This is Wii Play's equivalent of what Wii Sports Resort was to Wii Sports. I'm sure I would've played this ALL THE TIME if I had it during the Wii era, because the minigames here are considerably more fleshed out than the Wii Play ones and they all have variations or sidemodes, unlike the original.

Also I spent almost 3 hours on Teeter Targets because of the last 4 stages, especially 29 and 30, of which the latter I didn't even manage to beat. The amount of precision you need is out of this world, screw that shit. If one day I manage to clear that it'll be my proudest GAMER MOMENT.

One of my earliest gaming-related memories is of me playing this game some years before I got a GameCube, so before 2005, probably between 2002 and 2003. I loved visiting this site and Mario Party 5's site all the time. I don't recall very well the gameplay, but it was a very charming flash game, with even some minigames besides the board gameplay! The Mario Party 5 site didn't have boards, but it had this whole political campaign gimmick where you could support your candidate (ie. Mario for President, Wario for treasurer, Luigi for vice-president, etc) by playing some simple minigames and earning coins, which then iirc you could use to get some wallpapers for your desktop. The nostalgia that's consuming me while writing this is so strong it's almost making me cry... I miss those flash sites, man...

In 2023 I saw a bundle of this trilogy and The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles for crazy cheap on the eShop and thought those were a perfect fit to be played on the Switch. I had a hunch I’d enjoy these games, I’d always see memes and pics of its characters, but after playing the original trilogy, I didn’t really like it. No, I absolutely LOVED it!

[This review contains spoilers, so be sure to have played the games before reading!]

For a series that simply boils down to clicking on the screen and reading, it’s crazy just how riveting Ace Attorney is. I guess point and click appreciators and visual novel readers probably know how enrapturing games of those genres can be, but I had never played anything like that, so my experience with this series opened a brand new door for me.

What makes it so appealing are the characters and the narrative. The main cast is SO endearing and their dynamic is just a blast to see. Phoenix having to deal with Maya’s dumb remarks, Edgeworth being an absolute tsun, the Judge being the most malleable person in the world, Gumshoe being the most adorable AND trustworthy dork in the world (he’s THE BEST!!!)... I quickly got attached to all of them, and even to some recurring side characters and case-specific characters. There’s no shortage of personalities that will make you intrigued and get you laughing.

It’s because of all those characters that the cases become so gripping, along with the writing that rarely ever disappoints. The first game doesn’t get too crazy with the narrative, but starting from the second game they turn the supernatural elements up to eleven, with a huge focus on the mediums of the Fey Clan. The third game dives deep into the backstory of the main cast with its flashback cases, something that gives you an even greater appreciation for them and makes the finale incredibly gratifying.

Oh yeah, and the music! There are so many catchy tunes in these games, and their impact during the trial segments cannot be understated. As you’re cross-examining witnesses, a calm but intriguing theme plays, but as you get closer to uncovering their lies, the same tune gets faster and with more elements added to it, giving you an extra push to finish them once and for all. And nothing feels more empowering than presenting the right evidence, the music going completely silent, saying OBJECTION!!! and hearing the objection theme start. Same thing for when the pursuit theme starts as the culprit is about to break down. It’s an unrivaled rush of adrenaline and satisfaction.

If I were to rank each game individually, my order would be the first game, then Trials and Tribulations, then Justice for All. They’re all great, though! And yes, I’m aware 90% of Ace Attorney fans consider the third game to be the best in the whole series, which is totally deserved, given the strength of its cases, how they’re connected together and how nicely it wraps the trilogy up (and also the fact it has Godot, one of the best characters in the series), but my experience with the first one was truly special.

Of course, there’s the fact I was experiencing the thrill of trials and all the crazy plot twists of the narrative for the first time, which you start getting used to as you play the games, but the aspect that makes my time with the first game stand out is the fact I didn’t savescum. Every Ace Attorney veteran knows how it’s almost muscle memory to save right before an important decision, but I only found out about that strategy after I had finished the first game! So the trials were much more tense due to the fear of getting a game over, which did happen 3 or 4 times.

Something else that helps this game take the top spot is the fact it contains my favorite case out of all 3 games: Rise from the Ashes. I wasn’t prepared for how long this case would be - I started playing it early in the morning during a weekend and finished it by 1 AM, playing basically nonstop, because I was totally immersed in it! It has so many memorable elements to it, such as its cast of characters, from the quirky Ema to the smooth Marshall, and of course Damon Gant, my fav “villain” in the series so far; all the twists that kept surprising me constantly during its LONG trial sections, which you gotta remember I didn’t savescum; the slew of new mechanics it introduces, such as the forensics stuff and the video footage review... I kept thinking about this case for at least a month after finishing it.

There are several cases I would’ve loved to talk about, like the one you defend Edgeworth against the most despicable prosecutor in the world (and you expose him BY USING A METAL DETECTOR THAT WAS SITTING ON YOUR EVIDENCES AND YOU THOUGHT WAS WORTHLESS AND IT’S SO SATISFYING), or the one you gotta cross-examine a serial killer who’s talking through a walkie-talkie, or the one with a Phoenix impersonator who actually looks nothing like him, or the one where the defendant fucking kills himself by poisoning and drops dead on the stand... but then we’d be here all day.

I got into many new game series in 2023, such as Pikmin and Yakuza, but Ace Attorney is certainly one of the franchises I’m most grateful for getting into. I still didn't get around to play The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles and the new Apollo Justice Trilogy, but I'll definitely do so in the near future.

I had never beaten a Wario Land game before, having only played Shake It on the Wii for a little while around the time it released, so after hearing all the praise for the series in recent years, I decided to finally give it a proper try, and went for the game that's most easily accessible at the moment, being Wario Land 3, since it's included with the Game Boy app on NSO.

I was mostly familiar with the fast-paced wacky zany gameplay featured in Wario Land-inspired games like Pizza Tower or Antonblast, but it seems that style stems mostly from Wario Land 4 and Shake It, because Wario Land 3 is certainly not frantic at all like those games! In fact I was surprised to see a fairly methodical Metroidvania platformer! It's interesting to see the usual facets of a game of that genre applied to a platformer, like revisiting previous levels after getting new power-ups to explore a path that you previously couldn't reach. That satisfying sense of getting progressively stronger is also present, of course.

Though I do feel they went a little overboard with the concept, considering there's other elements in stages that impede access to certain areas that are dependant on finding specific treasures in other stages, and they're not linear at all, meaning for example that a treasure from the last world might open a new path on a stage from the second world. The game always tells you which stages are affected by the treasure you acquired, but sometimes it's multiple stages at once, so you better memorize it or grab a pen to write them down.

It's charming seeing how the treasures you collect visually affect the world map to open up new levels, like getting a bunch of chemicals that make a volcano explode and open a huge crater in the middle of the map, which can then be explored as a new level. As for the levels themselves, it's fun to explore them and solve the many puzzles scattered across them to get the treasures, some of which can be fairly tricky. You also gotta be observant and pay attention to roadblocks that you can't overcome on your first visit so that you know exactly where to return once you get some power-ups or specific treasures.

However, there is a MASSIVE caveat for my enjoyment with this game: I completely and utterly abused of the rewind feature, since I played this on the Switch. You see, this game's level design wants to screw you up every step you take, with every stage being littered with enemies or hazards that either immobilize you for a few seconds or bump you back to a previous section of the stage after you spent a while getting to that point. Even the bosses exhibit that behavior, with any minor mistake making you exit their arena and make you work your way back just to get another shot at it, so every boss basically has a one-hit kill.

I guess it makes sense for a game associated with Wario to be constantly giving you the middle finger and annoying you, and I usually do my best not to use save states or rewind, but this one is way too infuriating to deal with. Maybe if I played the game on original hardware when I was a kid I'd have the patience to deal with the bullshit, but nowadays I don't have the time nor the patience.

So yeah, I liked experiencing Wario Land 3 thanks to the rewind feature, but I'm sure I would've dropped it if it wasn't for it.

I have quite the funny history with this game, because when it originally released, I loathed it, as someone whose favorite games were the first two Paper Mario games. I didn’t want to play it and would always complain about it, even though I was just a young wee lad. Little did I know what would happen to franchise after this game... Anyway, after a year or two with a Wii in my possession, I decided to finally give it a shot and I... kinda liked it? Didn’t find it anything special, but I didn’t hate it either. That was around 2011, and since then I had never replayed it, that is until this year, when I felt this urge of finally replaying this game.

The biggest point of contention for most people is the combat. The idea is fun in concept, a platformer with RPG elements. It's satisfying to jump around dealing numbered damage to everything in your path. The most brilliant thing about it might be how they transformed the usually pointless score tally into the level up system, because defeating enemies gives you points that add up to your score, which makes you level up by increasing your HP or attack power once you reach a certain score threshold. You can earn more points by chaining bounces on several enemies and pulling off Stylish moves by shaking the Wii Remote, which can be hard but adds to the satisfaction of this battle system.

However, everything is ABSURDLY easy. You jump a few times on an enemy and BAM, they're gone. This even applies to the boss fights, who can be cheesed in countless ways and offer no real challenge, EVEN THE FINAL BOSS! The boss fights rarely ever try something interesting, none of them incorporate the 3D switching mechanic into their fights and most of them don't even require you to use any of the partner abilities, and the ones that do boil down to simply spamming a single move. It's the definition of mindless, there is no need to create a strategy for any encounters, other than bringing healing items.

So half of the gameplay loop is the combat and the other half is exploring the areas and solving puzzles to progress, mainly using the biggest selling point of the game: the ability to switch the perspective from 2D to 3D. It's cool. It's really cool. Even now as an adult I still can't grasp how that even works, can't wrap my head around what kind of programming witchcraft the devs had to make for that to function.

But despite being fun to see the world through that new perspective, that mechanic is the solution to 90% of the game’s puzzles and roadblocks. You flip and find the right path or the required macguffin. Since the game is so over-reliant on that mechanic, you're not incentivized to use Peach, Bowser, or Luigi frequently since they don't have the ability to flip. If you like using them, too bad, because you'll have to keep constantly switching over to Mario. The partners’ abilities are also heavily underutilized, usually only required for the chapters they are found on. Sometimes when the game is feeling TRULY lazy it simply requires you to point the Wii Remote to the screen to find a hidden door. Not rewarding in the slightest.

Now something people often praise regarding this game is the artstyle, and it is undoubtedly one of the most unique Mario games when it comes to that. Everything is geometrical and abstract, be it the levels or the characters, all formed by angular lines and varied shapes. It's an aesthetic that gives this game its own identity, something that became increasingly rare in the Mario series in the years following the release of this game. It is pretty charming and I commend it for trying something completely unconventional for the series, but I'd be lying if I said I love this visual style.

Again, while it's great that they weren't restrained by what's considered conventional by Mario standards, I'd say this game goes a bit TOO far in that regard, especially the character designs. Most of the original characters don't feel like they fit in the Mario universe, it gives me this vibe of a fangame made by a kid that wanted to see their OCs interacting with Mario characters. And I say “a kid” specifically because the designs are so simplistic to the point I find some of them ugly.

The variety of locales you journey through is another of Super Paper Mario’s strongest assets. From retro grasslands to outer space, from a nerd fortress to a mansion with slave workers, from a monochromatic castle to heaven and hell themselves... You never know what awaits you, and even during a replay it’s still a blast to see the creativity on display in each of these areas.

But I feel the structure of the game clashes with the exploration of these areas, interrupting the flow by segmenting them into subchapters instead of seamlessly weaving them together, making them feel more like disconnected levels in a platformer game than well fleshed out interconnected worlds of an RPG.

And finally, THE main aspect that makes people remember this game fondly: the story. ‘Till this day you’ll see tons of peeps mentioning how great the story was for a Mario game, always bringing it up when talking about how the Paper Mario games that came after it dumbed everything down, featuring barebones plots with no stakes or character development, which is true.

I doubt a new Mario fan would believe me if I told him we once had a Mario game whose main plot was a love story of a heartbroken man who wanted to end the whole world by fulfilling a dark prophecy because his loved one was taken away from him and (presumably) killed by his tribe since their love was forbidden, but that is Super Paper Mario.

Unfortunately, I’d say the story is a bit of an acquired taste. Given how disconnected it is with the Mario universe, it feels like a fanfic that has nothing to do with Mario, but for some reason features him and his gang. Nowadays I can appreciate the introspective story blurbs about Blumiere and Timpani between each chapter, but as a pre-teen I couldn’t give two fucks about it. It’s a novelty, basically. An experiment that went against many conventions of the Mario series, something that weirded me out back when the game first came out, but that now I admire... for the most part.

All in all, Super Paper Mario is a game unlike any other in the Mario franchise. There was no game like it before it was released, and there has been no game like it since its release. It’s one incredibly tough game to evaluate, because it’s flawed to the core, but that’s by virtue of its own ambition, because the game isn’t afraid AT ALL of treading new grounds, which makes me admire it deeply. It’s a journey with many ups and downs, but the downs are never bad enough to sour the ride, so it was a pleasant experience from beginning to end to revisit this game again after many years.

PS: This is an abridged version of my full review of this game. If you're interested in reading the complete version, please check it out here!

Played the tutorial on an actual arcade machine at the Namco arcade building in Osaka during my trip to Japan, and as someone who's a huge fan of the franchise, it's an indescribable experience playing the game that started it all on its original hardware. Seeing (and interacting with) Haruka's original design with brown eyes and hearing the absurdly catchy soundtrack coming out of the actual machine are sights and sounds I won't ever forget. I even got my own Producer cards now, so I can truly call myself a real iDOLM@STER fan and HarukaP! Giving it 5 stars just because of its importance and this experience alone.

Pikmin 4 is simply the definitive Pikmin experience. The game brings the best elements of each of the previous three games in a single package. The exploration of Pikmin 1, now with the biggest number of areas in the series, which are more expansive than ever; the caves from Pikmin 2, reworked to be less exhaustive and more cohesive in their designs (not randomized anymore); and the Mission Mode of Pikmin 3, now incorporated in the main campaign instead of being a side mode.

After playing the first three games, the thing I was looking forward to the most regarding Pikmin 4 was to see which enemies would return. In the July 2023 Direct trailer I got genuinely hyped when I saw some creatures that had been absent from the series for one game or two. I even memorized the names of pretty much every enemy in the series, THAT’S how much I got attached to them. The fourth game brought almost every creature back, along with introducing a bunch of new ones, of which some are already among the most iconic Pikmin enemies, such as the disco ball spider, Groovy Long Legs.

And the good thing is that engaging these creatures in combat is not a cakewalk anymore like it was in the third game, as it rebalanced the difficulty to offer a nice amount of challenge again. You gotta be real careful around some enemies and especially against bosses, such as the aforementioned spider, who killed SEVENTY of my Pikmin during my first encounter with it. I’d say the reason for the difficulty increase is thanks to everyone’s favorite dog of 2023: Oatchi. He’s basically a buffed Pikmin who can fight enemies, carry treasures, crucial for puzzles and traversal across the maps, AND he can even be used as a second captain. Due to the ability to ride him to remove Pikmin from danger and how overpowered he gets after all upgrades with how he can stun or even one-hit KO some enemies with a tackle, he does make combat easier, but it’s still much more engaging than Pikmin 3’s combat. The enemies are more aggressive to accommodate the changes Oatchi brings to the gameplay.

Another substantial addition are the nocturnal expeditions, a first in the series, since in every game prior you had to leave the planet before nightfall due to the increased hostility of the creatures. Finally being able to explore at night had me excited, but it isn’t implemented in a very organic way, like just choosing to keep exploring after sunset - no, instead these are treated sorta like a side mode you select on the hub area. Even the way they play feels like a side mode.

They’re basically tower defense missions in which you gotta prevent some towers from being destroyed because they produce an item that’s important to the plot. These missions start tranquil at first, but by the end of the game you gotta strategize well switching between both captains because they get CRAZY! And those missions do a great job at making you feel tense due to the superb sound design, with the music getting gradually more threatening the closer the creatures get to the towers. So yeah, night expeditions are fun but could’ve been implemented better.

The only other big thing I’d criticize about this game would be the lack of options for the controls, mainly the option to disable the new automatic lock-on. That takes away from much of the skill that was needed to combat enemies and it’s often a hindrance because it locks on to any interactable element on screen, so sometimes when the screen is packed with enemies and other pickable objects, you might end up throwing your Pikmin on stuff you didn’t want to. That’s not a dandori issue on your part, it’s just the game’s flaw.

But these shortcomings are nothing but a small stain on a phenomenal game that’s my personal pick for the best game of 2023. It’s admirable the amount of content this game has, especially for today’s standards with so many games being released in an incomplete state. It’s the longest game in the series, with the largest number of explorable areas AND caves, largest number of collectibles, biggest enemy roster, lotta missions to get medals on... Pikmin 4 might’ve taken a decade to come out, but the wait was totally worth it, because they delivered a complete package that offers everything a Pikmin fan ever dreamt of.

It seems the people at Nintendo heard the negative feedback about the second game, because Pikmin 3 is much more like the first game. Caves are gone, the focus on exploration is back, with the objective being collecting fruits, not unlike the ship parts from Pikmin 1, with those fruits being used to produce juice, the substitute for the day limit of the first game, seeing as the captains need juice to survive or else it’s a game over. That’ll hardly be an issue though, because this game is considerably easier than the previous two.

That was the thing that stood out the most to me on my first run, because I was coming right after two games where I had to carefully plan each step or else my precious little guys would end up being mauled by creatures or electrified to death (among many other horrid fates). But in Pikmin 3, the hazards aren’t nearly as deadly and the enemies come nowhere near close to the level of threat of those games, not even the bosses.

However, the game being easier didn’t take away from my enjoyment at all. Having almost a 10 year gap from the previous game, the gameplay got refined to a new level. The areas are much more expansive and delightful to explore, full of setpieces that show how gorgeous the scenery is; the Pikmin AI is more responsive and the combat is more intuitive, thanks to the new lock-in and charge mechanics; and despite the boss battles being much easier, they’re true spectacles, due to how massive some of them are (although some of them can feel a bit too scripted).

But just like the previous two games can be defined by a single aspect, with the first game’s being the atmosphere and Pikmin 2’s being the combat, Pikmin 3’s defining aspect is the multitasking. You can alternate between three captains and use the new “Go Here” feature to send each of them to a different place in the map to do different tasks simultaneously, that way you can optimize your efficiency in getting the collectibles back to the ship.

Mastering multitasking is CRUCIAL in this game’s side mode called Mission Mode, in which the objective is to collect all treasures or defeat all enemies within a time limit. This mode is where I spent more than half of my 75 hours playtime with this game, trying to get platinum medals on all 30 missions, whose timer is ABSURDLY strict for some of them - it forces you to be the master of planning and divide tasks between all three captains while making sure they’re taking the most optimal routes in each map. The Mission Mode is simply the best thing about this game.

Pikmin 3 is also more replayable than the second game due to it being shorter and nowhere near as stressful, but I’d say I like both of them equally. When I want to have some action, I might replay Pikmin 2, but when I want to chill and have a good time, I might replay Pikmin 3.

Right after finishing the first game and loving it to pieces, I went straight to Pikmin 2. Before playing it I wasn’t aware of how divisive this game was in the Pikmin community, but now that I’ve beaten it 100% twice, I can definitely see why. It boils down to a single word: caves. Some people love how unpredictable they are due to them being randomly generated and the challenge they offer with its many enemies and bosses, and those are the very same reasons some people hate them, because let’s face it, it’s not that fun wasting your time bringing down a gate just for it to have literally nothing behind, or having bombs raining down on you from the ceiling out of nowhere.

While the main focus of the first game is exploration, the caves make Pikmin 2 be more focused on combat, because they make up for like 80% of this game’s content. The overworld exploration takes a back seat, so much that they didn’t even bother on creating new areas - other than the very first level, all areas in this game are reused from the previous game, but with some changes. So if you don’t like the caves, well too bad, this game ain’t for you. As for myself, I quite enjoyed my first run through the game. Exploring the caves the first time around made me increasingly anxious as I progressed through the game and noticed how unpredictable they were, uncertain of what devilish troll the game would throw upon me. I’d always be especially excited for the boss fights.

I’ll never forget my first clashes with the Empress Bulblax and her spam of evil larvae that can one hit kill Pikmin; the sheer surprise I had when this mechanical spider called Man-at-Legs started decimating my Pikmin squad with a freaking machine gun; and the nightmarish Waterwraith, crushing my Pikmin with its stone rollers in the most memorable cave in the game, the Submerged Castle, a cave with an unsettling atmosphere that forces you to use only Blue Pikmin despite it having hazards of every single element.

However, despite the randomized aspect being nice for repeated playthroughs, the overall magic of the first run is significantly reduced, especially because of how exhaustive some caves can be due to their long length and the overwhelming amount of bullshit. And speaking of length, Pikmin 2 is MUCH longer than the first one (AND third one!), so all that combined greatly diminishes the replay value of this game.

All that said, I still love this game. It may sound like I find this game vastly inferior to the first one due to all I said, but that’s far from being the case. I can understand why some people dislike it, but I don’t think it deserves all the hate it gets. I’m sure I’ll replay it again and again for the years to come, just not as much as the first game.

Pikmin was a series I always ignored because I was confident I wouldn’t enjoy it for being RTS, a genre that never caught my interest. But one day I decided to give the first game a shot and got completely enamored by it. After playing and replaying all games in the franchise, I can safely say the first game is my favorite out of them all. There are three aspects that make it the best one for me: its replay value, the atmosphere, and the fact it has the best areas in the series. It was a wise idea starting with this one, because just like the situation Olimar found himself in, I was experiencing something completely new and unknown.

I felt completely immersed in its world, learning by trial and error how to interact with the elements in each area (because unlike the other games in the series, this one barely has any tutorials, you gotta learn most things by yourself), finding and observing creatures I had no idea how they behaved, getting used to the nuanced controls... It was a genuinely fascinating experience, heightened by the 30 day time limit that definitely pressured me on my first run, in which I didn’t even manage to get all ship parts in time!

Exploring each area was an adventure filled with wonder and anxiety. The tranquility of The Forest of Hope, the darkness of The Forest Navel, the deceiving serenity of The Distant Spring... No other Pikmin game offers this strong feeling of isolation, of being lost on an unknown planet without knowing what awaits you at every corner. Olimar’s reflexive diary entries drive that feeling even further, adding a surprising amount of depth to this character, to the point he’s one of the most well fleshed out Nintendo protagonists. The Distant Spring theme is the one that best represents the unique atmosphere of this game: serene, mysterious, and melancholic.

The game’s short length and its objective to collect the ship parts make it extremely replayable. It’s a nice challenge trying to get all parts in the fewest days possible to try and beat your old record, which is helped by how fun the areas are to explore on repeated playthroughs, creating strategies and finding out the most optimal routes. Nothing beats the adrenaline rush and satisfaction of carrying a ship part to the ship at the very last second during the end of day countdown.

I played it the first time in 2023 and I’ve beaten the game 3 times already and I’m sure I’ll try to beat it every year in a single sitting, like I do with Star Fox 64 and Super Mario 64, both of which are some of favorite games of all time, a title that Pikmin 1 is without a doubt worthy of now as well.

I was always a huge Fire Emblem hater despite never having played a game, because the gameplay looked boring as shit and, above all else, for the petty reason that it started getting way too much representation on Smash Bros. with all those generic anime-looking swordsmen. I never EVER imagined I would give this franchise a try, but one day I was bored on the voice chat with some friends and decided to open the GBA app on NSO to play something. Then I saw Fire Emblem there. Decided to open it just for shits and giggles, to see how boring the gameplay would be. What happened next? I kept playing for 2-3 hours.

I got HOOKED! The first campaign of the game is basically just one massive tutorial, which I know is a bit divisive among the Fire Emblem community, but for someone like me who had no idea how to play the game and how its many mechanics worked, it was very welcome and it didn’t bother me one bit. It speaks to the quality of the game that even its tutorial had me engaged!

Once the game lets go of your hand is when the real fun begins and fun I sure had. Strategizing my way across maps and enemies that kept getting increasingly more difficult as I tried to keep all my units alive was some of the most invested I got into a game in 2023. Few things felt as satisfying as landing critical hits, getting a good level up, and beating a tough enemy unit by the skin of your teeth, especially during longer skirmishes that I REALLY didn’t want to reset in case a unit died (yes, I did end up resetting quite a few times when a unit I really cared for died, but sometimes I’d just let go).

I just couldn’t put that game down. I got so invested I started reading a lot of info online about the game and its inner mechanics that aren’t properly explained due to the limitations of it being a GBA game, such as its many classes, hidden battle stats and the support system. I always kept a sheet open while playing it to see the units I should try pairing together at the end of each turn to get extra support buffs and some endearing dialogue between them. While the story is your standard medieval fare, revolving around politics and dragons, the characters are what keep you interested in it, because this game has such a charming cast. Most of them have a great dynamic, especially the main trio, Eliwood, Lyn and Hector. I actively wanted to make them support each other to see what their interactions would be about, and they’d always put a smile on my face.

That’s why the permadeath mechanic is so devastating, because you start caring so much about some characters you don’t want to see them gone forever. They’re not just disposable units anymore, they’re people you want to protect as hard as you can. That’s why it’s so satisfying to see a character you love getting great level ups and upgrading to a new class and starting wrecking every enemy on their way. That’s what happened with my favorite unit, Florina. She became a goddess of destruction, raining despair over her opponents atop her white pegasus.

And I’d be remiss to not talk about the visuals of the game. Good lord, this game might just have one of the best sprite work of any GBA game. The battle animations are always a treat to watch, ESPECIALLY the critical hits. Their over-the-top animation is smooth and dynamic and packs such a punch, along with the crunchy sound effects that accompany it. It’s so goddamn satisfying. But yeah, that’s the story of how I went from being a pathetic hater of a franchise I had never even played a game of to someone who became invested enough to want to play every single Fire Emblem game.

A bunch of my friends are into the Yakuza series. As such, its games have been recommended to me many times, but to be real honest, they never interested me much. I was pretty confident I wouldn’t like them. One day, though, there was a Steam sale and a bundle of this game, Kiwami 1 and 2 was up for crazy cheap, so I said “eh, why not.” But even then it still took me some more months to finally decide to start the series.

I’ve always heard comments about how great Yakuza 0 in particular was, with many people even including it on their fav games of all time rankings, and how it was the perfect starting point for getting into the series. Now that I’ve played it, I can vouch for everything people say about it - Yakuza 0 is one PHENOMENAL game, truly deserving of the fame it has, and it’s one of those games that kept growing on me over the months the more I thought about it, because there’s no better word to describe it than MEMORABLE.

Everything about this game is memorable: the characters, the story, the soundtrack, the substories, the combat, literally everything. As I mentioned before, going from this game to the Kiwami games felt deflating due to their lackluster stories, because Y0’s story is so gripping, there’s some moments that even give me chills just remembering them, such as Majima’s knife cliffhanger, Kiryu’s last encounter with Kuze, Nishiki and Kiryu’s emotional scene in the middle of a dark road (the best scene in the game btw), among many others.

And the reason the story is this good is because the characters are all great, you actually care about them and want to see more of them as you progress in the game. I haven’t played most games in the series yet, but I HIGHLY DOUBT there’ll ever be better antagonists than the trio of Dojima lieutenants: Kuze, Awano, and Shibusawa. They’re those characters you just love to hate and can’t get enough of them. Sagawa is also an incredibly layered antagonist, I actually felt bad for what happened to him by the end of the game.

The substories also deserve a special mention because there’s so many great ones, like Majima infiltrating a brainwashing cult (MUNANCHO!), Kiryu meeting Steven Spielberg and Michael Jackson, getting a living chicken as a reward for bowling (which can then become a real estate manager), becoming a pizza delivery boy... Nothing beats hearing that melancholic but hopeful tune starting as an NPC thanks Kiryu for helping them find meaning in their life and starts telling him their ludicrous backstory after he just smashed a whole bike on their head.

I'm writing this while the song for the long battles is blasting on my headphones, my favorite track out of a soundtrack that’s just full of banger after banger. Yakuza 0 is so damn good, man. I’m glad to have finally started this series just because it means I got to play this masterpiece. And if you still haven't gotten into Yakuza, don’t listen to elitists that tell you to start from something other than this game, they’re just plain wrong.

After my disappointment with Kiwami 1, I was very weary of Kiwami 2, but thankfully my experience with it was considerably better. It’s an improvement in every single aspect, especially the combat (boss fights don’t make me want to cut my wrists anymore) and exploration, with everything in the cities being connected now, meaning you can now seamlessly enter and exit stores with no loading screens in between. The game also looks much prettier now, thanks to the brand new Dragon Engine (and I don’t mind the green Matrix filter many people complain about).

The substories are also much more memorable, with a bunch of funny ones that are among the best in the franchise (out of the games I played so far), like one where you find a Kiryu impersonator, the one Kiryu watches a horror movie tape and gets jumpscared, the one he’s unknowingly pulled into recording voice lines for an erotic visual novel, the one he finds a clan made of men that wear diapers... There’s many crazy ones!

The main story, however, is still nothing to write home about. There are more memorable characters than in the previous game and the way the drama and romance is so over-the-top it feels like a soap opera does have some charm to it, so yeah, it’s better than Kiwami 1, but the bar was so low it was almost on the ground there. This game also has that one scene of Kiryu punching the table that you’d see the gif being used everywhere, so that alone already makes it more memorable than the entirety of Kiwami 1.