In absolute awe of the nearly raw, undercooked nature of this game. It's weird, it's ambitious, it fails on multiple fronts. It's an RPG Maker game before RPG Maker existed, a borderline avant-garde experiment from a time when you had to call a factory and physically manufacture cartridges to get a game on the shelf.

More than anything: the combat. It's different, that's for sure. It's easy to see what they were going for, the positioning, unit facing, action delays. And… most of it doesn't matter? Combat is trivial until the final chapter, moderately challenging at best from then on. Status effects are plentiful but largely irrelevant, action timing is so very odd. Sometimes opening a menu allows another character to go, sometimes a unit will take 7 active turns to unleash an underwhelming move. Opponents need to spend time to reorient, but you do not, despite the numerous enemy moves that change your facing. You have a plethora of abilities on each character, most of them meaningless. The non-linear nature means everything before the finale is the exact same difficulty. Everything is just… there. A pile of ideas.

So it's a good thing the rest works. Yasunori Mitsuda's boss theme rips right out of the speakers, gets you hyped every time even though you know you're in virtually no danger. Every character has their own musical identity, each era is sonically unique. The themes slowly reveal themselves, the plot hook setting in as the chapters move on. The different genres have different mechanics, the dialogue has different fonts. Different artists for every scenario, different takes on the same message, an ending that pulls it all together. You see the credits no less than nine separate times, and they never let you skip them, treating each as a proper endroll.

It's uneven, a mess, and a reminder that Squaresoft's RPGs were almost always full of the same odd choices and missteps. More so here, but it's easy to point out in almost every title of theirs from the era. They took risks and then polished the results, the flaws harder to see in the resultant sheen.

labyrinth of galleria is proof that you can absolutely have too much of a good thing, but i also refuse to think less of it or rate it lowerjust because of that.
by the end of the second half i started to be burnt out to the point where i decided it'd be better if i just stopped playing and watched the rest of the story cutscenes which isn't something i've ever really done for a game i loved this much. not to say that the game is bad at all, quite the opposite actually! i loved every second of gameplay even if it was definitely of lower quality once it shifts to procedural generation for the dungeons in the second half, the music was spectacular, and the story and characters are some of my absolute favorites! on top of dealing with heavy topics in a way that feels natural, galleria in general has some of the most (and probably some of the only, to me at least) natural and human portrayals of lgbt characters in any game i think i've ever seen. the fact that the game is explicit about it in all cases but one without being heavy-handed about it means a lot to me. overall i absolutely love this game to death, it's just that i think i have a hard time with such huge time sinks and get stressed when i start spending so much time on any one singleplayer game, and i didn't want to get burnt out on an experience i loved so much. i'd definitely recommend checking this one out for any fans of drpgs, especially if you don't mind the massive commitment some of its later dungeons expect of you, and even if you aren't a fan of drpgs necessarily the story here is amazing and worth experiencing.

Unicorn Overlord has that gameplay loop which totally absorbs me in and I can't stop. The idea to create an unstoppable team with the variety of items you can purchase, liberate towns, clear tough battles, and get stronger while fighting back against what seems a nigh impossible situation is truly fun. The experience is phenomenal to me and I could yap how much I love the classes and the cool shit you can probably do with it if you dig deep with it, but it'd probably be long. SO why is it a 3.5/5 stars? Simply because the story. The story is pretty generic, and you have to go through a 100+ hours of this. Sure, i love consuming my rpg games like its a king-class meal and some of the characters, but they don't have much depth to them. I do like the character-specific interactions though! Yet, this is not enough. If you're gonna make me sit through a plot like this you might as well should try make it interesting, and it fails at that for me. Well, at least the voice acting performance makes for it; they did an excellent job with it.

Unicorn Overlord is not a bad game, it just has a grasping flaw with the story. It has that classic fantasy rpg spirit and inspiration from a game like Final Fantasy Tactics, but doesn't sell much on it with the story. I seriously would've considered giving this a 4.5/5 stars for how good that gameplay was, but the story kind of nags at me because I wish it was good. I love a good rpg with good gameplay, but somethings can just disappoint you greatly more than others. Still, I'd love to replay again in the future for how enjoyable the gameplay is.

TW&T100K is the game of all time. It's cool to play this and see the references and building blocks that would eventually be come to create the labyrinth of coven games like the facets, you aka the playable character being an all-powerful familiar, the witches, and story structure. I've been constantly warned about how the ending of this game was utterly flopped but when get to the actual ending of the game it's fine and it actually serves as a narrative to her character in the end which is pretty cool. story is good and metallia is great but some moments has really bad jokes thrown in there in addition to the initial ending players get being bad, but that's kind of the intention to let players know "hey dont you wanna get the real ending of the game".

BUT what's the major problem isn't the story, it's the gameplay. holy shit the gameplay fucking sucks. no sense of stage design, enemy design, or boss design. normally i wouldn't be against asset reuse because companies gotta save up on money and resources somehow but jesus christ it's to a fault here. later on they just reuse bosses as regular enemies that don't flinch to your attacks at all, and they use grunts as bosses too sometimes which makes up for some lame as hell fights. there are 0 good bosses in this game that gave me a sense of fulfillment. bosses are either god awful or just pathetically easy there's no middle line here. do yourself a favor and play the game on casual mode for the best experience because this game is total slop, but at least it's playable; i gave in to casual mode when i was in the postgame for the real ending and i have no shame for it. oh yeah, can't forget the awful loading times too.

would i recommend this? slight yes, but a majority is no. if you do waste your precious income on this game or pirate it, then do keep it in mind that you're in kusoge territory. i'd only recommend this if you played the two labyrinth of coven games, refrain and galleria, and you want to follow it up with the precursor of it all.

but at least metallia is goated to me so in some sense it was worth it. me when a bad bitch tells me to do something

As a follow-up to Pikmin 1, Pikmin 2 makes an incredibly strong statement. And that statement is "we know that we're spreading ourselves thin between score attack-style survivalist gameplay and slow-burn exploration and worldbuilding, so we've destroyed the worldbuilding and put it in a little book and now the game is all about not dying in caves". It's a change that honestly the Pikmin series probably needed to take in one direction or the other, and the game commits to its more arcade-style gameplay fairly well! Without having to worry about navigating a more complex terrain in favor of labyrinths, control of the Pikmin generally feels a lot more consistent, combat challenges can be placed in a player's way methodically and deliberately, and overall the spikes in difficulty and memorable moments are a lot more controlled than in Pikmin 1. Unfortunately, the very limited exploration offered from seeing Pikmin 1 environments change does end up feeling very rote and obligatory by comparison, which makes a lot of the game's opening stretch seem pretty performatory; Pikmin 2 can't be mean enough in its opening to really grit its teeth due to needing to reteach Pikmin 1's mechanics and introduce its new ones. Additionally, returning bosses like the Burrowing Snagret, Beady Long Legs and Emperor Bulblax are shadows of their former selves due to appearing at the end of dungeons where a player can't be assured to have a full squad like Pikmin 1, creating this really unfortunate deflating feeling after clearing the first game. I'd cleared the debt and was ready to write the game off as a technically superior, but ultimately short-sighted version of Pikmin 1.

Then the Water Wraith happened.

I cannot tell you how wonderful of a turning point the Water Wraith is. Every cave up to that point (discounting backtracking to the first area's harder dungeons) could be handled with just a simple measure of patience, with taking things slowly, step by step, and throwing the right colored Pikmin at the thing they're good at stopping. Water Wraith takes every bit of that away from you, demands you scramble, puts you in the position to make mistakes, has no weaknesses for a majority of its dungeon. This is Pikmin 2 at its best: throwing you into cruel situations where one lapse in attention or assuming that your little guys will be fine will end up with a squad crushed, exploded, or eaten by a jumpscare of a bomb rock or bulbear. Where the first game had you try to figure out how to solve each creature individually, Pikmin 2 is glad to mingle its enemies together, forcing you into incredibly uncomfortable situations to try and keep your most precious fellas alive, cursing the name of the Dirigibug or anything that happens to shoot lightning as they attempt to one-shot your lil' boy army. Bosses take a significant step up, with Man-At-Legs being an especially fantastic upgrade of needing to figure out spacial awareness, positioning, and just how fast your Pikmin can duck into cover to avoid machine gun fire. The midgame of Pikmin 2 is absolutely exhilerating in attempting to expect its cruelty and react.

... and unfortunately the endgame is where Pikmin 2's flaws become most apparent. The caves that you delve into are somewhat randomly generated, with layouts tending to be similar, but a lot of enemy placements and exit placements in those rooms being random. This leads to a lot of scenarios that aren't so much difficult, but unfun, especially if something REAL dangerous like a groink or bulbear spawns directly outside your starting area and leaves you little time to react. I do think the game is significantly more fun not resetting or leaving caves, just trying to do your best with the limited resources you have (I actually managed to beat Submerged Castle on the back of seven total Pikmin remaining, and it was an absolute blast maneuvering that!), but I'll admit it's not the optimal way to play the game compared to resetting. Sitting there watching your 'min get blown over and over again because the blowy man is behind a wall you need to break while a snitchbug takes swipes every so often is hardly a fun time, and these kinds of scenarios are abundant the further you get into Pikmin 2. Add in things like bomb hitboxes extending through walls with no real indication, cutscenes for items interrupting gameplay, and treasures sometimes glitching out if at a bad angle, and Pikmin 2 ends up an experience as unintentionally frustrating as it is intentionally.

Overall, Pikmin 2 is my favored Pikmin game of the Gamecube duology. It's a wildly inconsistent game, but its peaks are utterly fantastic, its writing some of the best on the system even though it's tucked away in its own little section, and the moments it creates as you barely make it through a tough challenge or scenario are legendary. I will never forget sending my army of Pikmin to gank the Empress Bulblax while the President of Hotocate Freight personally punched out an army of her spawn with his bare hands until they could all mob her face and guarantee a win, or slowly tricking Dweevils into getting a stack up disc out of the water because I lost all my Blue Pikmin. It is not the ideal sequel to its original game, and has to sacrifice a lot to make its own fun, but what it does uniquely it does superbly, and there's a stretch of about eight hours of game in here that's utterly incredible. The other surrounding eight hour chunks on either side are still pretty good, too, just with their very obvious drawbacks!

Olimar should not dump his wife for a cool marble, though. That's weird, Olimar.

One of my most anticipated indie games from 2023 and I finally got to finish it a couple days ago. TEVI is a really solid and satisfying metroidvania + bullet hell mix that will be sure to please any newcomers to this type of game.

But I have to admit, it's not quite ~as~ good as Rabi-Ribi. It's an ambitious game for sure, I do have to respect the amount of effort they put into making a large story full of lore and complete voice acting (with recognizeable japanese talents, even!), but the cliched nature of the many directions the story takes and mixed tones do hold it back from making it a special experience. Thankfully the characters are all fun and likeable, really carries the story for the most part.

This new direction just doesn't feel quite as earnest and niche as Rabi-Ribi was. Just feels very held back, almost as if they're to please a different crowd altogether. Feels pretty clear considering the overall gameplay feels a lot more accessible/easier on normal difficulty and even the localization style feels like it's trying to be more mainstream.

But honestly, these might just be personal nitpicks. Rabi-Ribi is a very special game for me and I was hoping this one would capture that same magic. But that doesn't mean it's a bad game! It's fantastic and i'm sure anyone going into blindly will find it more enjoyable than I have.

The level design is still pretty top notch, boss fights are as awesome as ever, OST is top tier and the character designs are a good mixture of cool and cute. I explored 100% and found 80% of every item in the game, did all sidequests and experienced most of the boss rush modes after the endgame and it all feels worthwhile. I might even return it for more playthroughs on higher difficulties.

I highly recommend it!