Vanillaware asked what if Fire Emblem was good.
- Crits and misses are calculated in the battle preview. So if the game says your unit will deal 20 damage and receive 10, that's guaranteed. There's almost no RNG to worry about.
-No perma-death, and the difficultly is balanced around that. The highest difficultly is fair but challenging.
-Units are much more than just their class since units can have abilities, conditions to active those abilities that remind me of FF12's gambits, and four pieces of equipment which can also have conditional abilities.
-Classes are also more nuanced since each class is usually weak to multiple classes, thus allowing for multiple ways to take down a foe.
-Units operate in groups of up to six party members, allowing for detailed class synergies. It's easy to switch these as well to adapt to new party members or just a specific map.
-The game is real time with pause, so telling a unit to move across the whole map is just one input rather than having to move them every turn.
-The story actually remembers all of its characters. Party members that haven't been in a cutscene for ten hours will come out again when relevant.
-The aesthetic is beautiful and doesn't fall into generic anime looks.
-The voice actors generally sound like people rather than trying to impersonate anime tropes. This isn't because the voice actors are different, the voice talent is actually an all-star cast of JRPG voice actors, rather it's just that the voice direction is more serious.
-There's a large degree of player freedom as there's tons of optional missions, and some of the main story can be done in different orders as well.
-There's an overworld allowing for a brief respite between battles to talk to NPCs, see party member conversations, buy equipment, etc.
Overall the game fixes all of my problems with fantasy strategy RPGs while also having the unique Vanillaware aesthetic that makes it feel original. I recommend this game to anyone who likes RPGs or strategy games, even if they haven't liked most fantasy strategy RPGs.

This is a Ghibli inspired, deck building, monster collecting, farming game. That is the perfect combo for me. I've seen all the Ghibli movies and Nausicaa is my favorite manga. I love deck building games like Slay the Spire, Baten Kaitos, Battle Network, Chain of Memories, etc. I love monster collecting games like Megami Tensei, Pokemon, Digimon, and even Spectrobes. I love farming games and I've played most of the Harvest Moon/Story of Season/Rune Factory games, as well as all the major indie games in this genre.

I hope it's clear that I am very qualified to talk about this game. With that in mind, I can confidently say that each aspect of this game is executed very well. If all of those genres appeal to you then go play this game. If you only like a few of those genres but not all, read below.

Aesthetically the game is beautiful. Anyone who has seen Kiki's Delivery Service will immediately recognize the inspiration. Flying around floating islands defeating giant stone guardians gives a Laputa vibe. Then once you get a glider, you've befriended a fox-squirrel like Teto, and you're trying to balance nature then you'll feel like Nausicaa. Great pixel art all around.

The deck building allows for tons of different viable strategies. It is easy to add and remove cards so it's possible to often adapt to new tactics. There's also just a surprising amount of cards. Towards the end of the game I was still pulling new cards I had never seen before regularly. As each type of monster has different types of cards they can pull, and some monster types won't be see till the end of the in-game year, there's tons of incentive to be consistently changing your strategies.

The monster collecting is great. Taming isn't hard, just feed the monster while battling it. Each species of monster has a unique ability, some of which is useful in battle while some are useful in the overworld. There's no type chart. Every monster has two random weaknesses. This means it's worth catching multiple of the same species and using different party members. A Poison type dungeon will use poison attacks, but since you don't know what the boss will be weak to it's worth bringing a diverse team.

For the social aspects, I really like how the player can go on dates right away. The date dialogue is much more interesting than the daily greetings that make up the bulk of most farming game NPC dialogue. The cast is also diverse with multiple different accents to keep character distinct. I settled down with a 50 year old divorced mother. I love how this was an option as usually all romanceables in farming games are just teens/early 20s people.

Farming is primarily for feeding to your monsters for daily stat buffs rather than selling for money. I spent little time doing this actually as I got sprinklers immediately. All farmables appear in the overworld to be picked and this was fine for the early game. In the mid game though, using fertilizer and turning the crops into potions makes a huge difference.

A significant portion of playtime is spent exploring. The location of islands is randomly generated and the player has to fly everywhere to put them on the map. There's also thirty dungeons with some very simple puzzles. So the gameplay loop is usually checking on crops, uncovering the map, doing a dungeon, taming some new monsters, upgrading your deck, and having a date before the day is over.

The only problems, as of March 2024, is that the game has some annoying menuing and a lack of proper tips. Healing your party is odd. The player needs to equip an item, hold down that button, walk up to each monster, go to the third option to feed them, then choose the healing item in the inventory. Likewise, if I put ore and fuel in a furnace it doesn't automatically start as I have to click a start button, which gets annoying after doing it so many times. This stuff could be easily fixed but probably won't be too annoying as long as you don't play the whole game at once.

The bigger issue is the lack of tips. I've seen too many people give up on this game because they wanted a Ghibli farming game but they couldn't beat any more dungeons because they didn't understand the core concept of keeping your deck small. Too many players that like deck builders thought they needed to grind for better stats, when in reality their level was fine but they just needed to grow crops and make potions.

No aspect of the game can be ignored, and if you don't know how one of the genre works then you'll need to learn about it, possibly from outside sources. This isn't a hard game at all, but for the audience of a game that markets itself as cozy, people are likely to give up if they hit any kind of wall. If you're willing to learn then you'll have a great time. If you hope that you can just avoid one aspect of the game then this isn't for you.

1: Easily one of the best pet-raising sim games of all time even though it's not even the main game
2: One of the best video game soundtracks of all time with a huge variety of genres
3: A story that starts by being hilarious because of how ridiculous it is, to being genuinely hype by the end

We all know about the bad parts of the game. The voice lines clip over each other, there's some glitches with floor/wall detection on some stages, and some people really dislike the Mech/Treasure Hunting stages.

Overall though I had more fun with this than 90% of games I've ever played. 10/10 doesn't mean perfect here, this game is clearly not flawless, but it is incredibly entertaining and memorable.

I'm not even a Sonic fan. I don't like most games in the series and I have no interest in the comics/movies/etc. I just think this is a fantastic game who's reputation has been mired by other Sonic games being awful and social media videos only showing off the worst parts.

The gameplay is significantly improved from the first game but the other aspects are worse.
Luigi has a lot more options in his toolkit allowing for more interesting puzzles. Suck, blow, flashlight, darklight, jump, plunger, etc. are more interesting mechanics than the generic fire/water elemental puzzles in LM1.
I played the whole game co-op which was really fun. Luigi and Gooigi had different difficultly levels so the player that's better a games can take Luigi, but the Gooigi player still has unique abilities that won't make the second player feel left out.
The bosses don't have dialogue or much personality anymore. I miss the little backstories they had. Likewise, the music is fine but doesn't have any iconic tracks like the original Luigi's Mansion theme. The graphics and animations are still detailed though, but rather than any genuine horror the game relies more on slapstick comedy.
While LM1 was short, charming, and simple, LM3 is a longer experience with significantly more depth and complexity. While I ultimately prefer the later it didn't need to sacrifice what I liked about LM1.

This game has tons of problems. I could go on about the problems with the low level cap, the poor class balance, how some party members are so significantly more important to the plot than others, how the story devolves into collecting magical stones to defeat a magical evil, how the Intelligence stat is pointless for almost every build, and even how party members often have 13 in a stat they don't use because the devs took out stat requirements for multi-classing last minute but didn't update the characters stats to compensate, but none of this matters.

Baldur's Gate 3 is easily the best game of its genre. If I had twenty major complaints for a 2D platformer then that would be a huge issue because there's many 2D platformers that are nearly flawless. However, having twenty major complaints for a Western RPG is nothing. When the best games this genre has to offer are A: games that were incredibly glitchy on launch, like nearly every Bethesda game; B: games that are unfinished, like KOTOR 2; or C: games that expect you to play the prior games to understand the story even though those prior games aren't nearly as good, like Mass Effect 2 or Witcher 3, then Baldur's Gate 3 looks incredible in comparison.

This game has relatively few glitches, the plot and character arcs felt mostly finished, and I understood what was going on without playing Baldur's Gate 1 or 2. Taking all that into account there's no way I couldn't give this a 10/10 despite its many problems.

If I were to rate this game with individual scores for its gameplay, graphics, sound design, etc. then no aspect would be rated highly due to the overall lack of polish and originality. However, this game is much more than the sum of its parts.

This is essentially the first game that is an online-multiplayer, survival-crafting, monster-collecting, action-shooter. I've desperately wanted a game like this since the Pixelmon Minecraft mod came out in 2012, which is probably the closest we've ever gotten until now.

Even though it's clear that the world design is based on Breath of the Wild, the monsters are based on Pokemon, the tech tree is based on Ark, the boss design is based on Elden Ring, etc. if I try to compare the whole of the game to another then there's no competition. This combination of genres is unique. The overall experience was unlike anything I've played before which is why I really enjoyed it despite the obvious flaws.

Easily the best 2D Mario game. This might be the most creative level design in the whole series. Also the multiplayer is actually fun now. No longer do people bounce on each other's heads or accidentally throw each other off cliffs. I also appreciate how levels have a difficultly rating. My wife doesn't like to play the really hard levels, so instead of her getting frustrated we could skip this together and I could go back by myself to play them. Likewise, having different playable characters allow for different difficultly levels is also great for allowing players of different skill levels to play together. Just a fantastic game overall.

I hate the 100% requirements. It's really hard for me to tell the difference between the coin colors and trying to just get all of them is a pain. Needing max health at the end of the level is just annoying, so often would I get hit by something small like a watermelon seed at the last minute and have to redo the level. Also a lot of the flowers only spawn from killing all the enemies in a room or finding invisible item clouds. It generally requires a much slower pace than what's needed for getting all hidden exits in Mario World.
Even though I normally love to do the special world stages in Mario games I eventually gave up unlocking them in this game because it wasn't fun for me. However, once I just started playing it any% I found the game too easy and short.
Otherwise, the art style is great, some music is iconic, and a few levels feel innovative for the time. I could do without the baby screams being so shrill though. I understand it's a baby but it got on my nerves quickly. It's a fun game but has some major problems for me.

Two main issues. First, the genre combo has no synergy. 2D Metroidvanias have a lot of backtracking so the combat should be quick. Turn based monster collectors tend to have long battles so different play styles, such as set up or stall, can be viable. Likewise, in monster collectors the player doesn't have access to every ability they've gotten at all times, one has to choose what team to bring. This opposes the Metroidvania idea of trying all your new abilities when you are backtracking. This genre combo was just a bad idea from the inception.

Second, the monster collecting gameplay encourages constant switching but makes it annoying to do so. This is just a problem with the developer's execution. In games like Pokemon there is a weak incentive to switch monsters as using the ones from the start can easily take one through the whole game, leading many players to just use their one Charizard as much as possible. This compliments the highly detailed level of customization though EVs, IVs, moves, abilities, held items, etc. Oppositely, games like Megami Tensei give a strong incentive to consistently switch demons in your party, as each demon will stop learning moves after only a few level ups. There is relatively little customization so fusing away a Jack Frost you've had for an hour doesn't feel bad at all.

This game can't decide what camp it wants to be. New monsters are easy to acquire. Hatched eggs will be at your party level so they can be useful right away. However, there is also a large amount of customization. There's skill trees, held items, form differences, and having to set these up every time you get a new monster is very tedious. The Metroidvania aspect asks the player to use the latest monsters for overworld abilities, but the turn based combat asks one to get out their spreadsheet to figure out the best investment for skill points.

Overall, this game had a bad concept and has bad execution. I imagine I enjoyed this game much less than others because I am a huge monster collecting game fan, and thus have played all the notable works of this genre. However, likely many of the fans of this game were people who only played Pokemon, were disappointed enough by Sword/Shield to finally try a different game in the genre, and then loved this because it was something different at all. Releasing a monster collecting game in 2020 was a fantastic release time.

You need a Buddha level of willpower to not get frustrated here. I often hear competitive Pokemon players describe the game as, "Chess but your pieces are dragons." yet no Bishop has a 50% chance to sleep, poison or paralyze you. It's possible to become better at the game by taking these percentages into account and minimizing their possible effect on your strategy, but no matter what there's also some randomness.

Casually the game is very fun though. Easy to make a team, lots of different formats to try, plenty of resources to help you understand the huge amount of knowledge needed to be decent, and overall it's an incredible feat that this is all free and fan made.

It's essentially a worse Mario 3D World. It has the same level design; basically 2D levels with some added depth rather than full 3D worlds.
Getting all the Waddle Dees is much more annoying than getting 3D World's green stars. I missed some on nearly every level because the Waddle Dees are locked behind obtuse requirements like beating a boss with a certain ability or touching five small flowers.
The co-op is disappointing. Rather than player 2 being able to also be a Kirby, or at least have copy abilities, they are stuck with Bandana Dee who can only use the spear. 1997's Kirby's Dream Land 3 let player 2 have copy abilities as Gooey so it's bizarre that this game in 2022 doesn't. I understand there's Mouthful Mode but Kirby's Epic Yarn let player 2 have unique interactions with the large transformations so I feel there's no excuse here.
The game is cute, simple fun. There's lots of set pieces and the gimmicks change often enough to be entertaining. It's just good, not great.