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When my only major gripe with this game comes from the stupid save file limitations, that’s a testament to how solid this game is, and I honestly even feel it’ll be one of the Indie classics people will look back on a decade from now.
Here you get what feels like a successor to Neo Contra, but one that tries to innovate in such a poor way that it feels like it forgot the basics, and it needs a lot of polishing up in order to really be memorable. I really tried hoping that this would still be a hidden gem in the end, but unfortunately even I couldn’t get into it despite an update being released, as that update did almost nothing to improve the core experience.
Here, you have a great four-player battle mode with plenty of options, and a fun endless mode, but that’s basically it in terms of meaningful content, and for $14 I honestly can only recommend this game for a very specific niche. The basic controls may be simple enough that anyone can join in and mess around, but when there’s also not much to the game as a result, then it doesn’t really bode well for being a lengthy investment of your time.
Still, if you can get past the bumpy story mode, you’ll get one of the most enjoyable minigame compilations that I’ve played to date on the Switch, and those who like picking these games up to play with friends or family, or for those who want to take on the online leaderboards or play with friends online, you’ll be very satisfied with this game’s quality. For those hoping for the story mode to be super engrossing and worth the price by itself however, you should hold off on this one.
When the only gripe I have with this version is that the US border art for the game looks dreadful, you know you’ve done an outstanding job on a retro re-release. Most Sega AGES games do a great job at updating things and adding extra content, but there haven’t been too terribly many that have made me convinced that they put in their full effort. Thankfully, Shinobi does do just that, and joins Phantasy Star in being the ultimate version of a featured game in the AGES lineup. If you’re a fan of this game, then you owe it to yourself to buy this ASAP!
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD is a game that I really enjoyed at first, only for things to hit a brick wall upon noticing the edits they made to try and change levels with normal controls in mind, as with the case with the aforementioned hellish challenge that is Stage 7-2, alongside those boring waiting levels and boss fights.
Really, either of the three Disgaea games are worth picking up, but I definitely felt 4 was very close to 5 in terms of quality. The story may have not engaged me nearly as much here, but the speed of the battles and overall enjoyment factor was just as fun, so this still leaves Disgaea 4 Complete as a great entry in the franchise. Just don’t expect this to have anything too terribly unique. Here’s hoping Disgaea 3 Complete becomes a reality soon, so that I and other newcomers to the franchise will get to experience all five main entries on modern platforms!
Keen Dreams ended up being a barebones port of a barebones game. While Commander Keen does have a reputation of being a solid platformer, this game certainly isn’t one of them, as the combat is bad and the few bits of “remastering” they tried doing here are just horrible. The speedrunning potential for this game ended up being a lot better than I realized, but with no in-game speedrun leaderboards there really isn’t much incentive to do so unless you want this game to be over faster.
The exploration aspects are still very fun and I enjoyed the additions they did add, but I really do feel a lot of work could have been done to make this stand out as a game worth playing, but even now, Devious Dungeon 2 just didn’t make me care enough to want to get past that first boss.
It’s a game I recommend with no hesitation, but I also won’t act like the battle system may seem like a jumbled mess to outsiders even after all I described. The game does mandate helpful tutorials that made it easy for me to pick up and understand, but even when you know what to do the battles are super reliant on strategy, so if you end up losing to a boss then you only have your own strategies to blame and need to plan another course of action.
Giga Wrecker Alt ended up being a pretty decent action game from Game Freak, being a metroidvania with a very heavy reliance on puzzles that are often clever enough to get the player thinking without making them totally stumped. However, the confusing map, weird zoomed-out view and clunky nature of the game makes this one tough to recommend even for metroidvania fans, since it has a lot more jank than most polished experiences.
Regardless, while Gurgamoth’s core gameplay loop is still decently enjoyable, the lack of anything else to it makes it a hard recommendation in the sea of other multiplayer games.
Still, dig deep and you’ll find a charming block puzzle platformer to play through, although there’s little else to note of and this puzzler isn’t anything that’s terribly innovative.
Ittle Dew might have been ported here after the outstanding sequel, but that doesn’t mean that you should ignore this original entry to focus on the sequel, as the first game is still a brilliant Zelda clone. Yeah, it’s much more linear than the open-ended nature of the sequel, but it’s also just as fun with the clever puzzles and combat that you’ve come to expect from a game in this category.
The Alliance Alive was a game that I was very surprised by, as it’s of really high quality! Containing some of the best aspects from the SAGA series with some handy quality of life improvements, and you have one of the best pick up and play RPGs that I’ve seen on the Switch in a long while.
Feather could have easily been a great relaxation game to unwind with, if it had an even remote sense of content to mess around with. But with nothing of significance to find, abysmal framerate drops (despite this game being out for months, this was never fixed in handheld mode for some baffling reason) and a boring world that you can pretty much see everything of in mere minutes, this bird sim is a really sad example of a great idea with bad execution, both in performance and scope.
While this isn’t really a game that’s practical or easy to beat, the journey in your attempts to try and beat the game is where the fun is, and I still had a lot of fun just playing for the sake of a higher score, even when I didn’t particularly care about progressing.
In conclusion, Ichidant-R is easily the most obscure Sega AGES title in the first wave of games. While the Arcade version’s English translation helps significantly in making this widely accessible to the west, the core game is unfortunately not that fun, though the helper mode is an appreciated addition to cut some of the repetitive nature for players who want to see the ending of the game.
The SEGA AGES port of Columns II may not be out here in the west for a while, (due to the irritating gap in releases we’ve had) but it is currently out in Japan, and if you’re an import fanatic like I am, I absolutely feel that it’s worth picking up from the Japanese eShop due to the sheer addictive nature of Columns I, the outstanding online mode for Columns II, and the braincrushing puzzles that will test puzzle fans to their limits.
Ovivo is a very barebones puzzle platformer with one simple mechanic. While this isn’t anything you haven’t seen before, I actually found Ovivo to work a bit better than I expected, since the controls are very tight and the simplicity of the levels make this a relaxing romp with little frustration. The $7 pricetag is pretty steep for a game like this, but considering the many, many other puzzle games on the Switch eShop that fail to nail the same relaxation factor as Ovivo, I can at least Ovivo props for sticking to a simple concept and doing good with it.