This is my first ys title, and it's pretty fun! The gameplay is very unique and satisfying, and I believe the game has enough variety for it to not just feel like button mashing. I've only played for a few hours so far, but the bosses and areas are very well crafted and gimmicky, so i never find myself becoming bored. There is also quite a bit of challenge, but it never falls into the trap of becoming miserable and frustrating, which is an issue i have with a lot of rpgs. That being said, i'm kind of disappointed this whole game seems to take place inside of a tower, there isnt much in the way of exploration and npc interactions. What story is there is good enough for what it needs to be, and I enjoy the cast of characters so far, i just wish the story was a bit more involved. Maybe all ys games are like this, but personally i enjoy more narrative depth in my games ! but its still been a really nice experience and i'm glad i got to play it !

i have pretty harsh feelings about this game. i love animal crossing, i always have. it was a huge part of my life growing up and some of my most wonderful memories are of playing City Folk at night in my grandmas house. That game was there for me then, and new leaf was there for me as a teenager. so when this game came out, i thought this would be the animal crossing game that would be with me through adulthood. I was so excited for this game, it was giving me panic attacks the week before release.
When i first started it up, i fell in love with it. it looked beautiful and it was so amazing seeing my favorite characters in HD as opposed to the crunchy 3ds screen. i thought the villagers were very well written and funny, and i still do kind of think that some of the dialogue is genuinely good, but it started wearing off fast.
The game is so empty. theres nothing here. Every time i used to open this game, all i can picture is the boardroom meeting in which they were plotting to make the game more marketable. Its been gentrified, that's the only way i can describe it. The villagers offer you nothing emotionally, theres no GracieGrace, no city, no little secrets to find. there is no depth here, a world that moves without you, or a sense of wonder. all the hallmark features of previous games have been removed. it is a marketable product. A product that produces products, merchandise for profit (new leaf never ever had this much merch, but i noticed immediately how much they were making for this game). And ever since i realized this, games just havent been as fun. I feel like they all embody this game in a sense, giving up what makes it impressionable and personal to become something else. i worry very much, because every single mainline game ive ever cared about seems to be following this path. it's upsetting. I simply can not see how you could enjoy this game, unless you simply didnt know what you were missing out on.

"My nightly dreams, my hopeful dreams- you might not see them, but they're real to me"

As soon as i started up this game when the remaster came out two years ago, I knew it was going to be something very special. If there was ever a game that i wish i experienced as a child, it's this one. Legend of Mana is an incredibly difficult game to explain, because its made of several different things instead of having one core function. Immediately upon entering you will notice lom's strange, mythical atmosphere. The ambiance of this game is incredibly hard to pin down, it feels so warm and personal but also somehow mysterious and alien at the same time. You will also notice that this is very, very, very different from all the other mana titles, as combat really isnt the main focus. This is a game fueled by emotion and stories, more than anything. There is a great deal this game wants to tell you, but it's not like a typical rpg with an overarching plot either. There are 3 main events that you can pursue at your own pace, and these often tend to overlap with the dozens of other events outside of those. Something I love about this, besides the writing itself, is how interactive the story is. You are not treated as a hero, and some of the things that happen feel like they can go on entirely without you. But because combat isnt the main focus, completing an event doesnt typically boil down to just "fight this guy, give x this item" but instead has a unique objective each time, which really immersed me in the game. And on top of the story events, there is also monster ranching, farming, weapon/instrument crafting, and uh... you can build a cool robot.
What i love most about this game is very hard to put into words. Its the theming, the sense of wonder, the vastness of the world...after two playthroughs i have still not seen everything there is to see. It feels so dreamlike, like reading through some strange disjointed storybook. I love the way this game is designed for kindness and pure imagination. I love the characters, i love their designs, i love watching them interact with each other. I love the concept of the artifacts, the idea that objects carry with them their own histories and meaning. I love all the little details, like lil cactus' journal that you could go through the whole game without knowing it was ever there. I love the music, the whimsical environments, everything... well, except gilbert. but mostly everything.
I apologize that this is so long but this game is dear to me, i can talk about it for forever. There are only a few issues i have with it but it's not too hard to overlook it in the grand scheme of things. If anyone else is remotely interested in Legend of Mana, i really hope you get the chance to play it too ! there is truly not another game out there like this one !

I feel like i cant really dislike this game, as i enjoy how enigmatic it can be and it introduced me to one of my favorite artists (Tomomi Koyayashi) however i really just did not find it fun to play. The gameplay itself, while poorly explained, was fairly fun. But i often found myself becoming really frustrated with the strange difficulty jumps, particularly with some of the bosses. Im not sure how I would of gotten through this game without the new QoL features of the remaster. A lot of the game felt very repetitive and needlessly obtuse...and then there is the plot. The writing felt all over the place. The only story i kind of enjoyed was Asellus', but it felt like such wasted potential for something that could of been really really cool. T260G and Riki's events seemed okay enough but the rest were confusing... Blue's just ends randomly and i think i only played as Lute for around 15 minutes. I could not even finish playing as Fuse because this game was wearing me thin. People talk about unfinished games, but this one to me felt like entire chunks were taken out of it. It's such a shame too because this game has some of the best character designs i've ever seen, and i really wanted to enjoy it.

This was also the last game my old dog Nico watched me play. I was holding him on my lap the day before we had to take him to the vets.... when i think on my time with this game, it makes me feel kind of sick. I wish i was playing a more comforting game.

yesterday on february 13th i finally moved out of my mother's house. I have been suffering with severe ocd for about a year now, it got so bad that i couldnt leave the building. I have chemical burns up and down my thighs and my arms are permanently scarred from washing them so much. This is a big achievement for me, because i needed to leave for my health. but i really didnt want to. i miss my mother, i miss living in the woods. i miss the ivy growing on our neighbors house and the wombats that lived under our porch. Its really, really hard. so to ground myself, i decided to boot up my old new leaf file from 2016. i played this game on and off for years, and it was integral to my life..
the second i heard the title screen music everything just hit me like a truck. all the memories and feelings i has when playing this game, the person who i was, were still encapsulated within it. i remembered playing this on the bus ride home from school, and crying when Fuchsia left suddenly, and excitedly telling my mom about completely normal events that nonetheless felt wonderful to me. as i walked around my little town i just couldnt stop crying. villagers told me of dreams i used to have, my house was a wreck but well loved, it felt like home. every little thing about my life was preserved here in this game. it felt like i had a little piece of my childhood house in my pocket, in a way. what other kind of game can do that? i miss those days so much... i wish i could go back to the times before i was so sick...

this is a cute little rpg with a very impressionable opening, but as the game progresses it kind of loses its plot and starts turning into wandering around the map looking for an objective. i got to the point in the game where you have to beat the monsters flooding the town and it really isnt holding my interest very well. i had cheats on to disable random enemies, so maybe one day ill just make everyone level 100 to see the rest of the story but i'd rather play other things right now.... its still a good game though !

Unfortunately, I didn't really have as much of a good time with sword of mana as I did with it's predecessors. I should state that this game has a lot of love put into it, but sadly it suffers from some of the worst aspects of previous mana titles. I'll discuss the good first before I delve into why I had to shelf it for now.

Sword of Mana has a lot going for it: the wonderful artwork and unique character designs were my main reason for continuing to play. This game shares the same artist that worked on Legend of Mana, so naturally i enjoyed it a lot. Along with that, I was very intrigued by the story and felt it contained a lot of charm, the characters were very beautiful and interesting even if the plot became somewhat esoteric at points due to the diverging paths in gameplay. Even if it was kind of strange, I think I can appreciate it for what it is....aside from that, the pixel artwork is gorgeous and the music was on par with secret of mana, I'd say. The combat also had a lot of potential; the concept of having multiple weapons that affect the way your magic is cast is a lot of fun. Though sadly, that's where my issues begin.

The fighting in this game is horribly thought out. First off, my main problem: only specific types of magic/weapon attacks can damage certain enemies. What this means in practice is that you will constantly have to be switching out your weapon of choice, killing whatever was blocking your way, then switching back which is very cumbersome due to the menus not being easily accessible. This is disregarding the trial and error to find out what will actually hurt these enemies, as there are no patterns to detect what will injure them. Plus the fact that you have limited mana and limited items, so if you run out I'd imagine you'd just be screwed. I learned quickly that I would never make it through this game without cheats, so I had infinite HP and mana on the whole time and it still was getting on my nerves.
The heroine casts magic very, very slowly and enemies can knock you out of attacks, even if your magic is in midair. So you'll just get stuck in a corner with two enemies wailing on you and physically be unable to get out of it. The partner AI took a leaf out of Secret of Mana's book, being very unreliable. They will often get stuck somewhere and be unable to help you, and they never seem to attack when needed.

And finally.... the map design. The only solace I had in this game was the towns, pretty much everywhere else I had to look up a guide. I was constantly stuck. I can not empathize enough how much i got stuck. The game never explains anything to you, and there are sometimes random puzzles that you have no hope of understanding on your own, because they wont even tell you theres a puzzle you need to solve in order to move on. There's also no questbook or anything such as that to remind you of where to go, so if you don't remember what someone told you, get ready to hopelessly wander for way too long for what's supposed to be a linear game. You can jump to access different elevations, but this only works sometimes, and is not consistent at all in showing you what can be jumped on and what can't, leading to me walking by the correct path at least a hundred times before giving up and looking up a guide.

I'm very sad this game isn't more fun to play as I really enjoy parts of Sword of Mana, it's a strange amalgamation of every Mana game that came before it.... i very much enjoyed the callbacks like seeing Lil Cactus again, but unfortunately it's just not enjoyable to play and very, very frustrating. It feels like it takes all the worst aspects of the other games and amplifies them here. I would say only check this out if you're a huge fan of the series, but even then I might suggest watching a walkthrough video instead.

PMD DX might be one of the best remakes of a game I've ever played. Even though I've never experienced the original, from what I can tell DX absolutely realizes the gba titles to its truest potential. Every aspect of this game has a ton of love and care put into it and to my knowledge the only thing that ended up being cut was the Friend Zones you could walk around in, which is understandable at the very least. The rest is near flawlessly recreated, particularly the artstyle and music which both manage to capture the feeling of the older pmd games and yet be elevated to what their native home consoles couldn't preform.

DX seriously may be one of the best looking games on the switch. Even the basic dungeons are so pleasing to look at, the watercolor art really lends itself well to the kind and emotional spirit of pmd. I frequently had to stop just to gawk at the environments. It's so obvious that a lot of love went into this entry, and this isn't even mentioning the music, which I think was brilliantly remastered. Mixing the original gba soundfont with a new orchestrated version of the soundtrack was a really smart move; the music alone is enough to make me cry and it really elevates the more emotional scenes. On my second playthrough, I also noticed how well the cutscenes were animated which felt weird for a pokemon game. Rayquaza, the star falling, and all the other legendary intros just looked so gorgeous. DX is made of many good things, and I can tell that it's very much a loveletter to the series as a whole.
The gameplay itself though, I think this game is probably as good as its gonna get. Naturally, it can get pretty repetitive and it's not really something you can play nonstop, but that's alright. For some reason I had a huge issue with Sky Tower though; I was severely underleveled and kept getting wiped out. I'm not sure how this even happened but I've learned that pmd really, really, really sucks when you have to grind. It is so frustrating and I honestly contemplated knocking the game down a star because of it, but in the end I couldn't really bring myself to since the rest of the game went off without any interruptions. Just... make sure you're at least level 35 before the final dungeon or flygon will knock your teeth in.
DX is definitely one of the higher quality pokemon games that have come out recently along with the new Pokémon Snap, so I would recommend this to anyone who feels like they've lost their love for the series, since this game is what rekindled my own feelings for it back in 2020 when it released. As good as this game is, I can only hope that we'll live to see a remake of Explorers in this style... one can dream ):

After hearing that Unwound Future was unanimously considered the best out of the series, I decided to give Professor Layton one last chance. But even still, I just really can not wrap my head around what is so enjoyable about these games. I want to like it so, so badly. I can see the good parts, like the art and the music and the atmosphere, but it's almost like the game uses that to masquerade as a better experience than it is. I look at Professor Layton and I think, "wow, what a charming little world!" But playing through Unwound Future was one of the most miserable experiences I've ever had (with a game, of course).

I'll start off with gameplay. These puzzles are not fun. And at first, I thought it might just be me... after all I am on the spectrum, and my brain has a rough time doing certain things; particularly math at which I am incapable of. But a great deal of these puzzles are just not good and they all share the same issues. My biggest problem is how long these puzzles take to complete, and how they just assume you have knowledge that they don't explain to you. These puzzles don't respect your time. For being 150+ in the game, they really want you to spend as much time on them as possible. And they aren't satisfying puzzles to finish either; only a handful of times have I ever enjoyed completeing a puzzle and it's usually towards the start of the game where they're shorter. And I love a good logic puzzle, but these just feel like the kind of thing you might see in a mobile game. One puzzle consisted entirely of me having knowledge of how an x-ray machine operates. What? I've never had an x-ray and I'm not a doctor. But this game expects you to know random things, like what a 'timepiece' is (common knowledge or not I don't care, I've never heard of it and the 10 year olds playing this haven't either) and then shames you severely for getting it wrong. Every time you fail you have to watch a 3 second cutscene in which x character looks disappointed, a loud buzzer plays, then you must get through several more screens to try again. It brings me deep anger to constantly repeat this and makes me feel stupid. There's a limited amount of hints, which is awful for what's supposed to be a relaxing game, and it all leads back to just being so deeply frustrating.

This is ignoring the way in which the puzzles are presented initially. Unlike Ace Attorney, these puzzles do NOT work at all with the story. Most of them are completely irrelevant to the events taking place. I am literally talking scenarios such as "oh my god! We're being chased!! Quick, do a sliding block puzzle!!". This hampers the story progression so bad, as all the tension is sucked out of the scene. The game makes puzzles seem optional, but 3 times throughout the game they will halt your story progress to do more worthless puzzles. Puzzles happen constantly. There's no break from puzzles, no time to enjoy the story. Sometimes characters will even state they have no reason to give you a puzzle, but they randomly give you one anyways. To me it felt almost like an ad popup, just wasting my time when I wanted to progress the story.

And the story, despite being the best of what I've seen, is not well thought out. Professor Layton is a star at writing character interactions, but that's it. I've never seen a game series with such consistent child-like writing. Despite playing as something of a mystery for you to unravel, the game violates every rule of writing you can think of. Random characters and concepts will be introduced out of thin air; the mastermind was someone the player has never heard of before. Nothing Layton says makes him look smart because everything he says has no foundation to the player and has no previous involvement in the story. Unwound Future was way better than Curious Village in this regard, but it was still very unsatisfying to experience when Layton just decides to announce he's solved the whole story at the end. This game takes so many plot-convinences that there is no point in trying to engage with or solve it, because there's nothing for you to solve.

I really wanted to like Layton. After all, in concept it is so similar to Ace Attorney- a game series I adore. And I can see why people enjoy it. But I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone unless you really, really, really, really love puzzles. Any type of puzzle, any length- you just can't stop doing puzzles. Because while the characters are fun, the gameplay is repetitive and aggriviating, and the story isn't treated with much care either (which is weird for a vn-like game). And I didn't really have anywhere to put this but, wow that character artist sure likes to draw people with fishlips... a few of them were brown, which certainly didn't help my thoughts of the game. I really wanted to have a good time like everyone else seems to with Layton, but I don't think I'll be visiting his world again ): I didn't even cry at the ending.

I only spent 30 minutes on this but I am just not enjoying it. The pixel art is beautiful and I like the music, but it doesn't feel at all like a Mana entry and conducts itself against the virtues that most Mana games tried to uphold. I know it's a tactics game, but it immediately rubbed me the wrong way that our protagonists were slaughtering beastmen without even knowing why they were sent out on their mission. This is ignoring the fact that our main characters are in the military- which is again just uncomfortable for a Mana title. The gameplay is very strange too and slow, I do not think I like it. I'll probably pick at this game from time to time but I don't think I'll be finishing this one.

It is nearly impossible for me to craft with words how necessary Ace Attorney was to me in my life. A dear friend to me in some of my most crucial moments, these games transcend a connection that I don't think most people can understand. I feel at home here, and especially with Miles Edgeworth, whose character was foundational to my growing up and path in life.
I had my doubts about replaying this game. With the original trilogy, I feel as if it has a warm place in my past, but it almost feels wrong to revisit it as an adult. Nonetheless, I decided to experience aai2 again since I barely remembered the contexts of most of the cases, and it was the last one i played before tgaa. I am very, very happy I made this decision. I have not felt like this in so long, so passionate and invested in the power of a story. It is an intense feeling that I remember having as a child too, it was these very games that inspired me to learn several arts that are foundational aspects of me today. I never grew up with a father, and I was very much alone my whole life. I saw and experienced many wrongs committed by people who were supposed to know better than I, and I've never had a voice to object to it. To me, what this game has to say is very important. To choose your own path in life and be able to see the world clearly, this was what I wanted to live by as a child. And though some things could be better, and I have grown more since my first time here, I can not reject the impact this series had on me years ago and even still today.

I feel profound gratitude to the people who translated this game and let me experience it for myself. I still hope for an official translation one day, but the amount of love and care put into making this accessible to the west is really incredible, and I'm just so so happy I got to play it once more. This is a little embarrassing, and I always feel like my words aren't accurate enough, but even if it is hard I just want to share my love for this game and the characters in it. Goodbye, aai2, may we meet again in a few years.