flap directly out of a talon trot. When you do a beak buster, you can now move forward while you're doing rather than staying in place. This change can actually lead to some exploits you can perform too which is rad. These along with some non move-set changes like how whenever you speed up the text it makes the characters talk faster and doesn't pitch up their voices (which was an issue I had forgot to mention in Kazooie), the camera is slower but smoother to use and is overall an improvement, Banjo's backpack animates now when he walks and something about it is incredibly satisfying to me idk why, and the biggest thing is now notes don't get reset when you die (for a reason I'll get into later). All of these improvements drastically enhance the basic gameplay and I honestly miss a ton of these whenever I go back to Kazooie.
That's all fine and dandy, but how about new moves? Well, Tooie's got you covered because it's got like double the amount of moves in Kazooie. The biggest addition is the split-up mechanic. Now you can play as Banjo and Kazooie separately which makes for some clever puzzles. Each singular character gets their own specific moves and while Kazooie's are generally really fun, Banjo's are mostly situational. Kazooie's consist of moves that aren't as context-specific like the ability to glide on her own, her own backflip that's better than the normal one, and the ability to hatch eggs which gets used quite a bit. Banjo's however, besides the first one that lets him pick up and move objects which can lead to some fun puzzles, aren't used that much. He has an ability that let's him recover HP which is nice but only gets used a couple times overall and isn't as helpful as you think because lives aren't an issue anymore. I actually forgot to say they don't exist anymore and it's actually better to die sometimes because it respawns you at the last split-ip bad/beginning of the world which can work in your favor. But anyways, his other two abilities which let him go in dangerous liquids and the other let's him go in his backpack like a burlap sack to cross dangerous obstacles, just aren't used much and are incredibly situational. They all feel pretty samey too unlike Kazooie's, so overall I'd say Kazooie had the better new moves overall. This isn't even getting into all the new moves they both got together. There's 4 new egg types: Fire, Grenade, Ice and Clockwork. All have various uses and are fun additions. There are two new shoes, the claw clamber boots and the springy step shoes. The springy step shoes feel a little derivative because of the jump pads but they're still cool. The claw clamber boots however let you walk on designated parts of walls and it's awesome. There's the bill drill which is also kind of situational but is super satisfying to use. You can now fire eggs in first-person, which can be a little tricky at first with the N64 joystick but is also fun. Because of this, the game also added egg shooting in the air and water when going in first-person mode. The first-person shooting also leads into this FPS mode where you use Kazooie as a gun, certainly riding on the success of Goldeneye, and they can be super fun as well. All of these additions, plus the split-up stuff just really add to their whole move set and makes traversing through worlds a ton of fun.
Speaking of the worlds in this game, they're overall a lot bigger than Kazooie's. The first couple are kinda comparable in size to the first game's but by the time you get to Terrydactyland, they become just massive in size. You'd think this would be super annoying compared to Kazooie, but the game added warp pads that can warp you all over the level. These are the reason I never found the game tedious, if the game didn't have them or if they were awful like DK 64's warps, then the game would be way worse than it is. Anyways, the world's are much bigger in size and there's a lot more things you can do in each world. Though, overall there are less collectables because notes are now in bundles of 5 and 20. So overall the game has less of a focus on tons of collectables like the notes and more of a focus on the jiggys themselves. Jiggy's require way more steps than they did in Kazooie and this turns a lot of people off of the game. A bit understandable but the game is clearly trying to be more of a slower paced adventure platformer rather than Kazooie's brisk pace. I like both approaches but when it comes to Tooie's unique world themes like a run-down amusement park, a dinosaur world and a combined fire and ice world, I definitely prefer just how creative Tooie gets.
I mentioned how Jiggy's take longer to get because more steps are involved, and that's partly because of Mumbo Jumbo and Humba Wumba. In this game, Humba is the one that transforms you and Mumbo is actually a playable character. It greatly depends on the world but overall, I think this is a fun change. Mumbo has a very basic moveset compared to BK but his whole deal is using his magic on specific Mumbo pads. This is incredibly situational ofc and depending on the world it can be a bit tedious, but it can also lead to some interesting puzzles where you have to switch back and forth between BK and Mumbo. Same thing with Humba, sometimes you actually have to switch between Mumbo and then the Humba transformation. Mostly in the later levels do they make these portions kinda puzzling. In terms of everything new they added, this is probably the weakest addition just because it can lead to some tedium, I'll admit that, however I personally never had much of an issue with it tho I also have the whole game memorized at this point so take that as you will.
Besides all that, one of my absolute favorite additions was the fact a lot of the world's are interconnected. Early on, you'll help this mayan cat character out in recovering this idol. Well, you obtain it from this caveman in a weird looking cave and bring it back to him. That's strange though, you're in a world called Mayahem Temple and you just saw a caveman. What gives? Well it turns out, you just entered Terrydactyland when you did that, the aformentioned dinosaur world. This happens a lot in this game where you'll briefly cross over from one world into another or even unlock paths to directly travel between each one. The most memorable one is where you have to feed a different tribe of (good) cavemen this time, and to do so, you unlock a shortcut between Terrydactyland and WitchyWorld. You pick up some burgers from this one character, use the claw clamber boots you get from Grunty Industries and walk along the wall to feed them. All these working parts and interconnectivity just make the world feel alive and I love it.
I mentioned how you had to get the claw clamber boots from Grunty Industries, which is world 6, and use them for a jiggy in Terrydactyland which is world 5. Banjo Kazooie did this exact same thing only once, where you had to backtrack with an ability from another world. Tooie does this way more often and because of that and the interconnectivity of the world, it kind of feels like a 3D metroidvania at points which is awesome. Anyways, people seem to have an issue with backtracking in this game and I don't get it. The more complex jiggy's I understand, but the backtracking is not required as there's enough jiggy's in the game for you to beat the final boss. And even then, there really aren't that many backtracking jiggy's in general. Maybe like 12 or 13 of the 90 jiggy's require backtracking I think? Either way I think that complaint is majorly overblown and is not an issue at all to me, again the Mumbo and Humba stuff I can understand but backtracking to old levels with future abilities? Never even crossed my mind as an issue.
Something else this game added was a boss for every world and they're all really fun. Some are better than others, Lord Woo Fak Fak for example is probably the worst, but I really like how almost every single one of them are large in scope. They really feel menacing even if some of them are pathetically easy.
The game is also way funnier and a lot more cynical in general which I dig. Kazooie was both of these things as well but Tooie cranks it up to the max. The game literally starts off with Bottles dying and Kazooie going "well, he wasnt the most popular character anyways". The game is just full of this tongue-in cheese cynicism. The cast of side characters is not only WAY larger, they're more distinct and memorable just because the dialogue is so much better. There's literally an immigration joke when BK have to help some actual aliens, it's amazing. I think this, plus the interconnected worlds and more unique world themes, are THE main things I like over Kazooie. That plus the improved move set ofc.
The OST is again wondeful just like the first game, but instead of being upbeat, catchy tunes..Grant went for a more atmospheric darker ost this time around. Because worlds are much larger and take more time to beat, I think this change is for the better since the music track won't get old at all. Some of my favorite songs were Grunty Industries, Weldar's Theme and Mr Patch's Theme.
Yes I know two of those are from Grunty Industries. I honestly don't get the hate at all for that world. Something like Terrydactyland I can get, even if I still like it, because it's a massive world with empty space in a lot of it. However, Grunty Industries is a complex, zelda dungeon-like world and it's amazingly designed. I guess if you went into Tooie expecting it to just be like Kazooie, you'd hate it however it's very fun to explore and again super well-designed. It's not even that easy to get lost imo, it's a multi-layered world with distinct set-pieces rather than a super large open world. Sorry for the rant, I just don't get Grunty Industries hate lol. Something I did end up feeling a tiny bit sour on this time around was Hailfire Peaks. I still really like that world, and think the theming is awesome. However the fire side is a little too big for its bridges I will admit and the lag gets really bad sometimes there. The game can get laggy throughout portions of the game, which is only a thing on the N64 version, but there especially it's pretty bad.
One more thing before I mention the endgame and close out the review, is Canary Mary. Canary Mary has methods that make her very doable but she's still easily the worst part of the game and the only part I straight up dislike and dread doing. Her first button mashing races in Glittergulch Mine are perfectly fine. Her races in Cloud CuckooLand tho are insane. If you aren't doing the pause trick, idk how it's humenaly possible to win without using a turbo controller or something. The 2nd race isn't as bad because you can stay near her until the very end and then button mash to hell to pass her right before she can catch up. These races are easily doable with the right methods but the fact you have to do them this way, it just stinks man. But luckily this is only for 100% and only a tiny portion of the actual game so it's not the worst thing in the world.
I talked about a lot of improvements this game has over Kazooie. If there's one thing Kazooie destroys Tooie on however, it's the quiz section and final boss. Gone is the charming board game aesthetic of Kazooie, now you have a typical game show-esque quiz game where you have to answer enough questions to beat Grunty's sisters. It's not bad but it pales in comparison to Kazooie's version as it's less charming and even has less question types. Yeah, I won't miss the Gruntilda specific questions but no sound/music quizzes? That's kinda lame. Again, it's not bad and is only disappointing when compared to Kazooie. The final boss is also not nearly as good as Kazooie's. Is the Hag 1 harder? Most definitely but it's not as memorable as the Gruntilda fight from Kazooie and isn't as fun. It's a solid fight overall but compared to Kazooie's, just a bit lackluster.
So do I like Tooie more than Kazooie? In many ways, hell yes. It improves on many things like the duo's moveset, the writing is way funnier and the interconnectivity between worlds felt like a logical step to take after Kazooie. It may have the weaker end boss and quiz show, it's definitely and easier game to replay/100% and the Canary Mary rematch race is the worst thing between both games, however I'm still feeling like I may like this just slightly more than Kazooie just because of how ambitious and fun it is. It's kinda like Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 where each game has is own strengths over the other and it's just hard to choose what's better. Either way, it's still a 10/10 like the first game and one of my favorite games ever now. Easily in my top 3 N64 games, alongside the first game and Majora's Mask of course. Either way, if you see people saying you shouldn't play this game after you've beaten Kazooie. Don't listen to them, give this a try and you might fall become infatuated with it like I have.
This Banjo double feature was fun but I reckon it's time to play some Kirby again. Stay tuned for a Dreamland 2 review coming soon!
If you played Kazooie prior, the first thing you'll notice with Tooie is just how much Banjo and Kazooie's moveset has improved. The roll attack lasts longer, is more mobile and has a nice visual of Kazooie shielding Banjo. The normal attack you perform by standing still, which before was a simple claw move by Banjo, is now replaced by a more effective stationary rat-a-tat rap. The swimming is now WAY better naturally and doesn't require you to hold the R button for it to be good. In fact I don't think the R button does anything when swimming lol. You can now flip-flap directly out of a talon trot. When you do a beak buster, you can now move forward while you're doing rather than staying in place. This change can actually lead to some exploits you can perform too which is rad. These along with some non move-set changes like how whenever you speed up the text it makes the characters talk faster and doesn't pitch up their voices (which was an issue I had forgot to mention in Kazooie), the camera is slower but smoother to use and is overall an improvement, Banjo's backpack animates now when he walks and something about it is incredibly satisfying to me idk why, and the biggest thing is now notes don't get reset when you die (for a reason I'll get into later). All of these improvements drastically enhance the basic gameplay and I honestly miss a ton of these whenever I go back to Kazooie.
That's all fine and dandy, but how about new moves? Well, Tooie's got you covered because it's got like double the amount of moves in Kazooie. The biggest addition is the split-up mechanic. Now you can play as Banjo and Kazooie separately which makes for some clever puzzles. Each singular character gets their own specific moves and while Kazooie's are generally really fun, Banjo's are mostly situational. Kazooie's consist of moves that aren't as context-specific like the ability to glide on her own, her own backflip that's better than the normal one, and the ability to hatch eggs which gets used quite a bit. Banjo's however, besides the first one that lets him pick up and move objects which can lead to some fun puzzles, aren't used that much. He has an ability that let's him recover HP which is nice but only gets used a couple times overall and isn't as helpful as you think because lives aren't an issue anymore. I actually forgot to say they don't exist anymore and it's actually better to die sometimes because it respawns you at the last split-ip bad/beginning of the world which can work in your favor. But anyways, his other two abilities which let him go in dangerous liquids and the other let's him go in his backpack like a burlap sack to cross dangerous obstacles, just aren't used much and are incredibly situational. They all feel pretty samey too unlike Kazooie's, so overall I'd say Kazooie had the better new moves overall. This isn't even getting into all the new moves they both got together. There's 4 new egg types: Fire, Grenade, Ice and Clockwork. All have various uses and are fun additions. There are two new shoes, the claw clamber boots and the springy step shoes. The springy step shoes feel a little derivative because of the jump pads but they're still cool. The claw clamber boots however let you walk on designated parts of walls and it's awesome. There's the bill drill which is also kind of situational but is super satisfying to use. You can now fire eggs in first-person, which can be a little tricky at first with the N64 joystick but is also fun. Because of this, the game also added egg shooting in the air and water when going in first-person mode. The first-person shooting also leads into this FPS mode where you use Kazooie as a gun, certainly riding on the success of Goldeneye, and they can be super fun as well. All of these additions, plus the split-up stuff just really add to their whole move set and makes traversing through worlds a ton of fun.
Speaking of the worlds in this game, they're overall a lot bigger than Kazooie's. The first couple are kinda comparable in size to the first game's but by the time you get to Terrydactyland, they become just massive in size. You'd think this would be super annoying compared to Kazooie, but the game added warp pads that can warp you all over the level. These are the reason I never found the game tedious, if the game didn't have them or if they were awful like DK 64's warps, then the game would be way worse than it is. Anyways, the world's are much bigger in size and there's a lot more things you can do in each world. Though, overall there are less collectables because notes are now in bundles of 5 and 20. So overall the game has less of a focus on tons of collectables like the notes and more of a focus on the jiggys themselves. Jiggy's require way more steps than they did in Kazooie and this turns a lot of people off of the game. A bit understandable but the game is clearly trying to be more of a slower paced adventure platformer rather than Kazooie's brisk pace. I like both approaches but when it comes to Tooie's unique world themes like a run-down amusement park, a dinosaur world and a combined fire and ice world, I definitely prefer just how creative Tooie gets.
I mentioned how Jiggy's take longer to get because more steps are involved, and that's partly because of Mumbo Jumbo and Humba Wumba. In this game, Humba is the one that transforms you and Mumbo is actually a playable character. It greatly depends on the world but overall, I think this is a fun change. Mumbo has a very basic moveset compared to BK but his whole deal is using his magic on specific Mumbo pads. This is incredibly situational ofc and depending on the world it can be a bit tedious, but it can also lead to some interesting puzzles where you have to switch back and forth between BK and Mumbo. Same thing with Humba, sometimes you actually have to switch between Mumbo and then the Humba transformation. Mostly in the later levels do they make these portions kinda puzzling. In terms of everything new they added, this is probably the weakest addition just because it can lead to some tedium, I'll admit that, however I personally never had much of an issue with it tho I also have the whole game memorized at this point so take that as you will.
Besides all that, one of my absolute favorite additions was the fact a lot of the world's are interconnected. Early on, you'll help this mayan cat character out in recovering this idol. Well, you obtain it from this caveman in a weird looking cave and bring it back to him. That's strange though, you're in a world called Mayahem Temple and you just saw a caveman. What gives? Well it turns out, you just entered Terrydactyland when you did that, the aformentioned dinosaur world. This happens a lot in this game where you'll briefly cross over from one world into another or even unlock paths to directly travel between each one. The most memorable one is where you have to feed a different tribe of (good) cavemen this time, and to do so, you unlock a shortcut between Terrydactyland and WitchyWorld. You pick up some burgers from this one character, use the claw clamber boots you get from Grunty Industries and walk along the wall to feed them. All these working parts and interconnectivity just make the world feel alive and I love it.
I mentioned how you had to get the claw clamber boots from Grunty Industries, which is world 6, and use them for a jiggy in Terrydactyland which is world 5. Banjo Kazooie did this exact same thing only once, where you had to backtrack with an ability from another world. Tooie does this way more often and because of that and the interconnectivity of the world, it kind of feels like a 3D metroidvania at points which is awesome. Anyways, people seem to have an issue with backtracking in this game and I don't get it. The more complex jiggy's I understand, but the backtracking is not required as there's enough jiggy's in the game for you to beat the final boss. And even then, there really aren't that many backtracking jiggy's in general. Maybe like 12 or 13 of the 90 jiggy's require backtracking I think? Either way I think that complaint is majorly overblown and is not an issue at all to me, again the Mumbo and Humba stuff I can understand but backtracking to old levels with future abilities? Never even crossed my mind as an issue.
Something else this game added was a boss for every world and they're all really fun. Some are better than others, Lord Woo Fak Fak for example is probably the worst, but I really like how almost every single one of them are large in scope. They really feel menacing even if some of them are pathetically easy.
The game is also way funnier and a lot more cynical in general which I dig. Kazooie was both of these things as well but Tooie cranks it up to the max. The game literally starts off with Bottles dying and Kazooie going "well, he wasnt the most popular character anyways". The game is just full of this tongue-in cheese cynicism. The cast of side characters is not only WAY larger, they're more distinct and memorable just because the dialogue is so much better. There's literally an immigration joke when BK have to help some actual aliens, it's amazing. I think this, plus the interconnected worlds and more unique world themes, are THE main things I like over Kazooie. That plus the improved move set ofc.
The OST is again wondeful just like the first game, but instead of being upbeat, catchy tunes..Grant went for a more atmospheric darker ost this time around. Because worlds are much larger and take more time to beat, I think this change is for the better since the music track won't get old at all. Some of my favorite songs were Grunty Industries, Weldar's Theme and Mr Patch's Theme.
Yes I know two of those are from Grunty Industries. I honestly don't get the hate at all for that world. Something like Terrydactyland I can get, even if I still like it, because it's a massive world with empty space in a lot of it. However, Grunty Industries is a complex, zelda dungeon-like world and it's amazingly designed. I guess if you went into Tooie expecting it to just be like Kazooie, you'd hate it however it's very fun to explore and again super well-designed. It's not even that easy to get lost imo, it's a multi-layered world with distinct set-pieces rather than a super large open world. Sorry for the rant, I just don't get Grunty Industries hate lol. Something I did end up feeling a tiny bit sour on this time around was Hailfire Peaks. I still really like that world, and think the theming is awesome. However the fire side is a little too big for its bridges I will admit and the lag gets really bad sometimes there. The game can get laggy throughout portions of the game, which is only a thing on the N64 version, but there especially it's pretty bad.
One more thing before I mention the endgame and close out the review, is Canary Mary. Canary Mary has methods that make her very doable but she's still easily the worst part of the game and the only part I straight up dislike and dread doing. Her first button mashing races in Glittergulch Mine are perfectly fine. Her races in Cloud CuckooLand tho are insane. If you aren't doing the pause trick, idk how it's humenaly possible to win without using a turbo controller or something. The 2nd race isn't as bad because you can stay near her until the very end and then button mash to hell to pass her right before she can catch up. These races are easily doable with the right methods but the fact you have to do them this way, it just stinks man. But luckily this is only for 100% and only a tiny portion of the actual game so it's not the worst thing in the world.
I talked about a lot of improvements this game has over Kazooie. If there's one thing Kazooie destroys Tooie on however, it's the quiz section and final boss. Gone is the charming board game aesthetic of Kazooie, now you have a typical game show-esque quiz game where you have to answer enough questions to beat Grunty's sisters. It's not bad but it pales in comparison to Kazooie's version as it's less charming and even has less question types. Yeah, I won't miss the Gruntilda specific questions but no sound/music quizzes? That's kinda lame. Again, it's not bad and is only disappointing when compared to Kazooie. The final boss is also not nearly as good as Kazooie's. Is the Hag 1 harder? Most definitely but it's not as memorable as the Gruntilda fight from Kazooie and isn't as fun. It's a solid fight overall but compared to Kazooie's, just a bit lackluster.
So do I like Tooie more than Kazooie? In many ways, hell yes. It improves on many things like the duo's moveset, the writing is way funnier and the interconnectivity between worlds felt like a logical step to take after Kazooie. It may have the weaker end boss and quiz show, it's definitely and easier game to replay/100% and the Canary Mary rematch race is the worst thing between both games, however I'm still feeling like I may like this just slightly more than Kazooie just because of how ambitious and fun it is. It's kinda like Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 where each game has is own strengths over the other and it's just hard to choose what's better. Either way, it's still a 10/10 like the first game and one of my favorite games ever now. Easily in my top 3 N64 games, alongside the first game and Majora's Mask of course. Either way, if you see people saying you shouldn't play this game after you've beaten Kazooie. Don't listen to them, give this a try and you might fall become infatuated with it like I have.
This Banjo double feature was fun but I reckon it's time to play some Kirby again. Stay tuned for a Dreamland 2 review coming soon!
1998
Back in September of 2023, I decided to replay both Banjo games to see how much I still liked them. It had been around 10 years since I had played Kazooie since then, and 4 years since I'd last played Tooie, so I was excited to dive into both games. Well, as it turns out, I loved replaying both so much I decided to replay them directly after. I very rarely do that, so I just knew I had to bump both games to a 10. Well, after my whole review purge, I decided to replay these once again and rereview them all over again. Only 7 months later after playing them both twice before, I'm a madman I know (haha you won't get this reference because those reviews are now deleted). Anyways, just like before...I had a blast replaying Kazooie and consider it one of the best N64 games ever.
The first thing I'll get into are the controls and Banjo-Kazooie's moveset in general. I honestly think this game controls masterfully, Banjo and Kazooie have such a varied move set that flows well with each of the levels. The talon trot is a must in every level as it let's you go through each area that much faster. With the c buttons, it's also really easy to remember how to perform it too. In fact, I haven't played the game on anything but the N64 itself, but idk how I'd feel about playing it on another controller just cuz I find the N64 controller fits it perfectly lol. Besides the talon trot, you also have a roll attack, rat-a-tat rap which is an aerial move, golden feathers which you can use to turn invincible as long as you have them, red feathers which you can use to fly (and the flight in this game is more satisfying than Mario 64), the beak bomb which is an attack you can use while flying and more. All of this you unlock gradually while playing and is all used plenty through-out the game. You also have two power-ups that let you either traverse unsafe ground (wading boots) and the speedy shoes which, as the name implies, let's you go fast. Even the swimming in this game is pretty nice once you know how to use it. I've seen some people say it's awful because it's so clunky. Which, if you're not holding the R button then yeah totally, but if you are it's very nice and smooth as you have a breast-stroke and a paddle you can perform depending on what you need.
The game itself is incredibly charming, both aesthetically and comically. The world's all look lovely and is just full of that N64 Rare ware charm. When playing through a world, you would be hard pressed to not see a pair of googily eyes on an enemy or even the items (when the item explanation first pops up) and for how lighthearted this game is, it very much fits. That's not to say the dialogue is all light-hearted. It's not as dark as Tooie obviously but they still put in a couple of dirty jokes hear and there. The dialogue itself, while not nearly as funny as Tooie imo, its witty enough especially Gruntilda's dialogue.
Going into Gruntilda and her lair in general, both are fantastic. The lair is a tightly designed hub world that is super memorable, not just because of it being compact in size and easy to traverse, but because the whole way through Grunty insults you and eggs you on. Kazooie has way less dialogue than Tooie, and Grunty herself I find more menacing in that game, but when it comes to her insulting rhymes...they're easily the most memorable pieces of dialogue in the game. Even on this most recent playthrough, I was still hearing rhymes I've never heard before. Really makes me wonder just how many there are in total lol.
When it comes to the worlds themselves, they are excellent tightly designed levels just like Grunty's lair was. Mumbo's Mountain is the worst one imo, and that's just because of how small it is...which makes a ton of sense because it's the first world. All the rest are very enjoyable, with some of my favorites being Freezezey Peak, Clanker's Cavern and Click Clock Wood. Now you might be saying to yourselves, Clankers Cavern? Yeah, idk why but it might've been my favorite world this time around. I honestly don't have an issue with the swimming portions, I love the track that plays in it and the dank grimey atmosphere I find wonderful (which makes sense because I love Tooie and it has a lot of that). It feels like one of the more unique world settings next to Rusty Bucket Bay. Speaking of Rusty Bucket Bay, it has the infamous engine room area and yeah that's still my least favorite part pf the game. It's not TOO bad if you do that part right away, but I still died like 5 times this playthrough. I also died to Click Clock Wood very stupidly, those two levels even now can still get me as they're easily the two hardest in the game. Going back to the engine room tho, the reason it's so hated is because it's the only world with an instant death pit. In the N64 version, instant death means you lose all your notes as the game tracks a total note score in this version rather than keeping your notes when you die like in the Xbox version. This is also a small gripe I have, but only in these last two levels because I pretty much never die in any of the earlier ones.
The music in this game was done by Grant Kirkhope and he's absolutely legendary. He has a very distinct bouncy style to his music and it absolutely fits here with how goofy this game is. My favorite tracks in the game would have to be Rusty Bucket Bay, Spiral Mountain, Clanker's Cavern, and The Final Battle. The entire soundtrack is wonderfully though, and I especially love Grant's use of dynamic music. His work on Banjo Kazooie and Tooie, and DK64 show he's a big fan of it and it's perfect in these types of games.
Once you beat every single world, and have obtained enough notes and jiggies to progress, you enter Grunty's Furnace Fun. This is basically a giant quiz show that puts your knowledge to the test. It's very goofy and fitting for the type of game Banjo Kazooie is. The questions consist of listening to the voice of a character or song of a level and guessing who/what it is, random trivia, playing a mini-game from the main levels or a Grunty question. The grunty questions consist of trivia about Grunty herself that you must know to answer. To find these out in-game, you must hunt down her sister Brentilda, who is hidden in specific areas of the lair. You might think, meh I'll just look the answers to these online. But they're randomized per playthrough so you simply cannot do that. Luckily, with the joker card which let's you skip 2 spaces on the board, you can bypass these if you weren't able to find Brentilda. Same with the instant death skull spaces which are usually just a basic trivia question, but still are very nerve-wracking. After you get to the end of the board, you get a hilarious joke where Grunty makes her escape by forcing credits on you. After that though, it's actually time to fight her.
Before you fight Grunty, depending on how many collectables you have gotten, you can unlock consumable refills and even double health. Once you've gotten what you need, it's time fight Gruntilda herself. The final battle may honestly be in my top 20 fights ever, it's super good. It tests you on many of your moves you've learned through out the game and it has a killer boss theme to boot (as you know with my favorite songs portion). The end of it is super satisfying too, with the Jinjonator being summoned to defeat her. If there's any one thing I love more than Tooie, it's this final boss and cutscene. The Hag-1 is a fine enough final boss for that game, but it pales in comparison to Kazooie's final fight.
All in all, I'm glad I replayed this once again as it's still amazing and still one of my favorite games ever. Back in September, I stated I might love Tooie even more for the things it improved on and its expanded worlds, and yeah I probably do in the end. However, Kazooie has its own strengths , some even over Tooie's and it's still a must play as an N64 fan. Next up though is Tooie, and I simply cannot wait to replay it so look forward to that review coming soon!!
The first thing I'll get into are the controls and Banjo-Kazooie's moveset in general. I honestly think this game controls masterfully, Banjo and Kazooie have such a varied move set that flows well with each of the levels. The talon trot is a must in every level as it let's you go through each area that much faster. With the c buttons, it's also really easy to remember how to perform it too. In fact, I haven't played the game on anything but the N64 itself, but idk how I'd feel about playing it on another controller just cuz I find the N64 controller fits it perfectly lol. Besides the talon trot, you also have a roll attack, rat-a-tat rap which is an aerial move, golden feathers which you can use to turn invincible as long as you have them, red feathers which you can use to fly (and the flight in this game is more satisfying than Mario 64), the beak bomb which is an attack you can use while flying and more. All of this you unlock gradually while playing and is all used plenty through-out the game. You also have two power-ups that let you either traverse unsafe ground (wading boots) and the speedy shoes which, as the name implies, let's you go fast. Even the swimming in this game is pretty nice once you know how to use it. I've seen some people say it's awful because it's so clunky. Which, if you're not holding the R button then yeah totally, but if you are it's very nice and smooth as you have a breast-stroke and a paddle you can perform depending on what you need.
The game itself is incredibly charming, both aesthetically and comically. The world's all look lovely and is just full of that N64 Rare ware charm. When playing through a world, you would be hard pressed to not see a pair of googily eyes on an enemy or even the items (when the item explanation first pops up) and for how lighthearted this game is, it very much fits. That's not to say the dialogue is all light-hearted. It's not as dark as Tooie obviously but they still put in a couple of dirty jokes hear and there. The dialogue itself, while not nearly as funny as Tooie imo, its witty enough especially Gruntilda's dialogue.
Going into Gruntilda and her lair in general, both are fantastic. The lair is a tightly designed hub world that is super memorable, not just because of it being compact in size and easy to traverse, but because the whole way through Grunty insults you and eggs you on. Kazooie has way less dialogue than Tooie, and Grunty herself I find more menacing in that game, but when it comes to her insulting rhymes...they're easily the most memorable pieces of dialogue in the game. Even on this most recent playthrough, I was still hearing rhymes I've never heard before. Really makes me wonder just how many there are in total lol.
When it comes to the worlds themselves, they are excellent tightly designed levels just like Grunty's lair was. Mumbo's Mountain is the worst one imo, and that's just because of how small it is...which makes a ton of sense because it's the first world. All the rest are very enjoyable, with some of my favorites being Freezezey Peak, Clanker's Cavern and Click Clock Wood. Now you might be saying to yourselves, Clankers Cavern? Yeah, idk why but it might've been my favorite world this time around. I honestly don't have an issue with the swimming portions, I love the track that plays in it and the dank grimey atmosphere I find wonderful (which makes sense because I love Tooie and it has a lot of that). It feels like one of the more unique world settings next to Rusty Bucket Bay. Speaking of Rusty Bucket Bay, it has the infamous engine room area and yeah that's still my least favorite part pf the game. It's not TOO bad if you do that part right away, but I still died like 5 times this playthrough. I also died to Click Clock Wood very stupidly, those two levels even now can still get me as they're easily the two hardest in the game. Going back to the engine room tho, the reason it's so hated is because it's the only world with an instant death pit. In the N64 version, instant death means you lose all your notes as the game tracks a total note score in this version rather than keeping your notes when you die like in the Xbox version. This is also a small gripe I have, but only in these last two levels because I pretty much never die in any of the earlier ones.
The music in this game was done by Grant Kirkhope and he's absolutely legendary. He has a very distinct bouncy style to his music and it absolutely fits here with how goofy this game is. My favorite tracks in the game would have to be Rusty Bucket Bay, Spiral Mountain, Clanker's Cavern, and The Final Battle. The entire soundtrack is wonderfully though, and I especially love Grant's use of dynamic music. His work on Banjo Kazooie and Tooie, and DK64 show he's a big fan of it and it's perfect in these types of games.
Once you beat every single world, and have obtained enough notes and jiggies to progress, you enter Grunty's Furnace Fun. This is basically a giant quiz show that puts your knowledge to the test. It's very goofy and fitting for the type of game Banjo Kazooie is. The questions consist of listening to the voice of a character or song of a level and guessing who/what it is, random trivia, playing a mini-game from the main levels or a Grunty question. The grunty questions consist of trivia about Grunty herself that you must know to answer. To find these out in-game, you must hunt down her sister Brentilda, who is hidden in specific areas of the lair. You might think, meh I'll just look the answers to these online. But they're randomized per playthrough so you simply cannot do that. Luckily, with the joker card which let's you skip 2 spaces on the board, you can bypass these if you weren't able to find Brentilda. Same with the instant death skull spaces which are usually just a basic trivia question, but still are very nerve-wracking. After you get to the end of the board, you get a hilarious joke where Grunty makes her escape by forcing credits on you. After that though, it's actually time to fight her.
Before you fight Grunty, depending on how many collectables you have gotten, you can unlock consumable refills and even double health. Once you've gotten what you need, it's time fight Gruntilda herself. The final battle may honestly be in my top 20 fights ever, it's super good. It tests you on many of your moves you've learned through out the game and it has a killer boss theme to boot (as you know with my favorite songs portion). The end of it is super satisfying too, with the Jinjonator being summoned to defeat her. If there's any one thing I love more than Tooie, it's this final boss and cutscene. The Hag-1 is a fine enough final boss for that game, but it pales in comparison to Kazooie's final fight.
All in all, I'm glad I replayed this once again as it's still amazing and still one of my favorite games ever. Back in September, I stated I might love Tooie even more for the things it improved on and its expanded worlds, and yeah I probably do in the end. However, Kazooie has its own strengths , some even over Tooie's and it's still a must play as an N64 fan. Next up though is Tooie, and I simply cannot wait to replay it so look forward to that review coming soon!!
1998
Before playing this game, the only 3D Sonic I ever played was Sonic Colors. And even then, a good chunk of that game was in 2D. So Adventure was my first fully 3D Sonic game ever. For years, I'd hear people say this game was broken beyond belief or just simple a "guilty pleasure" game that they enjoy despite being shit. While I did not love it like some people do, I can personally say I did not think the games were either of those things.
The game is broken up into 6 (technically 7 if you complete all other routes) character routes. You can play as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Big the cat and Gamma respectively. Each of these characters play differently from each other, whether it's for better or worse, and even tho each playthrough varies in quality, I can at least commend how ambitious this is. Because in each character's playthrough, you get different cutscenes and also context for certain scenes that may not be explained in earlier playthroughs. As my friend Lemonstrade said, it's sort of similar to what Drakennier does which again is super cool conceptually, especially for a 1998 game.
But back to the actual characters, Sonic is the clear best one here. He has his spin dash, is of course the fastest in the game and also has a super fun aerial dash. I've heard people say the controls are bad in this game and I simply don't get that at all. Sonic, at least, feels simply perfect to control. The levels on the other hand, I can see people having issues with. I disagreed with the fact this game is broken beyond belief, but it definitely can be a bit broken if you're unlucky. I only glitched through the stage like 2 or 3 times, but the first time it happened was on the very first stage. That made me think the entire game would be broken, but it wasn't. Unless I got lucky, those claims, while still credible sometimes...are massively overblown. Besides that though, Sonic's stages while still fun, can feel incredibly janky just because of how fast he goes. It's hard to explain but if you've played the game you'd know, a lot of times the animations and your movement through levels can feel very unwieldly. It can be really hard to control sonic sometimes, and it often looks super awkward when looking back at it. Like I said it's hard to explain, and while I still had a ton of fun with his levels (just because he feels so good to controls) I can't help but think thee levels feel off. Again, this is mostly when you're at full speed going through loop de loops and shit. When it's slower sections you're going through, it's not an issue.
As for the other characters, they all have significantly less stages than Sonic. Tails has you racing against sonic, and with him being able to glide, you can take some seriously crazy shortcuts. The game itself even encourages this which I thought was pretty neat. Knuckles has you searching for three master emerald shards. It's basically a treasure hunt, with the emerald icons turning different colors depending on how close you are to them. These were alright, but story-wise I wasn't really a fan. Honestly thought his story would be more different from Sonic's than it was, not to mention the final Chaos fight was barely different from Sonic's (and Tails had a unique fight for his ending). Amy was probably my least favorite character to use. Her levels consisted of getting to the end like Sonic, while running away from one of Robotnik's robots. Problem is, while her hammer bounce is kinda cool, her moveset isn't nearly as fun as Sonic's yet her levels are still long like Sonic's (which isn't much of an issue with Tails and Knuckles). That plus, besides the one Gamma scene, her cutscenes were lame. Big the cat is the most contentious character by far, and honestly I didn't hate him. Yeah his cutscenes are super dumb and don't add much to the story. However his campaign is by far the shortest, and the fishing is actually really easy (and kinda fun) once you get the hang of it. Gamma is by far the best character next to Sonic. Not only are his stages fast paced, with you having to kill enemies quickly to get more time to your total. His story is actually significantly different compared to the others, and quite touching at that. If I had to rank each character's campaigns, I'd say Sonic>Gamma>Tails>Big>Knuckles>Amy.
To go to each actual level, you have to navigate the hubworld. For a 1998 game, it's not bad but it can feel somewhat empty I felt. Though, there are things to get that aren't just apart of the main story. There are some optional collectables and even some minigames you can play. There's also the chao garden which, I tried to get to work but since I was emulating the game, I suspected there was an add on I needed or something idk. But from the little I've heard, it does sound fun.
The story in general, does have its high points, like the aforementioned Gamma campaign and the ending is really nice. It's simple but effective. However, the actual voice acting is horribly stilted a lot of the time. It's not even a so bad it's good situation, it was just mediocre a lot of the time. That is, except for Robotnik who is super over the top but hilarious. Even despite the fact they reuse fight dialogue in actual scenes (which is jarring for sure) his dialogue is super duper memorable and easily the highlight. Something else that was memorable were some of the face animations, goddamn are they awful sometimes.
I didn't like LOVE the soundtrack like some people do, but it is quite nice overall. Very experimental which I appreciate a ton. My favorite songs were probably Red Skull Mountain, Welcome to Station Square and Egg Carrier: A Song That Keeps Us on the Move.
Once you complete all 6 character routes, you unlock the 7th and final one..Super Sonic. This is essentially just the final boss and some closure on the story, but it's definitely satisfying. You become Super Sonic, defeat Chaos's final form at supersonic speed, and in turn this cleanses Chaos of his evil as we find out he wasn't ever bad from the start. The closure on the whole Chao's and the past cutscenes was really nice. That along with Gamma's scenes ofc, easily the highlights of the story.
This game is definitely flawed in some ways, and Adventure 2 might improve on everything in this game idk. But I can officially say, this game is overall good and that Sonic had a good transition to 3D. Not everything works in this game, but I can acknowledge this game is full of heart.
May drop it down to a 6 cuz I was feeling like that for a good while but for now it's a 7.
The game is broken up into 6 (technically 7 if you complete all other routes) character routes. You can play as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Big the cat and Gamma respectively. Each of these characters play differently from each other, whether it's for better or worse, and even tho each playthrough varies in quality, I can at least commend how ambitious this is. Because in each character's playthrough, you get different cutscenes and also context for certain scenes that may not be explained in earlier playthroughs. As my friend Lemonstrade said, it's sort of similar to what Drakennier does which again is super cool conceptually, especially for a 1998 game.
But back to the actual characters, Sonic is the clear best one here. He has his spin dash, is of course the fastest in the game and also has a super fun aerial dash. I've heard people say the controls are bad in this game and I simply don't get that at all. Sonic, at least, feels simply perfect to control. The levels on the other hand, I can see people having issues with. I disagreed with the fact this game is broken beyond belief, but it definitely can be a bit broken if you're unlucky. I only glitched through the stage like 2 or 3 times, but the first time it happened was on the very first stage. That made me think the entire game would be broken, but it wasn't. Unless I got lucky, those claims, while still credible sometimes...are massively overblown. Besides that though, Sonic's stages while still fun, can feel incredibly janky just because of how fast he goes. It's hard to explain but if you've played the game you'd know, a lot of times the animations and your movement through levels can feel very unwieldly. It can be really hard to control sonic sometimes, and it often looks super awkward when looking back at it. Like I said it's hard to explain, and while I still had a ton of fun with his levels (just because he feels so good to controls) I can't help but think thee levels feel off. Again, this is mostly when you're at full speed going through loop de loops and shit. When it's slower sections you're going through, it's not an issue.
As for the other characters, they all have significantly less stages than Sonic. Tails has you racing against sonic, and with him being able to glide, you can take some seriously crazy shortcuts. The game itself even encourages this which I thought was pretty neat. Knuckles has you searching for three master emerald shards. It's basically a treasure hunt, with the emerald icons turning different colors depending on how close you are to them. These were alright, but story-wise I wasn't really a fan. Honestly thought his story would be more different from Sonic's than it was, not to mention the final Chaos fight was barely different from Sonic's (and Tails had a unique fight for his ending). Amy was probably my least favorite character to use. Her levels consisted of getting to the end like Sonic, while running away from one of Robotnik's robots. Problem is, while her hammer bounce is kinda cool, her moveset isn't nearly as fun as Sonic's yet her levels are still long like Sonic's (which isn't much of an issue with Tails and Knuckles). That plus, besides the one Gamma scene, her cutscenes were lame. Big the cat is the most contentious character by far, and honestly I didn't hate him. Yeah his cutscenes are super dumb and don't add much to the story. However his campaign is by far the shortest, and the fishing is actually really easy (and kinda fun) once you get the hang of it. Gamma is by far the best character next to Sonic. Not only are his stages fast paced, with you having to kill enemies quickly to get more time to your total. His story is actually significantly different compared to the others, and quite touching at that. If I had to rank each character's campaigns, I'd say Sonic>Gamma>Tails>Big>Knuckles>Amy.
To go to each actual level, you have to navigate the hubworld. For a 1998 game, it's not bad but it can feel somewhat empty I felt. Though, there are things to get that aren't just apart of the main story. There are some optional collectables and even some minigames you can play. There's also the chao garden which, I tried to get to work but since I was emulating the game, I suspected there was an add on I needed or something idk. But from the little I've heard, it does sound fun.
The story in general, does have its high points, like the aforementioned Gamma campaign and the ending is really nice. It's simple but effective. However, the actual voice acting is horribly stilted a lot of the time. It's not even a so bad it's good situation, it was just mediocre a lot of the time. That is, except for Robotnik who is super over the top but hilarious. Even despite the fact they reuse fight dialogue in actual scenes (which is jarring for sure) his dialogue is super duper memorable and easily the highlight. Something else that was memorable were some of the face animations, goddamn are they awful sometimes.
I didn't like LOVE the soundtrack like some people do, but it is quite nice overall. Very experimental which I appreciate a ton. My favorite songs were probably Red Skull Mountain, Welcome to Station Square and Egg Carrier: A Song That Keeps Us on the Move.
Once you complete all 6 character routes, you unlock the 7th and final one..Super Sonic. This is essentially just the final boss and some closure on the story, but it's definitely satisfying. You become Super Sonic, defeat Chaos's final form at supersonic speed, and in turn this cleanses Chaos of his evil as we find out he wasn't ever bad from the start. The closure on the whole Chao's and the past cutscenes was really nice. That along with Gamma's scenes ofc, easily the highlights of the story.
This game is definitely flawed in some ways, and Adventure 2 might improve on everything in this game idk. But I can officially say, this game is overall good and that Sonic had a good transition to 3D. Not everything works in this game, but I can acknowledge this game is full of heart.
May drop it down to a 6 cuz I was feeling like that for a good while but for now it's a 7.
I honestly forget where I got this game, but I remember it was one of the first SNES games I ever played. The first was Super Mario World and I absolutely adored it. Because of that game, I got really into retro Nintendo games and some time after, I bought Yoshi's Island. Part of me thinks I bought this at my local flea market because it always reminded me of going there on the weekends. Yoshi's Island in general, is a big weekend game. I remember just playing it on my days off from school, and because of that it always gave off that vibe. Either way, I played through the game and loved it. I think since then, I only 100%ed it one other time or maybe not at all. So this was only, potentially, my 2nd time fully beating this game. I'm glad I did because just like Super Mario World, it's absolutely wonderful.
The most striking aspect of the game that you'll notice right away, is just how visually appealing it is. Its crayon-like artstyle is super pleasing to the eyes, and it also makes the most of the console and the newly created FX chip at the time. The FX chip was an add on to carts created by Argonaut Games (my beloved Croc developer). Basically, created to enhance the graphics of certain SNES games, and Yoshi's Island was one of the few games to use it. The FX chip, along with the wonderful artstyle, just gives the game this timeless look. Best looking game on the SNES imo, with Kirby's Dreamland 3 right behind it.
The gameplay itself is much more complicated than Mario World. In Yoshi's Island, you can run and jump and all that, but you can also create/throw eggs. Eating an enemy, and pressing down on the d-pad, let's you create eggs. These can be tossed at enemies and items and greatly enhances the regular Mario gameplay. You can have the eggs bounce off walls and based on the angle you threw it at, collect items you wouldn't have otherwise been able to get. You can have eggs skip across water. You can have eggs reflect against or be obtained by certain enemies and then thrown/hit back at you to get collectables. The egg mechanic gets utilized super well. This along with the varied level design makes the game a blast. Cuz yeah, the level design is super good in this game and is always throwing new things at you. Whether its the fuzzy enemies that make the screen all trippy, to the ski slopes in world 5, to the temporary platforms that disappear if you jump on them too much. And that's not even getting into the Yoshi transformations which are all fun too. Never was I bored with any level. Frustrated though? Maybe a little.
This is a good segway into the other half of the gameplay I wanted to talk about, the 100% requirements. See, unlike Super Mario World, you don't just have to beat each and every level and get all secret exits. You have to get a score of 100 in each level. There are three collectables that contribute to a score. Red coins, flowers and Yoshi's health. You must get all 20 red coins, all 5 flowers and have 30 health by the end of a level to get a score of 100. Then you do this in each world, 6 times for the normal levels and two times for each boss level. Then you unlock a bonus game and a bonus level. So why is this frustrating to do? Well, first it depends on the level. The early levels aren't too bad but some of the later levels are quite hard. The red coins appear as normal coins (tho there is a redness to them that is quite visible) so these can be tricky to find. The flowers are very obvious, you just have to be sure to find them. They hide both of these kind of collectables in some devious places sometimes. Usually it's not too bad but rarely, even now after having played the game before, I had to look them up because they're obtuse. This is all fine and dandy but the real hard collectable is the health. It all depends on how easy the stage is and how often they give you health in the stage, but sometimes it can be super difficult to have 30 star points (that's what the game calls the health) by the end of the game. Especially in that last world, hoo boy did I have to use an star point item in almost every one of those levels.
That's another thing the game has, you can get items (and live) from minigames at the end of stages. When you jump through the goal, and the ring stops on one of the flowers you collected in the stage, you can play a minigame. Like I said, it can give you lives but more importantly items. Some of these items suck but 2 of them give you +10 and +20 star points respectively. Seeing as, as long as you're alive, your star count always goes back up to 10. You can get hit as much as you want, get to the end of a stage, and pop a +20 and have full star points before ending a stage. Getting these items can be quite hard depending on the minigame, but the match cards game makes it super easy to grind these items out. You can replay this minigame as much as you want with the world 4 bonus game, so as long as you can 100% that world, going back to 100% every other level will be that much easier if you suck. Overall, I think the collectables are fun to collect and 100%ing the game isn't that bad because of the item system. The game can just be somewhat devious with its hidden collectables and its difficulty near the end game (that world 5 bonus level can suck it) which is why I found it a bit frustrating at points and not as replayable as Mario World. However, once I remembered you could at least cheese the star points in the endgame, this issue lessened a bit.
Something else I really liked were the bosses. Honestly, they're not all winners but they're probably better than any 2D Mario game. They all take full advantage of Yoshi's move set and egg mechanics and are also a treat to the eyes since they're usually so flashy looking too. I can really commemorate how creative they got with them. Like one of them has you getting eating by a frog and throwing giant eggs at the frog from within its stomach. There's a boss where you must use the egg water bounce mechanic to defeat it (or you can defeat it by killing it before the fight even begins, and Kamek has his own unique dialogue for doing so, so it's not even an exploit...it's a cheeseable method the developers put in which is hilarious). Just unique bosses all around. Baby Bowser at the end is one of the best final bosses in the series too I'd say. It takes a little getting used to with the whole change in perspective but its badass nonetheless. Also, the ending after that is so very heartfelt and feels good every time, I love it.
One other thing I wanted to mention was the game's OST. It's incredibly hard to dislike it, it's so happy and upbeat a lot of the time. The entire soundtrack is awesome but my two favorite songs are the Athletic Theme and the Underground Theme. They're my most listened to songs in the entire ost, and the underground theme especially is my absolute favorite in the game. That one always spoke to me and it out of any song in the game, gave me that whole weekend feeling I talked about earlier. I really don't know why, but I love it.
I originally had this game at a 9, and even despite my small criticism of the collectables, I can't help but bump this to a 10. I'd say I love Super Mario World slightly more but this is one of my favorite games ever and my 2nd favorite SNES game now. It's amazing, it's fantastic, it's wonderful. Go play it.
The most striking aspect of the game that you'll notice right away, is just how visually appealing it is. Its crayon-like artstyle is super pleasing to the eyes, and it also makes the most of the console and the newly created FX chip at the time. The FX chip was an add on to carts created by Argonaut Games (my beloved Croc developer). Basically, created to enhance the graphics of certain SNES games, and Yoshi's Island was one of the few games to use it. The FX chip, along with the wonderful artstyle, just gives the game this timeless look. Best looking game on the SNES imo, with Kirby's Dreamland 3 right behind it.
The gameplay itself is much more complicated than Mario World. In Yoshi's Island, you can run and jump and all that, but you can also create/throw eggs. Eating an enemy, and pressing down on the d-pad, let's you create eggs. These can be tossed at enemies and items and greatly enhances the regular Mario gameplay. You can have the eggs bounce off walls and based on the angle you threw it at, collect items you wouldn't have otherwise been able to get. You can have eggs skip across water. You can have eggs reflect against or be obtained by certain enemies and then thrown/hit back at you to get collectables. The egg mechanic gets utilized super well. This along with the varied level design makes the game a blast. Cuz yeah, the level design is super good in this game and is always throwing new things at you. Whether its the fuzzy enemies that make the screen all trippy, to the ski slopes in world 5, to the temporary platforms that disappear if you jump on them too much. And that's not even getting into the Yoshi transformations which are all fun too. Never was I bored with any level. Frustrated though? Maybe a little.
This is a good segway into the other half of the gameplay I wanted to talk about, the 100% requirements. See, unlike Super Mario World, you don't just have to beat each and every level and get all secret exits. You have to get a score of 100 in each level. There are three collectables that contribute to a score. Red coins, flowers and Yoshi's health. You must get all 20 red coins, all 5 flowers and have 30 health by the end of a level to get a score of 100. Then you do this in each world, 6 times for the normal levels and two times for each boss level. Then you unlock a bonus game and a bonus level. So why is this frustrating to do? Well, first it depends on the level. The early levels aren't too bad but some of the later levels are quite hard. The red coins appear as normal coins (tho there is a redness to them that is quite visible) so these can be tricky to find. The flowers are very obvious, you just have to be sure to find them. They hide both of these kind of collectables in some devious places sometimes. Usually it's not too bad but rarely, even now after having played the game before, I had to look them up because they're obtuse. This is all fine and dandy but the real hard collectable is the health. It all depends on how easy the stage is and how often they give you health in the stage, but sometimes it can be super difficult to have 30 star points (that's what the game calls the health) by the end of the game. Especially in that last world, hoo boy did I have to use an star point item in almost every one of those levels.
That's another thing the game has, you can get items (and live) from minigames at the end of stages. When you jump through the goal, and the ring stops on one of the flowers you collected in the stage, you can play a minigame. Like I said, it can give you lives but more importantly items. Some of these items suck but 2 of them give you +10 and +20 star points respectively. Seeing as, as long as you're alive, your star count always goes back up to 10. You can get hit as much as you want, get to the end of a stage, and pop a +20 and have full star points before ending a stage. Getting these items can be quite hard depending on the minigame, but the match cards game makes it super easy to grind these items out. You can replay this minigame as much as you want with the world 4 bonus game, so as long as you can 100% that world, going back to 100% every other level will be that much easier if you suck. Overall, I think the collectables are fun to collect and 100%ing the game isn't that bad because of the item system. The game can just be somewhat devious with its hidden collectables and its difficulty near the end game (that world 5 bonus level can suck it) which is why I found it a bit frustrating at points and not as replayable as Mario World. However, once I remembered you could at least cheese the star points in the endgame, this issue lessened a bit.
Something else I really liked were the bosses. Honestly, they're not all winners but they're probably better than any 2D Mario game. They all take full advantage of Yoshi's move set and egg mechanics and are also a treat to the eyes since they're usually so flashy looking too. I can really commemorate how creative they got with them. Like one of them has you getting eating by a frog and throwing giant eggs at the frog from within its stomach. There's a boss where you must use the egg water bounce mechanic to defeat it (or you can defeat it by killing it before the fight even begins, and Kamek has his own unique dialogue for doing so, so it's not even an exploit...it's a cheeseable method the developers put in which is hilarious). Just unique bosses all around. Baby Bowser at the end is one of the best final bosses in the series too I'd say. It takes a little getting used to with the whole change in perspective but its badass nonetheless. Also, the ending after that is so very heartfelt and feels good every time, I love it.
One other thing I wanted to mention was the game's OST. It's incredibly hard to dislike it, it's so happy and upbeat a lot of the time. The entire soundtrack is awesome but my two favorite songs are the Athletic Theme and the Underground Theme. They're my most listened to songs in the entire ost, and the underground theme especially is my absolute favorite in the game. That one always spoke to me and it out of any song in the game, gave me that whole weekend feeling I talked about earlier. I really don't know why, but I love it.
I originally had this game at a 9, and even despite my small criticism of the collectables, I can't help but bump this to a 10. I'd say I love Super Mario World slightly more but this is one of my favorite games ever and my 2nd favorite SNES game now. It's amazing, it's fantastic, it's wonderful. Go play it.
1995
Back in 2022, I played Dr Robotniks Mean Bean Machine. I knew it was Puyo Puyo with Sonic characters, but I wanted to give it a try since I was playing a lot of Sonic games around that time. Turns out I sucked at it! Only got to like stage 6 before I gave up, and even then I'm surprised I got that far lol.
Kirby's Avalanche is Puyo Puyo again, only Kirby themed. This time around I only got to stage 3 before I quit(if were not counting the starter stages which I did complete). Idk man, my brain just melts sometimes whenever I'm playing. I'm way more of a Tetris guy than a Puyo Puyo guy, but those early stages were somewhat fun I'd say.
Besides me liking Kirby more than Sonic, something I definitely thought put this over Mean Bean Machije was the dialogue before each stage. Goddamn, Kirby is savage in this one. Maybe feels a little out of character, especially for how he is nowadays but it was very entertaining. Had to look up all the scenes cuz I knew I didn't want to miss them. If anything, its worth it to see them alone cuz they're hilarious.
Considering how short this game is too, the length of the OST is super short as well but the couple stage themes being remixes of Kirby's Adventure songs was nice.
Yeah, as you can see, I don't have much to say about this one. It's Puyo Puyo but Kirby themed like I said and I got filtered by Puyo Puyo yet again 😢. Guess that series just isn't for me haha. Kinda stinks this is another Kirby game I ended up not beating but it will probably be the last (unless one of the future spinoffs filter me as well). Either way, next Kirby game is Dreamland 2 so I'm happy to finally get to another mainline again.
Kirby's Avalanche is Puyo Puyo again, only Kirby themed. This time around I only got to stage 3 before I quit(if were not counting the starter stages which I did complete). Idk man, my brain just melts sometimes whenever I'm playing. I'm way more of a Tetris guy than a Puyo Puyo guy, but those early stages were somewhat fun I'd say.
Besides me liking Kirby more than Sonic, something I definitely thought put this over Mean Bean Machije was the dialogue before each stage. Goddamn, Kirby is savage in this one. Maybe feels a little out of character, especially for how he is nowadays but it was very entertaining. Had to look up all the scenes cuz I knew I didn't want to miss them. If anything, its worth it to see them alone cuz they're hilarious.
Considering how short this game is too, the length of the OST is super short as well but the couple stage themes being remixes of Kirby's Adventure songs was nice.
Yeah, as you can see, I don't have much to say about this one. It's Puyo Puyo but Kirby themed like I said and I got filtered by Puyo Puyo yet again 😢. Guess that series just isn't for me haha. Kinda stinks this is another Kirby game I ended up not beating but it will probably be the last (unless one of the future spinoffs filter me as well). Either way, next Kirby game is Dreamland 2 so I'm happy to finally get to another mainline again.
1994
So I knew the next Kirby game I had to play, Kirby's Dream Course, had a two player mode. I only ever played the single player for a bit years ago but never the multiplayer. I always heard it was more fun to play it that way, so I was excited to find out the NSO version supported online multiplayer. Me and my friend wheatie decided to play together.
This is essentially Kirby golf. Okay it's not quite that simple, it's a little more complex than that. The goal is the same as golf where you have to get it in the hole, and it tracks the amount of moves you do (at least in the single player) but you can change the angle of your shot in many more ways than golf, not to mention Kirby's copy abilities from Adventure are here. In the multiplayer mode, your goal is to have the most stars by the end of all 8 courses. You get a star by killing an enemy, two by getting in the hole at the end, AND you can steal the other persons stars if you're feeling devious. Me and wheatie played all 4 courses (except we sadly could not finish the final one because we disconnected at the very end) and I'd say we were pretty much tied in terms of how good we were at the game. It was chaotic, frustrating and a lot of fun and definitely the best way to play the game.
Going into the single-player though, while fun it definitely got a bit old after a while in comparison. Some of those later courses can have some really rough stages, especially since it's a bit different compared to the two-player mode. Instead of going for the most stars, you go for low par and survival. See, every time you kill an enemy, you get a tomato. You have 4 tomatoes from the start, and each time you make a move, it uses one. If you fall off the stage, automatic death. This can get quite frustrating since if you game over, it sends you back to the beginning of that course. It can be quite annoying if you get stuck on a particular level, but it could easily have been less forgiving and send you back to very beginning. Also that final boss, there's only one boss in the entire game and it feels so undercooked lol. You just spam the A button and Dedede's done. Either way, the single player is still fun, it's just not as fun as multiplayer.
Quick thing on the visuals and ost, they're both alright? Visuals are nice for the most part but the isometric angle can really make some of the stages look awkward. Especially with your line that shows where you're going to make the shot. If you played the game you'll now what I mean. The OST has some nice remixes but I found a chunk of it kinda forgettable which is a shame.
In the end though, I had a fun time (mostly cuz I played with wheatie), and it's definitely a better spinoff than Pinball Land. Next is the last spinoff before another mainline game, Kirby's Avalanche. Knowing it's a Puyo Puyo reskin, just like Mean Bean Machine, has me not looking forward to it because I got filtered hard by Mean Bean Machine lol. Ah well, look forward to that soon!
6.5/10
This is essentially Kirby golf. Okay it's not quite that simple, it's a little more complex than that. The goal is the same as golf where you have to get it in the hole, and it tracks the amount of moves you do (at least in the single player) but you can change the angle of your shot in many more ways than golf, not to mention Kirby's copy abilities from Adventure are here. In the multiplayer mode, your goal is to have the most stars by the end of all 8 courses. You get a star by killing an enemy, two by getting in the hole at the end, AND you can steal the other persons stars if you're feeling devious. Me and wheatie played all 4 courses (except we sadly could not finish the final one because we disconnected at the very end) and I'd say we were pretty much tied in terms of how good we were at the game. It was chaotic, frustrating and a lot of fun and definitely the best way to play the game.
Going into the single-player though, while fun it definitely got a bit old after a while in comparison. Some of those later courses can have some really rough stages, especially since it's a bit different compared to the two-player mode. Instead of going for the most stars, you go for low par and survival. See, every time you kill an enemy, you get a tomato. You have 4 tomatoes from the start, and each time you make a move, it uses one. If you fall off the stage, automatic death. This can get quite frustrating since if you game over, it sends you back to the beginning of that course. It can be quite annoying if you get stuck on a particular level, but it could easily have been less forgiving and send you back to very beginning. Also that final boss, there's only one boss in the entire game and it feels so undercooked lol. You just spam the A button and Dedede's done. Either way, the single player is still fun, it's just not as fun as multiplayer.
Quick thing on the visuals and ost, they're both alright? Visuals are nice for the most part but the isometric angle can really make some of the stages look awkward. Especially with your line that shows where you're going to make the shot. If you played the game you'll now what I mean. The OST has some nice remixes but I found a chunk of it kinda forgettable which is a shame.
In the end though, I had a fun time (mostly cuz I played with wheatie), and it's definitely a better spinoff than Pinball Land. Next is the last spinoff before another mainline game, Kirby's Avalanche. Knowing it's a Puyo Puyo reskin, just like Mean Bean Machine, has me not looking forward to it because I got filtered hard by Mean Bean Machine lol. Ah well, look forward to that soon!
6.5/10
1993
The next Kirby game to release after Adventure was Kirby's Pinball Land. This was the first game I had yet to play prior to this whole thing and I gotta say, not really a fan of it tbh.
I do honestly enjoy pinball a bit, it's fun when you're just going for a high score or are at a pizza parlor and you see a pinball table and play it to pass the time. But Kirby's Pinball Land is actually beatable. See, each stage has a boss from Kirby's Dreamland you can fight if you progress high enough into the stage. The entire game is Dreamland themed actually. Well, I tried to get to Wispy Woods for 40 minutes straight and that's the first stage. Every time I'd defeat all the cappies in the little bonus game and make the warp star appear, something would make me fall down again. So yeah, I never even got to fight any of the bosses because I was just so frustrated trying to even get to the very first one in the first place. After giving up on the first stage then, I just decided to play the other two for a bit as well before calling it quits. There's 4 bosses in total, the three from the stages and then Dedede at the end. Idk if you have to do every stage and Dedede in one continue, because if so that's pretty ridiculous with how random pinball can be.
This review seems overly negative and yeah I was getting frustrated when playing and still don't care fit it much but for a simple pinball game, it's not bad. I'm giving it a bit of slack since it is an OG Gameboy game (and also maybe me not being much a fan is just a big skill issue). The Dreamland 1 visuals and references are nice and the music's nice too (most of it is just reused from Dreamland tho). Just maybe don't try to actually beat this game cuz you'll also get frustrated unless you have a high tolerance for random pinball BS lol. It's been a while since I played a game and didn't finish it, and I really hate doing that especially for a Kirby marathon like this, but idk man I just can't do it lol. Looking forward to playing Dream Course next!
Edit: In retrospect, maybe a 5 is too generous, especially since I couldn't even get to a boss cuz I had enough at that point. So I'll drop it to a 4.
I do honestly enjoy pinball a bit, it's fun when you're just going for a high score or are at a pizza parlor and you see a pinball table and play it to pass the time. But Kirby's Pinball Land is actually beatable. See, each stage has a boss from Kirby's Dreamland you can fight if you progress high enough into the stage. The entire game is Dreamland themed actually. Well, I tried to get to Wispy Woods for 40 minutes straight and that's the first stage. Every time I'd defeat all the cappies in the little bonus game and make the warp star appear, something would make me fall down again. So yeah, I never even got to fight any of the bosses because I was just so frustrated trying to even get to the very first one in the first place. After giving up on the first stage then, I just decided to play the other two for a bit as well before calling it quits. There's 4 bosses in total, the three from the stages and then Dedede at the end. Idk if you have to do every stage and Dedede in one continue, because if so that's pretty ridiculous with how random pinball can be.
This review seems overly negative and yeah I was getting frustrated when playing and still don't care fit it much but for a simple pinball game, it's not bad. I'm giving it a bit of slack since it is an OG Gameboy game (and also maybe me not being much a fan is just a big skill issue). The Dreamland 1 visuals and references are nice and the music's nice too (most of it is just reused from Dreamland tho). Just maybe don't try to actually beat this game cuz you'll also get frustrated unless you have a high tolerance for random pinball BS lol. It's been a while since I played a game and didn't finish it, and I really hate doing that especially for a Kirby marathon like this, but idk man I just can't do it lol. Looking forward to playing Dream Course next!
Edit: In retrospect, maybe a 5 is too generous, especially since I couldn't even get to a boss cuz I had enough at that point. So I'll drop it to a 4.
2015
After hearing the news that the 3DS/Wii U's online services were shutting down, the first thing that popped in my head was replaying this game's online one last time.
Back in 2015, I remember seeing the trailer for this game and thinking it looked really cool. I never played an online shooter in my life, but this one actually interested me with its colorful art style and interesting concept. The day of release, I ask my dad if he could pick the game up on his way from work and when he came home, not only did he have the game..he had an Inkling Boy amiibo as well. That basically kickstarted my Amiibo addiction around that time but that's a story for another time. Anyways, I ended up enjoying Splatoon a ton. I remember the day after I got it, I had a relatives party to go to and I could only think about playing this game. This game consumed my whole summer, I loved it so much. Playing every Splatfest, seeing every update as they roll out, I was hooked for a couple months. Part of that is because I had no school of course, because once September arrived I didn't play this game nearly as much as before. Still, May-August 2015 was the summer of Splatoon and I'll never forget it.
Anyways, time to actually review the game lol. I think the most striking aspect is just how stylish this game is. From the different outfits you can wear, to the more experimental soundtrack, to the unique art styles that appear in the sunken scrolls. I've seen people compare this game to Jet Set Radio cuz of it's sort of counter culture type attitude and ofc its stylishness and appeal to the younger demographic and I can totally see it. It can be really influential playing this as a young lad, and it certainly worked for me.
Speaking of the music, I've seen some individuals on this site specifically call it bad and I just don't see it. Sure, it's not everyone's cup of tea but the OST is really well done honestly. Splattack! is of course a classic and Ink Me Up brings me right back to participating in Splatfests all day. Those are my two favorites but the whole OST is great. I think Splatoon 2 is great and all and probably the objectively better game, but if there's anything I prefer more in 1, its the soundtrack.
The meat and potatoes of this game however is it's online matches. This game doesn't have as much content or modes as 2 (and god it was pretty barebones at launch I'll admit that) but it's still a ton of fun to play a match or two. I was able to play a couple turf war and ranked matches and they were still fun. I remember raging so hard whenever I would lose on ranked matches, I had issues lol. Still, I wish Urchin Underpass and Saltspray Rig were in future games, I miss em lol. Sadly couldn't play them during this last play session but I remember they were some of my favorites.
I did also replay the campaign, and it's still fun as it was back then. Sure, it's no octo expansion and probably worse than 2's, but I always enjoyed it personally. I don't know if it's weird to say but I kinda get Mario Galaxy vibes from it. Just going from section to section using the launchpads and seeing the really cool backgrounds in each level. Always got that vibe. It does get a bit formulaic having every 5th and 6th level be the same level type, however overall, I really enjoyed the single player. At least you can still play that even with the online off.
This game may have been a bit obsolete in the eyes of a lot of people once 2 and eventually 3 came out. However, 2 I never got into nearly as much so my memories of 1 really outshine it. It's not perfect but this game will always hold a special place in my heart and is one of the first things I think of when the year 2015 is brought up. Rest In Piece Splatoon 1 online and the 3DS/Wii U online in general, I loved you dearly.
Back in 2015, I remember seeing the trailer for this game and thinking it looked really cool. I never played an online shooter in my life, but this one actually interested me with its colorful art style and interesting concept. The day of release, I ask my dad if he could pick the game up on his way from work and when he came home, not only did he have the game..he had an Inkling Boy amiibo as well. That basically kickstarted my Amiibo addiction around that time but that's a story for another time. Anyways, I ended up enjoying Splatoon a ton. I remember the day after I got it, I had a relatives party to go to and I could only think about playing this game. This game consumed my whole summer, I loved it so much. Playing every Splatfest, seeing every update as they roll out, I was hooked for a couple months. Part of that is because I had no school of course, because once September arrived I didn't play this game nearly as much as before. Still, May-August 2015 was the summer of Splatoon and I'll never forget it.
Anyways, time to actually review the game lol. I think the most striking aspect is just how stylish this game is. From the different outfits you can wear, to the more experimental soundtrack, to the unique art styles that appear in the sunken scrolls. I've seen people compare this game to Jet Set Radio cuz of it's sort of counter culture type attitude and ofc its stylishness and appeal to the younger demographic and I can totally see it. It can be really influential playing this as a young lad, and it certainly worked for me.
Speaking of the music, I've seen some individuals on this site specifically call it bad and I just don't see it. Sure, it's not everyone's cup of tea but the OST is really well done honestly. Splattack! is of course a classic and Ink Me Up brings me right back to participating in Splatfests all day. Those are my two favorites but the whole OST is great. I think Splatoon 2 is great and all and probably the objectively better game, but if there's anything I prefer more in 1, its the soundtrack.
The meat and potatoes of this game however is it's online matches. This game doesn't have as much content or modes as 2 (and god it was pretty barebones at launch I'll admit that) but it's still a ton of fun to play a match or two. I was able to play a couple turf war and ranked matches and they were still fun. I remember raging so hard whenever I would lose on ranked matches, I had issues lol. Still, I wish Urchin Underpass and Saltspray Rig were in future games, I miss em lol. Sadly couldn't play them during this last play session but I remember they were some of my favorites.
I did also replay the campaign, and it's still fun as it was back then. Sure, it's no octo expansion and probably worse than 2's, but I always enjoyed it personally. I don't know if it's weird to say but I kinda get Mario Galaxy vibes from it. Just going from section to section using the launchpads and seeing the really cool backgrounds in each level. Always got that vibe. It does get a bit formulaic having every 5th and 6th level be the same level type, however overall, I really enjoyed the single player. At least you can still play that even with the online off.
This game may have been a bit obsolete in the eyes of a lot of people once 2 and eventually 3 came out. However, 2 I never got into nearly as much so my memories of 1 really outshine it. It's not perfect but this game will always hold a special place in my heart and is one of the first things I think of when the year 2015 is brought up. Rest In Piece Splatoon 1 online and the 3DS/Wii U online in general, I loved you dearly.
2003
This is gonna be a conflicting one.
In 2021, I first saw the trailer for NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139. I was a huge fan of Automata and had also played a bit of Gestalt before dropping it, so I was no stranger to the series. I wanted to play Replicant but also wanted to play every prior game beforehand. Alongside going back to Gestalt and finally beating that, I also decided to buy both Drakengard and Drakengard 3 since I knew they were connected to the series somehow. Fast forward to 2022, I randomly decide to finally dive into the Drakengard games. I play up until like chapter 3 or 4 I think and drop the game due to a skill issue. What did I think of it? I thought it was shit! Not only did I not like the gameplay, which most people don't ofc, I also just thought the story was super boring up to that point. The story was the main reason you'd be playing the game, so for me to not be into the characters or story at all, I just wasn't motivated to continue playing it. Fast forward to present day, fellow user Lemonstrade eggs me on to play it as a joke. Well I didn't back down and decided to beat it this time. The first mission or two, I immediately thought "yup this is still shit". But then I remembered some of the gameplay mechanics that made the game more tolerable and bada bing, I started to enjoy myself more.
So let's get into the absolute most contentious aspect of the game, the gameplay. The biggest issue I had with it, and it's still its biggest issue now, is it doesn't flow the best due to the camera. It's a fixed camera depending on what way you're facing and the right stick only tilts the screen a bit and goes back in place when you let go of it. If there's an enemy behind you, this can be really clunky feeling as you manually have to face the enemy before you can see them in front of you. I got used to this pretty quickly but this is the only major issue I had with the gameplay tbh. Otherwise, it's just a perfectly fine hack and slash/musou game. The actual gameplay, not including camera issues, is perfectly serviceable I felt. It actually does get satisfying killing hoardes of enemies while the side characters talk about how brutal Caim is. That plus there's combos that can knock enemies down which makes the gameplay more tolerable, there's summonable characters that can just mow down hoardes of enemies like nothing and the magic that changes depending on what weapon you're using. The combat is surprisingly more in depth than you'd think, and that's not even getting into the air combat. I found that more enjoyable from the start tho that can be even more frustrating than the ground combat at points just because how slow it is to aim sometimes. That's only an issue with later encounters and bosses but either way, the combat in this game? Not bad honestly, it's not great ofc but in the end I found it a lot enjoyable than when I played the game initially.
The music is honestly super fitting and also really experimental and out there. A big chunk of the songs sound like looping messes. It kind of sounds shit at first, and look I aint listening to the OST outside of the game, but it really is memorable. Playing this 2 years later, I still remembered all the early game songs. I wouldn't say I actually "like" the ost, except for maybe a couple of the more comprehensible songs, but it's still a good ost since the game is trying to drive you crazy.
Diving right into the story, I'm gonna just say it. I didn't think it was mind-blowing at all or even that amazing. My issue with not caring about the story or the characters still applied to a good chunk of my playtime here. It wasn't until like the last third, and all the endings, where I was actually interested. I really really enjoyed how crazy it got near the end, and I really loved the dark fantasy elements. I just wish more of the game was like that, and that the earlier chapters weren't so boring. But I also think that was the whole point, it was to subvert expectations and make you think it'll just be a boring fantasy game only to surprise you with all that craziness in the endgame. It also wasn't until post ending A, where you got cutscenes with all the side characters. Those were entertaining every once in a while but I just did not care about the cast in this game. Even Caim, who has an iconic design (which may have been caused by a very iconic user on this site) I just didn't like as much as I should've. I know the whole point of him not speaking is for the characters to describe how awful his slaughtering is and for you the player to basically take his role. That's a cool concept but it just made me not care about his character. It's funny how I'm more positive on the overall gameplay than the story, but the peaks of the endgame story cutscenes overshadow everything else at least. I just wish there was more idk. Also, that final boss, holy shit idk how you're supposed to do that without the pause trick or looking up inputs. I had to do both cuz otherwise I would've just not beaten the game lol.
Additionally, I may not really care about the cast in this game, but I can't deny the voice acting is actually surprisingly good. It's a mix of British and American voice actors but it works surprisingly well, especially for a game from 2003. Aroch, specifically when you summon her and she screams "WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN", holy crap is it satisfying. Idk who voices her but that voice actress was cooking.
So yeah, like I said, it's a very conflicting game for me. Usually you see people either loving or hating this one but I just personally think it's a decent little game that does some really unique things. I'm glad to finally have beaten this as a huge NieR fan and I'm glad I did end up enjoying this one overall. Excited to play 3 in the future, tho I also own that physically too and idk if I'm ready for the framerate lol.
6.5/10
In 2021, I first saw the trailer for NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139. I was a huge fan of Automata and had also played a bit of Gestalt before dropping it, so I was no stranger to the series. I wanted to play Replicant but also wanted to play every prior game beforehand. Alongside going back to Gestalt and finally beating that, I also decided to buy both Drakengard and Drakengard 3 since I knew they were connected to the series somehow. Fast forward to 2022, I randomly decide to finally dive into the Drakengard games. I play up until like chapter 3 or 4 I think and drop the game due to a skill issue. What did I think of it? I thought it was shit! Not only did I not like the gameplay, which most people don't ofc, I also just thought the story was super boring up to that point. The story was the main reason you'd be playing the game, so for me to not be into the characters or story at all, I just wasn't motivated to continue playing it. Fast forward to present day, fellow user Lemonstrade eggs me on to play it as a joke. Well I didn't back down and decided to beat it this time. The first mission or two, I immediately thought "yup this is still shit". But then I remembered some of the gameplay mechanics that made the game more tolerable and bada bing, I started to enjoy myself more.
So let's get into the absolute most contentious aspect of the game, the gameplay. The biggest issue I had with it, and it's still its biggest issue now, is it doesn't flow the best due to the camera. It's a fixed camera depending on what way you're facing and the right stick only tilts the screen a bit and goes back in place when you let go of it. If there's an enemy behind you, this can be really clunky feeling as you manually have to face the enemy before you can see them in front of you. I got used to this pretty quickly but this is the only major issue I had with the gameplay tbh. Otherwise, it's just a perfectly fine hack and slash/musou game. The actual gameplay, not including camera issues, is perfectly serviceable I felt. It actually does get satisfying killing hoardes of enemies while the side characters talk about how brutal Caim is. That plus there's combos that can knock enemies down which makes the gameplay more tolerable, there's summonable characters that can just mow down hoardes of enemies like nothing and the magic that changes depending on what weapon you're using. The combat is surprisingly more in depth than you'd think, and that's not even getting into the air combat. I found that more enjoyable from the start tho that can be even more frustrating than the ground combat at points just because how slow it is to aim sometimes. That's only an issue with later encounters and bosses but either way, the combat in this game? Not bad honestly, it's not great ofc but in the end I found it a lot enjoyable than when I played the game initially.
The music is honestly super fitting and also really experimental and out there. A big chunk of the songs sound like looping messes. It kind of sounds shit at first, and look I aint listening to the OST outside of the game, but it really is memorable. Playing this 2 years later, I still remembered all the early game songs. I wouldn't say I actually "like" the ost, except for maybe a couple of the more comprehensible songs, but it's still a good ost since the game is trying to drive you crazy.
Diving right into the story, I'm gonna just say it. I didn't think it was mind-blowing at all or even that amazing. My issue with not caring about the story or the characters still applied to a good chunk of my playtime here. It wasn't until like the last third, and all the endings, where I was actually interested. I really really enjoyed how crazy it got near the end, and I really loved the dark fantasy elements. I just wish more of the game was like that, and that the earlier chapters weren't so boring. But I also think that was the whole point, it was to subvert expectations and make you think it'll just be a boring fantasy game only to surprise you with all that craziness in the endgame. It also wasn't until post ending A, where you got cutscenes with all the side characters. Those were entertaining every once in a while but I just did not care about the cast in this game. Even Caim, who has an iconic design (which may have been caused by a very iconic user on this site) I just didn't like as much as I should've. I know the whole point of him not speaking is for the characters to describe how awful his slaughtering is and for you the player to basically take his role. That's a cool concept but it just made me not care about his character. It's funny how I'm more positive on the overall gameplay than the story, but the peaks of the endgame story cutscenes overshadow everything else at least. I just wish there was more idk. Also, that final boss, holy shit idk how you're supposed to do that without the pause trick or looking up inputs. I had to do both cuz otherwise I would've just not beaten the game lol.
Additionally, I may not really care about the cast in this game, but I can't deny the voice acting is actually surprisingly good. It's a mix of British and American voice actors but it works surprisingly well, especially for a game from 2003. Aroch, specifically when you summon her and she screams "WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN", holy crap is it satisfying. Idk who voices her but that voice actress was cooking.
So yeah, like I said, it's a very conflicting game for me. Usually you see people either loving or hating this one but I just personally think it's a decent little game that does some really unique things. I'm glad to finally have beaten this as a huge NieR fan and I'm glad I did end up enjoying this one overall. Excited to play 3 in the future, tho I also own that physically too and idk if I'm ready for the framerate lol.
6.5/10
1993
Kirby's Adventure was actually the first game I ever let's played when I still had my old YouTube channel back in the day. I chose it because around that time, I got an NES and figured it was a good game to play first because it's so easy. Turns out, I really sucked at the game lol. Since I was using a camcorder and didn't know how to edit videos, I had to keep every single death in too. I may have sucked ass but I truly wish I still had those videos, as sadly they're lost to time now. Anyways, playing this again brought me right back to those memories of making the videos 10+ years ago, good AND bad memories.
Let's start with the biggest addition, the copy abilities. This was the first game to have then. And it kinda shows. You have a ton of classic abilities here; sword, hammer, cutter, needle etc. The NES was very limited with its buttons, so the move sets are super simplistic, but it works well. The reason I said "it kinda shows" was they have abilities that would later just be combined into one. Ice/freeze and fire/fireball. Freeze and fireball are both so much better than ice and fire, there was just no need to have both. But of course, they had to be split due to the NES controller only having two face buttons. Overall, a decent selection of copy abilities but not great imo.
For an NES game, and compared to dreamland 1's graphics, this game looks great. While I'm personally just not a fan of how NES games look in general, this game does have a very consistent color palette which I can commend. It's no Dreamland 3, but again it looks nice for the console it's on.
The OST is ofc good again, all Kirby games are. This game introduced a buncha songs that have become staples now. Butter Bridge is a big one, such a banger. Honestly might be my favorite version of that song too, it's that clean.
The level design is solid though I feel like no level really sticks out and they all just blend together. The levels have these switches that you can find in the stages that unlock little parts of the map outside of the levels, and let me tell you some of them are mean. I only found a couple this playthrough, but I feel like with some of them, you'd absolutely need a guide. Like I said, there's a map. Besides the main levels, there's other stuff you can do. There's little arena sections where you can fight a boss for a maxim tomato. There's a copy ability room where you can get a specific ability anytime you want. And then there's the little minigames that can net you some lives. All of them are fun but my personal favorite was always the crane game.
Something I did not like back then, and this still applies to the NSO version, is the lag that happens in game. Every single room you're gonna get some sort of lag, and sometimes it chugs hard when there's like 4 enemies on screen or a fire/ice/electric effect is happening. I get they wanted to make the game look super good but it was at the cost of the game not running well which stinks. Apparently the 3DS version fixes this funnily enough? But the E-Shop is now closed so ahhh that blows. Also I never really liked how you barely have any invincibility frames in this game. The game is easy but it can be super easy for enemies to stun lock you in certain circumstances, especially since enemies respawn. Not a huge issue but it did annoy me somewhat even on this replay.
This game brings back a lot of good memories but sadly this was never one of my favorite Kirby games. It's definitely a solid time but I like most of the other mainline games more. Honestly, I think I like Dreamland 1 more just because it's so short and comfy. Ah well, still recommended for anyone looking to get into Kirby or NES games in general!
Let's start with the biggest addition, the copy abilities. This was the first game to have then. And it kinda shows. You have a ton of classic abilities here; sword, hammer, cutter, needle etc. The NES was very limited with its buttons, so the move sets are super simplistic, but it works well. The reason I said "it kinda shows" was they have abilities that would later just be combined into one. Ice/freeze and fire/fireball. Freeze and fireball are both so much better than ice and fire, there was just no need to have both. But of course, they had to be split due to the NES controller only having two face buttons. Overall, a decent selection of copy abilities but not great imo.
For an NES game, and compared to dreamland 1's graphics, this game looks great. While I'm personally just not a fan of how NES games look in general, this game does have a very consistent color palette which I can commend. It's no Dreamland 3, but again it looks nice for the console it's on.
The OST is ofc good again, all Kirby games are. This game introduced a buncha songs that have become staples now. Butter Bridge is a big one, such a banger. Honestly might be my favorite version of that song too, it's that clean.
The level design is solid though I feel like no level really sticks out and they all just blend together. The levels have these switches that you can find in the stages that unlock little parts of the map outside of the levels, and let me tell you some of them are mean. I only found a couple this playthrough, but I feel like with some of them, you'd absolutely need a guide. Like I said, there's a map. Besides the main levels, there's other stuff you can do. There's little arena sections where you can fight a boss for a maxim tomato. There's a copy ability room where you can get a specific ability anytime you want. And then there's the little minigames that can net you some lives. All of them are fun but my personal favorite was always the crane game.
Something I did not like back then, and this still applies to the NSO version, is the lag that happens in game. Every single room you're gonna get some sort of lag, and sometimes it chugs hard when there's like 4 enemies on screen or a fire/ice/electric effect is happening. I get they wanted to make the game look super good but it was at the cost of the game not running well which stinks. Apparently the 3DS version fixes this funnily enough? But the E-Shop is now closed so ahhh that blows. Also I never really liked how you barely have any invincibility frames in this game. The game is easy but it can be super easy for enemies to stun lock you in certain circumstances, especially since enemies respawn. Not a huge issue but it did annoy me somewhat even on this replay.
This game brings back a lot of good memories but sadly this was never one of my favorite Kirby games. It's definitely a solid time but I like most of the other mainline games more. Honestly, I think I like Dreamland 1 more just because it's so short and comfy. Ah well, still recommended for anyone looking to get into Kirby or NES games in general!
1992
The first Gameboy game I ever bought for myself was this. My dad had passed down his OG gameboy along with Tetris and Kwirk, but Kirby's Dreamland was special in it was the first one I got of my own volition. I still remember buying it for $5 at the flea market back in the day. I still remember first discovering I could play original Gameboy games on my GBA because of this game. In fact, this might've been my first ever Kirby game period (it was either this or Return to Dreamland). I've played this game several times prior to this, and even now, it was still fun.
The game is quite short, only taking around an hour or less to beat, but I think that's actually really nice with a game like this. It does not overstay its welcome and if it was way longer, idk if I'd like it much. This is the first Kirby game and so it's super simple. There's only 5 stages in the game, with a boss at the end of them. It's really not that hard of a game at all, that's what Kirby is known for and it applies to his first game as well. Copy abilities weren't a thing at all until Adventure, so the gameplay in this is super simplistic. But like I said, it's short so I don't really have much of an issue with it.
For a Gameboy game, this has a super nice soundtrack. Every single song is memorable, though maybe that's also because I've played this several times, but I think a big reason for that besides them being good is the fact they get reused a lot in later games. I think the only song I haven't heard in later games is the spicy curry theme, all the rest are iconic whether it's Green Greens or the invincibility lollipop theme or Dedede's theme. Kirby has been known to never have a bad soundtrack and yeah it applies here too.
Something I'm not really much of a fan of is extra mode. I tried it out a bit again here but I still can never get far. I've never beaten it before but it's because instead of being a bit harder, it goes full into bullshit mode and not only do I not find that fun, it doesn't feel fitting for Kirby. Kirby's known for easy main playthroughs but hard side content but it's too much in this game I feel.
I never found this game amazing at all but I have fond memories with this one. It's one of the better Gameboy games I've played for sure. I plan on going through every Kirby game eventually now so consider this the start of my Kirby reviews cuz yeah I'm gonna review most of them. Don't expect it to be like my Mario Kart marathon tho since there's way more Kirby games and I don't wanna get burnt out lol.
Edit: Bumped up to a 7
The game is quite short, only taking around an hour or less to beat, but I think that's actually really nice with a game like this. It does not overstay its welcome and if it was way longer, idk if I'd like it much. This is the first Kirby game and so it's super simple. There's only 5 stages in the game, with a boss at the end of them. It's really not that hard of a game at all, that's what Kirby is known for and it applies to his first game as well. Copy abilities weren't a thing at all until Adventure, so the gameplay in this is super simplistic. But like I said, it's short so I don't really have much of an issue with it.
For a Gameboy game, this has a super nice soundtrack. Every single song is memorable, though maybe that's also because I've played this several times, but I think a big reason for that besides them being good is the fact they get reused a lot in later games. I think the only song I haven't heard in later games is the spicy curry theme, all the rest are iconic whether it's Green Greens or the invincibility lollipop theme or Dedede's theme. Kirby has been known to never have a bad soundtrack and yeah it applies here too.
Something I'm not really much of a fan of is extra mode. I tried it out a bit again here but I still can never get far. I've never beaten it before but it's because instead of being a bit harder, it goes full into bullshit mode and not only do I not find that fun, it doesn't feel fitting for Kirby. Kirby's known for easy main playthroughs but hard side content but it's too much in this game I feel.
I never found this game amazing at all but I have fond memories with this one. It's one of the better Gameboy games I've played for sure. I plan on going through every Kirby game eventually now so consider this the start of my Kirby reviews cuz yeah I'm gonna review most of them. Don't expect it to be like my Mario Kart marathon tho since there's way more Kirby games and I don't wanna get burnt out lol.
Edit: Bumped up to a 7
While in the middle of my Cult of the Lamb playthrough, my power went out for 4 hours. In that time, I had nothing to do except go on my phone but eventually it died. I remembered my 3DS was fully charged and so I decided to look through my DS/3DS games to see if I can be productive and replay something I hadn't in a while. Decided on the original New Super Mario Bros, since I hadn't played the series in years. After playing through the first world, my power came back on not long after. Decided to continue replaying this even with the power back on so here we are.
The New Super Mario Bros games were not games I ever truly loved. Yes, by the time 2 and U came out, the series became super stale. But even with DS and Wii, I never found them amazing at all. Replaying DS, this seems to still be true for me. In fact, this may be my least favorite of the bunch, at least next to 2 for several different reasons. Even despite that however, it's still a fun time overall and worth coming back to for a certain addition I'll talk about later.
First thing you'll notice when playing the game, would be its graphics. Personally, I always thought the NSMB games had a fine enough artstyle tho I much prefer how the sprite-based games looked in the past. DS though is sadly the ugliest in the series now. It was certainly a marvel back then but nowadays, just looks kinda ugly a lot of the time compared to the other titles.
Level design-wise, the game has plenty of levels that actually are pretty memorable. The sewers level, the giant wiggler level, the pipe maze level, the fucking brutal 8-1 level with the birds. I wish more of the levels were memorable like these, since a large chunk can be forgettable but I was surprised just how many I ended up remembering. This game also added the star coin collectable and honestly, they can be a tremendous pain in this game. They don't hide them behind invisible walls like future game but some of them require a powerup from other levels or toad houses and it can be frustrating. Same with the secret exits (which came back from Mario World). Like a third of those require the aforementioned outside powerup and they're a pain. I do recommend going for 100% tho cuz once you beat the game, you can actually buy bottom screen skins with any star coins you have and I never knew this and it's awesome. Such a great reward for going out of your way to get them.
One more aspect of the gameplay I wanted to get into were the powerups. 80% of the game you'll be seeing the fire flower which is a good powerup of course. The other 20%, you'll see the three new ones (and the classic star I guess) and I gotta say they're not that great. The mega mushroom is a great concept and is fun to use but is barely in any levels naturally. The mini mushroom is also not used that much and I honestly never liked much just because it's so floaty. And the shell is just obnoxious since you start moving on your own the moment you hit top speed and you have to manually stop to get out of your shell. I'm sure it's super fun when speed running but alas, it just annoyed me more than anything. This is another thing I think future games did better, especially WIi, that one has a great selection of powerups.
I really don't have much to say about the soundtrack. It's alright at best I think and it doesn't help the 1-1 theme gets reused in Wii. I did actually like the map theme for world 7 though, something about that feels so nostalgic. This game is somewhat nostalgic to me since I remember seeing a classmate play this on field trip bus ride when I was 8 and thinking it looked so cool. Never ended up playing the main campaign until after I played the other 3 NSMB games but my memory of that bus ride is engrained in my memory, and part of me thinks that classmate was on world 7 that day which might explain why the song feels so nostalgic. Either way, besides that one song I really like, never cared for the game's ost sadly.
This is all fine and dandy, but the real reason I think someone should come back to this one is its multiplayer modes. Minigames are a blast to play, even if most of them are ported straight from 64 DS, but there are a couple new ones which is nice. I probably played these more than the actual game back in the day. The Mario vs Luigi mode was also a lot of fun back in the day too. The goal was to get the most stars and you could steal them from the opposite Mario brother. Was just really fun constantly screwing the other person over. Though I guess since (most of) the minigames are in 64 DS and future games had multiplayer in it's campaigns, these aren't amazing reasons to come back to NSMB DS specifically, but it's still a nice little package of multiplayer goodness overall.
Like I said, was never a huge fan of the New Super Mario Bros games, and while this still rings true...I'd say this was still a fun time overall. Would be fun to replay them all but I'd have to spread them out considering how samey they are lol.
The New Super Mario Bros games were not games I ever truly loved. Yes, by the time 2 and U came out, the series became super stale. But even with DS and Wii, I never found them amazing at all. Replaying DS, this seems to still be true for me. In fact, this may be my least favorite of the bunch, at least next to 2 for several different reasons. Even despite that however, it's still a fun time overall and worth coming back to for a certain addition I'll talk about later.
First thing you'll notice when playing the game, would be its graphics. Personally, I always thought the NSMB games had a fine enough artstyle tho I much prefer how the sprite-based games looked in the past. DS though is sadly the ugliest in the series now. It was certainly a marvel back then but nowadays, just looks kinda ugly a lot of the time compared to the other titles.
Level design-wise, the game has plenty of levels that actually are pretty memorable. The sewers level, the giant wiggler level, the pipe maze level, the fucking brutal 8-1 level with the birds. I wish more of the levels were memorable like these, since a large chunk can be forgettable but I was surprised just how many I ended up remembering. This game also added the star coin collectable and honestly, they can be a tremendous pain in this game. They don't hide them behind invisible walls like future game but some of them require a powerup from other levels or toad houses and it can be frustrating. Same with the secret exits (which came back from Mario World). Like a third of those require the aforementioned outside powerup and they're a pain. I do recommend going for 100% tho cuz once you beat the game, you can actually buy bottom screen skins with any star coins you have and I never knew this and it's awesome. Such a great reward for going out of your way to get them.
One more aspect of the gameplay I wanted to get into were the powerups. 80% of the game you'll be seeing the fire flower which is a good powerup of course. The other 20%, you'll see the three new ones (and the classic star I guess) and I gotta say they're not that great. The mega mushroom is a great concept and is fun to use but is barely in any levels naturally. The mini mushroom is also not used that much and I honestly never liked much just because it's so floaty. And the shell is just obnoxious since you start moving on your own the moment you hit top speed and you have to manually stop to get out of your shell. I'm sure it's super fun when speed running but alas, it just annoyed me more than anything. This is another thing I think future games did better, especially WIi, that one has a great selection of powerups.
I really don't have much to say about the soundtrack. It's alright at best I think and it doesn't help the 1-1 theme gets reused in Wii. I did actually like the map theme for world 7 though, something about that feels so nostalgic. This game is somewhat nostalgic to me since I remember seeing a classmate play this on field trip bus ride when I was 8 and thinking it looked so cool. Never ended up playing the main campaign until after I played the other 3 NSMB games but my memory of that bus ride is engrained in my memory, and part of me thinks that classmate was on world 7 that day which might explain why the song feels so nostalgic. Either way, besides that one song I really like, never cared for the game's ost sadly.
This is all fine and dandy, but the real reason I think someone should come back to this one is its multiplayer modes. Minigames are a blast to play, even if most of them are ported straight from 64 DS, but there are a couple new ones which is nice. I probably played these more than the actual game back in the day. The Mario vs Luigi mode was also a lot of fun back in the day too. The goal was to get the most stars and you could steal them from the opposite Mario brother. Was just really fun constantly screwing the other person over. Though I guess since (most of) the minigames are in 64 DS and future games had multiplayer in it's campaigns, these aren't amazing reasons to come back to NSMB DS specifically, but it's still a nice little package of multiplayer goodness overall.
Like I said, was never a huge fan of the New Super Mario Bros games, and while this still rings true...I'd say this was still a fun time overall. Would be fun to replay them all but I'd have to spread them out considering how samey they are lol.
2022
The only roguelite I ever got into majorly was the Binding of Isaac. I played Hades and Returnal but while I thought those were fun, I never played them for too long unlike Isaac (I should get back to them though). Cult of the Lamb however is now the 2nd roguelite I've ever beaten a run of. Did I like it? Yeah I enjoyed myself but compared to something like the Binding of Isaac, this game's lacking a bit.
The first thing you'll notice about this game is it's not just a roguelite. It's also a management simulation type game. Basically, the times you won't be playing through the roguelite sections, you'll be working with your cult on a day to day basis. You have to make sure they're fed, make sure they have beds to sleep on, make sure to clean their literal shit as well as making them do tasks like harvesting crops or mining rocks and stuff. Also, since you're the leader of a cult, you can also perform rituals and sermons daily. At first I found this really refreshing and a nice break from the roguelite sections. Well, I'd say its the other way around as you'll be in this mode a lot more than the roguelite sections. While this part of the game is fun, it never gets super fleshed out at all and becomes a bit tiring in the endgame, at least for me. I will say, this part of the game did kinda freak me out with the depictions of cult behavior. Idk why honestly since I don't get freaked out by stuff like this usually but after a bit I got used to it.
In between these simulator parts are the roguelite sections. Compared to something like Isaac, these are not fleshed out at all. They're fun but in terms of content, there's not much here. You have a small assortment of weapons to choose from. They can have passive abilities but each type plays the exact same each time. You have a regular attack, then a strong attack which uses fervor as well as specials you can collect that also use fervor. Fervor is basically just like SP you can collect from enemies to perform these moves. You don't have much in terms of a move set and it pales in comparison to Isaac's many synergies. You can also get tarot cards and relics which both provide other upgrades or abilities but there aren't many of those either and I kept getting the same ones a lot of the time. The bosses are pretty fun I will say and while I didn't find this game hard really, some of the later bosses can be tricky. In the early game, I was having a blast with the simulator section and less fun with the roguelite section, but in the endgame, it was the opposite except the roguelite section was just fun rather than a blast.
I will say, probably the aspect that holds up the best is the art style. Despite some of the disturbing stuff you can do in this game, it never is that bad (despite me being creeped out at first) because of how cutesy everything looks. In general, it's just a really nice art style and everything looks really good, as long as it doesn't glitch out on you.
Yeah uh, I saw some people mentioning glitches and while they never bothered me, it is worth mentioning. I played the PS5 version and every time the start of a new day happened; the game would literally freeze for 5 seconds each time. You get used to it but the first time it happened I thought the game crashed lol. I also had an issue where followers would glitch out and work on something like a block or two away from where it should be so it looks like they're working on nothing which is distracting. Also had a glitch at the very end of the game where the floor texture would go from looking normal to being reflective like water. Idk if all this is just in the PS5 version but it all happened throughout my game and it's worth mentioning.
Overall, I enjoyed myself, but I wish a lot of the game was more fleshed out. The simulator and roguelite sections are fun but because they're trying to balance the two, neither feels super rewarding in the end. The fun concept, cute art style and really fun early game is what made me enjoy this game in the end. Just wish it was better overall. Also didn't bother with the platinum despite it seeming easy enough. Looks like it requires way more playtime than I'm up for lol.
The first thing you'll notice about this game is it's not just a roguelite. It's also a management simulation type game. Basically, the times you won't be playing through the roguelite sections, you'll be working with your cult on a day to day basis. You have to make sure they're fed, make sure they have beds to sleep on, make sure to clean their literal shit as well as making them do tasks like harvesting crops or mining rocks and stuff. Also, since you're the leader of a cult, you can also perform rituals and sermons daily. At first I found this really refreshing and a nice break from the roguelite sections. Well, I'd say its the other way around as you'll be in this mode a lot more than the roguelite sections. While this part of the game is fun, it never gets super fleshed out at all and becomes a bit tiring in the endgame, at least for me. I will say, this part of the game did kinda freak me out with the depictions of cult behavior. Idk why honestly since I don't get freaked out by stuff like this usually but after a bit I got used to it.
In between these simulator parts are the roguelite sections. Compared to something like Isaac, these are not fleshed out at all. They're fun but in terms of content, there's not much here. You have a small assortment of weapons to choose from. They can have passive abilities but each type plays the exact same each time. You have a regular attack, then a strong attack which uses fervor as well as specials you can collect that also use fervor. Fervor is basically just like SP you can collect from enemies to perform these moves. You don't have much in terms of a move set and it pales in comparison to Isaac's many synergies. You can also get tarot cards and relics which both provide other upgrades or abilities but there aren't many of those either and I kept getting the same ones a lot of the time. The bosses are pretty fun I will say and while I didn't find this game hard really, some of the later bosses can be tricky. In the early game, I was having a blast with the simulator section and less fun with the roguelite section, but in the endgame, it was the opposite except the roguelite section was just fun rather than a blast.
I will say, probably the aspect that holds up the best is the art style. Despite some of the disturbing stuff you can do in this game, it never is that bad (despite me being creeped out at first) because of how cutesy everything looks. In general, it's just a really nice art style and everything looks really good, as long as it doesn't glitch out on you.
Yeah uh, I saw some people mentioning glitches and while they never bothered me, it is worth mentioning. I played the PS5 version and every time the start of a new day happened; the game would literally freeze for 5 seconds each time. You get used to it but the first time it happened I thought the game crashed lol. I also had an issue where followers would glitch out and work on something like a block or two away from where it should be so it looks like they're working on nothing which is distracting. Also had a glitch at the very end of the game where the floor texture would go from looking normal to being reflective like water. Idk if all this is just in the PS5 version but it all happened throughout my game and it's worth mentioning.
Overall, I enjoyed myself, but I wish a lot of the game was more fleshed out. The simulator and roguelite sections are fun but because they're trying to balance the two, neither feels super rewarding in the end. The fun concept, cute art style and really fun early game is what made me enjoy this game in the end. Just wish it was better overall. Also didn't bother with the platinum despite it seeming easy enough. Looks like it requires way more playtime than I'm up for lol.
2007
All the way back in 2017, I played Persona 5. I picked it up on a whim the day after it released, because my friend loves the Persona series and recommended I get into it, and not too long after I was hooked. That same friend also gave me SMT4 around that same time and I didn't really get into at all. But it did get me more interested in Megaten as a whole. Fast forward to the Summer, I go to TooManyGames 2017. I remember seeing the Persona 5 collectors edition, man good times. Ah anyways, I also stumbled upon Persona 3 FES and Persona 4 inside a glass cabinet along with some other Megaten games. Naturally of them all, I was most interested in P3 and P4 seeing as I was a huge fan of 5. Knowing the price of the Raidou games, I wish I picked those up then since they were only $30 but in the end I bought both FES and P4. Oh, not at the convention btw. I bought them off eBay the day after cuz I realized you could get them for cheaper there. Anyways, to this day I still haven't touched vanilla P4 since I played Golden. But FES, I picked up and dropped several times over the years. I really don't know why it wasn't grabbing me but the furthest I ever until this most recent playthrough was the first full moon operation on the subway. Either way, I can say I've finally beaten Persona 3 FES and I'm happy to say I ended up enjoying it overall.
Let's start with the story. I think overall, it's good and has some really fantastic moments. The beginning scene where the MC awakens to his Persona, to the whole turning point in Junpei's arc near the end of the game (if you know you know) to the whole last hour or two. There's some super good moments throughout the game, I just wish the story's pacing was better. After the MC's awakening in the beginning, I found the story to be super slow up until the middle of the game where it starts picking up again. Then near the end before the grand finale I found it dragged a bit. Pacing-wise, I thought it was the worst of the nusona games but specific moment-wise it's some of the best in the series. I do think the whole theme of facing death head on and not being afraid of it and making the most of life is super strong though, especially in the end-game. They really hammer that theme into you by the end but it works really well.
The main cast is solid overall but it can be a mixed bag. I really liked Akihiko, Yukari, Junpei and Aigis by the end of the game. They all felt really fleshed out and I just liked them the most. Mitsuru is decent but I expected her to be better, idk why I found her somewhat bland. Fuuka and Ken are the definitely the weakest party members imo and a big part of that, besides just not caring about their characters as much, was their voice acting. This game has really solid voice acting (the 4 characters I listed at the beginning) and then it has some really awful voice acting (Fuuka, Ken, Shinjiro, the chairman). Fuuka especially man, she sounded more robotic than Aigis it's crazy. This no doubt took me out of the story a bit just cuz those 4 are so prominent. Oh and can't forget Koromaru, interesting that he's the only normal animal sidekick in which he doesnt actually speak but he's a good boy nonetheless.
Going into more of the game's characters, let's talk about the social links. They're a bit more hit or miss in this game compared to 4 and 5. Akinari may be the best social link in the entire series with how good it is. I was tearing up in literally every rank, no doubt due to the music that plays during it. Yukari, Maiko and Chihiro were probably my favorites then after Akinari. I didn't even think Gourmet King's was bad like some people say considering his whole backstory and everything making me sympathize with him. However, a lot of the others I just thought were decent, very meh or just straight up bad. The worst by far was Kenji's, one of the worst in the series imo and just such a nothing Social Link. Same with Bebe, just did absolutely nothing for me. I didn't love 4's social links either but I think overall they're better in that game, especially since there's no male party member SL in 3. Yeah that's a weird omission, along with being forced to romance all the school girl social links, just overall the weakest of the nusona social links imo. It's not a terrible first try at the social aspect tho, but it's clear it's the first game to try to tackle it. 5 definitely has the best social links I think even if there are a couple duds in that game as well.
Something I actually dissed on stupidly was the game's soundtrack. Idk what was wrong with me but I originally just thought it was out right bad (besides battle for everyone's souls) but have since realized it's actually a super great ost, liking it so much now I think I like it more than 4's soundtrack. 5 is still easily my favorite but never did I think I'd like 3's ost more than 4's. Some of my favorite songs were the aforementioned Battle For Everyone's Souls, Joy, Living With Determination, Memories of the City and many more. Honestly, absolutely insane how much my opinion on the OST changed but I'm super glad I can see now why people love it so much.
Just a couple of random things I liked before I get into the combat. I really like that in part with the theme of death, every single party member experiences the loss of a friend or relative throughout the story. It really makes the dorm's friendship more believable since they can all relate to each other. The 2nd awakenings are easily the best in the nusona games simply because they aren't tied to the social links and are apart of the main story. Really felt impactful, especially Junpei's goddamn man. Also really enjoyed the atmosphere, mostly in the Dark Hour and Tartarus. Seeing how each Tartarus block would look was fun.
Speaking of Tartarus, it's one of the most contentious aspects of the game (along with tactics of course). Some people really love it and some people despise it. Me? It's not terrible but it's definitely the worse of the Nusona dungeons imo (yes I like 4's more) and probably the worst of the PS2 megaten games in terms of its dungeons. Absolutely does not touch DDS1's dungeons for example, but I didn't hate it overall. At first, I was just not getting into it but after a while you get used to the flow of doing a bunch of floors, then social link stuff then Tartarus and repeat. Near the middle of the game is where I was sort of getting burnt out on it a bit, especially since you do have to grind in this game and around that point I feel like enemies weren't giving great exp. Maybe I was over leveled then, idk but near the end game I was getting loads more exp and my personas were actually good so I got over my burn out near the middle of the game. Either way, Tartarus is just meh imo. Thematically it works but gameplay wise it leaves a lot to be desired.
Funnily enough, I ended up thinking more positively on tactics this time around. I still definitely prefer controlling your party members, but tactics works really well for the most part. You just have to not be dumb and engage in the mechanic. If you simply set your party to act freely all the time, then yeah they're gonna do whatever and are more prone to do stupid shit. But if you set them accordingly then I don't see the issue at all really. In fact I found it fun the more tactics you got as you progressed. Though, one issue I personally had is when I want a group heal from Yukari. Someone is super low on health, while the others aren't as low but are still missing a chunk of their health. If only one party member has less than 50% of their health, then she'll single target them and that's it. In that case, I'd want to be able to control my party members but that was about it really. One more still doesn't touch press turn imo, and I'd take controllable party members over tactics I'd say but this game clearly is built around tactics and it works really well.
Honestly, super glad I ended up enjoying FES, even if it's my least favorite nusona and my least favorite PS2 Megaten game. I was expecting to actually dislike this one cuz that's how I felt the few times I tried to get into it. It has its faults but it also has its highs and yeah I recommend playing this even with Reload out now. It may fix some of this games issues idk, but this is still a good time I'd say. Going onto almost 7 years since I got into Persona and Megaten as a whole and I'm just happy to say I've beaten all the nusona games now!
Let's start with the story. I think overall, it's good and has some really fantastic moments. The beginning scene where the MC awakens to his Persona, to the whole turning point in Junpei's arc near the end of the game (if you know you know) to the whole last hour or two. There's some super good moments throughout the game, I just wish the story's pacing was better. After the MC's awakening in the beginning, I found the story to be super slow up until the middle of the game where it starts picking up again. Then near the end before the grand finale I found it dragged a bit. Pacing-wise, I thought it was the worst of the nusona games but specific moment-wise it's some of the best in the series. I do think the whole theme of facing death head on and not being afraid of it and making the most of life is super strong though, especially in the end-game. They really hammer that theme into you by the end but it works really well.
The main cast is solid overall but it can be a mixed bag. I really liked Akihiko, Yukari, Junpei and Aigis by the end of the game. They all felt really fleshed out and I just liked them the most. Mitsuru is decent but I expected her to be better, idk why I found her somewhat bland. Fuuka and Ken are the definitely the weakest party members imo and a big part of that, besides just not caring about their characters as much, was their voice acting. This game has really solid voice acting (the 4 characters I listed at the beginning) and then it has some really awful voice acting (Fuuka, Ken, Shinjiro, the chairman). Fuuka especially man, she sounded more robotic than Aigis it's crazy. This no doubt took me out of the story a bit just cuz those 4 are so prominent. Oh and can't forget Koromaru, interesting that he's the only normal animal sidekick in which he doesnt actually speak but he's a good boy nonetheless.
Going into more of the game's characters, let's talk about the social links. They're a bit more hit or miss in this game compared to 4 and 5. Akinari may be the best social link in the entire series with how good it is. I was tearing up in literally every rank, no doubt due to the music that plays during it. Yukari, Maiko and Chihiro were probably my favorites then after Akinari. I didn't even think Gourmet King's was bad like some people say considering his whole backstory and everything making me sympathize with him. However, a lot of the others I just thought were decent, very meh or just straight up bad. The worst by far was Kenji's, one of the worst in the series imo and just such a nothing Social Link. Same with Bebe, just did absolutely nothing for me. I didn't love 4's social links either but I think overall they're better in that game, especially since there's no male party member SL in 3. Yeah that's a weird omission, along with being forced to romance all the school girl social links, just overall the weakest of the nusona social links imo. It's not a terrible first try at the social aspect tho, but it's clear it's the first game to try to tackle it. 5 definitely has the best social links I think even if there are a couple duds in that game as well.
Something I actually dissed on stupidly was the game's soundtrack. Idk what was wrong with me but I originally just thought it was out right bad (besides battle for everyone's souls) but have since realized it's actually a super great ost, liking it so much now I think I like it more than 4's soundtrack. 5 is still easily my favorite but never did I think I'd like 3's ost more than 4's. Some of my favorite songs were the aforementioned Battle For Everyone's Souls, Joy, Living With Determination, Memories of the City and many more. Honestly, absolutely insane how much my opinion on the OST changed but I'm super glad I can see now why people love it so much.
Just a couple of random things I liked before I get into the combat. I really like that in part with the theme of death, every single party member experiences the loss of a friend or relative throughout the story. It really makes the dorm's friendship more believable since they can all relate to each other. The 2nd awakenings are easily the best in the nusona games simply because they aren't tied to the social links and are apart of the main story. Really felt impactful, especially Junpei's goddamn man. Also really enjoyed the atmosphere, mostly in the Dark Hour and Tartarus. Seeing how each Tartarus block would look was fun.
Speaking of Tartarus, it's one of the most contentious aspects of the game (along with tactics of course). Some people really love it and some people despise it. Me? It's not terrible but it's definitely the worse of the Nusona dungeons imo (yes I like 4's more) and probably the worst of the PS2 megaten games in terms of its dungeons. Absolutely does not touch DDS1's dungeons for example, but I didn't hate it overall. At first, I was just not getting into it but after a while you get used to the flow of doing a bunch of floors, then social link stuff then Tartarus and repeat. Near the middle of the game is where I was sort of getting burnt out on it a bit, especially since you do have to grind in this game and around that point I feel like enemies weren't giving great exp. Maybe I was over leveled then, idk but near the end game I was getting loads more exp and my personas were actually good so I got over my burn out near the middle of the game. Either way, Tartarus is just meh imo. Thematically it works but gameplay wise it leaves a lot to be desired.
Funnily enough, I ended up thinking more positively on tactics this time around. I still definitely prefer controlling your party members, but tactics works really well for the most part. You just have to not be dumb and engage in the mechanic. If you simply set your party to act freely all the time, then yeah they're gonna do whatever and are more prone to do stupid shit. But if you set them accordingly then I don't see the issue at all really. In fact I found it fun the more tactics you got as you progressed. Though, one issue I personally had is when I want a group heal from Yukari. Someone is super low on health, while the others aren't as low but are still missing a chunk of their health. If only one party member has less than 50% of their health, then she'll single target them and that's it. In that case, I'd want to be able to control my party members but that was about it really. One more still doesn't touch press turn imo, and I'd take controllable party members over tactics I'd say but this game clearly is built around tactics and it works really well.
Honestly, super glad I ended up enjoying FES, even if it's my least favorite nusona and my least favorite PS2 Megaten game. I was expecting to actually dislike this one cuz that's how I felt the few times I tried to get into it. It has its faults but it also has its highs and yeah I recommend playing this even with Reload out now. It may fix some of this games issues idk, but this is still a good time I'd say. Going onto almost 7 years since I got into Persona and Megaten as a whole and I'm just happy to say I've beaten all the nusona games now!