Alana Hagues's Reviews
Episode INTERmission gives Yuffie the lease of life she deserves and delivers some future teases that will excite fans old and new.
A solid first piece of DLC that has a few chinks.
The Garden Path is a labour of love for both developer carrotcake and the player. It targets for a specific audience that is accepting of a slower pace and a soft, cosy vibe. Unfortunately, that meticulous, mellow life is both The Garden Path's selling point and its weakness, with vague directions, advice, and control issues on Switch weighing down the experience even more. The Garden Path may grow on you over time, but whether you have the patience for that will be the real test.
The Witch and the Hundred Knight 2 is one witch's brew you definitely don't want to drink.
Nights of Azure 2 was the chance to improve on its predecessors potential, but it completely drops the ball.
When everything comes together, Mika and the Witch's Mountain is definitely far from the worst witch – the premise is pleasant, the visuals and art are cute, and short runtime means there's no fat that needs trimming. But it's almost completely unmemorable at every turn. Delivering parcels as a witch should be fun, but lacklustre characters and too much back-and-forth make this delivery service simply adequate.
Alchemic Cutie is an adept of adorableness that's in need of an elixir to smooth out the bugs, improve tutorials, and make it that bit more manageable and engaging.
There are better Grimm-esque fairy tales out there.
With a little bit more polish, Dissidia Final Fantasy NT could be great, but as it is now it's a huge disappointment.
The Indigo Disk takes a few steps forward for Pokémon Scarlet & Violet. There's some genuine challenge, a nice variety of activities, and a fun new world to explore in the Terarium; if you love Pokémon, you'll absolutely enjoy what's on offer here. But the DLC drops the ball in terms of narrative, offering an unsatisfying and rushed conclusion to Scarlet & Violet's story, along with the grindy BP system and those ever-present performance issues. It's fun at best and disappointing at worst, with a lot of missed potential left on the picnic table.
The Teal Mask is a fun diversion for Pokémon Scarlet & Violet players that builds on the base game's strengths, but also exposes its weaknesses that much more. Fortunately, those strengths sparkle and Terastalize into a breezy, fun experience that delivers some rich regional storytelling, great characters, and some fantastic new Pokémon. We wanted more, though - more love and care put into the visuals and the battles. The Indigo Disk has a chance to build on the foundations The Teal Mask has laid, and we hope that's exactly what it will do.
As a lite beach bash, Danganronpa S will amuse hardcore fans, but it's really just a grindy gacha in disguise with little reward other than a few laughs.
An interesting concept that needs a little bit more work to make a compelling game.
Aside from its diversity and occasional cute character moments, Half Past Fate is largely forgettable.
I'm frustrated because I wanted to like Oninaki a lot more than I do. It's absolutely not a bad game; rather, it's yet another "serviceable" outing from Tokyo RPG Factory, who continue to try their hardest.
Tardy's uncomfortable sci-fi atmosphere and beautiful pixel visuals are the biggest successes for this otherwise by-the-numbers adventure game.
Style without substance, State of Mind never pushes the boundaries of its genre stereotypes.
The very definition of mediocre, Shining Resonance Refrain fails to stand out from the crowd in another packed year of RPGs.
Tokyo Babel could've been so much better, but it tries so hard to be epic only to result in an overlong and boring narrative.
While it starts off fun, Nights of Azure gets boring very quickly and never seems to fully utilize its array of other features.