The King Is Watching is easy to pick up and start playing, with a short tutorial that is easy to understand to get you started. From there, though, you realize there is a depth of strategy that you will pick up each and every run as you start to manage every tile with efficiency under your watchful gaze. You will unlock and discover more tiles that diversify your playstyle and continue to offer you more to experience as you go toe to toe with more powerful enemies that seek to destroy your kingdom.
Wild Hearts S makes the mistake, I feel, of copying the Monster Hunter formula too closely. There are times where the loop overlaps so clearly that it might make somebody who is often on the beaten path, having just beaten Wilds, for instance to ask themselves, Why am I just not grinding gear in that. The level design here is great, with Karakura being encouraged due to the verticality of exploration, but it’s still a big open map with big monsters you are out there to hunt.
The Wandering Village has its issues, most games do, but even these issues I outlined never felt off-putting to me. There is an engaging experience here that you don’t get to see very often. Wandering the land on the back of your Onbu, feeling like you stepped into a Miyazaki classic.
Issues with the AI aside, I had a blast playing this game, and there was never a moment I felt the problems that could mire the experience weren’t outweighed by the whole unique experience I had engrossed myself in. Earning bizarre bike parts to mix and match my frame for the best performance, then winning that race I was struggling on
Walking away after beating My Friendly Neighborhood was a victory in its own right. That Five Nights at Freddy’s game I most recently played held my attention for an hour at most, and bored me throughout, which I’m sure will upset a few people out there. My Friendly Neighborhood, for its part, makes me willing to at least try some other games in the subgenre, even if I still don’t ‘get’ it.
BlazBlue: Entropy Effect manages to somehow convert the fighting franchise to a 2D sidescrolling platformer without losing the charm at its core. The characters, and there are plenty to choose from, all feel like the characters should if they were facing off against each other, with some minor amount of change to make them function in their new surroundings. Within that is a fun roguelike that keeps your earning abilities and upgrades run after run, and gives you the flexibility to take those builds even further, though at the risk of simply breaking your character when the next run starts.
Ruffy and the Riverside might have had too many puzzles, as it constantly barraged me with them, but it didn’t have bad puzzles. The world that was offered was one that I loved exploring and getting lost in. Even when I was running around in a circle, the likelihood of my stumbling onto something that would distract and delight was very high.
There are elements that didn’t work for me as well as I was hoping, and others I spent hours debating if I didn’t like them or just felt weird that they were changed. But, here is the thing, at no point is this experience not an improvement over everything that came before. This is the best Rune Factory has ever been and a game that can stand against the best of the genre, not just its own series.
Exploration could have stood to have a little more in the way of discovery, but that doesn’t change the fact that these barren areas are well designed and enjoyable. The constant stream of additional tasks to complete, both the personal ones for the crew and the ones added as you run across strange planetary anomalies, constantly diversifies what is asked of you and keeps the experience fresh.
Nova Hearts, being a visual novel, romance, and dating sim, is where the game fully hits its stride. I love the artwork, and the zen soundtrack, both are a necessity in an experience where I am mostly going to be wading through tons of dialog. The characters are great, the main character is honestly very relatable, and when the game goes full-on magical girl, I am into it. It just needed more. All of these ideas, even the combat, feel like the game understands it needs to stand out in a crowd, but it never fully realizes that goal.
t its absolute worst, this is a game from 2002, and it plays accordingly. I was never a fan of fixed camera angles in action games, but at the time, I didn’t know any better. Sluggish character controls were the norm. It doesn’t feel as great as a modern game, but Onimusha also feels good against its peers, which helps when returning to it.
Maybe, based on my own struggles recently, but Date Everything was positioned at the right place and the right time to affect me profusely. I like to think, though, that it’s just that flipping good. A cast of one hundred characters that all beg you to interact with them and see their narratives straight through to the end, and reflect on the lesson held within long after you have moved on to the next character.
Cyberpunk 2077 on the Nintendo Switch 2 is, for lack of a better way of putting it, not the strongest place to play the game. This version of the game is really for people like me, who buy it everywhere because we have no self-control, or most likely, Nintendo fans that have long since had the Nintendo Switch as their primary console.
Cattle Country’s biggest sin is being in an extremely bloated genre. Throughout my time with it, there was nothing it did badly. It’s a perfectly serviceable Cozy/Farming sim to sink hours of your life in as you grow your little slice of the frontier
. But in that lies the crux of the problem, the best aspects of the game don’t involve playing the game. The core racing loop doesn’t hold a candle to its contemporaries. In comparison, arcade racer Horizon Chase 2 is the same price, and while neither is perfect, I would recommend Chase every day of the week.
Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade has a lot of fun to offer if you’re looking for a take on a roguelike or hack’n’slash game. The three characters are all unique and fun to play as, despite needing their own saves. The combat is fast-paced with enjoyable, with a diverse weapons list to switch up gameplay, even if you can expect each character to control the same throughout each run
Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping is, at its heart and soul, a charming and cute experience. I loved every minute with it, even if those minutes were fleeting. That is the biggest crime here because this is a world I want to get more invested in with its great cast of characters, and over-the-top titular detective.
Spellcaster University has a lot of good ideas on display, which honestly might be its biggest issue. A management sim, wrapped with a card game, structured like a rogue-like, is a lot of concepts that need to work together, and they often don’t. The management sim is the best part of this, ass who has never wanted to run a magical school, but the card mechanic and the rogue-like at times feel needed, and honestly, a hampering to the core management mechanic at the center.
In truth, there were points in the game that felt like the game could have gone any way. Major mechanics like driving and shooting, which take up much of the experience, both had moments where I enjoyed them and moments where I hated the hell out of them. This was in between the repetitions that often hit the point of tedium, with some standout moments that made me laugh or smile as the absurdity of the procedural generation hit its apex.
Little Kitty, Big City delivers on its two big promises. Taking the role of a kitty that encourages you to embrace the feline inside of you is never dull, especially when you go off to do your own this. The City is beautifully crafted and fun to explore, filled to the brim with people who have cell phones you can steal! There is a lot to love in here if you’re looking for an experience that is tranquil and worry-free.