The people over at GoodFeel looked at what Yuji Naka was doing with Balan Wonderworld and said hold my beer.

As Nintendo exclusives go this one definitely feels the most like a late era release for a system on it's way out the door. Visually it's really bland and surprisingly fuzzy and poorly optimized for a game made by one of Nintendo go to second party studios, besides the main visual motif of the levels being plays everything else feels very bland; even by Goodfeels standers with their last game this is the most "second party" made nintendo game I've seen since in a long time, There just isn't much heart here and you can 100% tell.
Gameplay wise it's very easy, like......really easy; as in it's a two button game only and the only time the gameplay changes is when Peach uses a costume which gives her the ability to do one whole new move (wow). Obviously this game was made with very little kids in mind but honestly I feel like even they would get bored with something like this. Hell even compared with Kirby games like Forgotten Lands or Planet Robobot still offer a greater challenge as the game goes on, for pretty much the beginning to the end the whole game feels like it's on autopilot; like it's only reason for existence is to babysit your 6 year old for 5 hours instead of being a normal parent and put your kid in front of Bluey or a Mr. Beast video (joking by the way fuck Mr. Beast).

I guess my overall problem with the game is how...completely unmemorable the whole experience was. I went out of my way to 100% the whole game and besides like 1 or 2 moments from the beginning and the end I've already pretty much forgotten almost every part of the game. And I don't like using the argument of "oh well it's a kids game made for very little kids; what did you expect?", because even if you made a game with it being very easy in mind you still need to make it a good game. Like a side before Kirby is a very pretty much made with kids in mind but those games are not only game games that both kids and adult can enjoy, and give kids a good challenge while also still being welcoming for smaller kids; but those games are also chock full of stuff for kids and adult to play besides the main game. Here I 100% the game and did everything in around 9 hours for a game that cost the same price as Kirby's Forgotten land, Luigi's Mansion 3, and Super Mario Wonder.

The nicest thing I can say about this game is that unlike Balan Wonderworld it's not a buggy broken mess and plays alright, it's just a shame the game itself is the definition of bland.

This game is probably relies on and as a result is a better showcase of what I would call RGG magic than any other game in the series. Whenever I play a new Yakuza game I’m struck by how immediately engaging it is. This is what I would label as RGG magic. Games with plots and characters that immediately hook the player despite often being convoluted soap operas and that contain a plethora of diversions and mechanics that are so addictive and well designed that you can easily forget about the main story for days at a time. This RGG magic absolutely redeems Yakuza 7, which could have been a very dull game otherwise. The turn-based RPG gameplay of Yakuza 7 is decidedly mediocre. It’s pretty easy and mindless with the only real difficulty coming from required level grinding. It’s also lacking in the complexity and customizability that often make easy JRPGs nonetheless engaging. It’s a testament to the design chops, writing talent, and core vision of the RGG team that Yakuza 7 manages to be so engaging and enjoyable despite all of this.

Not worth getting. In short, this game is extremely boring and somehow made the ocean feel absolutely lifeless.

Endless Ocean 2 was one of my biggest childhood games growing up so I was looking forward to a new game in the series finally, but this game takes everything 2 did right and chucks it in the trash. The main thing to do in this game is explore and that’s just about the only thing to do, but exploration in this game is painfully boring with the randomly generated maps. The Veiled Sea is interesting for maybe about 30 minutes and then it quickly becomes apparent that the vast majority of what you get to see is the same flat seafloor over and over again with nothing new. I’m pretty sure each map has 1 designated “special” region, so you might get a map with a big iceberg you can enter, or a deep sea region, or a freshwater region. These are the most interesting places to explore but once you’ve explored them once, any magic they had quickly vanish once you roll them again. There’s nothing new to do in any of these regions. You’re either aimlessly scanning fish to meet scan quotas or aimlessly swimming to try and find 7 random arbitrary fish to spawn a UML or find something for the mystery board.

The story mode is one of the worst parts of the game. Each chapter is maybe 30 seconds to a minute of gameplay and you’re completely locked out of leaving the extremely limited story space you’re stuck in. Often times there isn’t even any marine life in these story segments despite all the coral around. It’s kind of jarring. And the story itself is laughable. The story mode as a whole is so shallow it could be entirely removed from the game and pretty much nothing would be lost.

And if you do want to actually complete the story mode, and you know, complete the game, it’s locked behind the ludicrous requirement of clearing the mystery board. 99 things you have to search for in randomly generated maps that aren’t even guaranteed to have what you might need. You can spend 2 hours searching 1 map and just find repeats for things you’ve already found. You can spend up to an hour trying to find random fish to spawn a UML only for it to be a repeat that you’ve already found. You can swim for up to 20 hours or more and never find the big circle that wants you to take a sawtooth shark to it. The game doesn’t even tell you what you have left to find to clear the board. The only thing to do in this game is swim and hope.

You’d think that at least discovering all the different species of fish would be interesting but this game butchers this as well. The game tries to throw pacific, atlantic, antarctic, deep sea, freshwater and prehistoric fish all in 1 big body of water and it makes no sense. It’s not immersive when you’re finding chinook salmon swimming alongside giant squid in a coral reef.

Rare creatures are especially dumbed down, you’ll find something like Thanatos and it’ll be a special moment - only to realize that there’s about 10 more of Thanatos on the same map. And repeat for every single legendary creature taken from Endless Ocean 2. Cocoa Maharaja, Gugnir, Apollo, Phantom, they’re all very common. One time I spawned into a new map for the first time and right next to me was a Singing Dragon. UML’s take the place of legendary creatures but they all have the same extremely disconnected requirement to spawn and before you can even make your way over to it you get a cutscene from across the map showing it in full detail.

You might think, that can’t be it, right? There has to be more. But besides playing the same gameplay loop in multiplayer, yes, that is literally it. Once again, you just swim, scan, and hope you find stuff in randomly generated maps.

Overall an extremely disappointing game and a waste of time to try and complete in full.

lethal company is the first time in an Ever that a trending new multiplayer game has impressed me and rivaled the Certified Hood Classics like valve's games or... yeah no valve's games. i don't tend to play multiplayer shit! i think what sets lethal company apart is atmosphere. the game is immersive from the first moment you start a save file and see the scratched, murky helmet hud. you don't notice it as much in multiplayer, but in singleplayer i just sat there and took it in the croaks of the ship's hull and the gentle whirrs and tippity taps when you use the computer (though eventually i do play the game). while the abandoned buildings are almost always repetitive (for readability reasons), the outdoor areas of these planets are sick. coming out of a long expedition to not only see, but HEAR that night has hit, is super impactful. increase that impact about tenfold when the ambiance is interrupted by the stomps of a forest giant. the microphone detection (thereby requiring you to be quiet) almost forces you to soak it all in.

however, my absolute favorite detail is that the monsters don't jumpscare you. 15/10

I’m gonna talk about both Drift 1 and Drift 2 since I don’t feel like writing two reviews and they are so similar it doesn’t really feel worth it.

For what Sonic Drift wants to achieve it’s not bad at all. Problem is it’s not achieving much pfftt. I don’t think an 8-bit kart racer released in 1994 was ever going to knock anyone’s socks off, but for little Jimmy in the back of the car on the trip to grandma’s I imagine this to be a very serviceable way to pass the time. It’s a good, engaging challenge to look at the map and signs, and make your turns at the right time! The minimum for a racing game!

Unfortunately that minimum is about all it has going for it, so anyone who isn’t little Jimmy is unlikely to willingly spend more than an hour with this game. The general Sonic theming is as good as it could be with tracks based on Sonic 1 zones, and characters with varying stats (not told in the game? Maybe in a manual?) reflecting their personalities(?), but it’s very hard to appreciate that when the actual game is just so barebones. The “items” don’t add too much either. The little animations and pictures of the characters that change depending on whether they’re winning or losing do a put a smile on my face though, they’re just so silly (and some very derpy :P ).

Sonic Drift 2 devs read my last paragraph, said “get a load of this guy!” and proceeded to shove a bunch of new stuff into the game that kinda feels like if it got a modern day dlc:
- More characters! Fang, “Knucles”, and Metal Sonic are here, cool.
- More creative zones! Some Sonic 2 based ones and a quite a few original ones
- More ambitious stages: more obstacles in the road, tunnels, half-pipe turns, bottomless cliffs, seizure inducing lightning effects, etc.
- More opportunities to use items, and character abilities

There is probably a bunch of stuff I’m missing as well because I admit I didn’t exactly play this one thoroughly; I was definitely getting bored. Theoretically these features should make the game much more interesting. For me though, I’m still playing Sonic Drift, and no amount of cool additional sparklies or shinies is really elevating my experience very much. If all of the concepts in this were moved to a mega drive version (with easy built in multiplayer??) then I think I could appreciate them much more, instead of just occasionally feeling like I did something cool that I previously couldn’t do.

Apparently there is 2-player versus available. I'm just learning right now, you gotta use the “Gear-to-Gear” cable pfftt. That would totally be the most fun way to experience the Drifts. But as they stand, racing against the CPUs just wasn’t too thrilling after the first couple GPs.

Drift 1, Drift 2, it’s all the same really.

This side series is so interesting to me because it’s the most focus Silver had gotten since 06 and just completely contradicts 5 other games in this series. What a series Sonic is, man. Game is fine. More of Rivals 1. I was NOT about to play it 8 times so I did it once with each character off of each team and yeah it was decent. These games work and feel good they’re just nothing remarkable. Team combos are pretty interesting here, I liked Espio and Silver a LOT and Metal and Shadow is cool. Story is very funny though, considering only Silver and Shadow’s stories really matter at all, and Silver is the MC so if you wanna just play one story play his. Anyway, yeah, game is fine. Besides the Second Zone’s Boss good lord. It’s like a Superstars boss on PSP. It sucked. But, I’d run through one story at least, I’d say it’s worth it.

(Demo abandoned)

What the fuck are we doing? How the hell did Dark Souls 3 become the template for action games?

"Oh, it's the potential for good levels!" But what would good level design even look like in this context? Dark Souls 1 has a simple combat system that doesn't rely on large open spaces without obstacles. This way the player can be trusted to defend themselves in most terrain, which in turn enables designs like Blighttown, Sen's Fortress, New Londo Ruins, etc. where enemies can meaningfully interact with the level geometry. One can argue how consistently applied or successful this was in practice, but there is a solid design goal there that's still visible even up to Elden Ring (as scattershot as that game is).

As you make combat systems and enemy AI more complex though, generally you'll have to start making the simplifying assumptions of plenty of open space and no blocking terrain, which in turn restricts your level design capabilities. This is fine if you build the game accordingly, i.e. most of the classic linear action games. But Dark Souls 3 likes do not actually seem to be aware of this and so have dragged along huge amounts of bloat sections (Stellar Blade: swimming, keypads, climbing) so they can continue to pretend that the spaces between fights have any relation to the actual mechanics.

Similarly constructed arguments can also be made for the following Souls systems, which I will leave as an exercise to the reader: items, camera, pacing, leveling.

So I guess the whole point of these games is to grit your teeth so that you can experience the combat system? But is the combat really all that interesting? The camera limits how many aggressive enemies you can reasonably handle at once, and not being able to hitstun enemies with normal attacks pushes you into hit and run defensive play, which in turn pushes you to abuse the simplistic, timing-based parrying and iframe systems that all these games are cursed with. Why bother when you can just play Nioh 2, which commits all the soulslike sins above but at least has actually interesting resource management, accessible hitstun, deep weapon movesets, and so on. Why play any of these games at all when you can play Monster Hunter where the defensive, commitment driven style that soulslikes are known for is a hundred times better executed?

This whole subgenre is a complete dead-end design wise and doesn't look to be getting better anytime soon. What a mess.

What's on the menu tonight, boys? Invisible food.

So, I'm not really sure if this used to be as buggy as it is now or if I just never noticed, but taking your Sims to a restaurant is kind of a miserable experience. Like, it's an all day excursion. Take PTO because you're gonna be stuck there until 3:00 AM when you really just wanted to go on a date night with your husband. I'm not really sure what the issue is honestly, maybe all of the furniture just short circuits all of the Sim's brains and gives them stupid idiot disease, or quite possibly they all have some serious ADHD because it's almost impossible to keep them seated for even 5 minutes.

The waiter is a pregnant alien and the chef is a robot who keeps shutting himself down mid-shift. There's a thunderstorm outside so everyone is running around in fear. The bathroom is too far away so there's piss puddles all over the floor. The guy sitting next to me keeps eating everyone else's food. I ordered my appetizer 6 hours ago and it still hasn't come. An old person just died in the lobby and a celebrity is screaming songs into the open mic. It's nothing but CHAOS!!!!

I appreciate the sheer amount of possibilities that could happen, but I seriously don't recommend bringing more than one Sim to one of these things. It's funny for like 10 minutes, but it does quickly turn into a migraine. I went to a restaurant everyday to fulfill the Experimental Food Collection, and that's really it. She ate 3 meals in one sitting each time and can now craft the most disastrous artisanal foods you can think of. Squid tentacle à la Mode if you will. Nothing but the finest cuisine over here, except for when you order something and it comes invisible like the waiter is pulling the biggest prank and charges you for it anyways. Dickhead!!!

Aside from that, there's really nothing else other than the gameplay. Having no Aspiration is a bit weird because in this pack you can actually own your own restaurant, unlike the Spa Day pack. You can actively choose the staff and take care of your guests, which is rather nice but there's really no incentive to do it without an Aspiration though. (Unless you really want to live your restaurant owner fantasy). Being in direct control of the operation helps it run a bit better and you're actually paid for a full night. I'd definitely rank this above Spa Day even with the bugs just because of that alone.

I like the ideas a lot with this one but it's probably the buggiest pack out of them all. It's been patched multiple times throughout it's entire lifespan and it seems they just can't figure out how to get it to function normally with all the other DLC throwing wrenches into the Sim AI. With every other expansion pack added into your game, this one breaks again. It's not a super necessary pack to have for a full experience of this game, so I wouldn't buy it again personally. However, if you're a true psycho you can feed unsanitary sushi to your guests and literally murder them with it, so there's that.

Maybe Dine In instead.

[Average Reading Time: 8 Minutes]

A mute, a drunken womanizer, a french fashionista, and a momma's boy are working together to take down a big bad guy. Surely they would work better together if the game worked at all!

I discovered my love for the Dragon Quest series of games a little over half a decade ago when I downloaded the mobile version of the first game on a whim. Since then, I've always been excited to see the future of the series, as well as the spin-offs released in the past. One spin-off that caught my attention was the Wii game, Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors. That's a mouthful, so from here on out, I'll simply refer to it as Dragon Quest Swords.

Dragon Queest Swords offers a very unique gameplay experience. It's what I would call a rail action RPG. Imagine a rail shooter. You're constantly moving forward until you have to stop to shoot at enemies. Now, replace shooting enemies with slashing a sword at monsters. On paper, it sounds interesting. Not many games opt for a melee focus when being on-rails. As interesting as it is though, we must ask an important question: Does it stick the landing?

Sadly, I can't say that it does. So, to attack, you must swing the Wii remote. Of course, it's not as simple as just swinging the remote. Moving the controller in specific directions executes slashes in specific directions. Swing vertically for a vertical slice, horizontally for a horizontal slice, you get the idea. You also have a stab move, which requires you to thrust the controller towards the screen. This all sounds simple, but you must also remember that this was a Wii game that released in 2007, which means it's less than accurate, to say the least. Sometimes you'll swing the sword and wind up stabbing. Sometimes you'll stab and wind up swinging. This gets highly annoying, especially as you begin to encounter monsters that are more effectively taken down by specific moves.

Along with slashing, you are also able to focus your strikes on a specific area of the screen by moving the cursor to a specific spot and hitting A. This helps with targeting, allowing you to have vertical and horizontal slices go through areas that they normally wouldn't and allowing for stabs to hit a specific spot when the input feels like being read by the game.

This also helps with targeting specific enemy attacks that can be reflected with a sword strike. Many enemies will shoot projectiles that you can either only block with your shield, can either block or deflect with a sword strike, or reflect back at a foe with a sword strike. This all depends on the color of the move as the prompts appear to you before they make contact. At first, it's as simple as seeing the telegraph, highlighting the area the move is going to land and hitting A, and then swinging the sword when the timing is right to send it back. As the game goes on, though, you'll begin encountering scenarios where you're on the receiving end of multiple of these moves rapidly, requiring you to react accordingly quickly. Many times I've been hit with multiple deflectable moves because I was only able to deflect one and didn't have enough time to set up for another deflection.

You'll also have times where the deflection zones line up with where a slash would go without doing the A button setup, and other times where you're getting hit by multiple deflecting moves at once in a line and now you need to hope that when you do the specific sword strike the game is asking for, it registers properly. Input delay is very real with this game, as well, which does not help with these moves that require specific timing.

Thankfully, this isn't all the game offers in terms of combat gameplay. At any time, you can open your inventory to use a healing item, or have your party member (when you get one) use an attacking, restorative, or buffing spell to even the odds. You also have access to "Master Strokes", which are your special moves that deal big damage to all enemies on screen. By hitting foes, you build up a meter that allows you to execute these moves. Fill it up and you can activate these at any time during combat. Of course, in order to do the move you need to move the Wii remote in whatever directions they ask for. Fail to do so properly, and you'll either do less damage with the move or the move will fail to execute!

Despite my problems with the combat, when you're fighting anywhere between 1-3 enemies at a time, it's manageable. Not good, but manageable. It's when you're in scenarios where there's 4+ enemies on screen and you're slashing away at one while the other's readying an attack and now you have to get your shield up and oh no, the enemy you were wailing on moved away from you and now another enemy is healing them and whichever enemy you're now focusing on while any other enemy on the screen can do something to ruin your life...

...is where the game truly falls apart.

It truly is a shame that the combat wound up like this. The Wii was home to a plethora of motion based games, and as I played this game, I began to understand more and more why casual games for the console required less-specific motions with the controller. Motion controls simply weren't at the proper point for a game like this. In an era where VR has lead to an era where motion controls in games are more reliable than ever, leading me to want to experience them more, I can only say that Dragon Quest Swords was ahead of its time. Had it released in this generation as a VR title, I feel that it wouldn't have suffered from these problems. At the very least, I would be able to stab at an enemy and actually pull it off on the first try.

So, outside of the combat, we also have a town to explore. Here you can buy items to restore health, as well as equipment to raise your stats. You can also temper your sword, making it more powerful and allowing you access to more Master Strokes. It's also here where the bulk of the plot happens, which is very basic, for the most part. There are twists here and there and there are stakes, but it never really feels too compelling, sadly.

What is fun here are the character designs and the voice acting. I'll start with the voice acting first. The cast is pretty well-directed, and the actors pull off their lines very well. Hearing people speak to me in this world was one of the highlights, since there are some fun writing bits here and there.

Since this is a Dragon Quest game, we have Akira Toriyama (RIP) doing the designs for the cast. The enemies are wonderful looking, as always. The main party also hosts a number of interesting designs. One of my favorites has to be Claymore, who's the protagonist's father. As you explore the town and fight baddies, you see a number of familiar designs all getting the 3D model treatment, and they all translate really well! It's because of this that I find Fleurette's design to be funny in comparison since she clashes so much with the world around her. It's a great design, don't get me wrong, but she looks like she walked into the wrong game and just kinda hung out there!

As much as I enjoy the characters and world here, it does not save the gameplay. Through some effort, you can get far and beat it, but I found myself stopping right at the final boss. Without spoiling ANYTHING SPECIFIC, here's why. So, the final boss has a special move they can pull off, and when they do you are prompted to slash repeatedly at the screen to reduce damage as much as possible. Despite almost filling the meter keeping track of my strokes on the side of the screen completely, I was one-hit killed by the move! This never happened at any earlier point in the game. This also happened after a long session with intent of beating the game, which did not add to my mood that night.

Despite being a spin-off, it still has that Dragon Quest blood and wants you to grind! Want cash for better armor or levels to keep your stats beefy? Better go spend a non-specific amount of time grinding for it! Before facing the final boss, I never even considered grinding. The difficulty curve was adjusting properly as I played, so I felt no need to ever go back and boost my stats before any stage. Now, right at the end, the game is telling me to go back and do all that? If this were a normal RPG, I would've. However, grinding in Dragon Quest Swords means any additional amount of time flailing your arm around to boost stats. Just thinking about returning to old areas to spend hours swinging that sword around strictly for levels and cash sounds exhausting, physically exhausting. No thanks.

Overall, I can't in good faith recommend anyone play this game. The world is pretty and the characters are fun, but the story is unengaging and the gameplay is dreadful. If this game were to get a remake for VR headsets that took advantage of the developments that have occurred over the 17 years since its initial release, though, I'd happily give it another shot. As it is now, though, I can't implore you enough to STAY AWAY!

One last thing I want to note before I end this review. I want to talk a little more about Claymore. His backstory is that he fought the evil demon five years ago and lost the ability to use his arm to fight as a result. The more I looked at him and thought about him, the more I began to realize that his story is similar to that of Dunban from Xenoblade Chronicles, who also lost the ability to fight with his dominant arm in combat. Then, I began to notice that his voice sounded similar to Dunban's, and I thought to myself "Did they really get this guy to do Dunban's voice for that game? That would be very funny." I then make my way to the MobyGames page for the voice actor, Wayne Forester. As I scrolled though his roles, I did find that he offered his talents for Xenoblade Chronicles. However, it wasn't for Dunban. It was for someone else. It was for... HIM!

Not a full review that I usually do on this site, but I just wanted to say after beating four Like A Dragon action games (Lost Judgement, Ishin, 0, and Kiwami 2) its kind of aggravating how close they get to a genuinely great combat system yet they continue to make frustrating or baffling decisions that prevent it from living its full potential. Namely the enemy and especially boss design. Everytime a enemy breaks out of my combos and immediately counter attacks, or perform a attack so fast its impossible to react to, or have absurd invulnerability frames from dodges that should really only apply to the player, or just decide to ignore your grabs; it turns my enjoyment into annoyance. Yes there's more to these games then combat, but it's undeniable that combat is the bread and butter gameplay system of Like A Dragon. I don't know, I love these systems more in concept then execution.
Kiwami 2 ain't no exception and I even went out of my way to fight the four secret bosses only available after clearing every side quest, and they just fell into the same trappings. A lot of them turn into exploiting heat actions as they were safe and consistent, since a few of these bosses could take half my health from dodging my jab. A jab, as in the quickest attack in my moveset. This is the exception, but it's still no less sloppy how hard you get punished for utilizing a tool that tests when a opponent is vulnerable or not. And even then, they can break put of your combos anyway at seemingly random.

That's all I have to say, and at least this was on sale for $5. Regardless of the other things I liked and disliked about this title, that is a hell of a bargain for how big these games are.