Honestly the first 9 of 13 chapters in this game are a really good idle game. Very simple, very easy. Keeps your attention enough to have to do something, but you can always have American Dad on the other monitor. The idle game feel is aided in large part by the world design being hallway after hallway with maybe a 5 foot diversion with a consumable at the end. At chapter 10 though this is all entirely ruined because the game opens up a lot, and this is where the problems with the game really bare their fangs. You move so slow, enemies are boring, fights are boring, combat is boring, level-up system is boring, equipment is boring. God this game is just so fucking boring. It took me like a week to get to chapter 9, and took me like 4 more to beat the game because I kept putting off chapters 10-13.

Combat feels fluid and the dance between Sekiro and his evil enemies is engaging. Things look nice and generally feel nice. Good job. That said, some stuff is annoying. Grappling doesn't feel great. A fair amount of early game bosses like to spawn or be surrounded by tons of enemies, which is plainly unfun design to me. For some reason, they decided to have cutscenes play every single time you refight a boss that has a cutscene at the start. Cutscenes are skippable, but it's still very odd and ground my gears a bit. Still, the gameplay is generally fun enough to keep coming back to that I didn't mind most of those issues, and some cropped up only in specific instances so they weren't constantly prevalent. Cool game.

Having played very little of the original SMRPG, I was pretty excited to see this remaster coming out. $60 is maybe a bit high if you're one of those people who thinks that price should reflect the time you spend playing, but shut up dude nobody cares. It's a really pretty game with a lot of charm, and I think the new look and music are pretty worth it. Gameplay-wise it's very baba binky. The entire final boss was spent doing like 3 things on repeat for me, which wasn't the most engaging. Definitely had some other bosses or even random enemies that I found required more actual thought, so that was a little disappointing. Definitely a super easy game that took like 6-7 hours for me to finish, although I didn't do some of the optional content because that's not really the kind of guy I am, so maybe I missed some stuff that makes this a stellar game. it's very serviceable and cute and fun and I found it very interesting to see the evolution of this game into Paper Mario's 1 & 2.

Too many power-ups that are never used in levels aside from the wall jump, which you get horribly late. Sometimes the dash is useful, but rarely. Everything else is a combat ability in a game where your jump attack is far and away the best option 99% of the time. Bubble shield breaks the game by allowing you bypass most of the piss easy platforming. Too many autoscrollers for my blood. Music is good, art is pretty nice. I got this game because I thought it'd be Shovel Knight with a grappling hook, only to find out it isn't a very good Shovel Knight and the grappling hook is so useless it shouldn't have been included to begin with. There are so many clashing elements in this game that don't work together. I still can't understand how they added so many power-ups and failed to use them in any stage. If you're gonna add combat upgrades, make sure to include worthwhile combat in your game. If you're making a platformer, for the love of God please make sure you actually use the platforming abilities. Fucking Guacamelee did both better and I hate that game, too. At least this game was short.

Sonic Boom is far from the worst game I've ever played. Nowhere close. The reaction to this game seems very strange to me. Most people think Sonic games suck anyway, so I don't know why this one got such insane hate hype. That isn't to say I think this game is good or worth anyone's time. Far from it. This is possibly the most boring game I've ever played, but I wouldn't necessarily say that makes it awful. Just keeps it from being good. The platforming is so mind-numbingly bland and safe and boring. There's combat, which is almost always a no-no in my book. The combat is purely a "Mash The Attack Button and Win" simulator that for some reason has a DMC style rating system. The music is the most generic video game music I've ever heard, which is insane considering that music is the one thing most people actually come together on with regards to Sonic. The characters are all extremely annoying and constantly saying things at each other, rarely responding to what someone else said. They love to shout "Bounce Pad!" or "Boost Ring!" 80% of the time you use one of these very common platforming aids. The story is bland and lifeless. If this game wasn't intended to re-style the entire Sonic franchise and spawn a TV show, I would've bet big bucks that it was some platformer that SEGA saw and said "eh put Sonic on there, it'll sell more copies that way."

Sonic Heroes is so weird. The levels are generally fine, although I think I only like the Casino levels because of nostalgia. As someone who pretty much only likes the Adventure games, the level design here was really interesting. It felt like they tried really hard to mimic 2D Sonic's level design, and I think they succeeded for the most part. Unfortunately, I'm not particularly wild about 2D Sonic so sometimes it fell really flat for me. The game controls really weird. The camera is super finnicky and sometimes gets so close you can't see anything, and because the only camera controls you have are moving it horizontally there's nothing you can do to fix it but pray. The homing attack also seems to work less reliably than in the Adventure games which leads to some absurdly frustrating boss fights. Speaking of boss fights, the Eggman ones are just the Sonic/Shadow final boss from SA2 but with Eggman in a giant flying machine OR waves of enemies, OR you fight another Team from the game in combat that rivals the jankiness of the Shadow/Sonic forest fight and the Knuckles/Rouge fights. The combat is generally ok. It doesn't really try to be more than it is, and leveling up makes things way easier. This is good because it makes me consider which character I want to get the checkpoint levels, and makes me very afraid of dying.

Team Sonic's story is basically just fast (save for the last couple stages which take about as long as the standard Team Dark stage). High energy stages that require lots of changing between characters and lots of different paths. Fun stuff!

Team Dark story contains really long stages (typically like 10+ minutes from recollection). Lots of combat or difficult platforming. Definitely the hardest of the stories. Their team attack freezes time which can do some pretty fun stuff.

Team Rose's story is baba binky literal baby mode. After doing Team Dark it was a really nice and quick palette cleanser. Each level is like 4 minutes at the absolute most, and it feels good to rush rush through everything after doing some hard stuff.

Team Chaotix is weird and I'm sure if you're reading this review you already know about it. Weirdo missions that range from really lame to really frustrating. The level where you just have to get to the end of the stage? Boring! Done that 15 times in every other story! The level where you have to blow out 40 flames? Frustrating! It's very linear and just takes forever! The level where you have to go undetected across the Egg Fleet? Sick as hell! More please!

Last Story is whatever who cares. Special stages control like absolute shit and the fact that you're required to do them seven times at minimum is criminal. Music is pretty alright if on a seemingly short loop. Love the cutscenes with my whole heart, there's just something so special about them. If the game worked better and you didn't have to replay it 3 times (Chaotix is different enough that I don't count it) the game might be better than exactly average when I'm feeling charitable.

Just a straight upgrade from BOTW in nearly every way. The map is similar, but revamped. The new areas above and below are fun to explore and offer unique challenges. The story delivery via Dragon's Tears was far more engaging and interesting than the memories in BOTW. Fusing weapons is so fun that whenever I consider going back to BOTW now I feel it'll be lacking specifically in that regard. Ascend is shockingly useful and fun. Recall + Ultrahand are the biggest game changers for sure. Just a flat upgrade over BOTW in nearly every way, although I do wish we go to keep the bombs so there was a way to deal damage without weapons (although I've yet to run out of weapons at any point, so maybe that's a non-issue anyway). Choppy framerate that doesn't bother me at all, but might bother others. Otherwise the only bugs I've encountered were things like the fun glitches that can only be replicated if you're looking to do them.

The Wind Waker HD might be a game for babies. Lots of hand-holding throughout the game, including in some dungeon puzzles that would otherwise force you to actually engage with the rooms you're in and connect dots (looking at you, Ganon's Tower), quest markers for the main quest, and that extremely annoying gossip stone. The King of Red Lions looks so cool, both as a boat and as a man, but holy hell he needs to stop talking.

The Great Sea is really cool once you get the swift sail. Being able to move around this big ocean at fairly quick speeds really helps sell the adventure feel that they pretend to be going for. Lots of the side content has charming writing and fun looking characters. The QoL improvements on the Sea are much needed (bomb cannon showing trajectory is a god-send). Without the quest markers throughout the main quest, I think the Great Sea would actually be a super fun area to explore. Of course, they'd also need to let you have items a bit earlier so you can actually do things before the finale if they wanted it to be engaging. Still, it's a good vibe to just sail around and fight the subs and outposts and fish up treasure from time to time. The Triforce Hunt is obviously improved, although it still felt somewhat lacking. In WWOG, some charts were in very simple to reach locations and you only had to beat a few rooms of super easy enemies to get them. The "hard" part was getting enough ruppees to pay Tingle to then begin the search for the shard. That sucked. In WWHD, all they changed was that most of the charts were updated to just be the shards. This means that some Triforce Shards are hidden behind a few super simple enemies, which feels absurdly underwhelming. This also cut the playtime drastically, which is a good thing because I'm not longer spending hours just grinding currency, but it also made the hunt feel less like a hunt and took away some of the grandeur I felt hunting in WWOG. Still, I'd take HD hunt over OG any day of the week.

Good music, fun bosses, solid dungeons (except Wind Temple fuck you Makar you slow piece of trash). Lots of fun islands that give neat lore if you talk to the fish, which builds up the Ghost Ship suuuuper well (even if the actual ship was a tad underwhelming).

The combat is actually pretty decent. Action commands are fun and feel satisfying to hit even if it's just a quick time event. I actually used a shield in a 3D Zelda game during some fights! There were some attacks where I had to sidestep or backflip to dodge! Wow! Remotely engaging combat in a Zelda game! Who thought it could be possible! Not me!!!!!!!!!

WWHD is probably a game for babies. But man, it's like I always say: "googoo gaga where's my baba binky."

Probably gonna be my GOTY for 2023. The best feeling game I've ever played. Movement is just phenomenal. Grappling hook + boost + rocket jumping allows for some insanely creative platforming and skips. The music is pretty solid, the visuals do a lot for me, and by Jove do I love mythology and folktales. This game hits so many checkboxes for me that it would be a 5/5 if it weren't for the wind area and Elfame being so absurdly annoying to do platforming in. It's such a shame the game has those areas because I cannot overstate how much fun I was having throughout the entire rest of the game. The boss fights are crazy fun, the moment-to-moment combat can mostly be skipped and the parts that can't usually have some fun little platforming gimmick to go along with it.

My issues with this game are as follows: the jump-platforming feels horrible. The maps are obnoxious to traverse and have horrible enemy placement to the point where about halfway through the game I just started running past 99% of enemies. Combat simply doesn't feel good. Nobody reacts to getting hit by a lightsaber at all, and having to parry large groups of enemies so you can break their poise so you can do a cutscene attack that gets interrupted by one of the other 9 enemies attacking you was more than frustrating. The wildlife was cool, but were far and away the most annoying enemies to fight (fuck the goats in particular). Parrying humanoid enemies or attacking during their endlag felt like nothing. People are swinging their weapons so wildly that it was difficult to ascertain when they're attacking or when they're in an animation that doesn't actually do any damage. The player hardly does any damage even after upgrading lightsaber strength, leading to some of the late-game bosses being a game of Simon Says where you just have to wait for one of the three safe openings so you can do .02% of their health bar. Dathomir is one of the most annoying areas I've seen in a Souls-like, which is a shame because the Nightsisters and brothers are cool as hell. Also for some reason the audio started lagging in every cutscene about halfway through the game, so characters would "say" something and then like 5 seconds later the audio of them saying it would come through. The story itself feels like they cut some stuff. Like when Greez comes to have a heart-to-heart with Cal, I was only thinking about how effective of a scene this would be if they put this in the game just a smidge later so I felt more attached to the relationship between the characters.

What I liked: mmm yummy star wars inject it into my veins. also the uncharted/assassin's creed platforming stuff worked pretty well. Customizing the lightsaber was pretty neat, and BD-1 is the best droid design I've ever seen. I want one. The coliseum area was really fun, although it was an extremely weird point to have it in the story and I'm still not totally sure what that was all about.

Overall, lots of actual gameplay stuff that made me want to drive my head through a wall, but the set dressing was great. Excited to play the sequel when that drops and feel Exactly The Same Way.