Becoming a real fan of Vanillaware studios after going through some of their more recent games. I find myself admiring their approach to game development. They don't bother with rehashed sequels or chasing lame trends or mass appeal they just work on an interesting, passion led projects and churn out some high quality, polished, beautiful unique experiences and 13 Sentinels is a prime example of that.

This has to be one of the craziest, mind bending "sorry can you slow down because I can't keep up" game plots I have ever witnessed and it's not just the subject matter itself that is off the rails but also the way it is presented is unlike anything I've played before. If you love being dumbfounded and asking yourself "WTF just happened?" after each chapter boy do I have a recommendation for you. Indeed as many pointed out knowing as little as possible before starting this adventure is the way to go. Gradually uncovering layers of the story is the intended experience and the focus of the game so unless you absolutely hate sci-fi themes or anime aesthetics I can guarantee you won't be bored with this one.

The gameplay side is however something that I have less praise to give. The story segments are emulating a visual novel style press X to proceed type of gameplay and honestly this just reaffirms why I tend to avoid VN genre games. Pressing a single button from time to time to read the next dialogue line is not why I play games and no matter how intriguing the plot can get after some time it becomes really hard to stay engaged and not question why I am "playing" this instead of watching it on YouTube.

Then we have the combat segments. Where our 13 high schoolers pilot giant mechs (Sentinels) fighting off evil kaiju robots that are coming to destroy all we know and love, did I mention that they have to be naked - tell me this game was made by Japanese without telling me this game was made by the Japanese. Tiresome cliché aside delving past the surface level observation this game is anything but predictable.

The section that will require some level of motor skills will be the wave clearing combat missions that are fine for the most part. I respect the attempt to make it stimulating and engaging with satisfying explosions, good audio feedback and even a video recording of different types of attacks and what they look like from the ground up in universe perspective but ultimately if I wasn't forced to do it to progress the story I would've ignored like 80% of that. Maybe it's just the way they decided to make it all abstract in sort of digital, radar representation of the "action" happening on the battlefield, with green and red dots and other geometric shapes moving on the map. Or perhaps it's the fact that it wasn't particularly challenging or requiring much strategy or that nearly every mission had the same exact objective.

Looking back on it I found this game to be little exhausting from time to time requiring to take frequent breaks between sessions. I'm sure that my approach to mostly do story or mostly focus on the combat until either gets gated waiting for me to progress the other didn't help, but jumping between 13 POV's with this bonkers plot and the somewhat dull combat missions made following the narrative even more challenging. I really like that we have a sort of legend/journal "the files" to refer back to regarding the events that happened as well as extra information on all kind of things from different characters, other NPCs, past events, concepts in the story and hell even some Japanese cuisine. This is very helpful and provides sort of a map to help you navigate this dense forest of pretty much every type of sci-fi concept known to man.

To circle back; I'm glad to have experienced this truly unique science fiction epic even if the act of playing leaves much to be desired. Gained some new found respect for the studio with and extra half a star added to the score and what more can I add other than it was an experience of all time for sure.

13 Sentinels is an incredible game that uses every sci-fi trope in the book to tell a story from the perspective of 13 different people, with each bit of it scattered across a complex timeline. Every now and then I'd need to take at least an hour just to stare at the timeline and the data logs, trying my best to piece everything together. It feels like a twist happens every 30 minutes, I love it.
I was surprised to find myself enjoying the combat sections as well. They aren't as easy on the eyes as the gorgeous story section is, but its still a fun change of pace to do separate the story sections every now and then.
Overall, my biggest issue with the game was the ending. It's still a satisfying ending, don't get me wrong, I just think it's a bit too consequence-free for the characters. It also goes out of it's way to confirm a lot of ships, and all I'll say is that there are some there that don't really work very well at all. Despite that, this game is practically perfect in my eyes.

I've never marathon-ed a game series before, since usually to pick what game I play, I go in my backlog, press shuffle, and play whatever is first on the list. With longer game series like Street Fighter, Zelda, Mega Man etc, using that method would take fucking forever, so I would rather just bite the bullet and now get through one of them now. The others i'll def do one of these days.

Why did I go on a yapping spree for the first paragraph? Well, because there's NOTHING NEW. The AI is the same, the graphics are the same, the opponents still read your inputs, literally all that's new are the 4 new characters, which are useless to me since I only pick Ryu or Chun Li anyway.

The only thing I care about is the new Ryu sprite on the character select screen, cuz holy shit he looks so much better. In the original, Ryu thought he was the rick friend emotionless mofo 😭

Finished my replay of WD1
and had to say when I 1st played this game I was hype for it like everyone else and was disappointed like everyone else cuz it didn't deliver on those high-end visuals, and the sad reality is because of that controversy we just didn't appreciate what great things this game did at the time.

History aside this replay been helluva a ride man, I freaking love this game, and how great of a SP experience this is, this was the time when Ubisoft try to exp with diff stuff before becoming shitsoft and passionless game-pumping factory.
I love how gritty and dark this origin STORY for a vigilante is, wished it was more memorable and Aiden was a bit better acted so he had some charm.
MISSIONS and GAMEPLAY are the high lights of this game, these missions are fun af, and this 3rd person gameplay is just goat af, idk what happened with future WD the guns become toys, but here man they sound great, have weight to them and are impactful.
the animation system deserve big round of applause in this game especially, the walking, running, hiding in car, diff take downs for each gun, its just John wich simulator man.
now this isn't perfect, wished the world was more alive, and dense and hacking was also very serviceable, cars could've used more physics IG, and side activities are cool design around vigilante stuff but they do repeat themselves.

overall as I said playing through this story is amazing, the missions, gameplay and animation and dark tone of the story carry this shit hard for me.
SOLID 8/10

This game advertises itself as a unique puzzle game with an interesting story. What that means in reality is worse candy crush with extra text boxes. The fantasy setting found within this game is extremely generic and uninspired, the story is very bare-bones, and the gameplay is not much better than most mobile games.

The game's combat system often feels somewhat poorly thought out and unfair towards both you and your enemy. Based completely off of luck, whoever gets the first turn in each battle can instantly a significant amount of damage before the enemy can do anything about it at all. Since the puzzle grid used for combat in this game is randomized, it essentially just encourages the player to constantly restart every battle until they get a grid that is favourable to them. Falling blocks are also completely random, so sometimes if your enemy makes a mediocre play the game will just randomly reward them by giving them 20 combos in a row and eliminating half your health bar. You do have the ability level up your attack damage and defence, but this only really slightly lessens the problems with the combat system, rather than fixing them.

Puzzle Quests story is probably one of the most cliche fantasy stories I have ever seen. There is genuinely nothing interesting or unique to be found here. It consists of watching two sprites exchanging extremely boring and basic pieces of dialogue in generic text boxes over and over again. To me it just feels like a marketing gimmick slapped on to a mediocre puzzle game.

I really wanted to like Puzzle Quest because the premise sounded very interesting to me, so its quite a shame how it turned out. I feel like this concept could actually have worked quite well if a bit more effort was put into it, but this game (at least the DS version) stumbles in its execution on nearly every level.

I first played Link's Awakening on my 3DS years ago. I got it on the eShop one day after a Youtuber I liked was let's playing it, and seeing as I was a Zelda fan at this point, I figured I'd enjoyed it. I think I got up until Eagle Tower and dropped it? I at least don't remember ever beating this game. Fast forward to the beginning of 2022, I had just gotten the remake for Christmas and was excited to play it. I actually beat that version this time and had a great time. Now with this marathon, I can finally beat this version of the game. I think overall I might prefer the remake, but this version is still good and Link's Awakening is still a good game overall.

Also quick note before the review: I was originally going to play the three CDI Zelda's next but decided against it so I'm skipping those. I also know this is the DX version, and that technically released after Ocarina of Time, however the majority of this game is still the original Link's Awakening which released 5 years before OOT so I just decided to play this first.

Anyways, Link's Awakening. This released 2 years after A Link to the Past and compared to that game and even the Zelda games before it, this game's plot and general atmosphere is very different. The story this time around is pretty simple. This is the same Link as the one in ALTTP and he regularly goes out to sea to train in other countries in case of further threats. One day, a storm destroys the boat he is on and he is washed ashore on Koholint Island. This girl named Marin finds him and brings Link to her home where he wakes up to see her and her father Tarin. Link leaves the home hoping to learn what this island is about and how he can get off of it. Along the way, he meets an owl that tells him to escape this island he must get the 8 instruments of the sirens and wake the wind fish (who resides in a giant egg) with them. Halfway into the adventure however, Link finds out that the entire island may just be a dream created by the wind fish. Whether that's true or not, Link continues to gather the instruments so he can wake the wind wish and get off the island. It's a simple plot but the first thing you'll notice is that it's WEIRD. I did not mention Zelda because she is not in this game. No Triforce or Ganon either. The big staple characters aren't in this game, instead it's an entire brand new cast. You have Marin and Tarin, the other villagers of the town they're in. There are many animal NPC's through out the world, there's even and animal village too lol. The villagers eventually can't recall how long they've been on the island. Throughout the game you even start seeing things from other Nintendo games like the many different Mario enemies, a girl gives you her photo and she looks just like Princess Peach and there's even an enemy that looks and acts like Kirby. This along with the general plot gives this game such a weird, dream-like atmosphere. That's kind of a joke but it's true, they really did a great job at making this game feel like a dream. This is honestly my favorite aspect of this game; just how weird and different it feels from other Zelda games.


The general gameplay is similar to ALTTP, tho it's not quite as linear as that game. You're still going through dungeons and what not but they aren't marked on your map. It can be a bit cryptic at times, trying to figure out how to get into each dungeon, because now you have to find each dungeons respective key to unlock it. Besides that, the overworld itself is pretty fun tho it can get a bit tedious to backtrack through. There are a couple warp points throughout the world you can warp to, but I think there should've been more because even with them, backtracking is plentiful and it's not super fun in this game. The reason for that is, and it's the game's biggest issue, there's only two item slots in this game and stuff like the power bracelet and even the sword takes up a slot. I know this is a Gameboy game, so there was only A and B to work with but having to constantly switch between items to explore can get a bit tiresome. That plus when you don't have an item, needed to clear an object, equipped, an unskippable message appears every time to let you know you need that item. So, whatever you do, don't touch any rocks without having the power bracelet equipped. Like I said, this is my biggest annoyance in the game and while I still enjoyed the overworld despite this, it can be annoying due to these issues.

Exploring the overworld, you'll find many optional secrets just like ALTTP. Like that game, there are caves all throughout and you'll usually need a dungeon item to get whatever treasure is inside. The puzzles in these might actually be more complex than ALTTP's, either way it's good that they're back in this game. You'll also find those weird NPC's throughout the world as well. There's actually a long trade quest in the game, that you would think would be optional due to how long and exploration based it is but it's not. It's required at several points to progress and also the reward you get at the end of it is too. It's not the worst thing in the world but I had forgotten how to do parts of it so I had to look some of it up online so that might stump new players.

Next I want to talk about improvements this game makes compared to past games. This is a Gameboy game so obviously I can't compare its visuals to ALTTP but for a Gameboy game this looks super nice and compared to the first two Zelda games, this also looks nice than them. They did a great job with all the pixel art in this game and I can see why some people prefer this version of the game compared to the remake, based on the art style since it's super charming here. This game also improved on stuff from ALTTP as well funnily enough. You could collect items with you sword in Zelda 1 but not ALTTP for some reason, luckily, you're able to in this game again. I also found the Pegasus Boots better in this game due to you not needing to press and hold the item button again and again when you want to dash constantly. You just need to hold it and Link will start to dash on every screen he's on now. Something that's kinda weird compared to past game is the rupees. Every rupee that spawns in the overworld from cut bushes or defeated enemies is a single rupee. The only way to get more than that at once is with chests and they can give you 20, 50, 100 or even 200 rupees. It's an interesting change but probably a needed one since this was a Gameboy game and this game was already probably pushing the system to its limits.

The dungeons in this game are actually really solid. They're not as vibrant or as memorable visually as ALTTP dungeons however they're full of puzzles, maybe even moreso than ALTTP. That game has a bit more of a focus on combat, and I still might prefer that games dungeons just because of the aforementioned visual memorability. But even still, very good set of dungeons that even stumped me a bit at times. The items you get in these though are pretty solid. You have the aforementioned power bracelet, the magic rod from past Zeldas, the hookshot from ALTTP as well as the flippers. A lot of these are just older items but the standout item, and the one that actually makes the game more fun to play in general tbh, was the roc's feather. When you equip this, you can jump. That's it but it makes a world of difference in how you can play and can absolutely just destroy some bosses super-fast if you're skilled enough. If I didn't need any item to progress, I just went with my sword and the roc's feather. That was my go to set of items. There was an annoyance I had with the items. Since there's no way to speed up text, you'll be seeing the same dialogue for the map and compass over and over again. The map is fine since it's so short but the compass is like three times as long or something and they decided to let you know there's a new sound that plays whenever a chest is in the same room as you. That's cool...you don't have to tell me every time I do a dungeon tho! The bosses at the end of dungeons might also be an improvement from ALTTP. They aren't as flashy of course but they also don't require red/green potions sometimes to defeat, they all have dialogue this time which gives them more character and they're also just really weird or goofy which fits the setting of the game. I'd say they're overall maybe simpler to fight than ALTTP's bosses but simple doesn't equal bad. The final boss tho, had several different phases that took the form of bosses you fought in past games, and it also made use of several of Link's items. Because of that, it was easily the best boss in the game.

The soundtrack in this game, even tho its a Gameboy game, is really melancholic at times and is charming as hell. The signature Ballad of the Wind Fish(I sent Marin's version is easily my favorite song in the game. Mabe Village,Tal Tal Heights and the Ending Theme were my other favorites. The whole soundtrack is good however, and something else this game had over ALTTP is the fact each dungeon had their own unique theme. Now I can't say I prefer any of them over the two ALTTP had but they're still mostly solid here.

While I did have some issues that held this game back from being better than ALTTP, this is still a really solid Zelda game and one that is unique in the story it tells and the atmosphere it provides. It must've been amazing having a game like this on the go back in the day. Like I said as well, I do prefer the remake just because of the some of the improvements it made. I'm kind of known as the original game enjoyer, so for me to prefer a remake over the original is very odd. We'll get to that game way down the line but even if I like that one more, it doesn't stop this version from being good. It certainly has its own charm as well.

I think I'm going to take a small break in between this game and Ocarina of Time. I'm thinking maybe my Plants vs Zombies replay is next? Either way, stay tuned for that and then Ocarina of Time after in the near future!

i mean its alright. a isometric action game which is not new to the ds or even harry potter adaptations its just a bit of a bland period in harry potter games and this is no different its seriously on the same level of quality as the phone game which is kinda embarrassing but not like dreadful to play there are some unique ideas the game really wants to give you stealth opetions but they are just way too boring in execution also too many things are mapped to the screen its one of these ds games where you are meant to play basically with a stylus in your hand the whole game but this isn't like a puzzle game, its an action game for the most part and it does end up being a bit fatiguing and very hand cramping and final thing the potion brewing is brutal for no reason those timers needed an extra 10 seconds or at least change how hard you have to shake/stir anything before it actually starts working I felt like I was going to destroy the ds screen