Such a comfy Zelda game.
Sure it's not everything people love from these games, it's stripped way back for the GBA, but I like it for exactly that reason.
This was the first Zelda game I actually beat by myself. It didn't make me feel overwhelmed and unengaged.
every other Zelda game for me went like this: man this game is cool, shame I'll never finish it.
until this one.
This one just hit right, and made me feel cool.

usually i just avoid VNs, they're not my thing, i do not attempt to play them and therefore never have to review them.

but as this was given to me as part of the playdate system itself, i tried it.

probably made it worse that I wasn't aware it was a VN till it was painfully too late.

allegedly this has gameplay, I never got there, I was so wildly frustrated with the boring and gratingly twee dialogue to even reach a 'level'

oh well.

probably a game for fans of steven universe, i have no idea why i think that.

OH BABY these adorable little games.

I grew up with the 3rd one for some reason and only played this one as an adult when they first got ported to ios.

These games are adorable. Tiny point-and-click adventures full of cutesy characters.
The story s straight forward, you'll beat it in one sitting. These were meant to teach insanely simple lessons to kids on the PC.

Should you play these as an adult? absolutely.
It's more than just nostalgia. these games have so much charm.

Everything you click comes to life in fun ways, it's such a treat to just boot these up and click around.

They randomize a bunch so it's worth replaying as well.

I don't recommend you actually beat this game, but you really should at least pop open an emulator and play it.

Valhalla Knights is a strangely compelling little action RPG with little to no story, VERY PSP graphics, and slightly clunky gameplay.
Crucially, however, it's fun.

There's nothing quite like this game mechanically except maybe its sequels.
It's a big team dungeon crawler with shockingly harsh leveling and economy, there are no random battles, it spawns enemies in that you can mostly avoid if you have to.

The dungeon crawling part consists of pathing out small levels, finding switches to open locked doors, and occasionally finding quest objectives.
The quests give you zero guidance and little reward, except the ones that randomly award you a party member that's absolutely essential.

Almost everything about this game is extremely obtuse, but I kinda just love it.

Combat has a surprising amount of strategy and fun to be had, the atmosphere is perfect.
If you're nostalgic in any way for ps1/psp graphics, this game can be a treat to look at.

I dunno, definitely don't try beating it, after the halfway point the game absolutely DEMANDS you grind your way to max level, which takes literal hours of tedium.
but the first 15 hours is genuinely enjoyable. Just know that the story isn't getting any better than the first hour of nonsense and call it a day.

So damn addicting, Every puzzle is just NEURON ACTIVATION.
So many games I've never played but know by their vibe.
TRUST YOUR FUCKING INSTINCTS. I've failed so many cause I just didn't guess the 'complete stretch' that was totally right all along.

go get addicted.

I didn't find it quite as incredible as people say. but it is breathtaking.

The vision is absolutely there. everything about the atmosphere and the pacing. going from the calm and quiet vast open world to the somber boss arenas.

the absolute highlight for me was the bosses in the water areas. something about fighting something massive above or below the waves is just awesome to me.

It pains me to rate this so low.

The first game was a cute little melancholy jaunt across a desolate wasteland. You managed your fun little vehicle and occasionally solved tiny puzzles that fed into the world and its lore. It reached a high point then a low point, then ended on a somber note with a tiny glimmer of hope.

The sequel... it's the same but worse.

The visuals have improved and the tech was expanded but the new visuals hurt the performance and the new tech leads to frustrating puzzles that didn't work properly during my playthrough.

I first bought this game on switch thinking 'the first one was so simple surely I can just play this on switch' but it ran so poorly I couldn't make basic jumps consistently which made it fundamentally unplayable.

On my PC I still had to run this game at medium settings.

The new mechanics are interesting at first but I constantly ran into puzzles that didn't trigger properly then got stuck for minutes before giving up to check a guide only to find out the puzzle just broke for me and I'd have to keep trying the same thing till it worked.

Everything in this game is made more tedious, it has all the same beats as the first game but many are repeated additional times, result in dead ends, and all of them take WAY longer on the ship.

The dead ends are the weirdest part, at least three times the game reached a sort of punctuation mark then shrugged at me and told me to keep going.

On top of that the achievements felt condescending. telling me 'what now' after one of the big false endings or congratulating itself on the real ending.

Worst of all the stellar soundtrack from the first game is toned down heavily in this one. There's still some incredible musical moments but they're fewer and further between.

I went into this game so wanting to love it but it dragged my patience to its limit then clapped for itself awkwardly.

I just couldn't like this game.

The best moment was a major spoiler that I won't mention here. it's also needlessly harsh but I suppose it was earned regardless.