Yall this game whooped my ass I was genuinely so surprised when I couldn't move backwards once the screen had scrolled and there were a few things about the collision (specifically around corners of platforms) that really threw me off and I definitely did NOT beat this game I didn't even reach the second boss despite playing for almost an hour. But...! I had fun and that's what matters. I just don't have the time to really learn this game right now especially when I have to restart from the beginning every time I die

I originally bought and played this game around when it came out, and at the time, I was completely dumbfounded by it. I was so confused with how I was supposed to get anything done if I kept dying every 60 seconds, and progress I made (in my eyes, things like bushes being destroyed) was erased every time. I didn't give it much of a shot. However, I knew people liked it, so I decided I'd try it again. And safe to say, I'm glad with my decision.

I think my biggest pervasive problem with this game is how you really have to memorize EVERYTHING-- every location and how to get there, every roadblock and the proposed solution, literally everything, as there's no maps or quest list in the game to remind you. And for the most part, that was okay. However, the game opens you up to a lot of different avenues/areas very fast, and I found that the roadblocks I discovered first were the ones I ended up forgetting for the longest time. The game also has grid-based design, but no grid based movement, and one of the most frustrating things ever was accidentally sliding into a door and wasting seconds getting out or getting snagged on the corner of a tile while running and losing seconds there.

But the art style was super simple and cute, and the world felt super tight and connected, never too big or crazy.

What? Homos?

I had the cough MISFORTUNE of getting this game spoiled to me due to an awry tiktok that appeared in my feed a few months ago. Before I even knew what was happening, I had seen a crucial part of this game's ending. I tried to forget about it, but of course, the more I thought about it, the more it stuck in my head. But, despite that, despite knowing the twist from before I even downloaded it, I still had an awesome time here. I absolutely love the character writing, because it feels like it perfectly treads the line between portraying Misfortune as a perfect angel of a girl and portraying her as a big gross weirdo for the sake of shock value. I think it captures the pure essence of what weird little girls are like. I mean, she's basically a furry for god sakes.

The gameplay is simple, but I feel like it tries to overinflate its complexity and make it feel like it's more intense than it is. You make a lot of A/B questions throughout the game, as you do in a lot of games, and yet both consequential (''will you do this'' questions) and progression questions ("do you want to enter the next area" questions) are portrayed with the same screen-blurring, music-pausing effect that makes them feel like they have the same question. I think if the intention was to truly confuse the player over what choices have weight, it was accomplished, but I also feel like that's kind of lame. Otherwise, have the simpler preferential questions be portrayed in a more mundane way. I also think there were a few spots where the interact icon was a bit finicky, to where you had to stand at a distance to something in order to inspect it instead of right next to it. But these things never bothered me too much.

Overall awesome, totally nutty experience.

Cool Spot honey, I love you but this game is so bad.

I can tell this was based/ripped directly on/from the ones on home console because sprites this big should not be in a side scroller on the Game Boy. ESPECIALLY one with non-traditional level/sprite design that doesn't make use of tiles like other 2D platformers on this system. If this game was actually built with the Game Boy in mind and was more like Kirby's Dreamland or Super Mario Land then I think it'd be completely fine. But here, the sprites take up like one third of the available screen space in any given direction, which means it's impossible for you to see what's up ahead (or above, or below) without just running straight into danger. And for some reason, this game is just FLOODED with enemies. Like, there's barely a stretch of land mass that doesn't have at least one little dude running around. But usually, it's bumper to bumper enemies for most of the allotted ground space. And for those who are wondering, no, I didn't make it past the first level. I spent all three of my lives just trying to get to what I thought was the end of the level only to find out it was actually a midway check point.

I feel like part of what adds to the difficulty here is the fact that your only attack is a little laser blast thing, but you can only shoot up, down, and to the side. Yet the platforms are almost all diagonals, so the enemies are almost never directly next to you or directly above/below you, so killing them is incredibly hard. There's also a 6 minute timer, which had me freaking out because I didn't know how long these levels were gonna be, and so I didn't want to dilly-dally and try to precision shot kill every enemy, so I resorted to just trying to jump over as many as I could, but because the screen is so zoomed in and the sprites are so big, I couldn't tell where I was gonna land until I landed. And usually I landed on an enemy.

I totally get why the developers of this 1993 shovelware game didn't make a completely different and reworked game for this one single platform but eh at this point why even make a Game Boy version... oh that's right... MONEY!!

I'm not going to deny it, I came into this game with a lot of hesitation, bias, and general judgement because I absolutely despised the first one, but had heard enough good things about the second one to give it a chance anyway. And because I played this game with judgement in my heart and mind, it was easy to spot a lot of tiny things, like inconsistencies in transfer spots (some doorways activate when you touch them, others are a-button commands, and half the time the a-button ones aren't tied to the doorway but instead the space in front of it, so even if you aren't facing the door, you'd still transfer if you hit a), or characters popping in and out during cutscenes without any animation or transition, which obviously aren't the biggest deal in the world, but at the same time are such easy fixes that it gives me a bad feeling. It's also hard for me to judge the merit of this game's story, especially when it (naturally) continues off the heels of the first game. I finished the first game in such a huff (and so long ago as well) that I don't really remember much of it. My memories of the first game are entirely of the frustration I felt while playing it. And so, looping back around, it really wasn't possible for me to come into this game without some of that bias still in my head. Luckily, though, it seems that this game stands on its own pretty well, if you disregard the stuff about the oracle and what not.

So for starters, this game has a battle system. It's all random encounters that only happen in the school, and it's framed as 'socialization', which I think is a really unique take and fits well in a game that takes place in a school. The game even gives you a single infinite-use item that fully heals you every time you use it. However, I completely ignored the battle system in its entirety, and that's for one reason and one reason only-- there's only one single save point in the entire game. I'm not always the biggest fan of when games only let you save at specific points, although I understand the merit behind it in certain games, especially as a means to prevent save scumming. However, for a game like this, having only one single save spot in the whole game is absurd. Especially when that location is made off-limits at random points for little to no reason. The game doesn't seem to punish you for always running from battles, since it doesn't really feed you that many to begin with, it kind of just seems like a side thing you can play around with when you want to.

The game also culminates (or at least I think it does, that's the place where it seems like it does) at a grand yes/no question. I chose 'yes' and I got the (or one of the) good ending. And for a moment, I thought I'd replay up until that point and choose the other option to see what happens. Then, I realized how far back I was because of how long it had been since I last saved, and I felt like it wasn't worth it.

The art and music are nice as always. And the game, as a whole, gave me this sick feeling that, for some odd reason, made me yearn for high school again. As context, I'm 22 and a recent college grad. I knew a girl in high school who Charlotte reminds me of. And although high school sucked, there was this weird comfort of knowing that maybe life afterwards would be better, as long as I stayed in school and worked hard. Of course, it didn't get much better, and the whole 'work hard and you'll succeed' thing was a total lie, but... well, now I'm getting off topic.

I'm not sure where this game leaves me in terms of the last 3 games in the series. Maybe sometime later I'll watch the rest of the endings on YouTube and use that to determine if I wanna play the rest of these. But as for right now, I'm kind of just uninterested. The best thing this game did for me was wash out my negative feelings towards the first game and leave me feeling truly neutral.