I'm tired.

Let's play armchair game designer, because lord knows we don't have enough of them on here.

Before you can run, you must walk, and boy does Nathan Graves enjoy walking. Nathan just adores going on a stroll in Camilla's castle while his master's getting his toenails ripped off in preparation for being slaughtered in a satanic ritual. Mr. Graves wouldn't know how to run even if I slapped his dump truck ass with the world's most painful block of wood. It's a godsend that Camilla's basement houses the very shoes he needs to be able to find the joys of exercise again after he forgot how to sprint when Count Dankula played his Trap Hole card in the introduction scene. One must wonder how long it would've taken if Drac's minions didn't make such a fuck up as to leave shoes for Mr. Graves to wear for his aching strolling feet. Even with these shoes Nathan only knows how to barrel forward with wanton disregard for his own being. Alucard had it figured out already, just run with care. That's all you gotta do. For Nathan though? Only two speeds exist. Tortoise, and drunken hare riding on a Kawasaki Ninja.

The input for running in this game is bad enough with requiring me to dash dance on the dpad and kill my thumbs, but Nathan's whip attack is noticeably sluggish compared to past Classicvania outings. It may not be noticeable at first, but try ducking and whipping and go back to playing as Simon in any of the past games and you'll definitely feel it. Nathan can jump like a stiff pong paddle and can even wall jump, and trust me I'm proud of him for being able to do so, but he should stick to his day job. Wall jumping in this is automated for at least two seconds as Nathan pauses on the wall and propels himself into the direction of enemy fire that sends him careening back down the pit that he was trying to make his way up from. You will encounter this scenario a lot, I assure you, especially with Circle of the Moon's obsession with slap dashing Armor enemies everywhere with annoying attacks that can bop you from the other side of the screen. No joke, I had a moment where I thought I was hitting an Ice Armor enemy in the underground waterway safely, only to get a very pleasant surprise in the form of another spear flying from off screen and stabbing me through the adam's apple thanks to the second Ice Armor that was behind him.

The primary system is collecting some shitty Yu-Gi-Oh cards and playing Blackjack with yourself to combine two of them and give yourself some form of power up, which could range from boring effects like your whip getting an elemental bonus, or actual cool shit like turning into a bone-throwing skeleton that dies in one hit. Unfortunately, the card for turning into a glass jawed skeleton is about 95% into the game and requires killing a very specific candle enemy that requires backtracking to a who-gives-a-shit area, and kindly asking it to drop the damn card sometime this week. This is where I get to bitch about the worst part of Circle of the Moon besides Nathan's completely useless movement, and it's the outrageous drop rates. That card that I'd need for the aforementioned skeleton transformation? The drop rate is zero point four fuckin' percent. That doesn't just effect the cards either. Health items? What are those?!

Seriously, I went for hours playing this game and didn't think healing was even a thing in Circle of the Moon besides the absurdly paltry potions that give a measly 20 hit points back, or getting to one of the sparse save points that fully heals you. Hell, you don't even get healed after boss fights. I beat probably six bosses before a piece of meat suddenly dropped from an enemy, where I double-taked and went back just to stare at it for a while. There is not a shop to speak of either, shopkeepers aren't welcome in Circle of the Moon. No buyable health items for you to help with the horrendous onslaught of tedium, but you can go ahead and enjoy all those completely useless armors you get to lug around on your person. Sure is a hard game we got here, would be nice if I could have some items, but Dracula is against formal goods trading.

Circle of the Moon is about inconvenience. It inconveniences you with movement that isn't convenient for the challenge that is set up for you as it would be for past entries. The only way to make your pathetic movement less inconvenient is to find cards inconveniently hidden away in an unknown enemy's back pocket that could potentially make certain encounters flat out trivial, like the normally problematic ice element in the underground waterway, or Dracula's nigh-impossible to dodge meteor attack in the final battle. It's all an inconvenient excuse to grind if you lack information, which this game inconveniently gives you none assuming you're not playing the Advance Collection version, which was the only convenient bit from my experience. Thanks M2.

It took me about three months to finish the save file I started on the Advance Collection a ways back after I completed Harmony of Dissonance and it's toilet noises, and it's mindbogglingly to me to realize that it was around last Christmas that I replayed and finished Aria of Sorrow again on the same collection. It wasn't necessarily a skill issue, it was a thumb issue from the horrendous dash input, and my complete apathy to this game's entire philosophy of wanting to train me on it's solitaire system only for the battle arena to give me the middle finger, and take that same system away in the ultimate show of disrespectful inconvenience. It was optional, sure, but it's existence is more than enough to make me want to transition into a volcanic state. It was even more aggravating to find out that Konami apparently bumped the experience requirements up for the western releases, thus demanding me to update the list for all the times they fucked us in the ass. I needed a lot of Picross breaks, and apparently a detour to that Peach game I didn't care about.

It kinda goes without saying, but the thought of replaying this on original hardware with the bad GBA screen, no suspend save, or in-game overlay hints of what enemies are carrying cards is less appealing to me than taking an epilator to my ballsack. I'll give it a pity star for Dracula's final boss design, I guess. I guess.

Thus concludes armchair game designer session, if you enjoyed what you've read, please like, comment, subscribe, ring the dingaling, and maybe sing me a nice song.

I'm going to bed now. Goodnight.

hoooooonkmimimimimi.

+Nathan Graves dump truck ass
+Rakugakids reference
+Yo Camilla call me
+Proof of Blood

-Nathan Graves dump truck ass
-Sinking Old Sanctuary?! More like Stinking Old Sanctuary!
-Why is my hair not as nice as Hugh's
-Where's my burrito

Always thought I would like this game more than most people, but I guess I ended up liking it less than most. Perhaps if you play it repeatedly it's better, but in this one playthough... oof. The bosses for this game are notorious for not giving you any rings, and the very first one just absolutely sucks right off the bat. Weirdly, the first boss is perhaps the hardest of the game. I had a lot of blunders on the other ones, but I think I was just too in my head, they're really rather easy for the most part. But yeah, the bosses are mainly what hold this game back for me, or at least the level leading up to them, because this has the Sonic 1 Genesis approach of having a level before the boss. It's not bad for most of them, but holy hell the Green Hills Zone act 3 level is ass.

The regular levels are also a mixed bag. I rather liked Green Hills and Aqua Lake Zone, but Gimmick Mt. and Scrambled Egg Zone were kinda bad (Scrambled Egg especially is doo doo). The other levels are negligible. Kudos for trying different themes than the typical ones, and placing the Green Hill clone in the middle of the game.

I'd personally just rather play Sonic 1 on Game Gear, though, I don't see this as an improvement at all, but rather frustrating most of the time.

Minha experiência com esse jogo é um tanto engraçada, assim que comecei a jogar já fiquei completamente hipnotizada e não queria parar de jogar, porém, digamos que cometi um “erro”: fiz a maioria das missões principais logo de cara e enjoei do jogo por um tempo, pensei que não ia mais ter vontade de voltar e terminar, portanto, voltei recentemente a jogar e tive a mesma sensação e o mesmo sentimento desde a primeira vez que comecei Tears Of The Kingdom!!
Apesar de reutilizar o mesmo mapa de BOTW, a adição das “sky islands” e das profundezas foi algo divertido de descobrir, mesmo postergando a exploração aérea depois de um tempo peguei gosto por olhar cada cantinho de lá, os lugares mais afastados que precisam de algum tipo de construção zonai (e de muuuuita bateria) eram os mais legais de ir na minha opinião, as shrines são divertidas de concluir, a vista de cima também é algo surpreendente, extremamente bonito. E as profundezas? Bom...é um lugar do mapa que não me agrada muito e eu não gostava de explorar por lá pelo único motivo de ser tudo escuro, eu só ia lá com algum objetivo específico tipo pegar um baú, juntar zonaite, e ativar as “lightroots”, admito que as profundezas é uma parte do jogo que eu particularmente, não gosto.
As habilidades do Link são extremamente divertidas! Achei que iria sentir falta de alguma habilidade de BOTW, porém não. “Fuse” foi uma das que mais demorei para usar e eu sempre esquecia de combinar minhas armas com algum item do inventário, mas depois de alguns puxões de orelha do meu namorado sobre “fuse” ser uma das habilidades mais importantes do jogo, comecei a utilizar de verdade, e realmente, algo que eu não dava muita bola descobri ser extremamente útil. Eu sou horrível com o “ultrahand” as minhas construções eram as piores possíveis, porém é incrível poder ter a total liberdade de criar algo novo, agradeço todos os dias pela “hover bike” existir nesse jogo. Devo mencionar a minha favorita também, “ascend” cria muitas possibilidades de exploração e de alcançar lugares que a minha mísera barra de estamina não daria conta (eu te amo ascend, eu te amo muito).
Além disso, as “boss fights” foram muuuuuuito emocionantes, adorei os bosses principais e as mecânicas e individualidades de cada um deles, as músicas que tocam durante o combate também é algo que eu não poderia deixar de lado, tornaram o momento mais marcante do que já era! Os mini bosses não ficam fora dessa, são tão memoráveis quanto os principais, o Hinox é muito burro tadinho dá até dó de matar ele, o Flux Construct me lembra um creeper (eu carinhosamente dei o apelido de minecraft nele), e o King Gleeok.......tão assustador que zerei o jogo e matei uma quantidade de 0 (em minha defesa mesmo após ter zerado eu continuo jogando e estou juntando coragem para matar ele).
E por fim não poderia deixar de falar da história e como a adição de mais 2 novos lugares (“sky islands” e profundezas) trouxe consigo tamanha história sobre a história de Hyrule e da sua criação, seus antepassados etc. Sou apaixonada pelos Zonais acho o design deles extremamente bonito e rico de detalhes (principalmente a Sonia e o Rauru, lindos!!!!!!!!!). Não sei se algo que foi acrescentado nesse jogo já tinha sido mencionado em outro jogo da franquia ou se tudo é algo inédito pois joguei poucos Zelda’s, porém para mim muitas coisas foram esclarecedoras, entendi melhor alguns pontos sobre o mundo de Hyrule. Os flashbacks mostrando o lado do Rauru e seus companheiros em busca de derrotar Ganondorf é uma das melhores partes da história na minha opinião!
Dito isso, Zelda Tears of The Kingdom entrou na minha lista de favoritos, não acho que ele fica atrás de Breath Of The Wild, acredito que os dois se complementam de uma forma única.


10/10.

As part of Landfall Game's yearly April-Fools-Shadow-Drop-Game tradition comes a genuinely refreshing take on the "Coop-Horror-Quota" game! (trying not to just blatanly call it a "Lethal-Company-like" here) Embracing the horror and chaos by trying to film as much as possible of it with the camera while your squad acts and screams through the proximity voice works pretty damn well, especially since you get rewarded (if you make it out alive) with the recording of your spooky romp, with audio and everything. A goofy game that excels if you can b goofy wit tha homies.

One of my favorite units in any RTS are the AoE2 Teutonic Knights, which like many things in this have been historically modified for the sake of gameplay.

The real Teutonic Knights were a bunch of catholic dudes on horseback, while in this game they fight on foot and walk very slowly towards their opponents with their swords at their sides and beat the shit out of cavalry, trebuchets, and entire castles with nothing but that same sword. They're little tin can armor fellas in capes with stats equivalent to Mammoth Tanks from Command & Conquer, except they'd probably solo Kirov Airships too if you gave them jetpacks. Hell, could you imagine what would happen if you gave them a skateboard or a set of rollerblades? It's nightmarish imagining such a scenario, every archer would piss their pants at the sight of these guys sliding at them downhill with their swords pointed towards them.

Simplicity is sometimes the most endearing thing.

This had to have been my dad's favorite game ever at least on the ol' piece of shit Gateway PC. He was always a sucker for medieval warfare, and honestly I ain't exactly straying from the same path of interests he had, at least in this instance. It was an all too common occurrence to constantly hear the "under attack" alert ring out through the apartment. It was only slightly less funnier than the Empire Earth alert that was some pompous bastard bellowing "WE'RE UNDER ATTACK" even when an unthreatening bronze age slinger was bouncing stones off a space age chicken walker.

Between playing this, Balatro, and Picross I can't help but feel like I'm slowly turning into a hodgepodge of both my dad and my grandma. ;-;