Phobos
2011
This review contains spoilers
This game is pretty much nothing, every level is some cookie cutter ass Mario level with nothing interesting going on. The overworld is laughably basic, it is literally just a straight line with a single color background. The camera is god awful you have no depth perception at all (the 3D does not help with this). The movement feels super sluggish and like I don’t have any control over him and he just jumps wherever he wants. You can’t gain speed in midair so if you don’t have full p speed you can’t make a lot of jumps, which is extremely annoying. I find it funny how the game literally doubles in length, I wish one of the good games did that but it makes sense considering how nothing the levels are. Each special world level feels like a different bowl of the same cereal.
Overall super boring and annoying game, bonus points for being able to play as Luigi tho.
Overall super boring and annoying game, bonus points for being able to play as Luigi tho.
2006
I've heard that this game was worse than the first one, so going into it my expectations were a bit low, but I never expected this game to be this bad. The level design is so much worse than the first, just boring unfun unmemorable uninteresting slop. Most levels are just meh to normal bad but does have a few that are just completely unforgivably awful. The autoscrollers in this game are so unbelievably slow which was a problem in the first game but it seems there are quite a bit more of them and they go on for longer making it far more annoying.
This game added more babies that you can have ride yoshi, unfortunately you can't run as any of them except baby mario, immediately making every other one worse and far more annoying to play as, I understand baby dk being slow to run with but I don't understand it with like baby peach. I never want to play as any other character than mario, the only reason I ever go off of him is because the game makes me.
I noticed that this game looks worse than the original, idk it just feels boring and 'flat' to me, the artstyle isn't even that much different than the original so i'm not sure why they didn't just make it the same as the first. Also wanted to mention that because this game is on the ds, anything that would be in between the 2 screens is completely invisible which does/can get you killed in a few places, I'm not too sure why they didn't account for this but it doesn't seem like that they accounted for anything really.
My main problem with the first game was how unforgiving the hundo requirements were and I am happy to say that they made it even worse in this one. The red coins now look exactly the same as a normal coin meaning to have to collect pretty much every coin in every level, and of course if you miss even one red coin/flower or you don't have enough star points you have to replay the level and recollect everything again. In addition to that they also added a golden coin in every level that you can only grab as a certain character, from what i've seen you don't have to grab these in the same run as the others but i'm not sure, I skipped hundo on this playthrough for obvious reasons
This game added more babies that you can have ride yoshi, unfortunately you can't run as any of them except baby mario, immediately making every other one worse and far more annoying to play as, I understand baby dk being slow to run with but I don't understand it with like baby peach. I never want to play as any other character than mario, the only reason I ever go off of him is because the game makes me.
I noticed that this game looks worse than the original, idk it just feels boring and 'flat' to me, the artstyle isn't even that much different than the original so i'm not sure why they didn't just make it the same as the first. Also wanted to mention that because this game is on the ds, anything that would be in between the 2 screens is completely invisible which does/can get you killed in a few places, I'm not too sure why they didn't account for this but it doesn't seem like that they accounted for anything really.
My main problem with the first game was how unforgiving the hundo requirements were and I am happy to say that they made it even worse in this one. The red coins now look exactly the same as a normal coin meaning to have to collect pretty much every coin in every level, and of course if you miss even one red coin/flower or you don't have enough star points you have to replay the level and recollect everything again. In addition to that they also added a golden coin in every level that you can only grab as a certain character, from what i've seen you don't have to grab these in the same run as the others but i'm not sure, I skipped hundo on this playthrough for obvious reasons
This review contains spoilers
The gameplay can be super annoying at times, if you don't object with the exact evidence (sometimes multiple evidences could fit but don't work) on the exact text box (again some text boxes could fit but don't work) the devs chose you will be penalized, and if you lose all of your "hp" or whatever you wanna call it you have to restart from your last save, which basically just means you have to mash through text just to get back where you were. I would've preferred just no punishment at all, all it does is waste your time and they knew this, for situations where evidence is more of a stretch you wont get penalized so why not just make it that way always? I know that would get rid of the "risk" but I don't think that's a bad thing when that "risk" is just having to mash through text for a while, they should've just kept it at dialogue calling you an idiot or something with no penalization imo.
The game should have a map system, you can only go to certain locations from certain places sometimes they make sense other times they don't, so I feel the game would benefit greatly from one, and with the game being on the ds (The game originally came out on gba in japan only but they still could've had this or just added it when they ported it to the ds) it would feel right at home. Also sometimes a place will "update" e.g someone new will be there, new dialogue ect. It would be nice for there to be indicators for when this happens as sometimes its unclear, you could argue that this would get rid of the investigative feel and that would be valid although I disagree.
As for what I like about the game, I think the plot is good, interesting characters, interesting cases, in particular I find ||the Edgeworth case and his character|| to be the most interesting . The investigation sections are cool, and uhhhhh I don't really know how else to explain why I like things without just saying "I like it" or "It's cool", but as you can tell by my rating I do like this game quite a bit.
The game should have a map system, you can only go to certain locations from certain places sometimes they make sense other times they don't, so I feel the game would benefit greatly from one, and with the game being on the ds (The game originally came out on gba in japan only but they still could've had this or just added it when they ported it to the ds) it would feel right at home. Also sometimes a place will "update" e.g someone new will be there, new dialogue ect. It would be nice for there to be indicators for when this happens as sometimes its unclear, you could argue that this would get rid of the investigative feel and that would be valid although I disagree.
As for what I like about the game, I think the plot is good, interesting characters, interesting cases, in particular I find ||the Edgeworth case and his character|| to be the most interesting . The investigation sections are cool, and uhhhhh I don't really know how else to explain why I like things without just saying "I like it" or "It's cool", but as you can tell by my rating I do like this game quite a bit.