Poison Control is significantly better than it has any right to be honestly.

I believe its saving grace is that it's a B game that wholly recognizes that it's a B game. The world designs are simple but streamlined, the music is unique and fun, and the UI is downright gorgeous. The combat is extremely bare bones, but exists primarily as a way to guide the characters and story, arguably the most well executed elements of the game, forward.

Don't start Poison Control expecting some grand, over-the-top experience. It should be treated as a simple, connected anthology of short stories and unique characters.

I would have given the game 4 stars, but unfortunately I encountered a game breaking bug. I presume this may have something to do with the loading being improved on PS5, but I'll revisit the game on PS4 when I have time.

ALL KILLER AND NO FILLER. IT'S MOEBIN' TIME BBY!!!

Inti finally went and finally made a successor to actual Gunvolt gameplay! I couldn't be happier! Sure our man is a DOG now and there's seemingly some gacha inspired loot shit, but LIGHTEN UP~ Give this one the same 10 or so years of marination and romanticizing the other games got, and I think folk will see things aren’t so different to how they’ve always been for our beloved anime rhythm game. FOR BETTER OR WORSE~

SO WE ARE BACK to the tagging multiple enemies and unleashing hell from a distance type gameplay that I've been missing from the series ever since they got us stuck in the spinoff hell playing as a non-platforming ass character whose whole thing was dealing with dudes one at a time real lame like with an overpowered air dash for half a decade now. I much prefer this! Considerately tagging and dancing between all the enemies you want to dust as you actually platform forward I've always felt was more engaging than whatever the hell vague flying shit Copen had going on.

All the bosses ROCK, there are ZERO unremarkable filler stages, you've got a big meaty perk system and extra as hell special attacks to get fiddling with for variety's sake, and even some hard mode modifiers for after ya beat the game too! Everything I'd want from a good ol' Gunvolt grind is accounted for and expanded! I loooove content!!! Kinda sucks the stages themselves are unaltered for those extra difficulties and the repeating content game is a biiiit excessive, buuuut I’m not really surprised about that kinda thing. JUST that classic Gunvolt experience, ya know??? A few good ideas and a couple steps forward and a couple steps back! What else is new from those guys at 'Interior Creators'??????

I thought I'd be way more irked having to witness Gunvolt seemingly take a backseat in plot importance yet again, but I did not! He is still very much at the center of most discussions, and the new main girl Kirin is super nice to see interact with him. The two of them got a real nice partner kind of relationship going on; it's pretty sweet! Really refreshing dynamic over the usual 'PROTECT CUTE GIRL' shit Gunvolt was always rocking in prior adventures. Recruiting a corny superhero club like it's the chad Mighty Number 9 and everyone eventually quipping together and busting GV's balls for being so old and overpowered now is just some hella cute found family kinda stuff; I love it. And having GV be SO STRONG that he becomes your go-to win button for the gameplay this time around ALSO weirdly feels just SO 'AZURE STRIKER GUNVOLT' and I'm totally okay with that as well.

Like the reaction time expected of you and enemy telegraphing has always been overtly suspicious in these games. TO SUCH A CONSISTENT DEGREE that I've come to assume the priorities of all this Gunvolt-ing have always been more about perfecting cool anime 'spectacle' over creating anything traditionally fair and action-game-like in the first place. I MEAN - Do 'REAL' action games go so hard out of their way to not just KILL you if their point is to grant satisfaction through overcoming difficulty? These games are ALLERGIC to killing you! And they've never been very tough to get through either! They've always elected to invent god-mode options and invincibility to keep this ANIME OVERSTIMULATION hype easy to lean into every installment!

So after being written in the story to be SO powerful, to have Geevs himself be made a resource and now like the epitome of this style over substance anime idea just... MAKES SO MUCH SENSE. They want you to bust him out now as this COOL secret weapon of yours whenever things expectantly get a little much and it’s time to UNLEASH THE AZURE STRIKER, MAN!!!!! I think it works! and it's pretty hype, dude... I enjoy nothing more than watching Geevs COMBO THE FUCK OUT!!!! I feel less guilty engaging with these 'easy modes' and can better appreciate the "LIGHT NOVEL 2D ACTION" VISION when these things are like definite meters and shit I'm working to build up over just the on/off switch versions of these ideas the older games had! REVEL in his POWER as you will! And combo-mad as stylishly and as cool as the characters are in the story along the way!!! THAT has always been 'GUNVOLT' to me. And even if we ain't playing as the guy normally, THE WILL OF THE AZURE STRIKER LIVES STRONG IN THIS ONE ALL THE SAME, DUDE~

The WORLD'S STRONGEST ADEPT is rightfully harder to get points with, but the scoring system and equips you can play around with ensure that you can still get high ranks with him by just ARC UNLEASH-ing smartly. It’s fiiiine!!! About as ‘STYLE OVER THE MAX POTENTIAL SUBSTANCE’-like as I’d expect from a real Gunvolt game anyway! The 'Special GV' Gunvolt only challenges are a really nice touch though; those are quite fun to engage with and optimize. A great bonus for anyone who still ONLY wanted to play as GV :)

I don't know what else to say! I had nothing but fear in my heart after iX2 came and pretended to be a 'normal action game' for a bit and sucked total shit balls, but we're here! We're finally here! A real GUNVOLT game again... With all the hype anime melodrama and simple yet satisfying FORWARD MOVEMENT-Y COMBO MAD SPECTACLE focused gameplay I'd ever wanted! It's even fully dubbed! English GV screaming and grunting is some GOOD FUCKIN FOOD for my ears, man. I loved ALL of it.

Your fate is sealed!!!

my thoughts on this game are so complicated that i don't think i could summarize here. it's such a weird and unique big mainline release in some ways. and yet it also just reinforces the inherent limitations of Mario as a character and like... global corporate mascot for the world of videogames. stuff like the New Super Mario Bros series or 3D Mario Land/World games may have fun or interesting design on a granular level but they don't really try and be anything more than what they are. and in some ways that makes them kind of bland, and safe. ofc Nintendo always releases more experimental side projects involving characters connected to the Mario universe, i.e. with WarioWare or with Mario Maker. but with this game it really seems like Nintendo tries to infuse some of that weirdness from their offshoots and shoot for the moon (pun intended i guess) and get weird and poke fun of the conventions of Mario a bit in a big mainline Mario game. and in doing so i feel like it ends up being this strange, uneven thing that i think the climate of the Switch release in 2017 and the general awed tone about Nintendo coming out of the smash success of Breath of The Wild kind of distracted from.

some of the environments bring back the surreal feeling of Mario 64. the feeling of new possibility, and that the unexpected is possible that older Mario games had sometimes creeps in from time to time. the Sonic 2006-esque New Donk City is def the highlight of the game for me, as well as the industrial forest area with the surf music that also looks like a 3D Sonic level and the two tiered structure. why does Mario suddenly feel like a 3D Sonic game in some places? who knows! it occasionally shows imaginative, anarchic glimpses of what we saw the most of in games like Mario 3, before it had really solidified what Mario was and wasn't. but then other levels (i.e. the beach one) are just your standard boilerplate Mario settings that feel like they could be in any modern 3D platformer. i don't really like the linear nature of the stage progression either and wish they did something with an actual hub world, even though i guess they sort of tried to by having secrets you could later access that connected stages. i also don't know what to make of the very self-referential nature of this game, from them bringing back Pauline from Donkey Kong to the castle in Mario 64 being its own dedicated bonus area that you're supposed to return to. it feels kind of like Nintendo's attempt to be self-reflective about the legacy of the franchise in a way that i didn't exactly expect to see in a mainline Mario game. so... points for that definitely. but ofc it doesn't go beyond a certain point with that, which invariably leaves me feeling a bit puzzled and with more questions than answers.

tl;dr There's A Lot Going On Here, and some of it works and some of it doesn't. and i'm not sure what to make of it all.

I think the most critical thing I can say about Forgotten Land is that after having gotten 100%, I would greatly recommend that new players do not strive to do so. It by no means a time consuming task (clocked in between 15-20 hours) nor is it an overly challenging one (though post game does get tougher). The reason I make this recommendation is that overall, it makes what is otherwise a wonderfully pleasant experience a repetitive and tedious one.

The level design and gimmicks throughout each world are often fun and you have a nice variety of upgradable powers for Kirby to choose from. All of them feel good to use and have their own niche. For example, the ice ability allows Kirby to skate along any surface as if it were frozen, including water or sludge. Mouthful mode too is a cool gimmick on top of the copy abilities, even if still a little unsettling. I would even say that every boss encounter is well designed and I don't really have any complaints other than some of them dragging on a bit. Waddle Dee town is a tremendous idea and is host to a bunch of fun minigames, the colloseum, the sound test, and more.

All of that being said however, the problems come if you are trying to 100% the game. The objectives you need to fulfill to free each of the waddle dees (your main collectibles in each level) are hidden upon your first time through. Sometimes they're awarded for things you'll probably do through natural exploration (like find a secret room off the beaten path), but almost always each level has a curveball (like beat a boss using a specific weapon, or pose in a certain spot) which can and often will lead to most levels requiring two, three, or even four playthroughs as any objectives you don't complete are revealed one at a time. It greatly diminished the experience for me, because levels I initially came away from thinking they were nice, ended up with a feeling of "c'mon let's just get this over with" as I delved into multiple playthroughs. Speaking also of repetition, the game repeats boss encounters more often than Elden Ring. A lot of the design choices outside of moment to moment gameplay really feel like an effort to pad it out, like they wanted to make a Kirby game longer than 8 hours without actually making one longer than 8 hours.

All in all, there really is a lot to enjoy in Forgotten Land and it does capture everything great about Kirby - I just wish I didn't need to see it all three plus times.