I'm afraid I've got some bad news.

Last year when Picross S8 released, I lamented the possibility that the curse of The Simpsons would soon take effect, and the series would jump the shark. As a matter of fact, Picross has indeed leapt multiple sharks in varying degrees of long jump altitude and species of carnivorous fish.

In order to even install the game, I had to delete 200 gigs worth of space to make room for all the 4k ultra wide assets and voice clips of Anime Electabuzz making noises. After I was finally done with installation, I had to sign and read through the terms of service backwards as I recited the lyrics to every song on Collective Soul's self-titled album.

Couldn't you believe it?! I made it to the title screen!

Then the game made me do mandatory tutorials for every version of Picross with fully voiced unskippable dialogue from your least favorite character. [It reads your Discord logs] After fifteen minutes, it asked me if I got all of that and proceeded to place my cursor on "No" by default, and I accidentally hit it as I was mashing the button!!!! Fifteen more minutes of tutorial!!!!

At long last! The familiar menu I've seen so many times before...my beloved Picross. I turned off all the assist functions, I navigated my cursor selection to regular Picross, I went to the first 5x5 puzzle to speed run my way through, the game told me to start, and then I went to fill in my first block....

"You do not have enough in your Nintendo account to purchase a block to put into this puzzle.....please add more."

Now imagine if this were all true and I wasn't shitposting on a review website. My real name is Armin Tamzarian.