Mario RPG is a dang good first attempt to kick off the long line of mario rpg's. It's got an incredibly charming presentation, with very fun characters and writing, a goofy plot with a lot of memorable moments, and a fun soundtrack. All of that stuff is consistently really good.

The gameplay is also quite good, although there's a number of places that feel a bit aged or annoying. The combat is good, nothing too complicated. It's mostly carried by a ton of bosses that all bring something new to the table, which does a good job of keeping things feeling fresh.

I did find that I was a bit tired of the same few enemy types by the time I reached the end of a handful of areas. The area design is much more varied than you usually get in an RPG, to mostly positive results. Sometimes you get a neat puzzle or some light platforming. There are a few gimmicks that don't work, like platforming that requires depth perception that doesn't feel good with the isometric perspective, or combat gauntlets that go on too long.

All in all though, this is a tightly paced and very fun rpg that doesn't overstay it's welcome and has a ton of variety to it, on top of a great presentation.

This is a solid improvement on the original game's formula and ideas. There's much more variety and creativity to the level design and gimmicks, so the game feels much more fresh and substantial despite being only a little bit longer than the original. The music's even better, and the platforming has some more interesting twists to it as well. Some of the objectives can be a bit annoying, but they're not too bad. This is once again a very cozy game, that I could definitely see myself revisiting in the future.

While I found this game largely enjoyable, there were a few large problems that prevented me from really enjoying it.

This game's presentation is great, with a very unique aesthetic. On top of that, the voice acting and sound design bring a lot of weight to many of the game's moments. The music is pretty great too. I do have one issue with the game's visuals, and that comes from how hazy some things can be. There were a few instances where I genuinely couldn't tell what was happening without really inspecting the environment because of the 1-bit style. It was especially annoying when the cause of death was the last thing I needed, but that was hard to discern.

The game is all about finding out who was who, and how people died. Many of these instances are rewarding, where you can reasonably infer that information by observing the environment, photographs, and dialogue. There's many ways to decipher information, and using all the clues at your disposal can feel very rewarding. Other times, though, it becomes more annoying than fun. For instance, I figured out who the carpenter was by locating the carpenter's room, and checking every memory on that deck until I found something around that room. Lo and behold, eventually one memory had two people in the carpenter's room that I could now distinguish. It felt satisfying to deduce that. But some instances required getting rid of every other possibility first to solve them via process of elimination. It's not like you'll know that before you investigate, so you may just waste a lot of time scouring memories for details just to realize that you can't even figure them out yet.

There were some decisions that made investigation more cumbersome than it really needed to be. I would need to figure out the cause of death and the identity of the attacker, but I didn't know the attacker, so I couldn't get credit for the person who I knew everything else about. Also, it would have been good to introduce a few quality of life changes here and there. Being able to instantly warp to memories instead of backtracking across the boat would have been convenient without cutting back on the investigative feel the game revels in.

Now, there is one more thing I wasn't crazy about. Some of the investigation feels very granular, basing large assumptions off of not a lot of information. I can understand why this would work for others, but I personally found those moments of guesswork and studying of tiny details to be more annoying than anything else. Again though, not necessarily a flaw, but it wasn't something I much cared for.

Well, that was mostly complaining. But don't get me wrong, game's still pretty good. It's got a great setting, is very unique, and has wonderful presentation. Unwinding mysteries and stories of the ship is a cool and fun process. But I just don't think that this game really jives with me as much as it does with others. I can still recommend it, but it takes a lot of patience that I only sort of have.

While I certainly enjoyed my time with this game, I can't help but feel that this is the layton series' weakest showing yet. It is quite impressive to me that a game with elements I found extremely annoying still manages a 7 with the likability and charm of it's core cast and fun puzzles. However, the story and mysteries just feel underwhelming. I like the idea of jumping between past and present, all tied into one mystery. However, it relies on flat and boring characters and it really feels half baked. The city is neat, but somewhat uninspired. The mysteries have some truly ridiculous solutions that aren't ridiculous enough to be fun or reasonable enough to be figured out on your own. But, the dialouge is still good, there's plenty of fun moments. Plus the puzzles are still great. Lotta missteps here, but still a good time.

This game was solid, with a few major pros and a few major cons. The first obvious highlight are the visuals. The art direction, animation, and level of detail are all stellar. Easily some of the prettiest/grossest pixel art I've seen for a game. These quality visuals lend to combat feeling very impactful and weighty. In general, combat is the most fun part of the game. There's a lot of enemy types that are (mostly) fun to fight. The bosses are all pretty good, although the last one has a bit of annoying luck to it. You'll never die to getting unlucky, but it might take substantially longer. The second to last boss was a thrilling challenge that felt immensely satisfying. Also the music was fine. It serves the atmosphere well, but it doesn't exactly stick in my head. The level design was a bit of a mixed bag for me. It was mostly good, but a few segments of the game had really obnoxious enemy placement or obstacles that felt inconsistent. The game is distinctly slow, which doesn't bother me alone. However, it would be nice to have a quicker method of fast travel to make exploration more rewarding and less taxing. All in all, it's pretty solid with some great bosses and solid level design with occasional frustration.

I really enjoyed my time with prime 2, and I'd say it's a stronger game than the original for a few key reasons. The first big thing I really like about this game is it's structure. There are four main areas, that interconnect in some ways but are fairly self-contained. I like this approach, as it rewards exploration but makes it harder to get lost and offers a more clear path to progression. There was one standout instance of annoyance I had, where the next upgrade was in a spot that felt poorly telegraphed, but the game mostly goes along at a smooth pace. I didn't mind the final section of the game, where a bunch of hidden keys must be found. This process was substantially less annoying than the artifact hunting from the original. The Light/Dark versions of different areas led to some fun puzzle solving and exploration, and was used in a lot of fun ways. The spider ball gets a lot of usage here, and is pretty consistently great in it's implementation. The areas are all cool, and have good atmospheric tracks that match quite well. The visuals have aged really well, with an intricate level of detail that is just impressive.

This is a pretty great game, and a solid step up from the already impressive original.

I'm sad this game didn't click with me much, because the art direction and personality of this game is top notch, and there's a lot of really good ideas here. Unfortunately, I found that I was often required to act quickly or die, with controls that don't really complement that sort of design. On top of that, respawning takes quite a while, and trial and error feels frustrating and punishing. There were a good number of rooms that felt fun to solve, but they were offset by the times that the game would be overly cryptic or tedious. The game's cool, but just has too many issues that stack up for me. I could understand why some would really like this game, but I just found it to be an uneven blend of cool, fun and really annoying.

This is the definition of a mixed bag if I've ever seen one. It's still got the strong art direction and fun tone of mega man legends, but the gameplay is split into different genres, which are not consistently enjoyable. The puzzle sections are great, and are fairly well designed. The dungeon crawling is pretty dull, and the action sections are clunky but somewhat enjoyable. The weird minion management system feels pretty tacked on, and the upgrades system is pretty poorly telegraphed. I bought several new weapons but the game just wouldn't let me equip them. Maybe I'm dumb, or maybe the game bugged out, but my weapons just disappeared so I was stuck with the basic shot the whole time. There were a lot of problems like that, where communication just felt off. This game has a neat idea, but just feels too messy and is only sometimes fun. It's got enough fun moments and charm to keep it from getting a lower score, but eh. It's jank, it's messy, and it's kinda cool. It also didn't take too long or overstay it's welcome.

I love games that are stupid fast, difficult, and with a lot of room for mastery. Pizza tower strikes that niche spot on, and has quickly become an all-time favorite for me.

Let's start with presentation, because hoo boy is it great. The ms-paint style linework with twitchy and over-the-top animation is so satisfying to watch. The stages all have fun themes with a ton of variance, enemies and background details are full of life and detail, and it all brings such a strong and great personality to the game. The cutscenes are fun, boss intros and animations are stupid, and I love it. The music is top notch stuff, with a ton of musical variety and it's pretty much all great. I especially liked the escape themes, War, The final boss theme, the final escape theme, and oregano desert. But there's really not any duds among the group.

The controls are excellent, and can feel a bit twitchy at first but really come together as you get better. Soon enough I was blasting through levels using all my moves in tandem and it makes just replaying a random level a joy. I'm definitely going to speedrun this game after I 100% it.

The level design is packed with weird ideas that are memorable and fun, with a constant stream of gimmicks that get used really well. Finding secrets is quite fun too, and going for P-ranks (where you have to do everything in a level while never dropping your combo) has been one of the most fun things I've done in a video game.

Pizza Tower is a masterpiece. I love every single thing about this game, and I will likely keep coming back to this game every once in a while for a long time. I recommend this to pretty much anyone who enjoys having fun.

I don't tend to explore much when I play games, but something about Outer Wilds made exploration very compelling and satisfying. Wandering about was rewarded with knowledge rather than an item, and learning bits and pieces of information that seems pointless at first but later seeing how it becomes useful was quite satisfying. Wandering into a planet only to get eaten by an angler fish was terrifying, but later finding out how to avoid them was great. The whole game was basically like this, constantly learning new things and finding new leads which was very fun to do. My one major complaint is that within the game's loop, there are some events that require quite a lot of waiting. That got dull when I needed to wait on sand to drain away a few times. Other than that, this game's pretty darn great.