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This starts off with a bunch of rowdies entering the jungle and blasting loud music, so the three marsupilami decide to kick their butts to have some peace and quiet. As far as videogame backstories go, rarely have I seen one so relatable. This is a fun game to play because it reminds me of the classic videogame approach of building a game and using the foundation and assets to improve and elaborate on it with a sequel. You know, before studios got closed after their first game, that time period. So this feels both very familiar to the first but also drastically different in other ways. The most obvious change is that the three characters now have distinct tools, like in the big ape game that this has always been inspired by. One of them can glide, one can double jump and the third one can turn himself into a ball. The latter is quite unusual and has a bit of a learning curve to it – it turns him invulnerable to stage hazards and normal enemies while also increasing bounce effects, all at the cost of precision. Every stage sends you out with two predetermined characters and you can switch on the fly. You rarely have to though, so it doesn't really break the flow. In fact, most of the stages can be completed just sticking with one, though you might need to switch around for secrets or Salsa Mode*. The control scheme has also been reworked and attacking is no longer mapped to the same button as the roll, which takes a bit to get used to but is a net improvement. Another area of improvement are the stages, as they are way more elaborate than in the first game. It pretty much starts where they left off with the dino DLC, so there's no handholding island with baby levels and instead throws some neat ideas at you from the get-go, and regularly adds nice visual flourishes like slightly angled perspectives for chase sequences and such. It's still not an incredibly difficult game, but noticeably more challenging than the first, and also has proper boss battles this time around as well. As in most 2D platformers though, they are the weakest part of the package. The secrets I'm less convinced about. You now collect notes in a stage, but also receive some depending on the amount of fruits you collect (lives are gone). To get all the notes, you have to complete *Salsa Mode, which is unlocked after first beating a stage and is some kind of pseudo-time trial mode, in which collecting fruit fills a bar and continuously collecting them adds a multiplier to them, but if you fail to keep the streak going it goes down to x1. I don't really like this one because breaking the streak in the last third of the level basically means restarting to get the best result, so I think I might ditch the idea of going for 100%. There's unfortunately no gallery or extras menu this time around, so completionist stuff might only unlock achievements. Not sure on that yet though. There's also some challenges, solo and multiplayer, which I haven't looked into yet. Really good sequel though. It doesn't have that 'wait, this is really good' kind of moment because I knew better this time around, but it's a really solid sequel that improves in the right places but maybe stumbles a tiny bit here and there with the optional challenges. It doesn't seem to be much longer than the first, but the islands have more stages and the stages are bigger, so it might end up being a 4 hour game instead of a 3 hour one, at the very least. Music is also way better that in the first game as well, which was quite forgettable bar one or two exceptions.

Berry Bury Berry... Honestly, words probably won't do the description of this game justice. I'll start with the trailer. So, it's a first-person incremental game set in a saccharine sweet, incredibly bright game world. Berries are generated from the plant in the area near you, and you're tasked with popping said berries into the bottomless pit in the ground. Your character's name is Berry. So Berry buries berries. Hence the name. Anyway, each cycle is timed, and you get around 70 seconds to stuff as many berries as you can into said pit. After the timer ends, the lights go off, and you go to bed. Before starting the next day, you get an upgrade screen. So far, so incremental. As you progress, you gain access to Berry Buddies, which are little plant pots that toddle about popping off berries from time to time. There is a story attached, but to say anything on that would render most of the game pointless. I've seen two YouTubers play it from start to finish, so I already knew the story, but what's there is really cool in my opinion. It's all revealed via cassette tapes around the world, which add to context to the wider concept. So you get this drip, drip, drip of information that pulls things along beautifully. It didn't hamper my experience, though, because I knew what I wanted to play this for, for ages. Numbers go up. Back to incremental stuff. It has all the usual suspects. Rebirth/Rewinds make progress significantly easier. The hole gets bigger the more you shove in there. You can eventually escape the confines of the starting area to discover what's scattered about. It's not a huge game, I managed to get the Platinum in about 12 hours, but if you want to switch your brain off for a few hours and discover a story that's slowly revealed as you get more power-ups, it's definitely worth a look.

I've been playing this on the side since it came out on Switch, as it's a really good handheld title. It's out on everything though, IIRC on PC since last year. Oddly very little talk online even though it ticks all the boxes for a hit. I don't know if it's the lack of a mascot and it having a rather 'faceless' presentation, or just multiple unlucky release timings. In any case, this is a bit of a mix between various games and genres, like Tetris and Carcassone put into the roguelite corset, but in combination plays like none of them. Explaining this will be a bit boring, but it generally revolves around building a landscape on a playing field by putting Tetromino-shaped blocks on it. The blocks themselves fulfil certain functions: plains, forests etc. generate produce like wheat and wood, others help increase said production (a farm for example), while the third group, military units, bolster your troops in case you land on a field with an enemy. Unlike Tetris the blocks don't fall automtically (at least up until the higher difficulties), but reaping your rewards does require completing a row. The Carcassone element comes into play because it's generally advisable to logically combine blocks of the same type by building a forest, a mountain range or a river, as a lot of production and military facilities work with multiplyers linked to large biomes. The roguelite part of it, meanwhile, is that it features three areas you have to go through and your 'deck' of cards/blocks grows with every stage you beat – even though, to me, it feels more like a classic arcade game than a modern roguelike. Think of a shoot'em up, but instead of shooting enemies you lay out the land and instead of powering up your weapons you unlock new lands. You do unlock some permanent upgrades by fulfilling certain conditions though. I realise this probably sounds very unexciting but it's quite a fun game. There's a lot of depth to it, especially after unlocking secondary factions. The first one, the eponymous Duchy, is a relatively straightforward agricultural deck which is designed around harvesting large fields and interlocking them with military outposts that generate units based on the fields surrounding it, for example. But every other deck has its own unique gimmick they bring to the table: the Order is a religiously-themed, crusading faction that benefits from building and using 'faith' as a currency, the North cannot combine miltary units during its combat phase but can pillage production units for larger benefits, while the Tribe is designed around strategic runestone placement, so that it's central stone momunemt can harness the produce of as large an area as possible. There's also a truckload of additional cards/blocks you can unlock, which are independent from the factions, and add their own little twist on things ('nobles', for example, are very powerful but can't be rotated). But if you don't like some of these, you can banish them, effectively removing them from playthroughs. Combat is a rock-paper-scissors affair, so carefully ordering your units to attack can lead to victories vs. numerical advantages, as seen in the little screenshot below (I won a 162 vs. 180 with 1 unit left). There's a ton of stuff to do here, too. After about 20 hours I'm still not done unlocking all the aforementioned cards, but there are multiple difficulty settings, a trial mode, an endless mode etc. It takes a while to click, because it really showers you in information early on, but when it does it's genuinely good fun. Reading through dwarf's Titanium Court topic, this basically seems like the more approachable little cousin of that game.

I've been trying to get into the competitive part of Pokemon a bit lately so having this fresh version of it that is so much easier to build teams for is an amazing way to learn. Despite it being limited to about 200 pokemon there is still a massive diversity of teams. I get caught out all the time and don't feel like I'm close to having a solid knowledge of everything to make reads and exploit my opponent. I have an okay selection of pokemon because I pulled some from Pokemon Go, Omega Ruby and Sun (but moving pokemon from the pre Switch games is an ordeal 😮‍💨). I must have had some from White 2 but they're all legendarys that aren't in the current format, and from some competitive I've watched they are never used. They've been power-crept I assume. Filling out my collection has been easy enough with more recent pokemon. There is a gotcha system in the game where it rolls 8 pokemon and you pick one out of the set (you can do this once a day no cost but after that you need an ingame currency which I do have lots of but I'm being careful with it atm). I didn't mind the system at first but when you start looking for specific 'mon it becomes a bit frustrating. I wish there was a way to gain something specific. Garchomp is something I think would be good for my team but it isn't turning up. Speaking of my team: Not a great pic but it'll have to do. Its not great but its mine. I know there are Youtubers who show strong teams but my experience with the TGC I'm always better with my own teams because I know my stupid mind and how it works so I tend to pilot teams by others badly. This has got me to the high end of Great Ball rank but I know it needs a lot of tinkering.

Dropping the trailer to introduce this one seems like the best course of action here, to be honest. Remember Muramasa? That awesome PS3/Vita/Wii title? It had gorgeous, 2D, hand-drawn visuals, a stunning colour palette, and was a fantastic Metroidvania-style action game? Yeah, this gives me all those vibes. It's beautiful in movement, the design of the characters is great, and it plays really nicely. You're tasked with repairing books. You do this by hopping into said books, finding tears in the pages, and painting/stitching/magicking them back together. Along the way there are perils to test your reactions and battle skills. There are certain areas you can't access straight away because you don't have the powers. Like a ground pound, for example. You know the drill by now with these games. I'm only a couple of hours in, and had my ass handed to me repeatedly by a rock boss. I knew the attacks but just couldn't get the patterns down, so it took me 5-10 attempts, but I finally got through it last night. One thing that's super-cool - the map is essentially colour-coded. If there are still things to do on your current screen, the map is in greyscale. Once you've repaired that screen/page, it goes to full colour. Makes it really easy to reference what you need to do, figure out where you need to go, all that good stuff. Honestly, if you were a fan of Muramasa, or - and this is a game I've been trying to remember the name of for days but it's only just popped into my head - Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir, I reckon this is worth a go. It's gorgeous and plays nicely.

Maybe a premature topic as I only played this for an hour or so but it seems very good. It's a classic platformer channeling the feeling of an N64 or maybe early PS2 game, where you play as a funny-looking frog who gets catapulted into different dimensions. Movement feels extremely good and responsive, so classic platforming actions like dives and jumps are satisfying to pull off. Because it's a cartoon frog, you can, of course, also use your tongue and use it as a grapple, to gather items and to interact with switches. One interesting feature where it deviates a bit from the classics are the fruits and seed you can find, which open up the level design a bit. The two I found so far allow you to grow mushrooms (help you jump higher) or vines (which can be attached to any wall and allow you to climb up). There's still a place for curated level design so they're not available all the time, but whenever they are they open up the world in a rather meaningful way, not unlike the climbing on BotW would, though of course on a smaller scale. Interestingly it doesn't have enemies, which I just noticed after my first hour with it concluded. Needless to say it doesn't feel like it's missing something, but still wanted to point it out. Technically it's flawless on Switch 2 (even in handheld mode thanks to the recent update), can't speak for how it runs on Switch 1 but I don't think anyone here is playing on that anymore anyway. PS5 and PC should have no issues whatsoever with it.

Terrible first impression. It starts with a big action set piece - normally I’m well up for that but it just does not suit the feel and control of these games. Especially if you’re mad like me & feel you have to scan everything. In which case all momentum and excitement is constantly ruined by switching visors and scanning. Think I’m going to have to force myself to stop scanning soon, there’s just way too much. Far more than I remember there being in other entries. Anyway, you get past that, lose your abilities and reach your first proper area. It’s gorgeous! & atmospheric. This is much better. Then you quickly reach Miles… he’s as terrible as everybody says. He genuinely ruins the rest of this area with his wisecracking and terrible dialogue. Thankfully this first area/dungeon is short. Before you know it you’re in the 2nd one. It looks incredible and Miles is no longer there. However my stomach sank when Miles started talking again via radio and told me where to go and I “can use an elevator to go down”. No shit Sherlock, thanks… But then it changes, immediately after that he can no longer get in touch with the you and you’re free to just explore and progress through this stunning area & it’s brilliant. It’s basically old Prime with new tech at this point which is exactly what I wanted. Then the desert opens up, it’s already ugly and dull. Made my way to another area and stopped there. Already know this is going to be a game of huge ups and downs. When it’s good, it’s brilliant. The rest of the time, we’ll see as I progress.

I think I'm in one of those ruts where I don't fancy playing anything too demanding on the brain, so I've gone from finishing PWSim2, to trying a game from the publishers of Onechanbara called Full Metal School Girl, to this. FMSG is fun, but it's an endless corridor shooter that wouldn't have felt out of place in the PS2-era, so in an attempt to pivot from that, I've tried this - a game about rolling a ball around environments that wouldn't have LOOKED out of place in the PS2-era. Anyway, this is apparently the first completely new Katamari game since 2011. It doesn't do much to upend the classic gameplay the series is known for, but progression feels a little different to the instalments I've played. For a start, you don't just get access to the next level straight after finishing the previous one. Sometimes you need to find crowns in the levels you've already played, and an arbitrary cumulative amount will give you access to the next level. Putting it blunt, it feels a little (ok, a lot) like artificial padding to extend the length of the game. But it's a game about rolling up shit. Give me the option of how much I want to replay levels; don't force me to do it. I mean, I'll eventually go back and do all the levels, because the platinum just requires finding all the crowns on specific maps, but still. Give me the option, let's not make it a requirement. The other thing that's weird with progression is the way it's set up. You go from era to era - I've explored a basic, modern day set of levels, the wild west, a prehistoric chapter, and now ancient Greece. But you have an era select menu, where the ones you've not unlocked yet appear as question marks. So right now mine appears as something like "Modern/?/?/Wild West/?/?/Ancient Greece/Prehistoric/?" (hopefully that makes sense) I imagine it's to clue you in to the different time periods you'll be traveling to, but I feel like there could have been a better way to communicate this. Especially when I'm trying to figure out the best time period and mission to go to next while I'm trying to figure out which levels need me to find more crowns to even get into, and which ones just need me to go back in and find the crowns. Looks-wise, it's very much PS2 in a super-charming way. It still has jaggy edges, characters are still blocky and don't have much animation. For anyone that liked/s Katamari for the personality, you'll find a lot to love here. It's also got those tanky controls that have always defined the series. Much like the visuals, this is either something you'll love for the level of control you can achieve, or you'll hate, because you can't quite get to grips with the intricacies of movement. I'm somewhere between the two right now, but that's normal for me with this series. I've kinda waffled about one of the dumbest game series that have ever been created, but it's also a genuinely fun game. The fact you have no real peril, the fun stuff you can roll up, the silly ideas and charming script all combine to give me exactly what I'm looking for right now. The short run time is also a bonus with these games, so I'm not complaining there either. Last night I went from playing on the PS5 with the big TV to playing on PS Portal, and I feel like handheld is the way to go with this game. On Steam Deck or Switch I can see it being a blast.

A cosy/creepy puzzle/adventure follow-up to Strange Horticulture. Once again set in a creepy fictional Lake District village, this time you're in a shop dealing in strange occult objects. You're ensconced in your comfy shop as customers come in bringing news of grim goings-on outside, and you examine the objects on your shelves and consult your reference books to give them the right item for their needs. You get clues and messages which lead you to locations in the town on your maps, giving you little bits of story/lore and additional items. They also help you solve puzzles in your shop for more items or additional help in identifying objects. I enjoyed Strange Horticulture, but I like these weird objects more than the plants in that game. As in the previous game there's' a simple pleasure in labelling and organising your stock on the shelves according to whatever system you come up with.

I know it's out in just a few days, but I was looking for something to play and instead of doing like I said and trying Hollow Knight again I wanted to give this another shot, the early access. I've really turned around on it in this session I think, maybe it's due to updates or maybe the quality of the game is a lot better than Hades I, or maybe it's just that I'm better at the sequel. But I think it's really good, something is really clicking here this time. What I think it is that the battle systems are more intricate, cause of the shift towards this style of battle mage gameplay. It has more or less the same systems and mechanics as the first one, but with a stronger emphasis on finding harmony with your combat options I think. Your basic starter is a staff with decent range, you have a cast which binds enemies and you can stack boons on top of that obviously, and you have your specials which tend to be ranged moves, but not always. The cast is hugely useful for kiting enemies and grouping them, which benefits certain AOEs that like clustered enemies but it can also be used by you with certain boons to regenerate mana. On mana, it feels like a much more important mechanic than in Hades 1 I think, if I recall in that game the game didn't just recharge your mana in each room, but I might be wrong on this. In this game, they specifically tell you to spend all your magic in each room, there's a big benefit to speccing builds that regen mana passively or from certain attack combinations and I think this lends to combat feeling less mashy and more skillful, which is a problem I think I had in the last game, it always felt like I was mashing. Here it feels much more like I'm actually playing the game, but that might be just on me not really enjoying the first one. But I think the sequel's witchiness just produces more interesting kits to fight with and makes it feel 20 percent less unga bunga (but still pretty unga, all told) Another thing which makes high mana use important is the 'hex' mechanic, which is the same thing as the super mechanic in the first game but you proc it by spending mana. So if you're holding onto magic and not finding opportunities to use it up a lot, you are throwing away DPS and crowd control There's an absolute shitload of 'reagents' and things that unlock stuff in your home base, and it has the same gift system as before to unlock accessories you level up in your runs. It has some new mechanics like an armour system which buffs your cast speed, or makes you run faster or whatever, but you lose it when you lose your armour. My favourite weapon so far are these fireball staffs that let you play like a zoner, and they have a special which is about crowd control damage. You unlock boons for it that let you zig-zag the fireballs around when you dash around and things like that. If you've played Hades 1 there's not a lot to say, I'm sort of skimming through the dialogue cause you can't turn subtitles off, which means I kinda just read it quickly and move on. I'm not that interested in it, but there's a few exceptions. One thing is that there are way more Homeric inclusions here, characters like Odysseus and others I won't spoil, so it's stuff I'm more familiar with and I enjoy the stylish twist it offers. There's a boss fight in this I cannot spoil but it's the coolest boss fight I've seen in a game in a while, and Hades 1 really only had one good boss fight imo, the last one. Maybe the first one also, the other two were rubbish. So hopefully that's a standard it can keep up. Anyway, surprised it's clicking with me, as a Hades 1 hater. I think I read that your saves carry across to the full game, but if they don't then I'll just treat it as a challenge to push as far as possible with a low level character come release, and maybe I'll actually read the dialogues this time.

Bought this a few days ago and I think this might, maybe, possibly, be a game some other people are interested in. As the name implies you're the owner of a small bookshop (in the form of a trailer you drive around with) and try to make a living in a small coastal town by visiting certain places and selling books. The books are categorised into genres like crime, fantasy, non-fiction etc. and certain areas favour one or the other – for example, if you go to the beach, you should pack a couple more children's books than usual because they're good sellers there (keep in mind this is a game of fiction and does not represent reality). You can also decorate your shop and certain decorations influence people's buying habits. A chair or a dog (don't ask) will make people stay around longer and possibly purchase more, whereas certain items with a theme could result in higher sales of related books, ie. spooky decorations push Stephen King novels and such. So below the cozy fassade this has some very manipulative capitalist energy but ultimately it's all done in a cute and inoffensive manner. The majority of the book sales happen automatically, meaning you see people walk in and out of the trailer and tiny speech bubbles showing what they're buying. But a couple of times per day someone will ask for a recommendation, which is where the slightly more active part of the process begins. Someone might ask for an easy read with few pages, someone might specifically ask for certain themes or time periods. For the most part it's easy enough to find the right one as there's also a bit of leeway, but occasionally you come across one that doesn't make much sense (asking for a happy ending but refusing your recommendation if it doesn't have one for example). Some are also a bit weird, like a fanatic of classic plays being super happy when you recommend Hamlet, as if they'd never heard or read about it. The books are real-life books of course. At first I was a bit disappointed there wasn't a list of what you could stock but ultimately this would just be an incomplete list of, well, any book ever written, so kind of pointless. The way it works is that you buy them pre-owned without any clue what's in the box and only by the time you're out and about and someone wants a recommendation can you actually go through what's on display and make an informed choice. There's a short summary of everything and I've already taken screenshots of a few that sound interesting. It's also not snobbishly discrimating, you can have Shakespeare and Le Guin right next to manga like Sailor Moon or Dragon Ball, which I think helps to make it more believable. I think it's a nice cozy game for this season, nothing too deep but also not mind-numbingly passive, a nice middleground that might even indirectly give you a recommendation here and there. Also looks fine on Switch 2 handheld mode despite being a Switch 1 game, though I suspect native resolution on a Steamdeck for example would fare even better (keep in mind the screenshots look worse than the game because of Switch 2 compression). This was my very first recommendation btw., I think the game is stalking my IP.

This is the collection that came out a year or so ago that has both the PS1 games in it. We have a thread for the Wii remake, which I'd completely forgotten about, but that seems to be an actual remake and didn't include the sequel. There's also a PS2 port, which I've played, and we'll get to in a bit, and I think that may have been a remake too. First off, I've played through the first game, Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, it's pretty good, and it looks alright all things considered. You couldn't tell looking at it that it was a PS1 game originally. The cutscenes are slow as fuck, there's an option to skip or fast forward them, but a bit of editing wouldn't have been the worst choice, so I've no idea what the plot is because I'm not sitting through all that. The game plays fine, for the most part, the design is pretty simple, early 3d platformer in that it's polygons that you traverse in 2d. You grab enemies and throw them at other enemies and items. Later this is so you can solve puzzles to progress, and these can get tricky, but also use them to double jump. Again, easy enough at first, you're just climbing up to higher platforms, but gets much tougher later. There's a few rough edges, some old fashioned elements with how hit and miss contact can be with enemies, particularly in the background, and it's tougher than something like Kirby which it's most similar too. The bit where it does show it's age is the movement. There's a very digital, block by block feel to how the game handles. There's no overstep to edges, grabs, or the game being generous enough to extend your jump so you make it when you maybe shouldn't quite. It's most noticeable in the more difficult platforming, if you're not precise then it's not happening, but as the world moves in the same stiff pattern as you do it can be a bit maddening. It's where that PS2 version I mentioned comes in. That's the version I've played the most, and I swear the movement is smoother than here. It's that era of Japanese exclusive remakes like the Sega Ages line, so I think it's a full remake of the game, and as such controls a little more fluid. It wouldn't amaze me if that's what the Wii version was based off. Maybe I'm imagining it, but while this is a pretty good version, I'd probably rather play that one

Finished this a few days ago, rather enjoyed it so I thought I'd give it a bit more exposure. From what I can tell it's based on one of those internet properties, as in someone is drawing little comics with the characters and selling merchandise and such. Interesting idea to translate this into a full videogame, but the end result speaks for itself. This follows the template of a very classic JRPG with exploration, puzzles and turn-based combat. You play a new character in this specific universe that gets thrown into a little time-travelling storyline, where you need to visit certain areas and time periods to destroy core nodes of an evil plant that wants to destroy humanity and restore earth to its primordial origins. In that sense it's not subtle with its environmental themes and it kind of makes the antagonist sympathetic in a way, like you sometimes root (pun intended) for Poison Ivy in a Batman comic. Though in this case the enemy isn't some attractive model but rather a weird amalgamation of vines and thorns that can possess other living beings. While you're time-jumping around you're controlling a party of four and dispatching said mutated enemies in turn-based combat. It's a relatively basic, straightforward combat system with four different attack types and therefore four different potential weaknesses on both your end and enemies. A timeline in the upper right corner shows the turn order and it's here where it adds a tiny bit of unique depth to systems, as you can alter that timeline by spending some energy and, for example, move one of your teammates in front of an enemy to maybe get some healing done before they can hit you. I doesn't go much further than that and stays very simple as a result though. There's only two or three bosses where I had to go out of my way to incorporate a proper tactic, like forcing one half of a boss duo to duel on of my characters (by moving their turn to coincide with one of mine) so that they couldn't use their devastating team-combo. But otherwise this doesn't go beyond what your usual Mario RPG would do – which was fine for me, but might be a bit too limited for other people. One thing I enjoyed is that how much it crammed into its relatively short length (16 hours). You visit a ton of different locales – farms, schools, Paris by night –, the storyline does tackle quite a few different subjects and gives every party member breathing room, resulting in a game that feels significantly larger than its playtime suggests. It also doesn't shy away from more dark moments, but portrays them in a very digestible manner through some rather well-written dialogue. While you time-hop around you cross paths with one NPC at different stages of her life, which gives it a very human anchor to mould the storyline around. I do love how very French it feels, too. A lot of games are either very Asian or very American these days, so it's always nice to see something like this pop up and have a French farmer girl make fun of the Parisian high society, or people using Euro as their currency, or just every atom of its design channel classic French/European comic artwork. For a small game it's also very polished, with rather beautiful visuals, nice UI work, really good character portraits, a genuinely great soundtrack. Some of the puzzle designs can seem a bit badly signposted but I ended up getting through without too much trouble. Twice I had a character die in battle but remain at 1HP so I couldn't revive them, which was a bit annoying the second time as it was a boss battle so I kind of had to let them kill myself to retry. But ultimately this is a very accomplished effort all around. I played the Switch version on Switch 2 and it's mostly 60fps, but when I checked its performance on Switch 1 earlier this year it looked kind of rough, so Switch 2 or PC is the way to go here I'd say. (Also, Nintendo has to do something about screenshots on Switch 2. There's no reason for them to get saved in such awful quality.)

The actual title doesn't contain Shin Megami Tensei in it, which is probably because it's already stupidly long, but it'd do wonders for brand recognition. Anyway, Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army was a PS2 Devil Summoner game, and this is a remaster / remake of it, somewhere in between because it's definitely upscaled cutscenes and quite possibly game world but they've adjusted the combat and gameplay. Apparently, I've never played the original. The combat is more active than a usual jrpg, kind of like Ni No Kuni. In battles you're locked in the combat area and you, as Raidou, can use light and heavy attacks, shoot enemies to stop them dodging about, and increasingly lob some slowly recharging magic. What makes Raidou unique as a Devil Summoner is that he can summon 2 demons to help him rather than 1. These demons generally act on their own, although you can tell them to cast specific things, and you can tell them to not use magic if you're low on mp The MP system works differently too. Your team all share one bar, and your demons will constantly be using magic ideally, so you really need to recover MP constantly. Fortunately, using your light attack gets you MP back, although it doesn't do as much damage, so you want to alternate between lots of light attacks and a heavy to mix recovery with actual damage. There's a few other moves too, specials that can be triggered at points, and the ability to hide your demons when really powerful attacks are coming Outside of combat the story has been pretty interesting so far. A girl who asked us to kill her then got kidnapped by demons, so we're sorting that out. From what I understand each chapter is it's own thing. You use your demons out of battle too, occasionally to help with the investigation, sometimes just to recover items So far I'm really enjoying it. It's pretty easy, although I suppose how many fights you get in to determines that. You can avoid a lot, but it's probably not a great idea early on while the combat feels fresh, just so you don't end up having to grind for a boss

Started this after I beat BG1 the other day, on 'core' difficulty which is like the default (no buffs or debuffs to damage or dice rolls, beyond which you naturally get). I've beaten the first dungeon and did two largeish quests in the first area of chapter 2, but have many others in the journal. There's a noticeable step up in detail, not necessarily visually but in that there's a lot more unique voice lines for each character over BG1. Characters tell you their backstories, they do this a lot actually and it's kind of annoying when you're trying to prepare spells and devise a strategy for a difficult room full of annoying snake mages and Minsc is yammering on about his hamster. But you can sort of see the start of modern Bioware here a bit, though it still feels a million miles away from something like Mass Effect 2 or 3 imo, which is where bioware got really good at this I think. The first quest I did after the tutorial dungeon, which was incredible long, was this one where you had to defend a keep of a rich aristocrat's daughter that had been taken over by trolls that required ice and fire attacks to finish them off. So they're reminding you early on about the importance in DnD of preparing spells and equipping arrows, and the baptism of fire which was BG1 and some of its late game fights have made me a bit more smart about this now. These are RTFM games, you have to read what things mean before hitting your head against stuff, like I did at times. And then you have to read again in game when you get a magic scroll, which is full of all this lovely and lore-heavy flavour text about what actually happens when someone makes themselves invisible or throws a massive fireball at something tbh, I struggled with the keep quest cause the game doesn't really tell you what level is appropriate for what quest, but I got over it when my Inquisitor Paladin found a +3 flail which applies Ice, Acid and Fire damage in the same dungeon, so sort of lucky that that is what I selected my +1 proficiency in. Then I devised a strategy which involved throwing Minsc into a room berserked to fight beetles that cast confuse, and spamming doom magic at the main boss in the next room so that my debuffs could hit it more easily, and his saving throws/THAC0 took a hit. THAC0 still sort of spins me sideways, as well as the way in which the UI will say something gives you +1 to your armour class, but actually make the number smaller, cause the way THAC0 works is it's the 20-sided dice roll you must get to hit someone with armour class 0, so if your THAC0 is 14, you must roll 14 to hit 0. If you're trying to hit armour class 6, then you must roll at least 8, if they're -6 then you gotta roll 20. Which you probably won't, so you need some buffs to even hit stuff. It actually took me playing an entire DnD game to even internalise these rules, which are simple but the way they are applied in reverse means they feel like they aren't. I never picked it up in PS:T cause you can skip so much fighting in that game. Not even going to get into what saving throws do. BG3 did away with THAC0 of course Right now, I'm playing two rival factions of the Shadow Thieves against each other, who are at war with some mages or something. I don't even know if I can complete this quest on my Paladin cause Paladin's lose abilities if they fall off the Lawful Good path, so if I can't then I might have to let Yoshimo go (and get shanked, maybe). There are also a million other quests in the capital city of Amn so I'm trying to avoid walking around too much cause they kind of bombard you a bit, compared with BG1. The chapter seems extremely open and I've had to deny some quests that would take me down an evil path, though they sounded interesting. The other quest I did was to defeat an evil gnome in a circus tent who cast illusions on everything, which is where I got hit by this. Solve it and you win maf's new monitor

Picked this up as it was discounted on Steam and I’m feeling very intelligent after playing Blue Prince. I thought there was a thread but I guess not. Anyway, I booted it up to try it out and 90 minutes disappeared very quickly. Artistically, the game is a knockout. The mysterious animal theme is a very nice. Now that I’m thinking about it, the mysterious atmosphere of the game reminds me of Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP, even though they have nothing else in common (I haven’t thought about that game in over 10 years). The subtle visual and sound effects are very well done too. Gameplay wise, it’s kind of like a compact metroidvania with a focus on puzzles.

The glow up for Suikoden 1 is almost immediately apparent. The script has been tweaked IE better translated. The sprites have QoL improvements and the overworld & town maps have been given a modern facelift. I capped off my first session with acquiring your base. Roughly six hours in. It reminds me there is a reason I hold this series in very high regard. Even the "bad" one (Suikoden IV) isn't terrible. Hopefully if this remaster is a financial success, Konami might even revive the series proper. Or at least give a collection with the other three games (and maybe DS spin-off).

I'm cheating a bit here because I only played the demo, but this came and went without any kind of exposure but I think it might interest some people here. It's cheap to compare a game to others in an effort of explaining it but I like doing it because it's also quick and easy to get the message across – so this is basically the indie baby of classic Resident Evil and Killer7. At least as far as its gameplay foundations are concerned, the overall tone and setting is somewhere between SMT and Paradise Killer with very weird, supernatural characters that float somewhere between being human and godlike entities. You're playing as some normie girl working a boring late-shift job but suddenly stuff happens and you receive the boon of being able to perceive an alternate dimension where demons live. Gameplay is presented from a bird's eye view reminiscent of the aforementioned RE classics (there's even an option to toggle between direct and tank controls) and mostly consists of figuring out classic adventure puzzles. An early example is that you come across a computer that doesn't have a keyboard attached and is locked, so you need to find a keyboard and a passcode. It's basic, but it works in the sense that it shuffles you through its claustrophobic levels to force you to combat the demons. Combat then is where it morphs into Killer7 because holding the trigger to ready your weapon switches to first person while activating your demon-sensing ability highlights weak points on enemies. Smaller enemies die from one critical attack (melee or ranged are available), bigger ones might need multiple shots. Landing multiple of those critical hits in succession fills up a special gauge for a an extremely powerful shot that discards any normal enemy and is necessary to defeat bosses (at least as far as I can tell – there's only one boss in the demo). You can also attack enemies 'normally', ie. without first scanning for their weak points, but it's suboptimal and kind of a waste of ammo. The risk-reward here is that your scan has rather short range, so while enemies are easier to dispatch, they're also more likely to counterattack. I quite liked the demo, just quickly glanced at metacritic and it's around the 80% mark, so it seems the full version is pretty good. Might pick this up sometime this year. Quick note as well, despite the RE inspirations I wouldn't call this a horror game, it's more of a surreal, slightly spooky atmosphere it conjures.

Somehow I was convinced radiofloyd played this when it came out in Japan and made a topic. I played it for about five hours over the weekend, which is roughly the length of the tutorial/prologue. Origins and VIII are the only Ys games I've played, so I'm not an expert on the matter. Chronologically this seems to take place almost at the very beginning of Adol's adventures (after 1 & 2 to be exact), but in classic fashion it's not really necessary to be aware of those other games. Characters hint at certain things early on, but it's very much self-contained otherwise. So in Nordics you end up in a very cartoonish, pop-culture version of northern Europe with Vikings Normans who have claimed the northern seas for their own. After some exposition and the game introducing major NPCs, stuff happens, magic happens, and you then sail around the archipelago with a young Norman princess, Karja, in tow. While the whole Norse/Viking theme has been a bit overdone in the west in recent years, it's nonetheless interesting and refreshing to see it through the anime/Japanese lens for a change. I'm definitely quite enjoying the setting, and Karja is a surprisingly likeable sidekick, a bit of a tsundere voiced in a very bratty tone, but with a reasonable side to her as well. I remember some people, myself included, being a bit disappointed when they announced it would only feature a party of two, but after experiencing the battle system for a bit I can see that any more would easily have overwhelmed the player. There's a couple of ways in which you can fight: the basic one is just running around as either Adol or Karja, attacking by yourself and letting the AI take over the other character. I find this relatively useful when engaging groups of smaller enemies, in a 'divide and conquer' kind of way, as the AI draws some aggro, too. While playing like that, however, you can always change to the other character by pressing a button, which happens instantly and also works mid-combo. There's not much use for that early on, but I can see maybe casting special attacks with longer durations and then immediately switching to keep the pressure on as an option when unlocked. There's a second Duo mode for combat which activates while holding the right trigger and it's here where it becomes a bit much to wrap your head around early on. In this mode, both characters are linked by a magic chain and can't move, but they can block and parry (with very forgiving timing) and attack in unison while also having access to a different set of special attacks fueled by their combined Mana pools (in a funny twist, you can also use these if one character can make up the cost with their mana bar in case the other doesn't have enough – no idea how the developers expect you to properly gauge all that mid fight while parrying and dodging). But all this is only the very baseline as the game keeps giving you tools upon tools in rather quick succession. Early on you unlock a grappling hook for traversal, but it can also be attached to enemies, you unlock launchers for air combos or a unique move activated by holding the attack button which lets Adol cast a burst of fire and Karja a pillar of ice, affecting certain elements in the area (plants, water etc.). And that's just the feature handed to you in the first 5 hours. I find it a bit overwhelming at the moment, but it's cool to see so much depth and potential – I did really liked VIII, but combat in that game mostly revolved around last-minute dodges and not much more. The other big part of the gameplay, outside the usual traversal and exploration, is naval combat, which I think is a first for the series. So far this feels like its weakest link, as the ship is rather unwieldy – but not in a physically realistic, but rather a 'that's an odd control scheme' kind of way. In the early game you have two options to attack, a long-range cannonball to slightly damage and stun ships, and a short-range barrage which does enormous amounts of damage. So you use A until you get close, use B to finish them off, rinse repeat. It does suggest a lot of upgrades to you ship which I'm hopeful will make these encounters more fun and engaging the further along you get, so I don't want to judge that aspect too harshly as of yet. It's not as immediately gripping as the ship combat in AC Black Flag for example though, just to set expectations. I'm playing it on Switch, and compared to VIII, which suffered from severe aliasing or IX with its wonky framerate (at least going by its demo), this feels like a more polished product all-around, with clean visuals and an almost rock-solid 30fps with good frame-timing. The downside of this is that a lot of objects and NPCs pop in very close to the character, which I'm not too bothered about, but not everyone is as forgiving. I suspect the PS5, or I guess even the PS4 version, to have none of these issues, but in any case there's a demo on every platform to check for yourself. As always, can't do screenshots on Switch anymore, so here's a Karja plushie:

That is '1000 times resist', according to one of the creators I think. I put this on hiatus a week or so back, but wanted to write down my thoughts on the first half anyway. I think some of us have this on our backlog It is a sort of 'walking sim' type deal set in a very Yoko Taro-coded version of the future. A mass extinction event occurred, aliens invaded and spread a virus. The game jumps back and forth through time via a sort of memory technology called 'communion'. You're playing as this character called 'Watcher' and you live in this enclosed, somewhat infantilised sisterhood where everyone's names is their role. Nobody can ever take off their mask. There's a sort of COVID allegory to some of it, but also as the name suggests there's a theme of resistance and cycles which gets into slightly more interesting real world allegories, which I'll leave out here but they're mentioned in reviews if you're curious. Put in simple terms, it's an interesting sci fi story with lots of overlapping layers that develop its themes in interesting ways and are successful at generating empathy for their characters. Playing the game is a real struggle though, which is why I put it on break. You just talk to people in it, and you navigate these really confusing environments. It all sort of looks a bit like a second life level, or a custom map from VR chat or something like that. In a way the aesthetic is kinda refreshing or maybe nostalgic if you've ever played F2P MMOs from the noughties or something. The game does find some neat tricks with perspective, how it changes camera angles from third person free form to first person to fixed angles, trying to inject things with a cinematic flair. But it is a bit like doing the fetch quests in FFXIV or FFXVI and having being a bit traumatised by that design it makes it very hard to recommend. You'll see a few articles on some gaming sites praising the story, like massive praise calling it the greatest of all time. I'm not on that level with it, but I do think it's doing something interesting but in a way that's kind of draining to interact with, personally speaking. So I'm very mixed on it, but I'll probably try to see through the second half over Christmas. It seems like the kind of story where you can take an intermission cause of how it's structured

Played through the first two worlds and a bit into the third one over the weekend. I'd say if you've seen any trailer for this you kind of know what to expect, with a minor caveat maybe. Fundamentally this is a Donkey Kong game with a character palette swap. It's classic 2D platforming, with mounts, barrels and, well, not a rolling but a sliding attack. Unlike the DK games both playable characters have the same toolset, so it's just down to personal preference whoever you want to play as (and equal rights in multiplayer). The land-based mounts meanwhile can be summoned at will (if you have their token in your inventory) in certain segments of the stage, which I actually haven't done yet. The game doesn't really incentivise you to use this feature, so I've been relying on the sections where you break a box and they pop out, DK style. What the game isn't is a Crash Bandicoot copycat, despite the trailer maybe suggesting as much through the usage of 3D segments during the stages. Those amount to at best 5% of your playtime and are mostly there to add a bit of visual flourish to proceedings, so it's ultimately more of a gimmick than a true feature, so more reminiscent of how they were implemented in Trine 3. I don't think that's an issue at all, just putting it out there because I was expecting this to be closer to a 50:50 ratio. As for the game itself, you run around your typical tropical locations, do platforming, defeat enemies. Controls aren't quite at the same level as its inspiration (the Dino mount in particularl feels needlessly floaty), but it's still a very nicely tuned platformer. The stages themselves are rather diverse, though I will say there hasn't been anything particularly memorable so far yet. It's very much replaying the DK orchestra while missing a beat here and there, which still results in a very enjoyable platformer, but not a game that's going to alter the perception of the genre. Speaking of orchestras, while this certainly isn't Wise's best work, his tracks ooze the same charm you've come to like from recent DK games. In terms of difficulty I find the normal stages to be rather easygoing so far, but some of the special mini stages (of which there are two per level) can be rather devious. Completing those unlocks a key, which I presume will unlock something else at the end of the game, but I'm not that far in yet. The collectibles are hidden pretty well, too. It's rare that I finish a stage on the first try with everything bagged. As for the negatives, I think some checkpoint placements are a bit off and it also does that annoying thing where you sometimes need enemies to reach collectibles but they don't respawn if you mess up, so you have to kill yourself if you want to try again. I've also run into two bugs so far, one where I couldn't use the glide anymore until I killed an enemy and the other one was when the water mount (seahorse) didn't despawn so I could just float around the remaining part of the level. Which was hilarious, but also kind of adds to the feeling of it lacking a bit of polish here and there. Nothing game breaking though, just these two oddities so far. Loading times are also surprisingly long, relatively speaking. In general though I think this is really solid. The actual gameplay (controls, 'feel') is slightly below that Marsupilami game we all played, but it IMO makes up for it by being a bigger and more ambitious project overall, and visually this is a really nice-looking game easily on the same level as Crash 4. It's a difficult genre to get into as a small developer because it has basically been perfected years ago, but this is probably as good as a DK game can get without having the backing of a big publisher and the skillset of a Nintendo employee.

I thought there might be a thread for this, but there isn't. So I'll be the one to make one for the weird indie game Premise is you've got 50 games which are emulative of the style of 8bit to early 16bit era, all released by this fake company called 'Ufosoft' which shut down in the 90s. Games which are dungeon explorers, side scrolling beat em ups, weird puzzlers where you're a chameleon blending into tiles, a kinda horse betting game. Game where you hop around platforms kicking soccerballs at things. A platformer all about suiciding yourself. Apparently there's a full 20 hour classic FF style turn based RPG in there, and an Ultima style first person dungeon crawler. Lots of weird shit The games are hard. You have to actually learn them, it ain't Warioware. Naturally, as an impatient person, I'm full of salt and rage at some of it. But it is interesting, the games get more sophisticated and better to control over the 'years'. Eg, pick up the final game they released, Cyber Owls, which is a beat-em-up that 'released' in 1989, and compare it to Fist Hell from 1987. Similar mechanics but more intuitive movement and faster gameplay. Also some of the games have couch multiplayer. Some of the games are good, some seem crap though like the weird egg dungeon crawler at the beginning where they kill you for walking right. I don't have much history with this era of gaming but it's been talked up a whole lot this year so after enjoying Balatro so much that it's potential GOTY for me I thought I'd try to expand my horizons on here. So maybe I bump this later way more keen on it, or someone else might find it interesting. I did find this one potentially interesting title, Bug Hunter (1984), which is this strategic kinda turn based bomberman game you see below where you have to kill bugs. I think the idea is to find your niche and get comfortable with a few familiar games first before branching out into the more scary ones (which for me, are platformers. Fuck man, great way to get me tilted 😠) Very original idea for a game, but fuck I bet it took a shitload of work to get 50 of them. Some are a bit more throaway like the camoflague gecko game though so maybe there's some sensible overlap that they achieve when implementing them This seems to just be Windows currently, but you could probably play it on any old machine. Definitely expect to see it on Switch eventually

Found out about this by chance when I went through the Golden Joystick nominees and after watching its trailer I immediately bought it. Looked like it'd hit all the right notes for me and thankfully that proved correct. It's from a small French studio called Plane Toast (the food-puns seem to be all over the place) and seemingly their first project. You play as a young adult girl who receives an SOS signal from the ship her sister disappeared in six years prior, proceed to leave the space station you're currently residing at and start following the trail of the signal to a mostly deserted colony planet where you grew up. It's not the most unique setup, but it gives you an immediate emotional hook for what is essentially a purely exploration-driven open world game. And it mixes in some slight Dune-ish mystery elements via the titular Sand Witches and some subtext about environmentalism and corporate greed in there as well. The gameplay foundations are very light, there's a bit of climbing and platforming, there's a lot of driving around, and the only thing you find when exploring are either materials to build new tools or certain items you need to collect quests. Because there are still some people living on the planet and they're struggling to survive, so they're more than happy to have a newcomer there who can help out. Story progression is linked to the tools you build, as unlocking one moves the plot and timetable a bit forward. There's no combat, so when I say tools I mean a gadget to allow you to use ziplines or a scanner for your car to more easily find interactable objects, among them signal blockers which jam your map and are basically UbiSoft towers (they only reveal a couple of question marks on the map though, not a hundred). I can't put my hand on what it is exactly, probably just all the gears perfectly fitting together, but it's an incredibly engaging experience IMO. It's not a deep game by any means, at least mechanically. Think of it as a less obtuse version of Sable, or the bigger cousin of A Short Hike, and you get the idea. The world is densely packed and gives the impression of being vast, but you can drive around from one edge to the other in I presume less than five minutes. But it does evoke an incredibly sense of place, mostly due to the strong artstyle, great soundtrack and grounded, believable writing. It's also unmistakably French, and I don't say that with any kind of fun-poking subtext, because the media landscape has become very unified in recent years, so it's nice to see something European with a unique cultural influence for a chance. I guess part of why I like it so much might also be because it just came out of nowhere, which nobody reading this and deciding to pick it up will have the luxury anymore, but I do believe it's a really good 'experience' if you like more challenge-free games. I'm not quite through yet, but I suspect it will conclude at around the 10 hour mark, which seems like a reasonable length for a game without much mechanical depth. One last thing: I play it on Switch because I don't have a PS5 or a decent PC and I wouldn't really recommend that version. It permanently runs sub-30fps and has horrible pop-in and dynamic resolution drops. It speaks to the quality of the game that I'm still enjoying it, but unless you have no other option like myself, I'd strongly recommend playing it anywhere else.

Been playing this for around 6 hrs on Series S - and it's quite enjoyable. Has some similarities, in terms of roguelike progression, as Into the Breach, although game presentation and pathways are significantly different. I've defeated the first boss, and so I'll see how well it keeps my interest (probably up to a point where it turns into a grind (or not)). Anyway it's certainly a bit different in looks at least to the mainstream.

Seems a lot (relatively speaking) people got this, so I think a topic here makes sense after all. I don't think this needs context, but just for the record: this is a collection that includes three classic Castlevania games initially released for the DS (Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, Order of Ecclesia) as well as both the original version of Haunted Castle, an arcade game from the 80s, as well as a complete remake with SNES-style visuals and some other changes of this last game. I started with Dawn of Sorrow, because it's my favourite of the bunch and also the first one that came out (despite being placed at the bottom of the list in the menu). Plus from what I recall it's the one that made most 'use' of the touchscreen, so a good litmus test for this specific release, too. On Switch you can use the touchscreen if you're playing in handheld mode, so there's nothing lost there either way, but the alternative is holding a shoulder button and moving a cursor around, which is a less than ideal alternative. Thankfully the magic circles you have to draw are now also QTEs, but stuff like destroying ice blocks is a bit finnicky so I decided to play that section in handheld mode. IIRC the further you get the less frequent these gimmicks become, so it's only really a small issue in the first hour or two. We've already discussed the multiple screen options in the News topic so I'm not going to repeat those, but I noticed there's also a setup where both screens are displayed vertically, like they were on the original system. I think it would have been really cool to have that setup in Tate mode, but that's really just a nitpick because it would only really be useable on Switch (and maybe PC depending on your monitor setup). As you can see in the picture there's a lot of extra stuff in there as well, like the complete OST that works as a music player (and those games have some of the best tracks in the entire series IMO), a gallery which even includes the game manuals, and you can also choose which version you want to play (EU, US, JP and in Ecclesia's case, even the Korean version, though I'm not sure what's different about that one except the language). In any case, I've been really enjoying the little time I played so far. I usually only associate consoles and games I played as a kid with nostalgia, but the moment I stepped into the first area with its wonderful music I got hit by quite the wave of good old times. Absolute recommendation, these are classics for a reason and M2 did a great job of porting them over, as usual. Not to mention that we get a completely new remake as a bonus, too. [Also, a bit off-topic: while I was going through the gallery I noticed a promo picture for Castlevania: Judgement, which was on the back of one of the manuals back then. I wonder if they plan on re-releasing the 3D games as well considering we're now kind of 'through' with the 2D games. I realise they're not as well-regarded, but I think the PS2 ones are somewhat decent and Judgement, despite being a super broken and unbalanced fighting game, is quite a fun little guilty pleasure with a ridiculously good OST.]