Homura Hime is a fun game. At its best, it’s a unique and distinct blend of Ninja Gaiden and bullet hell systems that forces you to develop a rhythm and dance to it. At its worst, it tends to drag out it’s welcome and stutter under what is a fairly light load. But it has heart, and it loves a genre I love and doesn’t ask much up front.
Romeo Is A Dead Man feels like it’s out of sync with the rest of the industry. It’s a time capsule, a character action game with labyrinthian level design, a big weird story, and an expectation you play it by its rules and not the other way around.
It’s a lonely journey through a cold world that I’ve found myself drawn to continuously since I finished it. With this, one fact keeps coming back to me — nearly 15 years after I first saw it, Routine is out, and it’s good.