At its best moments, AI: The Somnium Files – Nirvana Initiative was some of the most fun I’ve had playing an adventure game ever, even topping its predecessor on occasion. The characters are still fun, the game made me laugh plenty, the Somniums are similarly creative, and there’s still plenty of enticing mystery to go around. Unfortunately, while the first AI: The Somnium Files manages to pull its story together to a thrilling conclusion, I cannot say the same for its sequel. Outside of one particular part, its final act is immensely unsatisfying and does not hold up well under scrutiny, with a big twist that felt more to the detriment of the story than to its benefit. Some of its new characters are welcome additions, others are not, and the antagonists of the story don’t contribute much value. It also adds some unnecessary retconning that feels worse coming off the first game. The story is fun in the moment and has a strong first half, but doesn’t carry its own weight all the way through and feels lacking the same substance that made the first game so memorable for me long after I finished it. AiNi still has a lot going for it, but for a game where so much of the enjoyment is centered around its story, I really wish it could have brought it all home. It’s still a really engaging experience, it’s just substantially more uneven.
AI: The Somnium Files became one of my favorite adventure games through its combination of inventive concepts, great use of sound and music, a thrilling mystery, and a strong emotional core that made me care about the characters the story was happening around. It’s delightfully weird, often to its benefit and occasionally to its significant detriment, but it’s unabashed in what it is. It has its rough edges in places, but it was made with a lot of love in spite of its limitations. It’s compelling and hilarious, but most of all it’s immensely rewarding to play through.
For a pretty modest price point, Kanade is ultimately a sweet and short visual novel, and how much you enjoy it will depend on what you’re looking for and how you feel about the bubbly main character. It’s very cute, at times endearingly funny, and has just a pinch of sentimentality to spice things up. There’s not a lot of depth to its characters even with its small cast, and its attempts at theming feel like they only scratch the surface of what they maybe could have with an otherwise rather interesting concept for a setting, which left me a bit wanting for more of substance. Still, I enjoyed my few hours with Kanade for what they were.
It’s difficult for me to really pin down exactly how I feel about A Tithe In Blood on the whole. Its setup, its theming, and its presentation are all incredible, making for a memorable experience with reading the visual novel. As a story of the experience of grief and living through it, I connected with it quite a lot. Once it gets to actually having to progress its narrative, however, things gradually get shakier and shakier in the way it pieces together its various sections, and it features an overall letdown of a conclusion. While in its set-up act, it’s one of the most emotionally resonant and striking parts of a visual novel I’ve read in some time. Unfortunately, by the time I was done, I spent more time dwelling on how I felt about the story rather than the impact it had on me, the sign of something with a share of missed potential with the direction it took. Still, there are compelling aspects to this story and a lot that I did really like about it. There is something genuine beneath it all, and I found I got more out of it than I do from a lot of attempts at this subject matter. It won’t work for everyone and the story that it tells is rough and uneven, but it manages to have the memorable good aspects to stand out just enough.
There’s a share of good and bad to Saeko: Giantess Dating Sim. It’s certainly one of the more unique horror experiences I’ve experienced, enough that the novelty alone makes it worth consideration even if you aren’t inclined towards the particular kink this game ostensibly is marketed towards. It left me with enough moments to kind of dwell on thinking about how I would respond to this situation. The fact that much of the cast really doesn’t come out at the end of this story looking like a good person might not be for everyone, but it gives it a fairly believable side. The first ending I got was unsettling in a way that was genuinely interesting, one which worked particularly well given what all you do in this game. At the same time, it can be a somewhat tedious experience to play given all the repetition. Though I wouldn’t call it quite an “ironic dating sim” despite it using the genre for means beyond conventional romance, the “dating sim” side of things can feel somewhat more burdensome rather than the neat little twist on the genre it perhaps could have made for. This game offers a memorable experience, though a noticeably flawed one in part due to the relatively small package this giantess dating sim comes in that keeps it from reaching its full potential.
Strictly as a collection, the Lunar Remastered Collection is an excellent package. You have both games of a classic yet hard-to-obtain duology in a single, highly accessible collection. There are enough touch-ups to account for the different sensibilities of all kinds of JRPG fans around today. The fact that there are Classic and Remastered options which can even share save files is an especially nice treat. Still, the core of each game is kept gracefully intact from their PS1 counterparts. As they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Lunar 1 and 2 don’t offer particularly deep games in their systems and their stories are a bit on the simple and straightforward side. While this lowers the upper ceiling of the games for me, they have a high enough floor that I still enjoyed my playthrough plenty. They also make up for their simplicity with a charming and engrossing world and interconnected narrative between the games, while having some fun characters and dialogue. This collection serves as an excellent way to experience these fan-favorite RPGs, whether it be for the first time or just a trip down memory lane.
I felt like Love, Elections, and Chocolate was overall better than the sum of its parts. It’s imperfect, but it has enough good moments and handles enough sections in interesting ways even in those imperfections. The phrase that kept coming to my mind throughout my time with this visual novel was “rough around the edges”. I could definitely feel that this was sprite’s debut into full fledged visual novels, as there are some aspects (pacing, handling conflict) that felt rough at times. Its heroines all have rough spots in their respective routes if not their personalities and character, and the melodrama can come off as overdone. Things don’t always happen the cleanest in this story, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. I can’t say I expect it to work for everyone, but there was enough here that worked for me. It’s not a story I expect fans of this genre to all agree on thanks to the rougher aspects of some of its characters, and there’s plenty which I felt could have been done better with its narrative and character dynamics. Even with its weaker aspects, however, I enjoyed my time with it enough to give it just enough of a thumbs up.
I’ve no doubt The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II may be a somewhat contentious entry depending on what peoples’ expectations are and what they play these games for. Still, even though I found it generally easier than its predecessor, I had fun the whole time playing it. The core gameplay mechanics are fun to play around with, and the cast of delightful characters and their dialogue and relationships make for a sweet treat. This series has had trouble reckoning with the consequences of its escalating stake, and alas Daybreak II is something of an odd entry that does little to fix any of this while also having its share of problems of its own. Nonetheless, taken as its own game, it has enough marginal improvements in certain areas and some interesting concepts brought forth that I still probably liked it a sliver more than the first Daybreak overall, which was already its own pretty fun (if uneven) experience.
Donkey Kong Country Returns HD makes for an okay way to play a pretty decent and generally fun (if perhaps conservative) platformer, especially if you haven’t already played Donkey Kong Country Returns before. Otherwise, it’s a pretty unremarkable remaster which lacks many meaningful improvements and has a share of minor-yet-noticeable downsides, which is a bit of a letdown for its price tag on release. While ultimately a charming and enjoyable game with some pretty good levels at spots, I find it to be just a touch on the safe side and not as dense with ideas or moments that blew me away, especially when compared to the game that followed which received much better treatment on its move to the Switch by comparison.
No Case Should Remain Unsolved makes for a nice game to scratch that mystery game itch that can be completed in a single afternoon, one that I felt was more than worth the $7 price of admission. While taking a rather minimalistic approach, it executes most everything it sets out to do within a reasonable scope. At the same time, it also feels surprisingly heartfelt and left me quite satisfied by the time the credits rolled.
Come for the beautiful dioramas, stay for the fun and challenging boss fights. Fantasian Neo Dimension is definitely a game I was left hoping for a bit more out of its story and characters, and it's not without some frustrations and less-than-stellar design choices here and there, but when things click the game makes for some of the most fun I've had playing a JRPG in years. It's a tough game that requires you to pay attention and be willing to change up your game plan if it doesn't work, and it can feel like trial and error in spots, but it's immensely satisfying to progress through and conquer its greatest challenges. While Fantasian Neo Dimension is an experience rooted in nostalgia to some extent, it does more than enough on its own to stand out in a crowded pool of retro-inspired JRPGs coming out these days.
The Mario & Luigi series began to grow stale over time, so I’m happy to say that Mario & Luigi: Brothership is a welcome refresher in several gameplay areas. When it’s fun, it’s very fun, and there are a lot of neat ideas and sections that make this game get generally better as you get more into it. The Plugs and some of the overworld abilities make those sections some of the most fun I’ve seen from the M&L series to date. It also made the leap from handheld to console quite well, with some really nice aesthetics and animations to its visual components. In some ways, Brothership feels like two steps forward and one step back for the series. While not quite the worst game in the series pacing-wise, Brothership still has its share of slow sections that drag on a fair bit more than I would have liked. This ultimately holds it back from being as tight and consistently great as it could have been. I also appreciate that the game’s attempts with its story are a touch more earnest rather than just being fully comedic, and the game still has its charm, but I found its narrative a touch too basic and lacking in interesting developments despite the amount of its runtime taken up by cutscenes. Ultimately though, there’s a lot to like with Brothership. If you want a generally upbeat and at times wacky RPG with a neat and skill-rewarding combat system and don’t mind something a bit simple on the story, it’s a pretty fun game.
Astro Bot is a game with an incredible amount of love put into it. It’s not quite at the level of a game that makes a PlayStation 5 worth owning all by itself, and it’s not especially long, but it’s the kind of game that any console would gladly feature in its library as a key title. It’s a game with a fair amount of nostalgia behind it, both in terms of its wide array of cameos and it being a collectathon, but it stands on its own as a triumphant adventure of fun and charm in its own right. My playthrough had me smiling at so many points and served as a great reminder of all the hours of joy that I’ve had with PlayStation games over the years.
Given how long the series has been going, I had higher hopes for SINce Memories: Off the Starry Sky than I felt was able to deliver on for the series’s English-language debut. It hits a few of the right notes but doesn’t quite put them together enough to truly strike a chord. It’s well-presented, but presentation alone doesn’t carry it, and the script errors don’t do it any favors either. The cast of characters have their moments, but they’re scattered between lengthy sections of ultimately both predictable and often forgettable story routes that at times feel like inorganic drama was put in for the sake of it. The end result is a fairly cookie-cutter and by-the-books romance visual novel that doesn’t truly shine in any particular area.
NanoApostle is the epitome of a “pretty good” game. Combat is fun, presentation is well handled, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome. This is one of those games where it does almost everything it sets out to do well but doesn’t quite reach particularly highs at any point either. It sticks to doing what works but rarely gets aggressive with its ambition or does something to truly go off the rails, falling into few pitfalls but also not being as creative as I would hope for a boss rush game. Nonetheless, I had a fun time playing it from start to finish and can definitely give it a recommendation for people interested in a short but relatively dense little action game.
If you’re a fan of the Mana series, I’m confident that you will most likely enjoy Visions of Mana quite a lot. There’s a lot here that feels in line with what the series has to offer, while offering some absolutely gorgeous locales accompanied by a great soundtrack. If you’re like me and you’ve wanted more out of the Mana series in the past, I don’t quite think this game elevates the bar all too much. Still, it’s a gorgeous game that’s still decently fun enough to play much of the time. While I would have liked to see it do more with its potential in terms of combat and story, I still found it a satisfactory adventure. If you’ve never played a game in the Mana series and you want to get into it, this is a fine place to start.
Everlasting Flowers - Where there is a will, there is a way is a tepid story with high-quality presentation. It has its moments here and there of solid storytelling and some relatable character moments, but there’s not much to take away from it either. The visual novel medium is one of the more stagnant in the greater landscape of gaming and I appreciate Sprite’s attempts to make a shorter and more cinematic story that breaks somewhat from the typical mold of presentation but it ultimately doesn’t quite have the substance to match its style.
Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch wasn’t entirely what I expected going into it, but I came away satisfied. While it takes a while to hit its stride and has some odd parts here and there that don’t always click, I think it does a good job of handling several of its core themes and delivering emotional payoff. What matters most to me in a story is if there is something that I was able to get attached to and resonate with, and I absolutely found that here. The story is largely well-paced with a cast of characters I grew to care about, and it features several scenes I found to be surprisingly emotionally gripping. It might not be the most original story, but what it lacks in novelty, it largely makes up for how well-executed much of it is once the ball gets rolling. If a small-town story with personal struggle and bits of magic, fantasy, folklore, romance, growing up, and occasional silliness sounds like something you might even at all enjoy, I can definitely recommend this tale.
Hana's Campus Life feels like a visual novel that wants to reach the highs of some of the medium’s greats but doesn’t really have the space to do so. It’s far too short to do everything it wants to, leading to a story that is dense with events but lacking in emotionally resonant scenes or characters to earn any satisfaction from reading it. While it doesn’t have extremely low lows, there’s a lack of striking moments, and even some of the parts I did like have an asterisk attached. The experience of trying to get all the endings was bogged down by some programming issues and requiring certain choices that sometimes didn’t make all that much sense.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak made for a rather enjoyable playthrough that was hard carried by its main party and how fun combat was. I also like that it trims some of the fat that had begun building with the bloated previous arc. This is one of the best put-together Trails games in a long time, complete with some solid cutscene choreography and a near-seamless feeling of play in between combat and cutscenes.