Connor Nichols's Reviews
Potata is a middle of the road puzzle platformer. Yes, it provides puzzling entertainment, and the solutions can be clever enough to make you crack a smile, but when the game is bogged down by a lot of genericness and frustrating moments, along with just how dull the experience is as a whole, I honestly can’t really recommend this at the usual MSRP: it controls fine enough to get you some entertainment if you pick it up on sale, but for the $12 MSRP, this is a puzzler that just doesn’t have the full magic.
While I wish this package could have done even more cool stuff such as throw in old trailers and prototypes, what we have here is excellently presented by the folks at D4 Enterprise (Wii U Virtual Console TG16 + Project EGG emulators), and I’m super excited that Edia is actually doing something with the Telenet properties, and something fun at that. Here’s hoping we see the Valis series come back with a new game, in as great of a way as Blaster Master Zero!
Stay Cool definitely deserves props for looking distinct in a series that overdoes the same art style to no end, but otherwise, I can’t say this River City Ransom story is a must-own by any means, outside of local co-op shenanigans or for the sake of completing the series on your Switch. It’s a shame, since some aspects of this game I really do dig, from how the game looks, the spirit attacks, the multiple playable characters, but when the core loop is just so repetitive and confusing, this time travel story is just a weird paradox that is best left unsolved, and I feel that they could very well use this promising game engine for a game that’s far, far better executed.
It’s brilliant how crazy you can make this Pocket Dungeon, and it gives me a proud joy to say that this puzzler was easily the biggest sleeper hit of the year: despite being tough to explain, it just has a flow that is silky smooth!
Clockwork Aquario is an incredibly colorful, fun arcade gem restored and finally released after so many years, leading to a great platformer that feels like the perfect sister game to Monster Lair. This port job is pretty decent, though the lack of some expected features from other Ratalaika Games releases is rather disappointing, especially considering the completely asinine lack of button remapping.
The Ambassador didn’t really click with me much at all. While it did have some cool time manipulation mechanics and controlled pretty well for a twin-stick shooter, it didn’t offer much of anything substantial that managed to engage me, and ultimately it just wore out rather quickly.
When those bugs end up being the best way to prepare for the aforementioned battle tower and make up for the lack of QOL features, that’s even more silly, and sadly, does ultimately lead to these remakes not feeling nearly as Shining as they could have been, despite the amount of love and polish in other areas of the game that’ll definitely make these my preferred method of replaying Sinnoh for years to come. Still, I couldn’t help but also wish these just got the extra polish they desperately needed.
Gynoug is a fairly average horizontal shooter, even if it’s nowhere near the same exciting level of action that Gleylancer provided. Still, the QOL options here are very welcome, and just like with that game I feel that this port easily makes for the ultimate way to play Gynoug, one that yet again, is far cheaper than buying a real cartridge of it or the US Wings of Wor.
With how these devs did such a great job with Gleylancer, I can only conclude that this porting disaster had to have stemmed from being rushed out somehow: whether to try and time it with the physical releases, or just for the heck of it, it is incredibly disappointing that such a promising game, so close to being accessible in a cheap and affordable fashion, was thrown out in such a state of disarray. Like with Cotton 100%, a patch for EN translation is on the way, but I also hope they fix the damn game first: something that should have been checked more carefully from the get go.
Alas, the same is true here, for the online is entirely barren now, and with so much of the focus dumped into multiplayer modes that are practically worthless, (And not even that fun with the local friends I did manage to bring over) I just can’t understand what Treasure Stack was going for. With several more local modes, and just a bit more tweaking, this could easily be an addictive, fun modern take on the Wario’s Woods formula, but as it stands now, this just ends up being a forgettable puzzler that pales compared to the inspiration.
Cotton 100% is a very good port of a pretty niche game, but it does have some stuff to iron out. The original game is here fully intact and still just as fun as ever, but the buggy visual options, the weird lack of any toggle for the epileptic, and the current lack of a translation make this port feel a bit rushed.
Still, with a solid combat system, fun upgrade and crafting mechanics, and a great sense of speed, this is still a decent platformer I can recommend for fans of ninja action games, especially those who love fast-paced ones and wouldn’t mind skipping over the optional objectives. Don’t expect it to be the most polished thing ever, but if you just enjoy fast-paced platformers, then this may be one worth considering, even if the price may seem a bit steep.
Gleylancer is an outstanding port of a fun Mega Drive shooter, presented with pretty much every quality of life feature you could possibly ask for! From SRAM Hi-Score saving, to dual-stick controls, to weapon and speed swapping on the fly, this revision is easily the best and most accessible Gleylancer has ever been by far.
While it is a bummer than both Castlevania Legends and Symphony of the Night are missing (especially since both of those relate to the three advance games more than Dracula X does), what’s here is excellent, and the quality of life and scaling options make this $20 value an absolute must-own, whether you’re new to some or all of the games or someone who played these to death, there’s lots of fun action to be had here, and it’s a great starting point for this explorative style of Vania.
Nevertheless, games get bigger as they’re followed up on, and with hidden buttons to collect, pages to find, and secrets to discover, this game will take significantly more time to go through than the original Squidlit, leading to Super Squidlit to be worth the asking price. The variety in gameplay, the bigger scope, and continuing the funny and charming nature from the first game all leads to a worthwhile experience that fans of the Game Boy Color should check out, despite some details in need of fine tuning.
Bitmaster is just average at best, with me finding the overall loop to be serviceable, but not much else. The roguelike aspects of grinding levels and constantly trying again to gain gradual upgrades and new characters seem cool at first, but the slow pacing just doesn’t work for a scorechaser like this, and I found these aspects to be more discouraging of future run attempts, rather than motivating me to go for yet another attempt to see how far I can survive.
After 100%ing Blaster Master Zero 2 and watching the cliffhanger, I was so longing for the end of this epic tale, a situation that 10-year-ago me would have completely disbelieved would have happened in relation to the NES game which terrified the crap out of me! But now two and a half years later, that cliffhanger has concluded, and I have to say, it really surpassed my expectations, working great as a throwback to the rest of the series and the pinnacle of the constantly evolving level design and boss fights, leading to some of the most challenging, yet fair experiences I’ve had with a metroidvania in a very long time.
In fact, since this variant focuses on the arcade experience, rather than the original console stuff CS introduced, that means you don’t even have the ability to play 16:9 formatted stages, making the lack of any visual options even more frustrating. Still, with four player co-op, a variety of great ships, and the same great Darius fun to expect from the series, this manages to be a very fun romp for scorechasing and boss rush fanatics, even if it doesn’t have much else for casual players just wanting to reach the credits and call it a day, though it at least leads to being an accessible entry point for co-op action, and is a game I can definitely recommend to people with access to a four-player setup, especially since you can’t really play the arcade game in person here in the US.
Truly, this game ended up being the best surprise gem for me in years, and when it contains all the aspects of my favorite games of all time, with great characters, world building, soundtrack, writing, and addictive gameplay loops, Fuga creeped up from behind and led to an unforgettable adventure, where the saddest part for me was when it all came to an end.
Regardless, the gameplay is just too dull and boring for me to keep my interest, and when the other half of the game (the story sequences) are so agonizing that I found myself skipping through some and literally missing nothing when going back to check if I missed anyway, that’s not a good sign of a fun game at all, regardless of platform.