ayyyy, they finally did good music for cotton! yeah! thats what im talkin about!
generally speaking this game is stunning and really beautiful looking.
taking the regular side scroll shoot em ups into a first person view for the time this came out was huge.
it didnt really let down. the game works pretty well still with this formula.
you might need more than 1 playthrough to really enjoy this though because getting a feeling of what is near or far away in the background might take some time and gets harder with each new stage.
the game only has 5 of these though, so its a rather short game but doesnt overstay its welcome.
the bosses did however lack on cool designs like in 100% cotton. but i dont have more reference than that yet so ill let that slide a litte.
cute story, cute stage designs.
AND TEA TIME IN 3D

cotton 100% is a beautiful cute em up shooter with a really beginner friendly difficulty. you also have that experience gauge instead of the level ups you can collect by defeating enemies; i still dont get how or if the bombs in this game actually do something?? but the 3 magic beams are cool i guess
the background and color palettes of this game are absolutely gorgeous. enemy designs get pretty samey but the bosses are cool and fit well into the area you find them to be. personally loved the snowman with the og ">:(" look
music is pretty bad sadly but other than these 2 cons this was a pretty solid entry into this franchise.


TEA TIME!!!

hi. watch me play comfort games again instead of the ones i have started.

i would like to write another review on jade cocoon since the first one still is accurate but i would like to say so much more to a game this important to me and so dear to my heart. i am very biased here but i will try my best to put this review as professional as possible.

jade cocoon begins with a beautifully animated cutscene by studio ghibli which should be a name for everyone. the story of the village we are located in is told and we take on the role of levant, the mute hero of this story.

the story itself is pretty dark and intense - the game in all its form has a really dark feeling to it in my opinion, which doesnt make it bad but the happier scenes even more appreciated. for a pokemon knock off, as a lot of people call this game purely by looking at its gameplay, this game has a lot more substance to it than any mainline pokemon game i personally have played.
what i really appreciate about this game is how easy it is to immerse yourself intothis world despite its dark setting or maybe even because of this.
the characters here are beautifully intertwined with the story, even if you think that guy from before was not important or that shop keeper was not important. at a certain point in the story you feel just absolutely stunned by how much life all these regular npcs gave this town. you feel integrated.

i also really adore the looks of every single spot this game has. the dungeons especially. while it is pretty hard to differentiate what is background and what is, for example, an item you can pick up (i mean this is a common problem for ps1 games in this era), everything just looks so alive and breathtaking. the backgrounds are all so beautifully rendered, when i first played this and still to this day i am still in awe. my personal favorite dungeon is the spider forest.

musicwise all of the tracks just add up to a dreamy-huntingish atmosphere. i also love how this game has small things you start to notice by time, like levant having different tunes to play to summon a monster.speaking of summoning: another big thing here is the aspect of fusions and summoning monsters. quite a unique gameplay choice. you basically have absolutely no limits in how or what way you can fuse your monsters. appearance and stats will change accordingly which is really cool.

the game also features an amazing dub.
i played this game in german and can only recommend this dub but i believe english also was pretty good.

lore-wise it kinda speaks with the player about everything but leaves certain things unmentioned which i think just adds up to the things i so dearly like about this game. a lot of your actions here actually speak for themselves; humans only bringing ruin and therefore theres not really an experience system here. you can level up your summoning level but otherwise you wont be battling at all only as the main character.

the game is really slow and you should really want to play and give this a try. otherwise this will not be your game. but if you actually get into it it will leave a everlasting impression on you that in this form i never experienced from any other game i have ever played.

this was such a revelation.
i havent really touched this franchise at all until now, only having played god of war 3 at a friends house years ago and remembering basially nothing about it except that the boss fights were HUUUUGE.
and i really dont regret looking into it
god of war 1 has an absolutely amazing world design, the different parts of the world we explore here feel alive (as much as it can be while people are dying all over the place), feel different from each other. they even look spectacular still to this day in some shots. the entrance to the architects tomb for example really blew me off in some way, the whole poseidon challenge, the ship right at the beginning of the game. i really, really liked how these felt. how many different platform ideas were put into it, how from hack and slash to puzzling everything felt just right and the right amount of hard and easy.
i enjoyed this game a lot. i still think its really enjoyable and lacks nothing too important.
some jumps can be a bit tricky but other than that i had absolutely zero problems and found the gameplay loop and different upgrades you get just enough to make it not too boring.
#kratosstannumber1

ok i can really appreciate and see why this game is being praised the way it is.
but damn. this game did not age well in terms of gameplay. i get that it is an oldschool playstation game and all that but the bosses were a huge pain in the ass. the communication with the player is almost kinda not there, giving me no option but to have a walkthrough open for kind of every little thing this game asks of me.
my favorite parts of this game, which really showed me why and how its possible for this game to still have that huge impact on the community were the cutscenes. the characters, the dialogue and the absolutely charming and amazing wallbreaks this game had to offer as one of the first of this kind. other than that this is pure hell to sit through at times and i really suggest just watching a video or something for the story here. maybe even a longplay of an experienced player because some codec conversations even bring a lot of character to the game.
the last fight against liquid also could have just been a cutscene. ive had enough of these terrible fights at this point, metal gear rex being incredibly bad towards the end and almost making me forget that every other boss before that was almost as bad.

meh.
after 13 sentinels i wanted more of that vanillaware magic.
i didnt quite get that. artstyle is beautiful, the gameplay feels fast & responsive at all times. but this game lacks substance. the story couldnt get any more basic, the characters don't grow on me. i do not want to engage with them or get to know them more. the english dub also sounds kinda whacky. an endless gameplay loop with okayish controls also does not seem to do it for me. they tried to give this some kind of atelier flair by giving you the chance to mix potions and a lot of other things with ingredients you find along the way. this gets more complicated to the point where you just stick with the first formular you learned in the beginning which absolutely is enough for this game because its button mashing at its finest while looking out for your level. if you do that, this game is really easy.
and sorry but doing this over and over with all the cast? i dont know if i want to do that. step by step maybe but this story isnt worth grinding another 40ish hours to fight the same enemies in the same areas again just with a different character.