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Honestly, for only $9.99 you get a great experience with Cthulhu Saves Christmas. It’s a very solid RPG with lots of laughs and good mechanics. Though I do miss some features from the first game, it overall does a good job of streamlining things for the better. More than anything, I just wanted reasons to keep playing in this universe. Any sort of unlockables, optional dungeons or hidden bosses would have been very welcome. Though my time with the game wasn’t exactly short, I kept finding myself wishing this was a 30-40 hour game. And while the ending was a bit of a disappointment, I still find myself hoping we get another entry to make this a trilogy. All in all, I’m happy with the latest from Zeboyd Games, and hope we don’t have to wait very long for Cthulhu’s next adventure.
I have to say overall I had a great time with GENSOU Skydrift. The racing was fast, fluid and just a lot of fun. The graphics and artwork are outstanding. The game runs at a solid framerate no matter if the Switch is docked or in handheld mode. I polished off the campaign mode in just a few hours, but I spent about 4 or 5 more playing around on all the tracks with friends and CPU racers. The $23.99 price tag might seem a little steep, but this is a quality racing game. If you’re a Touhou fan I think you will find a lot to love here, and if you’re a racing fan looking for a solid title this might just be your cup of tea as well.
While I didn’t touch on everything found in VenusBlood Frontier International I feel this is a pretty good overview of how the game flows. While this combat sounds complicated it’s really not once you start playing and is actually highly addictive. I haven’t had this much fun with an SRPG in many years. The story here is top notch and I loved all of the characters found here. This is one of the few times I can say a game truly met my expectations, and I sincerely hope Ninetails will bring more of these titles to the West. For the $40 you’re getting 100+ hours of solid gameplay and story in a game that has some of the best music and artwork I’ve seen in a long time. This is a must own for visual novel fans and SRPG players alike.
Devil’s Hunt is a game that knows the look of a high-quality video game, but stumbles on most other fronts. It has the skeleton of the game in place, but struggles to flesh things out beyond that. Clocking in at about six hours, it’s a mostly functional package that takes a grandiose story as its base and delivers something less bombastic. Hopefully Desmond can get his act together should another installment come to fruition.
Much as I wanted to love Woven, I left the experience quite disappointed. There was promise here, but for whatever reason it wasn’t met. If you don’t mind clumsy physics and very complex and vague puzzles, you might enjoy what’s here. Even then, it’s a hard pill to swallow at $19.99. Though you can beat the game in less than 5 hours, it took me around 9 due to getting lost repeatedly. So at least you’ll get some bang for your buck. This is one of those games I recommend you pick up on a sale. Hopefully Alterego Games has more ideas they can breathe life into in the future, cause I’d honestly like to see them succeed. In the meantime, I’ll lament this tale of an elephant and his firefly buddy.
And that’s my biggest problem with this game: how tedious it is. You go through level after level and stage after stage, doing the same things over and over again. It doesn’t even feel rewarding towards the end, just a relief that the level is over. I really hate saying that, because this game had a lot of promise and is very pretty looking, especially for someone like me who loves that art style. I just wish there were a little more depth to the game, because as it is right now it’s very boring to sit through a lot of the time. I didn’t even mention the story that much because it’s very simple and takes a backseat to a lot of the game. For a simple pick-up-and-play game, I suppose it’s fine and serves the purpose of an arcade game well enough. But I don’t think it’s all that worth it, especially at the $24.99 price range where it sits right now. All in all I got about five hours out of the game, but I really wouldn’t recommend it unless you really love this kind of thing, or you need something simple and fun to play with friends.
Evaluating this game is pretty tricky. I certainly had fun with what I played. As far as being a versus mode of a much larger game, its a neat little novelty that some folks might play around with for a couple hours. As its own game? Hard to recommend, unless you maybe have a friend group of passionate Shovel Knight fans. Though in that case, I’d assume they would have Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove already, and thus this is just a free update. It’s $10 on its own, which certainly is a fair price. However, I’d say Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove at $40 is a better deal. With that you get Shovel Knight and three additional full campaigns, as well as Showdown. At that price, you’re basically getting Showdown as a free bonus.
Other than some alternate difficulty modes and a funny versus mode where the two characters can duke it out, there really isn’t much reason to keep coming back to Haunted: Halloween ’86. It’s a game that isn’t really bad, but also not a particularly remarkable one. Once you get over the fact that this is a new NES game, you’ll start to see this game’s flaws more and more and realize that there are other exciting indie platformers out there. That said, Haunted Halloween is worth checking out if you are looking for more NES games to play. The game won’t take you too long as a playthrough will take about an hour or much less if you get good enough at the game to speedrun it. The digital version isn’t terribly expensive at $9.99 and can be fun for a little while if you are feeling nostalgic and find yourself craving a Halloween themed retro game. If you are interested in a physical NES cartridge with the game, check out Retrotainment Games’ site.
Other than my quibbles about the plot and Joustus, I have no huge complaints about King of Cards. The closest I can get is that some of the final stages were truly difficult and frustrating, most especially one that has you constantly warping back and forth. This is a very well made game, and had it not released after Specter of Torment, easily would have been my favorite Shovel Knight game. As it is, I got 5 and a half hours out of it for a mere $9.99, and only saw 34% of what the game had to offer. I skipped a whole 13 stages and probably some truly epic optional bosses. You won’t lack for replay value either, with many difficult achievements that are a hallmark of the series. As a fan, I did very much enjoy my time with King of Cards, even if the ending was a bit disheartening. I’m glad I got to play each part of the Shovel Knight saga, and cannot wait to see what surprises are in store for Yacht Club Games in the future.
Out of the few visual novels I’ve played, I don’t think London Detective Mysteria was my favorite or the best. Nonetheless, I still had fun during the 25 hours or so that I spent with it. It has plenty of story content for you to enjoy for $29.99 and an overarching mystery which, as I said earlier, you won’t see a legitimate conclusion to unless you make your way through all of the possible endings. If you enjoy otome games and have a true appreciation for visual novels, then I think you’ll love London Detective Mysteria. This is one visual novel that’s worth picking up and enjoying for yourself.
All and all I had a great time with Pokémon Sword. The game runs very well docked or in handheld mode, online features work great aside from the slowdown and the gameplay is quite addictive. I loved all of the characters and some of the theme music is the best I’ve heard in a long time. I felt like the game was easy enough for a casual player to get into, while it still had plenty of depth for veteran players to explore. This is exactly the balance you want in a game like this. I played this for around 55 hours for this review and finished the main story and bit of post game content. I feel like this game is well worth $60 price tag. There is plenty of content and I feel like old and new players will find a lot to love here.
I spent over ten hours playing OUTBUDDIES and I still could easily have stretched that out to twenty or more with all of the hidden areas and secrets. It is really up to you and how much you like backtracking to determine how much enjoyment you will get out of OUTBUDDIES. I got my money’s worth but I could have used a little more direction. OUTBUDDIES is currently available here on Steam for $17.99. It will be out Q1 2020 on PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One. I think that the price was very reasonable given the amount of exploration in this game. I’m sure if you like Metroidvanias then your dollar will stretch very far with this game.
I spent just shy of 25 hours in the sleepy town of Clocknee, and I loved it. The developers put a lot of love into this game. The story is touching, and makes up for the minor flaws in the game. The characters are endearing and the emotional soundtrack breaths depth into the world and its characters. It is a story of youth, friendship, regret, pain, love, and triumph. There may be some terrible prices to be paid, but all is not lost yet. Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers is available on the Nintendo Switch eShop for $39.99. Just don’t expect it to have the difficulty, scope or depth of something like Final Fantasy. In my opinion, this game is a bit of a hidden gem in the Nintendo Switch library (and it’s also on PlayStation 4). Can you untangle the ravaged timeline of Clocknee to undo the terrible wrath of fate?
It’s true that The Legend of Bum-Bo isn’t for everyone. It’s demented, crude, immature and hard as hell. And yet, it’s crazy addictive, fun and very compelling. If you don’t mind losing a lot and like a game with good strategy, I think you’ll enjoy it. I know I loved my time with it, and found it an incredible bargain for only $14.99. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this prequel to The Binding of Isaac, but should have known I’d end up appreciating it. Especially the super clever ending you’ll get once you beat the Basement for the first time. If you’re a fan of rogue or Edmund McMillen’s work, you’ll find a lot to enjoy in the darkness with Bum-Bo.
Utawarerumono: Zan is not a bad game, but it is a game made for fans of the series exclusively. If folks go into this with no knowledge of Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception’s story they will be completely lost. The combat is solid and tons of fun. I really enjoyed unlocking all the different modes and watching all my favorite characters grow stronger along the way. The story mode is well done, but it does skip around a bit too much, and some will find its length a bit on the short side. However, I do think fans will find plenty of content here to justify the around $50 price point. In the end this game is the very definition of a fan service game, and I think that’s perfectly fine.
My biggest complaint with EarthNight is that the game was constantly tripping over its own ideas, even the good ones. For $14.99, it’s not an expensive game, but I still find it hard to recommend. If you like rogue and don’t mind a very grindy, often confusing experience, you might wanna pick it up. For everybody else, at least wait til some patches have smoothed out the rough edges in the Switch version. Despite all that, I was impressed by Cleaversoft’s creativity in EarthNight, and hope it is put to better use in their next adventure.
I can certainly still recommend the game, but mainly only for those with nostalgia for those old monster collecting games. If you don’t like them, this won’t change your mind. If you do, it might be worth checking out, if you feel like you can get past the weird leveling quirk. It might not blow you away, and it might make you just want to play those old games instead, but its got its own twists that you might end up really liking it. It’s $15 on Steam, and should take at least 20 hours to play through it, and I’d say its worth it.
In the end, BurgerTime Party! can be a fun experience, but doesn’t have a long lasting appeal. I only spent 3 to 4 hours playing. But thanks to it being on the Switch, the game does have the virtue of being a decent portable experience where you play five stages and then can be on your way. Unfortunately, I can’t give an opinion on the multi-player aspect, having played only single-player. Priced at $19.99, you will get your money’s worth just by content alone, especially if you’re a fan of more arcade-like games. If you are more uncertain, I reckon waiting for a price drop before taking a bite.
If you really enjoy the frantic nature of the game, there is lots for you to come back to. Most of the enemies you encounter can be unlocked as a playable character, and the levels are filled with branching paths and decisions you can make leading to more than 40 endings for you to unlock. So clearly this game is packed with content and replay value. However it’s up to you to make the most of it and spend a lot of time mastering the battle system in order for you to really appreciate it. The levels are large and can go on for a long time. But as I’ve mentioned before the game is oozing with style so that can potentially keep you playing even if it will kick your butt for a while. Also the music is rocking, with plenty of metal tunes to compliment the action and mayhem on screen as you are sending enemies flying or being sent flying yourself. For $20 Fight ‘N Rage is a nice little gem, however your enjoyment of it really depends on how much you are willing to put up with the learning curve. If it clicks for you and you enjoy mastering the parry system and learn how to chain attacks properly, this will probably be among the best beat ’em ups you’ve ever played and the unlockable content is sure to keep you coming back for more.
Whether or not Jet Kave Adventure is worth it comes down to whether you think you’ll replay the stages to complete all the extra challenges. My initial playthrough lasted just short of four and a half hours, but I completed almost no challenges and missed several trophies. I want to recommend it to people who just want a nice platforming experience, but between its other shortcomings and the asking price of $19.99, I’m leaning more toward waiting for a sale. It’s functional fun, though not necessarily a total package.