Man after beating this game I know there's so much to love and appreciate, the writing is humorous and entertaining, the characters are all charming and witty, the music is grandiose and striking, but what does all of this mean when the controls for this game are horrendously bad. I want to love this game but playing through it was as an exhausting chore that I liked thinking about this game more than I liked actually playing it. I'm sorry but this NEEDS to be on another console other than the 3DS, it's the biggest thing holding it back from greatness. The idea and foundation of this game are solid but I cannot in good faith recommend this to someone who likes having hands. I think if you watched a playthrough or the cutscenes you'll have just as good of an experience, if you don't want to do that proceed with caution, this game is straining on the hands and everyone who made those arthritis jokes is right.
It pains me to give it anything less than 4 stars but it really is that bad to play, I thought at first maybe it's something you get used to but with how this game controls it made it downright annoying trying to do the higher difficulties and it sucks. If they port this to a console with an actual controller we'd be seeing a higher rating but because its stuck on a dead console it's hard for me to give it anything higher than this.
Updating this because I feel like it needs to be said, I'm left-handed, and I've experimented with all of the control styles in this game. If you want my recommendation for all my lefties out there, I did the circle pad for reticle movement and abxy for general movement, with the shoulder buttons acting as the skill selector. While this did help out tremendously for me I lost out on the ability to move in a precise manner, though problem is if you decide to do it the other way then you also lose out on the precise reticle movement. Which both are needed for the sky and ground sections so... pick your poison.

This might be the perfect game in terms of quality, its the year 2023 and can you believe they made a fully complete fighting game. For its price you're getting one of the most fun and easy to get into fighting games of this generation, the dlc is just that, downloadable content and is nothing that really feels like things that should be in at launch like most games tend to do. I'm not a big fighting game guy but this game really got me into it and got me to want to learn how to play and how its mechanics worked. It's one of the most stylistic and visually pleasing games i've played this year and I cannot recommend it enough for those who are curious. Absolutely masterful.

You see everyone's reviews and they're all the same 3/5 stars and honestly, yeah they're all justified. I wont deny that this game has its charm, and the visuals are no doubt the greatest thing going for this game, but it's a very cut and dry B-grade platformer. Nothings done here that hasn't been done before in the past and maybe it wasn't even trying to be groundbreaking. It's a fun simple game that anyone can enjoy, but the writing and characters all feel like they were designed with children in mind. Not a bad thing, it just means I'm not its target demographic, but for someone who didn't know a thing or two about the old Kao games and this was his first shot into the series, it just left me feeling ok at best. The pure definition of mid, nothing bad, but nothing great either. Pick it up when its on sale if you REALLY want to play it.

Yeah this was a short but fun experience, I think it fails as a Metroidvania, like very badly. If it weren't for the fun movement this would be a chore to go through because the areas you visit sort of blend in with each other. And having no map really just elevates it. That being said though, this is a very pleasant movement based platformer that I imagine would be fun to speedrun through. A lot of its ideas are there and they're great, but they're not as fleshed out or refined as they should be I feel. But for a $5 game you can't go wrong with that.

What can I say that hasn't been said about this game like 100 times over already, it doesn't even matter what you think of this game, it's peak. This game has flaws yes, but they do very little to hamper my overall experience, the inverted castle is still the weirdest idea for padding out game time but you know what? I don't even care because the game is so fun to play anyways that I don't mind exploring it. And In all honesty, it's not as bad as everyone likes to say it is.

Symphony of the Night was their first attempt at a Metroidvania and by golly did they ever succeed in that. This is one of the most fun games i've ever played and while it isn't my number 1, it is still goddamn fun to replay over again.

Wow. Talk about a game that completely blew away my expectations.

For this being a 40 hour game the fact that it managed to make me enjoy my time with it as much as it did, is an accomplishment and should not be understated. Games of that length WISH they could be as engaging as this game was. Like I said, invest everything into the POW + Stache stat and just learn to play good, because if you do that, you wont ever have to focus on gear catered to defense and you'll be killing foes before they get the chance to attack ya. The best rank upgrades to get are Counterer (does 150% more damage when countering enemies) Casual Bros (reduces the amount of bp used for a bros attack), and Quick Level (self explanatory) And then the gear upgrades so that you have 5 gear slots by the end. The game is not hard, the game does not drag, it is purely the matter of if you know what does what. If you fight literally everything you encounter you will be just fine. Not once did I ever have to grind in these games. Unless I wanted to. The common misconception is that battles are slow, but they're not, they're only like that if you allow them to be. Speaking of. I really loved this battle system, it brought back a thing from Superstar where every bro got a new attack/move whereas in Inside Story and Partners in Time they shared the same move pool. The dreamy bros attacks are also very fun to use, and alot of these are just bangers in terms of the variety they put in. The world exploration is probably the best its been since Superstar Saga imo. There's just a lot of beans and goodies to find throughout the world. Exploration never became a chore imo.

That being said, this game wasn't perfect, that final boss is just annoying. They really can't ever top BIS in terms of a game finale. Hell, even Superstar Saga did it better. While this one definitely felt like a finale to a game, the Dreamy Bowser fight really left a sour taste at the end. I'm fine with Final Bosses being able to heal, if its limited, this mother fucker just does it whenever he feels like it and in turn it can make the fight drag on and on. Something that I haven't experienced in this game till now. there were numerous times where framerate would drop and sometimes it did actually hinder how I played. The final boss for example has a move where Mario and Luigi are running towards the camera and have to dodge dreamy bowsers fire, thing is, everytime he does this the whole fucking game lags. I think it might've slipped past game testing cause it makes these already shitty 3D dodging segments even more unbearable. SPEAKING OF. FUCK 3D dodging segments. This has to be this games biggest flaw since I hated every time the camera shifted to a 3D perspective while battling because the depth perception is awful. And these are just everywhere, they're not all bad, but the ones that are end up souring a lot of these great boss fights.

The story is just really predictable... man, I'm sorry but once you figure out how this game works you can tell what'll happen at each area you visit. You know exactly what will happen and what will be awaiting you. The game does like to shake it up at times, but its very far in between as the moment to moment gameplay is easily something that you'll love or hate. I ended up liking it but this is where I can see people get annoyed with how it doesn't do much to shake up the narrative.

Character writing though is still fantastic, only characters that suck is some of the early people you meet and Starlow, but Starlow was already pretty shit anyways so I don't really give a fuck. Dreambert clears in like every way possible, that's my goat. He is easily the best partner in this series. It helps that I also really like his design and personality too.

I didn't expect myself to like Dream Team as much as I did and in some areas it even beats out BIS with the 2D dreamy mechanics and the big luigi battles being improvements to the formula.

Talk about a game that's just... there... If you thought there was no such thing as "playing it safe" pay no attention to Super Monkey Ball 3D. This overall release just feels pointless, a lot of the levels are filled with nothing, using the same models and graphics recycled from Banana Blitz this game does try to seperate itself with its paper craft like style in the story execution. Literally other than that its just Banana Blitz without the jump + boss fights.
Its a boring nothing of a game with quite possibly the worst monkey race and monkey fight modes in the series. Nothing is truly memorable about this game, I went through the whole thing doing everything and nothing. Even the final world you unlock is nothing. Just skip this one, there are better games to play out there, this isn't one of them.

Love Scott Pilgrim, read the comic books, watched the movie, watched the animated series, played this game, it wasn't good, oh no. Ok I should explain myself, I think on everything that isn't the core game itself, this game is amazing at. The visuals are so eye catching, the sound design and overall ost are among some of the best i've heard, and it's a great game for fans. It's when you start dissecting the game is when it gets really ugly. Once you look past the property and you view it as a beat-em up game it's so disappointing.
Lets start off with the gameplay, the gameplay is what you'd expect from a beat-em up, but did they seriously have to make going to shops one of the most frustrating and annoying things. The way these shops work is that you have to buy the item first before you can actually know what it does. The game gives a vague description but that alone is not enough because all you care about are what it does for you the player. Also lets get the elephant out of the room, this game is unnecessarily hard when you first start out, I don't care if its trying to replicate the old-school style beat-em ups in its punishing difficulty but most of the time it feels like they should've been trying to replicate a fun experience. Even on the Average Joe difficulty this shit is just annoying, I hate how slow the characters are when they get knocked down it takes way too long for them to even get back up and there's no way to decrease the time on that, it's just how it was developed. No I don't think using a coin glitch just to get a bionic arm excuses this games sad excuse of a challenge. Leveling up doesn't even affect your stats it only gives you new moves to bring in the illusion of this game being fun, when it's not. The game only gets fun when you have all the moves but by that point you'd already game over'd multiple times that you're only on the 2nd boyfriend boss.

Man what happened here, I know this game at one point was considered lost media in how you couldn't purchase it anymore, but now that its back its made me realize how overhyped it was. For Scott Pligrim fans I think its a neat novelty, playing this game on your own, good luck.

You wanna talk about a good fucking Castlevania game, look no further than this beast. Rondo of Blood is everything you should be looking for in an old-school traditional 2D Castlevania game. Everything about this game is amazing to me. What I really love about it is that the level design is REALLY GOOD. Like I'm talking no more bullshit Castlevania moments that make me want to pull my hair out. The bosses are also a highlight. Them having actual enemy patterns and it just being a test of skill and no bullshit RNG is why I don't mind replaying these levels after a game over. Speaking of which, another thing is that these levels are SHORT and have multiple pathways and secrets to find. Leading to more replayability, and having a stage select really helps when you want to go back and do everything. Game Overs in this game don't carry the same weight as they do in other Castlevanias, you have unlimited continues and the worse it gets is just replaying the stage from the beginning. But again, may I remind you, these levels are not long to begin with. So that is just a non issue in my opinion. Richter may not be as nimble or capable of shit like Simon in Super Castlevania 4 but he doesn't even fucking need it. The level design is built around his moveset. And the music oh my god the music its all bangers. The main theme kicks so much ass and even the weaker levels have the best tunes to listen to. There's even 2D cutscenes with voice acting! A first for this series! The story is just "kill Dracula" but that was always the case with these games so it doesn't matter. Having an actual save file is also a first for this series up to this point. And little things like that you take for granted start to be more appreciative when you're a maniac like me who's marathoned like 8 games right now. I love that you can also play as someone other than a belmont, maria! Maria is like the easy mode of this game but I welcome it since she's just fun to play as. She reminds me of Grant, Sypher, and Alucard from Castlevania 3 except she clears all of them. Really the only flaw I can think of is that there's barely any invincibility frames when getting hit, leading to you getting juggled by enemies easily. But to be honest, I'll take that over any bullshit death from the previous Castlevanias.

Rondo of Blood is a game I think anyone can enjoy, and its definitely one you should be looking out for should you decide to ever get into the Castlevania series, it's the best of its kind.

Waited on getting all the badges before writing this review, but now that I did I can say that Pikmin 3 Deluxe is definitely worth your time and money. There is just so much content packed into here that there is virtually no reason for you to play the inferior wii u version. While it isn't my favorite Pikmin game in the series, there's a lot of things this game does right and it's definitely still fun to play. This does feel like a beginner friendly Pikmin though despite it being the 3rd game but that's more of a nitpick than anything, getting more people into this series is what we fans want so we don't have to wait a decade for another game.
But yeah, after you buy Pikmin 4 (like you should) go back and give 3 Deluxe a chance if you haven't played it already, it's one you don't want to miss.

This started as a fun little blast to the past but the difficulty spike when you get to around world 4 and world 8 are insane. It's something to where the game becomes more annoying to play because their idea of level design is throwing like 500 of those annoying enemies, something akin to bad Mario Maker levels. It was a nice romp until I got to the final boss which soured my entire mood, while he wasn't hard i'm pretty sure it's a universal bug where the boss would disappear from the stage and then never return, this happened to me about 5 times before I finally beat it, but the damage was done. For a cute little 2000's 2D platformer, it's fine, but nothing worth checking out other than nostalgia.