It’s sort of linear but that doesn’t necessarily bother me. In fact, I thought it was going to be more of a walking simulator but I found that you get a slingshot which doesn’t sound like much but they make it pretty impactful. It’s not a stealth game but there are stealth sections so you can throw rocks and pots to distract and sling if you really want to hurt something. But you also knock things down to go to the next area, it’s a nice companion without just being a gun or sword, it really makes you feel like David from David and Goliath. I remember being impressed with just how much it reinvented itself right after learning a new technique.

It’s also got crafting, not an absurd amount and not as required if you don’t want it to be but it’s more for things like holding more rocks in your bag as well as crafting materials and bettering your slingshot for accuracy and drawback speed.

The atmosphere is also pretty great, there’s this part at the beginning of the game with an apple tree that looked straight out of a painting. But these guys are French so there’s a lot of that influence. Like at the beginning Amicia’s hair is tied with pink string and put up like a rose but afterwards she makes three braids leading into one, I appreciate the design quality. It’s also a longer game than I thought, from previews, it just looked like a tech demo but no it’s a full 10 hour game. (at least for me it was 10)

The story focuses around a girl and her brother which I’m sure you’ve already gathered as well as it revolving around rats, which is true but these rats are afraid of the light so you can imagine the mechanics it tries to incorporate. It’s like a better Alan Wake. But because of the brother’s illness, he hasn’t really gone outside which can be a problem because he wants to venture out and catch the frogs and see the windmill and stuff which causes him to run away and play hide and seek. He even talks very proper like most of his experience with words has come straight from a book.

But I will admit some falls in the storytelling because they set up all these questions like why is her brother sick or rather what is he sick with? A simple one. Why is the inquisition after them? And my first day of playing it, I played up to chapter 4 which is when they explain all those things and I found the answers to be kind of dumb. They try to incorporate alchemy and the plot turns into “I gotta go get this book.” Bleh! But there’s this one section where they make you sacrifice a pig and make alchemic fire, why not just make a firework or bomb or something? It’s just kind of too far out there, it just goes off the rails from there and I can’t believe I’m saying this but it could’ve been more grounded and have had a greater effect in my opinion. Speaking of though, this can be pretty brutal and dark, there was this one scene where Hugo (the brother) says “I can smell something cooking, is it a fair?” In an innocent like voice then Amicia (the sister) says “It doesn’t sound like a fair.” So I joked “No, we’re cooking bodies tonight.” Or something along those lines. My dark sense of humor and wouldn’t you know it, they’re burning a person at the stake. My jaw dropped.

There is a companion system where you can tell someone to go and turn a wheel or where to cause a distraction (which I hope gets expanded upon for the sequel). On a gameplay level, this is really fun, there are some really standout moments. The only complaint I have on that front is the final ability, it can be janky sometimes especially when you first get it. So yeah, I’d give this game a much higher score, I mean, when I was first playing it, it was checking off all my boxes, but the story didn’t keep that up.

Thank goodness I don't need Uplay for this.

I made a post about my background with the series/game so you can check it out if you're interested:

So here we are. This game's combos are kind of brutal, I know this is the black sheep of the family that was meant to appeal to a new audience but it's kinda crazy with its blood, beheadings, cutting people in half (vertical and horizontal), and loads of different weapons. The Prince says a cuss word in the opening boss who is this skimpily leather clad chick who smacks her butt with her swords…~looks Frank Frazetta's way~ 👀

"Hit me harder prince…harder!"

If you wanted me to be quite harsh on this game, I would say that it doesn't seem finished but not in the way you might think. I'm not sure if it's poor optimization or what but the jumping and actual control over Dastan is a little touch and go, the controls could use a bit more tightening (and yes, I tried a mouse & keyboard combo as well as a controller). The cutscenes themselves can seem a bit middling because they can glitch, seem very abrupt or out of place and sometimes the audio cut out (but I get that one's a circumstantial thing). And sometimes the Prince gets his times messed up in dialogue like "I need to go back to the past" when you're already in the past and actually need to go to the present. And certain points of the plot don't make a whole lot of sense.

The story builds off of SoT in such a way that it's a continuation but its so far removed that it's a whole different chapter. I like the idea of Dastan running from pretty much literal death, facing consequences for the last game. So, he's going to try and stop the Sands of Time from ever being made. It's a passable story but it's the vibe that you really pay attention to. With sound: The music is fine when it's actually there, it has a edgy hard metal sort of vibe. The main menu has the same sound effect for everything and it gets kind of tiresome to hear that "Ch-king" over and over again.

(a lot of close ups of his angry little face) As far as gameplay goes, you can see where they might've drawn Assassin's Creed as a conclusion because there were some instances where I felt like stuff a future game could build upon like say for example an open world (which they later tried with the 2008 one) but then fleshed it out in AC. It would be cool to have stealth kills, well AC has that, add that with the idea of "Persia" and make it an assortment of different places instead. But to a certain degree, when does it cease to be 'Prince of Persia'?

Each boss has a certain technique to beating it using your combos, so outside of normal enemies, this is no mindless hack & slash like you might expect, you have to be deliberate, enemies can block. Mix that with clunky controls and it feels like you learn exactly how to do it, it's just the patience to get there after being cheated due to combat, poor camera, controls, or…insta death fall damage?? Anyways, I like that they added combat after SoT apparently had a lack thereof but it's nothing special, I found it kind of annoying if I'm honest.

Each room feels like a relief to get through, this is a challenging game (and yes, I tried both normal and easy mode) so it was a bit of a crawl to get through. You get the sand mechanic but that's only good for 3 at a time which sounds understandable but you'll see…Eventually you get the means to upgrade stuff like health and more sand holders. Other than that though, you can refill sand by breaking the seldom pots and defeating enemies and drinking water to heal. One of things about rewinding is that it keeps your last input which can be both good and bad because it won't leave you completely vulnerable but sometimes that's the very reason you rewound because it tossed you over an edge or something and end up having to use another stock. It also literally uses time, so if you take a second to adjust the camera, it's going to count that.

What I got was different than what I came for but I kind of dig it. There are certain sections where I felt like it required you to be a little too tight though, which for me was based around luck. Everybody talks about the Crash Bandicoot sections and while they're not inherently bad, I could make a singular fault and the run would be over, it's pretty unforgiving in that regard. The bosses eventually start slowly healing themselves too, and towards end game, enemies just become an infinite nuisance because they keep respawning, it's that relentless!

So, this isn't the Prince of Persia game I wanted but it's an interesting one. And while I don't think it's required. I think playing Sands of Time before this would be very rewarding, it only doubled my interest in the remake…if it ever comes out…(and it's as good as the original is said to be.)

How about them Mets, huh? No, I don't mean BASEBALL!

I mentioned how I visited Prime as a kid and didn't like the controls so I only just recently revisited with PrimeHack. Well, after dropping Prime as a kid, I visited this game, thinking 2D Metroid was my route but I lost the save file so this was actually the second Metroid game that I've tried then failed to finish. It's about as well regarded as any top ten list, not just for Metroid but for gaming as a whole, so let's see if it lives up to my memory as well as its reputation.

I could see people falling in love with this as a kid, moreso than the original, I mean this was the first one of "those" Metroid games and definitely pioneered a lot of what made ZM great for me, including the atmosphere. If I mentioned it with the Prime games, then this one makes it feel like Alien at times, little bodies with bugs crawling around, deep mechanical structures, and for the time, this was THE game but how does it age with today's standards?

It feels more precise. Not "more stiff" but just not as buttery as Zero Mission, which would make sense, ZM came out a decade afterwards and a lot of things in that game were based off of this game, which I assume was made to appease the fans of this game as well as introduce it to the handheld market. So, rather than just porting Super, they bred it with the NES one, which for the time sounds great but in today's day and age when you play one after the other, it just feels a bit repetitive to play both. There were a lot of points where I'd ask "Didn't I do this before?" during the first half, the second half differentiates itself a little more.

When comparing the two, I can't help but feel ZM gets the better hand. And because of that, a lot of my gripes from ZM carried over to this game. I actually went back and played the first level of ZM just to be sure and I was right, I think it's just faster momentum wise. (I don't know whether Fusion feels like that or not, haven't played it yet but I'll revisit this topic when I do).

There are a few little downgrades that you can't do like seeing what certain rooms are on the map, there's just maps, ammo and save stations, no indication of colored doors or any of that jazz unfortunately. And I feel like it's a bit harder to follow than the other games because there were a lot more things in your way that just didn't need to be there while backtracking. For example, doors with buttons that can only be opened on one side. They close again after you leave the area rather than just unlocking a shortcut. Part of it is my fault because I've opened these doors before in such a way that I knew what I was doing but just forgot after trekking a completely different area to learn (hence why there should be a map in the first place). But I wouldn't call this the game to start the series with, leaving it in a weird position.

Now I talked about how some things felt out of sorts with ZM but I let them slide because of how early and experimental the game it was based on was and how a lot of the mechanics I complained about weren't mandatory features, just to get certain bonuses but I feel a little less lenient with this one, I definitely felt the most unnecessarily frustrated with this title compared to the others, and I played Prime 2!

The ball bombs aren't OP, you actually have to time them which is fine but still seems like a mechanic they can improve upon. The sand pits of Maridia are a chore to just jump up and out of places. The amount of times I got stuck is beyond belief, the water was one thing because you get the gravity suit eventually but the sand is just horrid to try and traverse and you never get anything to help you with it which made getting optional items like the spring ball a real hassle. I actually took a few day break from the game after Maridia because I didn't want that alone to mar my experience.

Some people will say that they like that because it takes time and training to master since it just drops you in with a brief idea of what Samus is doing and sets you in this world with no instruction but I look at it as "if you gatekeep controls behind masters then how are you supposed to play the game normally?" It's not a bad controlling game overall, it's just certain features that I feel like are purposefully there to get in your way and waste time. Wall jumping, screw attack, have all been improved upon in later titles and going back to a title where it wasn't as fine tuned feels but that's just how I feel, maybe I just couldn't get it to work but it seems like a lot of people have complained about it.

BUT I can say that it allows you to turn whatever abilities you want off. So I complained about the screw attack and freeze ray in ZM and how sometimes I wouldn't want to do that. There are also a lot of really cool secret details that this game opens up since it tells you very little. I liked it, it's still a Metroid game but just didn't live up to what I was expecting.

I saw this when it was revealed for Switch and thought it looked cool but I wasn't sure what it was, it looked like a Visual Novel that you could move around in which I'm all about. It's got rave reviews and has been out on PlayStation for quite some time now so why not?

The actual combat is kind of basic, it's kind of just commands but it doesn't really matter where you are on the map, there are no "turns" per say but there are cooldown periods and expense (not MP but it works the same way) so there are breaks in between your attacks which is understandable, you'd be op otherwise.

You can also long range attack with your guns. Different characters have different attacks, you don't choose your party at first though. The prologue is split into seven parts and once you finish it, it opens up way more than I expected. You get to choose party members and how you want to go about playing, do you want more mech sections? Do you want more character sections? You take on whatever amount you want at any given time from any character. You want to upgrade those abilities and or unlock more for any given character? A demo really wouldn't do this game justice because of that.

It makes sense that there are more than 13 numbers but there are only 13 sentinels (ones that failed) but it just gets confusing who is what number (it does shows you every time they talk on this Codec comm type thing) but I guess it's not important, just overwhelming.

I heard the story described as all sorts of things mashed into one but it works and really that's the best way I can describe it. I went into this pretty much blind but I can tell you that it has to do with mechs, aliens, and time travelling, so the characters all have something to offer as a protagonist and make references to stuff like War of the Worlds and Men in Black and the fact that some of it takes place in '84-'85 could reflect a number of things. You see everything more or less revolves around these characters, the story, the gameplay and the style is displayed in 2D (except for mech secs) with a painted flair to them that makes the lighting look really pleasing.

There are multiple routes but it sort of makes itself into the game because you play different characters' stories in different scenarios so you really just fulfill all those and it gets you to the final ending. It's weird though because you don't have a specific order so you go from character to character to progress which I can't help but feel that I'm making the wrong decision sometimes. I ended up just trying to keep them all around the same percentage. You might be asking yourself "Then why can't you just do it one character at a time and then move onto the other characters?"
It does however lock some "remembrance" (which are the walking story sections) until after you beat certain missions so I'm wondering what the threshold was for how you figured out about specific events (because sometimes different characters will cover multiple sides to the same event). It just all gets very confusing so I might've preferred if it forced you to play a specific character order and then only choose routes. But I guess at least it doesn't require you to play it in different orders EVERY time; Every story is the same story, no matter what you've done thus far, routes are contained within each character so another doesn't have an impact on that.

On top of that, like the mech secs and story, there's a third option, "Analytics", when I say this game is packed, it's packed. So, the analytics provide a database of everything you've done thus far, you want to revisit cutscenes? Read summaries on the characters? It's pretty much all there but you also get newfound context along with it. When you go back to play a section, it doesn't seem like backtracking because everything you've done carries over, like keywords, which I'll get to in a moment, but once you complete a chapter, you don't even have the option to do that route again, so you don't have to worry about making a mistake and just getting the same cutscene. Instead, all the previously viewed cutscenes are in those "Analytics". There's even a chart that guides you to what you haven't gotten. So, for as complicated as it seems, it's pretty user-friendly.

Who is my favorite though? Well I started finding reasons to like all of them and felt very similar things with them. For instance, a character that I didn't think I'd like ended up being really good and a character that I thought would be my favorite, didn't. So, it does a pretty decent job with its characters but some routes still seemed a bit more interesting than others. I also took notes when I was first playing it to try and follow along so I included the nicknames I gave them.

CHARACTERS:
Fuyusaka-Flower hair. I like her but I'm conflicted. She probably netted me the most damage in mech secs but her gameplay in her story secs bother me because she's the one where you do the same task over and over again to get "a keyword" which is used to unlock the next route but it just seems like jumping through hoops, like it'll ask you "Do you want Hot Dogs or Nikuman?" (meat filled buns) but it's just a stupid cover to get that keyword and sometimes you find yourself doing it over and over again.

Kurabe-Main. I don't really have much to say about him, not because he's a bad character but because I feel like he's the "middle" character, a standard, plain, run of the mill main character.

Kisaragi-Cassandra Lee Morris. She looks unlikeable, but she's actually a really decent character and friend. She's also probably the funniest, but normally with her is Miwako, who is kind of annoying.

Amiguchi-Talks to the TV. I like his bad boy style because in a way it says a lot about what he's into. He's like Kurabe but cooler.

Natsuno-ET. I found her storyline to be a bit cliche but I found her impact on other characters to be enjoyable. She also has probably one of the most memorable moments of the whole game for me.

Miura-Old, has a sister, dude with the hat/Hemborgerlar. Is his name just a play on Kentaro Miura? The creator of Berserk?

Sekigahara-Doesn't remember squat. He's kind of rounded out because he seems to be one of the ones that always has a hand in the pot.

Yakushiji-Marinette. I think I like her character but not so much her story, I'm just not one for typical cat stories. I wish they would've focused on her and Juro's past a little more so that both her goal and the ending would be more rewarding but I still like her a lot.

Ogata-Shield hero. He's kind of just roped into this, showing the variety with these characters. He has a similar formula to Fuyusaka but I liked his a lot more, it had a stronger story and he was aware of what he was doing, there was a reason for why it was the way it was and it wasn't annoying to figure out.

Gouto- Boss. So little is known about him until the end, he actually has a prologue mission and then you need to get everybody to 80% in order to get any more. Once you do, he's kind of how you imagined, just a know it all.

Shinonome- Bandaid. I'm a fan of the "I don't care if I have no clue what's going on, nobody knows what they're talking about." type thing that she has going on.

Hijiyama-Long hair/old style/obsessed with sandwiches. He just can't win and is part of what makes his character so funny. I think they really drove on the friendship factor with both him and Kisaragi (not together) so they both seem very fleshed out.

Takamiya- Black skirt chick. I like the idea that she's just trying to make sense of it all, going around and interrogating people and she also has a thing with Amiguchi…well kind of, there's a lot of things you could argue in terms of shipping (until the end). In fact, her route was the first I finished.

How will you know if you'll like this? If you're tolerant to complicated anime storylines and time travel then I think you'll like it.
It's interactive, there are some moments where I was shocked like standing in front of the tv makes this guy say "I can't see!" or picking up a can of cat food and putting it too far makes him say "Did you have to put it so far?" And yes, the cat talks.

I will say this though, if it was just the mech sections, it would get annoying. If it was just the Walk through sections, it'd be kind of bare so doing one after the other is pleasant but towards the end it kind of requires you to do one at a time in order to unlock the next stage which makes it seem like it runs a little too long. Because of all these factors, it was a pretty stellar product towards the beginning but eventually middled itself out for me so I'm going to give it a 7/10 or a 3/5. I spent about 27 hours on it so there's an avg runtime.

I wouldn't call it overrated because I don't hear much about it but whenever I do, I hear the moon about it and it's just "good".

I'm a Kirby noob so let me get that out there first before anybody says that I just don't know what Kirby is. I'll admit, I'm not a fan of Kirby. When I see gameplay, I see the 2D side-scroller and that's about it. I remember the first time I played it and it was the original in the demos of Super Smash Bros. I kept floating and floating and thought to myself "It's almost infinite" I breezed through that entire demo just floating over top of everything, I considered it broken.

There was one game that wasn't entirely 2D however, called "Kirby 64: Legend of the Crystal Shards" and I adore that game (I guess there was Air Ride too but that's a racing game) I thought we'd never see anything like it again…then Forgotten Land was announced and I was like "Okay! Odyssey for Kirby!" I was sold. No. The demo came out and I figured I'd play it before I bought it, demos usually carry over to the real game anyway and it was easy. Like…really easy. I didn't even play on the easy mode, I played on the harder one which apparently has more enemies and less health or something along those lines. No, it was terribly easy. It might've just been that it was a demo but it surely wasn't what I expected out of the game. The environments weren't really explorable or open like Odyssey, just more open than normal. I knew that it'd be short because I experienced so much from that demo alone. I was disappointed because I was really excited. (turns out it ended up being a decent 10-11 hour length). That has nothing to do with this game but just some background to how I ended up buying this anyway.

Nova. I saw this thing and was in awe. It looks so cool and I heard a certain story tidbit about it and I knew I had to check it out. I could've visited the SNES title because this is technically a remaster/remake but I bought this one to see it all in 3D (cutscenes, not gameplay) plus it seemed like Ultra added more as a whole.

THE GAME:
The first two worlds are not what you should judge this game on because I played those two and they were unreasonably easy much like I felt with the other games but then the third world fixed relatively all the qualms I had with it and from then on. It even added treasures that you can find throughout the map. And it's a stark difference, I actually found myself kind of stuck towards the end.

You can also give a power up to make into your companion, which if I let Kirby go, they would do all of the work in no time but they also have a health bar and it seems more vulnerable than yours (probably because of the AI) but if you face them a certain way after so much time, then I guess Kirby gives them a face sucking or hickey or something because it starts healing them. Just adds to the cuteness points.

Once you finish the game, you unlock Meta Knightmare Mode which is the game but as Meta Knight. It's not really a hard mode but it gave me more initiative to play the game, it's got a different story and such (or at least cutscenes, Stage 4 doesn't make a whole lot of sense though). While I might've preferred different levels, it was a nice addition. It's like a speedrun version with slight modifications here and there where you don't have the copy ability and instead have the sword at all times. The more enemies you defeat, the more points you get and those points can be used to heal/get a companion/increase walk speed/do mega damage.

As far as what you want out of this game, every chapter is different, it's own contained story for mostly, in fact credits play at the end of most of them. There's also cool minigames to take into account but those are optional so I don't necessarily count them because who buys a game for the minigames? It's a cool little cutesy game, I spent an okay amount of hours on it so I'm satisfied.

I didn't mention this with the last one but you get rewarded the more quests you do, giving you more context and foreshadowing as well as connective tissue between the games. Reach all the planets you can.

By this point, Uncharted 1 and 2 were already released so you can imagine the inspiration they took to craft a more cinematic intro and setpiece. It's just too bad that was the only part. But I don't really care so much that they had to revive Shep, the only way I think I'd like it is if we actually got to perform surgery on him, like screw in the bolts and stuff. But I will say that even after just playing the first one, getting the band back together and getting a new ship that looks like the old one gets me pumped.

There's different gameplay too, so if you want to crouch behind something, no L3, just X. No combinations while bypassing either, instead it's one of two timed matching games (I prefer the combinations). There's ammo now and new layouts for everything so that it seems a bit more organized, even mission complete reports. But with that ammo is an assortment of guns. Rather than just switching them out for a better one, you can trade your load out at the start of each mission when you choose the characters, same with the upgrading tree if you want. I didn't even buy any weapons in the first game, but this one gives you more initiative to, it reminds me of Ratchet and Clank actually, it fits to your playstyle. My saved money carried over and so did my intimidation and charm factors so I was pretty well off. You can also mix and match armor. My one complaint with the shop system is that it can make the screen a little…cluttered.
Look at all those notifications, they don't disappear right away either. Also screw whoever came up with the idea to hide then vault in order to hurdle over a ledge, how stupid is that? It can be like an obstacle course sometimes, if you didn't want a jump button, don't make things you HAVE to climb. Then it gets really annoying when there are husks surrounding you and you can't move and when you do, you stick to the wall to hide. Smh.


Maps are updated to have objectives displayed under the planets which is a huge help. I didn't mind so much surveying the planets in the last game but I'll admit that I don't exactly miss it…Ok, you can survey planets but this time you actually use scanning stuff and mine for minerals to use to upgrade your ship, weapons, and etc. It comes off kind of tedious but I like the reward. There's no longer an in game mini map but instead you get a full one mapped to the R3 button. They really could've just done the same thing again but with a new story, characters and better graphics like they did KOTOR 2 but they went above and beyond to make this feel like a new game.


It makes you feel important. Everybody just seems so honored around you. You had people on the ship in the first game but they were just there. While they're here now, you have a cook (though I don't agree that he should be in Kaidan's spot) you have a secretary, you have a crew and sometimes they'll have idle conversations like "Yeah, my daughter's one year old." And stuff to kind of get them more active with the community, see what everyone thinks about it and how events are affecting their lives.


In fact, Chakwas is the one that says it "They just don't have the same enthusiasm" but I think rather the opposite. Instead of a band of misfits, it's all these people at their 9-5 office job (they even have a freaking water dispenser in the ship now), making it seem cool in the beginning but speculative in the long run because you're asking what Cerberus' true motives are and if they actually have good intentions. Yeah, they brought you back but can you trust them? Why do they have an AI system in every room? Why is everyone so suspicious of them? I mean we heard about them in the first game but we didn't really "know" about them and 2 years has passed since then so have they changed?

Anyway, there are gangs now but you don't join any of them, in fact, they're all against you. I would've liked to see a little Stormcloaks vs Imperials vs A middle road action but that's not a choice, I mean maybe it was planned, they each have characters but I'm saying maybe it was dropped partway through development.


And hubba hubba, there's a lot more romancables than I realized. One of which being your secretary so I updated my characters list with all the new stuff. The one thing I'll add to that is that there's only one of each species (other than human) to recruit so not every character from the last game will be a party member. With that said, try to recruit and get the loyalty missions done before the IFF because after that, it launches you into the final mission so be cautious and plan out everything you want before it. The credits also made me realize that each character had their own credits. They spent so much time on their characters that they had their own teams dedicated to each individual one, that's crazy but I guess the final product speaks for itself.


I did more or less every quest, there were some trivial fetch quests like finding the Volus' chit but I did all the anomalies, loyalties and 100% discovered all the systems taking me to around 32 hours of playtime, near double that of ME1. I'll give it a 3.5/5

(This is Legendary Edition btw)

I hear so many good things about this series, moreso about the later ones than the first one though. So I got the ME2 demo on Steam and...I didn't like it. I liked being able to customize a character but it looked plasticy and the gunplay felt rubbery. Part of that might have been me preferring to play third person games on console and first person on PC though. So Legendary Edition came out and I thought I'd give it another shot, especially if they fixed up some of my gripes. I always hear how great the characters and choices are, which were some of the things I liked from BioWare's previous games and wanted to see come to fruition. This time we'll start with the first game proper.

When you hover over an item, it makes a circle but no button appears in the middle, instead, it's at the top of the screen, which is weird. There's a map but you have to go into the menu to access it and it's kinda uninformative sometimes, or maybe I'm just using it wrong. But once you visit an area, you can fast travel to it, if it's a world that allows it. The pause menu itself doesn't tell you a whole lot when it comes to controls either, in fact, it doesn't tell you anything, some stuff it doesn't demo for you so you kind of just have to experiment.

The sprint is shaky like a high school student's Powerpoint presention transition so I prefer not to use it. The music is pretty nice at times, it's really noticeable on the Normandy.

I don't think I would've had the patience for this sort of thing back when I first tried it but playing KOTOR made me a bit more tolerant for the things that it carries over. In fact, I was hoping that it'd be better playing it versus watching it and I think that's the case, there's a certain atmosphere to it that you can get into.

You can definitely tell it's aged, despite being a remaster, the graphics are fine for the most part (Feros makes you blind as a bat though) but the lines can seem robotic (specifically with Shepherd) and animations stiff, there are good animations though too, just some are stiff. The photo mode is fun to play around with but limited in the elevator. Why would I want to take pics in the elevator you might ask, well that's when Liara does her-
https://64.media.tumblr.com/4917091bc90146b34611c18786246a31/8741bc43372f5f9d-87/s540x810/9d6633e46672cb91558d41846bae1853cf10a3f2.pnj

https://64.media.tumblr.com/a21d7d9d2318a32504a110441b88a008/8741bc43372f5f9d-4e/s540x810/c35673b2ae71104f11b9977fa776245b405e50e8.pnj

Twitter flagged this one as NSFW, lmao.

Uh anyway, sometimes choices can seem like a Telltale game where you pick one thing and it says another, some options have the same dialogue or responses, I'm not going to really complain about it though since it's not just this game that does that.

The elevator rides give you context to current quests as if it's breaking news or an infomercial. Depending on who you have in your party, different characters will have different things to say and have conversations with each other, even remarking at the landscape and certain things in the area. This isn't the only game to do that but it's all these elements combined that just add to the atmosphere I was talking about. When Liara's mother dies, everyone that I had in a party with her by that point had told me that I should check on her, is that chemistry or what?

Seeing the societal structures of all these aliens is very diverse and interesting to pick apart, it makes me interested in not only the character but think twice when I come across one of their species. Like say there's a krogan, I'd start out by just taking it out but after getting Wrex you decide to just not equip him when fighting them to avoid making him slaughter his own species. Then when he tells you about the Genophage, you feel guilty for killing them yourself. Then when he asks to be the one to bring an end to it, it makes you feel sad. In some ways, these guys are betrayed by their species, that and they're the ones betraying them to be on your team. Deep stuff.

I think eventually it even gets to be like Fire Emblem where you have optional recruits and if you're not careful, you can lose party members permanently but for now that's not really a problem. You sort of make what you will of the combat, you can choose to command your party members around but you don't have to. You can choose to do stuff with your weapons (ie upgrading, switching out) but you don't have to. You apparently pick a class at the beginning but I don't think I did that. I think you need to make a custom character while I just picked plain old default John Shepard, which I wouldn't normally do but when I tried the ME2 demo, my character looked funky to stare at all the time. Worry not, what you lack (in my case, decryption) can be resolved by equipping a party member with that ability so yes, there's a "skill tree" of sorts but I don't find it all that complicated, maybe to use but not to upgrade.

I think it'd benefit from having actual bosses, there are special characters you fight but they aren't all that different from regular enemies. And the villain is a little cliche with his "if you can't beat em, might as well join em" mentality and only speeding up the process. I know he thinks he's doing people a favor but I think it would've been better written if there was more than that. Say Sovereign gets revealed and now Shep knows what he's up against, Saren could've revealed that he wanted people to find out through him so that people would be made aware (like the council that never listens) and do something about it. And yeah he knew it was inevitable but he wanted to act as the warning. Something like that seems like it could've serviced the story better but we have a lot of other great stuff to look at.

I actually expected a lot of what I got to be in the later games and that this one would be bare bones but this is far from bare bones, I actually have no idea what to expect for the later titles' gameplay because this one introduced everything I knew of. I clocked in around 17 hours, it was a good experience that I found myself excited to come back to. 4/5

This is the most I think you start out with so far. From the ball to bombs to missiles to double jump. Speaking of ball bombs, how are those? They're about the same as the two that came before it, I think Zero Mission, while broken, was a bit more fun to mess around with.

You wanted more story outside of the logs? Well you got it and with voice acting this time around, there are actual characters! This means we learn more about the federation and I need to point out that the female suits remind me of Yori. They get attacked easily but they go out of their way to prove to you that they aren't stormtroopers and can actually hit stuff when they want to. But my question is, why would they have doors that require you to shoot live blaster fire just to traverse through a military facility? Isn't that, I don't know, dangerous?

The menu is more organized, just point and click. It assumes you've played the other games so while you can go into your logs and see what buttons to push, it doesn't hold your hand. You should already know stuff, like scanning for example. The scan doesn't completely fill every item with green, it just outlines it, which I find to be more visually pleasing than the former but you may have to double check just to make sure.

There are also achievements, like say you shoot 100 enemies, there's an achievement for that. What do they unlock? Credits that you can use in-menu to get art, extras, or back in the day, friend tokens. It gives it a better replay value and I kind of like seeing those little S's pop up. I mentioned how the story has voice acting and dialogue and stuff but does that make the scan logs less relevant? No, I found a lot of things out by reading the logs, treat it as the same as the other games but they did change something in return, how you get your endings. The endings no longer require you to scan everything in sight, instead you just have to collect items, whether you think that's better or not, I'm unsure. Can you still scan everything? Yes, it's worth an achievement.

Visors? How are those this time around? Well, similar to how I'd view the blaster, it's pretty concise, it's similarly handled to the 2D games, where you have other blasters but it's usually just upgraded instead of swapping all the time. The only exception to this is the extreme mode, which seems different enough to me anyway. The only other "visors" you get is the one to call your ship with, so I barely even count that and the X-Ray visor which is a lot cooler and cleaner than Prime 1, you only ever use it in a few instances anyway so with that said, I prefer it this way.

Back it up, "call your ship"? You know those outdoor platforms? Well if you can get to one of those and clear it out, you can call your ship there to park and make a save point.

There are some good little details like when you get the grapple, it changes her hand to just straight metal grey as if she's changing pieces of her armor when she gets a new item. If you shoot liquid (like this explosive gel) it will make a break in the flow, and pools will bubble and jiggle, ladies and gentlemen, we have jiggle physics. Samus also has my favorite suit of hers to date in this game, it just looks so cool.

I'm a sucker for interactive stuff and this pumps it up even more. It really makes the game feel like an on-rails arcade shooter at times and I dig it. I think it might be the attraction effect like where you're at an amusement park and you're aiming your water guns and lasers wherever you want just like the Wii Remote, so they gave it more freedom. While Prime 1 and 2 still had that (It's the Prime Trilogy version mind you), they were made for the Gamecube so it was held back a little without me even knowing. I don't think I've felt that since the Ghostbusters game. From an enemy slicing through a glass wall, causing Samus to shield her arms up to being able to press buttons on the ship, yes, that's right, you go planet to planet.

Can you fly the ship? No, you can upgrade it and tell it to land or pick something up. (But you can't land (or ride) it and pick something up at the same time for whatever reason?) And you can tell it to shoot missles at something (very rarely). In fact, that's a bit how I felt with a lot of things, like the robots for example. You can "activate" them but you can't control them, some people may not want that though, I know when Star Fox did it, people went bonkers.

The actual story reasons are kind of weird with Dark Samus just electrifying the hunters and all of the sudden they're all corrupted. I think there also could've been more development with the Hunters themselves before they split apart but I understand why it was done the way it was.

But anyway, let's tally up what I thought overall. It did a lot of things differently and a lot of things right, I would like to see more like this, especially seeing as this was made nearly 15 years ago, imagine the things they could do with a modern game. 4/5

I decided that I preferred the Japanese dialogue because the main character is played by Izzy from Digimon and I couldn't get that out of my head (except if you meet Yunore, then I like changing it back)

I could not have played this as a kid. The whole keyword thing already spins my head. There is SO much exposition crammed into just that beginning part and I'm not talking about plot, I'm talking about gameplay, before I even got to move my character around, it was telling me about more or less everything the game has to offer, like just show me danggit!

You would think it would be like Pokémon XD or something of the sort but it actually plays similar to an old MMO, thus an MMO for people who couldn't play MMOs. A console game that simulates one. So it's not turn based, there aren't even "random" encounters per say. I'd actually compare the combat to Dark Cloud. Limited movement options though, almost like it doesn't always follow my prompts? Which isn't the controller's fault, it's the game...I can hold the stick right and it'll go down, luckily, it's not overtly dependent on movement. Just annoying.

What do you do in an MMO? Crawl dungeons and that's exactly what you do here.

Using "special skills" and ordering party members is more like a normal RPG though, it pauses the combat while you choose. There are even affinities and weaknesses. The thing about that though is that some of those status effects are too OP. If you enter a room with plants, it's game over, you're doomed because they paralyze you and can keep using that ability however much they want, leaving you and your party absolutely helpless. One is manageable but more than that is absurd.

Another thing is that there isn't a whole lot online about this game, like yeah there are walkthroughs and stuff but if you think of something specific, you probably can't find it anywhere. It's especially annoying because googling the name ".Hack" just brings up cheats (hacks) for other games. I feel like I'm playing it wrong all the time because there's a lot the game tells you but I don't know where to look for it. I can be a decent level for a dungeon (there are recommended levels) and it be a cakewalk but then get to the actual boss and get decimated because the initial health bar isn't really a health bar (it's "bugged" and you have to wait to use data drain). It boiled down to grinding (which I hate btw) but I eventually made the decision to have a grind day and then have a story day and then go back and forth from there to prevent such an incident from happening again. As annoying as that sounds, I enjoyed the game a lot more that way instead of being frustrated like I was during the first 8 hours. So the more I played, the more I liked because the more I learned, it's a lot to take in all at once.

The mini map isn't so mini, it takes up 1/6 of the screen which doesn't sound like a lot but once you see it, you'll probably see what I mean, it's not a hinderance to gameplay though. Also, make sure you save! If you die, you're going back to the main menu, no auto saves. And there are only two types of save points, the hub world(s) and the desktop, no menu saves. Imagine grinding and then dying or dying to a boss only to have to redo the whole dungeon again.

Shouldn't "username" be the one in-game and "Character name" be out of game? Instead, it's inverse. But you could just leave it as "Kite", you don't really use the username for this game anyway. And you'd also think "that must mean you go out of game, right?" No, there are no real world missions, it's just the desktop and the game. You can check your mail and boards through that. Luckily it has the sense to tell you when there's new mail...sometimes? I mean, it doesn't always notify you and sometimes you have to check the board and it doesn't tell you that at all. I could make the connection to check on my own but why have even have a "you have mail" notice in-game anyway? I think it's meant to be that you should go to the desktop after every dungeon (as if you were actually leaving the game) but dungeons can be short and mail isn't always there waiting for you. It's a cool idea but just one that I think could've been expanded upon more.

And if you trade, be sure that the user can use it because no takesy backsies, once it's gone, it's gone for good unless you load a save. I do however like what's involved with it. Giving gifts, trading and inviting on missions results in them emailing you where you can email them back through a list of choices of how you want to respond. When I started the game, I thought those sort of things would've benefitted a game like this and then they actually came to fruition. There is a pretty big cast of characters too so I'll mention a few but I won't spoil what their emails may contain because that's the fun part of trying to get them.

BlackRose. She's a tsundere and you can probably tell what she's going to be like from the start but I actually enjoyed sending emails to her, she wasn't mean about it like you'd think, she was very casual and eventually opens up, hence why I prefer her Japanese voice, it seems to be more in line with that rather than just the typical tsundere archetype. Nothing against Wendee Lee, she does some good voices...but then she does Haruhi Suzumiya.

I could've sworn there was another character that wore green, similar to Kite at the very beginning. Maybe that's in a later game though, Elk is the one that looks most like that though (also Rei Ayanami). Elk in my opinion, isn't my favorite party member, but maybe character. And that sort of symbolizes this game for me, the gameplay isn't my favorite, but the story and characters are good. So I like one of the most powerful and least powerful party members. He also does all that to be friends with Mia, I assume out of loneliness, so I figured if I spent time around him, he'd realize he could be Kite's friend too. But he's not one of the ones you can get special emails from.

Natsume is the first out of a few where you can offer up a weapon in exchange for a party member and for the most part, she's kind of fun. She's the same class of player as Kite, a Twin Blade, therefore she seems to have a lot in common. She ended up being online (they have to be online to invite to your party) the most for me so she became one of the higher levels.

There are also little eggs and sorts that you can collect throughout the game that make this really funny sound when you pick them up. You can feed them to your "Grunty" which isn't as developed as a Chao Garden or anything but it's nice to know there's a pet. The board also acts as a good manual for how to do it too, giving you the keywords for each type of food.

My advice is to either get this game on an emulator or wait for a remaster or something. Whether that's the baby gamer in me talking or not, this game hasn't aged the best with today's standards. I'm done with these regularly, with as annoying as the controls are and how expensive the last game is, I'm just going to watch the rest of them online. I know people reading this will probably say the infamous "But- all four are really just one game" but that also means that the other games will just carry over the same problems, am I right? It's not the story I have beef with. (Also that doesn't mean this isn't a full game, it's got a decent length and amount of content, it's just the story isn't as large and leaves on a cliffhanger so the next game uses your save file to carry over stats and such (for reference, my time was 17 hours 14 minutes)

If you feel like it, Soraalam1 does a really good playthrough of it, it's one of his earlier series' so the actual videos can drag on but he does good gameplay and seems passionate about it. Watching his videos actually gave me the reassurance to go back to it at times, unfortunately he didn't do the other games though. I will check out the anime(s?) especially since Liminality came bundled in but as for this one. 5/10, it was pretty ambitious to do what it did but playing it now and days makes it kind of annoying.

Now you might be thinking: "Why review Toy Story 3? That's a trivial game to review." Well for those who've played Toy Story 2 for PlayStation and N64 will know that that game holds a firm standing in platforming history, it's a darn fine game and stands as (probably the best) licensed game there is. So, surely a successor wouldn't live up to it but here we go anyway.

When I was a kid, I played the Toy Story 3 DS version before I even saw the movie and beat it the first day. To this day, it's probably the game that I've beat the most times and even speedran. Had I recorded it, I might hold the world record (the WR is currently 46 min!) but I am pretty rusty now and days and am kinda scared it won't live up to those memories because while I loved that game, it was too short.

"So, if I already played Toy Story 3, why am I playing it again but on Wii?" Because the Wii version is probably the most different of them all. You see, there's the PS2 version which is basically just the PSP version which just doesn't look as good as what I played. But the higher gen consoles at the time (PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii versions) might as well be a different story, this plays completely different from the one I remember on DS but that's not really a bad thing.

DS followed its story pretty much beat for beat the movie with some added mini games (particularly tower defense) but this one plays it with the Toy Box, which is what they really pushed in the marketing and I thought the DS version had when I bought it but then learned it didn't. The story DOES play out like the movie but it's a retelling. Hamm and friends are telling Bonnie's toys about how they got to where they are using- yep, you guessed it, toys. And that is the excuse for the Toy Box.

You can play as Woody, Buzz, Jessie and even ride Bullseye, which I don't believe the latter two were an option for the DS version.

You can even play the Buzz game from TS2, or at least their version of it. So, you can use Buzz's laser which can seem finicky with cough motion controls. Which as a kid, I wouldn't have minded but being older has gotten me to look at it differently. I think maybe I had it set up with the prime distance as a kid but now and days, I'm limited, because I have a different TV, different house, which equals different space.

Cutscenes are rendered pretty well and no they're not just FMVs of the movie! You can play the levels separately to get stuff that you missed. They did care about what they were putting into this game.

The thing the DS version has over this one is environments and Buzz. With Buzz, you could glide. That's half of what I remember about that game, is just gliding around as Buzz, without even having a place to go, just to feel the sensation of being able to do it. There's a glide in the Buzz videogame but he doesn't extend his wings, it's the not same glide and it's nowhere near as long, even the N64 TS2 had a better glide.

The camera drives me nuts with this game and it's really apparent in the Toy Box, trying to figure out where to go. The unreliable camera is actually what's keeping this back as a good speed-running game, so yes, it is another short one (WR: 32 min, about 8 levels + Toy Box). I'm sure it was made under a tight budget with an even tighter deadline though.

Now it does have some other issues like lag but that's also part of the Wii, but then there some cutscenes where music plays too loud over voices. Music cutting out with a sudden interruption of a cutscene then return where the music stopped right after.

How exactly is that Toy Box? It's good to have collectibles and to be able to customize buildings and villagers but it is experimental. It worked its way up to Disney Infinity, which the Toy Box mode in that is great but TS3 is the better game overall, at least from what I've played of Infinity. There are other collectibles and cards that you can view in Al's Toy Barn (not a level, not explorable) They're literally just pictures, hardly considered concept art, I've seen much better examples.

It's not a hard game but not so easy that it's baby stuff. They have hints that you can choose to use and sometimes I did actually use them. It's a good balanced kids game even if I do prefer TS2. Speaking of which, let me talk about licensed games in general. There are quite a few that I like, contrary to popular opinion but what I like most about them is to visit places that were in the show/movie. That's it! Make a fully explorable, 1x1 creation of that world and I will be happy. Toy Story 2 was the closest that I've found to that. The Kingdom Hearts series does pretty good with it too. I appreciate getting levels and stuff that are brand new never before seen content that feels like it fits right in with the movie (even this game does that) but I think most of us play them to feel like we're in the world that we're already familiar with.

The fact that licensed games have more or less gone away is a little sad to me but going back to some of them, I see why. Many of them were very similar, made on shoestring budgets with a tight schedule to coincide with the movie. I get that but then I look at stuff like Spider-Man 2, Battle for Bikini Bottom, and even Shrek has a few cool games. There's a demand for a niche part of those games, even now, and I would be happy to see them back in a new way, one that doesn't have to rely on a release schedule and can just come out like any normal game. Many of them are cultural icons anyway. Tell me you wouldn't play a Danny Phantom game or a Moana game or something of the sort even being that old. I get striking while the iron is hot but that seems close-minded in my opinion.

I really dislike writing these together but I wanted to be able to say everything for certain in terms of how you should go about playing it and comparisons between the two.

I'm not going to really talk about story too much because the story is the game and the game is the story but imagine a kid who's gotten into some trouble but a detective takes him under his wing. This is his first proper mission without his teacher. (He's still there but he's doing a different case).

This is an Ace Attorney style game from before Ace Attorney was even born. This visual novel has the added bonus of gorgeous graphics, designs and animations. Sometimes there are even little things in the background to catch your attention like a kid messing around in his shoe locker, it's pretty funny.

This even has Smash history. Yep. Ayumi was a Smash trophy in Melee and I believe even a spirit in Ultimate.

If I've hooked you, then let's proceed.

So which game should you play first? Originally, the games released with the Missing Heir and then the Girl Who Stands Behind released after as a prequel. I feel like it wouldn't be a wrong answer to play it either way because you learn more about these characters. Playing this The Missing Heir will give you insight to the main character because it's an amnesia story. It can add context to certain scenes in TGWSB, if you want to already have those scenes in mind, you should start with TGWSB. If you want to get the context first then play TMH. It's nothing major in terms of plot points. Neither is mandatory to enjoy the other. I personally played TGWSB first but I think I'd have rather went with TMH. But I'm also the kind of person that likes playing sequels and then going back to the ones before it, it doesn't cause me as much issue as some other might have.

There's also a naming system that allows you to carry over your chosen name (as long as you have the save data) from one game to the next (doesn't matter which order). You don't have to do that though, it's just a fun little continuity thing. As far as length goes, my Switch says "Played for 5 hours or more" for each but it matters how you play visual novels. The text boxes are voiced but you can just skip those if you want, I kind of do half and half.

There are some points where it feels like you will need to ask the same questions over again even to the same answer because there are only so many options. I don't think it runs the same way as Ace though where you have to ask in a specific order to get the desired answer or penalizes you for guessing wrong. In fact, I didn't look anything up until Chapter 11 where you have 4 places you can visit around the school, I did every option for every area but how it works is that you have done that option already but it wasn't triggered yet because you had to do something else so I guess something I did triggered the Old School Building's surroundings because ended up being the solution. It also had a mysterious "Open" option. I've noticed that sometimes it'll have an option already available that can't be used yet (like checking the trash can) but that Open option was never relevant to that area.

There are no romance options or alternate endings but there is a "personality test" and "compatibility" with Ayumi at the ending of TGWSB but that's actually gained by what order you ask things (when interacting with her specifically), as well as looking at other girls too many times but it doesn't affect anything, just what sentences you get at the ending to say "what kind of person you are" but I feel it could've benefitted by giving you actual choices to determine those things especially with a game as trial and error as this. It's just not as clear cut as I'd like it to be and the reward seems lacking.

What I will say is that The Missing Heir seems like a proper sequel graphically. I mentioned the animations with the last game being good but this improves upon it even further, which is odd considering these remakes released at the same time and I suppose were developed at the same time.

I liked TMH more than TGWSB but as a report card for both games, I think that the story is decent, Ayumi is great, the animations are exquisite, but the gameplay is sort of lacking. I've played a few visual novels so I know that sometimes you can get lost with options and have to test the grounds but sometimes you do everything and then need to do it again and don't even know why you're doing it. Sometimes they correlate to what the character is saying, and you can pick up on it but that's only sometimes. I think that's part of the reason I liked The Missing Heir more, is that I played it with a walkthrough and I played TGWSB blind.

The story is the best so far but the gameplay was slightly better before.

I didn't play the original GameCube or PS2 versions of the first two games so I expected going into this system was going to be different for me, but other than some quality of life changes, I found that this game carries over a lot more elements than I thought.

There's no sprint but honestly it's not that bad, he does a brisk jog most of the time. You can't save whenever but there are relatively frequent places as long as you're not engaged in something. You can't pause cutscenes but you can enable to skip them in the menu. You can't just change difficulty for some reason. Which is especially weird because if you fail an amount of times, it asks you if you want to lower it "temporarily" (if you're on normal). In fact, I'll just tell you what part I used it for.

There's a part where the police chase you and it tells you to tap X if you get caught but tapping it doesn't do anything, I let it go and it had the exact same results. That's the thing, it doesn't matter how many times you press a prompt, sometimes you'll just fail anyway and I think that's stupid especially when it's a boss holding you in a chokehold or something. Same with quick time events, sometimes the timing is crazy fast, it's not fatal if you miss it but really annoying when you're trying to do a combo.

Chasing in general isn't done as actively or relentlessly. In Kiwami, you could see them on the map but here they just kind of pop up and surprise you which isn't all that bad most of the time but it can get annoying if you just did one and then another comes straight after.

As far as the actual remaster aspects, Heat mode is activated by rapidly tapping R2 but R2 isn't an easily tappable button, it's a trigger. It loads before the menu and then loads again afterwards (not a load screen, the save data) then when you go to save it always saves twice, no matter what button you push, it saves and then saves again. Those aren't necessarily that bad but minor inconveniences.

Holding R1 in a fight lets you play it more like a fighting game by having the camera swivel. Combat is really very similar, almost where we left off so you don't have to worry too much about downgrading. You still have to upgrade individual aspects but you don't have to do the skill tree of abilities, they're luckily just unlocked through level, it feels a lot more organized that way to me.

As for story, it starts out with a flash forward revealing the catalyst of this game, the thing is, it backtracks. It doesn't need to have that flash forward, it could just be told linearly and probably have a greater effect. You don't even reach the same part from the beginning until you're already hours in. It's not like an out of context, only able to be understood at the ending thing and it's not even playable, it's just there.

But after that we get some of the stuff I was waiting for. Now some people will be turned off by this but just wait and see. Kiryu moves to Okinawa to take care of an orphanage and you actually interact with these kids and help solve their problems. Sometimes it's the little slice of life stuff like that, that makes this series special for me.

And because of that, I feel like we have some good characters. I've felt most of the Yakuza characters have just been mid in the last 2 games but this game has a good amount of good characters and I actually came to care about these kids. I think Nagoshi was finally out of the practice stage and the series fully started to blossom here. 🌸 There're problems that carry over from the past games but I'm not going to bother reiterating.

It definitely has some of the best moments so far but there's a butcher scene...he may be a bad guy but I'm still not a fan of it and the graphics really didn't age well for the scene in particular, everything else isn't too much of a downgrade in my opinion though.

You can use your phone camera for certain quick time events to capture little memes to put on your blog, I ended up doing those the most because I wasn't all that impressed by the side missions. I believe that's where certain special attacks come from.

There isn't a funeral chase sequence, luckily, but there are returning things like the Colosseum, which I personally don't care to see keep returning over and over. I've more or less accepted that Kamurocho is going to be a main stay but this series rhymes a little too much. I'd like to see something actually done with the Purgatory because you get there and what? Walk a hallway with all these buildings you can't interact with to get to one set location? When you have the potential for all these side quests? When I first saw it, I thought of Wall Market from FF7 and it has the potential to be like that but it just isn't.

Sometimes there will be a big heavy duty guy holding a chair or something in your way and unless you have a weapon or special move handy, you're pretty much screwed and even then, you drop the weapon if he hits you and it takes more time to pick it up than it does for him to hit you again so it can get stuck at his feet so you're limited to just little punches here and there and more or less tanking his hits.

I found Kiwami 2 to be the longest but this one was on par with my Kiwami 1 length, clocking in at 17 hours. There's also "premium adventure" which unlocks after you finish the game, adding more minigames, modes and costumes. A good game for sure, probably a 7 or 7.5/10, if it wasn't for some gameplay aspects, I'd say this was the best one so far.

I heard it has a darker tone, like a horror game. Doubt. How dark can it get? The story revolves around going to Aether (planet name) to retrieve some lost federation soldiers. The first level has you walking into a room where most of them are dead, being fed upon by these bugs called Splinters which, you know, might be a little dark...Oh they're hanging, yeah, that's creepy. One of them getting sucked up like one of the barnacles from Half Life 2. You scan all these bodies and find the soldiers' logs before they died and then they're possessed by (well I'll just call it "dark eco") and start attacking you like zombies. Nice.

These aren't just any soldiers either, they look up to Samus, they might not personally know her but one person even calls her Santa Claus because of how legendary she is, imagine being a bounty hunter of that status finding the bodies of these people who looked up to you like that. That's not even as far as it goes, they went as deep as saying who sat in each of the seats in the crashed ship, as needlessly irrelevant as that sounds, it tells you how many people were on the ship as well as which ones still need to be accounted for. That's so smart! I love it. Sad though.

This is a different game, I can appreciate that, that's exactly what I asked for. I also asked that it added more story related cutscenes, got that too. I still scanned as much as I could though (as should you to get the story), but even that has an improvement with each item you scan being tagged green in the visor so you can differentiate what things do.

Green = Scanned. Blue = Not scanned. Red = Important. Simple but definitely worth noting. Not to mention the friendlier natives are MOTHS! And guess what? They talk, maybe not in english (or your preferred language), but they do have a few written dialogue scenes, just what I asked for. You find those bodies too...

Here's a small weird thing though. In Prime 1, you start out with stuff but your suit gets taken out of commission from the elevator explosion. This one, you start out with stuff but it also gets taken out of commission. And it's not like there isn't other stuff to get, but I'm asking to keep even just the bare essentials like morph ball bombs (you have the ball, just not the bombs) maybe they felt it would add to the experience if you went back to areas to unlock stuff you were unable to get because of a stupid bomb or measly missile but it's not very rewarding, anyway.

I also want to complain about the difference in menu, the map is the same but the place where you see lore and research and stuff has a really weird layout, stylized but weird to navigate through because it's like sorting through subfolders using gulp motion controls so you have to spin it around like a ball...it's a whole mess. With the last game, you had multiple visors, which I honestly wasn't really a fan of. I mean they cranked up the immersion factor but here? We have new ones but I don't really care for them, they pose the same problem I have with not starting out with ball bombs, gatekeeping. If it was a normal ability or mechanic, it might be fine but to force you to change the game view entirely? I don't think we need extra visors for Prime games going forth (I'm unsure whether it's in 3 or not).

The main feature that I was concerned about was the light/dark gimmick and the bubbles. I had no idea what that meant but it sounded horrific.

BUT let me explain it because it might sound worse in concept than it actually is. It's not really a shield, it's more of a stasis. This next part is going to sound bad but the dark air hurts you and light bubbles heal you so you recover from it immediately. Each bubble is powered by a crystal or light (there are even creatures that project them and you follow them to stay in the light) some you power by shooting but most are spread evenly enough that you're only outside the bubble in short bursts.

AND this is done in the dark dimension which is basically a mirror of the regular one with some things missing and some things added (Nintendo likes this feature and has used it in various games since then so you probably already know it (this might even be the origin of some of it)) that doesn't make it wore out though because it's only done in bursts. Imagine a specified section of an area that you navigate, fight a boss and then you go back into the real dimension where you don't worry about any of that. Not all of the light realm is translated into the dark realm. PLUS you get something that suppresses the damage from the dark eco even further. It's very graceful and didn't stress me out like I thought.

This is where this game starts to take a bit of a turn though because I mentioned how it was done in "sections". Well that's essentially how the rest is done too. You start off doing the Agon Wastelands and restoring that temple, and afterwards a few more separate maps. It's more organized that way and I feel like the backtracking is at least condensed to the area you're in rather than every map in the game (not 100% but more than Prime 1 imo) But when you do backtrack, it sticks out because it's so far away. Some are going to like the separation and some aren't, I understand both arguments.

There is a weak spot compared Prime 1 though and that's the bosses. I remember a good amount of the bosses from Prime 1, because I just played it, but I literally just played this and I disliked most of these bosses and doubt I'll even remember then and the ones that I will, will be for all the wrong reasons. I like the variety but most of the time, they're annoying to actually play, even the common enemies. The music just wasn't as memorable to me either. (And the extended emphasis on the ball in this game is atrocious.) On the plus side, I can say that I liked the story more than the first game.

In the end, I just didn't enjoy it as much as Prime 1. It does some things better than the original and that start was promising but it just didn't live up to my expectations. It was littered with too many little inconveniences.

There are no difficulty modes, you could see that as a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what you think of its base. I hear some people say it's hard because they don't grind enough and I hear some people say it's easy because they grind too much or they're just really good at figuring out what to use for stats and building their kingdom, which I'll get to shortly.

There's a pretty smooth transition from fighting to traveling and vice versa, the only downside is that once you're engaged in combat, it locks you in so you can't escape until you defeat them or they defeat you. You do have a chance to run before they catch you though.

One of the the best things about the game is that it's not turn based. I've seen Dragon Quest XI gameplay where it looks like it should play more similar to this and I actually prefer this over FFXV combat. So it's not the same as the original for those who've played it. The other best thing about this game is its visual design, the whole reason I bought it. There were some character designs that I really liked as well as some that lack but all in a Ghibli-esque style.

In the grand scope of things, it’s a big world with tons of side quests. With some of the side quests, you HAVE to look it up, like this one where you make a tart for this guy in Goldpaw (pretty early in the game) but you can't actually make it until you beat the main story, I get having side-quests in areas that you can't do yet so no one area is deemed irrelevant and they do have certain side-quests and NPCs open up after beating certain missions but why not these? Why were these the exceptions? It just doesn't make sense to do it this way, if anything, give me the resources readily available. There's no reason I can't have a certain market or lumber yard when they're all the same but with different names.

Now my biggest complaint so far is the potential. Sometimes the person you do the quest for will join your kingdom but the game requires you to keep your kingdom a certain way in order to progress, so you can't just pick and choose your villagers, there's a minimum amount you need to have. That breaks the illusion of being able to customize your kingdom and getting to interact with your villagers in an engaging way because most of the time, you're just filling in another space. There's a specific point where the difficulty ramps up overall which was around the end of Hydropolis for me but it makes it very easy to fall behind on leveling your kingdom as well as your party. There are also "skirmishes" which have a similar playstyle to Pokemon Rumble (cool in concept) but in reality is pretty annoying. You even have to work on your skirmish forces' level separately through the kingdom research (as well as just doing more skirmishes) so there's a lot to keep track of.

That kingdom research (for whatever department it may be in) says things like "this will take 9 minutes" or "this will take 25 minutes" but that's annoying when you have nothing else to do but wait for those to be done, when you need to level up in order to progress your missions. The kingdom is just a mandatory mobile game! You can actually speed up research but you have to spend your money, and not just regular money, oh no, this is a special currency that you only get from your kingdom, for your kingdom. The whole thing seems pretty counterproductive if you ask me, especially considering it's done in increments. To speed up a single research task you could be spending purchase after purchase to lower it by 10% each time, mere minutes to sometimes a wait above 45. All it needs are the microtransactions to purchase them with real money and you got yourself a gacha.

I believe MGS5 has something similar to the research part, but the difference is that I actually had fun with Mother Base in MGS, this one just makes me feel like I'm playing Clash of Clans. Once you get enough gold steadily coming in, it's not as big of a deal but it's definitely tedious. Combine that with the grinding, which took me way too much time just to keep up with the level gap of "Recommended strength" and my actual level. You're taking down hordes at a time and the XP just seems to slow down. I would be fighting enemies way above my level and barely even a scratch so I looked it up and it said it's more quantity over quality, (or in this case level) which is nuts to begin with but even doing so barely increased it at a solid rate, I got the exp necklace, messed with the tactic-tweaker, did side-quests, did a bunch of stuff with the kingdom itself and it was just never enough, it was like the game was trying to unnecessarily inflate its playtime. Now my best advice that actually ended up working, is to do the optional boss fights littered among the world (tainted monsters). I don't like them but they're the only things that seemed to give me a reasonable amount of xp and even some decent weapons. Mornstar, The Sword of Unity, end-game item with 270 damage? Try my Giant's Tooth or whatever it's called with 290!

The story isn't necessarily priority here, it kind of sets itself up from the start. You go to each kingdom, beat their boss, unite them. That about sums it up, that's not bad for a game like this but it's not as rich as many JRPGs and I hear even the first game so I doubt you would have to play the first one to understand it (at least I didn't). It also starts out as a sort of isekai where Roland is a president who gets sent to Ding Dong Dell to service a furry king...what a fanfic.

The first half peaked and then just became unenjoyable for me after Hydropolis. There was a boss late-game that I was into but it was sandwiched between 2 really dumb bosses, so it evened out. I'll give it a 2/5 or 4/10 overall. I don't really recommend it but if I did, I would recommend the Nintendo Switch version (which is apparently out now) because I got this on PS4 around launch (yeah, it took me this long) and I felt that it was best suited for the Switch as soon as I started because of the quest system. The only downside is that I hear that version runs poorly, which is a shame because honestly, I might've dropped it if the PS4 version ran that poorly. It actually ran pretty well, barely had any load times and has a massive world with consistent quality, quite impressive.

This is pretty much my review (gushing) of the sequel.

I started out with Halo 1 when I was a kid, I think Halo 2 had launched relatively near that time but it was like a mythical game to me. "2 guns at once?!" "You can play as one of the Elite?!" I was baffled and then someone told me that it was only with certain guns, like pistols, to which I felt disappointed. The person who showed me Halo, got Halo 2 and showed me basically what amounted to a teaser of it but I never got my hands on the actual gameplay. Then the 3rd generation console wars came with PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii. I didn't really see anything on PS3 at the time but I knew that Xbox 360 had Halo 3 and Viva Pinata...but then I played Mario Galaxy in a Gamestop and that sold me on a Wii. I took my hiatus and went to my friend's house when Reach was already out and we played the multiplayer like no other. Me and my friend boarded the hype train for Halo 4 and Anniversary but we didn't really play them together too often, what we did have though were the Halo Mega Blox, which I still have by the way.

I would sit in my room, thinking about what my gamertag and dogtag would be and customizing my suit based on the Mega Blox. Well, here I am. Over a decade later with these Halo games now available on PC, something I've only dreamed of, so let me visit that mythical Halo 2.

It's back! As much as I enjoyed Anniversary, this one is making me reconsider which game I love more. This has a lot of the things that made an impression on me in the first game, like the interactive suit testing but it's not aiming to make the same impression, it's just taking you through the motions, reminding you of Halo 1 and then revealing what else it has up its sleeve. I was immediately thrown off by the interface because it looks "different" and more simplistic. I'm not one for cluttered HUDs, in fact I've avoided some games for that very reason, and this is far from cluttered but I just preferred the original one partially because I got used to it and partially because it looks more stylized. But anyway, I found myself playing the game a bit differently anyway. I liked pulling the Covenant and UNSC combo with an SMG in one hand and a Type-25 in the other. I've found that Elites seem to hurt more when I use their weapons, while with grunts, it's just whatever, so I used the SMG on them to avoid overheating my rifle. It is kind of a hassle to drop your second gun every time you throw a grenade but you can just pick it right back up, it's no big deal and I suppose it makes sense (practically and all).

I was afraid about the "only certain guns" thing and while I didn't feel limited initially, it started to settle in a little bit more. But just the fact that you can do it, is still very cool. (I thought I remembered a flamethrower though...guess I was mistaken?) Now, playing as the Arbiter also had me hyped because I believe that's the first time you get to wield the sword which made the whole story just stunning because it starts out with Chief getting recognized for taking down Halo while on the flip side, the Arbiter is being punished for losing Halo. Dare I call this sequel the Shrek 2 of game sequels.

I like how your melee actually brings you to your enemy, rather than smacking and missing all the time, it's a wonder how much these games revolutionized not just the genre, but gaming in general, I can feel its influence. Now I do have a small complaint however, I found that after playing both Reach and OG, this one had the most problems running. It's not awful or anything but there were noticeable moments where it would freeze up which is odd that it would be this one specifically. All in all, I couldn't imagine playing this and then having to wait until Halo 3 with that cliffhanger.