TheBestestJoe
2017
2004
2015
2010
Everything everyone says about this game is absolutely true and not even an exaggeration. The story is a complete mess. The ganeplay is linear with none of your progress feeling like your own. The game goes out of its way to make it feel like you have zero agency in anything. The combat could be decent if they didn't use the most backwards control scheme possible.
Also Anthony is the only decent character
Also Anthony is the only decent character
2016
Really impressive romhack all things considered. Theres tons of custom items enemies and mechanics, but it all kind of buckles under its own weight. Theres so many powerups that some either feel redundant or underutilized. Theres also a lot of bugs I encountered. Levels also have a huge difficulty spike about halfway through. The later challenges often feel like they don't take Mario 64's inherent jank into consideration and ask you to do some precise maneuvers that can be challenging to most players. Overall, its very impressive, but it feels like they prioritized stuff that looks cool on paper over stuff that was actually fun.
2005
2022
This review contains spoilers
When compared to its predessor, Ys Seven, this game is a marked improvement in numerous ways. Combat is more fluid than before with better boss design than seven. Exploration is more fun and encouraged with more unique landmarks and a map completion system. As a standalone game, I quite liked this entry and believe the combat to be better than Ys VIII due to the fixed camera and more encouragement to learn enemy patterns.
I recently, however, watched my friend play through one of the original versions of Ys IV for the pc engine. What became apparent was how much the story in the game was altered for the worse. The story was okay on its own merits but ends abruptly. The original Ys IV heavily expands on the lore of previous games while delivering a narrative with fun characters and villains. Celceta seems to do away with most of this in favor of telling an amnesia plotline that fails to majorly build on Adol as a character as is hinted at the beginning of the game. The characters feel watered down, especially one of the main villains who no longer is a villain in Celceta. The game being twice as long as the original does not help matters as it feels like less happens despite the game being longer.
Overall, i think Celceta is a fun game, but knowing what the story was like original really puts a damper on my appreciation of it.
I recently, however, watched my friend play through one of the original versions of Ys IV for the pc engine. What became apparent was how much the story in the game was altered for the worse. The story was okay on its own merits but ends abruptly. The original Ys IV heavily expands on the lore of previous games while delivering a narrative with fun characters and villains. Celceta seems to do away with most of this in favor of telling an amnesia plotline that fails to majorly build on Adol as a character as is hinted at the beginning of the game. The characters feel watered down, especially one of the main villains who no longer is a villain in Celceta. The game being twice as long as the original does not help matters as it feels like less happens despite the game being longer.
Overall, i think Celceta is a fun game, but knowing what the story was like original really puts a damper on my appreciation of it.
2011
A solid follow up to Trails from Zero. The story goes way off the rails near the end, and some lategame twists come out of nowhere if you don't do the sidequests that foreshadow them. You can also see some of the tropes that cold steel would become infamous for start to rear their head here.
One problem I have with the gameplay this time around is getting max DP. There's many fights that you do not need to win to progress the story, but if you choose to you have practically no choice but to abuse cheese strats to win. I wouldn't recommend going for max DP in this game.
I'm in the minority that considers Zero to be the better game, but I can absolutely see why this is often a fan favorite.
One problem I have with the gameplay this time around is getting max DP. There's many fights that you do not need to win to progress the story, but if you choose to you have practically no choice but to abuse cheese strats to win. I wouldn't recommend going for max DP in this game.
I'm in the minority that considers Zero to be the better game, but I can absolutely see why this is often a fan favorite.
2009
I enjoyed the atmosphere and the unique ideas this game brings to the table. The game definitely feels a bit awkward in a lot of places. In particular the game seems extremely generous with potions and retry bread, the latter of which I rarely used. This feels like band-aid solution to deal with the somewhat tedious level design.
Getting 100% map completion is also a pain as it requires use of the warp magic in a lot of places. Sometimes I had to intentionally jump into pits to map out bits of the ground. The game seems to have a fetish for pitfall traps, especially in a certain area of the game where you cant see the floor.
The postgame Dela Mode might be my favorite part of the game since it feels more carefully designed than the base game while also being challenging in ways the base game isn't.
Getting 100% map completion is also a pain as it requires use of the warp magic in a lot of places. Sometimes I had to intentionally jump into pits to map out bits of the ground. The game seems to have a fetish for pitfall traps, especially in a certain area of the game where you cant see the floor.
The postgame Dela Mode might be my favorite part of the game since it feels more carefully designed than the base game while also being challenging in ways the base game isn't.
2021
While it is a refreshing take on what a new 3d Mario adventure might look like, I think Bowser's Fury feels awkward in places. A lot of the islands levels that you can seemlessly travel to however you often need to leave and come back for some objectives. Fury Bowser was interesting at first, but he became an annoyance later on, often showing up at inconvenient times to prevent you from being able to complete an objective. I also don't think the 3D world control style and powerup system works too well for a more sandbox type of mario game. Your movement options don't feel as flexible as something like Super Mario Odyssey which feels uncomfortable at times for this game. This is likely a result of being a bonus mode for 3D World as opposed to being a standalone game. Overall its an interesting package, and I don't regret buying 3D World again just for this.