Joonatan Itkonen's Reviews
Enotria comes with superb art direction and an imaginative world to explore, but it's riddled with game-breaking bugs and frustrating design choices. It's a start, but not yet something you should spend hard-earned free time on. Not yet, at least.
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For fans of murder mysteries, thrillers, and visual novels, Emio: The Smiling Man is a must-buy. For everyone else, it’s a solid recommendation with some caveats. You’ll have to adjust to an old-school play style, and it won’t deliver the constant gamification modern titles offer. If you can overlook these aspects, Emio offers a smart, often terrifying experience that is different from anything else out right now.
You can feel the 20 years of progress that gaming has made in every fiber of Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, but most of the time, you won't care one bit. As far as pure zombie-killing-mayhem is concerned, Capcom's delirious gorefest is still a blast.
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Concord is a baseline game that does nothing poorly, but it doesn't stand out in any area, either. In theory, it should have found at least some kind of audience, but it didn't. After two weeks online, the servers are dead, even though the game itself is just fine. I have a bad feeling about this.
Review in Finnish | Read full review
This is a game that I can recommend to everyone, regardless of their love of Star Wars, and be comfortably certain they will enjoy it. What a time to be a Star Wars fan.
It’s not a perfect new beginning, but new beginnings rarely are. Instead, it has the growing pains of every long form story that has taken a shift into uncharted territory. We’re only just diving into a big new mythology, and there’s a certain excitement to that uncertainty.
Kingdom Hearts is one of the most formidable multiverse stories in gaming history, and this extensive remaster package presents one of the best deals around. Not all of the games have aged gracefully, but the best ones have stood the test of time. They're classics for a reason.
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Flintlock might be overtly familiar, but it's also an honest God of War clone with imagination and ideas to spare. For the price, it's a welcome addition to the genre, one that should tide you over until the next big thing comes along.
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Nobody Wants to Die, the new game from developer Critical Hit Games is a stylistic triumph. It's a moody, atmospheric, and thoroughly captivating experience that's one of the most gorgeously rendered and conceived titles in years.
Warhammer 40k: Boltgun is the kind of title that’s easy to recommend to everyone. It’s an accessible, supremely fun blast from the past that does nearly everything right. In its price range, there’s very little competition that can offer an experience as smooth and polished as this. Do yourself a favor and give it a go.
Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD is yet another gem from Nintendo’s remastered library. One that reminds us how many great games are still waiting to be rediscovered in their backlog. It’s true that the third Luigi’s Mansion is the better, more refined game, and that asking for a full price for a remaster is steep. But there’s so much to love and play here that maybe, just maybe, it’s fine this time around.
The Final Shape has several staggeringly annoying design choices and raid encounters, and solo adventurers rarely feel welcome. But it's also full of welcome fanservice, tender goodbyes, and a sense of scale this long story has seen before. If it's a farewell, it's well worth it.
Review in Finnish | Read full review
It might stumble with balancing issues, but everything else overshadows any minor complaints I might have. This is a gorgeously rendered dark fantasy, same as its predecessor; a vast and mythic nightmare I love to get lost in.
At its best, it’s the kind of action adventure game that you can point to as a high point of the genre. The kind of game that in the future others will use as an influence for their own projects. A work of art that emerges from the shadow of its predecessors and takes its place alongside as if it always belonged there.
Eiyuden Chronicles is the spiritual successor to the Suikoden series, and a heartbreaking farewell to Yoshitaka Murayama, who passed away unexpectedly earlier this year. As such, it's a bittersweet experience: one that thrills and excites, only to remind us that we'll never see something like it again.
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With gorgeous visuals that have aged gracefully, a stellar soundtrack, and a solid, perfectly playable experience right on the card, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is an easy recommendation. It’s yet another home run from Nintendo and their Switch console.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Endless Ocean Luminous, warts and all. It’s not a game that would be my first recommendation for most, but it is something that I wish everyone gave a chance. There’s a lot to love in any project that has this kind of purity of vision. Even if it’s vision to a fault.
Sand Land is a traditional action-adventure made better by the iconic style and wit of Akira Toriyama. It's also a sorrowful farewell to the maestro who helped revolutionize how the West viewed anime. We're lucky his final outing is this much fun and provides a fitting conclusion to his career.
Review in Finnish | Read full review
Stellar Blade is exactly what it says on the tin. It isn't big, original, or even novel, and the experience turns tedious well before the 20-hour campaign draws to a close. The aggressive fanservice is equally dour and does nothing to hide the lazy shortcuts the narrative takes.
Review in Finnish | Read full review
For under 15 euros, it’s one of the more solid dungeon crawlers out there, and a perfect pick-up-and-play experience for fans of the genre. It’s the kind of indie gem that you can recommend for just about anyone, thanks to a low barrier of entry and a solid difficulty curve that makes repetition a joy.