A solid SRPG with a strong Fire Emblem influence - I'd rank it over a good chunk of the FE games, even. A key difference is that instead of a permadeath toggle, allies retreat when their HP hits 0 but your reward money decreases if you let it happen. It's a unique take on the issue that I really appreciate.

The art is nice, the setting is a fun alt-history version of the French Revolution, and the unit classes are built to match. I enjoyed it more often than not, but the last few chapters can get frustrating as SRPGs do - even when you've invested in the objective best class (light infantry with the +1 range promotion).

Another pain point is that some of the side missions are actual puzzles with fixed stat rosters and a single solution. It wasted a bit of time before I just gave up and looked the solutions up online. The upshot is that side missions are mostly for achievement hunting more than essential in-game benefits.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with the game and I'm definitely looking forward to a sequel.

It's fun to mess around with, but not a must-play by any means.

A very unique game that has you assembling a team of fish, crustaceans, and warships to take over a bunch of coral reefs, rock formations, and even a refrigerator across the ocean floor. The gameplay loop is satisfying for a while if you get a kick out of seeing marine life duke it out with bullets, and I sure do.

The playable species all have their own unique quirks, with tools ranging from melee attacks to guided missiles and lasers to molting as a decoy, though the controls also vary across species from decent to nearly unplayable. Leveling a species increases their stats, but they won't gain experience from fights if they're AI-controlled. This ends up adding more of a grind to the game alongside the DNA collection you'll be doing to unlock new species (even the battleships).

It's cute, it's relaxing, it'll make Mystia one of your favourite Touhou characters. The base game is such a steal that I'd feel bad if I didn't buy the DLC packs as soon as they were translated.

The gameplay difficulty ranges depending on your settings at the start of each night: later areas and larger restaurants will be more hectic, but you get more employees (and better at optimizing the game) to offset this. Harder still are the bosses you can challenge at certain points in the story, but you're also free to put them off as long as you like.

The dialogue is a treat even if the translation is still a little off, the soundtrack is as amazing as you'd expect from Touhou fans, and the variety of in-game food will have you craving Chinese and Japanese barbecue after each play session. I still don't even know what a lamprey is and I want one on a stick.

jogged around the town for a month in order to come up with the recipe for gatorade

The main characters and town are much more fleshed out compared to Ryza and I thoroughly enjoyed interacting with them (with the notable exception of Oskar's dialogues where someone has to get a fat joke in every time). The alchemy system is fun to learn, especially with the recipe ideas that require getting unique traits onto certain other items. The English dub is also nice to have compared to other Atelier games, even if I hate that they pronounce "atelier" as "at-lee-err".

bolearis my beloved

Doesn't quite reach the narrative heights nor the unspeakable narrative lows of Xenoblade 2. I think I had lofty expectations for the end of the trilogy, and Xenoblade 3 did not deliver.

The endless side content is back too, but now you'll have to do side quests as a pre-requisite for each class you want to fully level.

Combat is a lot more comprehensible than Xenoblade 2, and the QoL and UI are a step up from XBDE. Unlike XB2, shops finally have unique icons on the map, but now they have barely anything worth buying. Monolithsoft giveth and Monolithsoft taketh away.

A consistent experience through and through. Features a varied soundtrack, a cast that goes from solid to great to Randy, recurring character appearances, and a plot that slowly draws you into the life and times of Crossbell State without ever feeling like filler.

The dialogue does an excellent job of rewarding you for sticking your nose in every NPC's business until you lock down your favourites, and that's without mentioning the return of the chest messages from the Sky trilogy.

Combat builds upon the systems from Sky - if you made it through that on Normal, Zero is straightforward on Hard. There's a couple gimmicky encounters as Trails does, but they aren't as frequent as SC's.