John Friscia's Reviews
Ultimately, Half Past Fate is a game about walking and talking for a few hours. Optional Achievement hunting can extend the game's length if you so choose, but this is without a doubt an interactive movie with some gameplay tossed in to glue plot segments together. Your general predilections as a person will ultimately dictate if that's worth the price point. Nonetheless, with its gorgeous art, energetic soundtrack, and breezy narrative, Half Past Fate just exudes positivity from top to bottom. That should count for something.
The Complex offers commendable acting and writing and a genuine sense of excitement to go with its interactive movie experience. However, most of the endings are quite similar and unsatisfying, and player choices often don't have much effect on the overall narrative. Still, considering the game costs the same price as a weeknight movie theater ticket, but with the added benefit of some novel interactivity, The Complex could make for a refreshingly unique, albeit short, movie night.
Trancelation is neither a powerful language-learning tool nor a particularly exciting arcade experience. But if you're looking for a supplement to a language you're already learning, and for some reason Duolingo isn't enough for you, this game will help you with rote memorization of basic vocabulary.
Shinsekai: Into the Depths is a game worth playing. Its large world is addictive to explore, its oxygen mechanics are innovative and create dramatic gameplay moments, and its audio is a real delight.
Some people will absolutely love Telling Lies. The type of person who can watch five minutes of a movie and then has to watch the entire thing will surely be absorbed into this game's mystifying world. However, for other people, sifting through hours of footage and being forced to jigsaw a narrative out of it will just feel like a chore, even if the characters are well depicted. It's up to you to decide which category you're most likely to fall under.
The narrative of Evan's Remains — if you don't skip any of it — probably takes up half the total playtime, if not even more. The puzzles themselves, of which there are maybe 20-25, take around two hours to complete. So honestly, I can't call the game a bad value at only $6.99, considering the price of a movie ticket these days. But there is just little here to recommend otherwise. The puzzles are fun enough, but the storytelling won't be to everyone's tastes. It definitely never strummed my heartstrings.
The base management is a little inconsequential, the interface has some clutter, and the persistent online connection requirement will be a wall for some, but none of that changes the fact that Volta-X is an outstanding strategic combat experience. Building new loadouts and testing new strategies is addicting and delightful, and a perfect online experience means there is tremendous replay value if you have a friend with the game or if the PvP scene continues to grow. GungHo has produced a quirky little gem here for Switch.
Despite the litany of technical issues I just outlined, this quirky licensed brawler is one of my favorite games I have played all year. Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues delivers a satisfying combination of engaging beat 'em up gameplay, authenticity to the TV series, and preposterous humor that results in an experience unlike any other on Nintendo Switch. "Cobra Kai never dies" thanks to bonkers extensions of the IP such as what Flux Games has produced here.
If you love The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, you would be out of your mind not to try Immortals Fenyx Rising.
(One last note for Nintendo Switch players: Cyber Shadow actually plays best with Joy-Con, not the Pro Controller. The control pad on the Pro Controller sometimes incorrectly registers "forward" inputs as "down" inputs, which makes parries and dashing frustratingly more difficult.)
In its brief runtime, Half Past Fate: Romantic Distancing tries to tell a charming story of romance amid the pandemic, but it's just a waste of an hour instead. Give the original game a try in lieu of this.
Ultimately, PUSS! is an exercise in frustration. Some people will appreciate the zaniness of the design and/or enjoy having a brutal challenge to push through in a blast of 10-20 minutes at a time. Other people will just be annoyed by the entire experience from start to finish, and the small bugs and quirks don't help that. PUSS! is not for everyone, but it's also not trying to be.
In Bravely Default II, you either break the battle system with some beautiful strategy, or it breaks you. And that's the thrill of it. Taking charge of massive customization options to build a party that can uniquely demolish the varied bosses is incredibly satisfying and never gets old. When you couple that stellar action with a phenomenal soundtrack, it becomes possible to forgive the game's uninspired story and technical hiccups. And while I really wish Square Enix were not struggling so much to tell a great story lately, Bravely Default II is still an utterly addicting RPG and an excellent addition to the Nintendo Switch library.
I Saw Black Clouds has some bold ideas, but the execution on a structural and technical level is a total failure. Even if the writing, acting, and scene editing were immaculate - which they are not - it would not forgive how all of the decisions the player makes carry no weight. Decisions only have consequences in vague, indirect, unpredictable ways, and it's extremely unsatisfying to have so little control over a story that isn't overly engaging in the first place. The best decision you can make is to just not play I Saw Black Clouds.
Ultimately, Say No! More is short, vapid, and stupid… but it kind of works. Gameplay is basic almost to the point of meaningless, but when combined with its striking art style and funny writing and voice acting, it adds up to an experience unlike any other. Frankly, full price is too much to ask for a game this simple, but definitely consider it during sales.
With enjoyable sim gameplay, an engaging element combat system, and excellent boss fights, Smelter is a game with a lot of good pieces across 12-15 hours of play. Unfortunately, it never becomes more than the whole of its parts. The platforming level design feels a bit unremarkable, and the Trials ruin the pacing. Still, if you love ActRaiser or Mega Man X, there's enough to make Smelter worth recommending.
When you set aside the little performance issues on Nintendo Switch and the lack of some quality-of-life additions, Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne HD Remaster is still an excellent dungeon crawler with tons of demons to experiment with and several different endings for hardcore players to find. The game feels like it's dragging on sometimes by so heavily emphasizing gameplay over story, but when the gameplay is this solid and with the world renewed in HD, it's not much of a complaint. This is quite the appetizer from Atlus as the wait for Shin Megami Tensei V continues.
Ultimately, Mundaun is a creepy Switch game with creepy secrets to uncover across its creepy landscape, and it's easy to recommend to fans of adventure and horror. Others who don't typically play such games might just be bored to death with it though, especially if they get stuck on an objective they can't figure out. So basically, if your gut tells you that you might enjoy this game, it's probably right - and vice versa.
Realistically, adults who want to program are just going to go learn an actual programming language and/or pick up a tool like GameMaker. But for impressionable preteen children, which arguably seems to be the prime demographic for this software, Game Builder Garage on Nintendo Switch can provide a comprehensive and accessible introduction to programming, despite a few glaring oversights. However, not just anyone is going to instantly click with and love this game. It takes time, determination, and raw passion to get the most out of Game Builder Garage. But maybe that's a good thing.
Ultimately, Mythic Ocean is a unique experience with its charming god-guiding gameplay and its exotic and atmospheric ocean to explore, and it is utterly immersive in the best way for the few hours that it lasts. However, the endings are not as memorable as the rest of the game. When you combine that with the tediousness of re-collecting pages on future playthroughs and going through many of the same conversations over and over again (though there is a fast-forward option), there is little incentive to replay Mythic Ocean as many times as it would like.