Surprisingly spooky and atmospheric exploration, the diegetic HUD is neat and vivisecting stock enemies is engaging. The campaign itself is not great: too many fetch quests, and every single boss fight is a letdown.

Its spooky FMV scenes, competent writing and voice acting, pre-rendered Gothic ambiance, and Celtic synth-folk OST are all quality. I just can't put up with the excrutiatingly slow and frequent turn-based grid-combat.

Typical "hidden gem whose merit is overstated online." Very cute, great presentation (too "Japanese" for the perceived Western public-at-the-time), just okay as an actual side-scroller. The final boss is pretty hype.

The department-store and luxury-hotel backdrops give it a sort of "kids movie" charm. The gameplay is simultaneously rock-solid and hard to imagine how someone came up with it. A true arcade classic in that way.

Easily the worst commercially-released game I've ever played, as I don't tend to go hunting for garbage. Runs and looks like shit, controls are a complete disaster. Apparently just a port of HotD 1-3 is too much to ask.

Ultra-stylish "rail-shooting adventure" and a pioneer in intellectualizing online otaku culture. One of the most "post-9/11" games ever. A cyber-noir wasteland of wandering neurotics. Hilarious and point-'n-clicky.

It's just way too long. Nobody has time for 90 hours of magical teenagers saving Japan (except for teenagers). The story's dumb, obviously. The musical cues and gameplay transitions and menus are very nice.

Some ideas were greatly improved by Dark Souls, but there's a lot to love here: intricate, discrete stages; eccentric puzzle-bosses; magic that feels great to use; less focus on intensive dodge-combat; intoxicating atmosphere.

It's such a friendly, pick-up-and-play take on the roguelike. I love how many of its mechanics also work as tiny storytelling embellishments. Art is surprisingly lovely as well. Post-game dungeons are mostly just torture.

Highly-addictive puzzle-dungeon RPG with humorously pathetic story and characters. This is where Onion Games' gameplay, and not just writing, gets to shine. It made more sense as an iOS F2P game, though.

Its stages feel very exploratory and "full" thanks to how the camera accompanies you as you wander in 2.5D. Its world in general is very rich and the story is heartwarming. The central platforming is consistently fun.

For being a Treasure-developed Wario game this is really mediocre. I struggle to remember anything about it beyond a couple boss battles. I'm definitely on board for a mainline Wario game, but this wasn't it.

The juxtaposition of detailed pre-rendered objects with foggy, low-texture environments is deliciously uncanny. The hub town strikes a good balance between "dungeon" sections. A really impressive survival horror debut.

Such a cool take on the match-puzzle game, where you're exchanging small coins until each makes a thousand. Insanely high skill ceiling (and ruthless AI), but fun to play solo. Perky and silly magical-girl premise.

Its painstakingly-shaded depictions of warfare and machinery are like zooming in on the details of a Brueghel or Bosch painting, so full of humor and pathos. Compared to its sequels, fairly grounded and 1CC-able.