If there was any game out there that I could recommend that I can guarantee no-one in my social circles has played, it would be this one. And I'm going to explain in the next few paragraphs why this game is one of my absolute favourites.

The game begins with Tadashi, a young man who buys a giant worker mech for his business with his girlfriend, Elina. Soon, they discover the mech is actually a 'Metal Slader' , a war mech used years ago in a great space battle. Tadashi, along with his girlfriend and his young sister, Azusa, take it to a moon colony to investigate further. After finding someone who knows about Sladers, they discover the pilot of the mech was Tadashi's late father, and has left a message warning of an oncoming threat, a threat that some of the colony are aware of and are apprehensive to explain. Tadashi soon takes the mech and goes to find what became of his father, what his father's final message means, the lurking intrigue of what the colony is hiding, and what's hiding deep within the unknown…

Being an adventure game/visual novel, gameplay takes a backseat to the story, as most of what you do in this game is talk to people and explore the many areas around you. Gameplay isn't too extensive, using menus and some point and click elements to interact with the environment. Combat does happen sometimes, but it's very rare and it's even rarer to actually fail this game. I counted twice in my playthrough where a wrong choice results in death, and even then you get taken right back to an earlier conversation.

The main draw of the game and what interests me is the many interesting characters, and the interactions between the main three protagonists. Besides a few harem comedy tropes hiding in Tadashi's interactions in the colony's living space, the conversations between him and Elina are genuinely well written and absorbing, showing their history with one another and acting as genuine as a real life couple. Other characters like Azusa are fun too, even if she's a bit of a stereotypical naive young, innocent sibling that you saw (and still see) in many anime today. Children Are Innocent is in full effect here.

What also makes this game really speak to me is its graphics, with truly beautiful sprite work in both character design and locations. The lighting in some of the traveling scenes are particularly beautiful, selling the effect of deep space travel better than most live action Sci-Fi shows and movies. Character sprites are also vibrant and large, rivaling what you'd see on NEC PC games at the time. With the game releasing so late into the Famicom's life, it's no surprise that the game is as pretty as it is, but words really do not do it justice, it looks as good as any game released on the SNES.

I feel anymore gushing about this game would drag this review on far too long, so I'll just close by saying this is a gem of a game that should absolutely be played, even if gameplay does take a backseat to dialogue and story, but it's a great story regardless so it'll absolutely draw you into its many twists and thrills. The game only saw a limited release and even fewer people bought it when the SNES, Mega Drive and PC Engine CD all crowding the market, so copies are super rare. But if you can find a chance to play it, it is absolutely worth your time.

Disclaimer: This review is copy-pasted from my Steam review and is being reuploaded here in light of the sequel being relesaed.

tl;dr If you can look past the visuals you get one of the best EDF titles, but it lacks the class depth of the mainlines and unlike the others it's a little too self-aware.

I vividly remember thinking this game would suck when it was revealed. "EDF but for kids" sounds like a recipe for disaster and it being headed up by the Iron Rain team (a game I'm not too fond of) made it seem like it was headed for the bargain bin.

Fortunately, Yuke's surprised me. WB is not only excellent, it might be my favourite EDF title.

The first thing you'll likely notice is how different the format is. Mainline EDF gives you 1-4 classes and has a whole mountain of gear, weaponry and vehicles for you to unlock. World Brothers gives you the EDF5 Ranger with a single weapon and tells you to go recruit more people, who each come with one weapon and maybe an accessory. They have recharging abilities like air strikes, tapioca tea and molotov cocktails, and Special moves that recharge upon killing things which have an equally large variety of effects. Rather than unlocking new weapons for a class, you level up that class so they can use other people's weapons (the level cap is 10, which lets you use anything).

It doesn't sound very EDF, does it? But it is. Delightfully so, in fact. If you're familiar with Warriors games, this is to mainline EDF what Warriors Orochi is to Dynasty Warriors. Different framework, but the EDF core of charging into swarms of giant aliens, robots and insects is still intact. The team swapping and build flexibility just give you far more options, and the denseness of the maps (to accommodate the Switch's weaker hardware) honestly makes some later missions MORE chaotic than the mainlines, especially from Hardest onwards. Much like Warriors Orochi, this is also a crossover title, so you get to fight a wide variety of enemies and your favourite class from the other games is guaranteed to be in. There's a bunch of returning maps too, including London, so if you're an abolitionist you can take down Parliament.

There's a lot of replayability too. Around 150 characters to acquire and six difficulties with the mission pack (launching Jun 10th), and that's not factoring in higher level versions of weapons and accessories (up to level 5 with the mission pack). The story is a bit short, only 60 missions (71 with the mission pack), but they're good missions and there's not much filler.

That all said, the game does have a few issues. Despite the lower amount of weapon levels, some higher level variants are a downgrade. Some world brothers/sisters outright suck, and while you can build a team around them, you likely won't be so generous in higher difficulties. Unlike the mainlines, which are corny because they try to be serious, WB tries to be tongue-in-cheek and self-referential. YMMV, but the humour can get old. There are less maps than in other games, so there's a ton of repetition on that front. Some maps have really bad unit placement, which can make grabbing them a pain in the ass. The music gets repetitive FAST and I genuinely recommend disabling it. At the time of writing, the PC version has mouse smoothing that makes turning around a pain in the ass.

Despite these issues though, World Brothers is still my favourite EDF, and I've played all but one of them. The variety and fun on offer is amazing and I don't think we'll ever see anything like it again unless this game shifts millions. Buy it, play it, love it. And hey, if you hate it, you only need an hour to decide if this is for you or not.

Don't buy the season pass though, just get the mission pack. Unless you REALLY want to play as Sarge from EDF5 or whatever.

Fine but I wish there were more than like five pretty good to great games on the TGCD. You have Rondo of Blood of course, and then I really liked Super Air Zonk, but then what else is there? This, an okay aleste reskin that looks nice and whose story is all in Japanese so I could give a fuck? Dragon Slayer heroes, which has the worst voice acting I’ve ever heard in my whole life? Lords of Thunder, which you can just play on Sega CD? The Ys games, which, unlike the nes and super versions, also have rotten voice acting? And those are the very best the system has to offer. Vasteel, Exile, and the Valis games are some of the worst I’ve ever played. It keeps giving me a million reasons to walk away, and I just want more than two to stay

Screw the haters- Tekken 4 rules.

A perfect companion piece to Ridge Racer V, the early PS2 vibes are at full force here. Fantasy takes a back seat to a more modern, military-tech themed aesthetic, with a focus on night time city environments drenched in a palette of cool blues and icy greys, marking the arrival of the new millennium in style. Kazuya donning shades. Jin sporting the effortlessly cool jacket-with-hood-up combo. Hwoarang now a tacti-cool spec ops agent. Brawling in minimalistic urban stages like Airport, Mall and Building to the impeccable techno sounds of 'Touch and Go' & 'Authentic Sky'. This 'on the cusp of the future', technologic inspired aesthetic is simply unimaginable by todays standards- a perfect time capsule from the Y2K era, where we yearned eagerly for what was waiting just around the corner. Peak. Soul. And for a title released in 2001, the graphics go hard- check out the rippling water effects in the Jungle stage as your fighters wade through the stream or the bustling npc's ringside in Underground, who can even be knocked over if your opponent is smashed into the crowd.

To top it off, no longer are you forced to fight a dumb giant demon as a final boss- no, not on Tekken 4's cool-ass watch. Instead you're thrown into a cage match with a very angry, very naked, sumo Heihachi.

Hell yeah dudes.

Nick All-Star Brawl in it's original state can be best described as if a dictator and their corrupt military organization landed a deal with Viacom to develop a platform fighter, and embezzled 98% of the budget to develop useless aircraft that die to low flying pigeons. This then left NASB with so little drip, that upon exchanging currency or trading goods for it immediately dehydrated you to the point of becoming a flattened corpse on the ground.

Since then some characters were added, items were brought in to actually bring spice to the dreaded concept of casual play, and the characters now are allowed to display "character" via voice acting rather than just being dummies with some paint applied to them and funny looking Mortal Kombat animations. I mean, after all why would you even bother bringing in Hugh Neutron if you weren't getting Mark DeCarlo? Granted I asked this very same question a year ago about the lack of voice acting and Nigel Thornberry's entire existence on the base roster, so what the hell do I know? Even if you can't get Tim Curry in the studio, don't throw speechless Nigel at me! It's just nice to hear Patrick actually go "THIS IS PATRICK" as he smashes the Krusty Krab phone over Lincoln Loud's pathetic noggin.

Some of the stages I think suffer a bout of purism competitive nonsense, with little gimmicks and non-chaotic platform design. I know you still need the Battlefield and Final Destination shit, but there could be more going on in some of the illegal stages. They actually made a great choice adding Double Dare as a stage, but the best they could come up with was a pit of slime lining the bottom of the stage, in addition to lagging the game somehow. My robust supercomputer that I utilize for supervillainy can run Hitman 3 at max settings effortlessly, but the Double Dare stage in NASB? It was like I never left my bronze age laptop that would keel over from running tower defense flash games. The best stage for me actually ended up being the kitchen countertop stage based on the series created by well-known creeper John K., where every fighter is lactose intolerant and capable of dying to Chex cereal. Part of me wants to like the soundtrack, since it attempts to mimic the feel of the shows the game is trying to imitate, but a lot of it just comes off flat. I do however need to give a special shout out to this crazy-ass application of the Howie Scream here that is actually pretty genius.

I could talk about balance and instantly grow a neckbeard as my deodorant's effects wear off immediately, but the modern day concept of researching more advanced character-specific tech by having to visit a discord server makes my brain swell into a heavily-concussed state. Realistically, I would not be playing this for longer than a weekend anyway, and that's assuming I try to coerce every friend and cohort I know into playing with me. My only real complaint about the gameplay itself is that I feel like a lot of the characters aren't really that fun to play as, and a bunch of them feel very similar. Sorry to say, but Peter Piranha here solos the cast of NASB. I could also just be sore about them being creatively bankrupt on day 0 of development and giving Helga Pataki a Marth counter.

Single player is still pretty much an afterthought, but after Sakurai decided I needed to waste my time unlocking series mainstays by fighting annoying SNK AI for nine hours prior to finally unlocking Ridley, I can safely say I don't care anymore. No, I did not get the appeal, and I never will.

My ultimate judgment on NASB, is that for an actual finished product on Steam at a sale price of around 14 or 15 usd with DLC included, it's actually a decent game. If I had played this last year and bought it for 40-50 and got an unfinished beta, I would probably be breathing hot fire and rampaging through Philadelphia. It's fine now!

Play any combo-focused fighting game or beat ‘em up for an extended period of time and you’re bound to catch yourself thinking “Damn, I wish I had a second wall bounce!”. There’s nothing more frustrating than developing a theoretically strong combo in the lab and then discovering in practice that you already used up your OTG allowance 16 hits back. Sure, it might break the game if you could loop that EX move a third time, but it would look so cool, right? You deserve that shit, man! This combo is built different! If only you had unlimited ground-bounds, things would be different…

Urban Reign is the furled monkey paw’s fulfilment of this wish. Namco’s spirited attempt at a standalone Tekken Force game is wholly defined by its disrespect for the laws of the known fighting game universe, allowing you to wallsplat, sweep and breaker to your heart’s content - no idea is off-limits here if you have a demented mind that's capable of dreaming in the language of juggling. Lemme tell ya, it feels GOOD to football kick grounded opponents into the wall over and over again until their little polygonal souls leave their body!! Remember when your little brother threw down his PSX pad in a fit of rage because your King combos weren't "letting him play" in Tekken 3? This is a dark resurrection of that feeling writ large and legitimate.

The first dozen or so stages are borderline pornographic in their allowances to smokin’ sick style, making an aggressive argument for why doing damage with a super should allow you to build enough meter for another super than can be cancelled into from the first super. “Why can’t fighting games be like this all the time?” is something you’re bound to ask yourself when the second boss battle against the helpless sap Sick Rick ends with you infinitely hammer-tossing him into a pool table; you can practically imagine the little computer inside your PS2 throwing down its proverbial controller because you made it watch your mastubatory Brad Hawk combo video, packing up its shit and telling its mother you cheated at the game by "spamming too many moves".

But the law of equivalent exchange is alive and well here, and every player-positive design decision requires a reactionary advocate for the equality of CPU rights. Ever commented on EventHubs that “the best way to balance a game is to make all the low tiers as strong as the S-rank characters?” - well, here’s a look at what you could have won. Once the ten tutorials are done and the goons’ gloves come off, this becomes another game entirely. You thought you were safe from all these cheap hands you were throwing out? You’re built different, right? Pure skill? Shhhhhhhhhhhhhit. Sit down. PT-22 is gonna show you how truly broken this game is.

The mid-game of Urban Reign is a fascinating experiment in fighting game design, built almost entirely around how you think up a combo (both in sequence and circumstance) and how far ahead you can take it - given that some enemies can start chain-killing you with their first flick of their wrist, you’re forced to constantly plot random bullshit infinites out of sheer self-preservation instinct, the desire to "style on em" put aside in favour of hiding behind a shelf with dodgy collision-detection in the supermarket stage.

Strings that involve trash bins, jukeboxes, couches, lampposts and a whole lot of running up/suplexing into walls are only the tip of the iceberg here; you will have to go to the deepest, most depraved depths of your fighting gamer's mind in order to out-cheap the cheapest of the cheap shit. Let up for even a split second and it could all be over, and don’t forget that the CPU has the same rights as you do to do Guilty Gear-style bursts mid-combo - meaning no victory in this street war is ever guaranteed for even a second… Did I mention that while you’re being thrown by one enemy, other enemies can still kick you in the head? Damn! And there's no wakeup invincibility or reversal options? God DAMN!

Don't Stop until you reach the top and you'll be rewarded with the only language this game knows - more sadistic pain and suffering. After 99 stages of maverick midtown Marvel 2 madness, what could a final boss possibly look like? Well, the answer's hilariously simple - it's a dude with a gun who can kill you in one shot. Another one of gaming's greatest punchlines. Was it worth it? Hard to say, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime game that's worth checking out for a hot sec, even if you never make it past the karate guy in the 7-Eleven parking lot who can kara-cancel off a sneeze.

N.B. Really sad that this game's rough lil excuse-plot was written by the same guy who directed and scripted the Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War story. I refused to skip all the cutscenes and intro text because I was expecting Something Clever would happen at some point but no, this is just the narrative equivalent of a Final Fight game where you munch turkeys and beat up guys called Golem and Mr. Motor who say stuff like "Ow! That hurt!" lol

It's almost impossible to describe the intensity of the pre- Chain of Memories/KH2 hype era. There was no other game I was looking forward to more than this back in '02/03. However, when KH2 finally released, the experience was anticlimactic at best, if anything because of my own unrealistic expectations. The narrative didn't feel as cohesive, the dialogue felt really stiff, and it just didn't have the same charm.

Make no mistakes though, in terms of gameplay and combat, this is the strongest the franchise has ever been. Never has a Kingdom Hearts game's combat felt as fluid and buttery smooth, and if I were a speedrunner type or someone who didn't place emphasis on a game's narrative, it would have hit harder. It didn't help that the original NA release had an almost nonexistent postgame with any real incentives either.

KH2 Final Mix fixes so many of the original's issues in terms of pacing and content, and while KH1 will always be my favorite installment, this version of the game is much more adequate successor.

“Mademoiselle, your life will be a crazy carnival, filled with laughter, luck, and life’s lovely lunacies...”

Theresa Duncan and co.’s lens with which to see the beauty of the world. Meets children at their level with their curiosity and does not go any lower. Love love love the writing here (and the narration, thanks David!), giving children beautiful prose to study and understand as they piece together this world. That’s a didactic view of course, but sans that even, the world still feels so descriptively penned. Also, aggressively 90s with its fuzzy guitar, pig-latin jokes, and (oddly popular) pastiche of beatnik culture.

Warms my gnarled heart that Fugazi and Nation of Ulysses alumni embraced this project with the care needed. It shows, truly.

EO's style finally matured with Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City, the peak of their art. With this entry, Atlus improved on all fronts (artistically, systems mechanics, gameplay, level variety, map design, etc.) expanding on the intuitions learned from the previous 2 games. Wider build variety (thanks to the addition of subclasses and an almost complete class overhaul) is complemented by an even stronger emphasis on tense, but not terribly frustrating (as in the second game) or tedious (as in the first), but still very challenging dungeon crawling. With this release, Etrian Odyssey can claim to be a worthy successor to dungeon crawlers for the modern age.