To call Donkey Kong Jr. Math a weird, slow, clunky worksheet that you control, for some reason, with 1982 video game superstar Donkey Kong Jr, among the slowest, clunkiest platforming characters to ever control would be accurate. Your ability to move around and collect numbers whilst a player two sits in the corner doing absolutely nothing and you solve five math problems as slooowly as possible so that young Cranky Kong will give you an apple and call you cool proves that there is pretty much nothing here as a single-player game. The mode explicitly FOR single player fares little better as you fill in a blank worksheet number by number in a hilariously contrived manner that you can easily mess up and waste a ton of time on.

However, the actual meat of the competitive mode is way, WAY more fun than it has any right to be. In fact, I would dare say that a good match of Donkey Kong Jr Math is one of the most fun experiences you can have with two players on the NES, a statement so ludicrous that it wraps around to being true. You may look at this and balk, but you have never had the experience of stealing someone's subtraction sign so it spawns on the other half of the map - you didn't need it, but you could afford it. You haven't planned to overshoot a number in the center by a factor of tens of thousands just so you can divide down later and subtract whilst your opponent slooowly adds. You haven't blocked another ape with your giant toddler ape body, preventing them from getting the one sign they need to actually make their strategy work, so you can quickly calculate out some division, simultaneously working a football-like defense and doing math equations in your head on what you have to multiply to in order to come close to 600.

Donkey Kong Jr Math is a shockingly engaging title that is easy to pop in and, most importantly, is a game that you do not want to lose at. Imagine getting 5-0'd in a children's math game - that is the terrifying reality that DKJM can bring to the forefront. Is it just this single mini-game? Yeah. But it's a surprisingly, almost accidentally GOOD one. DKJM has a kusoge soul behind its edutainment exterior, a mixture of high stress, intense focus, and incredible trolling potential. There have been hundred-hour epics in video games that I overall got less enjoyment out of mechanically than 10 minutes of doing competitive math problems only for my opponent to realize they forgot how negative numbers work and were playing themselves. I adore this awful game. You should, too. Put it on at a party as a dare or challenge, put on Calculate B, and see people care way, way too much about children's math problems.

... is this technically the first platform fighter? You ARE fighting your opponent for stage control the entire time!

Never have I played a game I felt so middle of the road on. Nothing about this game felt outright bad, but nothing really stood out as really great either.

The story has its moments but is overall kind of a mess pacing-wise. Plot threads get started and forgotten about before suddenly coming back and hastily wrapped up with little fanfare. There was a particular moment that felt like it was setting up the ending to the game only for the game to continue for another four chapters.

The gameplay is okay, but it is repetitive and lacking in room for strategy. Often you are just spamming your strongest skills until the enemies are dead. There are some mechanics involving manipulating the turn order, but it's too unpredictable to take plan around. This is only when you aren't farming for experience without even battling which the game generously lets you do the moment enemies are only slightly below your level. The side quests are a fun distraction with some entertaining banter between party members but also don't leave much of a mark.

After finishing the game I realized that, while I didn't mind my experience with the game, it really failed to leave a big impression on me. While the other Utawarerumono games are by no means perfect, those games have incredible high points that made them extremely memorable to me. My only hope is the inevitable sequel really steps things up because there is a good foundation here.

"An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity, a physicist tries to make it simple, for an idiot anything the more complicated it is the more he will admire it, if you make something so clusterfucked he can't understand it he's gonna think you're a god cause you made it so complicated nobody can understand it"
-Terry A. Davis, RIP.

People weren't ready for this game, it didn't deserve this much critical panning. Sure, it went through development hell, having to change multiple publishers to settle down for an exclusivity deal with Nintendo at the end, but i'd argue that it delivered. Tomonobu Itagaki's main purpose for this game was its multiplayer (which unfortunately is dead) it actually did very well in Japan, even having the multiplayer filled with people so much that they made a "Devil's Third Online" on PC that was JP-Exclusive. Itagaki notes on his FB Account that he wanted to get as many people in its multiplayer mode. He also noted many things like how he was done with Ninja Gaiden & DOA but he wanted to continue Devil's Third. Its almost been 9 years since this game's release and with Wanted: Dead coming out this year and his heir Yoshifuru Okamoto doing a great job overall, its safe to say Itagaki will make a comeback sooner or later.

The reviews that note it down as a poorly made game with poor mechanics are absolutely clueless on how to play this game. It literally is simple, you've got your shooting, sliding, blocking, parrying, dodging, jumping, quick attacks and heavy attacks. However, despite all of this, in every goddamn video I've seen that pans this game as the absolute worst or shrugs it off as a "so bad its good" title, they always end up hiding behind covers and shooting with the gun... Yeah, let us just ignore the fact that this is a literal Gun-Fu game, where you're literally encouraged to use the melee as much as you're encouraged to use the gun. The game even throws you in a lot of different enemy types and bosses for you to switch up your playstyle. But nope, everyone is going to approach the combat with as much disinterest and disaffection as possible. Then later complain how much it sucked. These are the same people that play games in so-called "Journo" baby mode.
"Itagaki professes a liking for simplicity of inputs, he states too many inputs would result in the loss of the gaming experience."
-From Tomonobu Itagaki's Wikipedia page
Itagaki doesn't care for complexity, it has been apparent ever since DOA & Ninja Gaiden and that's where the beauty of his game design kicks in, the simplicity. There's no need to memorize movesets because all of it naturally gets revealed to you, you know exactly how to approach a threat, and to eliminate it. In Devil's Third especially, one of my favorite combat strategies was to slide towards the enemy while hip-firing, then cancelling it with a slash and getting that sweet glory kill. Another great mechanic was the ability to leap kills and being able to throw your melee weapon at the enemy, I was just so hooked to the gameplay and the endless combat scenarios, I couldn't stop at all. All of these abilities are presented to you by the man himself so you can play experimenting with different approaches as it was intended. Not just sticking to one method of gameplay like an absolute cretin. It genuinely infuriates me to see people refer to this as a "Gears of War" clone or a "TPS COD", when it has absolutely nothing in common.

Devil's Third's story felt like a riff on Metal Gear, which seemed to be the case for any Japanese game releasing during that era. It involves heavy on the nose Buddhist themes, as if the Sanskrit tattoos written all over our main protagonist, Ivan, wasn't an indication already. You have loading screens filled with Buddha statues, and not to mention a Buddhist take on a "revenge" story, with the main antagonist's ultimate masterplan literally being the concept of Nirvana in itself, is nothing short but one hell of a ride. The boss encounters are especially to live for, your final stand-off with Isaac Kumano is genuinely breathtaking sequence, that I feel a certain game company for sure took some artistic liberties in putting it in their own title. :)

Tomonobu Itagaki to this very day is still proud of what he's done. When asked about the hysterical criticism, his answer was: "The fans loved it." And that's what Itagaki truly cares for. As if these Metacritic obsessing, ratingheads would understand.

"To all my fellow gamers. No matter how the world changes or times pass, our love for games and our passion will never die. Thank you all for waiting so long for this moment."
-Tomonobu Itagaki, End Credits of Devil's Third.