Oh boy... this is going to be quite a disappointing review to have to make. Mortal Kombat 1, the little game that could've but so far definitely hasn't. When this game was announced I was most interested in how it's based around the new timeline created by Fire God Liu Kang at the end of MK11 Aftermath. I'm all about alternate interpretation stuff and 'what if' scenarios are especially interesting, the premise for this game seemed right up my alley! How is it? ...I already used the word disappointing. So that's probably a tell. Even more of a tell is how unmotivated I felt to actually make this review even after sitting down to start it (for reference this began around the time of Peacemaker's delay and is only NOW being picked back up after the Ermac trailer dropped!)

Beginning with some positives, I guess. I quite like the gameplay here even if it's not too hugely different from your typical Mortal Kombat approach, but the addition of Kameo fighters makes it feel that little extra bit fresher. Getting to mix-and-match fighter moves alongside Kameo options gives the game a huge level of versatility to it even if some characters naturally pair together much better than others. For someone like me who just enjoys having fun with the game rather than sweating over tiers, though, it's very enjoyable to hop-in with different combinations and find pairings that I enjoy most. Graphically, this game is pretty good although some of the character faces hit that 'uncanny valley' effect where they're realistic but something is quite obviously still off about them. But for the most part this game has some nice visuals, and I say 'for the most part' as it all blends together very nicely in motion but in stills and less action-packed moments you can see more of the cracks in the art-style. Nothing I'll deduct much credit for though. Last point of praise I'll give the game is the roster, which although divisive I'd say I like a fair amount of? You've got the must-haves alongside fan faves and obscurer 3D-era picks who haven't seen the light of day in years so there's a good amount of visual and characteristic variety, alongside just about everyone feeling distinct from one another in a good way. Combine this with the unique feels among the Kameos and you can pair most characters together in quite the satisfying manner.

And that's quite honestly all the positivity I can muster for this one because holy moly is the rest of this game a huge nothingburger. It's quite unfortunate as well how this game continued to the worst trend of the previous NRS-era games by having DLC announced prior to the game's release, not only offering a fan favorite as a pre-order incentive but having a full pass planned and announced before the game would come out. Except unlike previously, the DLC was announced quite ahead of schedule; with MKX at least (I'll be damned if I remember anything from MK11, I tapped-out during that gmae's pre-release) it was only around a month before the game launched. But with MK1, we knew about every upcoming DLC character/Kameo before we knew much about the game itself which I hopefully don't have to go into detail about why this is such a bad thing? This pursuit of financial greed extends to the in-game economy, or rather what may as well be a lack of it. This game is such a charmer that you not only have to grind for the funny fake currency that gets you fancy-looking skins, but said funny fake currency is actually not infinitely obtainable... unless you pony-up cash to buy more from the shop, for fucking real. But it's also announcer packs and even low-quality bonus fatalities! So unless you paid too much for the special editions that came with bonus currency or are willing to pay money for more after already dipping what was likely full-price on the base game, you have to manage your currency carefully like some broke ass college student. Whilst this is lucky for me- someone who doesn't give a hoot about skinconomies at all, nevermind in fighting games -the practice is undeniably shitty regardless. It's not targeting me and won't work on me but that's not even the point of it all, because the point here is that they seriously implemented this system to begin with. You can instead dip the shitty "free" currency into a gacha system to POSSIBLY unlock certain cosmetic rewards that way though, except most of the time you're more likely to get concept art for stage NPCs and other guff. So god forbid you have impulses related to gambling because this is really going to be a tough game to stomach, in fact I'll say right now that you should actively avoid this game if you know you're likely to fall for predatory microtransaction garbage like this.

The monetization is crap but that's only part of the game, sure. I'd debate it's problematic enough to be a bigger part of the game than most will admit though, between locking-behind story important characters as DLC (one of them is even day one DLC because NRS are that stupid) and forcing you to pay a considerable amount of money to get extra costumes in a full-price game. This is a practice that really makes Street Fighter 6 look flawless, except I can at least say that game (will get to covering it eventually... probably) had a good amount of base game content to chew on. Whilst that doesn't stop the microtransaction system from being needlessly greedy and a notable blight on an otherwise excellent title, there is at least a good amount of stuff in the game to do without paying for extra shit. MK1? We get "World Of Light at home", the very contentious Invasions mode. I'll be real, at first I didn't understand why this mode was getting lots of crap thrown its way because the introductory stage of Cage Mansion was a lot of fun! And then I completed it and was sent off to the actual 'season' of the mode and boy oh fucking BOY did it fall apart quickly. I already made the World Of Light comparison but it rings so true that it's kind of insulting to the original mode. World Of Light was never said to be anything like a huge adventure mode despite the theatric reveal trailer it got, whilst a lot of hype was placed on Invasions only for it to be "go and uppercut Lv.1 CPUs until you have to fight a boss who you will either cheese with items or get steamrolled by LOL repeat a few times". Invasions is where you get a third type of currency used to unlock temporarily available skins themed around the current 'season', each season itself being tied to a certain existing MK character and themed around them. This is, in theory, an awesome idea! ...but they put the bare minimum effort possible into the cosmetics for this mode, with some characters eating super well and others barely having anything worthwhile. You can unlock even more simple cosmetic shit through playing the mode but just like the ones you have to pay for, they're incredibly hit-or-miss and rarely worth anything (hence them dumping so many on you and leaving the more detailed things locked behind premium currency). This currency is actually given out at an insulting high rate too, to the point I had way more than I wanted or needed by complete accident! But if you want to actually finish a season of Invasions, it feels like a very sluggish grind that never really improves as they have continually removed ways of speeding-up the grind despite previously claiming "those are features". The best season so far has been the cryomancer season, because it bugged-out and let me unlock everything without playing the actual mode so I didn't have to do jack fucking shit.

But speaking of GRIND, I hope you love to GRIND because this game is full of GRIND. Gotta grind your account level to unlock Kameos, gotta grind each individual character level to unlock more recolours specific to them as well as some gear pieces, grind both to unlock banner pieces related to that character, then you also have to grind each Kameo to unlock their own cosmetics and banner pieces, oh and make sure you keep GRINDING those characters and Kameos to unlock the ability to read their fucking movelist in-game (not the ability to use those moves, just to see the inputs in-game). Grind, grind, grind, griiiiiiind... this game is one huge grind and does not respect your time as a player; it sees you as a payer instead, either sinking extra cash or all of your time into this bland, live-service game in hopes of you sticking around to enjoy what little content there actually is to play with. I think the breaking point of this grind for me came in two parts: Okay, so like most EXP systems the requirements go up the higher your level. Sure, fine, whatever, but this game really took that concept and ran with it way too much because the climb becomes very steep very quickly. So this incentivises swapping characters and Kameos around often, right? No, because eventually those characters will also reach the steep point in the grind leaving you at a bit of a stand-still. Whilst your reward for getting a character up to "mastery" is a small helping of premium currency (except none of the DLC characters do that because NRS can go fuck themselves) the grind did not feel worth it to me ONCE, as in I only did it once and didn't feel like doing it again after realizing I wasted my time playing Omni-Man since he wasn't hiding any magic crystals up his ass. If this was only half of my breaking point though, what was the other half? EXP is not gained in local matches. The grind is fucking terrible already and even when playing on a Discord call to have people to talk with I was finding myself quitting partway through to play something else instead, but I can't even progress ANY of this grindy shit whilst playing with my friends? Actually inept. Whilst this is, once again, a cosmetic structure I don't care for the idea that they disabled EXP gain for local matches is very stupid. Fighting games are best enjoyed with friends, the online play community for MK in particular is incredibly uninviting, but my options here are to grind the shitty solo modes or grind the online modes that I don't find fun. Yaaaaaaaayyyy...

I haven't even mentioned story mode and I'm surprisingly less angry about it than one might expect from my previous uses of strong words. The story mode is forgettable and disappointing despite having a cool idea. It just doesn't really do anything at all with what they decide to set-up, trying to force-in all the characters they can even when they have nothing much to do in the grand scheme of things. Leading to some very pathetic-looking matchups that make should-be strong, intimidating characters a problem to be theoretically circumvented. The writing is pretty buns but that's honestly to be expected at this point, it ain't like either of the previous games (nor Aftermath) were known for their stellar writing. Story mode is repetitive and just kind of 'there', but it's over very quickly and has a fun final chapter at least. I can't really go into any details without spoiling said final chapter's gimmick but it does add to the disappointment of Invasions, having all these extra NPCs they could be using instead of pitting me against the same few recoloured fighters and giving them generic names. Story mode is a mediocre one-and-done mode in the grand scheme of things which is far less offensive than being a painfully terrible grind, plus you at least get to unlock Havik for getting through it the first time. The final chapter once held some replay value during the game's early days when everyone was discovering how deep the chapter went, but nowadays it's all really well documented. Oh well, it's still a fun novelty to think back on.

I could complain a bit more about how the DLC Kameos eat so much better than the base game Kameos, but that short statement alone kind of speaks for itself; base game Kameos still have their uses but the DLC ones so far have had a LOT more put into them, making them far more appealing options. I only have a limited amount of DLC to-hand since I'm basically taking the scraps my brother has purchased. In fact he's kind of the only reason I have this game at all, I was about to skip out on it until both his girlfriend and our parents got him MK1 for his birthday. So I pretty much got a free game that day, and whenever he's bought DLC I've been able to get that through console sharing. Yet even as someone who has not only gotten this game for free, but also been able to enjoy the pre-order bonus for free AND been able to use some of the DLC characters and Kameos for free, I would not recommend this game in its current form. I would go further as to never recommend it in any form if you're especially vulnerable to predatory microsanction practices. MK1 is a game that had, maybe still has, a lot of potential and it's been squandered by what is most certainly a rush development cycle that has been made to instead focus on getting as much cash from players as possible. The worst part is I will still say that the DLC trailers they create all look super hype, the marketing team for these games always know how to push their products well but I am long past the point of buying into it. I'll happily take a fast-paced fighter with less single player content to grind out online rounds because the gameplay there is far more engaging and rewarding, whereas even with the reworks to the gameplay here MK1 is still not the kind of game I'll be playing by myself. Hell, I haven't even brought it out to play locally with friends since January. Perhaps in a few years when they've done all the expensive DLC and you can buy the game as a truly complete package for a couple of bucks, this is a game that'll be closer to something I can recommend getting. But unless you are an absolute Mortal Kombat diehard I don't think you'll get much from this one. Disappointing game turned into an experience ruined by the push for a live-service grind and emphasizing microtransactions, not that it comes as a huge surprise these days. Maybe I'll come back some day, though I currently don't even care enough to think about trying this game again.

This'll be an extremely quick, to-the-point review since there isn't too much new to say on this one. And hey that's probably a refresher from all the paragraphs I usually chuck-out! As you can see, I played this one quite a while ago and meant to review it MUCH sooner. But oh well, is what it is I guess. Now, what is a "BS F-Zero"? Basically a sort-of sequel to the original SNES F-Zero that was distributed via the Japan-only Satellaview add-on. What we have on-hand is technically not the complete product however... the live event 'Soundlink' versions of the game (which featured commentary voices and I believe remixed music?) were never archived. What we instead have is the 'practice' version, which contains five of the ten courses to freely play upon in practice or grand prix formats akin to what is in the original F-Zero. This has left two locations in the series, Forest and Metal Fort, completely unused in any official capacity as all we have left of those tracks is archival footage from many years ago. There is now technically an exception to this, hence why I specified "official". But that's a story for another time. This is the second BS F-Zero game and the only one really worth covering, considering the first one is split-up by different 'weeks' and retreads the original F-Zero courses except for adding one new one at the end of each grand prix. Those five courses are the ones used in this game, so it's only worth picking up this game if you wish to experience the BS F-Zero exclusive content.

In this little practice pack we have Mute City IV, Big Blue II, Sand Storm I and II, and Silence II. Sand Storm is technically the only new location introduced here but it also utilizes remixed assets from Sand Ocean, though I like to see it as being on the further reaches (or 'dark side') of the Sand Storm planet. These tracks are all really good in my eyes with Silence II being my favourite of the bunch by a wide margin, offering a similar feel to the original Silence track whilst still being uniquely distinct enough to be worth playing. Mute City IV follows the trend of being a slight layout modification of the original Mute City track, this time being set during a sunrise and featuring a lot of boost panels that can make you quickly lose control especially as they end off with a huge section of jump panels that can easily cause a crash-out if you don't react accordingly. You can also try to slide/drift your way towards the corners of the track to avoid the jumps, instead taking more boost pads around the typical final turns of Mute City. It's an alright track when you learn it after a few runs with a very beautiful aesthetic to it. Big Blue II is okay, it's not bad but is far less fun than the iconic original track; this one instead goes for an approach favouring jump panels, which is fine but it makes me more think of a Red Canyon track than Big Blue. I still like it for what it is, at least. And lastly are the totally new settings with Sand Storm I and II. I feel like Sand Storm I is actually a very fun and exhilarating track with how it encourages you to tackle it with cornering/drifting, and also a simple but fun land-mine section that sees you having to drive super careful to avoid touching them and the magnetic fields on either side. It's a fair bit challenging but feels great to conquer it after multiple runs and learning where everything is... something I feel far less fondness for with Sand Storm II, an okay track but disappointing finale to this package. Sand Storm II is technically a little bit shorter than Sand Storm I but it really doesn't feel that way, the tighter turning at the start is something I actually like but the land-mine straightaway is replaced with a fairly dull pull-magnet section that makes the track feel like "Fire Field at home". What makes it particularly lame here is that the Death Wind pushing is always in effect, meaning you're fighting two very similar track elements at once which is an interesting idea but I wasn't a fan of the execution. If I'm running through this tracks, I almost never pick Sand Storm II.

And that's really all there is to say on this one, actually. This is basically a lite version of the original F-Zero with five new tracks, although there are also four new vehicles as well which I have some. Mixed feelings on? The Green Amazone and Blue Thunder are both my favourite go-to vehicles here, as they feel the most like machines from the original F-Zero and are thus easiest to get to grips with. The Luna Bomber goes as fast as a hyperactive child downing sugar but has really mediocre steering/control in exchange, it's a vehicle I basically forced myself to learn because it's hella fun to zip-through these courses with a machine this fast but just takes a bit of learning. Fire Scorpion is... a vehicle. I'll be honest, I never pick this one. I feel as if it doesn't have much of anything going for it, essentially being a worse Fire Stingray. And hey I absolutely love the Fire Stingray, but Fire Scorpion isn't it chief. I'm not sure what, but something about this one feels very off to me. As for a critique affecting all the new vehicles, it's the graphics; instead of the pixel art seen in the original F-Zero, as well as the rest of this game's elements, they utilize models pre-rendered into sprites akin to Donkey Kong Country. With this game coming out in '97, it's understandable to see why. By the time this game game out, the N64 had already been out for almost a whole year; the first BS F-Zero came out in '96 and was half a year older than the N64, too, so it's fair that Nintendo would want to use the pre-render technology to make the still existing SNES look ever more impressive than it already is. The first Donkey Kong Country had been out two years before BS F-Zero 1, so I can't fault them for making the machines here 3D rather than taking the hand-drawn approach again. However... it clashes very badly with the other assets in the game. We have these highly detailed models retaining a great degree of graphical fidelity even given their restricted SNES palettes set against the traditional sprite styles for the courses and bumpers. You go so fast in these games that the course part can be forgiven to a degree, you'll zip-zoom by and not really notice the lack of track detail unless you've paused it or something. The backgrounds are more detailed too and thus blend better with the machine models. But the bumper sprites are the exact same as the original F-Zero and as such you have these 3D models in the same plane of existence as hand-drawn graphics? It feels like a fan game that didn't quite go the full-effort, which is appropriate since this is basically an officially licensed ROM hack of the first F-Zero. The machines by themselves look pretty good and the pre-render style is always a favourite of mine, but they clash quite noticeably with the rest of the game's assets.

That's actually all there is to say on this game now, for real. BS F-Zero 2 is a fun little distraction offering five new tracks to play on with some different-ish machines to have a go at too. This is essentially the first F-Zero with less content, but the core of the game still plays very well and yes the AI is still a cheating prick on higher difficulties. This one ranks slightly lower than the original for having less meat on its bones, but especially the clash in art-style. I'd at least be a bit more forgiving if the other new tracks- Forest and Metal Fort -had pre-render looks, however they do not and thus that makes the vehicle graphics a bit of a noted anomaly in this game space. You can play this one and finish it in an afternoon if you want, or do what I did and finish it gradually on each difficulty setting across commuting trips on the bus. You'll like this one if you really wanted more from the original F-Zero, it's hard to be disappointed aside from knowing the full version is likely lost to time. There is now an unofficial technicality to this statement, but that'll be another review for future me to worry about.

So... this was not a review I expected to be posting. Nor was it a game I expected to be playing again, ever. Whilst this game as a whole really needs no introduction at this point, my history with it is a little weird. I tried out Fortnite BR a little bit before it became a huge hit with the mainstream due to exposure from my brother who was playing it and loving it, and I personally was not a huge fan of it. I didn't hate it but I wasn't engaged too much by what I was playing and so dropped it after trying to give it an honest go for a few days. But a few years back I made a bet to a friend that I'd start playing Fortnite again if they ever added Peter Griffin to the game, which finally happened with this season's battle pass. I'm not even a fan of Family Guy, far from it, I was simply unconvinced that they'd ever put him in the game. But as I saw collabs such as Futurama and Invincible pop-up I realized my bet from years ago was likely coming to reality sooner rather than later, with that same friend instantly reminding me when we had official confirmation of Peter Griffin in the game. So I honored the bet, and... fuck. I really wish I'd gotten back into this game sooner, man. It's way too much fun.

I'd like to highlight upfront that I am primarily if not entirely a zero-build player. Whilst I did spend my initial matches playing the default builds mode to try and refamiliarize myself to the game that way, I was reccomended zero-build due to my openness in not having interest in the game when last I played it. My opinion on builds has improved a fair bit and I think it's a solid mode to hop into a couple times, but I simply prefer playing zero-build and it's thus where I've spent much of my time with the main game. Fortnite is a third-person shooter with building mechanics whilst zero-build simply disables the building options to make it a more traditional battle royale experience, but this one change did end up giving much more of a new perspective on the game than I had originally expected. Whilst in the default builds-on mode much of your strategy and planning will come from how you utilize the build functions to create preemptive cover and defensive movement options, zero-build instead runs you through the risk of being in an open world with limited cover options yet instead finding out how to gear mobility tools to your advantage. Things such as the grapple blade (my personal favourite weapon thus far) and shockwave grenades that have multiple purposes, with one purpose being to aid in your movement options when vehicles are not easily accessible. It keeps the traditional shooter elements that I like whilst adding more of an involved feeling to the gameplay with it especially helping in making the massive maps traversable whether or not you actually have a vehicle. It's genuinely quite impressive how many times I've just walked and sprinted across the world without ever really thinking about how far of a distance it truly is, because it all blends together so well and works as a connected open space. Inversely to your movement options, you can also destroy most existing structures with your guns or explosives to instead limit where other players can hide behind and bait them into having to face you head-on; whether or not this works in your favour is a gamble, really, unless you know the other player is in a pinch already. It adds more on the fly thinking to the gameplay in what is otherwise a simple but very solid third-person shooter battle royale game, and given this is a genre I'm not the most familiar with (this, TF2, Garden Warfare 1/2, and the classic Battlefront games are really the only shooters I can say I'm a fan of from the top of my head) it's something I can very easily get behind. I find the reliance on cleverly utilizing movement options and your momentum both in and out of firefight situations to be a lot of fun, plain and simple.

The weapon variety in the game is very good too and makes it very unlikely that you'll get similar starts across games, with a lot of the fun for me coming in trying to work with whatever it is you can get your hands on and gaining an ever-expanding arsenal as you traverse the map and eliminate other players to potentially collect their inventory items for yourself. Mod benches (apparently a new addition) can give you an edge when coming across them too as you can equip a number of weapons with useful modifiers such as zoomed-in scopes for ADS or reduced weapon recoil. This is all pretty standard stuff in shooters from what I can gather but I like it a lot, even if certain weapon types should near-always run the same few mods unless you're trying to catch opponents off-guard with something different. Weapon variety expands further beyond your basic kinds of assault rifles and shotguns though, with more unique items for your loadout including the likes of anvil rocket launchers and lock-on pistols (my favourite firearm thus far) and these particular weapons add a lot of spice to your average match. Whilst a lot of the 'best' weapons do come back to just being those more simple firearms, I'm not the kind to sweat too hard about what's in my loadout so long as I can have a good balance to it. I'll use what I can get my hands on or ideally what I find most fun to use, which these other kinds of weapons tend to do for me. All in all the sheer variety of weapons to be found makes for a very chaotic game that can hardly be predicted, especially as items come and go from the loot rotation throughout the season. However, I feel this is where I can also talk about what is my main negative of the game thus far; weapon balance, or the occasional lack of it. Any game is going to have some kind of internal 'meta', where something is far better than the rest and something is far worse than the rest. Even in metagames where just about everything can be considered viable that won't stop this fact from occurring, there's no way to evenly balance everything without making everything function 1:1 to the same. That being said, Fortnite's balance of weapons generally works out and I've bear witness to a number of changes across this season but a couple of weapons stand out to me as being particularly unbalanced in one way or another.

First up in this regard is probably now the smaller offender, the ballistic shield. This was once a top-offender for me but they changed this thing in a meaningful way late into the season that makes it feel much more manageable although still a weapon I find to be more annoying that anything else. You have a small pistol and a large home-made shield of sorts, able to pull-up the shield as extra cover whilst utilzing the weapon in ADS where you can block incoming hits and still make use of your pistol for some damage. Fun fact, this was the first weapon I found when playing a match which made it all the more prophetic that it would wind up as one of my least favourites to come across and one I won't willingly pick-up. Initially, the shield's HP was seemingly infinite and wildly inconsistent on when hits would stun the user for a punish window; this would mean that even the proposed counter to the shield in a Hyper SMG was not guaranteed to work, with even full magazines not granting a stun in some scenarios. So you'd instead basically need to sacrifice an inventory slot for one of the more consistent counters, the grapple blade or a pack of cluster clingers... and whilst I do love both of those weapons, part of the fun of Fortnite to me is not having to use any specific kind of weapon and rocking what you like most out of what you can find. But the shield would basically demand you have a specific kind of item for something you may or may not end up running into at some point, since not running either weapon could leave you to be screwed over. Thankfully they since changed the shield to have a damage limit and although it's still a little much in zero-build (your max HP is 250 and the shield's max HP is not far off with 150) you can at least consistently counter the shield with more weapons now. Yes, other fringe scenarios existed such as being able to target the hand or feet of the shield user but these are situational at the best of times. I still find the weapon annoying to come across and think it could require taking-up two inventory slots given you're using both a shield and a gun on top of doubling your health (for zero-build) but it's now possible to beat it out with a number of options, making it less of a 50/50 encounter unless you unfortunately run into it early-game.

The weapon that has been trouble for this season from early on and is still trouble now, though, would be the reaper sniper rifle; I straight-up think this weapon is on the overpowered side, at the very least in zero-build. I'm probably not in the best place to compare this one to prior sniper rifles given this is my first proper season but I will say I did at least wait to hop on the hate bandwagon for this weapon, people complaining about it close to the start of the season felt like "people don't know how to counter this weapon so it's overpowered by default" and I had this same mentality with the ballistic shield. As mentioned I just think the shield is annoying rather than overpowered, but the reaper definitely hits both of those marks. Along with every other mark you could dream of because I find this weapon quite easy to learn with extremely rewarding payoff, even post-nerf (if we can call it a nerf). Three bullets per magazine prior to upgrades(!) with the capability to deal OHKO shots even at the lowest rarity, as well as the option of removing glare. This thing is nasty and is not only fantastic at long range, but also medium to close range too... it out-damages ARs and shotguns by a fuckton even disregarding headshots, which means even if you are blessed with life following a missed headshot you're starting a firefight off having taken somewhere around 110 damage. So many times on the mic has a firefight been brought to attention by someone yelling "FUCK I'M SNIPED" (which must sound great without context) or any kind of equivalent, at other times someone will randomly be knocked and that's how we'll know we're being targeted by a sniper. In solos you straight-up just drop dead and whilst multiplayer at least has potential comeback from one of your friends essentially being a living sniper meatshield, it's still annoying that it happens quite frequently and drains you of your recovery resources from only one interaction. With a sniper that has glare you can at least potentially see that and adjust your route accordingly to avoid being hit, but for snipers without glare it becomes nigh impossible to see it coming unless you've got sixth sense. Then there's the other issue of countering a reaper rifle: Your best option is basically using one of your own. Grapple blade to close the distance? Predictable travel path, you'll be shot by anyone who is half-decent at the game. Enforcer AR for long range counter? That's a poor man's sniper and requires mods of its own to be reliable. Flow-inducing items? Might help with mixing up an approach but it is by no means a consistent counter provided the sniper can adjust their aim, which is a reasonable assumption. Weapon mods make it hard to tell what loadout the rifle will be too and thus makes it even more questionable as to what counters sniping except for sniping someone first. It's another weapon I won't use on principle despite it basically being mandatory in mid-game and is damn essential to have in the end-game, but I don't find it fun to be memed on for 275+ damage out of nowhere and thus won't subject others to that same experience. I have used it in the past and a lot of winning games would come down to 'playing chicken' with sniper rifles, pretty slow and not the most exciting thing in the world... "camp or die" sums the sniper situation up pretty well. I won't shame people for using the weapons they have fun with but I strongly suspect people primarily use these things for how powerful they are, especially when some people end up carrying two reaper rifles at once; to say nothing of squads that have multiple players applying repeated pressure with each one carrying the rifle. This weapon is NOT unbeatable, but it does get seriously draining to have it pulled out of nowhere and lose to it multiple games in a row. When you end up overcoming it there is a huge satisfaction factor to be had, but the counters are so situational and inconsistent even if you choose to go the "snipe the sniper" path. This weapon being near-untouched (they gave it nerfed bullet drop that anyone with half a brain has already adjusted to by now) is mostly what reinforces this as a negative impact on the game, and this paragraph being SO DAMN LONG to talk about a single gun probably shows it strongly too. This game will generally let you have a great time and won't take the piss that often, you can have a lot of fun with the chaos in this game and nothing is really irksome. But the sniper is so fast and powerful, packs up to five bullets before needing to reload, can be used effectively at almost any range, can hide the glare, effectively utilize a number of mods to make it wholly unpredictable that it seriously feels like it defines the metagame. Trying to go against it is an uphill battle: You're pretty much required to snipe like a good little boy/girl/enby if you want to have a chance at getting far. I don't play to win and nor do I really care too much about winning consistently, I just want to have fun but then losing many games in a row to an instant-KO sniper drains me.

Despite that huge wall of text about how one weapon is, in my opinion, bad for the meta? I really think this game is currently balanced out pretty well. Yes, I find shields annoying and will usually just run from players using them; yes, reapers one-tapping from their lowest rarity is incredibly crappy balancing; yes, the hammer pump is so laughably useless compared to the stupidly good frenzy auto (didn't even get into that one did I?). But by and large, the game is well balanced in how chaotic it is. Builds and zero-build end up having differing metas which will inevitably create a disconnect in the playerbase on what is and isn't overpowered, which is where I think the reaper is especially egregious as although there are more counters to it in builds it's still ridiculously strong in the mode whilst being pretty much mandatory the further into zero-build matches you go. I've already said there will always be a meta to something no matter how hard an equal balance is attempted, but even so there's a difference in something being stronger than the rest and something pretty much defining a meta. Sniper meta has been pretty real and I've tried to ride it out, but with the one real nerf taking very little time for competent players to adjust to it's hard to justify it anymore. This game is so much fun! ...the game being defined by who snipes who first is not fun, and an unfortunate reality. On one game I was so low about the opposing team having double-snipers that I just ran to the person shooting me from behind and let myself lose to their common frenzy auto. Not my proudest moment, but it was better than getting one-tapped by snipers for the hundredth time y'know? Wasn't going to be able to run and reboot my friend from that pincer motion, so just take the L in the way I want. I digress...

But hey, shooting and looting isn't all there is to Fortnite nowadays apparently. How about those extra game modes? Rocket Racing, Lego Fortnite, and Fortnite Festival. Of these three I have by far spent the most time on Rocket Racing, which may as well just be called Mario Kart DS for one reason that really discredits a lot of the positive aspects of this mode: Snaking. You can have all the track knowledge in the world and be apt at knowing when is the right time to use drifts and boosts, but nothing can compare to the very simple power of snaking across tracks like a maniac. Speed retention is important in this mode but you have no real means of doing so without constantly drifting, and thus snaking becomes the best option. Aside from this core issue, I've been very on-and-off with the track rotation at higher ranked levels. For the longest time you'd be stuck playing a lot of the more "difficult" tracks in the mode, although the general idea of difficult is to take an old track and then place a bunch of slow-down hazards across it haphazardly. This makes "harder" tracks fairly predictable and boring whilst further incentivizing snaking during the brief breaks given by the track design, although is is hardly something to be considered forgiving. It does seem to be that even Epic knew this and increased the pool of available tracks at higher ranked levels at a certain point, making me go back to the mode a few more times before I ultimately just stopped playing it. It was fun at first but the later track designs just being chock-full of hazards all of the damn place combined with the necessity of snaking to reasonably compete for higher finishing positions killed my drive to play it more. This mode has a lot of potential but I've had my fun with it for now, maybe someday I'll go back to it. The other modes I'll touch on more briefly since they're just sort of 'there' for me; Lego Fortnite is something I loved a lot the first time I tried it and then subsequently fell out of. At first feeling like Minecraft-at-home I wound up seeing it as more or less a diet version of Ark (and we now have Palworld also filling that niche) and Ark is a game that exists... I'm not fussed on it, and sadly Lego Fortnite ran out of things for me to care about quickly. This is another mode with potential and although they've added more to it now I honestly haven't felt the desire to try it again. Lastly is Fortnite Festival, a simple but fun rhythm game that started out as my least favourite of these distractions but I would now say is the one I like most even if I still don't touch it all too much. Rhythm games themselves are very hit-and-miss with me but hopping into a few rounds of this every so often to grind out a song and learn the patterns for it can be pretty fun, even if this is a mode I'm still not that crazy over. But Fortnite Festival is a good spot of fun, especially on expert difficulty which is pretty much the best way to play the mode. Each insutrment type also has its own difficulty level, too, so you can experiment and find what you like to use the best... drums aren't for me, I can tell you that.

Before I wrap this one up, there is another aspect I want to touch upon and that's monetization. I feel like the monetization practices in Fortnite are largely acceptable, especially when I compare them to the typical AAA gaming landscape nowadays. Fortnite is a free-to-play game with a battle pass model that is self sustaining, where you pay for it once and can earn back your 950 V-Bucks through opening the tiers little by little (in fact you get some pocket change leftover as you earn a total of 1500 V-Bucks for the whole thing) to invest back into the next battle pass. You can also take these Monopoly dollars to the item shop and spend them there for select skins, bundles, music tracks, all that good stuff that might tickle your fancy. The battle pass by default costs just under ten dollars or whatever your regional equivalent might be and it ended up giving a lot more stuff than I was expecting to get, I can't lie. A good variety of characters each with a handful of differing styles for added spice, loading screen splashes, weapon skins, music tracks, gliders, pickaxes, emotes, emojis, vehicle skins- calm down Ebin Games! Whilst this is indeed a lot of stuff, the actual value you get from it depends upon how you feel towards the specific contents in the pass and thankfully I've found use for just about everything here save for a couple of characters I'm not quite interested in to use more than a couple of times, if I've used them at all honestly. I don't feel anything is wrong with any of these designs but I just haven't been compelled by some of them, and to be fair part of that blame goes to the small handful of shop skins I've bought... yeah okay I'll cut to the chase right now, this is monetization that I can get behind. The base experience is free and you don't have to spend a single penny if you don't want to, so if it ends up being a game you do see yourself repeatedly coming back to then I feel it totally worthwhile to throw down a couple of bucks for cosmetic items you're going to get enjoyment out of. Whether you buy a shop skin, a bundle, or go-in on the battle pass I don't think you can really go wrong so long as you don't impulse-buy things. There is inherent FOMO that goes into monetization regarding battle pass models and rotating storefronts which is something I won't deny; I've had a friend who plays the game completely F2P (although he was tempted by the battle pass a few times but joined too late to get what he wanted from it) call the shop prices 'scummy' which was an interesting take. As interesting as one word can be, I suppose, but interesting to see a different perspective on it from my own. In a way I can understand the absurdity of individual skins from the outside looking in, but at the same time I look at it that if you're happy to keep playing the game then you're going to get a lot of value out of what you're buying. People are happy to spend a hefty chunk of change on takeout, sometimes multiple times a week, which is a very temporary product compared to a cosmetic in a video game that'll last... maybe not literally forever, but a damn good while with how popular Fortnite continues to be. I'm happy to throw down some change for some cosmetic items I know I'll enjoy considering how this has become a go-to game for me alongside F-Zero 99, with the base experience having been free for me to enjoy prior to deciding "Yeah, I love this enough to want to give them some of my money". You'll still be getting items as a F2P user, too, and can save enough free V-Bucks over time to eventually get the battle pass without paying a single penny anyways at which point it'll become self-sustaining provided you don't spend too much in the shop. That being said, the FOMO is still an unavoidable and unfortunately undeniable aspect of any monetization system done this way, but I think they've done their best with what's here. How much you trust yourself with playing around practices like these will definitely affect your opinion on it and for myself I'm not too suggestible when it comes to microtransactions, so unless I see something I know I want and will use I'm not going to be spending my money wildly. All-in-all I do think this approach to monetization works very well and is certainly far better than any of the imitators who nickel and dime customers without relent, but if you know you have impulsive spending habits then approach with major caution just as you would any other rotating storefront/battle pass format.

Having made this review gradually across the game season, I've seen my opinions on the main game rarely change. Once I got into the gameplay loop and understood how things worked and the best way to get to grips with them, the feel of everything has been consistently enjoyable and fun. I have my gripes with certain aspects of balance but can enjoy the game in spite of these problems as they feel relatively small compared to the rest of the game, honestly the big exception being how the reaper sniper rifle absolutely dominated zero-build from start to end. Even holding off on this review a couple hours longer to play some final rounds of the season, my opinions remain much the same as they have been to this point; I love the core of this game and enjoy getting to go-in for some rounds when I get the chance. If I'm not playing F-Zero 99, I'm probably playing this. I'd never have thought I'd come to love Fortnite as much as I do now, but I'm glad I gave it a second chance and think I'll be sticking with it for a long time! For each season I play, I'll keep my thoughts on them logged and release them on-site at the end of it just like I did here. It'll be fun to catalogue my thoughts of each season, I think? We'll see how it goes. Overall, I've been really enjoying my time with this game despite its handful of flaws. I'm curious to see how long-time players feel as apparently it's more divisive of a season around here, but my friends who have played longer still seemed to enjoy this one quite a bit too? I dunno. The playerbase is so huge I guess you'll see a pretty fair split of every opinion no matter where you go. Regardless, I've had my fun here and I look forward to the next season coming real soon. Can the legends of Greek mythology stand-up to this season of underground rebellion? ...I mean, probably.

This review's been a bit of a long time coming, but here it is at last. I meant to push this one out sooner but then the devs decided to give us more content across multiple unexpected occasions, those bastards. Jesting aside I had progressed fairly far into my review of this one, the day before the update to add Classic was pushed. So I delayed a bit to give my thoughts more time to settle... and then they decided to add Frozen Knight League after that, too. AND then they went ahead to add secret tracks after that! All this combined with working a new job giving me some varying amounts of free time, this review just naturally took longer to make as I had more content to consider, segments of a review to rewrite, and not always a ton of time to get all that done. But we're here now! F-Zero 99, a long awaited revival for this beloved waiting franchise. And apparently a divisive one at that?

I'll be honest, I'm really sad I had the surprise of this one spoiled ahead of time by a leak that said we'd be getting an F-Zero battle royale game. Yet even from this offset I was really hyped for the idea; F-Zero has always been a large-scale death race, it is actually perfect for a battle royale entry. If nothing else it certainly fits better than Mario, Pac-Man, arguably Tetris too (not to speak ill on any of those games) so retrospectively I'm surprised few people brought up the idea until it happened out of nowhere. Alas, from what I've seen the divide on this one comes from people who've only/primarily played the 3D games- X and GX -against those who are fans of the original 2D style. If my last review of the SNES original didn't paint me as being in that latter camp then I'll say it again, I really love the 2D F-Zero style even if I haven't spent the most time with the GBA titles; so it mainly comes back to the SNES original which is no doubt due to a fair bit of nostalgia bias too. Regardless, I think a return to the series roots for this entry was a fair enough decision and quite possibly one the better choice over using a 3D-era game too. For reasons I'll get into a bit later, but I will say upfront that I don't think this game would've been worse off for using X or GX as a template instead of the 1990 game. How is this game as it is though? Let's finally delve into that.

As everyone knows by know, F-Zero 99 is a reinterpretation of the original F-Zero game as a 99-player battle royale of sorts. 99 pilots enter in a bid to finish 1st, or settle for finishing at all in some cases; simple as can be. How it goes about this is giving us all of the original F-Zero tracks to race upon, with the courses widened and otherwise minimally modified to make the races less of a clusterfuck as they otherwise would be. If this sounds very easy, then it's really really not, but the same can definitely be said of the original F-Zero too. Except now it has a major feature I felt it lacked, multiplayer. In fact it's pretty much now an exclusively multiplayer experience, fitting with the whole battle royale style. Whilst tutorials are done against CPUs and will fill-up any empty lobby slots when the open entry period is left to run-down, the true meat of any singleplayer content is in the returning practice mode which rightfully has ALL of the tracks as an option now. But for the most part, you will be playing the multiplayer modes and I feel the game is far more fun in this format. Don't get me wrong I still adore the original F-Zero (it was my previously published review as mentioned) but the challenge in that game is either nonexistant or you having to steal wins against cheating CPUs who won't die even if a nuke drops, whilst in 99 the playing field is actually even at base-level; what will truly set pilots apart here are their individual skill level and familiarity with both their vehicle and the course being raced on. You know, as it should be? And it's really hard to find a particular fault in this aspect of the game by itself, as all four of the vehicles are perfectly viable and able to get 1st place wins with if you know what you're doing. It helps as well that they all offer different styles of play, so you can try out all four and see which one of them fits you the best.

Despite basically being the original F-Zero, it still stars some changes of its own. For one, the original boost system is replaced by what we've had in basically every game since X. Rather than earning boost charges each lap, you can boost at any time by using your vehicle's power meter. Whilst a simple and much appreciated change it does make the game more different by itself, most notably the Golden Fox goes from being really bad to actually usable (and debatably the best vehicle in the game now) and changing how you can approach certain courses and their shortcuts. This does mean that Mute City III is basically nothing but Mute City I with a different palette and noob trap mines however, since you can very easily take the boost shortcut from the first lap. Still, the system is very well implemented and much appreciated even if I still quite like the original boost charge mechanic too. The bigger change is the addition of supersparks and the skyway, which fits the 99 format perfectly: Dropped by other racers or from colliding with the big boy golden bumpers, supersparks fill-up a meter of their own just below your machine's power that allows you to use the skyway when filled all the way. The skyway is basically a personal(ish) road above the road that you can travel on for a limited time by using your collected sparks, giving you some extra boost pads to which altogether really lets you cut ahead of the competition and makes for some really great comebacks. What makes this perfect to me is that the duration of the skyway is based on your proximity to the player currently in first, making it more of a thought process as to when you should use it rather than becoming "press the button to win". When and where you should use it varies by the specific course you're racing on, where on the course you're situation, how far from the lead of the pack you are, how many other racers are also using the skyway... you could definitely ignore all that and just use it as soon as you get it of course but I really like having to think about when to use my super special power-up in a game like this, either reaping the rewards or sitting in regret as I instead crash out stupidly after it ends. Additionally, the spin attack seen in future F-Zero games makes a return here although without sacrificing your speed as it so often does. It serves as an equally effective offensive and defensive maneuver here considering the side-swipe wasn't added, which I think works out for the better given the more simple designs of this game compared to what came later. Side-swipes are also far more devastating attacks to be on the receiving end of which would be particularly potent in a battle royale game with 99 players... the spin attack was a perfect addition and fits fantastically, letting you defend yourself when your power is critically low or taking out a pesky bumper (and maybe sneaking a KO on a player who got too greedy with their boosts).

The changes to the system make the game much better suited to the battle royale format and give it an inviting feel to those unfamiliar with F-Zero, without completely neglecting the need for skill. This is where I think using the SNES original as a template was the perfect decision: In the 3D F-Zero games and especially in GX, there's quite a bit of player-applied tech that ranges from situationally useful to basically required at certain difficulty levels. Combine this with the less forgiving track design the deeper into the game you get and it would honestly be a terrible introduction to people who are only now being given the chance to try and F-Zero game. This series has always had a bit of a competitive focus with thrilling high-tier difficulty being what makes many of us love it as much as we do, and this can include the original game for sure. But when we delve into player-applied tech... the SNES F-Zero only really has boosting into a wall for a rebound, mashing the acceleration button whilst turning corners, or using up/down on the D-Pad when airborne (though this is something the game outright tells you about). You can also play the game perfectly fine without using such techniques despite being given an easier time on certain tracks when knowing how to use them, compared to the much higher skill ceiling demanded in the 3D games. For as much as I would love to be able to play GX online with 29 other players, I think they made the right move in giving us a reimagining of the first game. It's not only easier for them to develop content for and easier to make work with the 99-player format but the more evened skill-level of the game overall makes it easy for players both new and old to pick it up, hop into some games, and have a good time with one another. Veterans will quite naturally have an advantage but this game is so easy to pick-up and play that newcomers who end up enjoying the core gameplay should catch up before long, or hell even just enjoy comfortably playing at their own pace. Battle royales are naturally a bit competitive but something like this can certainly be enjoyed casually, which F-Zero 99 offers through a handful of alternative gameplay modes beyond hopping into a single-race.

Getting it out of the way first, there's Team Battle. Racers are split between differently coloured teams and race to get the most points for their team, the one with the most collective points at the end wins. It's a fun distraction the first few times but a month or so into the game I quickly started to skip chances to play it, so pretty much after I got the profile cosmetics you can unlock from this mode. It can be fun given it's still F-Zero but this particular format is not too much my thing I guess. What is right up my alley are the Grand Prix events, as well as Mini Prix events by extension; the Grand Prix comes in three flavours of Knight, Queen, and King leagues just like the original F-Zero game. And the courses you play on are the same as in the original, except the further into the races you go the higher you must play to continue the grand prix and progress to the next track. 99 players on the first track, down to a measly 20 on the final track! This is an incredibly fun game mode that really puts your skills to the test, with mechanics such as gaining power meter extensions/restorations from scoring a KO coming properly in clutch when you get the hang of them considering the additional power carries over to future races in that event. It can be difficulty to get a super high power meter, but it really does make the difference given it allows you to play more aggressively and utilize boots more frequently compared to other players with less power meter. You can still make it all the way to finishing a grand prix without this though, although to get top-3 (let alone be the overall winner) it becomes a lot more essential in order to keep-up with the competition. With how you earn entries for grand prix events just by playing the game normally, it makes the mode a properly fun and rewarding test of your track knowledge and racing skills when they come around. It's such a simple idea much like the rest of the game itself, but it ends up creating something incredibly thrilling and enjoyable.

...but that's not all! Because as I was writing this review, we had a new update to include an extra game mode: Classic. This returns the boost system to how it was in the original SNES game (rip Golden Fox mains) whilst also shrinking tracks back down to their original sizes and limiting lobbies to 20 players. They even go so far as to modify the camera angle to make it feel more like the original game, too. As someone who has obsessed over the SNES F-Zero this mode was practically made for me and I was so giddy when it first game out, but even looking back on it now I still absolutely love getting the chance to play it whenever it comes up. The 99 format works perfectly for this game and yet the original game just made into a multiplayer experience works just as well, being a real testament to how this franchise has always fit the mold for a battle royale format. With this update also came 'lucky ranks', a once-per-day gameplay system that gradually awards you parts for unique profile backgrounds exclusively obtained through this mode. Essentially, you get up to five of these a day and they equate to randomly chosen racing ranks or can sometimes be a randomly chosen vehicle. Match up as many as you can to get bonus EXP and bounty chips that eventually award you a background. It's a neat little addition that doesn't ask much of you, really just keep playing the game and you'll get stuff that way. Typically you can get a background from this mode every five/six days, depending on a few factors (including how often you play the game of course). I do think it can be a little punishing for players who consistently rank in certain areas though, as in order to get more from the lucky ranks you need to be landing in a wide number of positions which can mean intentionally tanking races at certain points. I've never done as such myself, but on days with particularly bad runs I have certainly gotten more consecutive lucky ranks than on days I've been at my best off the bat. In this regard it makes the system open to players of all skill levels and I do like that, I can't get much upset at the system's flaws either as it is random cosmetic fluff at the end of the day. Nothing you won't get within a period of time regardless of how good or bad you play; as long as you are playing and finish at least five races per day, you'll get bounty chips to acquire a profile background. It's harmless for the most part.

And then as I was ready to wrap the review again, they went and added the limited-time Frozen Knight League event. Starting in mid-December and concluding mid-January, all Knight League tracks were given special snowed-over variants that slightly modified the courses; new graphics, of course, but also some layout changes that primarily came in the form of adding slip zones to crucial points of the courses. From completing certain tasks by playing on these tracks in regular 99 races and by competing in the special Frozen Knight League Grand Prix, you could earn special cosmetic items for your profile as well as the much-coveted snowy blue boost that not only changes the boost colour and changes the default engine emission from orange to blue but also gives your machine a little snowy effect each time you use the spin attack. Rewards you could gain from just playing the game and having fun with it, making them feel like proper rewards and not something to grind painstaking hours for. I think I got all the special rewards in three or so days? It was quite early into the event, but I still loved my time with the specially modified tracks whilst they were there. AND then this leads into what is currently the latest update (I'm going to scream if they jump my review again with yet another update, I swear)... two major features were added, the easiest to address being private lobbies. It's what it says on the tin, you can play in games with friends without having to rely on a dice roll to see if you get in the same public lobby. There are some slight progression nerfs presumably to stop people cheesing with a second account, but that's fine. I have no use for private lobby mode anyways but it's something I did feel the game was lacking, so it's a much appreciated addition.

The star addition of this update has been secret tracks, however. When playing a 99 race, there's a chance of one of the course vote options instead being a glitched-out "???" selection that randomly flashes between the existing course previews. This is what I thought was their way of preserving Frozen Knight League tracks as I was initially taken to a secret track that looked like the frosted Death Wind variant, except when I got into the race I quickly heard the music was different... and then saw the layout was utilizing elements of the White Land tracks mixed into the Death Wind I layout: "White Winds" as it has since been dubbed fans. There are currently four secret tracks in the game and I don't want to spoil the other three even if most people who've played this game no doubt know the secret tracks by now, but holy SHIT am I all for these being in the game! ...whilst fans have quite quickly cracked the timing on when a lobby will be given a secret track option, making them very easy to scout-out now, they are still incredibly exciting to find and race upon. Remixing existing tracks into something a little less familiar and quite a bit more challenging, this is one of the best additions the game has received beyond the rollout of all the original courses (which concluded early into the game's life anyways). Whilst many of us have been hoping for the 'BS F-Zero' tracks to make a return in this game, and quite less optimistically hoping for future F-Zero tracks to be remade in this mode-seven style, this is a clever and efficient way of filling the void of new tracks by utilizing existing assets to create something different and entertaining. My main gripe with these tracks are how they can be a fair bit unforgiving to new players considering they like to mix-in elements from tracks that are reserved to grand prix events, tracks the game is knowingly calling 'pro tracks' when they show-up in a separate rotational mode. As an avid F-Zero player I'm all for seeing these tracks done the way they are but thinking about how it might look to the perspective of a newcomer... yeah these tracks must seem quite unfair? Especially if they haven't yet wandered into the Grand Prix events to unlock the base tracks for practice, let alone experience them once. Still, I think secret tracks are a healthy addition to this game on the whole and I seriously hope we get more of them if don't end up getting entirely new tracks instead. Or hell, give us both! Please?

Whilst my initial draft of this review had left me cautiously optimistic but unwilling to believe Nintendo's commitment to supporting this game long-term. But we're here SIX MONTHS later and they're still giving it attention with excellent additions such as Frozen Knight League and secret tracks injecting fresh life to the bloodstream of the game, when I was originally believing they'd pull the plug not too long after they released the King League in full. This game has made me so happy, bringing new attention to F-Zero and getting new fans into the mix after this franchise experienced a near-20 year hiatus that very few people believed it would ever escape. It's made me really happy to see the series come back in any form, and having a game that means so much to me be meaningfully remade into a format that I am now absolutely obsessed with and can enjoy in multiplayer form- the way F-Zero always should've been -is incredible. I have my biases in giving this game a 4.5/5 and I will openly admit to it, I just can't help myself though. This is how you take a classic game and remix it into something new yet familiar for audiences of all kinds, THIS is how you do a free-to-play done right: F-Zero 99 is a fun time that rewards you for simply playing the game at your own pace. In a world full of $70 crap that still has mobile game microtransactions shoved in, this has been a much welcomed change of pace and so it's no surprise this has quickly become a game I've sunk hours upon hours into. Provided they continue to update this game the way they have been, I'll gladly give this game another log when it's first year anniversary comes around this September.

Whew... that's a lotta words. My next F-Zero review, hopefully coming out soon, will certainly be a lot shorter since there isn't much to say on it. But it is our last stop in SNES realm for the time being. There's some other games I have to catch-up on with logs coming in due course, too, one of them hopefully being tomorrow. The last of my 2023 review, and another free-to-play I have accidentally formed an obsessive relationship with. Until then, hope you enjoyed this massive wall of fangirl text!

This review was originally going to go up alongside my next 2023 one (wow I wonder what game that'll be...) but since the game in question got an update just this week, I'll pull it back for a bit to let my thoughts swirl and collect some more to account for the new content added. One big addition in particular probably makes it appropriate I release this one first anyways, and there will be a second accompanying review that I'll put out probably after that one? It'll be a rather quick glimpse so it could go up any time, but we'll see.

So, F-Zero. The Nintendo franchise a lot of people seem to want back yet so few people have actually played for themselves; and that's not saying "there isn't anyone who actually likes these games" because that's not true. But much like the meme of "Persona 5 fans never actually played their game" I would believe the same to hold true here. Legitimately of all the people I know who've heard of this franchise (in-person, online is obviously a different story) it's because of Captain Falcon in Smash Bros. And it's not really a surprise that that's the case, but every time I'd bring this series up it'd be a response of "Oh Captain Falcon is from that right?". And heck, even my own brother who grew-up around me playing this game recently called F-Zero 99 "Captain Falcon 99" because he forgot the name of the series. He's not a kid by the way... I'm getting off-track. F-Zero! I'm very big on this franchise and as I just spoiled in the preceding sentence, this is a series I grew-up with so I'm very much fond of it. And hell, I even got my start with it on this same game. The original F-Zero for Super Nintendo, a classic in my eyes and from a period when Nintendo wanted to give themselves a 'cooler' image. Fun fact they nearly had Captain Falcon smoke cigars and holy FUCK am I glad they never went ahead and did that, because whilst this series does have a different vibe to its settings than most other Nintendo franchises it's not totally foreign and that's what I love about a lot of their games.

So yes. Off the bat I am admittedly biased for this game; it's one I grew-up with and one I hold in a special place for personal reasons I'm not going to state to internet strangers. But it's a big nostalgia trip for me and full of comforting old-school feels as a result. I do always worry a bit coming back to this one as I'm never fully sure how much of my positive memory is from the game itself having marks of quality or my warm and fuzzy nostalgia brain associating it with good times in my life... thankfully, I can attest that this game is still pretty great across the board! Let's start with the presentation because fuck me sideways I still think this game looks pretty damn fantastic to this very day. They made super effective use of the Mode-7 capabilities to make the "3D" gameplay work with tracks still being uniquely identifiable and memorable between each other despite being primarily limited to a 2D plane. It always mindfucks me when I remember just how this game looks beneath its layers, and that's because they do such a good job at giving you a great feel and sense of scale to the worlds here. The tracks all pop and look great, which extends to the playable vehicles too; all four are uniquely designed not just in gameplay but aesthetics too. In colour alone you can tell them apart at a simple glance and that works very well for a high energy, fast-paced game like this which is rather important in my eyes. Everything looks great and this game has visually aged remarkably well, but the gameplay...

...has also aged very well! It's very easy to describe so bear with me here. Racing around futuristic tracks as fast as possible whilst dealing with an ever-shrinking rank out and making sure to avoid blowing up your vehicle through the on-track hazards, barriers, magnets, the travelling bumpers, or mistiming a ramp jump and just blowing yourself up in one go. As mentioned already this game is very high speed and that makes all of this a lot harder than it would be in something like Mario Kart, as F-Zero is closer to a more 'traditional' motorsports game except with a much more exciting take on things with the addition of these hazards, very close rank outs, and especially the bumpers. Love them or hate them they're rather essential to not only making this game more lively without strangling the SNES memory to design 20 unique cars, but for preventing super easy wins. If the bumpers weren't here you'd be able to get into 1st place and hold it consistently without too much effort, provided you know the track decently enough. Bumpers add an extra layer of strategy and difficulty since even when you're ahead, you're not totally spared of having to combat other vehicles; you still have to think about your driving rather than mindlessly lapping the track until you claim your trophy. It makes this a proper elimination race at all times and I really enjoy it for the most part... we'll get there when we get there, shortly.

F-Zero has fifteen tracks to its name with a couple of reused settings, although given differences in the track layout in some way. Mute City I is your standard opening course whilst Mute City II changes the layout a bit to force you to turn where you'd usually drive straight whilst Mute City III keeps a more familiar layout and adds a mine field near the rough terrain segment. These differences are pretty simple spelled-out but do change how you approach the track in practice. Port Town I and II build off one other pretty naturally, with II essentially being an extended version of I and adds even more challenge to what is otherwise a decently difficult but always enjoyable track. The other variants are more different to one another, with choice segments being similar and otherwise primarily sharing aesthetic themes. And this is not a bad thing by any means! I really do enjoy all the tracks in this game, with none I'd say I outright dislike... sure I'm never waking up and thinking "Oh man I REALLY want to play Sand Ocean" but I don't hate any track is the point. They're all enjoyable in some form and that's a good thing for a racing game!

So you got all these tracks you can play on, how do you got about playing them? Grand prix mode of course. Fifteen tracks divided between three circuits; Knight, Queen, and King. The easier tracks are placed in Knight and the difficulty gradually builds towards the end of each circuit, as well as the harder tracks of course showing themselves as you go all the way up to King. In addition, you can have multiple tries on a track so long as you have enough lives to do so which is a small feature I really like. In most other racing games, you lose and that's it; you're done; your goose is cooked; so on, so forth. In F-Zero though you can have a number of chances in case you fumbled your first attempt, letting you learn a course through multiple tries and eventually claiming that victory. Lives are still limited of course so the game isn't giving you a free pass, but it's a suitably forgiving system that gives you a little leg-up without just doing all the work for you. Adding to this are F-Zero's difficulty options, so you aren't thrust into the hardest of hard right away. You can do a few runs on beginner if you like and work your way up through the higher difficulties that way, or as I like to do marathon each circuit in a specific difficulty until all difficulty levels have been completed. Now, I think beginner is a great way to ease-in a new player and standard follows up well on this too. Expert is mostly good until around Port Town II, but master is especially where I begin to take issue with this game's idea of difficulty.

At a glance, the difficulty mainly seems to affect the bumpers. Specifically how many can/will appear, how many are explosive, the competence of the slow and fast 'racer' bumpers... but it also increases how fast the other racers can go EVEN IF that car cannot usually reach that speed. Combine this with assholish Nintendo hard AI that does genuinely cheat (which also scales with difficulty level btw) along with the game eventually deciding to put parked cars in the middle of the road as extra obstacles... okay I don't mind the explosive parked cars in concept but it has always confused me, especially since some of the later games turned these into floating mines which make much more sense. Either way, the game's idea of harder difficulty is giving the AI cheat codes and leaving a bunch of drunk drivers around the track. This was a different era of gaming I get that, you can finish the tracks in an afternoon if you're not playing master (and the same could be said of expert but I just know the game too well at this point), yet I won't change my stance on this one. I feel this game IS well balanced to a point, but later tracks on expert really can take the piss whilst master as a whole feels really draining and honestly not too enjoyable... I don't think kid me ever 100%'d this game and I can see why, shit's not fun. And SPEAKING of NOT FUN,

oh my great giddy aunt what the shit is up with the AI in this game? Okay... so you can be miles behind an NPC and still have to play catch-up. That's fine, that's fair, that makes sense. But racing the AI in this game is like being chased by a damn Ao Oni, they're always behind you and ONE slip-up means they're passing by you effortlessly. "Oh but I can at least obstruct or destroy them-" nope, not in this game, the AI cars found the secret to immortality because anything that would and should kill your car will do diddly pissing squat to them. This isn't so much a problem on beginner, standard, and some of the expert tracks but it becomes instantly noticeable on master where everything is not only max speed but totally INVINCIBLE (insert title card here). If you could even just damage the NPCs to hinder their max speed until they go into a recovery zone that would be fine, you could actually feel like you're playing the same game as them rather than having a constant target on your back presumably for kicking puppies off-screen. It seriously sucks that the last stretch of challenge for this game is honestly not a fun time, because up until then the game provides a primarily well-balanced challenge that rewards your skills in memorization of the tracks, when to drift, use boosts, different ramp velocities... but master makes it all about the already challenging AI becoming totally unfair and putting explosive cars in the middle of the tracks. Yet I still went and fucking did it, I get to be an "F-Zero master!" for what zero credit that's worth. Maybe if I put it on my resume, future employers will take pity on me.

For my last footnote before I wrap this one up, the game also has a practice mode which is fantastic in theory. It's as it sounds, you get to race around a track of your choice either by yourself or with a chosen 'rival' from any of the four playable cars. This is a lot of fun, a simple time trial mode is perfect for what this game is at it's core; racing fast and knowing the track. Seeing your improvement as you make new top scores with your favourite vehicle or even getting one with each vehicle, it's a very obvious inclusion that just makes so much sense. Unfortunately they only went ahead and put seven of the game's tracks in this mode, and this confused the hell out of kid me. I thought I maybe had to unlock the rest somehow but was never able to do it, just to find out years later that there wasn't ever a chance of me getting to use those tracks in practice mode. Why they did this escapes me, but it's literally the only F-Zero game to have a limited track selection for practice mode. I would love to be able to race on some of these tracks without running through a circuit just for the one, but that's fine I guess. Because honestly despite all my complaints about the game's expectations on higher difficulties and the way it handles said difficulty? I still really love this game.

This is one of those classic games that just holds-up extremely well. The gameplay feels fantastic to play even by modern game standards, everything still looks great, the sound design is oh so satisfying and god DAMN the soundtrack! One of my favourite gaming OSTs ever made, there is not a single bad song in this game. It might confuse you, then, why I reduced this to a final thought but trust me when I say: Everything is memorable for one reason or another and never in a bad way, seriously give this one a listen any chance you get. Or better yet, give this game a go yourself! There's a number of ways to play it and you can't really go wrong with any method in my eyes. If you've never tried this game or franchise, this is a good one to play even if you understandably don't want to do all of the difficulty levels. It's simple to get into and possibly frustrating to complete, but you'll always remember a lot of the journey no matter how much of this game is under your belt... I love this game. Pure and simple.

Future F-Zeros would be a bit different from this, but the GBA ones remained closer to this timeless classic. And after nearly 20 years off the market, this year blessed us with a new take on this incredible game as another fresh taste of F-Zero goodness. But that's a review I'll get to soon enough!

One of few 2023 releases I've played, and the only one I've actually bought (one is free and one was gifted). I'll be pushing reviews out for these in due course, and first up on the block is 2Spider2Man. I played through this one twice before collecting my thoughts for this review, yet I imagine this'll actually be the shortest review of the 2023 releases. But that doesn't make this a bad game by any means; in fact I really love this one!

If you loved the first game then you'll definitely get enjoyment from this one in some form. It's safe to say those of us who did love that first one have already gone out and played this by now, that won't encompass everyone though. With a huge positive to detail right off the bat: I feel with very few exceptions, the gameplay here is brilliant. It feels really good to control in and out of combat, the combat itself feels satisfying to learn and master, movement is a highlight I felt in particular of all things? Like, it's just one of those things that you can feel is really damn good. It definitely feels much improved upon from the first game in that regard... at least from my memory of the first game as it's been a hot minute, but the quick positive resonance with me is likely a good sign. On upgrades from the first game I feel the presentation is massively improved, and although still not without some slight gripes here and there (face models can look somewhat off to be specific) it never felt bad to me.

The story is where I overall felt very satisfied and constantly invested; a lot of heart to this one and a super strong emotional core, with genuinely impactful moments that remained with me. But I kind of felt on my first playthrough and especially noticed on my second playthrough that the pacing of this plot feels rather... unwieldly. It has a really strong start and keeps that strength for a little while before it simmers into some rather notable downtime, only to then rocket back up again and- oh, it's over. Now the length of the story by itself I don't find to be an issue as they still put in plenty of fantastic things in here. It's moreso what they do with the length of the story- and thus the way it's paced -that irked me a bit, with big story beats kind of being jumped between whilst feeling like it could've done with a bit more in the middle. Again these big points do get your attention and remain interesting, and it's not like there isn't development done outside of them; but what's here didn't feel like quite enough. I would've loved them to add a bit more, flesh out more of the characters and give us more of those lovely emotional moments... maybe I'm biased as a sappy fuck but, hey. I think the ending sequence lost a fair bit of steam too, and there's one simple change they could've made that would've given a MUCH more impactful experience imo, though I didn't hate it as-is. So really my main issue does come back to how they rocket through a lot of things, where I think we could've had a bit more. The plot itself I'd say rivals the first game for sure, I'm not quite sure if it surpasses it however. I'd have to go back and replay that one to make a conclusive statement.

On a last note regarding the writing I think I was somewhat disappointed by the way they handled one of the would-be major players, or rather I'm a little let down in how they did the same thing twice by hyping-up a character and using them to drive the plot before kind of just dropping them a little suddenly. And what we do get is actually a really good portrayal but I think, along with this being a repeat of them doing this with a villain, the conclusion came too soon; suddenly, as I just said. I think this again comes down to a pacing issue with the story overall, I found it more noticeable here as- again -it's a repeat offence in these games. I'll stress again that what we got is good despite them almost rushing the conclusion of this character.

There is lots of fun to be had here between the main story and side content, it all feels suitably Spider-Man and is thoroughly enjoyable to me in spite of my grievances with the way the main plot is paced. As someone who is huge on writing, enjoying stories in all forms of media and wishing to be a proper creative writer myself some day, I take it more to heart than most people perhaps will. Yet... repeating myself again now... I can look over the pacing funk for the most part, and take-in the strong moments this plot does consistently bring to the plate. I was slightly more critical of less overall side-content compared to the first game but I can understand to a degree that it might've been due to working with new technology and what have you; even though I feel like they really should've made it on par with the first game, I can get that development resources and time are absolutely a finite resource. Yet despite that, what I'm less forgiving of is how this game lacks some QOL features from the first game. Relatively simple options too, which is why I cannot let them get away without a mention. It's not a huge slight against the game as a whole- whilst it sucks these options are missing, they at least don't take away from the primary experience -but hard to not notice when. Again, they've been in these games before... NG+ was originally a patched-in option, sure, but that was also a month after launch and all the way back in 2018. I'd like to think that at least NG+ would've been an easy add for a 2023 game. Come on...

Despite my woes over the rocket fast pacing, the lack of content compared to the first game, and missing features that shouldn't have to have been removed, this was still a great time and I don't regret the purchase. This game has wonderful highs despite occasionally falling down an open sewer hole instead, I've really loved my time with this one and can see myself picking it back up for sure. However... I do find it hard to rate this above the first game; whilst there is still a hearty helping of stuff to do and a really good story is present, it does all lack a bit compared to the first game. In a vacuum this game would certainly be rated higher, but it's impossible to ignore how this is a sequel game. Not a 1.5 like Miles Morales, a full-blown sequel title. I do think it comes close to what came before but I can't in good faith say it surpasses it; this game 100% slays the first when it comes to the core gameplay, it is incredibly satisfying, always enjoyable, and hugely improves on the already fantastic original gameplay structure. Yet it's an improved formula with less content to explore it with, and again my grievances with the pacing of the story too.

This one is still very much worth your time, I do not regret having played this (heck, I played it twice and felt positively both times). At the same time though it's not quite beating the first game for me as a base experience. DLC could likely change this- provided they go ahead and give us some -and I'll definitely give that a look if they do. What's here is still really great though, I'll prop it up as a recommendation if you like what you've seen and know you're a fan of these games thus far. This was nearly a 4.5 rating from me and it still comes VERY close to that, so let it show how much I enjoy this and think highly of it despite the mentioned flaws!

Yet another bit of a nostalgia trip for me, this one. It's hard to believe this game is over 10 years old, perhaps ironic to say considering the art style would date it further back in the eyes of unaware people. I've played this game two times in the past; once on 3DS and once on PC. Since I'm currently at a point in my life where I'm more comfortable with playing portable games (it's why my 3DS has become my frequent travel buddy this year) I decided to replay the 3DS port, a bit of bias in there as it's also the one I've spent the most time on in the past.

Off the bat, I owe a lot to VVVVVV. For one, it helped me win a "name a video-game" thing in one of my programming classes many years ago as nobody else thought of something beginning with the letter V. But more genuinely this game was one of my first forays into indie titles, drawn in by the delightfully simple premise... a puzzle-platformer where instead of jumping, you invert gravity. And for as simple as that idea is the game REALLY runs with it in such an unforgettable way, because whilst you'd maybe expect something a little on the easier/watered-down side this is a game made for those who like a bit more challenge in their playthroughs and are at least fine with balanced trial-and-error. Given I gave Pokémon Clover 5-stars whilst noting the trial-and-error gameplay there as a huge highlight, safe to say this has always been my kind of thing.

What really helps this type of gameplay is the frequent checkpoints combined with "1 hit = dead". Your main obstacles here will be spikes, continuing video game trends of the cover art showing our main antagonist, and they'll be placed on the ground, ceiling, walls, in circle-ish shapes... you may or may not have to dodge enemies at the same time as well, going from surface-to-surface. Angling yourself to land in the right spot at the right time, making sure your initial flip itself is done at the right time too. And that's without adding in things like conveyors, gravity lines, moving platforms, breaking platforms... they do a lot to make the simple idea so much more creative and enjoyably unique, without ever really feeling unfair. There are some player levels that can take the piss at times but those are unofficially created, granted they did choose to feature them so I guess they could possibly count. Not part of the main game though so I don't choose to count them.

Most people who haven't touched the game are probably at least aware of the soundtrack, or certainly the tracks Pushing Onwards and Positive Force at bare minimum. But this soundtrack is very well beloved for good reason; despite being only 16 tracks big, each composition is incredible earworm material without ever really feeling tiring. They suit the kinds of levels they get placed in and especially fit the game's mysterious vibes and awesome graphical style... which I guess I'll also quickly touch on. The sprites are definitely very simple but used effectively, with a fantastic variety in colours and patterns as well as visual effects to bring backgrounds to life. It's deceptively simple and effectively simple, rolled into one.

Is there anything about this game I don't like? ...that's a question I've been trying to ask myself, hence the review coming in a bit late here. Sometimes the hit detection can feel a bit wonky and the controls slightly sensitive, but that's honestly about it. The core of the game is tons of fun with lots of variety to the levels, getting your brain thinking hard when you get stuck and granting a huge burst of dopamine after getting beyond a tricky section to reach a checkpoint. Even better if you decide to go after all the fittingly named optional Trinkets, which encourage you to explore the expansive open-world map to the fullest in order to find and collect them. This game's one huge challenge with barely a weak moment, lots of side-content on offer and replay value for veteran players or complentionists. If the premise has your interest, I'd highly recommend picking this one up because it's never let me down and is always a brilliantly fun time. It's available on just about every platform now for affordably cheap prices, go and get it when you have some spare change. You won't be let down.

Another little bit of a detour to get myself some sudden nostalgia fix-up, and a rather weird one at that... I've always loved Kirby, I really have. Very simple but enjoyable games with great art to them and easy to follow story. Yet as a kid I actually skipped this one for the longest time and it's really stupid as to why; I saw the word "nightmare" in the game title and was deathly afraid of it. This despite lapping-up the uncanny worlds in Crystal Shards and all of the... weirdly dark imagery in Dream Land 3. No, those were fine, but "nightmare" being in a game's title was enough to strike fear into me. I guess it just came with a certain expectation for my overactive kid mind, not helped by the international boxart having Kriby pissed as ever whilst Meta Knight waits in the dark. Honestly looking at it now, the boxart looks like one of those bad fanmade covers you see online with how it uses Right Back At Ya artwork... I'm getting way off track.

I picked this game up later than I should've because of the title, but thankfully when I did get to it a couple years late I still really enjoyed it. And unfortunately I don't think I can say a whole lot on this one for a simple reason, it's basically Kirby's Adventure but good. Not saying that game is bad, I've definitely loved my time playing it as a young something or other, but the age definitely shows for it and it's just outright outclassed by this one. The music I can go either way on but it's obviously much stronger sounding here with not being restricted by the NES sounds, the gameplay feels a lot smoother to actually play, and the graphics are genuinely some of the best on the GBA and even outclass a good amount of DS titles if you ask me. This one is just super good, it's your standard Kirby game here; bright and colourful with great setpieces fit to a super catchy soundtrack, really fun minigames in case the chill vibes weren't already chill enough, and some very neat optional content for completionist types. Which is where most of my comments will go to; your 100% play rewards.

Extra Mode is piss. Fantastic start, but it's true! If you know what you're doing with this game then being restricted in your health will not matter too much in a lot of cases, just play a bit more carefully and you'll get through it fine. In fact there's less agency to this mode compared to the NES original since you're no longer forced to do it all in one sitting, so the only change is Kirby forgot to take his meds today and isn't able to take as much shit. I guess. It's pretty easy but I say this having playing both this and the original game multiple times now, I'm sure for a less experienced player they may find more difficulty in it. But completing this mode unlocks the far more worthwhile thing here; Meta Knightmare.

This mode is a lot more fun. Basically take Extra Mode, remove Kirby from the equation, put Meta Knight in his place, and then restore the "finish it one go" condition of Adventure's Extra Mode. So you're essentially speedrunning the game from start to end whilst having an entirely new character at your disposal, being a bit of a hodge-podge of some of Kirby's copy abilities to allow you to solve puzzles and break blocks a bit easier. They've since done two other iterations of this mode (Meta Knightmare Ultra in Super Star Ultra and Meta Knightmare Returns in Planet Robobot) and I would say they both do more to be worth revisiting; between it's giving Meta Knight more unique gameplay quirks and adding new, different boss/enemy encounters along the way. Not to say this original iteration is bad, because it's definitely a worthy second playthrough and worth pushing through Extra Mode for. It's super weird having Meta Knight beat-up... himself? But I'm here for it.

All-in-all, this is just simply a good Kirby game. There may be some rarer moments of 'screen crunch' making things from the NES original a little bit more unfair, but these moments are very far and few between. This one is just good, I don't know how many more times I can say that. If you've never touched Kirby before then this one is a great place to start... 21 years later, good fucking god. Existentialism aside, you can very easy pick this one up and get it done relatively quick I imagine. I went for the 100% route and still got it done in only a few days, not sure how those less familiar with the game will handle it but it should be all good regardless. Very easy recommendation to Kirby newcomers or those looking for something a bit simpler.

More of an excuse for me to avoid finishing Unbound? One could see it that way, but... no, I honestly just had a glimmer of nostalgia that I wanted to satisfy (helped by this game getting a big cameo in Clover). Because hoo fucking boy is Snakewood something surprisingly nostalgic for me. Not only that but the game is infamously popular within the community and for good reason. As well as bad reason. Snakewood, as far as I can recall, is one of the first ROM hacks to majorly change the Pokémon format up; which is to say, focusing more on new story directions and generally ignoring the "beat up gym leaders and become winner" plot beats that the series is known for. So it's a bit of a small landmark in that regard? It feels weird to admit and I could be totally misremembering, but as far as I'm aware... this thing right here was once one of the more 'advanced' hacks you could pick up, stepping out of line to do more. I feel like it's become popular for this alone, for daring to try something different and- at the time -being a shakeup from shit like Chaos Black and Quartz. Other hacks from around this time like AshGray would have a similar idea, with similar popularity too. But nowadays, how do they hold up? ...sorry, 'it'. Snakewood is the only game I'm looking at here.

Snakewood is based on Pokémon Ruby and unlike basically ever single modern hack ever squirted onto the internet, was born at a time where the physical/special split was either nonexistent or a niche idea. I'm actually OK with this conceptually, although mainly for nostalgia factor because by the time Gen.3 rolled around the phys/spec typing system was really showing its primitive nature. The Pokémon you get in Snakewood, though, usually make good use of the system even if unfortunate carryovers like Absol still exist. So whilst the gameplay at its core is untouched, why dedicate a section to it? It's certainly not the "disease" type, because that's just a renamed "???" type... no I give mention to the gameplay because it's also housing what is Snakewood's most infamous aspect, the absolutely ABSURD difficulty. This is felt as early as Petalburg Woods where the first roadblock crops up in an instant, having to fight fairly high-level Houndour and Murkrow ("zombie" versions of them but they have the same stats so whatever) that are definitely going to sweep the unknowing and unprepared; this being the start of the game, too, leaves you with fairly limited team options. And the starters at your disposal, though very unique choices, don't help a ton: Koffing, Baltoy, and Paras. Paras in particular is basically playing this game on hard mode, in a game that is already hard mode by default. And again, keep in mind this is an encounter within just the opening hours of the game. Not long after you're facing the glassiest of glass cannons in a battle against a Deoxys expy... followed by an endurance round against a number of Anorith (not usually a tough Pokémon, but in the early game with limited type options it becomes a bit of a wall)... soon after you're fighting some reskinned Charizards, which itself is shortly followed by a gym fight with an awfully infamous gimmick 'mon that you have to stall out. Again, cleaning unprepared/unknowing players with ease. These encounters are clumped in the early game too, remember: All of these examples are just the early game. And they get followed in the near future against a fight involving Raikou, in what could barely be considered the mid game. Gym leaders will later pull legendaries right out of nowhere in a certain back-to-back fight, other legendaries- real and Fakémon -will begin appearing with surprising frequency later down the line... and even if teams aren't crushingly overpowered, the sheer volume of trainers you may have to fight in any given area makes the balancing super dumb. Especially when trainers average about 3 or so Pokémon per team, it makes the game tedious to play a lot of the time; stack-up on items as much as possible, because holy shit you'll need them. Thankfully you can exploit an infinite free potions script at the start of the game, but is that any way to play the game? Being lame like that?

But if its not the battles that rustle people's jimmies, it is absolutely and understandably the overworld chicanery. To give an idea of how badly balanced some of this is, there are SIX puzzle guides given by the creator on the Pokécommunity page for the game. This not counting other grievous areas such as the various doorways on the inquisition island that make traversing things a nightmare, including a warp that sends you right back to do it all over again. Or a trap tile in a later dungeon that sees you forced into an unwinnable fight against a legendary Fakémon, leading you to have to do everything over again if you didn't know that could happen. Really I could keep going but a lot of these boil down to "if you didn't know it was coming, you're getting sent back to the start" and nobody enjoys a game that fucks with them that way. If you claim you do, you're just actually lying; there are clever and fun ways to have your game mess with the player, but cryptic puzzles and/or traps that leave you having to do the same room all over again just because you were playing the game blind... it's not fun. And even as someone running the game for the sixth time now (told you I have nostalgia for this one) I can identify it as unfun, unbalanced, and just pure tedium of game design. The idea of adding harder puzzles isn't a bad one, and heck the Magnemite/Ditto puzzles are great in concept. But they fall flat in execution because of how cryptic they get, especially the former considering it has to be specifically Magnemite... so having a Magneton or Magnezone ain't gonna work, just leading to frustration for players. Overall; the puzzles are too cryptic and unfun for their own good, and the battle balancing is all out of wack aside from the mid game (which also has the best pacing imo) and end game (where everything is at least close enough on-par in terms of strength by then). Why keep going? Because honestly, when you're not stuck in Shaderu hell the game can feel satisfying to beat. Yes, I hate when fangames use legendary Pokémon as an excuse for challenge, but it's thankfully not quite Radical Red levels where everyone and their mom stumbled upon mythics and legends and pseudos. This doesn't excuse the abundance of super strong Pokémon before you'd be adequately equipped to face them, for sure, but it's at least not every trainer. You get me? They pull SOME punches, most trainers who have Uber-tiers make enough sense having them. But these battles should've been spaced better imo, saved for later on in the game. Because Snakewood adds plenty of threatening and cool new Fakémon even without legendaries, seeing those get used more frequently would've been great. Because as it is, a lot of the zombie Pokémon are either repeated over and over (Graveill line, Moulder line, Houndsour line...) or used in maybe only one or two areas in the entire game (Stitcher and Shinigami are especially guilty of this). Although I will admit, the limited use of the Telefang monsters (yes I'm serious) makes sense considering they're only involved for a smaller part of the story. I rambled longer than I meant to... game balance is stinky, that's the point I wanted to make.

However, Snakewood prides itself on story! So how is the story? ...well the creator admitted to losing interest in it partway through making the game, so that's a brilliant notion to dive in with. But I digress. I honestly didn't really guess as such until reading it outright, because the plot... is confused and messy, but for this game it makes just enough sense. Now this is NOT a good story, hell I can only just about bring myself to call it passable, but Snakewood is so unhinged and off-the-wall that by its own standards it somehow works. Barely. Now there is a huge caveat to this, and that is the game starting off with a more bleak tone that becomes dropped in favour of something more parodic around halfway through; this makes the later push back towards a serious narrative feel weird, because by then it feels like the game had stopped dealing with the darker aspects initially setup. As said in my Pokémon Wack review I don't mind a game that wants to try both tones! It can be done well when pulled off correctly. But in here, it really feels forced; mainly with how the Deadly Seven just, out of nowhere, go from lmao funny action guys spouting nonsense to starkly seriously martial art warriors. If there were more telltale signs that there was more to them than meets the eye, this twist would be pretty enjoyabe. But it comes off as "damn I made the game too silly, how is this apocalypse plot going to be taken seriously now?" and a sharp turn into reverse to try and save-face. Amazingly the car doesn't crash in this scenario, but definitely suffers damage regardless. What also doesn't help is a lot of characters and plot beats from the first half of the game get scrapped or rushed into a rewritten form because, by the creator's own admission, he was bored with the original idea. This especially stings with the horsemen plot, as it ends up going basically nowhere. A lot of fluff comes up once or twice only, usually just to be filler... and this game unfortunately predates Wack by having a "voice of god" moment where creator-kun admits that nothing that has happened matters, or will matter. Thankfully this is an optional scene (at least I believe it is...) and doesn't come with the game ending, but it's still bizarre to have the player character just. Accept that nothing in the world matters, and continue onwards despite that. It's also very immersion breaking, as also mentioned in my Wack critique, granted this game was already very loosely dangling the immersion threads by that point in the story.

So... the gameplay is messily balanced, the story is unfocused and goes off-rail too much to be taken fully seriously, the zombie Pokémon are barely even usable for yourself. Why isn't this a 1-star game? Because it does do a complete and unique journey, for better or worse. Snakewood may not necessarily excel at anything it sets out to do, but it still has plenty of good and fun ideas that function for the most part. Consider as well the timeframe in which this was released. To have played it on launch must've been something else, because even as someone a little later to the party (I first played it in early 2012) seeing everything unique the game had set out to do was a lot of fun. Nowadays it's nothing more than a relic of the past: An embarrassing mess of ideas that unfortunately rarely works out or results in anything cohesive. This game is hard to call good or even OK... but it's such a mess that it becomes enjoyable in a twisted way. "So bad it's good" if you will. The main issue is how first-time players will be stuck, lost, and undoubtedly frustrated because of everything that is so cryptic about it. Especially if they've come off of playing newer, better hacks that respect your time and are just generally well put-together. But for an oldie in the ROM hack scene like myself, this one doesn't get as much scorn from me as it would others. Fuck, as mentioned earlier this was my sixth playthrough of the game! I'm amazed at myself for being able to stomach it even half that many times, because wow... I really wouldn't blame anyone dropping this partway through, or ignoring it outright.

The story doesn't know what it wants to do, the main draw of zombie Pokémon is unfortunately undercooked, the attempts at humour reek of 2010s lolrandom internet, the balancing is all over the place, there are a number of glitches ranging from harmless to save-destroying (including right at the end of the game yikes), there's a handful of Pokémon with unfinished sprites, there are sprites that are comedically unpolished ("Gigawolf" is fucking funny)... yet I just still enjoy this one. It's a mess, but it's a beautiful mess. I really do miss this age of Pokémon ROM hacking, before decomp hacks became standard and people instead had to carefully articulate every sprite and script change as to not fuck-up everything. Snakewood pales compared to most ROM hacks, saying nothing of how its heavily outclassed by decomp projects, but it's so bad it's good. I feel this game encompasses the "if you know, you know" phrase; people who've played this in the past will get a sick sense of enjoyment out of it. But if you're not nostalgic for this game or the era it comes from, it is a very VERY difficult recommendation to make... and not one I think I could suggest, even if it would be your first Pokémon ROM hack.

Snakewood is a relic. It's a relic covered in grime and dirt that'll be worth 50 cents on the second-hand market, but it's still a relic that has fond memories associated with it. Just like a gunky relic, you know it's shit and not worth much of anything, but you want to hold onto it for that sentimental value; for being "of its time". It's not good, but I enjoy it. And that's OK.

Super Scribblenauts! ...no shit, once again. I hopped back into this one the day after finishing the first game and holy shit the improvements were INSTANTLY noted, this is another game you can get through relatively quickly but it feels so much more complete and fleshed-out than what came before it. So, let's get right into it...

Off the bat, the controls were majorly fixed. Not only can you use the D-pad for movement if you so wish, but Maxwell no longer runs like he's in a platform game and instead has a more leisurely pace and can only jump if there's a reason for him to do so. This helps so much in avoiding stupid accidents and navigating the stages a lot better, too. It feels like the touchscreen controls have overall been improved as well since I never had any issue when trying to drag objects around, unlike the first game. Whether or not the precision on this was actually fixed or I experienced a placebo... no clue, but I'm bringing it up anyways.

Another thing Super does so much better is the way stages are designed. Goodbye platforming in a game ill-suited to such stages! Whilst there are levels that have light platforming elements it no longer expects you to play what is more or less a stage from a game with different core designs which is a huge boon; even the bonus worlds that tout more action-orientated stages utilize more of a puzzle-action hybrid, compared to the action stages of the original game which- though still not terrible, I want to say -are inferior to the ones introduced here. With the game making more direct use of its design philosophies, main gameplay quirks, and status as a puzzle-genre entry it is a lot more addictive and enjoyable to play through. It also ends up making you think more than the first game, using a bigger variety of words even just playing casually. Truly making the most of its huge digital dictionary. Furthering this are the addition of 'advance stages', which is marathoning an already completed stage three times in one sitting. The catch? You can only use a word once per sitting! Whilst very simple on paper this is genuinely a perfect add to a puzzle game such as this one, it really does get your brain whirring and thinking up more and more diverse words to try slamming into the notebook. See what could possibly work, bringing out potentially unexpected answers. It's brilliant. Simple but brilliant.

...and now we address the biggest add of Super Scribblenauts: Adjectives. Genuinely this adds so much more charm to the game and makes it ten times more fun to play, this feature alone makes the first game look shallow by comparison. Though not always needed, the majority of the game encourages the use of adjectives and specific stages require you use objects accented with relevant adjectives; even on stages that might not require it, though, you can just create a more fun and outlandish solution. In the first game you'd probably hover between the same few vehicle objects where required, but in Super I was making things such as a 'friendly rideable winged fast coral snake' for the simplest of stage solutions. The adjectives really bring forth one's creative side and quickly become hard-baked into the way you play the game, even if its just on a smaller scale compared to the example I gave. There's a reason this game is advertised with Maxwell riding a winged bathtub, it's genuinely a pretty accurate depiction of what you can expect to be doing throughout your time here. Love to see it.

The par system has been done away with, the seemingly random tally system for Ollars has been nipped, merits feel more like actual achievements compared to random bonuses... all just some small changes that do go a long way. The presentation, too, feels a lot more tight and professional even though much of the original game's sprites were used here. Likewise, it makes a much more effective use of the OST by having randomized music for each stage as opposed to every stage having one set song that always loops on replay. It really is a small detail in the grand scheme of things but it DOES go a long way! Hell, there are some songs here that you'd barely hear in the original game as well as new compositions mixed-in that blend with the first game's oh so perfectly well. Really I can only tell what one is from which game because I've played them for too long over my lifetime...

Genuinely, Super Scribblenauts is one of the best video game sequels that I've ever played. It does everything a sequel should strive to do: Providing more of what made the first game so beloved whilst meaningfully building on it without feeling like a plain rehash, something that we barely see with game sequels even today. The game is unfortunately still really short even when you go for completing everything all the way, maybe this can be chalked-up to me knowing the games better on replay... and replaying them at all, but keeping in mind it has been so many years since I even touched these games and still got through them both within a week? They're not 'easy', per se, and I do love that stages are pretty bite-sized so that they don't overstay their welcome. But it's something that I feel is hard to stay with for too long, just because there's not enough to keep you there for too much longer once you've finished everything... it is a point of detraction, because it's such a huge shame. This game makes you want more of it! So, so much more! It's an honestly near-perfect sequel, it only needed to have more stages to reach that coveted 5-star rating.

...But what is here is till top-notch shit. Make no mistake. Super Scribblenauts is still one of my favourite Nintendo DS titles to this day, I can appreciate it so much more now that I'm past my dumbass years (mostly) and get a lot more enjoyment from it that way. I wouldn't blame anyone for skipping the first game and heading straight into this one because it absolutely overshadows what came before, it receives a very high recommendation from me. Whether you're playing it for the first time ever, or picking it up again after many years like I did... do yourself a favor and go get this game! One of the most fun and charming little puzzle outings you can find on one of the most charming handheld consoles.

Taking a brief break from Pokémon games for what is an impromptu nostalgia trip for me; puzzle game mood randomly struck me and I knew I had to revisit this one. Scribblenauts! ...no shit, you've seen what review this game is for.

When I say nostalgic, I really do mean nostalgic. This game was one I followed since seeing the pre-release covered in a Nintendo magazine and the very idea of being able to create anything(*) to solve various puzzles was enough to get me absolutely hyped for the game. I've always been big on wanting to draw, write, and program projects of my own so having a game that encouraged creating your own solutions with numerous possible ways to complete each level blew me away. Alas, I wasn't fortunate enough to be able to get it on launch day, but come Chrimbo 2009 the game was in my possession and it expectedly became my newest obsession as soon as it was mine. I can still remember absolutely loving discovering everything the game had to offer, finding out the solutions to the various levels, discovering what words were actually usable in the game at all... like I said, massively nostalgic game for me right here. And I loved it so much, I completed it 100%.
...at least I'm pretty sure I did? I have no way of actually verifying this because of an infamous incident where one of my family members who borrowed the game from me deleted my save file. Rather than just use the second save slot. Needless to say I was pissed and still bring it up whenever I see him, mostly to be 'that guy' because it annoys him. Thankfully he wasn't around to borrow the game again when replaying it for this review.

Scribblenauts is... as I already described. A game full of puzzle stages where the solutions are created by you writing words to spawn items from an in-game dictionary list, and this very premise is a strong one from the very start. As mentioned, just seeing some magazine pages of it was enough to get me hooked and hyped! And to be fair this game does deliver on that premise mostly well, because the amount of words in this game is still rather surprisingly big. There's plenty you wouldn't expect to exist in the game at all and a number of developer easter eggs too (as well as special Konami characters if you're Japanese, but I'm not so damn it) which makes the game feel more than just a visual dictionary that happens to also be a video game. The way everything looks and animates, too, really does add to the charm and it's an art-style I still adore to this day. It fits the DS incredibly well but even in promotional material the style looks unique despite being simple when you break it down, it serves it's purpose really well. The way they handled character emotions/reactions in-game is super unique too without leaving the player feeling lost or confused. Visually it is honestly fantastic and perhaps one of my favourite looking titles on the DS system. How much of that is familiarity bias... I couldn't tell you.

There are a ton of levels (200+!) in this game split across ten worlds with twenty-two levels in each, eleven of two different categories; puzzle stages and action stages. The former require you to solve puzzles that make a Starite- your end of level McGuffin in this series -appear, whilst the latter have a Starite already placed within the map and you have to make your way there. Often still with a degree of puzzle-solving involved, considering you have to write words to get there. Puzzle stages ended up being my favourite by far by the end of the game as they really do get your braincells racking about to think of what could be just one of many solutions to the situations presented before you, and though action stages aren't too bad... for the most part... they end up suffering from a key problem this game has and that would be the wonky controls. Something I absolutely forgot about and I assume willingly blocked through the power of nostalgia blindness, because oh my god are the controls really imperfect here.

The control scheme is actually really simple and, on paper, really good; you hold your stylus in a direction to move around the stage, tap/hold upwards to jump. However, Maxwell (our lovable protagonist) has an unusual amount of speed to him and will very rarely stop right away. This leads to falling into a pit- be it of fire, spikes, or the void itself -way more times than should otherwise be possible. It is worse, though, when Maxwell refuses to stop jumping in-place like a sugar-fed toddler at a cinema because then you have to tap somewhere else on the screen to get him to stay still... which can once more lead to unintentional deaths if he moves in the wrong way. This imprecise touch screen movement also seems to extend to the objects themselves too as a number of times some objects I created would only want to be dragged when touched in a specific way, yet this also seemed inconsistent. First time making a black hole? It worked fine. Second time with the same object? Just got stuck hovering in place as I somehow failed to drag it with me. It's so weird and just oddly unrefined, I genuinely don't remember it being this imperfect... the game is still perfectly playable with these issues intact, don't get me wrong, but man. Stages that could be completed in one or two tries instead take so much longer to finish because you're likely to accidentally die a couple of times due to these controls.

How this specifically affects action stages should, I feel, be obvious. You're trying to platform or race or make a mad-dash for your end of level goal with controls that sometimes work but sometimes don't instead. Add explosive items, spike balls, fire grills, or combat encounters to the mix and a lot of the time action stages became a bit groan-worthy with what you've got to put up with. Fighting not just the level obstacles but the game itself. Puzzle levels can sometimes be affected by this, too, if harmful obstacles get included as part of the layout but I can't really remember any such issue. No instead puzzle levels seemed to suffer from a bit of redundancy, my chief example being a number of similar "get (x) to (y)" objectives that most of the time can have the same- or at least incredibly similar -solution. For fuck's sake the second to last puzzle level of the ENTIRE GAME is a "get (x) to (y)" stage, whereas it easily could've been placed much earlier in the game. I don't have an issue with similar level structures as this is the kind of game where there are often hundreds of possible solutions to any one stage, but when the actual layouts end up being simple along with having similar objectives? Come on...

It really is a shame because a lot of these levels are super good. But the repetition of certain layouts and simplified objectives becomes clear after a while of playing, where it feels like they added a huge amount of stages mainly for the sake of it. And I don't say this to try and disrespect the developers, I have SO much respect for what they did to bring us this game even with an apparently limited development cycle (it does kinda show) with the final product still being good. I want that to be remembered; I do not think this game is bad, because that would be wrong. This game is still good in spite of it's flaws. It's just that these flaws intertwine with not only each other, but the core of the game as well. This makes it pretty difficult to just overlook them. Honestly with some polish to the controls and spiced-up level objectives, this would've easily scored higher for me. But as it is, I don't think I can give more than 3-stars even with all my nostalgia bias. I would still definitely recommend this game if you haven't played it before, because it is absolutely worth a shot! Just be aware than it is definitely imperfect in a way that can hurt the fundamentals on show.

All in all? A really good start to a really great series. The controls are ass, a chunk of repetitive levels feel fairly pointless, and some level solutions are comprised of pop culture references that although clever would be frustrating to those who aren't in-the-know. But the graphics, the music, and the gameplay- both at its core and with the best of the level designs -really do save it. If you're not even a big fan of puzzle games but the premise interests you, please give it a go! I may not have the rose-tinted love for this game that I expected to coming back to it, but that I still remembered something of basically every single level after years of not playing is a really positive sign that they made something very special.

Up next... Super Scribblenauts. Will this sequel released a mere year later fare much better? (spoilers: yes)

This game sucks. Like, this game really sucks. Not, "this game is flawed but still good"... no. No, this game just actually sucks. It's so objectively bad that I was tempted to leave my review as a "fuck this game" and move on, but that wouldn't be fair considering everything else I've given a proper review to. So then, let's begin with this... this.

Pokemon Wack, is a video game. It sure is a game that you can download and play, and was made by some guys. But for real, Pokemon Wack is one of many RPG Maker 'Pokemon Essentials' fangames that sure does reinforce the stigma surrounding this engine. For the most part it makes use of modified Gen.3 assets on the overworld, with the official sprite rips used for Pokemon from Gen.1 through Gen.5 as standard for the Pokemon Essentials kit. Everything else falls into one of three categories; Microsoft Paint, stolen fan-art, or poorly ripped models/artwork. It's also worth mentioning that so many of the modified overworld sprites are incredibly imperfect, not following the sprite format at all and instead using the brush tool to add details... first noted (at least to memory) with the Team Wack grunts but it becomes incredibly persistent through the rest of the game not too long after. It gives a very amateur vibe and y'know what, for the part of the game where it first appears it works fine. I mean, this game is called Pokemon Wack after all! Surely it's meant to be funny-bad like this, hell the first gym leader lampshades how his specialty is weak to all three starter types! That's pretty funny, surely most of the game is like this!

...but unsubtle foreshadowing aside, yeah the game doesn't win any awards for graphic design. The Microsoft Paint sprites gradually wear down your sanity and the more I noticed the stolen sprites the more annoyed by them I got, and yes I do mean stolen because none of the original artists are credited. Unless I somehow blanked out on the part of the credits twice. The stolen sprites pose another core issue of this game but we've only talked graphics and whatnot so far, so how is the game?

Third time making this joke but unsurprisingly, this game plays like a Pokemon game. Except it feels like a Pokemon game where you're a young stupid child who doesn't know shit about types and moves and stats and items, because Pokemon Wack has 52 INDIVIDUAL TYPES and more than 100 new moves with thankfully nowhere near as many new abilities... though there's still too fucking many. This to say nothing of the absurd amount of items in the game, which also houses another issue in this game's design but we'll get there momentarily. So, I said a while back that Radical Red felt like a game with too much feature-creep. Well I should apologize to Radical Red because if I knew a game could be this fucking bad with feature-creep I would've further savored the time I had with that game. Well... OK, maybe I wouldn't go that far, but I think this point being made is obvious. Though this game prides itself on these features and they are fun in theory- as well as funny to meme about -it makes for a messy gameplay experience. Honestly. Look at this fucking type chart and tell me it's OK.
https://i.imgur.com/i9c2X4y.jpeg
Better yet, consider the following. Official Pokemon already has over 100 possible type combinations, with a handful of those being unique to single species and a smaller amount being currently unused. Now look at the type chart again, remember that this game has a Pokedex of nearly 5000, and tell me this is a good idea. Think about all the possible type combinations in a game like this and tell me with a straight face this is a good idea. You fucking can't, because it's not a good idea. So many types are just redundant and exist for the sake of existing too, Fire and Magma being so much alike and Wind being basically just a far worse version of Flying. Some of these types are really cool ideas, I will give credit where credit is due; Food, Magic, and Time are really cool type concepts that work well with the game. Light as a concept has already been covered in the official games with Fairy, likewise Fear is basically just Dark, and despite Cosmic sounding like it should be really powerful it's honestly just mediocre. Chaos is essentially the Shadow Pokemon concept as its own type but the result is pretty damn messy, with most Chaos-types getting OHKO'd if they have a dual typing or if you've had any chance to set-up. This especially doesn't bode well with the later parts of the game where so many battles turn into "whoever can get consistent OHKOs is the winner", and remember that Chaos is weak to everything. The idea is interesting but the way this game is laid-out by the time you get reliable access to the type, well it's basically better to use anything else. Honestly, I found myself rocking two Ice-types in my final team (with a third used near the start of the game before being replaced later on) because most things are hit neutral by it or are just outright weak to it. Seriously, Ice-types in the canon games are depressingly underpowered 99% of the time so seeing them be useful in this game of all things was a nice surprise. I already love the Ice-type so I was content using them regardless, but if you're not a fan then good luck getting by without at least one.

But hey, this game has damn near 5000 Pokemon. So surely the variety must be great, surely the game must do something with this expansive list of creatures! ...noooooo. No, it does not. Before the true final boss (I'll cover it later) my Pokedex sat at not even 2000 Pokemon seen... think about that, really truly honestly think about that. But even worse is that this is counting getting species through wonder trading and official Pokemon too, as well as creatures you can't even catch until the very end or post-postgame. I'm sorry but this is absolutely unforgiveable and just shows what would happen if Game Freak caved and gave us the National Dex back now, with so many of those thousands of Pokemon being unused with one exception that I do NOT count since it's an absolute copout. The crux of this issue comes with the aforementioned stolen sprites, because good fucking god so many of the near-5000 Pokemon are not even original designs. Rather it feels like the creators saw a cool looking sprite online and chose to add it to their game just because they could. This is especially evident in a series of Smash Bros fighters being added near one another with sprites by the same artist, same for a load of Digimon, same for a bunch of My Little Pony characters, same for so many batches of stolen regional form ideas, same for someone's weird human-Pokemon hybrid fetish... do you see the problem? There's so much shit in this game just for the sake of having so much shit in this game. The devs don't give a fuck about the integrity of the content they've added, it's just a factory line of so many Pokemon you won't see let alone use for yourself unless you play on a randomizer and happen to see them or wonder trade and happen to see them. This game would've been fine with the official Pokemon and the fakemon actually seen in the region itself, maybe leave some of the references in there... finding Bowser in a fridge is absurd and funny, for example, and he can mega evolve into Giga Bowser later on too. Stuff that has a place in the game world, please do keep it. But Pikachu with a SpongeBob face is an addition I didn't even know was in the game until I looked through the wiki and found it by chance. Cut this crap out or give it a place in the game. So many of these Pokemon are just useless too with shitty stats (originally mistyped as "shats" which only accentuates the point) and fuck-all for useful moves. And this isn't necessarily a Pokemon Clover situation where the game is balanced enough to beat it with a team made-up of mostly what you want, because...

The difficulty in this game is ass. Sure it starts out fine and dandy and nothing is extremely hard on the main paths. Y'know, ignoring the clusterfuck of types you have to just wrestle with or use the wiki for. But it has a really bad habit of "fuck you" moments, where you'll get stuck in a battle against something you obviously can't beat until so much later into the game and are just forced to lose. Yes, Xenoblade has unique monsters like this too, but the difference is you aren't losing money nor set back too terribly far if you happen to come across these guys too early. Not to mention you at least have a chance at escaping, whereas the Pokemon mechanics here means you'll either be too low-levelled to run away or you're stuck in a trainer battle and have to let your team die anyways. Fun game design. But outside of the fuck you moments, the postgame is where whatever design integrity... all, like, 1% of it... goes out of the window. I've seen people call this part of the game difficult or hard, but after playing this son of a bitch all the way through I think I can say it's in fact neither of those descriptors. Rather, two other words fit it much better: Boring and unfair. The main story has a fair share of potentially Uber-tier Pokemon but that's at least one maybe two per team and they're given reasonable enough stats like real Pokemon would be. The postgame, however, has no respect for your time and is constantly tossing out boss monsters well into and above the 900 BST range. In a few cases, there's more than one of them and in one apparently infamous case you get to fight a whole team of them. Finally calling back to my item comment earlier on, this is where the game also takes the piss; everything with the stupidly high stats loves to have over-time recovery in not just Leftovers but the newly added buffed variants that restore even more HP, or better yet the fuck off and die Corrupt Orb. This mistake has been used sparingly by NPCs prior to the postgame, but in the postgame it feels like everything has it and it is just not fun. What this item does is increase the holder's stats every turn, for free, no matter what. Now there is a battle against a Phione, of all things, holding this orb that becomes a nightmare if you don't stop the item early on. So imagine, if you will, something with 200+ in both defences holding it. It spirals way too fast and turns battling into games of praying you can predict well enough with Knock Off and/or pack at least one Toxic user, or else you just get steamrolled and lose. By the time the game finally gives you one for yourself, it's right at the end of the postgame. As in, quite literally literally: just before the true final boss is when you have a chance at getting it for yourself... so the devs obviously know how broken this thing is, yet happily gave it to NPCs pre-League. It's not impossible to counter as mentioned, but it is annoying and incredibly unfun to have to make sure you pack at least one Knock Off user and at least one Toxic user as a backup because this item on super bulky boss monsters is EVERYWHERE during the postgame. Yet even if a boss doesn't have this item the game won't respect your time, often giving them free HP recovery and moves that also recover HP or pile-on stat boosts. This is where the game absolutely turns into "whoever can get consistent OHKOs is the winner" because you have to haul ass before whatever monstrosity of game design fucks you up first, and in fairness it is sometimes satisfying to be trading OHKOs with the opponent... if they're on-par with you. But getting swept by Uber-tiers, hell swept by Pokemon who I would argue to be banned from even AG-tier, isn't insightful to the flaws of your team or something to show where you could've tried harder. It's just annoying. Keep in mind as well that you'll still be wrestling with the stupid amount of new types and the possible combination your opponent could be whilst also figuring out how bulky and/or strong it is. I'm just saying there's a real good reason why your chance for the Corrupt Orb is saved until the very end and why these boss monsters are post-postgame only unless you absolutely luck out on wonder trade.

The sad thing is, the bad balance doesn't just end there. I wish it did, but no. Unfortunately not. Because this game does not respect your time, nor you as a player. And I mean that. I really, really mean that. The postgame loves to just toss out an absurd amount of trainers at you, many of them not optional or incredibly difficult to avoid, and call that a "challenge". Most of the time you're still dealing with wild Pokemon encounters too. This turns so much of the game into a resource drain leading to a boss fight that you're unlikely to be fully prepared for at that point, encouraging cheap plays and overpowered moves/Pokemon to blast through everything. There's a particular moment where this was absolutely felt and a horrendous showing of the devs not knowing how to video game in the trip back from the Sloggoth Pits... after a tough boss fight, itself instantly followed-up with by another boss, you've got to leave the long winding path you came back from as it is infested with so many overworld encounters that the game would sometimes lag. As well as some more trainer encounters. After fighting trainers along the way... and natural wild Pokemon spawns are still happening. Fuck's sake. It gets so bad that it becomes difficult to open the overworld menu to heal your team. You'll be constantly dragged into fights against the same pretty strong Pokemon over and over again. It is an absolute nightmare, and not even the last time the game pulls something like this. During the should-be finale of the postgame where you're traversing many worlds of various types to fight a boss at the end, they are so often filled with a stupid amount of trainers that exist only to waste your PP and HP along with yet more wild encounters. Another dungeon before this has a similar issue, although at least those fights are primarily double battles so you get free healing from it... bugger me backwards though, it becomes absolutely exhausting to play. What starts out as a decent challenge turns into exhaustion before the halfway point, and yes before the halfway point because so much of this game IS the postgame. And this leads into another issue for me.

So, the tone of this game. I alluded to it earlier and I'm going to go into it properly now. This game starts out as a funny (..."funny") haha adventure where you have rivals named Zaydolf and Anne and the region's economy is seemingly taken over by Juvite Corporation. If you haven't figured out where this all goes by now, I'll be amazed because this game is incredibly unsubtle in being a "lmao hitler" story. Genuinely, the game's story is just your rival being Hitler except the devs didn't have the gall to name him that and thought giving him a slightly different name would lampshade what they're doing. But no, it is just your rival being Hitler and turning on the Juvites with his Team Wack... down to building a purification camp, which is just. Uncomfortable? It's not played for laughs, is the thing. You see Zaydolf's lot taking in Juvites as they beg to be let go and they talk down to them without any humor or lampshading to it, it's just really really uncomfortable. But worse still, somehow this game manages to be less subtle than Pokemon Clover; the game that literally had Hitler in it. Clover's Hitler sidequest is a funny little ditty that sees you following him as he tries to get his art in a museum, but thanks to your limited player actions he ends up becoming a military weapon developer instead. Pokemon Wack makes Zaydolf literally just Hitler. He follows basically the same actions, being an art reject who loathes a certain group and then ends up becoming a dictator who wants to exterminate said group in a vile manner. The only and I mean only lampshade that comes of this is when you beat him for a final time and he asks for your forgiveness. Obviously I gave the correct answer of no and he actually acknowledges that the force possessing him only brought his inner dark desires to the forefront of his person, rather than inspiring him to do something he otherwise wouldn't have. It's a piece of shit "story" and better yet you can actually skip your first meetings with both Zaydolf and Anne, because this game is really well coded. It's honestly the funniest part of the game, like logically you wouldn't even know these guys but they talk about recognizing you and wanting to be your friend and all that... but I didn't even do their first encounters until way late into the game, just to see what I could get away with.

...unfortunately I've already mentioned it, that Zaydolf turns out to have been possessed by something else. This is where Pokemon Wack absolutely shits the bed. If it were just this Hitler story in a crappily made Pokemon world with Family Guy-tier humor, I'd probably respect it more for knowing what it wants to do. But... no. Pokemon Wack absolutely shits the bed when you go into cyberspace and everything starts turning to pot, with attempts at unnerving the player with edgy Photoshop "Pokemon" designs and invisible NPCs talking about how humanity sucks and other philosophical subjects (well, Reddit's definition of the word). For context, this comes not long after you've battled the Nuclear-team gym leader, Hiroshima, in Cherno City. Hiroshima by the way is a samurai who speaks like a stereotyped Asian. Not even a full hour later though, the game is demanding you take it seriously. And yet after that the game is back to its normal wacky antics for the most part, save for some callbacks/vague hints about what's to come. And what's to come... well I already said, the game fucking shits itself.

The beginning of Pokemon Wack's postgame sees you in a corrupt other world that brings to the table more "philosophical" talk with edgy dialogue and NPCs wishing for death and the like. Not a bad opening to be fair. Except we're still dealing with MS Paint Pokemon and your character sprite can be a void, a weird split between Red and Leaf, an attack helicopter, or like it was in my case... some androgynous pink-haired character wearing short-shorts and a crop-top. These aspects alone really distract from the game trying to be more serious, and it genuinely only gets worse from here because not long after this you go and find Anne's imprisoned father who is now being used by this dark force ("HIM") to try and invade the Pokemon world. So the solution, obviously, is to go into space! ...but to get into space you need to finish a rocket, and the rocket piece you're tasked with getting is somehow up in the arctic region. This is honestly a really cool idea and I did love wandering around the snowy areas at first, encountering things Empoleon making it feel extra fitting. But as you journey further on it turns into this out of place story about a tribe turned into cannibals with eldritch Pokemon inspired by (if you somehow didn't already guess) H.P. Lovecraft mythos now frequently appearing. Again... whilst you can look like a fucking femboy stripper and whilst so many Pokemon use crappy MSPaint sprites and have stupid cries. This is where the game fully shits itself, in my eyes, as it demands to be taken seriously over what genuinely could've been a pretty interesting story. But Pokemon Wack has NO RIGHT to pull this card out after doing a "he's literally hitler" story just a couple hours prior to all of this. The game just becomes super serious and edgy and it doesn't fit, it really doesn't fit. Also this portion of the game has a room full of gore-ish, so that wasn't cool. Fuck off.

Yet worse again though? The game honestly PEAKS during the transition from earth to space. Following the cannibal story you have to do an incredibly tedious puzzle cave to fight Kyogre, Groudon, and Rayquaza which is about where I would've given-up if I didn't figure out the Rayquaza maze quicker than expected. But as you get launched into space, you have to fight a number of (canon) legendaries to prove your worth whilst Don't Stop Me Now plays in the background. This level of absurdity is something that the game even tries to do again a second time yet absolutely fails at it, because it somehow missed what made this first sequence so great; it's relatively quick and feels appropriately grand with a super hype, feel-good song blaring in the background. It is so much fun and actually got me to smile, I can't lie. This really is where the game just does peak, because it's unfortunately mostly downhill from then on... trying to play itself deadly serious and do this Lovecraft-inspired story about otherworldly monsters of epic proportion and how terrible things were destined to happen because of HIM and yadda yadda yadda... again it's really hard to care when this game is so at odds with its own tone. Reminder; the game starts off with you fighting an artist named Zaydolf, but now wants you to take his story contributions seriously as you explore the moon for ooo spooky monsters (more than half of them are an Evangelion reference btw) and fight not-Exodia. Whilst NPCs are STILL using the Shia LaBeouf Pokemon and mega Clefable which is a Sailor Moon reference. Pick a tone and STICK TO IT. Genuinely, more than half of this game is trying to be the edgy Lovecraft mythos despite the front of the game being lmao Hitler and a huge majority of the Pokedex comprising of stupid meme shit and Gardevoir with huge ass tits. This game had Bowser HIDING IN A FUCKING FRIDGE AND WANTS ME TO TAKE IT SERIOUSLY AT THE SAME TIME. OK, yes, EarthBound arguably has a similar problem with it turning into a cosmic destroyer plot, but it was set-up as such from the start. It wasn't a plot about Ness wanting to beat-up stray animals and bystanders that turned into existential dread about the oncoming death of everything and when it does want you to take itself more seriously, it basically revokes many of the comedic aspects to show you the full gravity of the situation. Pokemon Wack on the other hand is still doing the funny anime references whilst trying to do a serious story. You can deadass have the twin towers on your party as all this super serious edgelord crap is going down, it does NOT work.

...and yet somehow the devs still find a way to surprise in all the worse ways, because the edgelord comment really rings true when you get sent to another dimension full of ooo scaryyyy things. Except the devs didn't know how to make actually scary things so the only time I was scared was because I stupidly played at 4am whilst half-awake and wasn't expecting Nurse Joy to jumpscare me with a loud sound and JPEG face. This particular instance turns into a battle by the way, one that goes on for way too long and thus quickly loses any scare factor it had. Seriously... you heal your team and Nurse Joy turns into a monster thing that uses a corrupt, messed-up Chansey to fight you. That's an unnerving concept. But the battle goes on for so fucking long that the tediousness of the situation takes over any potential scariness it had. There's another part in the game that forces you to watch a train JPEG kill an NPC with a blood splat PNG covering the screen, and you fight the bloody remains which calls you a "stain on the world"... honestly this is another point where I nearly gave up, because I just tapped out so damn hard.

I could list so many aspects of this game that don't work and go against the name and concept of it. But I'd be here alllllll fucking day and I've already typed out way too much. So to cap off my point, it turns out that none of the horrific story even mattered! Because HIM, all along, was the game itself trying to fight you and get you to quit playing. This, ladies and germs, shows to me that the devs did not give a single FUCK about what they were doing. Yet, somehow, it leads into a cool final fight against your own team... stolen directly from Pokemon Clover, but cool regardless. It also would've been a cool final fight if it were actually the final fight, but no the game keeps taking the piss with a true final boss that has you fight all near-5000 Pokemon in the game. In one run. One team, one chance. If it weren't for so much of my team being outright overpowered I definitely would've given in here but I persisted, regretfully, and just finished the piece of shit. My reward was another Evangelion reference, not even a good one, they didn't even play the correct music and the credits that played were the same as the credits that led into the postgame plot. They actually didn't try with this one. It's also why I don't count this final rush as using all the Pokemon the game has to offer, because it is the literal last postgame fight and I will bet actual money that not even 100 people played the game to this point. I am dead serious. I usually go "well statistically speaking..." but if most people I've seen complained about the tedium of the moon encounters, which is only barely the halfway point of the game, then I severely doubt many of them made it past all the other planets. Let alone the horror-themed worlds, or the type-themed worlds, which is more of the same shit except Oops! All Corrupt Orb!

The more I recalled my time with this game, the more I recalled just how much I hated. I left it with a "thank fuck that's over feeling" but still remembering the genuinely fun moments it had... now actually writing a review, though, I realize I probably only had fun with most of those moments (excluding the first Don't Stop Me Now sequence because that will always be great) because they were a break from the rest of the game's unbalanced and bipolar bullshit. Look, the idea of a silly Pokemon game isn't a bad one. Nor is the idea of a horror-themed Pokemon game. But Pokemon Wack is barely one of these, with so much of the humor barely being there and only the most absurd of jokes getting me by surprise (Bowser in the fridge and a swimmer NPC who turns into a door post-battle, to name a couple I still think are funny) whilst the game is too cowardly to make anything above Family Guy-level humor. For real... I imagine this is the kind of game most people imagine Pokemon Clover is, except no Clover actually embraces the cringe nature of its NPCs even when delivering a more intriguing story. Pokemon Wack on the other hand is too cowardly to use naughty words whilst inexplicably recolouring the burglar sprite to be a black man. Come the fuck on. At least Clover had balls to use dirty, offbeat language to get cringing laughs out of you.

Then there's the horror themed elements. This game isn't a Pokemon-themed horror game when it turns into this, because it's all fakemon and boss monsters that barely count as Pokemon; the official Pokemon are only to be found as fodder or if you're using any yourself, or fighting with Zaydolf or Anne who use some official Pokemon. It's a tryhard "horror" game that happens to be made with a Pokemon game engine, the most it doing being a handful of fuck you jumpscares or edgy MS Paint gore designs that really honestly just remind me of an edgy Pokemon game I made when I was 13 and about to kill myself. Except even THAT had more to do with actual Pokemon than Wack does. What Wack does really is the equivalent of a scary maze game, setting you up with something innocuous (ignoring the attempts at edgy humor, anyways) before pushing "spooky" shit into your face whether you like it or not. And again this is all still done with MS Paint, and y'know what some designs still look cool in the style but I cannot and will not take your horror game seriously if it is all drawn shoddily with the pencil tool. Try to put actual effort in, don't be an edgy tryhard.

I said it earlier, I'll say it again. This game does NOT respect you, as a player. It exists only to waste time whilst admitting to trying to get you to quit. This isn't some obscure art experiment that's being clever, it's a 13 year old thinking blood and guts in a Pokemon game is SO SUPER DUPER COOOOOL!!! except this 13 year old can't program very well nor draw in anything except the good ole Paint program. It's embarrassing how this should-be silly game demands you listen to it when it wants to tell an actual story, only to then at the end say "Yeah none of this mattered and none of this is real lol". Not only does it make the whole endeavor feel pointless but it undermines any sense of integration into a larger world this game would've had. It already had basically zero, don't get me wrong, but you could at least rationalize some of it as fitting into the Pokemon world. Then they drank one too many beers, pissed all over the carpet and thought they were being clever whilst doing so. Fangames do exist in a world of their own, truly, but at least the likes of Clover, Xenoverse, and Unbound (unrelated note: yes I am still playing that one I know I'm taking forever on it) do try to make themselves feel like some part of the official franchise's world. Pokemon Wack, just like the people who made it, doesn't give a shit. It wants to do funny hitler memes, then it wants to do Lovecraft but worse in every way, then it wants to be edgy indie game of the week for that sweet markiplier faceman reaction, and then it crumbles under its own weight and decides to pull the card of "nothing matters because I said nothing matters, which makes this game super clever now"... nah. Fuck this game.

This game was a shockingly quick playthrough, ironic given the content it boasts. Most of it is just optional side-fluff that mainly relates to canon Pokemon though, ones that haven't received many if any changes and as such why bother using them when the game is also boasting so many original creations? ...so many original creations that aren't even original. This game not only steals its ideas and its spritework, but it steals your time too. This barely even gets the 1-star I'm leaving it with. Play literally any other fangame, it'll either be actually good or so bad you can laugh at it. This one just outright sucks.

And just in case I need to further "prove" I finished this mistake,
https://i.imgur.com/lRiTIrJ.png
Wack.

The 5-stars on this one is very genuine. No meme, no joke, no bullshit: I fully believe this game deserves the rating. Not only is it what I now consider to be my favourite Pokemon fangame, but also what I would say is the BEST Pokemon fangame. This game is honestly peak ROM hacking which I didn't expect from what is at the offset, and at it's core, a silly cringe-worthy 4Chan homage. But the word homage rings very true here, because despite mocking Pokemon itself and those who take it too seriously this is an honest love-letter to fans of the series with many a community reference and wonderfully balanced gameplay that provides a tough but fair challenge which reasonably scales along the journey.

But this game has a reputation which I cannot just ignore here, can I? As already mentioned, Pokemon Clover is a homage to 4Chan and was made by numerous anons from the /vp/ board across years of collective work. Starting life as a simple FireRed edit the game has developed over it's nearly 10 year lifecycle to become what it is today; I can't admit to having played any of these older versions of the game but I was aware of it for most of it's developmental lifespan. I never thought a whole lot of it back then as I had mainly come to know it as "the ROM made by a bunch of fans at once" which alone was a cool concept... but I guess I just never looked into it much more than that. A bit of a shame, but better late than never with this one.

Of course the one thing most people will bring up with this game is the 4Chan aspect, which is very well reflected in the game's tone. Both the creature designs and the humour of the game world. To start with the former, I understand that there are absolutely offensive designs here with many of their basis being abnormal, memes, itself offensive, or in-jokes. However, unlike most edgy/"offensive" ROM hacks I feel Clover does something incredibly well with the creature designs; making them work as actual Pokemon. Your typical edgy-era hack would just put in crudely draw genitals and nazi symbols as "creatures" and call it a day, but the Clover devs really ran with the concepts given and made creatures that- although obviously based on things that wouldn't be on the table for the official games -still look like believable Pokemon. I'm dead serious and I WILL die on this hill, because it's a very valid point. Yeah, names like Furnazi kinda spell out the reference for you but divorced from the name/basis it really does look like an official Pokemon; likewise for Finasoven, the thing it evolves into. Lizakbar and Vandash are perhaps too closely on-the-nose to be justifiably real but still work as creature designs despite that, rather than "let's put in an Osama Bin Laden PNG" or "let's draw blackface on an NPC sprite" which would've been the lazier and cheaper route to get shock factor in there. Then you get the unsubtle designs like Rainglock, Barbarkley, Motherfuck/Hofucno... and especially Kuklux/Kuklan. But dare I say these few unsubtle designs being the exception make them work? ...let me explain; the game builds itself up as having Pokemon based on various edgy/offensive/random concepts, only to then chuck out something like Motherfuck or Kuklux at you out of nowhere. The sudden appearance of these very blatant designs is what makes them humorous, offensive or otherwise. There are then Pokemon designs that aren't even offensive at all and are just genuinely cool ideas for creatures with amazing spritework to bring them to life: The Clovermon selection is a brilliant spread of cringy, offensive, straight-up cool, and everything in-between. It's absolutely wonderful and I loved discovering it throughout my playtime.

For the writing/game world, yeah. What the hell else would you expect from a game like this... basically nothing is off-the-table: If you exist, no doubt some part of your existence is going to be made fun of in this game. And here's the thing, here's my spicy hot-take. I don't mind it; I don't think it's as offensive as people make out; I don't think it existing is wrong, either. Yeah there absolutely are very dated and unfunny lines in this game, I cannot and won't deny that. The second city is a 'feminazi' dig after all, something that hasn't been relevant in years. But it's important to consider the timeline of this game's development, as well as how everyone gets made fun of here. I will emphasize again: EVERYONE gets made fun of here. There are lines of text that insult the game itself, for fuck's sake. I am part of one of the marginalized groups that is mocked in this game and yet I didn't take offense to it despite having received legit harassment before (face-to-face, in the real world, not someone sending petty online messages). Not all of it made me laugh, but there were points where it got me either because it was unexpected or because despite the over exaggerations it felt relatable in a sense. And that's something I think is important, being able to laugh at yourself. If this game was all "haha n-word" and saying gay people should die or whatever, yeah it'd absolutely cross the line from funny to plain offensive. This game not only makes fun of literally everyone, not only exaggerates things to an often unreal degree, but lampshades itself constantly. The neo-nazis for example are portrayed as being right because that's how they see themselves, yet are given trainer names that insult them for being obviously in the wrong. The merchants (no prize for guessing what these are reskinned to be) are constantly around tinfoil-hat NPCs who spout total bull pretty much every point in the game. The gym leader who is literally a nazi gets to have a spot of development by showing how his beliefs came from his bad upbringing and how he's considering a change for the obviously better. The overall writing in this game isn't top-tier or anything, but to write it all off as just being pointlessly offensive isn't exactly correct either. It's edgy, it's shameless, it takes no prisoners; Clover does make fun of people, absolutely. But it does more than just yell slurs at minorities. It goes after everyone, including itself, the people who made it, the people who are playing it, with hyperbolic humour. Whether or not this humour is for you is another question, and if it's not? More power to you. The game does warn you upfront though that the game is going to be edgy/offensive, if Googling it alone somehow didn't give you an idea of what to expect. It's not like it's tricking you into playing an offensive game.

So far all I've really done is defend what I see being the most attacked parts of the game. And honestly I will die on these hills, the game is obviously offensive but it's not promoting an agenda. Whether or not some of the hundreds of anonymous contributors held any kind of beliefs is not for us to know, but a few rotten eggs in this case wouldn't (or shouldn't) taint the entire product. Because it's quite obvious to me that the intent isn't to spread actual hatred; if anyone played this game and had their own sick thoughts "justified" from that, then they would've already been looking for that approval from literally anywhere else. The fault lies on the individual, not the game openly mocking people who believe such things. I digress, though... the serious talk is all well and good. But this is a game, not a political debate. How does the game part of this game hold up?

...well it's Pokemon, big surprise. But with a whole roster of brand-new monsters it really does feel like stepping into a new official release, albeit with this thing most of the main games don't know; challenge. Pokemon Clover features a really great difficulty curve that although starting off as your standard Pokemon fare will gradually turn into making use of EV-trained teams with idealistic moves and items, whilst never once leaving you feeling like you're lagging behind. The game especially takes advantage of this by having its first half not require any serious EV-training of your own, whilst heavily encouraging it in the second half. At the same time however the game makes training-up a competitive grade team incredibly easy very early into this portion of the game, with it being theoretically doable even before then if you're determined enough to max-out a certain Pokemon earlier on. Better still, this game is built around trial-and-error with you expected to lose most major fights at least once before acquiring a victory. Unlike most other difficulty ROM hacks, too, these eventual victories feel satisfying. Playing around with all the new Pokemon to find what works for specific matchups is incredibly fun, with training them up taking no time at all too it's easy to just pop on some background noise as you grind-up a new team member before setting back off into battle and see how your new crew matches-up. Most of this, for me, came during the first half of the game and primarily around the last three gym leaders who ended up exposing some bad type coverage in my team building. Yet all I did was try out a couple new members (two of whom ended up staying for the rest of this part of the game) and found success not long after, rather than being actually roadblocked for what felt like ages because the AI would cheat or have items/Pokemon obviously better than my own. The game actually tests you with engaging team designs, encouraging you to mess around with the options presented before you and using your brain for tactical play. It'll gradually ease you into the tougher battles whilst still giving a nice sprinkle of challenge earlier on without making you feel like you're losing due to bullshit, the game keeps you pretty much on-par with your opponents as much as it can.

For me the best part of this game's difficulty was felt in the second half of it all, where despite things being generally tougher than the first half of the game? I managed to pretty consistently stick with just one team of six that I bred-up. I'd argue few of the Pokemon on said team could be considered exceptionally great, too, especially my water of choice (Substarr). Yet I still got through the game's harshest battles using the team I liked best, because the game wasn't throwing dick moves or unstoppable mountains at me. The game is engaging, satisfying, and rewarding: But most importantly, it's FUN. Pokemon Clover is one of the most fun monster-taming RPGs I've played and ranks up as perhaps the most fun Pokemon experience so far, really only challenged by the Gamecube titles and Emerald Rogue. This is not to dismiss the other mainline Pokemon entries, but as far as games which are instantly memorable for their challenges and how I loved overcoming them? Colo/XD, Emerald Rogue, and now Clover rank as the cream of the crop for me. Of these... I would say Clover is most likely my favourite, considering by the end of the game I had half a box full of backup team members from how many I loved using and swapping-around. This game put a ton of effort into making so many of the Pokemon interesting with not just their (sometimes questionable) designs, but their kits; the type combos, moves both custom and canon, and likewise for abilities. My first team consisted of about eight or nine members swapped in-and-out, with a number of others used for early-/mid-game progression before being replaced, and my second team being more or less a consistent new six Pokemon that I'd caught, bred, and trained-up. This, however, says nothing of the number of Pokemon I wish I could've used and still want to use in future runs of the game. There are so many interesting ones I considered using but eventually settled on a group I became properly attached to, it's a really great feeling and does end up being reminiscent of an official Pokemon experience in that regard. Just exploring this big new world full of unique monsters, finding which ones are your favourites. I can't say enough how fun this game is, because fuck me sideways it's absolutely top-tier stuff.

Graphically this game is absolutely incredible considering this is a fan-project and running on the GBA hardware. I have seen some of the past sprites and despite looking far more rough once upon a time, the version of the game I played had basically nonstop graphical euphoria. Seriously, this is one of the most authentic looking fangames that I've ever seen. The trainer sprites and Pokemon sprites both fit the GBA style to an absolute T with the artists making the absolute most of the GBA's limited sprite sizes whilst still making visually distinct sprites with plenty of life and detail. I of course think of the dabbing youngster sprite whilst typing this sentence out, but in all fairness it is perhaps the best dabbing youngster sprite I've seen. For real though this game is graphically amazing from the creatures, to the trainers, to the backgrounds, tilesets, move effects, dialogue portraits... not everything is 100% original of course but the majority of this stuff obviously is. It's wonderful to see how much care was given to what really could've been a crappily-drawn meme game and it adds so much charm to the experience that I simply cannot gush about it enough.

Story is where this game both did and didn't surprise me. Going in, I didn't really have any story expectations considering this is a 4Chan game. The main villains being a Reddit expy was comically expectant though and I do like how they manage to be stupid goofballs whilst also somehow managing actual impact on the game's events, showing a level of competence despite making Team Star look like actual villains. Coming to a head with a boss showdown that manages to build itself up as something bigger, then get resolved right after with the kind of humour expected at this point in the game. But what did surprise me? How they managed to make these reddit wannabes into something far, far more interesting and a legitimate threat by the second half of the game. Not only that but calling attention to how nonsensical their actions were and describing them as such; it's a great surprise that layers on actual intrigue, especially since until now this is an evil team whose highlights include trying to steal something open-source and housing two weak fodder grunts that randomly shout a gamer word before battle. The fact that the game could make this same villain team into an actual threatening force but an interesting villainous presence, with the elites of this group serving as some of the most challenging, interesting, and fun fights in the entire game. How these guys get their story concluded is really nice as well, having a real-stakes final fight that itself is another fun challenging yet fun battle with incredible music behind it all. Yet despite this, the game never truly loses it's roots as being a primarily funny experience. It has genuine moments for sure but the most of this game- including the post-defeat speech of the main antagonist -carries a humorous tone that is primarily consistent. It takes a little to fully get into gear, but when it gets going it feels like one big enjoyable ride. Whether or not you find it funny is another story; objectively, though, it keeps the tone up really well despite wanting to tell more of an actual story during the latter portions of the playtime.

The soundtrack... yes the soundtrack here was (as far as I know) primarily made by some of the guys behind SiIvaGunner so meme remixes are rampant, and for the GBA they fit really really well. They are remixed pretty much flawlessly for the console limitations, without bastardizing any of them (the first gym battle music- Darude Sandstorm -is a perfect example). All of this despite me not really caring for the SiIvaGunner project; I do genuinely enjoy and appreciate their contributions here though. Not only are the remixes great, but so SO many original tracks are earworm material with how well composed and catchy they are. Always suiting the situation they're used for, being great to hum along with if that's your thing too. Battle themes are especially notable for this, with the Shadow Council theme being one I've gone back to so frequently despite hearing it five times in one sitting. Something like that is how you know you've struck gold, having a player wanting to obsessively listen to your soundtrack after they've already been hearing it for ours on end. Full props to everyone who contributed their musical talents, because there are very few songs I didn't care for. So many songs got me hyped-up, a lot of sudden meme remixes got actual laughs out of me when they appeared, and my work playlist got a fuckton bigger because of this game. Give it a listen... or play the game to hear it all in context. Either works.

I already said it at the start of this lengthy behemoth of a review. But this game is overall fantastic, easily what I consider the best Pokemon fangame and currently my favourite one too. The big fuss with this game is surrounding the content within it, but after having it hyped up I really was left asking "Is that it?" because all-in-all it wasn't anything outstandingly offensive. Maybe my unfortunate real-world exposures have left my senses simply fucked, but I really can't think of anything that genuinely made me go "Damn that's gonna hurt someone". It's a Pokemon game with embarrassing humour and designs that range from awesome to Kuklan, this is the kind of thing where you just have to embrace it and realize- as said -it IS just a game at the end of the day. If you're getting legitimately angry or offended over a game that openly advertises itself as having lowbrow humour, then quite frankly I don't think you have the right priorities in life. Feel free to have your own opinion of course: You can dislike this game, I have no issues there. But disliking it and being hurt or offended by it are completely different things.

I love this game so, so much. Far more than I ever expected to; I went in thinking it'd be just an alright but fun game with some stanky humour, but got one of the best Pokemon experiences to date. It is so shameless that I can't help but laugh along with the funny moments, or cringe-up at the shameful/edgy moments. And I do feel like that was at least half of the intent on part of the team behind this monolithic project, considering the origins behind it and all. If you're a fan of Pokemon and can tolerate, ignore, or enjoy this kind of humour then I 100% recommend this game to you. This is an absolute gem of a game that deserves to be known as more than just "the offensive 4Chan game", because it has so clearly gone above and beyond that original premise to become something truly special. It is absolutely packed with content, and I completed it all. Pokemon Clover is such a special piece of work, such an amazing video game experience, that for the first time in years I was compelled to complete the Pokedex all the way. This game is a golden nugget, a crown jewel, an absolute diamond of fangames. And as my log dates show, I did sit on this review for a while because I had so much to say and so much to think on. Even retrospectively, this game really sticks out as something truly great in my mind.

Despite going the completionist route, I still didn't want to put this one down when I was finished with it. One more time now... I fucking loved this game. Will absolutely be replaying it again in future, for many years to come. Godspeed, Clover devs. Thanks for all your hard work.

Boy, oh boy, oh boy... this one was a trip. When I first discovered this game many, many years ago I was absolutely in love with it. It was one of the first Pokemon RPG Maker fangames I played, with the other being Fusion Generation of all things. At the time though I vastly preferred this game and would spend a lot more time with it, playing religiously and even dabbling in customized sprites for my player (however shitty they were, it was still cool to me). Patiently waiting for updates to come along to add more to the story, to add more content, to expand on what I was loving so much at the time... nowadays? ...yeesh I really was having a phase back then, what the hell. Either a strong 'angsty' phase or I was just enamored at the scope of the fanmade project, what with it being one of the first fanmade Pokemon games I played that wasn't a ROM hack and thus giving it a lot more room to flourish (I know ROM hacks have come a massive way since then but at the time they were quite limited despite still showing plenty of promise).

Look, I'll get this out of the way now: I don't think this game is bad on the whole. But I definitely think the positives that tend to stick with people a lot more, and that's wholly understandable because the custom content on offer here is quite frankly incredible. Bringing a TCG-only concept in Deltas to a video game form with a high number of uniquely sprited creature forms is the main selling point people will pass around with this game, and that's probably because it's something this game does do fantastically. The Deltas are handled pretty much perfectly with their unique typings and designs complimenting them incredibly well, as well as their new moves and abilities providing new leases of life for them. In addition, some Pokemon get multiple Delta variants which gives you a TON of potential options to run if you want to use a team of just these new forms. Unfortunately I feel the Delta forms suffer from a problem similar to many main series regional variants; lack of base-stat changes. Despite types, moves, and abilities making up a lot of what makes a Pokemon function it is ultimately the base stats that gives them their niches. And some of these typings do not go well with the rest of a Pokemon's kit, and can even contrast the lore given. Delta Dodrio, for example, is apparently potent and mental manipulation with its psychic abilities... and is forced into being a physical attacker because that's what OG Dodrio's stat spread leans into. Metagross has two Delta forms but they're sharing the exactly same base stat spread, except for one of them which gets a new alternate Mega form with its own stats. But that still, in my opinion, limits what you can do with it. What hurts most though is how Pokemon who previous had lackluster stats still have lackluster stats in their Delta forms, and this would be fine and dandy if this were the kind of game where you can run what you want reliably enough. But unless you play on easy, which strips this game of balancing merits given it just emulates the official games, these Pokemon will still remain as unfortunate collection-only creatures. It really, really sucks because a good amount of Deltas do function well. But then there are ones who really missed out because of the devs refusing to give them differing stats, I mean shit the whole point is that they mutated which would've been the perfect chance to give them even slight stat changes. This is on the same level as many Paradox Pokemon not getting meaningful stat changes (Iron Thorns...) and- as mentioned -many canon regional forms having barely if any stat changes to suit their new niches. Again, I want to stress a good amount of the Deltas do work and work well, but with how many there are there's undoubtedly plenty that just got left behind due to refusal to let them be improved.

Since I brought it up, may as well mention... the difficulty. It honestly isn't too bad to begin with. It feels reasonable enough at first, with the 1st gym even being pushed back a bit to adjust for the level curve. And then the 2nd gym leader has a Mega Beedrill, which is really an omen of things to come. Legendries worm their way into gym leader teams pre-postgame too... except this is a privilege even the Elite Four do not get. Even on hard mode, the Elite Four do not get legendary Pokemon, despite two of the later gym leaders having them on both normal and EASY. Now, admittedly, this isn't a Radical Red situation where the game felt fun at first and gradually steamed my kettle until I fucking hated every major fight; the difficulty spikes and dips as frequently as my bipolar self does. But this itself feels like a bit of a problem... when you go from "wow, what the fuck" to "wow, that was kinda fun" so frequently I'm just left confused? I played on normal difficulty for the record. It felt like a decently good challenge for much of the game but incidents like a 2nd gym Mega Beedrill and random-ass Cresselia in a gym battle are not a pleasant surprise. The fact that things weeble-wobble so much with the difficulty, though, is not a lot of fun.

To give points to the balancing, however, is that legendary Pokemon are typically reserved for boss fights. And given the whole thing of this game is people praising these things like the gods they arguably really are, it makes sense that you'd come across them for big encounters. In that regard I don't mind the use of legendary Pokemon. You can also actually see it coming and have ample time to prepare as a result, not to mention they aren't typically given the strongest stats/moves until later on into the game. It doesn't expect the world of you right away... all the time, anyways. As mentioned there are still a number of stupid battles in here and the constantly shifting difficulty makes the whole thing feel off. Still, credit where credit is due, they didn't do a Radical Red for most of the game.

But this game is also touted as a pinnacle of Pokemon fangame writing! It's very story-heavy after all and intends on making the most of the potential for mature themes. So, what is this supposed cornerstone of Pokemon fanfics like? ...needlessly edgy. OK I know that's an easy way to describe it but can you blame me? Considering, though, that they already had a non-edgy story toggle which had to be reworked BECAUSE the non-edgy story made less sense than the intended edgier one, I would say it's a valid point to bring up. Honestly, I don't have issues with the ideas here; people praising legendary Pokemon like a cult is a very real and very interesting idea. Considering the in-universe lore these powerful creatures are given, it's not unreasonable to think that there would be nutjobs out there that praise them and commit heinous acts in their name and the like. But it's the actual execution I'm not a big fan of. Insurgence has a pretty good setup that is quickly exchanged for edge points in the mere opening hours of the game... I understand something like a sacrifice isn't going to be squeaky-clean, exactly, but showing us this off the bat doesn't do much. The opening is already really good with given backstory and having your character needing to escape a cult's clutches after getting your memories drained, that alone is a strong opener that sets-up the antagonists well. Having ooo aaa bloody sacrifice isn't doing much else at this point in the game but making you realize how old this game is, like if it'd come later down the line when the cult is desperate? That'd still be a bit edgy, sure, but it wouldn't come off quite as forceful. Having a character call things 'edgy' honestly didn't help matters much either, given being self-aware whilst still continuing to do the thing you are calling out is fucking stupid. But most people have by now called this game's plot out on the edge, so I'll leave it alone. Because frankly being edgy isn't the story's only problem. Plot points tend to get overlooked and eventually resolved with really poor conclusions, because there is too much shit going on. Genuinely at times this feels like a Dungeon Master's first module that was heavily inspired by their anime binge (an infamously awful "I'm chaotic good" line in the game is not helping to change my mind on this) because so little of this feels satisfyingly coherent... or coherent, period. There's just so many cults to follow along with, each with multiple unique individuals that have to get screentime; said cults also have their own ideals and personal plots that we need to be informed about and follow to a degree; there's a character set-up to be a major player with an honestly interesting concept behind him that gets IGNORED until it's way too late; two rival characters that add fuck-all to the game despite one having relations to one of the cults (how they messed that up, I don't know); one of the characters we see from the start of the game doesn't do shit to try and actually present a roadblock to the player until the end of the game; there's a whole otherworldly escapade with Giratina wackos and an anime-esque boss fight; an antagonist who's meant to be sympathetic yet ends up being anything but that... there's so much junk going on and you're never given a singular goal to strive towards until the game outright tells you who the main bad guy is supposed to be and then you beat them and don't feel very satisfied because it's over about as quick as it was introduced. What the fucking shit are people smoking to say this is the best story a Pokemon fangame has and why in the hell did I used to agree with those potheads? It's a mess, it's such a massive mess. The only salvations come in select cool/interesting moments and the unintentionally funny dialogue. But as an entirety, this plot blows chunks. The edginess is honestly such a minor issue by comparison, because the edgy content exists within this massive lump of confused contrivances and threads that jump around like a frog on crack. If it were a GOOD story with edgy content that'd be one thing... but this is an incoherent story with edgy content, and as such the core of the plot is broken. It is not good, it can barely be called decent at best and that's if you're generous.

Characters do not get proper time to develop, 90% of the plot threads go basically nowhere and those that do have lame resolutions when they eventually wrap-up: The story wants to do so many things at once whilst boasting a darker tint on the Pokemon world. But because it's such a mess of wet egg noodles, the story isn't given the breathing room to develop and properly embrace the themes it sets-up; that's why is goes from 'dark yet serious' to 'ow the edge' so quickly. It is much too concerned with packing as many cool ideas into it as possible rather than creating something truly impactful and memorable, hence the comparison to DM's first D&D module earlier. Ugh... love how I wanted to keep the "lmao edgy" point alone but ended up having to bring it back to make my argument. This plot isn't unsalvageable, at least not at its concept. In it's current form, though, it would need so many changes and rewrites to make it good- nevermind excellent -that you'd be better off just making it again from the ground-up.

So... the story is total ass, the difficulty is as inconsistent as my emotional state, and the soundtrack mixes genuinely great original compositions with RPG maker defaults. What does this game have going for it, especially since I'm not giving it lower than 3-stars? The gameplay. Yes, I fucking know, I rambled about the bipolar battle difficulties, but hear me out here. The core gameplay is Pokemon... big surprise I know, but Pokemon is fun. Really fun. And this game presents you with plenty of options to build your team and take on the world around you, along with many really well-constructed locations to explore and side-quests to complete in which to get some rarer Delta species. It rewards you for going out of your way to get more involved with the world, it feels genuinely satisfying to build-up a team and see what side content will bring to the table. Whilst in a way there is a similar level of content overload akin to Radical Red here, I feel it's generally spread out enough to not feel overwhelming. There are a ton of Deltas, new Megas, armored forms, even a couple exclusive legendary Pokemon included just for this game. But it's introduced gradually enough to not feel like you're getting pushed into the deep end after a couple hours of gameplay, this despite an early bad omen in 2nd gym Mega motherfucking Beedrill. The actual GAMEPLAY of the GAME is a lot of fun and is what kept me going on this playthrough, even with the now constantly mentioned wobbly difficulty curving/spiking feeling like a sledgehammer to the face at times. But unlike Radical Red where I just wanted it to be over, I kept going because it was more fun than frustrating. The bullshit is still bullshit at the end of the day, though, and I wouldn't blame anyone for being turned away by it. Because at points I was thinking of dropping the game early... yet, again; you get so many options and get rewarded for seeking out these options that you're never really railroaded into needing a specific answer to every solution. There are times where it may feel like that and I imagine hard difficulty might make that more apparent, but for the default difficulty setting you can honestly get by mostly fine. Just don't let the bipolar difficulty spikes turn you away, because when those bags of tricks are shown off it tends to become pretty simple in overcoming them shortly afterwards.

Man oh man, this was a ride and a half... I'll be amazed if anyone reads all this, and I'll be even more amazed if anyone reads all this whilst agreeing with me. Especially in regards to my story critiques. But all-in-all, this game is a mediocre mess. It's what people exaggerate Kingdom Hearts to be like, except it actually exists. The shitty story only really exists to give you excuses to visit more and more locations with tons of stuff to do, and that doesn't excuse the piss-poor plot... but whilst not giving a shit about said plot, the fun of the gameplay loop becomes very apparent and really is what kept me going through this one. I seriously can't imagine what younger me was thinking in agreeing with the people calling this game the best Pokemon fangame, but I wouldn't blame anyone coming here just to play around with the number of new options given to you. What an incredible disaster.

Despite going in knowing this game has had a reputation in the past, I wanted to give it a genuine go. A fair shake, form my own opinions... EV training is something I usually quite enjoy, and I did partake in my fair share of competitive Pokemon from the Black/White era up until the end of the Sun/Moon era. The premise for this hack honestly seemed really promising to me as a result! And what I got was a technically good game... that is generally unenjoyable to play through. Unfortunately so, because I really liked the opening to this game and the first gym battle provided a good taste of what should've followed.

The balancing for this game is all over the place. On the one hand you get a lot of resources off the bat- too much all at once I would argue -but on the other hand you're left starved of resources that the enemy gets access to WAY before you can. As early as the third gym you will be fighting mega evolutions fairly consistently, with even your rival and AI partner getting access to megas before you can. When DO you get megas though? After Sabrina. Alright... so for most of the early game and part of the mid game you're fighting a generally uphill battle; keep in mind, uphill. Not impossible. Not even always unfair. But a lot of the time it comes down to finding a specific Pokemon to counter the boss, which by itself isn't a bad idea. However: The game boasts custom balancing, from changing existing Pokemon to adding custom moves and even entirely new forms. Though it's not impossible to work with these, often times the specific solutions to boss fights are using Pokemon that weren't even changed and/or were already really good in the real competitive scene. In a nutshell, it feels like you should "get meta" or really just suffer because of it.

The balancing overall feels out of wack. I felt this most with Lavender Town: The boss fight against Marowak is a Level 58 WITH ADDED STAT BOOSTS and coverage moves whilst your level cap is 56... and then directly after that you're fighting Level 42-ish Pokemon with moves like Scary Face. Boss encounters should obviously be a noticeable challenge but a difference this huge in the same area (one room apart no less) is absolutely nuts. Honestly the Silph Co tower made this feel a bit evident too, with how there are three consecutive boss fights (in all fairness you get a free heal and have easy access to a full team heal as well); one being your rival, which is fairly well balanced and decently enjoyable. The second being a tag fight against Archer and Ariana, which is where the mega evolution starvation was especially felt... on top of the AI partner really being set up to fail, from having a lead Pokemon that instantly buffs the opposing Gothitelle to being given a Mega Sceptile that is stuck with Mega Drain and Dragonbreath. Keeping in mind the enemies at this point have long had access to competitive strategies and proper moves... including the third Silph Co. boss, Giovanni. In his first encounter he already had a Mega Kangaskhan. He still has that here, fair enough, but he also just gets to have a competitive-grade Garchomp because why wouldn't he. It's a shame because he does have a fairly interesting lead with Hippowdon, only to then devolve into the average OU team.

Really, I feel like a lot of my bitching is...well, bitching. But when they go out of their way to stop you from getting access to competitive items early, as well as making you deal with 30+ experience levels of mega evolutions before you can feel like you're on a level playing field, I would say the janky balancing is fair play to be critiqued. To put it another way, there was rarely a moment where I felt satisfied in my eventual victories... it was more commonly the feeling of "Fucking finally" which isn't a good thing to make the player feel in place of actual satisfaction. I don't mind swapping team members around and using multiple Pokemon, in fact it's something I love to do. But when just about every boss trainer invalidates at least one of the Pokemon you really want to use it's not a fun feeling; it rarely felt like my own fault for having a badly built team, it was more or less the game punishing me for wanting to try out the new toys it's given me. The feeling doesn't get much better as the game goes on, but I wanted to at least get to the elite four before calling it quits. Thankfully I did at least have the will to go on and finish it, but not the post-game...

...but I did nearly run through the game a second time. Yes, seriously, for real, I put myself through it one and a half times. The first playthrough I did on vanilla settings, but for my attempted second run I tried mininal grinding mode since it piqued my interest. Unfortunately, my feelings remained mostly the same. The only real difference is how it cuts down training and catching, because even with an easier bar for entry (no EVs + perfect IVs for everyone) and knowing what fights had what Pokemon? It was really much of the same experience. A fun taste at the beginning that quickly devolves into a hellish uphill battle, which becomes a largely mediocre experience after finally getting the tools your opponents have been using for most of the game. For what it's worth the champion battle felt like a satisfying enough end, although truth be told I don't know how much of that was me being happy to be done with the game.

All I've done so far is complain, but what about positives? Well. The Pokemon buffs do make the game fairly interesting and were a main draw for me... my main issue there is just how a number of Pokemon are still relatively useless despite getting really fun anf exciting changes. Likewise, when the enemy teams aren't your average Smogon tryhard they can be fairly creative. If anything that makes me hate the difficulty discrepancy more though! The devs clearly know how to make an interesting battle yet most of the time opt to just look at what's hot in OU or Ubers and make a team revolving around that. The presentation is good... yeah, that's a positive I don't really think has a drawback to it. At first I would've said the Pokemon availability to be a positive, but the game is so chock-full of encounters to shove in that it was borderline unplayable without inputting an in-game cheat that opens the DexNav without needing to go through random encounters first. Not to mention just how many of these Pokemon have a consistent usage (or even a niche usage) is heavily up for debate, considering every potential option is up against options that also outclass them. It makes for what I think is a pretty redundant meta, even as a singleplayer experience.

People have already torn the unfun enemy AI to shreds by now and I think that plays into the unfun feeling; you can't have a counter in your pocket because the AI just fucking knows about it before you get a chance to use it. The battle that, retrospectively, was the beginning of this game's downfall exemplifies this; the rocket grunt after Nugget Bridge. I lead a Flaaffy with Power Gem, unintentionally giving me a coverage option against his Growlithe. But suspiciously enough the AI swaps out it out before I've shown that I have the move... hhmmmmm... so, you end up playing hot potato with your switches because the AI has help from Jesus, apparently. Also this grunt has a competitive Gabite, because fuck you. As I said earlier in this ramble of a review; it's not impossible, it's just unfun to deal with. Even when I knew it was coming. That's not a good thing. I shouldn't have to say that it's not a good thing. But apparently all-knowing AI is a good thing in someone's eyes...

When this game is fun, it honestly is fun. But when this game drags, you absolutely feel the drag. And unfortunately for every step forward this game takes, it takes a few steps back and ends up as a horrendously mixed bag of trail mix that is technically well made at the core but has so much going against it at the same time. I wish this game were fun because the core of it all is an interesting prospect. There's genuine challenge and difficult, but then there's what they did here...

Apparently the devs use their Discord to mock people who don't like the game? So in the off-chance they read this: You've got great ideas going here, and kudos for wanting to make a more challenging Pokemon game. But this is not how it should be done. The difficulty ramps way too fast and starves you of resources as a way of making you feel underpowered by comparison. I don't hate this hack, I had fun moments with it to the point I decided to seek out shinies for some of my final team members (Lopunny and Flareon if you're curious) but there is just too much of that "Thank fuck that's over" feeling to make the entire game a satisfying experience.

Maybe I'll check the postgame out at some point, or maybe I'll just finish my minimal grind run. But as far as I'm concerned, I'm done with this game unless a major overhaul happens.