I thoroughly enjoyed this game when it entered the free-to-play scene back in late 2017. It offered a unique experience that resonated with many MOBA enthusiasts dissatisfied with the aging mechanics of other games, myself included. With features like moving while casting, canceling abilities, and concise WASD movement, it felt like a complete package. However, its downfall began with a lack of content and a split focus with its battle royale counterpart. Eventually, support from developers ceased, leading to its decline. With the right attention and support, I believe it could have achieved significant success or at least carved out a niche market, similar to Omega Strikers now. I fondly reminisce about the days I'd eagerly log on after school to play, but alas, those days are now behind us. Farewell, Battlerite~

the sad thing about gunvolt as a series is that while the gameplay gets better with every entry they also crank up the epsteincore and it makes me uncomfortable. it's still gunvolt 2 copen gameplay basically unchanged which is good, and there's no gunvolt, which honestly just makes it better, and there's some actual poignant moments in the narrative so this is still definitely the best in the series by a long shot. sucks that this was otherwise clearly a budget title because so many of the assets are just ripped from gunvolt 1 and 2 and the ui is noticeably barebones. if I had to recommend any gunvolt game it's this one at the very least

The original Backyard Baseball is an all timer without question. But the 2001 edition is the best version of the game. Not just for adding kid versions of MLB players but most of all for increasing the stats to amounts out of 10. Which makes just about every kid playable somewhere in the lineup, rather than just whoever gets Pablo Sanchez wins.
And some of the MLB players have hilarious stats if you actually followed baseball in the 90s. Frank Thomas, who hit 521 home runs and never pitched an inning in his life, has a 7 in batting but a 10 in pitching. Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson both have the same batting stat as future hall of famer Carlos Beltran. As well as Alex Gonzalez. Oh yeah, Alex Gonzalez is the Marlins representative in this game and I'm actually not 100% sure which Alex Gonzalez it's supposed to be.

Trivia Time!

Luigi's Mansion was originally pitched as "Peach's Womansion", in which the Princess would fight through a house filled with ghosts that represented misogynistic tropes. However, the game was retooled as a Luigi title after it was deemed too radical for western audiences. A decade and a half later, many of the original "Womansion" ghost ideas were reused in the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, and were subsequently lost to time, as no one actually watched that movie.

Stay tuned for more Trivia Time segments in the near future!

Immaculate pixel-art and a nice soundtrack met with an aggressively mediocre and flat storyline filled with one-dimensional characters and uninteresting dialogue. Sea of Stars never really feels engaging beyond its strong visual presentation, banking on nostalgic atmosphere to appeal to its player base. I genuinely do not understand the level of praise this game receives, I've seen squirrels fighting outside that were more entertaining than this. People love to put this game and Chained Echoes on such a high pedestal when those two are just having the biggest mid-off of my life.

The combat is pretty satisfying on a surface level, but never develops much past the first few hours, which ends up feeling repetitive without a lot of skill variety or new mechanics to play with and adapt to. Party building is practically non-existent. There is some leeway to let you optimize your party with stat increase selection upon level ups and rudimentary equipment diversity, but overall every single character ends up being a glorified default attacker suited for whatever color element you need at the moment. Characters pretend like they're different from each other, but the game never asks you or gives you the ability to build strong magic attackers or bulky defensive units, or come up with niche party compositions, leading every fight to feel exactly the same.

The story and character writing was so poor that I couldn't even laugh at how bad it was. I felt like I was staring at blank walls the entire time. Nothing the characters did, said, or experienced ever mattered to themselves or their surroundings beyond superficiality. Every other line was a meta joke or quip about overused tropes and stereotypical JRPG writing, I felt like I was reading some Redditor's idea of an #epic D&D campaign. I swear I was only one step removed from reading a "Well, that just happened!" but at the same time I had to read a "Yeet" joke in 2023 with a straight face so, yeah. In spite of all this, Sea of Stars still has the audacity to bring out plot points of such grand scale that just don't feel earned due to its writing.

Frankly, I tried to give Sea of Stars more chances than it deserves. I so badly wanted another Chrono Trigger that I lowered my standards to convince myself I was having fun until I just couldn't take it anymore. I was kept bored the entire time I was playing, desperately continuing to see if it gets better... but it never did. I played up to right before the final boss and did every side quest I could out of curiosity but ultimately dropped this game because I simply wasn't enjoying my time.

Sea of Stars is a game that fundamentally does not understand its inspirations. I'm dangerously close to feeling like I was scammed, to be honest, given its marketing. "Aggressively mid" is probably the best way to describe this game. You're much better off playing the classics that inspired this game (Chrono Trigger, Mario RPG, Breath of Fire) and admiring the artwork from afar.