imainmeleekirby
This really is just Breath of the Wild+, with all the good and the bad that comes with. I've seen a lot of people argue that this game fixed a lot of its predecessors problems, and I actually don't agree with that. I found a lot of the same things to criticize here as I did in BotW. But ultimately, the incredible exploration based gameplay is more than enough to outweigh any problems I might have.
2015
One of the most charming, heartfelt, and emotionally resonant games I've ever played. The humor has aged extremely well and the characters are all delightful. The writing is masterful and runs the whole spectrum of emotion effortlessly. The multiple endings add replay value and basically every aspect of the gameplay exists to serve the narrative. Without question one of the greatest games I've ever played and truly deserving of the title of masterpiece.
2018
I definitely didn't put enough time into this to actually get any good at it, but what I played was a really fun time. It feels like a love letter to DBZ and as a pretty lukewarm fan of the series, even I was grinning ear to ear at a lot of dialogue and special moves. If you're big into fighting games I can't really say what your take on this will be, but if you're a Dragon Ball fan then this is worth spending a few hours with.
This is some truly great mindless fun for any Naruto fan, especially if you can grab a friend for some multiplayer. The single player is a bit weaker than other Naruto games, but that's obviously not the core appeal here. It's the excellent core formula of the Storm series polished to a shine.
2013
It's a very tough balancing act to make a game feel both stressful and fun at the same time, but this game pulls it off flawlessly. The simple repetitive game play makes it easy to slip into a rhythm which makes it all the more important and stay on your toes. It's a really fun gameplay loop that could very easily have veered right into frustrating territory but it manages to stay fun throughout.
This game has aged like a glass of milk in Texas. I don't generally like NES era games, since the controls are usually clunky and janky, and nowhere is this more true than menu heavy RPGs like this. The core map design is actually quite good, and once you get the power to warp skip every map it's decently fun, but there is absolutely no reason to play this over the remake other than pure novelty.
Reviewing this game after playing Cold Steel 4 has given me more appreciation for the ideas in this game that weren't terrible (few and far between). I found next to nothing interesting about this game. Huge chunks of it feel like complete filler, with most of the characters having the soul sucked out of them. It's also truly impressive that this game managed to retroactively make Crossbell worse through a series of very simple but very stupid decisions. Many of these problems would carry over into the subsequent games, and at times are much more glaring than they are in this game, but this was the first Trails game that was a complete disappointment for me and I've never really gotten over that.
2019
This is absolutely one of the video games of all time. This is a very interesting concept, one that I think was used to great effect in Her Story, but the problem with this game is that they made it quite a bit longer so the repetitive loop began to wear thin. I can't say I would recommend this game unless you're a diehard fan of the idea, but the story it tells is decent and your own mileage may vary.
2023
I don't really want to regurgitate all the criticisms I'm sure people have already heard, so I won't. I didn't enjoy the game, but I can understand why others did. If you found this to be a refreshing change of pace for the series and enjoyed it thoroughly, I am genuinely very happy for you, but I found next to nothing that I loved about it. It's far from the worst game in the series, but I'm not looking to go back any time soon.
This game is hardly a step up from the previous one, which is to say thoroughly mediocre. The ever expanding cast of characters continues to get less interesting, and the story is outright nonsensical at points. There are few cool ideas in the plot, the school setting is almost as charming as it was in CS1, and it has one of my favorite endings in the series. Outside of that, though, this was an absolute slog to get through. Really not worth playing unless you're very committed to playing the whole series.
A genuinely adorable little story about the importance of honesty and owning up to your mistakes. Combined with the simple and relatively easy gameplay, this would be a fantastic game to play with a young child. It really is like an interactive story book.
Despite my name, I've actually barely touched the Kirby series. This was a great experience and has gotten me interested in trying more games. There's a ton of replay value so I may go back and play more at some point.
Fun chaos with friends. Nothing more, nothing less.
This game features a lot of interesting ideas that I'm sad never made it into subsequent games. Towards the end, navigating the world started to get a bit frustrating and I had to use a guide to find the last couple of dungeons. Subrosia didn't really feel like it added anything other than needless complexity. Overall, felt like kind of a step down from Link's Awakening but still quite enjoyable.
The story does a really great job of hooking you at the start, but after that it felt like it wasn't really going anywhere for a while. The RTS battles were more fun than I was expecting, and once the story gets going it's genuinely great, but it took longer than I would have liked to get me fully invested.