Pokemon Soulsilver is the third mainline game I ever played, behind Diamond and Platinum. I remember begging my dad for this game and receiving it on Easter since he wanted an excuse to not just get it for me for no reason. Back when I first played this, I absolutely loved it. Playing through the game just to unlock Kanto! I had never played a gen 1 game before so it was amazing (and still is). Present day, this game is nearly flawless. Starting with the story, this is a weaker part of the game. This game follows up on the Team Rocket plot from before, with Team Rocket trying to get Giovanni back in the picture and to regroup. While interesting at first, it isn't anything particularly special. Their motivations are a bit more clear, but ultimately aren't a major motivator for the game. We do get more unique interactions with them though, like at the slowpoke well and the lake of rage. While these are moments that stand out, they still do not make Team Rocket very complex. Instead, the game's sense of adventure pushed me through. I wanted to explore every inch of this region again and all the unique aspects. The game has a lot of old theming around it, like Ecruteak city for instance. The burnt tower, Bell tower, and dance theatre perfectly show the inspirations for the region and how it is less technologically advanced than Kanto was represented. This is seen especially with the apricorn system for instance, though I did not utilize this much. There are many attractions throughout Johto, one of which being the Pokeathlon. This was and still is one of the best minigame systems put into a mainline Pokemon game. All of the minigames are enjoyable and can add hours upon hours of playtime onto this. There is also the Ruins of Alph, which has a set of puzzles and the Unown. This is a great side quest to go through and if you have an Arceus you can also go to the Sinjoh ruins for possibly one of the most strange Pokemon cutscenes ever. As for our rival, he is more complex than Blue primarily with how aggressive he is with us and his own Pokemon. It's interesting to see how he slowly realizes throughout the game that he needs to treat his Pokemon with love and care rather than view them through the lens of power. I don't like how the final quote where he realizes this is an optional battle at the dragon den however, as if this is missed then it could be frustrating not seeing his story end naturally. This also brings me to a point of contention. I do not like that the Celebi event was locked behind a limited time event. Now, I did use the DNS trick in order to do this event. The event is great, we go back in time and get backstory about Silver and Giovanni and also battle Giovanni. It re-contextualizes huge parts of the story and really completes lots of it as well. However, if there wasn't a custom DNS server open then this event would be impossible, meaning we would not be able to experience this in game without cheats. I understand the event system and having special pokemon for this, however this was too far when holding back integral story content. This aside, I do have a few smaller issues as well. The game feels very underwhelming in terms of difficulty and levels. Most mons were incredibly underleveled in each route up until victory road. This was irritating as I battle every trainer I came across and still felt underleveled. Then I got to the elite four only to realize the highest level Pokemon in the league was level 50. While this is okay if there's enough EXP beforehand, there really isn't a consistent amount in the game. Only one or two of my Pokemon were appropriately leveled and everything else was lacking severely. This also goes for the Kanto region. While I absolutely love this postgame (one of the best in the series, literally an entire region), I don't love the levels in it. You were regularly see level 15 pokemon in routes which is so below what you will have at that point. Yes, the trainers will have appropriately leveled mons but you cannot consistently grind against the route pokemon until you get to Mt. Silver. This is a bit ridiculous, all the Pokemon in the routes should have been scaled up. Now, the battle with Red. This is a GREAT fight. It's a great final fight and really does take a lot of prep. It feels a tad annoying having to grind for even longer due to the EXP deficit, but beating him is worth it. There are also many, many legendaries to catch over the course of the game, but I feel like they went slightly overboard with the roaming pokemon. Yes, Platinum has four roaming legendaries whereas Soulsilver only has three, but two out of those three know roar. I can manage this with mean look and hypnosis, but they broke out of this constantly and ended the fight, This made it so much more tedious and annoying. The amazing thing is though, even with all of those issues this game is still incredible and one of the best Pokemon games. The amount of content is honestly insane and will keep you busy for a very long time and is a must play for any Pokemon fan.

This was my first time playing through the gen 1 remakes. I have childhood memories of seeing others play through the gen 3 games but I had missed out on this. I got my first ever handheld in 2006 with the release of Pokemon Diamond, so I had just missed out on that previous generation. It was amazing to see others play this though, I caught glimpses of it during the bus and recess and the mysteries enthralled me. Especially the Pokemon mansion, imagining capturing mew and finding the secrets. Finally, I went through and played it as an adult now after also completing Emerald. I was let down to play through this now, for a variety of reasons. Firstly, the story isn't anything too crazy. It's kept simple, Team Rocket is attempting to steal pokemon, capture buildings, etc. They are essentially the Pokemon mafia, which is interesting because they don't really hold back on the dialogue in this game. It feels mature even at this age with them threatening actual physical violence at times and the game mentioning Pokemon dying. I like the mature theming and makes the game feel like it ages better. The downside to this is that the story well, isn't really complex. It feels very disjointed, Giovanni doesn't really appear consistently and when he does appear it doesn't have a big impact. You beat him a few times and Team Rocket just disbands without issue. Your rival in the game is also not very fleshed out. I've heard him praised over the years, but I don't understand why. He's the most generic definition of the rival in the series thus far, he isn't mean enough to be intimidating but doesn't have enough dialogue to be likeable either. He's also obsessed with saying smell ya later, which was the one thing I enjoyed about him. As for gameplay, it suffers from standard old Pokemon gen issues. This is before the physical/special split, so strategies were inherently less complex. I am also a big enjoyer of the party wide EXP share. I play the pokemon games to get as many Pokemon as possible, level and evolve them. Having to swap train or use a single EXP share is tedious and can be annoying, since I have to grind for hours at times. The biggest issue I had with the game overall is the Pokemon variety. I understand this is a gen 1 remake, but they did introduce other regions mons in the Sevii islands. Having these spread throughout the game more would have helped immensely with the enemy variety. It felt absolutely terrible being at the end of the game and running into level 30 pidgeys or geodudes. At least remove the lesser evolutions at those higher levels to make it feel higher stakes. This was really my biggest issue for the game overall, it made it feel so repetitive and samey. Every route felt like a pidgey, sandshrew, or meowth simulator. Finally, the events. I was able to do all the in game events for the game and while I enjoyed capturing deoxys, ho-oh, and lugia, imagine my surprise that mew was unobtainable in this game but only in Emerald. I understand in the big picture this isn't a big deal, but why? This game would have made much more sense for it and would have fit right in. Regardless, overall this was a very tame experience that felt repetitive for me but I did not regret. I was nice going through Kanto for the first time and I'm eager to keep moving forward.

I've always heard of this game and seen others playing it so I was excited to play this! The story is interesting, with Chairman Drek planning on taking pieces of other planets (and ultimately destroying them) to rebuild his homeworld. Ratchet and Clank join up to stop him, with Captain Qwark employed by Drek to stop them. The story was enjoyable and the humour was a breath of fresh air. I didn't enjoy how Qwark was handled in the story. His outline is shown speaking with Drek and it's very obvious who it is, ruining the surprise. The tension between both Ratchet and Clank was also annoying, since Ratchet seems to not understand that Drek is already destroying planets but when he sees the plan for the big ray weapon he...learns that Drek is trying to destroy planets? But we already knew this and he seemed to not care, so it was a weird back and forth. The tension also lasted for what seemed like half the game, ruining a lot of good dialogue between the two of them. But the humour was funny and charming, i enjoyed the majority of it. I also don't know why but the gadgetron guy's voice was hilarious to me every time. As for gameplay, it was alright. There were a LOT of guns, but only a portion of them were actually good. I wish there were more standard wrench attacks as well. I will say the lack of checkpoints was frustrating, since there were some long stretches of areas that would send you all the way back if failed. Same with the final boss, he has three different areas but if you lose at the end you'll be all the way back again. It was annoying but I dealt with it. The game also did stretch out a bit too much, most of the game felt very repetitive of getting an infobot and starting a new planet, get new gadget and infobot, rinse and repeat. I enjoyed that for a while but it got a little stale. I overall still enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next games in the series.

This was a surprising game for me to play. I knew it was a very indie game and that it likely wouldn't be too crazy. The visuals looked great, a little janky yes but overall great. The main thing is the atmosphere, all the characters talk in a gibberish dialogue but it is very charming. Clid's dialogue reminds me of the motivational chinese beaver meme, so I love that. The story is that each type of animal has their own citadel where they live. The slugs have been attacking each citadel for whatever reason and Clid fights them back. The snails get pissed because they don't do violence, so they kick him out. Clid finds and joins a group called Alastor which is headed by a chameleon named Cassius. Way down the line we realize that the slugs were infested by spider parasites and being controlled, Cassius knew this and killed our lil firefly friend (RIP Belu) and tries to kill us. We come back, kill some members of Alastor (who either didn't believe Cassius tried to kill us or couldn't hurt him) and then we defeat Cassius, with a frog named Itako dealing the final blow. The story was fine, but I do have a few problems. It wasn't the best idea to name Cassius this because if you know who the real world equivalent is then you'll expect a betrayal. I knew this and was waiting for it. I also don't like the idea that the outcast's leader was doing this on purpose to punish the citadels. Instead of making it one of the citadel's it instead tried to pull a twist, but this lessened the effective evil of the citadels and instead placed it on us. I also could kind of tell something was wrong with the slugs since they have tendrils coming out and when you blow them up larvae come out. As for gameplay, it was alright. The main gun feels fine but doesn't feel like it has a punch when fully charged. The other guns were also fine, they were fun that they have environmental purposes too. Enemy variety isn't the best, but luckily the game isn't too long. As for boss fights, it is massively disproportionate. For 90% of the game the boss fights are simply attack a nest then blast a few waves of enemies, rinse and repeat. I was worried this would be the only fights, and I knew they could do other ones since the first fight in the game with Ska was so unique. Then at the end of the game, you fight 4 bosses back to back that are all unique. While this was fun, it means the unique fights are EXTREMELY back loaded instead of being properly spread out. Overall, a fun game that could have been paced better.

Evoland 1 was very disappointing for me to play. It did not utilize the feature of backtracking game development in a great way. It was mainly used to go between trees and such. The story was just a final fantasy parody, which meant the entire game felt very unserious. While this is sometimes okay it meant that this game did not give me any motivation to finish it. The gameplay itself is very very basic, it feels like the game hinges it's success off of the parody and comedy which for me is not enough to enjoy it. I only finished it because it was so short, if it was longer I feel like I would get bored and drop it. There's not much for me to say in this, I barely even can recall the story.

Pokemon Emerald is very much a mixed bag for me. It wasn't the first game/generation I played but I have memories of my friends and people on the bus playing this and me watching. The story is interesting, with team magma and aqua trying to summon their respective legendaries to re-do the earth (essentially). Rayquaza comes down, beats the fuck out of the two of them, then you catch it and do the standard story. The evil teams in this game weren't too threatening or particularily interesting. Obviously their goals are flawed and it's funny when they realize how wrong they were. That being said, they were stereotypical villains. The map itself is somewhat generic and that IGN review is kind of right, I was annoyed with how much water there was. Otherwise though it was pretty standard. One thing I didn't enjoy and know I will continue to hate is the EXP grind. In later games the EXP share applies to your whole party, but here it's only the one holding it. While I understand some people would like this more (difficulty) I view it as tedious and annoying. I have to switch pokemon out to farm EXP and it just gets annoying and makes me not want to try new mons. This is also before the special/physical split, so there wasn't as many options. Overall, I don't regret playing this as I transferred the pokemon over to Platinum, but it definitely shows it's age and I wouldn't recommend playing through it unless you have nostalgia or it's your first time.

Master of Arena was a mixed bag for me. Starting with the story, we are a pilot who wants revenge on Nine Ball for killing our family. We work with Lana Nielson, a Raven's Nest rep to get us into missions and a sponsor for the arena. Progtech sponsors us, they have us do some emergency missions not authorized by Lana. She gets pissed and basically tells us off and that we're done. It's revealed that Lana and Hustler One are the same, so we fight them three times and then fight Nine Ball Seraph. After we win, Raven's Nest shuts down. I'm confused on when this game takes place, was it before or after the first game? We destroyed the AI in the first one so it's slightly confusing. I am also confused at what Nine Ball said, they said they created the Raven's Nest (which I get) but that they also made AC's and the corps? This doesn't make much sense unless they meant in a figurative sense. While I liked doing arena fights to progress the game it also meant we did less sorties, which really affected playtime. GP is the same as the last two games. The karasawa (my beloved) absolutely destroyed everything and made it relatively easy. Nothing was too hard apart from Nine Ball Seraph. I was worried this would be another AC PP fight but I made my AC absolutely tanked out and blasted with the karasawa (my beloved) and amazingly this worked. I also found it funny that Hustler One would show up randomly, with him just exploding the hacker in the first sorty. But the controls still hold this back immensely, similar to the 1st gen games.

Armored Core PP is very much a DLC of the first game in a separate disc form. I enjoyed this more than the original game for a few reasons. Firstly, the story. This has a completely contained and easy to follow story throughout. Another Raven named Sumika is trying to bring down the Doomsday Organization, who is working on Project Phantasma. We work with her to bring them down and also develop a rivalry with Stinger, an AC who works with the DO. We fight stinger many times and slowly chip away at the org until Stinger merges with PP. We have a fight with this and destroy it. Sumika thanks us for the help and says she may work with us again in the future. This was much easier to follow and actually had both named characters and ones we can see in game. I was much more motivated due to this and wanted to win. It was relatively short, but I expected this going into it. As for gameplay, whoo boy. I became much more adept with the gameplay of the 1st gen and cleared through the story without problems. There were no major updates for the gameplay itself, though the game added many new parts. This was easy for me as I migrated my AC from AC1 to use, up until the final fight. This fight was HARD, and I could not figure out what to do. It had two attacks, a giant light AOE and rockets. The AOE was easy enough to dodge, but the missiles I could not consistently dodge, no matter how hard I tried. Combine this with his huge AP and it was a nightmare. I attempted this for about 45 minutes, on my final attempt I died. BUT, my Karasawa beam (my beloved) hit and killed him. I was ecstatic and so glad. The story was good, but they introduced the arena in this add-on. 49 fights to go through at any point and losing costs us nothing. This was so much fun to go through, though the flying ACs were annoying to fight due to the controls. I was able to wipe the arena fairly easy, but some gave me trouble (Jester and Gepard were nightmares until I chose the 3rd map, thank you guide). The #1 arena match was actually relatively easy as well. Overall, a massive upgrade in both story and features, though the controls hold it back.

Armored Core is a series that I was introduced through the 6th entry. I love that game and wanted to go back and play through the series. I played through and beat this once already on steam deck, but wanted to do so again on legit hardware, and since I was playing through the series. The story is barely a part of the game, I have tried to look deeper into it but there really isn't much. It's set in a world that was destroyed in a war, humanity moved undergrouind due to this and two companies (Chrome and Murakumo) are fighting for control of the old world. We as a Raven fight on both of their behalf, but this is were I get lost. It's revealed that it is an AI running the Raven's Nest and who is controlling the strong AC named Nine Ball. In one ending, we destroy a space cannon named Justice and see the Murakumo CEO get bricked afterwards. If we continue to the next ending then we can destroy the AI controlling Nine Ball and the Raven's Nest. It seems like Nine Ball was pitting the two companies against each other so that one would be destroyed and it could have a better chance at taking control, but I'm unsure. On to gameplay, jesus christ this has not aged well. Graphics are fine, I can deal with this. But, tank controls to maneuver your AC feels horrible. We also have to use the triggers to look up and down, making this incredibly tedious and sometimes impossible. While customization is an option and fun, there is not much room to be fast and have a good selection of gear (apart from the Karasawa, my beloved). Missions were alright if not a little tedious, it was extremely annoying to melee enemies at times or to interact with buttons. The worst part is the platforming, especially on the final level. I did not want to do it again, so I skipped the Nine Balls at the end and simply ended it. The lack of the arena detracks a lot from this, and after ending the game I had no intention to go back and do the alternative missions. The story was lacking overall and gameplay was tedious, though it did shine through at times.

Scooby Doo was definitely a fun experience. I am not used to playing platformers so it was fun, if not a little frustrating. It wasn't extremely difficult, apart from the ship/sails area. Boss fights were relatively easy as well, but that's expected as this is a game for younger kids/teens. It was fun unlocking different items to progress through the areas, it sort of felt metroidvania-esq. I did not enjoy the lack of clarity on where to go. I had to utilize a guide on where the next area is and where to backtrack, which took some of the enjoyability out. The story and atmosphere were very fun! I'm a big Scoobert Doo fan so this made it fun with the humour and sound effects. They were well voice acted and played, and it felt like I was really playing through an episode of the series. I expected the professor to be behind it, but I actually did not expect Holly to be the double twist. My nostalgia only impacted the beginning of the game, my small child brain did not know how to get past the first two or three areas. So, most of the game was new and enjoyable for me. Highlights were the beginning, some of the items, and the characters. Downsides were definitely the lack of direction and difficulty.