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Azure Reflections has plenty of challenge to offer the hardcore bullet hell fiends, but with its relative approachability and level of polish, it's also a great introduction to the world of Touhou shooters.
The concept, the narrative, the characters, the Lovecraft references... these are all brilliant parts to the game. But then when you really break apart the gameplay (at least on the difficulty I was at) and game options, the shortcomings become apparent.
This is the kind of game I can sit down to and play for an entire evening without realising how much time was slipping. It's always "just one more turn," or "just one more battle", and even after all these years of playing Koei's strategy and action games set through the Sengoku period, and reading books about it, I'm always impressed that Koei Tecmo manages to teach me something new each time it releases something in the franchise.
We've seen plenty of stalker horror games in the past (Amnesia being perhaps the best example), but a combination of bugs and absolutely dismal guidance from the game makes this one a very painful grind to work through, filled with trial and error deaths and far too few checkpoints for this kind of gameplay.
Milanoir is not the longest game, but that breakneck pacing is so high octane that it can become draining. Unfortunately, it's not a game that's easy to pick up and put down at will, because it's a little confusing as to when it's actually saving the action.
I truly love West of Loathing. It's charming, silly, fun and, most surprisingly, offers genuinely engaging combat and questing.
If you're sick of tower defence games, give this one a go, because it'll restore your faith in the genre.
World Soccer Pinball is still not great pinball, because it offers such a pedestrian, basic, near-childish design, but it's playable and passable.
It's just too simplistic and bog standard in design. I appreciate that the developers were aiming for traditional pinball experiences, but that's no excuse for not at least coming up with some dynamic, flowing table designs.
Bringing a dozen these games together, and then adding superb customisation options and a museum mode that manages to be genuinely informative, and you've got one incredible celebration of a fighting game series that has meant so much to so many people over the years.
With extra challenges, a rewind feature and some of the best emulation of the Nintendo Entertainment System I've seen. This is a must-have collection for sure.
I am crossing all of my body parts hoping that we see a third collection containing the likes of the Game Boy games, Mega Man & Bass and Wily Wars, as I have enjoyed every minute of Mega Man Legacy Collection 2, despite missing a few key features found in the first collection.
I admire the developers' ability to keep the player fixated on a pensive mindset, so that regardless of how difficult the levels become, they always have something deep to ponder on as they repeat each level until the correct button timings are ingrained into their fingers.
This game's predecessor was remarkable. This game itself is a remarkable evolution of that original vision.
For the most part though, Yoku's Island Express is a lot of wholesome, whimsical fun. It manages to make the hybrid of two disparate genres work in some inspired ways, and the result is a unique game full of surprises that is sure to delight players.
In the end the problem with the Fairune Collection comes from the fact the series is a short lived one and yet it still took its time to find its stride.
This game is undoubtedly a dream on the Switch. Perfect for the console's mobile nature, there's just something soothing about watching your caravan trundle along when you're on a commute of your own.
With all of that said, it's still only the slimmest of steps up from what most people who are interested in Dark Souls have already played to death back on the PlayStation 3.
The collection of games itself is just such incredible value, covering off such a broad range of SEGA's history when it was at its very finest, that anyone missing out on this is doing themselves a real disservice.
Despite those small issues, I can see this game developing a strong core audience that will play it for quite some time to come. It's simply too groovy, colourful, and cheerful to resist.