Showing 1-10 of 29 items
(finished) Probably my retroactive GOTY for last year, if not one of my favorite games ever. It's as if Falcom looked directly into my brain and made a game that would nail every single one of my pleasure centers. The combat feels fast and fluid without being slippery or unwieldy, and was challenging enough that I had to consider timings and whatnot without feeling too punishing. The map exploration is great and really captures the feeling that you're taming this unexplored island. Building up the Castaway Village and filling it out with survivors is fun, and the crafting is involved enough to feel rewarding without being a burden or requiring excessive grinding. The music is stellar, as is typical for Falcom. The only glaring problem is that I had played it with the godawful original localization, but there still seemed to be some quality writing underneath it. A+ 10/10 GOTY will probably go through it again for the platinum.
(finished) Some Mario platforming goodness for my Nintendo Switch-box. It's maybe not the hardest in terms of challenging platforming, but it's fun and colorful and happy and that's pretty great.
I never got to play much of the original Splatoon, so I was excited to play this, but it seems like everyone still playing Splatoon is way better at it than I am. Oh well.
(finished) My second Fire Emblem game, after Awakening. The presentation is great and I love the character art, and the core tactics goodness is still there, but I think that original map design that is apparently present really hurt it for me. I still enjoyed it on the whole, but it was hard for me to want to trudge through either another big open field or a map that just felt more frustrating than challenging.
(finished) My second Tales game. The writing felt pretty top-tier; the story was good, and the characters and their dynamics were honestly some of the best I've seen in a game. The chemistry within the cast is stellar, and the way their relationships intersect is great (Eizen and Rokurou's more lighthearted, teasing big brother act with Laphicet vs. the way Velvet and Eleanore's conflicting personalities influence him), and it's all elevated by really great performances. It's also genuinely funny in places (Magilou is the best). Legit one of my favorite casts in an RPG/any game. I'm cooler on other aspects of the game: the combat feels really mashy and was just sort of boring for me by the end, many of the areas felt really boring in terms of design, and I really didn't like the way you level up gear. Having to sort through a dozen of the same item to see which stats and bonuses are good, or trying to figure out who has gotten the bonuses from which pieces of gear, is just a straight-up hassle. I was longing for the skill tree from Xillia by the halfway point. Still though, the writing is great, which I definitely wasn't expecting, and I very much had a good time with it.
(finished)
(finished) Apparently, this was the first Ys game after it went on hiatus for a while, and it kinda shows. It's pretty easy, for one, much easier than Oath and even Origin. On it's own, I'd say it's a pretty breezy action RPG, with the speedy Ys gameplay managing to make it enjoyable enough.
(finished)
Played a little bit of the Vita version, but I'll probably hold out for that PC release that's coming soon, since playing an action game on a Vita makes my old man hands hurt.
