This, uh, really does not feel great to rate 2.5 stars. (bumped it up to 3.5, see last 4 paragraphs for why) Especially since when Evening Star first announced Penny to the world, I was really rooting for them to knock things out of the park, and prove that they don't need to rely on Sega to deliver a fantastic game. Booting this up for the first time, I thought I was in for a slam dunk, like there was no way this would be anything else but a good time. The reality is... somewhere in-between. After playing it, I'm still rooting for Evening Star, but mostly in the sense of hoping that they fix what's currently a very promising, but frankly jank game.

There are technical issues. In the first world, I got softlocked when jumping onto a roof. Thankfully, you can restart from checkpoints. Then there were two other times where I clipped straight through a wall. The first time, it was really amusing because it was actually helpful as a shortcut towards an optional collectible. The other time, it just led to an unfair death. The boss with the ship setpiece was all sorts of wonky, the camera would keep snapping away from Penny onto some random part of the level, leaving me in disarray regarding my current position. At the end of one level, Penny decided to do her victory dance while floating in mid-air.

I'm not usually the type of person that attracts bugs and glitches, because I don't try that hard to experiment in the games I play. Generally, I do my best to follow what they want me to do. So, the fact I was able to run into bugs this easily - not to mention seeing reports of other people having the same issues - makes me wonder if shadowdropping the game this month was a good idea.

Then there's the controls. So, this one seems way more subjective, and it's possible you might not feel these problems as I did. The most generous way to describe playing Penny is "technical." The less generous description would be "Takes some heavy getting used to." Speaking of heavy, the least generous term is heavy. In contrast to what the trailers made me think, getting Penny to soar through these levels was far from an easy task, and has led me to fumble an embarrassing amount of jumps. I counted eight. Eight instances of me just walking off an edge before I was able to press the jump button, and that's when I began to question if I'm starting to get too old for video games. But, no, I'm fairly certain that there's just something slightly off here, but slight enough that I could never quite get used to it.

Having to double tap the attack button for the dash, instead of just giving it its own button, is one questionable example. Sometimes, the dash would not activate if my double tap was too rapid, requiring me to adjust to a slightly more drawn-out timing. I would keep forgetting to do this however, and would keep falling to my death as a result. There were also moments where a whole bunch of enemies ganged up on me, and I would panic by mashing the attack button in order to deter them away. Of course, this would then activate the dash, and cause me to careen off a cliff. The physics on the dash itself feel too overtuned, using it to attempt and reach a platform would often cause me to overshoot it, and because Penny's turning can be heavy, it would be not enough to course-correct my mistake.

By far the worst of it is the rolling move, the one where you get on your yo-yo and can use downhill slopes to gain a ton of momentum and launch off ramps. Again, the trailers made this move look so fun, but as I got to try it myself, I've learned that for some ungodly reason, your directional controls are completely locked during the first 2-3 seconds of using this move. It's only after that, you can start kiiinda moving left and right, but forget about making any sharp turns. The rolling movement is only good for making slight adjustments on linear paths, but otherwise feels really stiff to use, less like a car and more like trying to steer a tank as it tumbles down a hill.

I've tested both the keyboard and the controller, and while controller does feel a little better, it does not flip the entire game feel upside down, and the problems still persist. It's hard to learn, and hard to master. I believe there desperately needs to be a patch to retune the game feel, as what's on offer right now is good enough for a casual run, but would make me rip my hair out if I was trying to perfect it.

And I really do think that a couple touchs-up is all this game needs to rocket into stardom. Have you seen those visuals? Holy shit, dude. You look at the visual design of the menu and think "Oh, whoever made the Sonic Mania menus definitely worked on this", and then you go into the game, and everything's so charming, and colorful, and the main character is so expressive! And the MUSIC, man, the game's hiding its best track for one of the later stages, and I already know I'm gonna be blasting this on loop for the next several weeks.

And I know I've been super harsh on the gameplay, but I can feel it, there's something really special here on those couple instances when the game IS working in your favor. It can be great to swing from one platform to the next, to soar at high speeds, to find little shortcuts and alternate pathways. The combo system in itself looks like a whole different ballpark of skill which I haven't even scratched the surface on, and I would love, LOVE to be able to fully appreciate these things if-!

Fuck, I walked off the edge again.

Update: I opted to do some post-game cleanup, and began to get to gripes with the combo system, thus engaging with the levels in more involved ways by aiming for the high scores. I also took some time to watch a developer utilize the combo system, and was taught that the best way to use the roll move, is to toggle it off by jumping, then readjust your direction, and toggle it back on while still in mid-air. This allows for a significantly higher degree of maneuverability than I previously thought was possible.

Don't get me wrong, I still hold the view that the game's physics could take some fixing up, they're still too finicky for my liking, and at times, feel either unresponsive, or too strict. However, if you're gonna play the game, I would highly advise engaging with the combo system and taking the time to learn as much of it as possible before you proceed through the rest of the game, as this is where I have found the most amount of fun to be had. Doing a 2nd run, the moment I obtained a high score after several tries, pumped my fists and thought "HAHA, YES!!!", that's when I realized "Oh, shit, so it IS fun!" It's just that the learning curve feels higher than it really should, and it took me a 2nd playthrough to really understand it. That's not good. Some people aren't gonna stick around for that long to figure this out. Then again, some people have clicked with the controls far more immediately than others did, so clearly, your mileage may vary.

Is it worth 30 dollars? Ehhh, I'm not so sure about that, I would've rather paid 20 myself. Is it good, though? Sure, but I do think that... it could've handled teaching the player its mechanics a lot better. But if you were to take the time to learn these mechanics yourself, and practice up, I think you could get quite a lot out of this otherwise short game. Give it a try! Perhaps you'll end up feeling proud of the scars it gives you.

Update 2: 5 attempts at getting a high score messed up due to collision bugs. Alright, seriously. This needs work.

I dunno man, the visuals are very pretty, but as far as sense of progression goes, Ultros is not hitting the kind of pacing I desire out of a Metroidvania. You're either unlocking way too many skills at once to process the worthwhile usage of each one, or you're finding seeds to plant, the advantages of which are not immediately apparent, and instead delayed until you hit the next bit of story progression. It's too much instant gratification, and not enough clarity messily colliding against each other, with mechanics rarely trickled out at a rate that allows you to slowly learn the advantages of each one, or what each type of seed actually does before you're given more of them.

I also take an issue with the game taking away your skills & abilities per every time loop. I don't understand the intent of this. The argument is that it's pretty easy to re-acquire those abilities on repeat runs, but that's still at least 15-20 minutes of backtracking and grinding up enemies in order to reunlock that stuff, plus another 15-20 minutes per every succeeding loop, and... the fact that it's easy only further begs the question, why did it have to be that way at all? Granted, you can find some items that let you lock some of your skills in place, but... at that point, you've already seen them all, and it doesn't feel that rewarding anymore. Meanwhile, there are some abilities that you are always forced to lose no matter what, requiring you to backtrack to a specific room to re-acquire them. It's incredibly unsatisfying. For every major ability I unlock, all I can think is that I'm about 5 minutes away from losing it.

Perhaps Ultros didn't want to be like every other metroidvania out there, but at the same time, what it tries to do different is unnecessarily gimmicky. A more standard progression system where each ability takes effort to get, but is yours to keep couldn't have hurt. None of what's currently here is necessarily stressful, nor is the game all that hard. I think it just overcomplicates itself in ways that seem pointless, abandoning the structure of a classic metroidvania in favor of one that really just doesn't feel as carefully balanced, or intrinsic to explore. Unless you love plant seeds and cryptic lore. Ho, baby.

Either it's just a pure coincidence, or a sign of something certainly foreboding that the company this game got outsourced to (Minakuchi Engineering) just... disappeared off the face of the earth, right after X3 got released. Like, not even an official announcement of the company going defunct, or bankrupt. Did a murder happen we're not aware of? The game wasn't THAT mediocre, was it?

Unfortunately, maybe it was. Whilst X3 uses the same gameplay framework as the previous two games, thus retaining a solid sense of control... everything else surrounding this framework - everything new, that is - really just doesn't hold a candle to what the previous entries had to offer. The level design is some real by the numbers shit, coupled with visuals that I struggle to remember anything about. The only exception is the snow level, which had the one song that doesn't over-rely on the electric guitar sound (though the song that plays at Dr. Cain's Lab was a pretty alright use of it), and its visuals stuck out to me amongst all the uninspired futuristic theming that permeates the rest of the game. The bosses are no fun to fight at all, some of which take too long even with their weakness, and my god, don't even get me started on the final boss, that one can fuck offffffffff.

Even as X3 attempts to introduce some interesting new concepts into the series, it handles them in such an unexciting in-the-background way, it makes you wonder why they even bothered. Do you want the ability to summon Zero as a playable character? Oh boy, do I! Sadly, Zero has never learned how to open a door, so as soon as you reach a boss, or even a mini-boss, he has to dip out and cannot be summoned again until the next stage, presumably due to his humilation at the hands of a door.

And apparently he's got the most powerful charge move in the game too. But if I'm only allowed to engage regular fodder with him, do you think it's surprising that I've never actually seen this move with my own eyes? Because what's the point? X is already more than capable of handling the mooks by himself. The bosses are like, the one case scenario where it'd actually help to have Zero around, but the game won't let you fight bosses with him. So, as a result, Zero just sits there, in the menu, literally never, ever used.

And then there's X3 attempting to expand on the variety of ridable mechs you can utilize, up to 4 different types, and it's like... whoooo, this one hits harder, and this one can be utilized underwater, this one flies, and... every single one of them, I could only find use under very situational scenarios, mainly just to grab some collectibles. Then I never use them again. I guess they're helpful if you're looking for some extra defense, but if that means having to spend a large majority of the game riding around in these huge clunky beasts, I think I'd rather just risk it and stick with X.

I've played both the SNES & PS1 port of X3. If I were to give a recommendation, I'd say stick to SNES. The PS1 port does have some pretty neat FMV animations, I especially enjoyed that every boss intro was replaced with unique cinematics. However, the game is identical to the SNES counterpart otherwise, with not a single visual improvement, and a CD audio soundtrack that's even weaker than the already kinda weak SNES OST. Plus, there's loading screens. I think you could just check the FMV's out on YouTube. Maybe even just check the whole game out on YouTube. I just realized that might be a better idea than having to play it in any form. I mean, again, it's not THAT horrible, but it is one of those games where the lack of soul is almost infuriating to behold. Sometimes it's okay, and then you have to fight the bosses, and it's... not. It's not even okay. Ah well, at least Mega Man X4 gets things back on track. Briefly.

On a final note, I'm still thinking about the baffling bombshell that X3's ending narration just drops on the player. Like, it just outright spoils that someone's going to get killed in a later game, while simultaneously providing no context or explanation for why such a thing would happen at all. Why did they do that??? Was the writer trying to hint at something else? Wait, maybe a murder DID happen at Minakuchi Engineering.....

Look, I've been wrangling with this review for a while, knowing that I tend to put way more of a wordcount on games I'm mixed/negative on, compared to games that I love with all my heart. It seemed like a weird balance in my head, knowing I don't have as much to say about what I think is the pinnacle of 2D platforming. Maybe it goes to show I like talking about negative things more? Does that mean there's something wrong with me? Well, maybe I'm not obligated to dedicate 30 paragraphs on why I love Donkey Kong Country 2. I just simply do. It just feels good. It's hard to describe all the little things this game improves over its predecessor that make for a strikingly different, and more fluid experience. Nonetheless, I will try.

They got rid of Donkey Kong, and somehow it made for a way better sequel. Not that DKC1 was bad by any means, but I did always feel like there were awkward things about it. The combination of one big playable kong, and one small playable kong was part of that. My preference would've always been to play as Diddy, he's smaller, nimbler, just overall more fun to play as than Donkey Kong, who took up more screen estate than I was comfortable with. How does DKC2 address this? Fuck it, just introduce a 2nd Diddy Kong, call her Dixie, and give her the ability to hover.

Dixie isn't just your partner character, or your 2nd hitpoint, she is your powerup. In the same way you obtain a raccoon tail or a super cape in Mario, obtaining Dixie is that additional bit of help to breeze through tough platforming challenges, as long as you're able to keep her around. Dixie is the superior character compared to Diddy, but unlike DKC1, where losing the agile character strands you with the somewhat clunkier one, DKC2's only punishment for losing Dixie is the loss of the hover. You still have Diddy, and Diddy's agility and size is overall equal to Dixie's, ensuring that each character feels just as good to play as.

Another significant improvement has been the retuning of the level design, and more specifically, how it handles secrets and bonus stages. Some of Rare's collect-a-thon trademarks started to come through here, allowing you to access additional optional stages by completing enough Bonus Rooms (thus, obtaining enough Bonus Coins) to unlock each one. Collecting every coin gives you access to the true final boss, and a secret ending to match.

The thing is, I didn't consider hunting down the bonus rooms in DKC1 very fun, due to the lack of reward for actually doing all of them, not to mention that they often relied on repetitive minigame gimmicks that made them less interesting to discover anyway. What I love about each bonus room in DKC2 is how they all feel like their own contained mini-stages. They're quick and to the point platforming challenges that take advantage of each stage's unique mechanic as a little bit of "Let's see if you've learned how this works," or "Let's teach you something that you can then bring into the main level." They're hidden, but intuitive to find if you're paying attention, and clearing 15 Bonus Stages each unlocks one more extra level as your reward, giving you constant positive reinforcement that going out of your way to do this is worth it, if only to discover more of the game's content.

The soundtrack's another high point for me. Though I'd be amiss to gloss over DKC1's Aquatic Ambience, or its final boss theme, I do think that DKC2's change of priorities away from ambience resulted in David Wise's best work. Equal parts energetic, and dramatic in their efforts to capture the theme of a pirate adventure, not to mention the use of more melancholy melodies for Bramble Blast, or the Forest theme. Sometimes cheery, sometimes sad, either way, a soundtrack that encourages you to push onward and save the day at any cost! Like the cost of 1 Banana Coin required to save your game. Okay, so maybe this game has at least one flaw.

But I don't care!! Though it may not be everyone's cup of tea due to its challenging difficulty, DKC2 is so expertly refined and so much fun to play, that I'd gladly lose as many extra lifes as it takes to conquer each stage, and achieve that satisfying 100% completion. This is not something I can say for even something as good as Super Mario World 2, which speaks to how much of a difference it makes, when the requirements to 100% your game are fast-paced. No time is wasted, new mechanics are constantly introduced, and rewards for exploration are everywhere. Did I mention that when you find that one Bonus Room you've missed in a stage, you can quit out of the stage and it'll retain what you've found? Yeah, it's so nice! Play it!!!

Not sure how to feel about this one. On one hand, I imagine it's a fun 30 minutes of your time if you've got a friend to play with, and if you enjoy seeing cars get smashed into pieces. The miniature toy car aesthetic jives with me a lot too, and the music is very of its time, in the best way possible.

On the other hand, Destruction Derby stops being especially fun once you start thinking about actually winning some of these races in the single player mode. It is clear that the race tracks are designed around making it as likely as possible that you'll crash into other opponents. It plays into the gimmick of the game, but also makes it frustratingly difficult to actually get good at it, when your opponents tend to come out of nowhere, straight into the side of your car. It is a racing game at the end of the day, yet it's one that wants to show off its car collision physics so badly, it prioritized making it more fun to lose, than it is to actually win. I don't think the balance was struck correctly here.

I probably should preface this review by stressing that there's gonna be heavy amounts of nostalgic bias. For several years as a kid, all I had was a PS1, and of the several CD's I was lucky enough to get, only two interested me: Crash Bandicoot 1, and this. Both of which are fairly short games which I would boot up and crank out a full run on a near daily basis. With that, I possess an immense amount of practice and muscle memory that few others would be likely to obtain these days, unless you chose to be part of the speedrunning community.

I had to keep this in mind as I was skimming through the reviews found on this site, acting surprised as it turned out that the larger majority of the world finds this game to be total bullshit. And even though I eventually got really good at it, I had to recall that once upon a time, during my initial couple runs of Rayman 1, some of the levels had me gripping the controller so hard, I could've sworn my handshakes were firmer after the fact. Yeah, no, the memories came flooding back, I'm pretty sure I hated this game once. But, it was 1 of the 2 platformers that I owned, so, what choice did I have but to keep pushing on with it?

So, call it Stockholm Syndrome or what have you, but cut to about 16 years later, and I'm here to tout that Rayman 1 can be actually pretty good, with some adjustments and the right mindset anyway. Starting off, I'd like to present new players some tips for a more enjoyable experience:

Tip #1: If you've got an emulator, put on an infinite lifes cheat. Alternatively, the game itself has a built-in cheat for 99 lives, you can find how to activate it here. Alternatively alternatively, just make a save state for every checkpoint you reach. While it does kinda sap away the point of the collectibles, alongside removing the game over screen as a stake... Rayman is already difficult as is, that getting to the end of a stage should serve well enough as its own reward.

Tip #2: Besides the regular collectibles, each level has 6 cages with trapped scrimblos to rescue. It sounds rather enticing if you love your collectibles, but the first problem comes up when you're halfway through the game and you realize you still have no idea what rescuing those cages actually does. It is only at the end of the game, that the purpose is revealed: You cannot access the final stage, unless you have rescued every single caged scrimblo.

At that point, I figure anybody playing this blind would just go "no thanks!" and shut the game off. After all, the locations of many cages are obtuse, and often hidden out of sight unless you touch a specific pixel to make the cage appear. You'll be likely to miss cages in just about every stage, so you're basically being told to replay the game all over again.

But don't worry, there's a workaround! First things first, just don't bother with the cages. Maybe get what you can just for the sake of engaging in exploration, but seriously, don't go for 100%. Instead, the way you want to unlock that final stage is by using the game's password system. Simply look up the password for 100% completion, and you're good. However, I highly recommend only using this password once you reach the end of the game, because using it at the very start of your run will lock you out of most bosses. They can only be fought once, how 'bout that.

Tip #3: Regarding the "right mindset", I wholeheartedly believe that Rayman requires to be treated less like a casual Mario platformer, and more like one of those "Meat Boy/Celeste-like" type games. Death is inevitable, but with that, comes learning from your mistakes. Stages have decent checkpointing as well, not like "per every room", but each level is short enough that you're not losing TOO much progress. To beat Rayman, requires committing yourself to the challenge that awaits you, and perhaps take breaks if you're tired. But, as someone with practice, I can guarantee that every stage is possible to get consistently good at, and I'd even argue it's satisfying to do so.

Tip #4: If you're really not feeling this, try the "Rayman Redemption" fangame instead. It serves as a reimagining of Rayman 1 that's extremely faithful in replicating every aspect of the controls, sound, and graphics, alongside adding several QoL improvements. However, the keyword here is "reimagining", as the level design is not exactly like Rayman 1, and oftentimes introduces new elements alongside it.

Going back to the idea of requiring "commitment" to beat the game, the question may arise, is it even worth "committing" to it? This is obviously gonna vary from person to person, but my reasons stand as such: I think Rayman himself, control-wise, is tight and responsive. Initially, you start off with a shockingly tiny set of abilities (move and jump), but you soon get your attack button, followed by a grapple move, a hover ability, and - to round it all off - the run button. This concept was reused in Rayman 2, where you start off weak and basic, before obtaining more abilities that make you more versatile and powerful-feeling. Here, you may argue that something like the run button and the hover should've just been given to you from the start - which honestly, I have no argument against - but I think it does work in the sense of letting the game be very simple for anyone to pick up, and get gradually more complex, and more fun as it goes on.

I also think that if you're all about that 90's PS1 aesthetic combined with a dash of surrealism, Rayman's an excellent example of using the power of a 3D console to make a very nice looking 2D game. Rayman's presentation aged so gracefully, with plenty of lush backgrounds, and bizarre expressive animations to oogle your eyes at. Almost every level introduces at least one new mechanic or enemy to keep your attention, along with bosses that seem to get increasingly more creative.

The soundtrack is a bit of a unique case for its time, that's emblematic of one of early Ubisoft's traits. Most platformers of this time would just settle for playing one song throughout the whole stage, but Rayman's strategy is to repeatedly switch between two audio tracks. One track contains music, and the other contains pure ambience. It goes from music, to ambience, back to music, back to ambience, just like that on loop. I think it's a fascinating way to create a soundscape for your game, an endearing attempt to make it feel more alive, and its sounds less predictable. The music itself has instrumentation that anyone nostalgic for 80's-90's synth and guitar will feel right at home with, just absolutely full of that CD audio cheese.

In all my attempt to convince the person reading this to play the game however, I think I've made one case most convincingly clear: It's not for everyone. It's a pretty difficult romp, it really sucks to 100%, and it takes like 40% of the game before you obtain abilities that really open it up. At the same time, I don't think Rayman 1's only for people who grew up with it. If you have even a general appreciation for the PS1 era of gaming, you should give this a shot. If you're ready to challenge yourself, you should optimize that challenge however you like, whether it's playing the game as intended, or giving yourself a leg up with cheats. Both ways are fine, I ain't gonna fucking gatekeep. Because for all the flaws that Rayman has, I really think there's plenty to appreciate about its variety of gameplay mechanics, and whimsical aesthetic. And I would like everyone to experience those positives by eliminating the primary negative: The fact that the game kicks your ass way too hard.

But, y'know, it's important not to force yourself to play something you're not enjoying either... so, worst case scenario, you can move on to Rayman 2. It is a very different experience from the first installment, and one that's much more palatable to a general audience. It's what I would consider a good entry point into the series. Rayman 1 is not that. It's for weirdos like me.

To put it lightly, RPG's that want you to create your own build rather than handing you a pre-made one have been my kryptonite for the longest time. It's why in the past, I've remained the most casual, white bread type of RPG player. The length that this kind of game comes with, the ludicrous amount of possibilities, and the anxiety that the choice I'll end up going with is going to bite me long-term, leading to an outright reset of the entire run... these were all things that overwhelmed me. It's why I couldn't deal with FF7's Materia system, it's why the moment FF6 introduces magic customizability I almost immediately bounced off, and it's why FF4 was - of fucking course - the one I liked.

But, hey, it's good to expand your horizons, and there's a reason why people like these games. What it comes down to is that I have to completely turn off my inner demons, and treat Final Fantasy V as what it is: A game that's meant to last. Once I do that, and once I understand the systems at play, I figure I can head into the later games with a much greater appreciation for what they want out of me, in opposite to what I want out of it.

So, I've beaten Final Fantasy V. And, I must confess, if someone was watching me play it, they would probably want to strangle me by the neck. The thing that harmed my enjoyment the most was my own fault. I somehow managed to find myself in a situation where alongside FF5, I was also in the middle of playing Megami Tensei II, an absolute hellscape of NES RPG difficulty which I couldn't have imagined playing without save states and rewind involved. And as I reached its credits, I realized I still had 15 hours of FF5 left, and despite being in no mood for more turn-based shenanigans, I pushed onward anyway. The thing is, I save stated through Megami Tensei so hard, that mentality rubbed off on how I played FF5 as well, load stating and rewinding before, during, and after every single instance of danger and non-efficient gameplay there was.

In the end, I beat the game, and wrote a 3.5/5 review for it, praising the party customizability options, its wonderful soundtrack, charming sense of humor, but heavily criticizing what I described as "trial 'n error boss fights," under the opinion that a good chunk of bosses rely on "gotchas", requiring specific Job builds that you cannot possibly be aware of on your 1st try, leading either to an inefficient boss fight, or in rarer cases, an instant death. I concluded by saying that FF5 is a bit of a messy game on your 1st run, but in all likelihood, a much better experience on a 2nd run once you know what you're doing. And during my 1st run, I didn't know what I was doing all that often. That review stayed up on Backloggd for about 2 days, give or take.

But... I am here now, rewriting my review of FF5, and changing my score to a 4/5 for two reasons. One being, I felt unfulfilled. That review rubbed me the wrong way from the very start, and I knew exactly why. I became so terminally reliant on save stating my way through games, that I convinced myself that failure was an unacceptable condition. That reflected on my take on the "trial 'n error bosses," essentially saying that if I don't win a boss fight on my 1st try, that boss fight is bad. This couldn't be any stupider of an opinion. Developers don't add failure states into their products because you shouldn't ever see them, nor is the right way to play games "Effortlessly conquer every part of them." It's like solving a crossword, what the fuck is the point if they just give you all the answers? The entire point of a puzzle is to stump you, in the same way the entire point of a challenge is to put you at risk of losing.

The 2nd reason for rewriting my review, is because I have done the unthinkable. Frankly, I don't know if this was the wise thing to do, and it has most definitely contributed to a period of RPG burnout that I'm currently about to head into. But if I didn't do this, this feeling of unsatisfaction would've tortured me for weeks, as it has done so for the several days I allowed it to. Immediately after finishing FF5 and writing out my previous review... I deleted the review, and then began a 2nd run of the game. This time, rewind was disabled, and save states were only utilized just before the start of a boss fight, and nowhere else.

While I haven't yet beaten the 2nd run as of this writing (though i am at the final dungeon by this point), I'm not here because I got bored, or weary, or frustrated. For once in my life, I have wrote a review before finishing my run of a game because I was satisfied with what I've experienced. I think I can now write this review with the full understanding of what makes Final Fantasy 5 a great game.

Suikoden taught me a valuable lesson in RPG's, that the reason why they're called "roleplaying" games is because it's about choosing what type of build you want, rather than succumbing to OCD and thinking the game wants you to try all of them. This lesson, in regards to some RPG's, is a valid one to keep in mind. FF5 taught me a different lesson, a different way to adapt to these sorts of RPG's: You don't have to try every build there is, but that doesn't mean you should be limiting yourself to just one either. With the tools at disposal that FF5 provides, the point isn't to force you out of your favorite build. The real purpose is to get you to find one you like even more.

When you die to a boss fight here, what may be perceived as a "punishment", is actually the game confidently pushing you forward into experimentation. To enforce this, switching Jobs is an instant process, and though you can grind Jobs up to obtain fun abilities, what FF5 cares more about is each Job's starter skillset being unconventionally used to generate surprising and exciting results. There were more than a couple moments where I smiled, or dare I say, pogged out due to strategies that go beyond just mashing the fight button.

FF3's attempt at a Job system was servicable, but ultimately underwhelming, I could never seem to get use out of the more unconventional Jobs, and grinding them up to be of use took too long. What makes FF5 way better is that as you change Jobs, your default stats gained through regular level ups are automatically redistributed to be optimal for the specific Job you're using, thus, they're ready for battle fresh out of the box. This made switching between them a more comfortable process, one that allowed me to enjoy over 19 of the 22 available classes, a sharp increase over FF3, where I only preferred Jobs that were blatant upgrades over the standard knights and mages. Here, nearly everyone is equal in their own unique strengths, and my willingness to step out of my boundaries allowed me to find not just one build that really works, but several. So, you see, FF5 can get away with wanting me to try out lots of different builds. Because it makes it very accessible to do so.

Though I must admit, once you find those few really special abilities, during my 2nd run, it was impossible to resist immediately pursuing them and using them wherever I could. While I still made strides to vary up my build depending on the situation, I frequently came back to X-Fight, the Call ability, Double Wield, and 2-Handed. There's still a part of me that really likes to prioritize high damage numbers over slow and steady progress, which in turn makes me feel like I'm still limiting myself in the ways I'm playing the game. On the other hand, I always have to remember that RPG's are about what works for you, and if I had fun playing it this way (which i did), while keeping in mind other options under other circumstances, then FF5 was still just... really, really fun from a gameplay perspective.

In my scrapped review, something else I complained about was the ATB system, which seemed a little more gimmicky here than in FF4. FF5 is inherently a more strategical game than its predecessor, which had me require more time to think over my options during battle. So the pressure the ATB system adds feels anti-thetical to the whole idea of "think your options through." Additionally, because I changed classes frequently, my menus and the order in which the party attacked kept changing, meaning I kept accidentally tripping up, selecting the wrong things because I was in a rush to outrace the timer before the enemy got their turn in. In this review, I'm still gonna leverage this as a valid critique, alongside the confusion of what the ATB system actually adds to the experience rather than detracts. However, I've found a way to circumvent this issue, and it's as simple as "press start to pause the game, dumbass." From there on, the ATB system becomes significantly more managable.

As for the story, I'm not exactly sure if I've made up my mind on it yet, but despite its seeming shallowness in the standards of today's age, I think I've warmed up to it well enough, that, this... may be the best Final Fantasy story so far? FF1 & FF3 were blank slates, while FF2 & FF4 tried a touch too hard to make me feel emotions for characters I knew for all but minutes. By comparison, FF5 still has a little bit of that "the characters are having bad things happen to them in every step of their journey" thing, but there's a strange certain sincerity to the tone of this game, that makes me feel all warm and cozy just adventuring in it. Maybe it's the characters being more expressive and animated this time around? The fun chocobo dances? Or Bartz's infectious optimism and belief that the solution to every problem is "ah fuck it, let's just do it." Or maybe it's all of those things, and then some. While I'm not sure I buy the idea that the entire game was a deliberate parody of RPG tropes, I can't deny that there's a subtle feeling of fun being had here. Not enough for a deep story, but enough to make you root for these little 16x24 guys. As sometimes, it feels like they're rooting for you.

As for the soundtrack, I'm starting to think that this is where Uematsu really started honing in his craft. FF4 was melodically strong, but had a lot of trumpets. Mind you, FF5 has plenty of them too, but my wish was that the series would start relying less on just this one instrument for every melody it doots out. FF5 is starting to get there, it's starting to lean into other instruments taking priority. "Battle on the Big Bridge" is the biggest example of this, as Uematsu has just discovered an instrument of the gods, the prog rock organ. And within the next games, it becomes very clear that prog rock is what Uematsu is all about. FF5's soundtrack was just a taste of what's to come.

Alright, it's about time to sum this up. Is FF5 a good game? YES!!!!!!!!!! Yes, it is. I needed some time to warm up to it, both for self-inflicted reasons and FF5's specific expectations of how to play it, but once you're in there, it's just really fun. When most people think of RPG's, they tend to think of the story being the main pull, but FF5 was created in an age where gameplay took precedence. And this Job system was the logical endpoint on how to create the most engaging type of RPG gameplay, by removing most manner of restrictions to let you play it in hundreds of different possible ways. The only condition, is that you have to get out of that comfort zone of yours, and let experimentation take course. My instincts fought back at first, anxious over the idea that not all of my time playing the game is being spent on making progress. But there's nothing wrong with that. After all, the nicest thing about RPG's often comes from that feeling of relaxation when you take in and absorb just how much these games give you to do. That, in itself, is progress to understanding the genre. I now feel more than ready to head into the later Final Fantasies, and be able to enjoy them. Thanks for reading this stupid shit.

If I'm ever looking for the type of game that's guaranteed to satisfy me on just about every aspect, I know I'm looking for a kind of platformer where every single level is at least 2 to 4 new mechanics relentlessly shoved down my throat, paired up with some of the most refined, godlike controls. Donkey Kong Country 2, Rayman Legends, maybe even the Spyro trilogy. All these, and Yoshi's Island too, fall under the same boat of games with such enormous confidence and passion put behind them, that I don't have to think twice about booting them up the moment I think about them.

On a side note, how many people actually call this game "Mario World 2?" Because I just use the "Yoshi's Island" subtitle to refer to it, and I do so because this thing is so far removed from the actual Mario World, that at times I don't really know whether it counts as a mainline Mario game, or a very elaborate spinoff of it, with the World moniker used to give it some marketing push. And I mean, starting from Yoshi's Story onward, all the way to the kinda middling Yoshi's Crafted World, it then really did become a spinoff franchise. Mario's just a guest character here, the run button is absent in favor of an automatic windup run, and stomping is a mere side ability in favor of the considerably more complex loop of creating egg ammunition out of enemies, aiming your shots, ricocheting them across walls, and skipping them across lakes of water.

With a little practice, it takes astoundingly quick to get used to these mechanics, not to mention how little of your time they actually waste. Being able to move around while aiming prevents the flow of gameplay from stopping, alongside the ability to instantly aim above you by holding up before readying the egg shot. The design rejects constraining its gameplay to a janky "stop 'n go" set of movements, and must've spent years being refined to ensure every action you perform can be done while on the move. Which is such a huge thing to appreciate, considering how most developers would've likely bungled this sort of thing on their first try, yet released it anyway. But Miyamoto's team had already perfected it here.

Aside from the variety of mechanics present at each stage, something else I adore is the huge amount of stages present in itself. While ultimately less than the 96 stages of the first Mario World, Yoshi's Island's 48 stages manage to still feel bigger by abandoning Mario World 1's more arcadey setup. Gone is the time limit, and gone is the conventional high score on the top left of the screen. Yoshi Island's HUD is by comparison a lot more minimalistic, and this was done to encourage playing levels thoroughly, not quickly.

Exploration is the main dish of the game, and by god there's so much shit to find. Secrets galore, things that are just there for fun and not to actually serve any purpose. There are entire mechanics locked away behind secret pathways which you'll otherwise never see if you're speedrunning the thing. Every 4 levels you run into a new boss, and it's not like the previous games where it's a bunch of the same boring Koopaling fights, no! Every boss is different, every boss is fought differently. You get swallowed by a giant frog, you fight a crow on the moon, you destroy platforms to send an invincible monster down a lava pit, and none of these are ever repeated. Which is more than what I can say for even something as creative as Mario Wonder - which is still a fantastic game, mind you - but nothing has yet to match the unbridled creativity of Yoshi's Island, a delicious pot of hundreds of ideas that has no end to it at all until the moment you see the credits.

So, I guess this is where I talk about my rating being a 4.5 instead of a 5/5, right? Well, believe it or not, the Baby Mario cry is not the reason. Actually, I've always been confused about that, is it really THAT bad to people? I mean, one thing for sure is that it fulfills its point. It serves to make you frantically scramble to get Baby Mario back as soon as you can, before that timer reaches 0. But, like, it being "annoying/ear grating" though? Eh, it's fine, really. Maybe I have a higher tolerance for this stuff or something.

The flaw of Yoshi's Island I really want to talk about is the difference between casual exploration, and obsessive completionism. So, just to catch up newcomers, every level can be 100%ed, right? There are three conditions for this. Collect all 20 Red Coins, all 5 Flowers, and reach the end goal with 30 Stars. First things first, part of what makes the Red Coins suck is that they're only just SLIGHTLY red, but otherwise, blend in with all the other yellow coins. I have partial color blindness, so being able to tell apart the color falls out of the question. While the solution to this would be "well, just grab all the coins then, they give you extra lifes anyway, it's a win-win" but sometimes, the game will put you into a situation where you only have one shot to grab the coins, whether it's when you're falling down, or moving across an autoscrolling sequence. I'm aware there's an item you can use that makes red coins much more obvious to see, but... that's assuming you're lucky to actually get it in one of the minigames, and why obtuse it like that anyway? What would've been the harm in making the red coins look more obvious by default?

The next problem are the "Stars" collectibles. Stars are your health, and you can cap'em out at 30. Of course, as you take damage, your Stars decrease. Now, the thing is, to 100% a level, the more sensible thing would be to punish you if, say, you took damage 3 times across the stage. Instead, what Yoshi's Island decides is that you can collect as many Stars as you want throughout the level, but if you so much as take one sliver of damage at the very tail end of it, then that's it for the 100% run, you're gonna have to do the stage all over again.

What makes this worse is that you can't 100% this stage by, for example, doing one run where you collect all the Red Coins and Flowers, then another run just to do the 30 Stars. You gotta do everything, all at once. Collect all the shit, find all the secrets, AND make it to the end of the level without taking damage, and only then will the game consider that level fully completed. To me, that's an insane set of conditions considering the larger scope of each stage, and ultimately, I've only ever done a 100% run once because of this. Which is enough for a lifetime.

"So, 100%ing sucks, why do it at all then?" Good question. The point of this entire tattletale is me saying it's not worth it. Instead, it's much better to play it as if you're attempting to 100% for the sake of discovering all the cool little secrets the game has to offer, BUT if you miss something, then you should just live with it, and move on. The only real big shame about this is that 100%ing unlocks an extra set of neat stages for you to play through, and I wish I could unlock these stages without it being this massive chore. As a whole, Yoshi's Island is some of the best platforming you'll ever get, contrasted against some of the most painful completionism that there is. Thus, play it casually for the best possible experience.

Oh yeah, I got a hot take too. The overworld theme is admittingly very memorable, but I'm really not a big fan of that harmonica. If we're talking "ear grating noises", then this is the closest thing I can point at, I just don't like it. In general, I feel like there's not enough music in this game to match the amount of varied content present in it, which in itself makes the overworld theme get worse over time. Anyway, it's not that big of a deal, I mean, the athletic theme is fantastic, and so is the castle theme, the boss theme, the final boss theme... there's still really good stuff in here, even if there's not much of it.

And that's that for my review! Good night.

Taking Rondo of Blood and squeezing it into the constraints of the SNES couldn't have been easy... but I can't buy for one second that it had to be this lacking in quality either. Dracula X is more than just a Rondo port with necessary cutbacks, it is also one that neglected to replace these cutbacks with anything of even remotely equal worth. Even Super Castlevania IV was more impressive through its frequent use of setpieces, and the way it danced around the limitations of the console to deliver some truly impressive moments.

Dracula X strips away most setpieces, and replaces them with arbitrary level design changes that hover somewhere between the most barebones shit you'll ever play in a Castlevania game, versus frustrating and frequent use of insta-death traps. Somebody thought the final boss in Rondo wasn't exciting enough, so here they added 4 bottomless pits for you to get knocked into when you get hit once. (unless you're crouching, which can negate the knockback) The spritework has also seen some very strange changes, with certain backgrounds being replaced to resemble something closer to a comic book art style. This clashes against the spritework from Rondo that does still remain here, let alone against the whole gothic aesthetic that Castlevania is supposed to be embodying.

There's no 2nd playable character here, there's less routes, there's no save system other than passwords, the cutscenes have been mostly removed altogether... along with most of the essence and soul of the game that this is based on. At most, the soundtrack has seen the most graceful conversion and still holds up very well. Either way, for newcomers to the series, I would strongly advise playing Rondo of Blood instead, as you're guaranteed to get a richer amount of content and a much better designed experience. Dracula X is an unfortunate little oddity in the series, which back in '95, gave the exciting impression to fans that Rondo of Blood was finally going to make it over to western audiences. Instead, showed up its chain-smoking cousin, Blondo of Roond.

During this period of time, I'm starting to see Tim Schafer as one of the many ambitious names that wanted to bring a more cinematic quality to the gaming medium. Point 'n clicks don't just have to be wacky and funny, they can tell a more proper story, something akin to a movie. I think it's here where Tim was really starting to push the company he was working under to prioritize these sorts of titles.

With that said, I can't really lie, this one's doing absolutely nothing for me. Maybe my disinterest in Mad Max-like settings was already the first sign that I should've stayed away, but even with the prospect of getting to watch some cool bike battles, and enjoy the aesthetic of those old 90's PC games, I've found the execution of everything here so drab, sluggish, and confusing (in the spirit of point 'n clicks of that time), that I don't think this would've hit even if I was a Mad Max fan.

The biggest complaint I can voice is the one that I've already done so in the past, which would be the LucasArts voice direction curse. In the case of Maniac Mansion, the problem with the voice direction there, was that it didn't match the crazed cartoony visuals. In the case of Full Throttle, the voice direction doesn't match the all-star cast. LucasArts must have presumably spent a ton of money to hire people like Mark Hamill, or Kath Soucie. Yet they pretty much never get an opportunity here to really flex their acting chops. No shouting, no major emotional range, so why bother hiring them at all?

The only reason I can think of is because star power makes your game look more appealing to purchase. But if I saw a poster for a big blockbuster movie with a cast of people I'm crazy for, and found out they all sound like they just got out of bed, I dunno, I'd be feeling a little bit ripped off, or in the very least, like an opportunity was squandered. LucasArts brought a bunch of big names to this video game, that's fine, but what do the big names bring to it?

As for everything else, I wanna say that there's some creative things in here, and I mean, you've got a couple hours, a guide if you're stuck, and you can clear this game, easy. It's short enough that you wouldn't really be able to waste your life playing it anyway, and it's always possible that you'll like it way more than what my shoddy little review here is saying. But for me, voice acting and voice delivery is everything in this sort of point 'n click. If it's not doing enough, then the rest of my engagement in every other aspect of the game falls apart. My engagement to solve the next obtuse puzzle, or deal with that really repetitive bike combat minigame, has to be reinforced by rewarding me with the next big joke, or the next big overall moment. And it's trying, it's definitely trying to hit me with these things, but the energy and the punch just isn't there.

As recent as Sonic Superstars, the Sonic series has a problem with figuring out how to make co-op work. Because apparently splitscreen, or online co-op where everybody gets their own screen hasn't been a thought of solution since 1992's Sonic 2, the games struggle with keeping more than one player on-screen, without one of them getting left behind due to the other going too fast. Knuckles Chaotix meanwhile came in, and I think tried to solve this conundrum by slapping ring-shaped handcuffs on both characters so they never get seperated. And then, it made that a mandatory gimmick, the main mechanic of the game, even when you're not using the 2-player mode. In doing so, it has prompted me to ask it a simple question.

Why?

No, really, what is the point of this? The game seems to think there is one when it walks you through its tutorial with an admittingly pretty nice song. It tells you, hey, you can use your partner like a slingshot to charge up a ton of speed. Or, gain a bunch of verticality by tossing your partner up into the air, onto otherwise unreachable platforms. These are both things that the spin dash has already solved 3 years beforehand, but of course, in order to make these other moves more appealable, the spin dash ended up being nerfed so we can go full throttle with our whole handcuff concept.

But like, if they ended up making Knuckles Chaotix more of an explorative slower-paced puzzle game, and created a bunch of mechanics centered around having two partners, maybe we'd be cooking something here. That's why Sonic's not in this one, right? Because they wanted to make something a little different from Sonic's usual design? And yet, traditional Sonic level design was all they could put into the microwave. A minute passes, the microwave beeps, and a half-hearted meal comes out that had to be heavily compromised and homogenized into a handful of the same repetitive level patterns, because anything more creative and complex would've only made it clear how the tether gimmick doesn't work. All they did was add a chain 'n ball onto your playable character, and then dulled themselves down to accommodate.

What makes Knuckles Chaotix all the stranger for it, is that it clearly was a product of some passion, I mean, I think you can tell that somebody on this team really did want to create a solid Sega 32X title, even if their efforts could've been better spent on something with longevity attached to it. Not that they might've known the 32X was destined to fail. Either way, the art team knocked things out of the park, the levels are still surreal, but now with a much greater amount of graphical detail attached. There's a neat day/night system long before that became a big deal in 3D titles, even if it's kinda pointless here. I already mentioned the music has its moments, and... you know what? Very normal take here, these are honestly some of Sonic's best special stages, maybe next to the ones in the Saturn version of 3D Blast. Autorunners are fun to me in general, the visibility in this one is good compared to something like Sonic 2... and the 32X hardware is being put to proper use through its charmingly simplistic rendering of polygons, while still keeping a stable frame rate. It was a pretty impressive showing for its time, likely made by a team that wanted to push the limits of what this new piece of tech gave them.

Unfortunately, somebody got too fixated on that tether system. That somebody is me. But also probably the developer to some extent. I mean, they could've had a cool idea, they made a 10-minute prototype of it, and it turned out interesting so they turned it into a full product. But as development progressed, somebody had to have seen the cracks, right? Somebody must've known that while they certainly haven't produced a terrible game, the entire basis on which its formed on was restricting them from doing a whole lot with it. In the end, it was too late to cancel, and so they put their special little game out into the market. However, being special wears off with time. When you're making a prototype with a cool idea, you have to consider whether that idea can possibly maintain being special for the duration of a full-length game, and if not, whether you can expand the idea into something more complex. If you're unable to do that, that's when you end up with Knuckles Chaotix.

An extremely cool version of Link's Awakening. The four inventory slots and the overall faster inventory managment is nice in itself, but the ability to zoom out the game and be able to see several rooms at a time tremendously helps in making the game more navigatable. Sometimes, after playing so many Zelda games where getting lost is the point, it's nice to play a version where it's easy to know where is progress, and where it isn't. It's one of those things where once you experience it here, you wish every top-down Zelda got something like this.

Some minor nitpicks include the pacing of certain cutscenes being more rushed than the original was, so if you care about preserving the original "tone" of the game, the way this version of the game wants to hurry things along may be a slight turn-off for first-time players. I would've also liked there to be a toggle between the original and the Switch version of the music, as the original's OST can get repetitive here and there, and I think the Switch remake massively improved things on that front.

Regrettably, there's more than just nitpicks to be found here, as I'm hesitant to say that this remake was properly tested. Keyboard bindings reset everytime you quit out of the game, and I've noted that there's something a bit off about your sword's hitbox. Whereas in the original I was able to hit enemies diagonally, the range in this version does not seem good enough to risk doing that without getting hit yourself.

By far the worst issue are the random softlocks that may or may not happen after you collect each instrument. The first time it happened, the game saved my progress right after I defeated the boss, so getting back to the instrument was no big deal. The second time, it was not so generous, and all of my progress on the dungeon was completely reset, forcing me to do it again. I lost my motivation to continue playing by then.

Seeing as Nintendo took the game down as of writing this review, I'm not sure if we'll be seeing any patches come in. (Edit: The creator did leave the source code for it though, so maybe somebody else will pick up the slack??) Huge shame, though. We were so close to getting the best version of Link's Awakening to play, with just a little bit more fine-tuning. Now, who knows if it's gonna happen?

As I continue my journey across a variety of RPG's to try and see how they evolve over time, one of the more interesting cases of that has to be the Megami Tensei series. Everybody's like Persona 5 this, Persona 5 that, what about the 60 other games in this franchise? Persona 5 by itself intimidates me, because it looks like a product of 30 years worth of refined mechanics stacked on top of each other. So I thought, wouldn't it be cool to start with a simpler game in the series? See where it all began, and what sorts of things they'll improve on per each entry... and well, what could be simpler than an NES RPG?

Then you realize, there might be a reason why there's a whole lot of people who can't get into this franchise. In particular for those like me who like to do these things chronologically, figuring out a good starting point is its own puzzle. Just about everyone seems to not recommend the first game. But some say that you could start with this one. Ha ha. Some would tell you "don't play the NES ones, play the SNES remakes", but then others would say "No, those ones are still pretty bad. Also, NES games are better aesthetically." Alright, maybe I can start with the SMT SNES games instead? Reading opinions, it's a cacophany of voices, half of which say they're a fantastic starting point, and the other half say they're bloody annoying to play, even among MegaTen fans. If... is, well, Iffy... and not even the first Persona is seen in much of a positive light.

It took until Persona 2, that the consensus started to skeeve more towards a favorable reception. It took until 1999. 12 years after the first Megami Tensei game back in 1987, one finally released that people could agree on being good. And one could say that's not even a MegaTen, so if you only counted the mainline stuff, it took until Nocturne, 16 years after the first MegaTen for there to be one that the majority could recommend to a newcomer. What the fuck went on with this franchise?

But perhaps the better question is, is it worth stomaching 12 to 16 years of divisive entries just to get to the ones that received an overall warmer reception? Perhaps it's too early for me to answer such a loaded question, but I can tell you sure as shit, you don't start here. This should've been obvious. You don't go into an NES RPG and expect to have a nice comprehensive time, these types of games don't give a fuck.

The first problem comes down to the scarcity of information, on this game especially. Every YouTube guide appears to focus on the SNES remake, with only obscure livestreams of the original, most of which appear to have not beaten the game. Items and spells have no descriptions, though there is a wiki page that can help you out on this. Only catch is, not all the names here are the same as the ones used in the fan translation, so you're gonna have to compare the prices, or which gender can equip it, or if you're lucky, a name that sounds somewhat close to what you have, in order to estimate what the hell did you even get or if it's useful. GameFaqs contains one (1) singular lonely guide, which only really gives you the brush strokes on how to progress the story. While I appreciated it for the help it did give, it can only help you so much during the mazes and enemy encounters. If you're really starving for help though, there is a site with maps in it, but it requires translating it from japanese. For some reason, my browser's translation function did not work with this site at first, so I spent most of the game not being able to utilize it.

This does mean that I had to do some insane outside-the-box solutions in order to figure out how to progress. For example, where the hell is the boss of this dungeon? Well, let's look up the name of the area that this dungeon is in on the wiki, and then look over the list of enemies that's in this area. Each enemy has a listed floor that they appear on, and... ah-ha, says here, the boss is on the second floor! And that's gonna be my only clue. It's like I'm doing detective work, piecing together random shit from a wiki not even to figure out a solution, but just to narrow down the list of possible places to find progress.

The other problem comes down to NES difficulty. Of course, your enjoyment varies on what type of RPG guy are you. I'm the guy that has only just started really getting into the genre as of a year and a half ago. This should make it abundantly clear that I am simply not ready for this sort of RPG, but hey, maybe you like to get your shit kicked in? If so, Megami Tensei II's crushing difficulty will be just for you, but it is too demoralizing for me to put up with for the exhausting 30 to 50 hours that it demands out of you.

Moreso than Dragon Quest 2, this may be one of, if not THE hardest NES RPG that I've played. Save states and RNG manipulation only just barely got me across each dungeon I faced, with there being far too many instances where without these features, I would immediately die, or lose a valuable party member that without, It'd pretty much just be a slow ticking clock to the rest of my party members dying right after. It honestly seems like you're meant to run away from half the game's enemy encounters, but that's only if you get the lucky dice roll to do so, otherwise, you're halfway there to being screwed. I cannot wrap my head around how are you normally supposed to beat this.

The thing is, I really wish I could understand. Even when I kept persuading myself to stop playing, the atmospheric visuals & incredible soundtrack (especially for NES standards, this shit rocks) made me give this game 5 more chances. I tried every strategy I could think of, thought a refreshed mind would allow me to finally figure out the "trick" to being good at this game, and yet only felt stupider for each time it resulted in my death.

I think I fooled myself into thinking that by continuing to progress through the game, I'll be rewarded with more music and more story, when really, that's not the main point. The story may be interesting, but there's little of it. The music is incredible, but you'll be hearing it loop until it loses all luster, and you'll grow numb to it. Ultimately, you'll realize that you can't be here for just those two things, and next up, you'll have to ask yourself if you can enjoy playing a brutal and obtuse dungeon crawler with a 80's design mentality.

Because contrary to what my mind wanted to believe, you can't play this like a Final Fantasy, or a Dragon Quest. You may not even be able to force yourself into liking it. This is a MegaTen game that's so early, and so specific in its design, with so little left in approachability, that you will only like this if your mind was already engineered to do so from hour one. If it's hour two and you're hating yourself, be better than me with my many hours of suffering, and just try one of the later games. Sure, apparently they're pretty hard too, but at least they should be able to provide you with better tools to understand how to play them, right? I still have hope that I can "get" this franchise. It just can't happen by playing a game this old.

Update: Remember when I said I gave this game five chances? Well, now it's six. There's something genuinely wrong with me. But, I guess even through all the torment this game is giving me, I'm seeing something that makes me keep coming back...? Anyway, if I do manage to finish this game, I'll be updating this with thoughts about that. For now though, I'll just say that if you're like me, you should seriously consider if it's better to play the series chronologically and struggle, or play them out of order and have a better time for it.

Update 2: I did it. I stand here, on top of the mountainhill, with hundreds of save states, thousands of rewinds, and heavy cross-referencings of guides and wikis, and yet somehow I still have the gall to be proud of beating this monstrosity of a game. I fucking did it, oh my god.

In the end, I think I took something home from this, just by the sheer virtue of this being the first real dungeon crawler I've seen the beginning, middle, and end of. I took a good soundtrack out of it, I took some cool looking monster designs, and I actually started to have more and more moments by the end where I was winning more frequently than I was losing. New recruits, excellent grinding spots, and equipment started progressively tipping the scale in my favor, and all it took was about 20 hours of pain and suffering to something resembling a fun sense of power progression.

Ultimately, most of this game will forever stick out as being a spiteful ball of hatred that wanted to see me lost, fucked over, and dead at its every turn. Thus, spreading its virus and converting me into a spiteful ball of hatred that wants to see this game get destroyed like one of those old AVGN skits. This was not a good game. It was not fun, and I cursed it out too many times. And yet, it at least won in one aspect. It gave me an experience I'll never forget. So nice job, you absolute spawn of hell. Enjoy your permanent residence in my brain, your room is 409 at the very far end of the hallway, that way you're as far away from me as possible.

Mega Man 7 had the potential to be the best entry in the whole franchise, by borrowing the best parts of X's formula, and combining them with the more simple structure of the classic gameplay. The more secret-oriented nature of 7 is by far the most obvious X influence, encouraging use of weapons to discover lots of new routes that'll lead you to optional upgrades. It also borrows a little from the Gameboy games, by carrying over the shop, where you can use your acquired currency for more goodies.

The visual aesthetic is wonderfully colorful - far more interesting to look at than what X has been doing imo - the music is on point, and every stage packs its own memorable setpieces, alongside bosses I really enjoyed fighting even without their weaknesses. The localization is the sort of charmingly put together trainwreck that you would expect out of a 90's SNES localization, turning the otherwise whatever dialogue into something a lot more incidentally funny and memorable. The ending also may be one of the rawest moments in this series's history, even if it's totally uncharacteristic in hindsight. All in all, the recipe for an all-time classic is all here, and more or less proves itself as one throughout.

Until you get to the final set of stages. Many things have already been said about this game's finale, so I doubt I have anything original to contribute here. But, when you read the wiki page and find out that they deliberately wanted to make the final boss unbeatable without an Energy Tank, it speaks volumes to the level of balancing that went on here, where they wanted you to tank through it rather than show any use of skill. It may be one of the worst bosses in Mega Man history, and I would honestly recommend at least placing a save state at the beginning of it, so you don't end up using up your E-tanks and weapon energy only to die 80% of the way through.

Mega Man 7 fucks with me, and it seems to fuck with a lot of others. You'd think it's one of the best games in the classic series, but all it takes is that one boss to suddenly convince you it's one of the worst. That's how bad 7's difficulty can be, but it's doubtful you'll see that at first. You'll have a really good time with this one. And then it'll sneak up on you. That one fuckin' bit.

Kirby seems to have had a phase around this point, where its idea of evolving the series onward was to encourage you to play as characters that are not Kirby. Normally, I'm not against that if you handle it in a fun way, but for Kirby specifically, it seems a bit redundant considering his ability to transform into other things, doesn't it?

Though it's true that at this point, Kirby was only known for copying abilities, not costumes. This would've made it more difficult to give Kirby owl-like moves while making it visually clear that that's what is happening, hence why, Dream Land 2 instead gives you a ridable owl that has their own set of copyable abilites, or a fish that lets you traverse through water faster. Super Star solved this through costumes that made each ability more identifiable, while still letting you just play as Kirby. Dream Land 2's solution of ridable partners was likely a result of Gameboy constraints, and it is one that I find more awkward in comparison.

My first problem is that whereas the owl is useful because it can move really fast around the air, and the fish is useful because it swims faster, what... is the hamster good for? He travels on land - which Kirby already does, he's not that much of a baby - except he can't fly, can't even double jump, at most his defining ability is that he can't slip on ice, and that's no big deal to me. A couple abilities that Kirby was capable of using by himself before are relegated to this hamster, such as the beam, or a more powerful version of the cutter.

Which leads me into my next point, that by passing off Kirby's abilities over to the animal partners, Kirby himself ends up nerfed. His amount of abilities has been drastically cut down, and they don't pack a lot of punch. Thus, the design says that you don't actually want to play as Kirby in this Kirby game, play as all these other chucklefucks. And they're all... okay, I mean, at least everyone aside from the hamster has some form of benefit. I think I'm just stuck imagining a version of Dream Land 2 where this could've all worked with just Kirby at the helm, as what's currently here is more like a gimmick that distracts away from what I came here for.

My third point is that by giving Kirby and the three partner characters each their own version of... let's say, a Fire ability, that's four seperate abilities for each character that all have the same Fire icon attached to them. My memory is my worst enemy here, as it becomes difficult for me to discern which of these "Fire" abilities is the one that I actually want. And sometimes, a specific one is required to collect a hidden McGuffin. So I start having to rely on a guide, because the variety of abilities here is so minimalistically presented, that unlike Kirby's Adventure, they simply fail to stick in your memory.

Even the soundtrack is something I have issues with, despite the actual melodies being solid. I genuinely can't tell if I'm crazy for saying this, but Dream Land 2's OST specifically... actually causes me headaches, even back when I was a kid. A good majority of the soundtrack appears to have these very tiny silent pauses in-between each and every note played, which I think is the main culprit in all this. And it's not something that I felt in Dream Land 1, or really any other game that I've played, Kirby or otherwise. Which makes me think that this is a quirk specific to this game, and it is one that makes the soundtrack a little unpleasant on my ears.

I don't have anything absolutely scathing to say about Dream Land 2 (except maybe the secret final boss, screw that guy), and the music complaint may just be me being nuts. But the overall package isn't what I want out of this series. Its overall intent drags down the pacing of what was previously a much faster-paced experience, and I'm glad that this direction isn't what became the rest of the series going forward. And if they do bring the ridable partner concept back at some point, in the very least, just don't make Kirby worse to play.