I have never been into Pokémon, I was the person who was mystified by other people's obsession with it as a kid, as everyone around me grew up playing Pokémon Crystal and Emerald, I simply watched. I got into RPGs through games like Dragon Quest VIII on the Playstation 2 so by the time I tried to play them later in life I wasn't impressed, Pokémon's brand of monster collecting RPGs wasn't for me, I thought, and I'd rather be playing Dragon Quest Monsters or SMT if I wanted a fix of that.

Not that long ago I gave Pokémon Red a shot and I found it interesting from a historical perspective, as it's a game that heavily borrows from older RPGs in terms of structure, you can see games like DQ3 influencing how it was designed, but I found it that, mearly interesting, as a game it was just fine. I felt similar with Emerald when I played it last year, it's a fine game that I didn't actually connect with on a personal level any deeper than "it's kinda fun in the moment to moment".

This game, Pokémon Violet, is the first time I have actually connected with a game on this franchise on any level deeper than that. Not only is the gameplay much improved but I actually like the cast of characters and exploration that the more open formula gives it. The game is buggy but I didn't really care aside from the occasional funny visual glitch. I was invested and I was having fun, meeting all these characters and building my team, which is something I seldom engaged with in previous games, I just didn't feel the games were compelling enough to bother. I know some older fans may disagree but since I've never liked Pokemon mostly 1 vs 1 combat system (I thought it was something we better left as an archaic remnant in games like Dragon Quest 1) I think sharing experience with your entire team is a really good move that the newer games do, it incentivizes me to actually use all my Pokémon more, and since I can't have a "in battle party" like in most RPGs, I see my entire team as my "active party" and as such all of them gaining experince feels fair to me.

Anyway. I don't actually have that much to say about it, it was more of a catalogue of my personal story with these games than a review. Good game. I love Penny.

I played most of it earlier this year. And I mean I was close to the end and I don't think I'll return to it

This game has a fascinating story with incredible concepts taken from basically every sci-fi story ever written. But the character story structure mixed with the destruction sections that gate your story progression make the pacing a terrible slog. I'm sorry, I think I'd try to finish this game if it wasn't structured like this, or if the destruction sections were just gone because they're really fucking bad even on easy.

I give it a positive score because I genuinely like what the story was doing, I don't dislike this game, far from it but those things I mentioned make it really hard to get the motivation to actually play it. Also the artstyle is impeccable.

So... I have a lot to say about this game.

For those who don't know Emerald Dragon was originally released in 1989 for the PC-88 and then it was ported to other Japanese computers of the time, in the 90s it got versions for the Super Famicom (this one I played) and for the PC-Engine, which is considered the definitive version because it has voice acted animated cutscenes, unfortunately that version is in Japanese only.

Well, as a 1989 RPG released on computers it has some quirks that I noticed other games born out of the Japanese computer scene around this time also have. For one you can save anywhere, you interact with people and chests just by... walking at them. This game doesn't have an interact button, and just the general feel of it that I can't describe it's very noticeable that it was made in that whole scene.

So for the story, you're a young dragon named Atrushan living in the land of the dragons and one day an orphan girl, standed in the sea, is rascued by your tribe. You're assigned to take care of her. Later when you're both older she disappears and goes to the land of the humans which is cursed for dragons, this means you can't keep your dragon form there, you go look for her and that starts your big adventure. The story actually had a lot of twists and turns that I didn't expect and has a lot of well written parts, characters are charming and fun and the party has a good dynamic through the story. Characters come and go but each new character is mostly good. Good thing is the game has party chat, so it serves a double purpose: one, to remind the player of the current objective and two, to make the party feel more alive. Characters will also talk to each other when you rest at inns at certain points of the adventure and they will comment on the current story events.

My major issue with the story is how underdeveloped a lot of it is. It's full of interesting concepts, ideas, mythology and worldbuilding but most of it is not really explored. I will mostly put the blame on this being an RPG from 1989 but still... I wish this version could've expanded things. I think it also doesn't help that the game has the fastest pacing of any RPG I've played in recent memory, events happen quick and the characters barely have time to reflect on them, and as such, I feel like there's not a moment to think about what's going on, there's barely any downtime. That said there's still some moments during the story that made me feel things, I didn't cry but at the end I kinda felt attached to the characters and what they went through and that's enough for me.

So about the gameplay. The combat system is... strange. And janky. And also kinda bad. Battles take place in an arena where your party and the enemies can move when it's their turn so positioning is very important, this doesn't sound bad at all, other games like Live A Live much later used this system, but this one feels extremely rudimentary in every way. You only really control the main character, and only him and Tamryn (you could say the second main character) can actually level up, every party memeber that isn't the main character is AI controlled. But fear not! This game is piss easy and your party members are smart as hell. Probably too smart, battles are a cakewalk and honestly the only time I felt threatened was in the final boss. The key of battle is to keep yourself out of harm and healed, and your party will heal you anyway, they heal and protect you constantly, also since you can save anywhere dying is really not much of an issue, and I mean anywhere, even in the middle of dungeons.

But yeah, this game is interesting, all and all. It's a very interesting but flawed game. It does a lot of really forwardthinking things for the time it was made. I admire and I'm glad I played it but I can't say I love it.

To end this I'll just quickly mention the audio, because this game has small audio samples of characters speaking, sometimes in an intense story scene a character will say another character's name and they will actually say it out loud. They also grunt and scream in battle. It's not much, but for the Super Famicom it's pretty cool, I think.

P.S. I will replay this game if someone ever translates the PC-Engine version.

Ok so, I thought the first game was only decent, a neat concept that ultimately left me a little underwhelmed, yet I still could recognize that it is a good game. I wanted more story and more varied puzzles.

Portal 2 is that and A LOT more than what I wanted. This game is so insanely well paced, well written and has such a good atmosphere, it hooked me during the first 10 minutes of gameplay. Everything from the dialogue, to the puzzle design, to the visual storytelling are just incredible and I can't think of many games that are like it, except... Portal 1 of course. I wasn't expecting for the story to actually hit me emotionally like this and I think I'll be thinking about this game for a long time.

Just excellent and I can't recommend it enough.