A different approach to Lego Star Wars that we've grown used to, still having the charm in its voiceless characters with some poorly done animations thrown in for extra charm and having a more explorable set of hubs than Dexter's Diner or Mos Eisley Cantina which is a fresh touch and really cool to explore the Venator and the Providence.
The extra abilities for characters are really cool and add onto the gameplay, making full use out of a lot of things seen in the show and in the films that weren't used for previous games, though basic blaster characters are still pretty weak despite the buffs. The levels are pretty faithful recreations of the original episodes, now that I've gone and watched the series, though they have so many tactical, base-destroying levels which hamper the experience and feel very generic, until you play the Zillo beast level, but even that's pretty generic.
100%ing would be such a nightmare because of all of the ground battles you'd have to complete on both sides, as well as the space battles inbetween the capital ships, which I will complete one day but I'm not looking forward to it.

No matter how hard you try to break us, the future is ours to shape! Always!

The premise of Xenoblade Chronicles is simple, yet effective. Atop the colossal Bionis, the three childhood friends Shulk, Reyn and Fiora are living their best lives, until one day a particularly evil robot shows up to disturb the local peace. With the help of the legendary sword Monado, Shulk embarks on a journey across the Bionis to track down the unknown assailant and get his revenge. Not only is the Monado arguably one of the coolest weapons in fiction, it's also especially useful in combat against the machines and allows the wielder to see into the future. The theme of fate is ever-present, as Shulk has to deal with visions involving the people close to him dying several times, and only he can change the future to prevent these events from playing out, while also pursuing his own goals. I'll not take away any more from the story, since I found it to be pretty intriguing and well written until the end, despite having quite a few tropes here and there and also some predictability to it. Even with the sheer amount of downright meme-worthy lines or shonen shenanigans, the core narrative is still surprisingly solid and doesn't fall flat in terms of twists either. Yes, Dunban being "over there" is actually important to the plot. The setting of the two titans is incredibly unique and memorable, but also just straight up cool at the same time, the area progression is really satisfying here. As for the main cast, they all have their reasons to join Shulk in his fight against the Mechons and their voice acting is superb. It's a shame Adam Howden never got any major roles besides Shulk, since he especially nailed those screams and emotional moments. But honestly, the rest of the cast is just as good and I like how many unknown voice actors are featured here (and their British accents).

While the main storyline is not as long as I expected it to be, Xenoblade is still jam-packed with side content, rocketing up the overall possible playtime by a significant amount. Most of the side quests are just fetch quests or "kill x amounts of these monsters", but there are also several skill trees or other cool rewards locked behind others. It never crossed my thoughts until I beat the story, how much Xenoblade rewards interacting with the world on the side, as there's even a whole chart accessible through the main menu where you can see the relations between every single named NPC and the locale they belong to. There's an entire trading mechanic I didn't even pay attention to in my playthrough, but it's cool to know it's there, I think little things like this or the info you can read up on the named NPCs on the chart improve the already impressive worldbuilding by a lot again. Now, one of my biggest regrets is not interacting with the Colony 6 side-story at all, there were many side quests related to it and I couldn't complete any of them because I somehow didn't do the initial one. Honestly, it's a shame it took me so long to properly appreciate those aspects, so I'll definitely focus on them on my eventual New Game+ playthrough.

Amidst the fierce battle cries of "Now it's Reyn Time!", "Electric Gutbuster!" and "Star-searing flames of ABSOLUTION!", I actually ended up liking the combat very much and was surprised by how unique it was. By the end it devolved into chain attack spam for me, but before that point, I think the MMO-style approach is really fitting and fun overall, while the cheesy battle lines of the cast add a whole layer of entertainment as well. Here, good preparation is half the battle already, as you will need to decide which skills your AI-controlled party members should use and how to efficiently combine those with the tactics of the rest of the team for optimal results. I said the combat is "MMO-style", because skills are locked behind cooldowns and your active character is using auto-attacks in the downtime to fill the special bar, like in the case of Shulk it's used for the Monado Arts. His signature sword not only specializes in slicing through machinery, but can also buff him or his party in various other ways, like shielding them or granting everyone the ability to hit the Mechons. Each of those abilities uses different amounts of the special gauge, so it's up to you to decide what's the best approach for certain combat situations. It would be pretty unwise to keep throwing out Arts which use your full gauge, as enemies and especially bosses can counter those by attacking with so-called Vision Attacks. Those come in three forms, Red, White and Purple. By casting the Impulse Art on a party member, they can dodge a red attack, which is pretty straightforward. Things get interesting for the white attacks, as they require you to have a properly leveled Shield Art to even block the move - so if an enemy uses "Attack VII", you need the skill level of your Shield Art atleast at 7, anything below will not block. The use of haptic feedback is also really underappreciated from what I've seen, every time you hit with a chance attack you get vibration on hit and everytime you break an enemy's vision attack the controller emulates this "breaking" effect with a stronger rumble. There's also a pulse while seeing the animations for vision attacks playing out, resembling a heartbeat, and that's pretty cool if you ask me.

Teambuilding is a central mechanic in Xenoblade Chronicles, and also one that is handled in an interesting way. First of all, you get access to most of the cast fairly early into the story already, so you can experiment with different teams through many different areas and see who has your favorite playstyle, who you want to main and who you don't actually like at all. This availability of being able to build around your team without even getting to the meat of the main story yet is such a nice change of pace, since I know so many games where you get party members so late, that they're basically unusable, as you have probably already have a good team composition at that point. Looking at you, Fire Emblem. But Xenoblade doesn't have this issue and it's just really nice, so I hope the other two games in the trilogy adapt this approach as well. As for their actual involvement in gameplay, each teammate has an unique role and playstyle, so you can basically play any possible combination of party members together and it will work somehow. Another neat feature is the ability to choose any character besides Shulk as the leader, allowing you to control them in the overworld and battle, it's very handy for certain encounters (or if you're just a big fan of the character). Like personally I played Melia on Mount Valka so I could have an easier time reaching the airborne enemies and it ended up being a really pleasant change of pace! There is also a whole layer of customization here besides the current party setup, since you can tweak individual characters to your liking by equipping them with gems, certain armor pieces or adjusting the skill trees. I really like how skill trees are handled here, like you still can normally unlock character-specific skills of individual branches through EXP, but you're also able to make use of the skills of other characters if you raise the friendship between them accordingly. This is not a metaphorical statement, raising the affinity between two teammates comes with a nice amount of extras - you unlock new heart-to-heart events across the world, the possibility of extending chain attacks is higher and as mentioned before, you gain access to a bunch of the opposite character's skills. Very nice!

As for the soundtrack, the Definitive Edition features an (almost) entirely revamped OST with new arranged tracks. I've only heard a few of the original tracks in Smash before, so I won't compare the new arrangements to the original compositions. With that out of the way, I'm a big fan of the musical score for DE and especially the more emotional songs here really hit me at times. Hearing Engage the Enemy for the very first time in-game with the corresponding cutscene is an ethereal feeling and gave me shivers in combination with Adam Howden's performance there. Gaur Plain is also one of my favorites, even if that one's a basic pick - maybe because it's just a memorable, good song. My final nomination goes out to Mechanical Rhythm for just being a pretty sick standard battle theme, which could easily pass as a boss theme elsewhere.

Considering I'm planning to do a NG+ one day to catch up on the content I missed, it's needless to say that Xenoblade Chronicles left quite the impression on me, even after finishing the game. Now onto Future Connected and I'm looking forward to playing Xenoblade 2 in a while too. Here's hoping that the rest of the trilogy will be just as fun!

Gotta go fast!

After Sonic Adventure has served as my personal gateway into the series and Sonic Adventure 2 gave me an even better experience, I can proudly call myself a fan of the series now. A fan who only played 3D Sonic. That being said, Sonic Origins opened up a whole new dimension to me: 2D Sonic!

Here's a quick rundown of the zones: Green Hill was surprisingly the least engaging zone for me, but I can appreciate it for how iconic it is and being a good introduction with a timeless theme. I didn't have an issue with Marble Zone's methodical approach for the most part, although some of the random pop-up spikes felt a little cheap. Spring Yard is fine, but gets repetitive after a while. Now, Labyrinth Zone seems to be pretty universally hated, but I didn't find myself having much of an issue with it and thought it was rather refreshing after going through Spring Yard, the underwater sections were cool. Star Light Zone had cool catapults and Scrap Brain was... rather hard compared to the rest of the game - but that makes sense, it's the last level for a reason! The final fight itself though was a bit underwhelming and the ending was cheap.

But in the end, I enjoyed my time with the Blue Blur's debut game, even if most of the level design goes against the whole "gotta go fast" motif, which apparently is a dealbreaker for many. And while 2D Sonic is fun, I'd be lying if I told you I didn't miss the homing attack from Adventure at first.

My first Castlevania game.

The movements were really responsive. Alucard isn't slippery, he doesn't gain a weird momentum as soon as he starts moving forward, or any other shenanigan. It just felt very smooth. The same can be said about the bat form.
It was such a sick ability btw, being able to fly wherever you want, dodging every enemy while backtracking. And I like the detail of the bat changing color depending on Alucard's outfit.

The soundtrack is extremely catchy. There are elements from multiple musical genres, including classical, techno, rock and metal. It fitted perfectly with the gothic aesthetics of the game. The atmosphere is just very charming.

The game has a good amount of teleporters that are well spaced between each other. I could reach any part of the map pretty quickly. It's too rare in those retro games.

While some of the Bosses were too easy, I still enjoyed them a lot overall. Many of them have a really cool chara design, like Granfaloon, Medusa, Scylla and Shaft. And honestly, I usually prefer too easy rather than too hard.
By the way, having to fight Doppelganger 30 minutes into my playthrough was a big surprise. It was probably the most difficult Boss in the entire game. Still a great Boss tho 👌

I liked the RPG aspect of the game, with the items you can drop on defeated enemies, or by finding them during your exploration. Whether it's weapons, cloaks or talismans to make Alucard stronger, or consumables to heal yourself and boost your statistics momentarily in battle. I wish we could use items without having to unequip our weapon or shield tho...

The sub-weapons I used the most were the knives for their ease of use & high damage, and also the stopwatch. I didn't use the other ones very often.

I like how there is a possibility of getting a bad ending if you rush to the top of the castle before doing the necessary to save Richter. I ruthlessly killed him even though he is a human, and immediatly realized my mistake.
Hopefully I was able to reload my save right away to get the true ending.

I remember being stuck at some point, and I found a clue while looking at the tactic for Dracula, in the Librarian's Shop. When you watch this tutorial where Richter is fighting him, you can see that he opens a secret path at the very beginning, right before the fight. So I was able to go there myself, and I found an item that helped me to progress. I just think that was a cool way to proceed.

At first, when I reached the Reverse Castle, I was excited about the idea to go through the same map but upside down.
But when I realized that many of the rooms were now filled to the brim with enemies, I decided to keep using the bat & mist to breeze through the map and reach the Final Boss a lot quicker.
This last segment in the Reverse Castle felt like padding to be honest. It wasn't as great as the rest of the game.

Still, I had a very good time with the game overall. I enjoyed it more than Super Metroid which I played right before SOTN. (I mention it because I saw that there is a heated debate between the fans of both games to decide which one is the best 😂)
Anyway, if I play another Castlevania game in the future, it's gonna be Aria of Sorrow! 👍

----------Playtime & Completion----------

[Started on May 8th & finished on May 10th 2024]
Playtime: 13 hours
I was at 88% after getting the first ending.
And at 150% after getting the true ending.

This is my first Metroid game.

Samus movements are a bit clunky. First, I never became truly comfortable with the Spin Jump. I couldn't get used to the momentum of this move, and often ended up slipping off platforms.
Figuring out how to use the Wall Jump wasn't obvious at all. I had to train on a wall for a few minutes to get a good grip of it.
And worst of all, the Space Jump: Underwater, I was able to perform this move without any issue, but outside of that, I was never able to chain them consistently. The timing is just so weird and unintuitive, and that's the reason I had such a bad time in the last area, Ridley's Lair. You need to fly across rising lava as quickly as possible using this move, and that was terrible.

Also, this isn't the game's fault, but I don't vibe with the sci-fi/alien/futuristic setting... Different strokes, right?

There are some items that are fun to use. I liked being able to freeze the enemies to use them as platforms, thanks to the Ice Beam. Swinging myself around with the grapple beam was also kinda fun.

I didn't like the abundance of hidden paths. Having to stop constantly to use the X-Ray kinda ruins the pace of exploration. It's the biggest issue in the game for me.

I enjoyed the boss fights for the most part. They aren't too easy nor too hard. I do want to note that I was using save states. So whenever I died against a Boss, I could respawn in front of it and retry immediatly.
Crocomire was pretty cool, the fact that you need to push him into the lava rather than reducing his HP to 0. And the way he comes back as a skeleton to scare you one last time was neat.
Draygon was my favorite Boss in the game, and I also had a good time with Golden Torizo.

Using the Power Bomb in Maridia to break the glass tunnel was such an Eureka moment for me. I was stuck for so long, and it felt very satisfying to finally figure this out!

As I said earlier, I kind of had enough once I reached Ridley's Lair. I got stuck at the 2 Ridley's Guards.
I didn't have enough ammo to deal with them, and I was really fed up with this area, so I didn't have the courage to backtrack to gather HP & ammo. The lack of teleporters is definitely a deal-breaker.
So I stopped here and watched the rest of the game on YouTube.

Honestly, I had a good time in the first half of the game. Before I reached the last quarter of the game, I thought about giving it 3.5 stars, or even 4 stars. But it became really tedious near the end, hence my final rating.
I'm still happy I played such an iconic game, it was about time I played this series! I feel like I would have more fun with Metroid Dread tho?

----------Playtime & Completion----------

[Started on May 5th & stopped on May 7th 2024]
Playtime: 18 hours
I stopped at the 2 Ridley's Guards.

The team to see it through to the end, but really, I think I need to give credit to everybody in this run.

I was not aware of just how much this game was going to kick my ass and after 20 attempts to nuzlocke, I decided to give it up and play through the game semi-normally, opting to continue limiting myself to one encounter per route, but I still got to choose which one it would be.
A super fun challenge to enhance the original Black & White which I already loved to death, even if the incessant rotation and triple battles got a bit irritating to try and plan for.

I got to beat the final boss with my favorite Pokemon and I don't think I can name a more euphoric feeling.

I was not expecting to love this as much as I did. It's not perfect for sure, but what it did right was more than enough to push it to 5 stars for me!

The combat felt THE best I've experienced in a soulslike outside of Fromsoft, even surpassing Dark Souls 2 or Lies of P for me. Aggro Crab just gets it somehow! My only gripe with the combat is just that the game got a little bit too easy towards the end. I think this is because you can unlock so many powerups that you get to a point where you can just mow enemies down without much trouble. I fought the final boss with full upgrades and took almost no damage (I didn't use assist mode a single time except to get the gun achievement post game). I would've loved to see a NG+ mode or boss rush to address this or just better scaling at least.

The platforming and movement were an absolute joy. Rolling around in one of the many incredibly creative shells and using the grappling hook had a great sense of speed. Sure some platforming sections could be janky but it never bothered me to the point of frustration. I wasn't even expecting the platforming going in so the level of quality it's at was a pleasant surprise. It also sounds like the team is hard at work on fixing bugs as well. Speaking of bugs, most of the ones I experienced just had to do with me getting launched after using certain moves. This also didn't happen often enough to frustrate me either.

The story is the other part that was a huge surprise. I was fully expecting the story to just be goofy crab shenanigans and there's for sure a lot of crab/ocean related humor that was mostly just fine and sometimes fell flat, but the main character actually goes through a lot of meaningful growth, the story gets pretty dark and serious, and it even had me on the verge of tears a few times. It wasn't a life changing story by any means, but it felt way more epic and meaningful than I could've anticipated.

The game also has a lot of references to other games which were kind of fun to discover though it felt like there were a little too many references at times. Now and then the attempts at humor even went a bit too far imo. Still, it was a great experience.

HIGHLY recommend this game to anyone who enjoys soulslike games or is looking for a challenge/different experience. I have heard about more bugs on other platforms so it could be worth waiting a while for more bug fixes. I'm feeling pretty strongly that this'll be my GOTY this year.