First I'm gonna say this, unlike a lot of early players for this game, I was not a backer or a religious follower. Some time ago I saw that a silly indie RPG in a modern setting with a unique concept for combat was being made and I wishlisted it. Outside of a few snippets, I didn't know much before playing it.

This game starts off really wacky and I love it. Its simply throwing joke after joke, minigame after minigame, and its all really fun while establishing the game's really silly and hyper sense of humor and wacky variety in gameplay. And I'll say it now, the humor is the highlight of the game for me. It consistently had me laughing at almost every cutscene that attempted funnies and a good chunk of NPC dialog got a solid nose exhale out of me. So in terms of being weird and goofy, the game gets an A+ for me.

Then it just, and I'll keep this vague for spoiler reasons, randomly pulls a... Very dark twist out of nowhere. It's completely jarring, and I don't think it was supposed to be a joke. For a minute it kind of plays up the guilt and scale of what happened. "Okay" I thought, "this isn't what I expected at all but, hey, I wasn't immediately into how dark Omori got, and that's one of my favorite games ever." The only problem is that Knuckle Sandwich doesn't really focus on that. Knuckle Sandwich doesn't really focus on... Anything, unfortunately. Right around here, completely contrasting that, you get a big exposition dump about some sci-fi fantastical nonsense on how the world works as we explore some weird glitch world. So already I'm a bit confused on what they want to explore, and then when you get out the game begins to set up a mysterious conspiracy sort of maybe loosely related to what was dumped on you probably, Bus Driver isn't entirely sure at least.

Like, okay? Is this a grim comedy with dark themes, a modern fantasy adventure, or a conspiracy mystery story? It feels like the game tries to do all three at once and can't really focus on any of them. Even outside of story content, the required overworld minigames pretty much vanish after you get party members and not too long after the burger joint the game is named after just goes into the background until near the ending. This game is so dissociated it feels entirely different at the beginning, middle, and ending. The dark stuff after the mystery properly begins outside of a couple vague references completely vanishes until and I'm not joking the last section of the last proper dungeon of the game. The weird fantastical stuff also vanishes for large chunks of the middle of the game as you're exploring more of Bright City, my man Bus Driver stops hooking you up with info outside of a few set points once you get far enough, and even then all he usually has to say is "Maybe the info is here? Idk."

The conspiracy angle I guess fits this game the best, but it just doesn't explore it well enough. You spend a huge chunk of the game chasing a rival party that ends up meaning very little in the grand scheme of things. And god the actual twist on what's really going on is so freaking silly and hardly set-up since the game spent so much time exploring other stuff. The main "foreshadowing" is a running gag where I can't even tell how it would work in-universe. This would be fine if the game was all silly and goofy, but no right after the villain does some disastrous crap that's so freaking jarring, and then the game just... Moves on! Like yeah sure nothing to explore there.

I just did not care for the endgame of Knuckle Sandwich at all. It pulls back in the other two concepts it was exploring in a haphazard way that just seems so confused. Elaborating on the dark stuff after hours of not acknowledging it, pushing the fantastical elements front and center to the point where after the final boss the game just delves into complete goofy nonsense that while pretty funny feels like it undermines the game, and again, has a really unsatisfying twist of a conclusion.

So yeah... I'm not very big on the story if that isn't clear enough. However, I don't really have only bad to say about "story" scenes surprisingly enough.

Once again the humor is excellent, whenever the game is doing dumb Mario & Luigi-type shenanigans, I was fully into it. The many scenarios that crowded the middle of the game were also pretty amusing or interesting. Yeah doing random crap around this cruise ship is pretty much filler, but it's fun, and that's what I was looking for. I liked some of the characters, too. None of them are explored all that much, but I was happy when Echo, Thea, Bus Driver, and especially Brightside were around. The overworld was nice too, NPCs are great, sometimes they feel like they have their own little punchlines and progression as they appear throughout the game. The dungeons were fun too, nothing crazy but I think they struck a good balance of puzzles versus combat. I didn't find much in the overworld to explore outside of those, but what I did find was neat. Got really into the arcade minigames especially.

But hey, the story isn't what got me interested in the game. It was the combat, and... Yeah, it's pretty good! WarioWare is a series that has a special place in my heart and the idea of combining it with a typical turn-based RPG sounds ridiculous yet sort of genius. Dodging enemy attacks never got old to me, I love how sometimes the minigames make sense for what the enemy is and sometimes it's just "Play golf and avoid hitting the cow." While most are pretty basic with ideas I've seen many times before, they were still fun with very few exceptions.

This is where I start nitpicking.

First off, attacking. There are three minigames for regular attacks, which are all fun, but the circle one is way too strong. It's just easier and has way more damage potential and often for me resulted in getting wins way earlier. There's also the minigames for special attacks which are fun but man you just don't get that many. Each character gets like two? I was getting really sick of using beat up on the protagonist, hell, he doesn't get many skills at all considering you have him the whole game. Equipping skills as items is an option but those are limited by your small, occasionally annoying inventory, and even smaller amount of equipment options.

Party member balance seems to be an issue in general. You don't get to choose your partner until the late game but I don't know why you would choose anyone aside from Thea, it took me a while to realize it but her flare up skill just freaking breaks her with how strong she can get on gop of her pretty easy skill attack minigames. Thankfully though I think the difficulty is handled well to (mostly) offset that and most other things in the game. You can customize minigame difficulty and how much damage you take in percentages of 10 perfectly to fit how hard you want the game to be, on top of other options like autoheal or disabling EXP all together. I thought a lot of this game was too easy but after customizing it it felt just right. Only thing that seems annoying with challenge runs using those are those undodgeable attacks that hit everyone, those just feel cheap. Only other complaint I think worth mentioning is that I think a lot of bosses go on just a tad bit too long, but don't let that distract from the fact that overall, I had fun battling in this game. It's fast-paced, fun, and always kept my attention with what they were going to throw at me next. I was never flat-out sick of battling, which even happens for combat systems I love, and I think this game's fast pace is to thank for that.

And this all makes me feel really conflicted. I was having a good time running through this game, laughing at all the ridiculous scenes, getting into fun battles with the goofiest systems, and absolutely digging the GBA-inspired aesthetic and music which is just overall really solid. However, now when I think about this game having beaten it, my thoughts are just soured by just how disappointed I was with the story and how unhappy I am with how it unraveled in the ending. I mean how much of this review was just me being confused on what it was even going for? I don't know, I feel like I'm being too harsh. This game clearly had a lot of heart put into it, but it almost feels as if the game was so excited to put out all of its ideas that it got kind of lost on the way of doing it. I guess it's decent overall? I do see a lot of potential here, and Andy Brophy seems like a lovable dude, so I'm definitely interested in seeing what he cooks up in the future.

I've gone on record saying I quite enjoy Tales of Arise. It definitely has its issues, don't get me wrong, I get why it's not the most beloved game in the series. I hate the bosses, the skit system has been ruined, the pacing in the back half of the game is not very good, the AI was blehhhh, but in spite of all of that I enjoyed the game a lot. I loved the cast, the combat was super satisfying outside of bosses, the overworld and content was vast and investing, and I even thought the story was pretty good. However, what I think both haters and fans can agree on, is that after the credits rolled, we were done with Arise. It made some interesting steps forward and we wanted to see where the series would go from here. Of all the Tales games, this had to be one with the least potential for a continuation.

Which is why I remember seeing "Beyond the Dawn" trademarked and getting worried.

Was this a sequel? No, it can't be a sequel, what would they even do? An anime? A pachinko machine? It was certainly a... Weird thing to see announced. But, being the massive Tales fan I am, I had faith that Bandai Namco wouldn't do something unreasonable. Turns out this was a DLC taking place after the story, sort of like Tales of Graces' "F Arc." I became cautiously optimistic, while the arc had its flaws Graces' F arc had a lot of great aspects going for it and I think made the game stronger overall. Promising 20 hours of content, a ton of new stuff, and a wholely new story, I was curious to see what Bamco was cooking.

The first thing that made me worried was the pricetag. Thirty dollars. That's pretty freaking hefty for a DLC, isn't it? But hey, it's pretty long at least, I guess it sooorta makes sense. Then I was hearing from others that the game's length was... Actually more like 10 hours. Hell, someone I know claimed to beat it in less than 5. I'm not taking the price into account with this review, but I beat this campaign in around 10 hours, and for the actual amount of interesting new content this price is a complete scam, especially considering what this is advertising. I imagine you're only getting 20 with all the sidequests while going as slow as possible. Not cool Bamco. Not cool.

But whatever, I had borrowed a PS4 for this, I had set aside time for it, I was gonna play this campaign. And... I was kinda bored? Beyond the Dawn's structure is the first thing that kills it for me. All the overworld areas are reused. This makes sense, the whole world was pretty much explored (which is another reason this DLC didn't need to exist), but it makes every moment you're not in a dungeon just... Walking from cutscene to cutscene. Tales of Xillia 2 reused overworld areas as well but there were like. Goals. And places to travel to. Here it's just... Empty space with no whimsey in the slightest.

And the cutscenes themselves? I mean they're fine I guess. The story of Beyond the Dawn is not very special in my eyes. Most of it is focused around this new kid Nazamil with Dahnan and Renan blood and how she had an awful upbringing that effects her life now, and like. I don't know she's fine. I didn't really get attached to her, they spent a bit trying to make me feel bad for her and then suddenly I'm supposed to think of her like she's my best friend. I feel like I've seen the themes and story of Nazamil done with characters in the series like Phi or Artorious or... I don't know, point is she just didn't really feel that inspired or special. Other factors in the story are lesser focuses. They reference the current race relations of the world which is interesting but it doesn't go much further than "racism sucks." It's nice seeing the other characters a year later and how they're doing though, even if they don't have much to do. Shionne and Alphen are the highlight here, being as cute as ever, and I'll admit I genuinely really liked what they do with Alphen. Being seen as a hero and someone who ruined the world at the same time and how that's taken a toll on people. It was neat! The skits were also an improvement I think, much shorter and featuring more enjoyable interactions. I'll admit that there were some genuinely effective and well-written scenes throughout the campaign, but nothing felt especially impressive. It just leads to a really mediocre undercooked story.

When you're not wandering around you'll end up doing the grand total of 3 new dungeons. Their layouts are typical Arise stuff (outside of the last one) meaning that they're neat and all but not really that interesting in layout. The problem comes in the battles. I mentioned the F arc earlier, which has many dope gameplay differences. New artes, an expanded version of a character you didn't (normally) get to play much, and an entirely new character! Beyond the Dawn has nothing new. No, seriously. The game plays pretty much identically, warts and all! Okay the AI seemed better, they died to dumb dodgable things less at least, but that could just be me. But the utter lack of things for Beyond the Dawn to claim as new makes this feel more like an overpriced sidequest, emphasis on overpriced because jesus christ $30 for nothing new in gameplay is some sad crap. I like Arise's combat, but I didn't get anything out of Beyond the Dawn that I couldn't have gotten out of the original with a way better structure. Hell, some things are taken away from you, having to unlock artes and such you already had in the campaign. What a bizarre decision to force in some level of progression since they didn't want to add anything new. I was at least hoping for Bamco to maybe go back on their boss design at least, but nope, still a bunch of stupid beefcakes that the game refuses to let you combo. What a disappointment.

But whatever, even with all of that I still would have written off this DLC as whatever, an overpriced disappointment. You know a sort of "well if you really love Arise there's more to do in it, a bunch of sidequests I didn't touch too." But no, they decided to drop one of the worst final dungeons in the series on me at the end too. Not only does it pull from the Tales design idea I was glad died of making the final dungeon a drawn-out gauntlet that will overstay its welcome and then offer you two more hours of content, something that instantly makes your dungeon tedious and horrible, it has you refight an almost identical boss THREE TIMES. It took me at least 12 minutes each time, and no it wasn't fun the first time either. It felt like a freaking punchline by the third time, where it was now throwing two giant unstunnable monsters at me at the same time! Great, now I have to manage dodging three strong enemies that I can not combo all at the same time! It felt like a freaking romhack, but whatever, one terrible version of a boss and a few bad ones throughout an overly long dungeon isn't the worst thing ever. It made me say I disliked the DLC, but I still had a grand finale to go through at least. Maybe Beyond the Dawn could pull through?

It's the worst boss fight in the entire franchise.

Now I can't be 100% sure on that, I haven't played the JP games or the spinoffs, and some come really close so I could change my mind later, but god what a DUMPSTERFIRE of a boss. Unlike some bosses in the basegame, this wasn't extremely frustrating with obnoxious mechanics, it's just the purest form of an Arise boss. Way too much health, some annoying abilities, and of course you can't combo it. But when I say way too much health, I mean WAYYYY too much health. It legit took me over FORTY MINUTES to take this dude down. I was playing well too, I never felt my chance of winning threatened once. The boss even has an ability to recover health if you don't take out their clones fast enough, which SUCKS because instead of being a threat my thought process was "oh god I don't wanna play this terrible boss any longer." But whatever, after so freaking long I finally beat the dude... AND THEN THERE WAS A SECOND PHASE. THAT ALSO TOOK FORTY MINUTES!!!! It has even MORE health, WHY?? Why is a significant portion of your DLC campaign ONE BOSS FIGHT, it took me over a tenth of my playtime!! Possibly even more! This phase was more threatening at least but god it just has such annoying attacks and does not. Freaking. END!

I was only half paying attention when the final cutscene played. I think I gathered what happened but I didn't care, I was so utterly worn out from that terrible endgame. This is a low for the series, and unlike other lows I can't make an excuse for it. This DLC flat-out sucks. The fact they're charging THIRTY DOLLARS for this game, a price tag you could use to buy some of the greatest games ever created around this holiday season is a punch to the gut of all Tales fans. Hopefully wherever the series goes from here takes no notes from this DLC. What a waste of time and money.

I feel like the first game had a better "adventure" feel to it, the tropical island setting was a bit more cohesive than random time travel gags I feel, and it also made better usage of items in dungeons, however I don't really know why so many people see this as a downgrade?

There are some annoying parts in this game, I hate so many of the bosses for example. But man pretty much every area in the first game from the cemetery onward had some really annoying parts, but I was just having fun most of the time here. The improved, more traditional controls alone make this game way more fun to play and allows for much more dynamic gameplay. There's also just way less beginner traps and mean tricks in this game too, I felt the genuine need to pull out a map once instead of like... I don't know a dozen times for the first game? Even if some of the adventure stuff was less cool at least there's no mazes in there now, and hey all the quirky humor of the original is still here and as lovable as ever. Overall fun game it was cool I think. The Cactus Dance is iconic.

Extensive Game & Watch Gallery 4 review because I didn't know I could have such strong feelings on repackage LCD games.

I like kinda love Game & Watch Gallery? 1 is pretty good but 2 and 3 are especially strong. They're very charming collections with not only fun Game & Watch games featured but great modern remakes of them. I've been wanting to play 4 for years now thinking it would be the best in the series with the greater technology and high amount of games but... No. This is easily the worst in my eyes.

Most of Game & Watch Gallery 4's 11 main games is made up of 6 reused ones from the previous games. The classic versions are still faithful and the modern versions are pretty much identical outside of the upgraded visuals. I think I've made this clear in me partially dismissing games like Katamari Forever and Rhythm Heaven Megamix but repackaged content isn't exactly something that makes me love a game. Yes Megamix features most of the best minigames in the series, but I could also just... Play those games. The ports are fine and I like the visual upgrades but the repackaged games in G&W Gallery 4 barely effect my opinion on it. I guess if you are looking for a large overall package when you're out of the house with your Gameboy Advance in 2023 though this is "the best" game in the series though.

That's especially strengthened by the 9 classic games featured in the museum actually being unlockable. It takes a lot of stars which is something we can talk about later, but I appreciate it this nonetheless. They don't have modern versions but more classic Game & Watch games being playable is never a bad thing in my eyes. Unfortunately, most of these classic games you can unlock probably deserved modern versions way more than the ones we got.

Where Gallery 4 really disappointed me though is the new games. We have the standard 5 in reality once you unlock all the bonus games. These include Mario's Cement Factory, Donkey Kong 3, Rain Shower, Boxing, and Fire Attack. I'm just gonna get straight to the point, this is by far the worst collection in the series.

I can't blame the game too heavily for this issue but the classic versions of these games outside of Fire Attack suck. Rain Shower and Mario's Cement Factory are so horribly boring and slow, especially on easy mode. Mario's Cement Factory is especially boring. I think legitimately half of the time playing the game is waiting for cement to actually drop which is the most literal equivalent I've seen a game have to watching paint dry. Boxing and Donkey Kong 3 on the other hand suffer from their own issues. The latter feels like a slow tug of war where no progress ever gets made (at least in one player mode) and Boxing has the lasting appeal of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots without the violence.

This is made a lot worse by an issue that has somehow persisted in all these games: the star system. I don't know why Nintendo insisted that with very few exceptions players should only get stars every 200 points, but god this game might have some of the worst cases for that in the series. I swear on Cement Factory I legit played for 20-30 minutes and only got about 200 points. You're gonna need 1000 on EVERY GAME (except Boxing and the classic only ones) to unlock everything in this game by the way! Actual torture. I never failed purposely on these aside from Donkey Kong 3 by the way, they're crazy easy aside from maybe Rain Shower on hard. I just killed myself to end them faster because I was so bored. For the record, you can get 220 stars in the game, which again you need all of to see the credits scene, but even if you just want all the playable stuff you need 160! 40 of these are locked behind multiplayer content too so unless you can achieve the only thing harder than me getting laid after writing this review, finding someone who owns this game in 2023 and a link cable as well, you'll have to achieve this in all but 4 versions of the games here. So fun!

Thing is though, Game & Watch Gallery games in the past have had these issues. The thing is though that the modern versions allowed potentially good concepts to shine. My main issue with Gallery 4 is that it just completely flops at doing that. Boxing is almost identical in modern, still not very interesting. Rain Shower once again is extremely similar, however it at least feels slightly more fast-paced and definitely more difficult so I'll give it some points for that at least. Mario's Cement Factory is much, much faster-paced and falling from platforms and boos add some needed depth but the game still has a lot more waiting than I'd like, even on hard. I suppose it's okay though overall. Finally, Donkey Kong 3 somehow might be even worse then the classic version. The whole gimmick they go for is this boo that will run at you when not looking at it but needing to refuel to fight it means that when it gets close you're almost guaranteed to get overwhelmed. There just aren't easy comebacks in this game and it makes the beginning of a match the only part that matters a lot of the time.

Fire Attack is the singular saving grace of the roster here. The classic version can be a little frustrating but is overall fun, and the modern version is an instant classic. The risky point boosts with apples and chickens and the fast-paced enemies you have to react to are a lot of fun. It is kind of sad statement though when the only new game I truly like in your collection is made up of racist caricatures however.

It really upsets me because with how much this game had going for it it could have so easily been a big improvement over Gallery 2 and 3, yet in my eyes it's even worse than 1. The production here is great. I love how every main game has a cute animation on the menu, I love how Mr. Game & Watch himself congratulates you when you unlock games, and there's just so much content here. However, I've been given less motivation to come back to this one over any other game in the series in the modern day, which shouldn't have even been possible with this game. This is undoubtedly the worst game Mr. Game & Watch has appeared in in my eyes.

I love when a piece of media can play with expectations or its concept and still manage to explore a lot of different ideas. One would look at Hatoful Boyfriend and go "oh, it's a funny bird dating sim. classic japan!!" and yeah that's what it is. The game explores that concept and how ridiculous it is with a ton of writing that solely exists to confuse you to the point of laughter. "Yeah, there's a bird watching club. What do they do? Idk!"

Yet despite that, the game doesn't use its goofy tone as an excuse to not explore the characters. While the actual plots to the routes are limited to only a couple scenes, they are effective and there's still many characterizing moments that really gets you to like them. Goofy stuff like Yuuya having a butler cafe to rival to Ryouta's maid cafe and talking about corny light novels to bookworm Nageki really do go a long way. It helps that the protagonist, Hiyoko, is so goofy and lovable with how much of dim-witted hyper girl she is. While routes like Nageki's sad and lowkey character journey, Yuuya's fascinating secret life, and Shuu's terrifying motivations are very memorable and solid, the rest I think vary from "pretty good" to "underwhelming." Anghel's is simply a goofy comedic story without too much else going on, and Okosan's is basically just that but less funny and with lay less depth, and while Nanaki's is alright the protagonist doesn't really have much impact on the story of it, though that may also have been intentional.

The thing is though that while all these routes are goofy fun, they're simply setup for the true story of Hatoful Boyfriend that you unlock after finishing all of them. From the characters I already loved like Nageki to characters I was just sorta okay on like Sakuya and Nanaki, this route does so much to bring together every character for such an excellent, powerful story about love, what we live for, and the differences between all of us. A story strong enough to make little 11 year-old me cry. My only real complaint is that the last twist maybe comes a bit too late? I don't know, I was thoroughly enjoying all the intrigue built up overtime and the amazing payoff the whole way through.

The incredible thing to me about that is that they made that story out of a meme game where you date pigeons. Most people who know about this game or even played a bit of it only know of it as a meme game, however, Hato Moa was able to make such a great storyline out of it because she was truly passionate about this project, even with it being made with the sticks and glue of stock music and bird photographs. The only other real complaints I can bring up is that the stat-building for certain endings is a little cryptic and sort of tedious if you wanna get all of them for characters with two endings, and some repeated scenes being kind of annoying to skip over (looking at you Azami). Also typos. Loys of 'em. All and all though, I'm not ashamed at all now that baby Rad cried at bird racism.

Welcome in Omikron.

A bit less than a year ago, I took an innocuous trip to a retro game store. I didn’t have any special pickups planned or anything, it was just something for me and my friends to do to burn time and maybe find something cool. However, we didn’t find something cool, we found Beyond Two Souls. My friends pushed me to join them and offer up my PS3 to play the game and it truly made for a memorable experience to say the least. Of course we then followed that up with David Cage’s other three story games as our little group expanded. While I think those four games definitely aren’t great, and that they definitely vary in quality, I can at least say they brought me a little bit of joy with their goofy moments. However, as our grand finale, we had to get together one last time and play his first game: Omikron: The Nomad Soul.

There was nothing goofy about Omikron.

Let’s start with the graphics, because jesus christ this game is ugly. Despite promising a big cyberpunk adventure, the world of Omikron is less Blade Runner and more Black Mesa, “Mesapunk” as my friends and I referred to it as. The color palette is incredibly drab and lifeless, covered in grim grays. Despite the game intending to show a big, bustling lived-in world, it feels so empty, which I’m sure was not intentional. The whole world feels artificial which is unfortunate when that’s a big marketing point for it. Admittedly there are a few inspired settings, I quite enjoyed the second zone, but for the most part the world is entirely soulless. The character design is pretty dreadful too, with bland humans or demons that aren’t disgusting enough to look cool but aren’t appealing enough to… Be appealing. That’s not even to mention the unnatural, lazy character animations and the poor shot composition of cutscenes. Even for the time these are lackluster, especially for a PC and Dreamcast game. By far the worst aspect of this game’s visuals is something I don’t think I’ve ever seen fail before, at least like this. The font. Legitimately, a huge chunk of this game’s writing, including required reading for puzzles, is in a borderline illegible font. Seriously, look up “omikron the nomad soul font” on Google Images, it’ll blow you away. There’s multiple points where you can buy books on the game’s lore, which is a really cool concept, but I legitimately didn’t want to just because so many were a headache to try to decipher. How do you even mess that up?

On the other end of aesthetics, the soundtrack for Omikron has received nearly universal praise… I don’t get it. The background tracks are horribly repetitive and dull. The music mainly fits into a bland ambiance that bores me to tears, only further creating the negative emotional aura this game gives off with the world design. When it is not that you, get tracks like the fight themes which are just grating. The worst it gets is with the theme of the Awakened Base in Jaunpur, which is a 90 second loop that plays EVERY MINUTE you’re in the area. The song is already a little annoying and repetitive, but when it’s in an area you visit CONSTANTLY it just gets infuriating!

The music isn’t just where the auditory issues end, because the sound design in this game is horrid. So many things in this game are just… Silent. I swear with how empty this game is you would think it’s a horror game. My favorite part is the sliders, vehicles which you can call upon for fast travel and even drive. These cars make no noise at all. None when they drive to you, none when you get in, and none when you get off. Great work everyone. The voice acting isn’t great, it could be worse, but it’s not good enough to invest someone playing. It’s also held back by your player character never being voiced! You just get this crappy wind sound whenever they talk as the dialog shows up in a tiiiiny spot in the bottom left corner. Because why should the most important character in the game talk, right?

But let’s be real, the acclaim for Omikron’s audio comes from David Bowie’s work. And it’s… Alright. I’m not deep into Bowie’s work but the stuff in this game feels more like B-sides than top tier compositions of his. All very okay and forgettable. You’re also only going to be hearing a few of his songs in the game, I think there are more but they’re stuck in optional concerts. It’s more than likely you won’t be going to them because that requires navigating in this game.

The bulk of The Nomad Soul is spent navigating the open world of Omikron. We’ve already gone over how it isn’t a very interesting world, but is going around it fun at least? No. First, let’s talk controls. They’re bad. The Nomad Soul is controlled entirely with tank controls. Tank controls may have been a pretty common standard at the time, however I still question their implementation here. I haven’t played a ton of late 90s adventure games, but I fail to see how this improves the game at all. Maybe due to the fact many PC players would be stuck on a keyboard? I have no clue, but it took quite a while to get used to how stiff the movement is. It’s workable but trying to turn around with your player character’s stupid slow half-steps is never not irritating. Sprinting makes it a little better, allowing you to cruise your character around, but it’s still not really ideal movement, especially in smaller rooms. Sure these aren’t the worst controls ever, but when the vast majority of the game is wandering around aimlessly it can only make things worse. Speaking of worse, that’s what this game continues to get when it starts expecting you to platform! It’s few and far between, but the slow, janky jump in this game is expected to be used to get you across platforms. It’s not fun. It has no momentum either so it just feels entirely dissatisfying, but you better not fail due to expecting that since this game has fall damage! Great! There’s also a handful of times you’ll have to swim, but they control sort of alright and never get you into situations where it’s likely you’ll drown. Not great, but I appreciate one of the few times this game doesn’t screw something up.

You may be thinking that I’ve forgotten to add any details on substance, and that’s because there is not any. The majority of this game is spent walking from Point A to Point B. And I’m not exaggerating. Sometimes maybe you’ll solve an annoying puzzle, usually one of the numerous ones involving translating symbols, but that’s it. There’s nothing exciting to the adventure gameplay, nothing that mixes it up and makes it engaging aside from the previously mentioned rare platforming and rosetta stone puzzle segments where you have to read off that awful font. This game’s main gameplay loop can basically just be summed up as following orders on where to walk and who to talk to, but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. There is some other traditional gameplay here, so let’s talk about it.

Okay, so Omikron actually is split into three gameplay styles. There’s the third person adventure game segments, the fighting game segments, and the first person shooting segments. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “those sound like completely different concepts that don’t mix together.” Well thankfully, you’re right. It’s completely jarring, it’s not like Zelda where you pull out your sword and fight on the same overworld, the game will just pause and go “hey it’s time for a fight.” Not to mention that you basically have to familiarize yourself with two different genres on top of this game’s horrible excuse for main gameplay.

The worst of this is the hand-to-hand fighting game segments. Thankfully there is a free training room you can interact with at the beginning of the game, but unfortunately there isn’t really anything to learn. I think you can block, dodge, and you have four combat buttons you can mix up for moves I’m pretty sure? You may be wondering why I’m talking in such uncertainty and that’s because there’s no proper tutorial or training for how it works. I know that that could be seen as intrusive, but having something like that could possibly give us the chance for interesting gameplay. Plain and simply, you mash to win. There are, I think, a few combo moves you can use, but you’ll never actually have the chance to learn them unless you waste your time labbing in the training room. There’s no command list, it’s just “here’s the four attack buttons good luck.” Absolutely no motivation to get better is given, there’s probably less than twenty of these in the entire game and they last no more than two minutes. I would just throw myself at these and sometimes I would win getting hit twice at worst without even dodging or blocking, and sometimes I would be decimated without even getting the chance to respond. It’s an unintuitive crapshoot that feels like it was made by someone who’s fighting game experience was watching their friend play Mortal Kombat at an arcade ten years ago. It’s terrible and the only "compliment" I can give it is that there’s no actual difficulty scaling or anything, because being expected to learn this with absolutely zero information would be a nightmare.

A nightmare is a title more deserved for the shooting segments, because dear GOD who the HELL thought these were okay? First, you aren’t even given a chance to learn how to play these despite it being a completely different gameplay style. You’re thrown into the first two segments with enemies in your face, and you can die extremely quickly, but thankfully there aren’t really many consequences. We died pretty much instantly due to the controls. I played this game on Steam, and I just wanna say this port is a piece of crap. At one point our saved controls undid themselves, and playing these segments on controller is legitimately unplayable. Dual analog was never added, you’re stuck aiming with buttons, but that’s not the issue. The left stick is SO SENSITIVE that, no joke, even moving it as slow as possible and barely exiting the dead zone would cause my character to make a full rotation in only about a second’s time. So optimally playing this game is switching from controller to a mouse and keyboard whenever these segments pop up. Maybe it’s a good thing the change in gameplay is so jarring. However, the control issues do not end there. I had multiple times where going forward would just. Break. I would move for half a step and then just. Stop. For one section I had to have my friend help me dual hand the keyboard and mouse + the controller since we were far away from our last save point and couldn’t restart the game, which trust me WE’LL GET TO. Even when that wasn’t happening, the use button would just legitimately never work for us during shooting segments on keyboard. We would have to leave pressing A on the controller to someone else a lot of the time, and when you’re constantly being shot at that’s not a very good thing to rely on, especially if I were to be playing this game alone.

But whatever, when the controls actually worked, these sections were barely better than playable. First off, the working controls still aren’t great. You move like a car, with super fast top speed and incredibly slow acceleration, which makes strafing away from enemy attacks near impossible. Kidding of course, because often it just IS impossible. I had. COUNTLESS. Times where enemies would shoot from behind the crappy draw distance that wasn’t upped in the PC port either, enemies shooting me at first sight before it was even possible to dodge, and times where I’m running at max speed, going backwards, AND jumping and I get hit anyway. Getting through these shooting segments is often more of a test of endurance than anything. There’s no actual skill in gunplay, especially considering you’re limited to using one weapon for all of a segment and ammo management is stuck to “you have the good ammo you got elsewhere and then you run out and use the less good ammo.” There IS technically a second weapon, you get it early on even, but you either use one or the other in a section with the other basically being useless, and they behave basically identical. Why even have a weapon switch function if it’s useless? Oh wait, because it isn’t useless. There’s other weapons. Allegedly. You have to find them in the dumb as hell overworld optionally, but that requires actually being able to find things there, but, again, I’ll save that for later. Either way, the horrible enemy placement and dodging is not fun. This is only made worse by the actual level design in these segments too.

To be fair, not all of these segments are horrible. I’m sure one or two can be maybe mediocre if you love first person shooters even in their most poorly designed forms. However, when Omikron brings out complicated objectives, I start to get pissed. Here’s a list of some of my least favorites. Searching around a maze of rooftops for the rare few things you can actually interact with, where you’re constantly taking pot shots from offscreen enemies, especially if you aren’t just using someone else’s gameplay to tell you where to go. Going through a sewer WITH A TIME LIMIT to lay bombs on certain spots, where I’m pretty sure if you miss one you’re screwed (and also has a glitch where you'll just randomly die far into it that happened about five or six times for us). And the GOD AWFUL final boss where you’re expected to utilize the unusable strafing to circle around after stunning him and hit his back. I’m pretty sure those alleged other weapons don’t even work on him by the way so no hope in sweetening that deal. As far as I’m aware, because all footage I’ve seen of him does this and I had to do it as well to beat him in the second half of the fight, the only way to realistically beat this fight is to get him stuck on level geometry and abuse his AI to get behind him. What great game design where BREAKING THE GAME is the most well known method for fighting a boss. A lot of these segments, including ones I didn’t mention, feel as if they’re unplayable without having stocked multiple medkits before. I wonder if that’s why this game makes you have multiple saves, because this seems like a game where it would be VERY easy to hardlock yourself otherwise.

Anyway, now let’s head back to the main gameplay. A bit abrupt to go from completely different concepts and then back to wandering aimlessly right? Yeah, I know right, who would ever think of that. Now imagine this except without the first sentence, because there sure aren’t any transition cutscenes. Whatever, nitpicking. There’s another reason it takes up a majority of the game, in fact there’s a good chance this gameplay style could take up over 99% of your playthrough. Why? Omikron is, without any exaggeration, the most cryptic game I’ve played in my life. Now, I don’t instantly hate a game for being cryptic. A few of my favorite games of all time even have a moment or two where I feel it’s best to just look something up. However, let’s talk about why it bothers me less there. Mother I think has dungeon design that’s way too maze-like, so I feel it’s best played with a map on the side. Super Mario Sunshine has a handful of overtly obtuse blue coins for 100%, and I think it’s healthier to just look up the last few you’re missing at the end of the game. These games also make up for this by having actual gameplay. There’s no fighting enemies and for the most part no platforming in the adventure segments of Omikron, just walking.

Keep in mind Omikron is an open world game. The best way to describe the situations it puts you into to progress is a needle in a haystack. Here’s some specific examples I remember. Finding buttons that are almost identical in color to the wall they’re on. Having to use a random part an NPC that you may or may not talk to gives you on a random elevator despite them having no mentioned relation. Being expected to jump UP to a ledge to grab an item for the ONLY TIME you’re ever able to do that in the game. Using candles you got multiple hours earlier in the game to lay out in a summoning circle. And the most common, getting a random item and being expected to show it to someone on the other side of the map. Imagine a point and click game where you have triple the items, there’s fifty filler screens between each area, and what you can interact with isn't even emphasized objects or NPCs.

That’s not even to mention that this game has LIMITED INVENTORY, despite the fact that every single item that could ever possibly benefit you in combat being able to realistically fit in your inventory at the same time. So in reality this system only exists to give you that moment where you realize you can’t pick up an item and you have to go find a stupid PC to put your items up in. Ignoring that, the game’s gameplay loop just becomes following orders from a walkthrough due to how cryptic it is. “Go here and do this. Go here and get this item. Give this item to this person.” There goes your chance of getting lost in the world! Sometimes even a written guide isn’t enough, at one point the game deleted one of our addresses the sliders could take us to so we were forced to wander around for twenty minutes until we found out where to go! There is NO REASON it disappeared by the way, it just… Did. Why? What does that add? Was this an oversight? Did anyone even get this far in playtesting? That would certainly explain the final boss. There is no way in hell that anyone beat this game naturally, without a guide, and enjoyed it. How did anyone on the team think this was okay?

Thankfully, there is one saving grace Omikron has for navigation: the magic rings. Magic rings are a currency you can find throughout the world, and using them will give you advice. Is the advice good? I wouldn’t know, never used it. And it’s not because I didn’t want to, it’s because advice costs FIVE magic rings to use. Five FINE-ITE magic rings. I wanted to have as many as I could because they’re used to restart shooting segments… And to save. Yes. SAVING. THE GAME. IS A FINE-ITE RESOURCE. I repeat. SAVING THE GAME IS A LUXURY. Who the HELL thought this was good? What does it add to the experience? What does making it harder to progress and harder to SAVE THE GAME add to Omikron? Does it make it more fun? More challenging? Hell no! All it does is make it more tedious and frustrating to play. Not like that’s the only questionable rollout of items in the game either. Health packs are limited too unless you buy them, and there’s no way to do something like sleep to restore HP, but money is limited from finding it on the ground unless you do dumb minigames that thankfully I never had to do due to save scumming. Why was I save scumming? A lot of the time dying doesn’t result in loading a save or a game over but having your soul transferred. This makes you lose money, which can softlock you by the way! Again, what does this add? Why? At worst it softlocks you just like that, and at best it just lowers the stakes of fighting or shooting segments. There is just… No value here. The only, ONLY credit I can give to any of these three gameplay styles, is that occasionally you use the game’s nomad soul body changing gimmick to do something clever like possess a guard to escape a prison. That’s neat, but of course it’s both underutilized and limited by mana that you only need to stock up for by managing money for potions. Great!

So if the gameplay, music, and visuals suck, what is there to keep you playing? Well, there’s the story. I’ve actually seen some people online claim that the story is pretty interesting. Do I agree?

What the hell do you think?

Omikron starts in an admittedly intriguing way. With a man named Kale coming to you, the player, asking you to inhabit his soul and access the world of Omikron for some unknown reason. One of my main issues comes right here. This game’s soul hopping gimmick doesn’t give you a character to get attached to, it’s just you. If this game had a silent protagonist or something I could maybe roll with that, and while there are dialog options that would fit that, there’s snarky dialog describing characters and it just confuses me. Are they me or are they a character? The story revolves around them being me, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The characters in general are just so lacking. There’s so few recurring characters, and most of them just get dropped really quickly. First you’re working with the police, then you leave to be with the awakened, which is a cool concept I guess, but there goes your entire first cast of characters. Then most of the awakened get sidelined after you leave their original base, so who am I supposed to get attached to? It’s not like anyone is remotely charming or interesting anyway, the only one I even remember the name of is Soks and that’s because he’s a goofy robot, and as I mentioned earlier, Omikron always chooses not to be goofy!

One of my least favorite things about David Cage games is that they almost always choose to follow this dystopian, doomer atmosphere, which just makes the games come off like they really do think they’re high art despite there being nothing to analyze. There’s no humor or anything to ground you in the characters, because this game is so focused on showing you its epic and deep plot, which just makes it come off even more pretentious. And speaking of pretentious, Omikron is pretentious! I hear that word thrown around a lot with David Cage games, and while I do get that I can’t help but feel it’s a little exaggerated. Except with this game. Omikron has such poignant commentary like “the computer and the government is controlling us all and we need to become awakened.” Wow, so deep. That’s totally not saying the most surface level, unnuanced crap imaginable!

Where this game gets the most pretentious however is the meta elements. A major element of the plot is that Omikron is a game made by the villain to suck in the souls of gamers and use them. So, let’s talk about meta elements in fiction. I’d say there’s two types, one is where the game is built around “meta” ideas, let’s say saving loading, and resetting, but the story can function without you, the player, being an imagined concept in the game. On the other hand is a much more complex idea, one where you as the player existing and playing the game is a necessary aspect for the story, like if a character had an obsession with the person playing. The second is a lot harder to pull off, and ignorantly, Omikron chose that method. So this very world-shattering decision was made and… Nothing is done with it. They mention how no one else has gotten this far and has been destroyed or whatever, which instantly breaks any immersion with the fact you need a guide from another player to get through this game. There’s this horribly cringe-worthy dialog you can get where you mention how Omikron is just a game and an NPC goes “erm, actually, Omikron isn’t just a game it’s a real world you’re interacting with.” Come on, Even for ‘99 this was corny. Worst of all though, nothing is done with this. No interesting ideas are raised, it just pays lipservice to being a commentary on video games or general media and does nothing with it. It’s just. Meta to be meta. Subversive to be subversive. So epic...

Not like the actual story is anything to ride home about anyway. The first part is a mystery about what’s really going on, but after you hear Big Bad's name and join The Awakened you do crap like spread radio waves about le truth and blow up a random bridge like that’s gonna do anything. It really just feels like filler, doing random missions that mean nothing over and over again between the constant handing off of random items to random NPCs in random places. The plot meanders until eventually you get a few back-to-back epic Omikron lore drops and are allowed to fight the final boss. An underwhelming story full of missions would maybe be fine if there were interesting characters, fun scenarios, or, you know, GOOD GAMEPLAY, but Omikron has none of that. Nothing at all. This lore does nothing to pull me in either. As I mentioned reading about it is painful to your eyes and brain to process, but both the lore books and what lore they dump on you with exposition in the horribly stilted cutscenes is a bore. It’s all so generic “ooo shedemerv dropped onto ooladan and used the granjardee to activate the porgorcan” and it’s just obnoxious to sit through. It mixes so horribly too, the game’s supposed to have this epic sci-fi world but in typical David Cage fashion he has to add everything he thinks is cool, so it has demons you need to fight and ancient powers stored in fantastical people because why not? I’m not against sci-fi and fantasy mixing, but jesus all this crap just feels like it was made up as it went on. It all leads to a boring climax that sneaks up on you and an unsatisfying ending, to the surprise of no one.

If it wasn’t obvious enough, I despised pretty much every single thing about this excuse of an interactive experience. The graphics are ugly as sin, the sound design is simultaneously obnoxious and dull, the story is pretentious and poorly-written, and the gameplay is some of the most cryptic, boring, frustrating, stressful crap I’ve ever put myself through. Everything I said was a major complaint too, I could go on even longer if I wanted to nitpick into further detail. Anything positive I said about this game was less than a minute of “oh that’s kind of cool” compared to the hours of excruciating, torturous gameplay and cutscenes my friends and I had to go through. Nothing went right here. I can say without a doubt that Omikron: The Nomad Soul is the worst game I have played in my entire life, and I think the developers should be embarrassed to have had worked on this. I would give a 0 if I could.

Game is a masterpiece just like the original. Everything I said for that game applies to this one. If this is the way you want to play We Love Katamari there is absolutely no issue with that. However, how do I think it stacks up to the original? There may be nothing huge, but I will discuss all of it anyway. Let's start with direct comparisons.

Graphically I think they did a good job. On rare occasions textures can be distracting with how they were blown up, but the HD facelift looks great. The option to play with classic graphics is wonderful too, especially for me since I'm not really a fan of how the Reroll games look. However, once again I am not a fan of the character redesigns and the change to the "cousin face." They look much more generic and less charming, except now it's just jarring since the young king and all the cutscenes keep the original designs intact. I feel that switching to classic graphics should have also changed the character designs as well. My only other graphical issue is that the widescreen was applied to the overworld very poorly, with remnants from other screens clear which looks really strange. The translation has also been updated, and outside of finally correcting "star" to "planet" the other differences are pretty minor. Namco still hasn't found out that "video games" is two words though...

The music and sound design is largely untouched too, as it should be. I did notice two issues though. One is that I noticed the sound mixing seemed to be different in some places, though this only ever bothered me in the racing level where the vehicle noises are way too loud. Another is that, just like Damacy Reroll, the game has been undubbed. ...Why? What's the point of this? Dual audio is industry standard now, let people play with English audio. Another more minor thing is that the audio cueing after beating a stage is incorrect. The king is supposed to throw the Katamari into the sky before the jingle plays, but now it's cued as he throws it. This probably isn't a big deal if you haven't played the original but it distracts me and is definitely worse. More annoying is that the comically overpriced day 1 music DLC pack has poor looping in a couple tracks, mainly Katamari of Love.

Whatever, presentation flaws aside, the spectacular physics and core gameplay of the original is kept intact. There's only one issue I noticed and it's that the render distance was noticeably lackluster at many points, much worse than the PS2 version. It varied depending on the level but it was especially awful in Dr. Katamari's stage, where the pop-in for objects was very distracting and became harder to route out. On the good side though, the occasional frame drops in the Bird & Elephant's stage are completely absent. Also since I don't know where to put this, importing cosmic objects from the first game is not a thing in this remake, and has been replaced by the cousin planets from the PAL version. Pretty disappointing, but I guess it's not a huge deal.

Now for quality of life, new content, and my disappointments.

The quality of life changes for this game aren't anything huge, especially for returning players, but they're absolutely appreciated. Directing players on level goals or barriers you can now get through, an easy select for fans, and faster movement in the overworld are options that are not only convenient but easily ignorable incase you don't like them. One specific addition I want to give credit to is the note for escaping from fishing rods, which I never knew you could do despite my huge amount of runs through that level. I also greatly appreciate the added on-screen lyrics to the credits game like how Damacy did.

The new content in Reroll + Royal Reverie is... Lacking. Let's start with the new additions to the regular game.

First is the eternal mode levels. These are a series staple that
give no time limit versions for existing levels that for some reason were absent in the original We Love. Me personally, I'm not huge on eternal mode. Rolling around with no stakes can be relaxing but in levels where I can pretty much already get most of the objects in time without eternal mode, I find it pointless. Especially as someone who likes hunting for new records on stages. So either way I couldn't really care less on their addition, yet I still found their inclusion lackluster. They aren't given a special planet to look at after completion or a results screen, just the King saving your score which is really lazy. There has also only been three eternal levels added, being for ALAP 3, 4, and 5. These stages have a decent chunk of the map overlapping already, with all of them featuring the same town area. While they may not have worked perfectly with the alternate goals featured in We Love Katamari (which is likely why they were basent in the first place), a greater variety of eternal stages would have done a lot.

The sticker side quest is the definition of mediocre tacked-on remake content. Hidden in stages are these stickers of Namco characters that you can take a photo of to add to your collection. After that you can use your sticker sheet to... Look at them, I guess. First off actually being able to get them is a pain. You have to find the present for the camera first so that's guaranteed backtracking if you're trying to 100% the sticker sheet, and then you have to actually have it equipped to take photos. I never cared much about this since I never used Katamari games for photography, but why was this not added as something you could do without the camera equipped by the time the original We Love came out? We're on the eighth main release and we still can't. Basically, if you're daring enough to use the unlockable cosmetics you had to find you're punished by not being able to get the stickers since you don't have the camera equipped. On top of that, finding them just... Isn't fun? Finding them casually when playing is fine I guess (even if it means you have to have the camera equipped to do that) but searching them just leads to needle in a haystack situations, especially with how big some of the levels in this game are. This isn't even to mention that they're tied to the missions in certain levels, so you can find where a sticker would be but it won't be there since you weren't on the ALAP mission or that you'll be getting many of these photos on a time limit, or that I even had a few runs where the stickers didn't even spawn, either on purpose due to size changes or due to bugs. Not sure which is worse. For getting these you get more frames for the expanded photo taking in this game, which is nice I guess. Still not worth the hassle though.

Next is the big advertised feature of this game, the Royal Reverie. Five new stages, the first new stages to the main series in ten years. And those stages are... Unfortunately uninteresting and not good. To give these stages some credit, the reskin of playing as a Young King lead by Papa is very cool, but these concepts are unfortunately kind of wasted.

The maps have gotten nice reskins, I especially love the sunset given to the racetrack. I also enjoy the look for the Royal Reverie's overworld, it's simple and resembles the credits game which is a nice touch. Papa's dialog gives him a different characterization from The King which I appreciate, but the result screens just cuts to the regular one with The King being like "yeah we did that" which is really disappointing, not to mention that like the Eternal levels, outside of a record you get no tangible planet or anything for beating them.

As for the levels themselves, they're not great. The first is a needless reskin of the clean up level. The difference now is that instead of ending when you get all of the objects, it has a size goal that you're never going to fail at getting and a one minute time limit. You can beat the stage regularly in under a minute. This is borderline pointless. The second is a frustrating needle in the haystack hunt for five objects where certain objects grazing you leads to an instant fail. They have the same spawns everytime but it's still not fun. The third is a needless reskin of the racing level except now instead of size you're hunting for tires. The shorter time limit may make your priorities a little different but the level pretty much will end up having you play the same. The forth is an odd reskin of the firefly level where it instead plays as an as fast as possible level. This one is fine I guess. And the last one is a needle in a hay stack hunt in the zoo map for four ballerinas with random locations. What fun. Needless to say, I think that Royal Reverie was very disappointing. It doesn't really hurt the game, but if you're on the fence on buying the remake, don't let this convince you to do it.

As for my disappointments with this remake, I believe that any remake, even lazy remasters, should try to at least improve the experience of the game in some way. As much as I love it, the original Katamari Damacy has a lot of flaws which made the remake specially disappointing. However, We Love Katamari, the original PS2 game, is nearly perfect in my eyes, which makes a remake less interested in fixing issues more forgivable in my eyes. However, no game is perfect, and I would say the game has two small flaws. First, even though you rarely have to do it, climbing up walls is a little janky sometimes. The remake does not fix this. Now for the more pressing one. Unlike every other game in the series to follow, you can only collect one new cousin per run of a level. This makes grinding on collecting all cousins needlessly repetitive, especially when you need them to unlock every stage in the game. I don't mind this much since the levels are so replayable and fun, but it is absolutely not a good thing, mainly for ALAP 4 and 5, with their long level timers and multiple cousins. Despite the following games in the series fixing this, Reroll + Royal Reverie decided that it didn't want to fix this issue. Why? This was the one thing I was hoping to be fixed in this remake, as it remains the only thing close to a black mark on one of my favorite games of all time, and they didn't even attempt to remedy this issue. While I mainly pick up We Love Katamari to replay levels, if I wanted to sit through every level and then watch the true ending's final cutscene again, I would get no advantage from playing Reroll in the most tedious parts, which is a massive disappointment.

All in all, despite my many disappointments and shortcomings I found in this remake, I at least appreciate the effort. Adding anything at all is way better than what we got for Damacy Reroll, so I at minimum appreciate Namco's attempts to properly remake one of my favorite games ever. The new content may have its flaws and this nearly 18 years later remaster may have its occasional downgrades, but you can never go wrong with We Love Katamari. If anything, I'm just glad more people will get to play this game.