I enjoyed sayonara wild hearts a great deal - I was entranced for it's entire runtime, despite typically not being very good at rhythm games to the point of finding them frustrating. Luckily, the game is very forgiving to playing poorly (in fact the worst part of losing is that they ask you if you want to skip the section after a few deaths, which in of itself is a good feature to have), and the beautiful graphics and music help with keeping you engaged.
I enjoyed how the game frequently switched between various mechanics without feeling clunky at any point, and managed to keep itself new and interesting for the most part - the only exception to this being the subspace levels, which I found repetitive by the last one. Particularly enjoyed the final levels culmination of all the previous mechanics.
The only other small complaint i have was that at some points it was really difficult to see what was coming up, but that didn't detract from the experience enough to stop me enjoying the game.

also i want to look like half the cast lol

This game hit my nostalgia buttons extremely effectively. Some thoughts:
- The exp share is a good change - pokemon games were always easy without self imposed rules, and the exp share makes it less of a hassle to keep your party level flat. You are overlevelled for the vast majority of the game, but the idea of not having those levels when you get to the elite 4 sounds awful.
- minor frustration with how the HM menu is accessed, especially if you are using other poketch apps.
- The duplo figures cracked me up, especially when they looked surprised. It definitely changed the tone of some of the cutscenes, but not necessarily in a bad way.
- the pokemon looked different to same gen pokemon games in a really nice, more cartoony way.
- The underground not having customisable secret bases is annoying. the greater range of pokemon available is cool.

Pokémon Black is the best Pokémon game by a fair bit. It still has the regular pitfalls that lots of Pokémon games have - the caves are frustrating and a chore if you don't know to buy lots of repels, once you have a well spread party fights become about sending in your Pokémon that has a super effective STAB move and using it until your opponent's Pokémon dies. There are a couple of difficulty spikes in the game that don't necessarily make the battles more interesting as the game more of a chore, especially the first gym having a level 20 Pokémon when most of my Pokémon were a significantly lower level than that.

But beyond that, everything is wonderful. The music is fantastic, I am particularly a fan of the Battle! Team Plasma soundtrack but everywhere is wonderful.
The region being filled with only new Pokémon is a wonderful experience because there's always new Pokémon wherever you look. Contrary to many others, I love the Pokémon designs in generation 5, apart from the intense sadness I would feel were I ever to evolve a vanillite into a vanillish.
The graphics are beautiful for a DS Pokémon game. There are several areas with stunning views, many of the bridges and cities are completely gorgeous. The route designs are very pretty as well, and playing the game over the course of a few weeks is advised because of how cool the weather system makes different routes look. The routes are also well designed, with healing NPCs well spaced so that you never feel like you're trekking to and from the pokecenter too much.
The story is another thing that sets this game apart from others in the series. Team Plasma's exact functions are mildly bemusing, but every interaction with N and Ghetsis is wonderful and perfectly sets up the conflicts in the final act of the game, both in terms of the Pokémon battles that you have and the ideological differences between yourself and N. I am a sucker for these sorts of narratives - The Player of Games is one of my favourite books, after all. Those final confrontations at the Pokémon league are stunning, feel important, and are a great conclusion to the story that has been building up since you first meet N. Cheren's story throughout the game through his interactions with Alder is also really interesting and manages to finish a character arc. Crazy. Remember, this is a Pokémon game. Team plasma's perceived motives also being somewhat sympathetic makes the game much more interesting, even if it is mildly frustrating that it forces you down a path of being opposed to them.

I really enjoyed the movement in this game and the way it slowly expanded as you explored, and particularly the way the gliding mechanic allowed you to take in the beautiful landscapes around the mountain.

I also enjoyed getting distracted very easily by all the things to do and not really running out of things to do until the end of the game. I didn't commit to doing any one thing for more than about 5 minutes. Particularly enjoyed slowly seeing the artist in different places and the conversations you have with them, though.

A couple of issues with the fixed camera prevented this game from being as good as it possibly could be, but were overall not issues.

Ladykiller in a bind was enjoyable from start to finish - the daytime scenes were delightfully tense, with the dynamic responses mechanic meaning that you had to pay attention to what people were saying and try to gauge whether you would be able to wait and see a better response, or whether it was best to try and stop a conversation going down a route that would make things trickier.

The night scenes were all enjoyable and well-written (at least, on the beauty route), I particularly enjoyed the focus on consent and the fact that things didn't always go according to plan, and the responses to that were very natural. They felt somewhat separated from the daytime story, but the relationship that developed between the main character and the beauty did feel like it was a natural conclusion of the story being told in the night scenes.

I also particularly enjoyed the general queerness of the game, was fun!

Tell me why is... interesting. I typically enjoy playing the genre of interactive storytelling walking simulators, and this pushes those buttons competently enough to be enjoyable.

This game has a trans man as one of the main characters, and I'm delighted to say that they did the bare minimum and consulted trans people while making this game - its also nice to see a trans man as a lead as they are typically underrepresented. His character is well done and his trans identity is well handled. However, this game deals with queer pain and it is somewhat frustrating to have a studio with no out trans people profiting from queer pain.

The story is engaging and the characters are well-developed. There's less awkward dialogue than in previous DONTNOD games. The puzzles are generally engaging, although a couple of the ones involving the book of goblins didn't make it clear that the clues were environmental rather than text-based.

There are two 'powers' in this game, one is very interesting and the other feels like something that would just make gameplay smoother. The latter is the 'voice', which allows the twins to communicate non-verbally. This means that conversations (which are the driving force of this game) can be continued even when characters are engaged doing other things, as well as allowing you to consult the twin you aren't controlling at that time during conversations.
The second, much more interesting power is the ability to recall and replay memories, although they may differ between the twins. The ability to decide between which memory is real is incredibly interesting as a gameplay and storytelling mechanic - how much can you trust different characters narratives? Is it worth it to believe a less realistic history to be truth to mitigate pain?

I ran into a couple of visual bugs (although they didn't impact gameplay and didn't bother me much at all), and occasionally wished there was the ability to move a little faster, but overall this is a fun game I'd recommend to anyone who's liked similar games in the past.

Wow, where do I start with this game? It's a successful blend of many genres - flight sim, adventure game, puzzle game, platformer, and walking simulator. Each of these genres are present in the game and each is done extremely well.

The Galaxy in this game is small but incredibly dense with content, with each planet having a huge amount to explore. And you can get to all of it, because this game is a masterpiece of level design. Almost every important location is accessible from multiple points, and every single location points you in the direction of something cool to explore. The visual design is also a huge boon to the game here, in that you build up familiarity with the symbols used by the race who came before and seeing them in certain places is enough to key you into how to travel.

The platforming in this game is also fun - getting all of the secrets out of all of the locations will require planning ahead of time through the game's somehow really enjoyable scout launcher as well as wise use of the game's jetpack. As you navigate crumbling ruins (and planets) the freeform platforming in low gravity will give you a fun challenge and allows pacing between reading the notes spread around the place that allow you to unravel the story.

Speaking of the story, its fantastic, and is remarkable in how it manages to tell such an engaging and comprehensive story in a non-linear manner. The way you slowly piece together what is happening and what the Nomai were up to is really well paced, and there were several great moments where I revisited somewhere I had found earlier on and with the additional context it was a lightbulb over the head moment.

The puzzles in this game are a perfect mix of achievable and not so obvious that they become a chore. The game utilizes the time loop to great effect, with many time based puzzles (and crucially a time skip feature, to avoid these causing you to have to wait). However, as you do not know exact times this does lead to some instances where you have to wait in real time, which can be frustrating.


The points where this game is less strong are the points where the things I have been praising are not as well done - there's a planet where the gravity is strong enough to make jetpack travel impossible, which was very frustrating, and there's a few areas where there's only one way to access them which was frustrating. There was also a point where I wasn't sure what the best way to proceed was, but the in game log is well designed and it was easy to chase up some minor clues that led me to bigger ones. Finally, one of the planets has a natural environmental enemy that is genuinely scary and made me not want to explore there - it does not help that the hitboxes of the enemy are not obvious.

Overall, this is an excellent game that I'd recommend to anyone.

Wow, it is rare that I give up on a game due to not enjoying it, but hollow knight managed to make that happen. This is pure catharsis for me, so:

The platforming in this game is bad, and you have to do it to get anywhere. The movement feels sluggish and much of the features that make it less unbearable are hidden behind barriers in the game (this is a metroidvania, but if your advanced movement is going to be hidden behind barriers, your basic movement needs to be fun). The field of view is not wide enough for you to move across platforms and get around the map easily or quickly without memorising where platforms are.

A couple basic features are locked behind equipable items - for example, you have to use an inventory slot to view where you are on the map, which if you did not have access to would make navigation near impossible.

The game's tutorial is non-existent, and some basic attacking controls that are near necessary for some fights are never explained.

There are some things this game gets right - boss fights are largely enjoyable, and the audio and visual design is wonderful. However, the game does not give you space to take this in as the gameplay distracts you by being bad. I would not recommend this game.

I finished Read Only Memories a while ago, so this review is not written with the game fresh in my mind. This is a fun and engaging point-and-click adventure/mystery game, with likeable characters and strong dialogue. The pacing is great, the tension is high, and the story explores a wide variety of cyberpunk themes - what it means to be alive or human, what tech might do to politics, and the impact that corporatisation has on people's lives.

The game is also very obviously queer and does this well, with multiple characters whose identities do not fall within the gender binary (both human and non-human). At one point your companion Turing - the first sentient robot, and one of the highlights of the game - muses on how gender has impacted him and the robots who preceded him.

The story, although taking itself seriously, manages to let through some genuinely heart-warming and some delightfully silly moments - at one point, you must help an up and coming rapper come up with lyrics by using the objects in your environment, which results in some sick bars.

Speaking of the environment, it is both rich and has very pretty pixel graphics. All interactable objects have multiple lines of flavour text, all of which are worth the time to read, so if you're at all like me you'll be sat on each screen clicking on anything just to find something new.

I loved 2064: Read Only Memories, and have very few qualms with it beyond:
- wanting to click on all the objects occasionally led to gameplay pacing issues where instead of following somewhere that was supposedly urgent I would sit and read all the flavour text
- One of the lead designers is less than pleasant, which makes me hesitant to recommend you give your money to him - I would still recommend it if you have your hands on a copy that you haven't paid for.