Extremely impressive game and certainly the best in vanillaware's catalog. 13 sentinels has an incredibly complex, interesting, and well-put-together sci-fi plot with tons of surprising twists and good character moments. Nearly all of the characters are likable and distinct and their individual story routes all have unique vibes to them giving the story a good sense of variety. The only route I wasn't a huge fan of was Iori's because the ways to progress could be very obtuse like feeding the cat at the intersection. The writing and voice-acting were very natural and I was enthralled the whole way through. The art was beautiful as it always is with vanillaware and this was clearly the best of their efforts so far. The music was fitting and generally solid with some awesome combat tracks that helped liven up the otherwise easy steamrolling. The one thing really holding it back from being a straight 10 is the combat which was clearly an afterthought. Sentry guns and interceptors completely decimate any and all challenges with ease and while it can be satisfying to blow everything to smithereens without lifting a finger, it does make the battles lose their sense of urgency and strategy. Also I really like giant robots so it's a big shame to me that everything in the battles are just represented by colorful icons instead of actually getting to see the mechs fight. That being said, the game is certainly primarily a visual novel so the lacking nature of the combat doesn't impact the overall enjoyment too much.

Even though I prefer 3H and awakening it's nice getting the classic FE vibes back once in a while and echoes provides quite well in that respect. The artstyle and character designs are great and I really wish the artist worked on more FE games. There are a lot of weird aspects like dungeon crawling and magic costing HP. The dungeon-crawling is very underdeveloped and might as well not even be in the game. I never really cared for weapon durability so I don't mind it not being included and magic costing HP seems like a fine enough system. The story isn't really anything special and the characters are serviceable but the dialogue is pretty well-written and the voice acting is solid. It's also cool that you get to control two separate armies led by 2 different lords for most of the game. The absolute biggest problem with the game and the thing that led me to drop it is the garbage map design. An absurd amount of maps in echoes are just mostly flat maps with hordes of enemies clumped together in big groups in random spots. When they do try to get creative it tends to result in obnoxious poison swamp maps that aren't enjoyable in the least. The difficulty annoyingly ramps up in the later acts as well and even though it can technically be alleviated by grinding in the dungeons, I'd rather not subject myself to the tedium.

Pretty comfy game to play in bed. Solid but had a really strong unimpressed feeling of "Yep, that's kirby on the 3DS" like with Super Mario 3D Land. I'm not a big fan of how kirby controls since he's floaty but the robot felt better and it kinda just made me wish they made a new IP where you play as the robot without the lame kirby baggage. I think the game kind of overused the switching of front and back layers since DK already thoroughly explored that, but some stages were more fun like the car segments and remote-controlled kirbys (kirbies?). The game also looked fairly nice for a 3DS game.

Very nice and soulful rhythm platformer. The artstyle and story are very charming and the music is great (as it should be, since it's a rhythm game). Mad Rat's character development isn't anything groundbreaking but it's still pretty heartwarming watching him come to terms with his fate and use his last day to help people. Also the rat god's design is super cute. The game had a nice earthbound-ish "enter your name" moment as well and I always appreciate those. The gameplay is a little bit of a mixed bag for me. Having to line up jumps and dashes with the beat is satisfying most of the time but in the more difficult sections it can feel like a frustrating limitation, particularly when the beat suddenly slows down at certain points in each song breaking the sense of rhythm and almost always resulting in a quick death which really hurts the flow.

One of the best artstyles in the industry, a wide variety of cool and unique characters, and of course super satisfying fighting. The tutorial also has a lot of work put into it that I really appreciate even if I knew a lot of it already. I also really love all the work put into characters intro/victory screens and instakills. Arcade mode is pretty much what you expect but MOM mode is a bit too complicated for me. The lobby system is really cute as well. My only standout issue with Xrd is that some of the voices are annoying for me like May and Jam's. Jam's voice in particular pretty much makes her unplayable for me. Rollback would be nice.

The story is standard fighting game fare in that it's a mess that constantly jumps around all over the place with little to no context. Cutscenes are all 10 seconds long or less and characters fight over absolutely trivial things. The fights are also all only 1 round each and super easy. Honestly I would've preferred if they dropped the silly Raidou plot and just stuck with having goofy character interactions throughout the tournament. The gameplay is fun and the girls are cute but sadly the content is lacking. Even the costumes are irritating to unlock considering you can only get them RANDOMLY while playing the lackluster DOA quest mode. While it's still a decent fighting game, the 3DS game was better at providing a complete quality product.

It's got soul reminiscent of the early PS3 days and the idea of playing as a mercenary in the hundred years war is really cool. The atmosphere is nice and trampling over the enemy with your overpowered halberd squad is a blast...for a few missions. The game is unfortunately very repetitive and unlike with dynasty warriors you don't even get new stages or variety beyond your chosen weapon (which is restricted by levels you need to raise individually). The game wants you to spend a lot of time equally leveling up every class but if you just level up the one you like, there are pretty much no penalties and it makes for a much easier experience. The story is also sparse and you need to go through many copy-pasted missions between cutscenes which are short and typically of little importance. The fame bar increases too slowly unless you avoid easily completing the objective to run around and mindlessly kill enemies which makes no sense considering a mercenary that could end a battle in minutes would surely be extremely famous. It's unfortunate the game has such glaring flaws since being in the bar with all the other mercenaries and taking requests from the bartender has a very distinct appeal that few games really capture. The character creator is actually pretty nice too.

The best battle network game by a small margin. Best gameplay in the series, the best story (although still nothing amazing), and very little padding. The chips are fun to use, annoying enemies are absent, and optional content in the form of classes and cross navis are implemented instead of tedious backtracking making for a very pleasant experience. The context and dire situations from previous BN games are present after being half-baked in 5 and the network is much more painless to traverse. The bosses are fun to fight besides circusman who's a nuisance and the final boss which is a massive pain as per usual for the series. I'm not sure who thought it would be fun to keep the player from using any direct-shot chips because it isn't and restricts playstyle significantly. I quite liked the villains this time around but the friendly cast was relatively weak. Mick is a brat and Tab barely exists so I would've preferred if Yai, Dex and Mayl just moved with Lan instead. Elementman's stage was probably my favorite in the entire series. It's sad thinking the series ends with this game but there are a lot of series that wish they could get half the amount of games BN got so I can't complain.

Dangerously high IQ VN. Remember 11 cuts out a lot of the fat found in other VNs and has some of the best pacing I've seen in the genre. The constant dynamic switching between 2 completely different settings and groups of characters keeps the game from feeling slow and important events and interactions appear at a steady pace. This does unfortunately have a drawback in that since you spend little time interacting with the characters normally, you don't really get attached to them. Characters like Satoru and Yomogi are likable in how dependable they are. Kokoro and Hotori are fairly inoffensive. Keiko, Yuni, and Utsumi are interesting due to their importance to the plot. The twists presented in the game, while interesting and clever, don't have the same impact as those from Ever17 or the zero escape games. That being said, that's only referring to the twists presented to the reader in an easily understandable way. The other mysteries presented by the VN blew my mind when reading the analysis afterwards and captured my interest with the ridiculous amount of thought put into the underlying plot elements. While I love the answers I got and seeing all of the hints and truths I missed in my reading, it's difficult to credit the game for it considering the ending is blatantly unfinished and does not make an attempt to clarify many of the mysteries presented in the rest of the story. It's also fairly annoying that important tidbits are spread throughout the bad endings which are annoying and time-consuming to get too despite the fastforward mechanic since it doesn't just let you skip the whole scenes outright. Also the music is good and the art is noticeably better than Ever17's. While it's hard to say Remember 11 as it is is a great VN, I respect the depth and subtlety put into its plot as well as the moment-to-moment dire atmosphere and compelling mysteries regardless of the incomplete finale.