Evan Norris's Reviews
Three decades later, R-Type III remains one of the very best shoot-'em-ups on SNES. Regrettably, the R-Type Dimensions III remake doesn't do it justice.
While it has an interesting premise and a clever gimmick, it doesn't do enough with those assets to stand out among other action-platformers, including those developed by Inti Creates in years past. With that said, it's far from bad. Thanks to snappy combat, four playable characters with unique talents, and appealing pixel art, it's a decent enough diversion.
While this Nintendo iteration doesn't add much, it preserves the base game, which is a dependable, valuable action-RPG with an engaging narrative, excellent combat, and lots of worthwhile content.
Thanks to significant improvements in storytelling, world design, combat, and visuals, it's the first genuinely great game in the sub-series. It's so good, in fact, that it can go toe-to-toe with the best installments of the mainline Monster Hunter series.
Inviting is the ideal word to describe Pokopia. It welcomes players into its vast domain, grants them world-altering tools, and encourages them to craft, build, demolish, customize, harvest, and befriend at their leisure.
Despite some successes — workshop upgrades and highway duels chief among them — it's a middling sim racer with a monotonous (albeit substantial) story mode, limited multiplayer options, and subpar visuals.
Ultimately, Mario Tennis Fever occupies the same general territory as recent Mario Tennis games. It's good, but not great. The moment-to-moment gameplay is exciting, Fever Rackets add chaotic, unexpected fun to each match, and the huge roster encourages lots of experimentation. Yet the game falters somewhat when it comes to modes, particularly single-player modes.
Dragon Quest VII Reimagined retains the core components of the PlayStation title — an emotionally powerful narrative, a diverse set of role-playing scenarios, and a tactically rewarding vocation system — and enhances them with gorgeous visuals, immersive voice-acting, several important quality-of-life features, and superior pacing.
It's great that Red Art Games has elevated the experience by adding two new modes, while also preserving the original version. The only issue is that the game, no matter the version, is too brief, disorienting, and repetitive to truly enjoy.
Woolhaven is proof that Massive Monster made the right decision to stick with Cult of the Lamb. By retaining everything the vanilla version does right, and adding several novelties, the expansion takes what was already a great game and makes it even better.
Core Design did fantastic work with the Tomb Raider franchise, but largely dropped the ball when developing Fighting Force and Fighting Force 2. And while this new compilation makes them more accessible, it doesn't do much, outside of the addition of save states, to make them more enjoyable.
While it's inferior to the three games in the original Prime trilogy and also recent entries like Metroid Dread, it remains a rock-solid action-adventure game that at times flirts with greatness.
It's the best game in the Hyrule Warriors sub-series so far, due to excellent music, sharp visuals, smooth performance, hours upon hours of rewarding content, a large roster of diverse heroes, and, most importantly, an extensive and flexible combat framework that helps the game rise above the limitations of its genre. The story and map designs could be more ambitious, and the pre-rendered cut-scenes more polished, but overall AAA Games Studio has done both the Zelda and Warriors franchises proud.
Majogami is the best Inti Creates game in a while, it turns out. The art direction is stunning, the music and voice-over work engaging, the combat system deep and flexible, and the boss battles riveting. With a crisper narrative, less repetition in the post-game, and greater connectivity between platforming stages and boss encounters, it could have been the best ever.
While it succeeds in moment-to-moment action, character customization, and production design, it's too repetitive and monotonous to recommend. Still, it's a decent Rogue-lite that will scratch the itch between bigger, better releases.
Spindle is a satisfactory Zelda-like, in the final analysis. It tackles difficult topics with grace and empathy, features multiple engaging boss battles, introduces several atypical tools to solve puzzles and outmaneuver enemies, and provides rewarding content even after the credits have rolled.
Thanks to Shujinkou, I know more Japanese than ever before. I have a basic understanding of sentence structure and logic, and can call upon a limited vocabulary. More importantly, though, I can say I've played a legitimately great RPG.
The straightforward combat hits the spot, particularly with a friend along for the journey, and the ancillary modes aren't half-bad. That said, it's hard to overlook the general clumsiness of the game. Stages are generic, enemy patterns are sloppy, and boss battles are slow and undemanding.
Earthion is a beautiful love letter to the Sega Genesis and the 16-bit era in general, co-authored by someone who helped define its greatness — Yuzo Koshiro.
Shuten Order may be Kazutaka Kodaka’s most ambitious work, but it’s not his best. Its multi-genre experiment, while bold and brave, doesn’t work as intended, resulting in an uneven adventure with several shallow, overlong vignettes.