It's definitely better than the first two games, though "redemption" is too strong a word. Took forever for me to get around to this after playing 1 and 2 mostly because me and the homie playing through this with me decided it would be in our best interest to watch the connected anime to get all the prior context (which was a horrible mistake, roots was horrifically boring).

This game at the very least gets a win in the fact that since this is the finale, the plot actually has to do things, explain mysteries that the series thus far had been frustratingly obtuse over, and wrap up everything in a satisfying way. For very brief moments in time I actually found myself somewhat caring about the characters and the general story arc, which was something that I didn't think previously was possible. Not sure if that's because of the actual writing being a step up or if I've found the sheer nothingness of the G.U. plot endearing thanks to stockholm syndrome, but hey! There's also another tournament arc when the previous 2 games already had tournament arcs within them, so that's awesome.

The gameplay is pretty much the same thing as always, you check your email and do a quest and then repeat that shit until the credits roll. The combat is at its deepest here given there's the highest amount of playable weapons and party members to use here, but it's still pretty bland and I definitely found myself avoiding every enemy encounter and optional side content like the plague just to get this game obliterated.

I will give this game credit over Quarantine in the IMOQ series in that at least this game feels more like a solid way to end the story rather than just being a dumb final grindfest with very little payoff. I'm saving most of my general thoughts on the G.U. series as a whole for my review of Last Recode, but I will say that G.U. at the very least TRIES to make each game feel like bespoke titles instead of selling a 4 disc game in piecemeal, and this game is no different. It's honestly a lot better than I expected it to be, but given its existence as one part of a greater whole, I can't exactly recommend it given you'd have to play the first 2 volumes as well.

NGL after hearing literally no marketing and this being the last game before the series (and TTL genre as a whole, honestly) finally suffocated to death, seeing the ho-hum reviews even from fans on this site, and being cringed to death by trap team and superchargers, I had negative expectations going in. After playing it though, I'm honestly surprised to say that I'd put this game up there with the first two games as the best in the series!

The new gimmick this game around are the imaginators, which are basically custom characters you can save to these weird capsule doohickeys. The character creator is quite robust and I definitely made the stupidest guy I conceivably could create. His name is greg and his catchphrase is "I like water!" Greg is the true hero of skylands. For a time, you could even use an app to buy a real 3D printed model of your custom character, which is extremely fucking cool actually. There are also a bunch of new original characters known as the "sensei" skylanders that are distinct in that they have their own super moves and can access certain parts of levels. On the capitalistic side of things, yes there's still the good ol' power creep making all previous characters as technically useable as possible and there are the level challenges that only the new guys can access. It's nowhere nearly as confusing as the supercharger gated content in 5 or as blatant as the trap masters being objectively better than anyone else in 4. Pretty much all the collectables are replaced by lootbox-esque treasure chests and apparently you could buy extra one-use treasure chests in blind bags back in the day and that's kinda lame imo. Also since this game didn't sell that well getting the actual figures for this game is incredibly difficult and expensive, if you want to legitimately play as Ro-Bow get ready to mortgage your house or sell a kidney. Definitely get some NFC cards if you want to see the new guys tbh.

As for the normally-cringe plot, this games narrative is extremely barebones so it doesn't have the effort put into being cringe and I actually could tolerate it this time around! It felt like they didn't really have the budget to hire the ol' corporate writing team they used for 3-5 so things are more snappy. What would be events in the plot that the cringe games would probably spend several scenes making jokes over are usually one-off things that happen and leave without dwelling too much. It's honestly refreshing! Nothing plot is certainly better than groanworthy plot, that's for sure. They also use playable characters from previous games as the primary NPCs rather than using the usual annoying crew, which doesn't make much sense given you can still play as those guys so there can just be two of em, but whatever.

For a final game in the series, it felt like a return to form. It's a very gamey game, not really concerned with being as corporately kid-friendly as possible and just concerned with having competent levels and solid if-not basic gameplay. This game being the last in the series also means that it has 100% perfect figure compatibility so there's literally hundreds of playable characters each with their own bespoke movesets and fighting styles. Special shoutouts to the switch version, as that one ditches the portal entirely allowing you to save figures straight onto the game itself, so you can basically have quick access to every character in the entire series including the nintendo-exclusive characters without even needing to pick up a single plastic figure or reach for a table. Considering the fact that this game was a switch launch title, and I already had my own preexisting army of characters from the first 3 games, I really regret not getting this at the switch launch because it sure as hell would have been a lot more substantial than super bomberman R or 1-2 switch. Unfortunately, just as the figures are expensive and hard to find, the switch version is also quite difficult to snag for a decent price, and there's no digital version that exists. Def not worth the aftermarket value, I had to do some goofy gamestop shenanigans to get my copy for a reasonable price (ill write that whole ordeal in a comment to this review).

I've finally did 11-13 year old me justice and played every skylanders game both on the home console and 3DS front. I've made the most I functionally out of the hundreds of dollars I've spent on these dumb plastic toys. Was it worth it? Not really sure, to be honest. If you are curious about playing any of these games I'd just really suggest either the first two games or this one. And if you are curious about the more cultural fan-community side of the series, I'd suggest checking out the darkspyro skylander forums for each game and the general collecting scene. That place used to be THE place to go for the community and nowadays it's just an abandoned inactive time capsule, only now sparsely populated with people remembering the good ol' days of chasing figure waves and discussing these doofy cringe-ass games.

this game also gets swag reduction for using youtube kids-ass skylander influencers for the credits music, miss me with that shit bro

Crossovers are incredibly tricky things to do right. A strong crossover to me is one that not only pulls from unexpected sources to keep that surreal "this should not be possible" sense of surprise, but treats those sources with proper care and respect. In this day and age though, it's hard for me not to feel kind of apathetic to crossover media in general, as it seems like every entertainment megacorporation wants to create their own multiverses in order to circlejerk over how many IP they've managed to eat up. Lego Dimensions has a bit of both in it, though I'm happy to say it's moreso the former than the latter.

As someone who has had both huge Lego and toys-to-life phases in my youth (a very deadly combination for the wallet of my parents, for sure), this game has always interested me. I wasn't able to buy it in its time due to it being significantly more expensive than other TTL games. Like, I remember this game charging 100 dollars for the starter set and 30 dollars for the character packs, shit was not within my realm of affordability at the time. Luckily, we happen to live in the cool future that has NFC stickers and android apps to basically unlock all the money-gated content without having to buy discontinued lego sets from dubious resellers!

The game is a pretty typical Lego game, the formula really hasn't changed at all since the Lego Star wars games that released a decade prior. Collect studs, find minikits, solve puzzles, etc. My two biggest gripes come from the level length and the toys-to-life integration. Levels are far longer than is comfortable for me, with shit taking anywhere from 30-80 minutes to complete which is just too exhausting for the type of games these lego titles are. The toy pad is also used in a rather annoying way, as there are three sections to it that each have their own bespoke NFC readers and LED lights, and the game constantly requires you to shift characters around on the portal in order to solve puzzles. Whether it's having each section on the pad correspond to warping your character to three different places, coloring your characters in game and then moving their figure to color in the pad lights to match a certain pattern, having different sections give different elemental attributes, or having different parts of the pad change your in-game character size, playing this game required me to constantly keep stopping everything I was doing to go lean over to the pad on the table and shuffle characters around constantly. It also means that most of the puzzles are the exact same, so the actual act of playing campaign levels gets really stale really quickly.

The crossover aspect of this game is its biggest strength, though not all properties are treated equal. There are 30 "worlds" that the game picks characters from, though the amount of content each world has varies depending on the IP. The main campaign consists of the trio on the cover going through 11 different worlds and engaging with various mashup shenanigans throughout. Your mileage definitely varies with how many of the crossed-over IP you actually care about, as I was mostly going into the campaign eager to see the Portal, Ghostbusters, Scooby Doo, Midway, and Back to the Future content only to get mostly jebaited by constant DC Universe characters invading random places I didn't give a shit about. Scooby and the gang barely got any screentime in the main campaign!!! There are also one-off bonus levels that exist, but they only are there for certain worlds so fans of specific series might be disappointed to see they only got table scraps. Lastly there are huge explorable hubworlds full of side missions and collectables for every single world in the game, so at the very least there's something to do for fans of each IP. Regardless of the total amount of content each IP was given, they did make sure to do them all as much justice as they possibly could, and filled the game to the brim with details and references that fans can appreciate. There's a sonic level with both a Mecha Sonic fight AND a chaos fight. The back to the future world has multiple different variations for each of the many time periods that you can travel between. The midway arcade world has nearly an entire compilation titles worth of playable arcade games on their own janky emulators. The Doctor Who character has fully voiced, uniquely animated variations for every doctor incarnation, AS WELL as bespoke theme music for using the TARDIS complete with period-accurate TARDIS interiors. There are over 45 minutes of unique character-to-character dialog for all sorts of interactions ranging from your expected quirky chatter (Sonic can remark on Doctor Who supposedly naming his screwdriver after him) to unexpected deeper cuts (the midway gamer kid straight up references LJN's shitty back to the future game when paired with Marty Mcfly). The credits music is even a brand new Jonathan Coulton GLaDOS song for petes sake! At the end of the day the crossovers could be seen as shallow fanservice, but it felt to me like it was a labor of love by fans on the developmental side.

The game really is built like a kid playing with their own Lego sets. Playful, ambitious, slightly unhinged, messy, and unbalanced as there's clearly favoritism towards certain sets over others. All the different aspects of the game definitely make it difficult to review and cleanly get my thoughts on it properly out, that's for sure. A messy, fragmented, review for a messy, fragmented game, I guess. Still something that I am overall impressed by the scope of, I didn't even mention the fact that there are one thousand and sixteen gold bricks to earn throughout the game. In my first playthrough being as generally thorough with the levels as I could, I earned about 20, to put how rediculously insane that total number is. Would definitely suggest giving it a shot if you have the means to play without breaking the bank and like enough of the worlds present. Just do yourself a favor and avoid the Wii U port like the plague.

Oh.

From the start of the game, this tries to impress me as much as it possibly can. The overworld is simplified and uses trains! There's more of an emphasis on story with cinematic animated cutscenes! The soundtrack is catchy and more pronounced! Zelda is an actual character that has actual screen time to develop and interact with Link instead of being captured/turned into a rock the whole game! Instruments are back! There's only 5 dungeons, so it's short and concise! Alas, the longer I played and further I progressed, the more the cracks began to show, the smoke and mirrors fade, and the truth becomes blatantly obvious.

This game is just Phantom Hourglass in a train-colored trenchcoat.

Pretty much every problem that I had with Phantom Hourglass is still in full blast here, from the clumsy controls and movement being entirely locked to the touch screen (though to give them SOME credit at least you can double-tap to roll instead of having to draw those dumb circles on the edge of the screen, thank christ), to the giant tartarus-ass main dungeon that requires constant retreads, all the way to the overworld being a painfully slow time waster with really not much to do whatsoever. If you weren't a fan of Phantom Hourglass, this game will give you deja vu in all the wrong ways.

And again to give them some credit, I can see that there were attempts to improve the general experience. The new items are more interesting and unique than in PH, and the giant central dungeon no longer has a time limit and you can start from the beginning of each unlocked section rather than only from either the very start or a singular checkpoint, and there are the aforementioned control and aesthetic/narrative upgrades. It's just that despite all the polish it's still using a game I didn't like as its foundation.

The two biggest new titular elements, Ghost Zelda (the spirit) and the train (the tracks), weren't even that interesting. Having Zelda be able to possess the guardians of the main dungeon to work on your side is conceptually really cool and there are a handful of interesting puzzles that come from the dynamic between link and ghost zelda, but the guardians crawl-like movement speed combined with the games insistance that you and zelda pass through doors together means there's a WHOLE lot of just waiting for her to just mfin catch up. Zelda's AI pathing isn't the smartest either, as I had multiple instances where calling her to me would cause her to go in the complete opposite direction, which was very fun and not at all irritating. Zelda's inclusion basically turns the big central dungeon from one giant annoying stealth mission to one giant annoying escort mission. Pick your poison. The train turns the mindless sailing of Phantom Hourglass into train track navigation that at its best is equally as mindless as the PH sailing and at its worst is some messed up game of pac-man where you gotta dodge insta-kill suicidal bomb cars that move faster than you when I just want to goddamn get back to a town already!!!!!!

Shoutouts as well to the flute that requires actual constant blowing into the DS mic to play and the final stretch of the game for being a gauntlet consisting of a dungeon with way too much slow guardian-swapping backtracking, a game of unfair train pac-man, boss fights with arguably unavoidable attacks depending on RNG, a perfect game of projectile tennis, and even more mic flute blowing shenanigans. FUN!

If you like trying to control fully-faceted adventure games with a stick, Nintendo has you covered with this game and its predecessor. I can't believe I had more fun with the fucking Tingle games than I did with the actual mainline titles when it comes to the zelda series on DS. What in the hell was Nintendo cooking dude

more monke

It's more ape escape, which considering how much I liked the first game really isn't a problem whatsoever. The core gameplay of using the dualshock sticks to catch various monkeys is primarily the same, as well as the tools and gadgets also mostly being the same, it's all-around a pretty safe sequel.

The game still has its signature level of wacky style to everything, I particularly like the new boss troupe - the Freaky Monkey Five, as both a goofy exaggerated sentai parody and as a set of boss fights. There's also a gacha machine that gives out collectibles ranging from goofy dev screenshots to bizarrely morbid fairytale parodies. There's even full 16:9 widescreen support, which is crazy for an '02 PS2 game. My only gripes with the game is that some of the later levels can be a bit too long and linear for the type of collectathon this series tries to be as well as the fact you basically HAVE to replay every level if you want the true ending as the post game adds bonus monkeys to every level like its mfin green stars from mario galaxy 2.

From the way everything is designed and presented, it really felt to me like the devs were having a lot of fun making the game. Like the first Ape Escape, the game wears its Japanese origins with pride to make a good time. (sidenote: kinda strange how the ape escape series is like the only largely talked about jpn-developed 3D platformer for the playstation brand, you'd think there'd be more from the PS1 and PS2 era). The game doesn't really reinvent the banana, but it didn't really have to in the first place.

Also the USA localization of the game is deadass dubbed by the same voice directors and cast as the 90's Pokemon anime, guess ash and misty can add monkeys to the things they have to catch all of

After a tokimemo-themed warmup, I am officially awoken from true DDR hibernation for the fall and winter, baby. Getting back into DDR in the fall is always a bit of a slow start due to the fact that its at the peak of cold/flu season so I always feel like crap getting back into this not only from being out of shape but also from fending off disease. True dancing gamers push on through such things. No matter how I'm feeling, all I need to see is footage from ancient japanese freestyle DDR competitions of 20 years ago to motivate me to jump around on the ol pad for an hour before I collapse from exhaustion.

As for the actual game, it's aight. I'd rate the setlist just about as good as 4th or extra mix in that there's a handful of bangers I kept going back to scattered through a pile of eh. Shoutouts to Captain Jack doing an english cover of odoru ponpokorin, that felt like it was made specifically for me lmfao. This game also runs at 60 FPS compared to literally every previous game running at 30 and it feels GOOD. The stepcharts are also really well-developed, compared to other games I found myself popping off HARD after finishing songs way more often just because of how good they felt to step through. It really feels like Konami has been subtly polishing the core DDR gameplay throughout the series so far. Speaking about the series so far, this game also essentially serves as a tribute to what's been done, as not only is there a 200-image gallery of various characters, backgrounds, and merchandise from the series up to this point, but the game also includes a complete archive of the old DDR websites data bank of user-submitted custom charts for all the previous DDR games. There are over 3000 fan-made custom charts of varying quality you can download to your memory card to give a breath of fresh air to your existing DDR game catalog, and that's hella cool. I wonder if anyone has actually played them all.

It's kinda funny that the setlist is really this games weakest quality, as this would absolutely be a top-tier DDR game if it had the setlist of something like 3rdmix. Everything else is top-notch and a solid send-off to the PS1 era of japanese DDR games before the series moves on to the next generation of game hardware.

(And this game marks the debut of Alice!!! I always used the player 2 side so I could play as her, she's the best I hope I can play as her in all the future games)

Another one of those truly uncompletable games, but fuck it I have hundreds of hours in this from just dicking around so completed it goes.

I originally remember seeing those old idiots of garrys mod/machinima videos back in like 2010 (they probably haven't held up very well) where they make skits in Gmod and assumed that's what the actual gameplay was like, so you could imagine my surprise when I first booted it up, went on gm_construct, and stumbled around trying to figure out what to do. Gmod is many things to many people, but at its core, it's just a way to mess around with the incredibly dynamic Source Engine that powered Half-Life 2. Going in without exactly knowing that, however, meant that I really didn't know what the hell I was supposed to do or how the hell to build/do anything.

Eventually I found out how to add mods to import various weapons, models, maps, and NPCs into my game properly, and from there the doors were blown open. The game basically became my own personal action-figure toy set I could slap together using the genuine models from the games I enjoyed. Not only was Gmod an endless playset with an unending number of explorable maps to screw about in, but it also gave 12-year-old me a bit of insight as to the various tricks and tech games do to inherently function. I never ported or coded anything within Gmod myself, nor did I use Gmod to chase any sort of computer science degree, but just dicking around in this game over the course of years made me much more game-tech and modding literate than I was before.

I know a lot of people have a lot of fond memories doing multiplayer on Gmod but I really didn't play with others much back in the day. Not only did my addons not properly transfer to other servers properly at the time, but also my internet was horrible so connecting to other servers and downloading all the assets took forever. I also didn't have HL2EP2 or CSS either, so multiplayer was mostly spent in ye ol checkerboard error hell.

Nowadays, roughly 10 years after the fact, I rarely go on Gmod anymore. I know thanks to the steam workshop its super easy to play multiplayer with friends and have everyones addons be synced, but again shit takes forever to load so I have a hard time convincing my friends to play. all I've done in recent memory is pose and take screenshots of the stupidest shit possible and post it to my friends completely out of context

what the hell why does this have a release date of 2018 i played this shit back in like 2014 and forgot about it to the point where I'm just now logging it. It's your typical unity shitpost game, I actually do remember the various race courses being solidly open-ended and explorable for something like this as well as the different physics models for each of the characters being fun to mess around with. With the level design being the way it is and super sonic being completely broken, you could make an argument that this is the modern sonic R, just flavored with outdated memes from yesteryear. It was some harmless albeit forgettable fun, as easily consume-and-disposable as the memes that it's constructed of.

For a bonus thank-you game redeemable through Japanese Club Nintendo, you certainly can do worse. It's exactly what it says it is; Balloon Fight but with Tingle. It uses the DS's dual screens to have an extra high vertical aspect ratio, as well as better control compared to the sluggish NES original, but I think the better control and extra space make the game a bit too easy for its own good. The game uses the same 12 stage loop that the NES game has, no Vs. Balloon Fight stages or anything else freshly designed for this game here. The game also saves after every stage of both the main balloon fight mode and the balloon trip mode, so really finishing all the stages is just a matter of persistence. In the options there's the ability to play either with music and sounds taken directly from Tingles Rosy Rupeeland or the original balloon fight sounds and music/random beeping. The music quality for the NES tracks sounds compressed, like they recorded it off of the original game rather than just using an NES sound font, which is lowkey strange. Lastly, there's a picture gallery of various images of Tingle overlaid on real life photos for some reason, where reaching certain milestones in the game earns more tingle photos. One of the photos is locked behind a 4-player multiplayer game, so you better call in the boys and hope this games multiplayer is download play compatible.

It's light on content and substance, but it's a club nintendo prize game so of course it is. It's certainly way more unique and interesting than the borin game and watch compilations we got over here in the states, that's for sure.

I have now played all the tingle games baybee!!!! kooloo limpah motherfuckers

it's a bunch of applications themed around tingle, I really don't have much to say here. There's fortune telling, a timer, a calculator, a music box dancing thing, and a coin game to help you make decisions. Probably had a few niche practical uses when it first came out and everybody had their DSi on them, but nowadays it just remains a fun footnote in the zelda/tingle repertoire. I do like the non-zero chance that someone used the coin game to make an incredibly important decision, or that someone needed to use the tingle calculator to calculate how much money needs to be split evenly between the boys and girls when dining out in a group or something.

Gotta admit, after the conceptually raw but still intentionally boring and grindy adventure that was rosy rupeeland, and the fact that this is a point-and-click game made by people from development studios practically known for their obtuse design, and I wasn't really super looking forward to this game. But lo and behold, I actually had quite a bit of fun here.

They basically took the bizarre situations from rosy rupeeland and decided to base the whole game around that kind of thing. The jokes the game has on offer are really well-structured and fun. From the antagonist very clearly being a pretty-boy parody of link to the whole large chapter where tingle and the crew need to file for a passport, there's never really a dull moment and it keeps the pace going nicely. The actual plot is an extremely loose retelling of The Wizard of Oz, for some reason, as Tingle is accompanied by a lion, robot, and scarecrow as they follow a yellow brick road (and accompanying yellow train tracks) to reach an emerald city where their desires lie.

Tingle isn't off to see the Wizard of Oz though, he's off to see the BITCHES of Oz. A core element of this game revolves around courting girls by giving them presents they enjoy so that they can actually talk to you instead of being eternally creeped out by the rotund 35-year-old in green tights glaring at them. Because presents cost money, there is a bit of a grind to be able to afford everything, especially considering you have to make guesses and deduce what each girl might be potentially interested in. Don't be an idiot like me and try to buy the whole shop to be prepared for any circumstance, as later on in the game they introduce higher-level presents and all the presents I slaved over earning became yesterdays news that nobody wanted. The money grind isn't nearly as bad as it is in rosy rupeeland, as there's a specific dungeon crawling minigame that gives out assloads of rupees really quickly.

The many various puzzles in the game are surprisingly not super difficult to figure out comparative to other point-and-click adventure games. The patented Love-de-Lic cryptic unexplained nonsense is still in the game, but instead delegated to optional bonus achievements found in every chapter that don't actually progress the main story, and the actual mandatory stuff is easily manageable. There's also a spoiler man that can outright tell you what to do next should you get stuck, so this is probably one of the very few games these guys have made where I can actually say a guide is completely not necessary.

It's a solid adventure game with a good sense of humor and interesting mechanics. My only real gripe is it can feel a bit like the game is wasting your time in some parts, mostly regarding how progress going to-and-fro chapters works. I straight up lost like 2 hours of progress because I ran out of money and had to go back to an earlier chapter to do a dungeon run and had to do all the stuff I was stuck on all over again because you can only jump between the beginning of each section for each chapter, it's kinda dumb. But that all being said, if you like that particular brand of obscure-japanese-nintendo-game strangeness, this is worth giving a go.

Honestly for a title released in early 1985 pre-mario it's pretty darn solid. It essentially is Nintendo/Iwata's take on Joust, instead using more cartoony and readable characters. While I certainly like Joust, I def remember being a bit confused when first playing it mostly due to how the hitboxes were handled by a tiny sword on your bird guy. With this game, the core gameplay of manipulating momentum by air flapping remains the same, with the giant balloons on both your character and the enemies serving as a large understandable target to aim for/defend. Add the fact that this game being a console game rather than an arcade game means it can be a bit more forgiving with a 2 balloon health bar and an overall less inherently oppressive atmosphere and slower pace than Jousts swarms of death, and you have something that's still pretty comfy and timeless to play even today (something that a lot of other early famicom/NES black box titles can miss the mark on). Oh, it's also one of the few early famicom games with simultaneous 2-player gameplay which keeps it fresh, and the balloon trip mode is arguably more memorable than the proper main game with its tricky obstacle courses and catchy tunes.

I honestly have played this on-and-off for the better part of like at least 15 years by now ever since I first played this by unlocking it in animal crossing. I never knew there were only 12 levels in this version before it just loops so I finally got around to playing through all 12. This game certainly is in the upper echelon of early famicom releases, probably up there with lode runner and xevious as the best bang for your buck in the pre-mario days. It's no wonder why Nintendo got Iwata to work with them for other titles like pinball, golf, and F-1 race, starting a relationship that would kickstart his legendary career.

Definitely an improvement from the first game in everything except for the fact that this game do be too got damn long for its own good. The main new addition to this is the free roaming map that ya drive around in to get to the various events scattered within, both visible on a big in-game map as well as secret stuff that can only be found through exploration. While it def makes everything slower than just pushing a button on a menu to get to the races, I actually did find the free-roaming quite fun as not only is the city reasonably sized and vibin' with its neon-coated glowing buildings and setpieces, but also it functions as a decent way to practice driving in a safe environment without having to constantly redo races n such. Considering the fact that a lot of the races take place in the giant city, having the familiarity of both the controls and the map through the free roaming do make it so that it's easier for me to get in the flow of things.

The game just kinda drags on a bit too much imo, has that same problem that a handful of racers I've played have where the mid-game is a bit more stagnant and difficult than the rest due to not having a properly upgraded/maintained car that the game might be expecting me to have. I feel like if they reduced the games length to like 2/3rds of its total runtime that this would be a lot more digestible. The open world explorable city already gives the game plenty of reason to go back to it and keep playing, they didn't need to have such high event complete quotas n whatnot. That being said though, it's really not like there's any gripping narrative going on here, it's just car gangs doing car gang things with very sparse cutscenes (that feel way lower budget than the CGI cutscenes the first game had but whatever). If I had this game back in the day I prob wouldn't have even cared about the story progression and just spent all my time just driving around the city taking in the wonderful 2000s ass visual and audio aesthetics that this game is rich with. I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of people that bought this game played it exactly that way.

(if i have to do ONE MORE drag race event i will go insane and drive into the highway, those events are ASS and I hope this is the last game in the series that they are featured in)

Kind of bizarre for a taiko game, especially since it felt like it was kind of shadow dropped out of the blue.

Unlike every other taiko game, this uses a vertical aspect ratio instead of a horizontal one. I definitely thought at first that it would limit visibility but the note charts are still quite readable. The UI and overall game aesthetic is very tiktokcore, with the extra vertical space being used to play videos and whatnot, which is eh. They gave every song in the game a bespoke album cover which has never been done before in taiko and the art for the covers is super cool, i honestly hope that they get implemented in the arcade and console taikos from here on out.

As for the gameplay, holding a phone vertically and using two thumbs as drumsticks works quite well, though this certainly feels like it was designed to not be taken so seriously. Not only is muzu the default difficulty with oni being locked behind a muzu clear, but also scoring in general is very P2W locked behind season passes and cosmetic unlocks and what have you. So while its definitely not comfortable to do really intense songs, I don't think thats the intention here.

Being an F2P mobile game, there are the caviats of there being ads that inconsistently bombard you with crap that you'd have to buy the season pass to remove. I thought that it'd be really bad and limit your every move, but honestly the game is incredibly generous with plays, as in my time playing so far I have never run out of limited play tickets and theres a rotating free song list that always has something interesting in it.

Honestly it's an upper-echelon home taiko game, as surprising as it is to say. It pretty much offers the entire breadth of content contained in the premium taiko pass on console for free, provided you dont mind watching a handful of cringe mobile ads from time to time. Considering the fact this has 800+ songs, a solid control scheme, and even mfin english support in the settings, there's probably not a better taiko game for newcomers. If this game came out when I was first getting into taiko, it'd have been all that I would have needed. Definitely keepin this on my phone to get a taiko fix whenever i want.

It was fine. Ngl doing a more open take on the kuru kuru kururin gameplay formula is pretty ingenious, but once they added a jump button that allows you to just not engage with the spinning mechanics plus the less-than-stellar hit detection means I felt kinda disengaged playing it compared to actual kururin. The characters and goofy FMV have their own kind of humor that either will or won't click. The writing didn't super click with me and the low budgety FMV nature felt less like a B-movie and more like some high school media project or limited run E3 showcase, idk the whole zero-budget style trope has kinda lost its luster to me. Beth hard carries the entire narrative, it's not even funny. That all being said, it did seem like the developers had a lot of fun making the game and I can't really hate it so yeah. It exists!

(oh and if you are so inclined to want the platinum trophy for this game, I hope you like desert bus)