What many Metroidvanias miss about Symphony is its maximalism: its deep well of secrets, rare drops, hidden moves, broken weapons, etc, alongside its decadent goth presentation. The discovery is the game.

Top-quality expansion to a still-very-fun game. Excellent modeling and animation work. My only gripe is that some of the new characters didn't exist when the game came out. Like why is Dark Samus here, c'mon!

Ruthless rubberband-y AI and somewhat OP items can make single-player a nightmare, but multi-player is hectic bliss. Sharp turns are fun to master, course designs are delightfully tricky. Great art and music, too.

It's been called "the best 6/10 ever" which sounds about right. The dynamic, mix-'n-match, class-based combat and stealth options will be a blast for Dragon's Dogma-heads. Everything else about it is bland post-WoW swill.

The high school rooftop stage with its blaring harmonica theme is, to me, the purest essence of shounen. A really great busted fighter, with an unforgettable cast and setting. Super loose and accessible, too.

Its presentation and campaign scream "late-era SNES game." The whole collect-'em-all angle seems like a natural evolution of the JRPG mindset, though it does make for a very easy and combat-irrelevant title.

The rapid-fire, WarioWare-style mini-game structure and presentation are really nicely done given that the game ends in like five minutes. This was a pretty impressive thing to come across over ten years ago on NewGrounds.