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Vandals was a bit of a mixed experience for me. I enjoyed parts of it, and found others held it back. I also really wish the game had more lore or something to ground things in. I don’t need a story to enjoy a game, but the fabric of the world it inhabits is still important. And while the art is simple and focused, they do tend to reuse environments and assets a bit too much. Though thankfully the main musical theme is pretty catchy. Then again, at $3.99, this is the most affordable version of the game, and I got at least 8-10 hours out of it. If you like quirky indie games on Switch, I’d say to give this one a shot. But if you want something incredibly meaningful and lasting, this might not be for you.
Overall, Type:Rider was an enjoyable experience and I walked away having learned a bit about fonts and typography in general. As mentioned above, I only sunk about 3 hours into this one as it can be completed in a rather short span of time. There are some additional trophies that you can unlock by doing special tasks throughout the game, but I managed to grab most of those just by playing through once. If it there was a bit more content available in each level, I could see this game being even more enjoyable. Having said that, the content that is there is still really neat and for its listed price of $2.99 on the Nintendo Switch eShop, it may still be worth taking a look at if you enjoy platformers.
Overall, Homo Machina is merely an average puzzle game with educative elements. Outside of engagement and conveyance issues, it is completely harmless without any other problems to be had. For an experience of about an hour with a price of $2.99, you could do far worse. The art style is by far the game’s biggest selling point, with everything else effectively an extra part of the package. If you are interested seeing the art in motion, it doesn’t hurt to give the game a whirl.
Overall, Prison Boss VR does a great job of making prison seem like a fun little adventure. My first few in-game days at the first prison seemed pretty straightforward and not overly challenging. Things picked up from there though and each decision I made began to feel important. I had to restart multiple times due to poor handling of my funds and my own inability to plan effectively. Each level takes around an hour to complete, depending on how many times you fail and how fast you move. In total, I’d say I spent about 7-8 hours playing this game and had a lot of fun doing so. It retails on both Steam and the PlayStation Store for just $19.99 and I think that it is more than worth picking up at that price point. If you’re looking for a quirky, fun title to pick up and play with your PSVR headset and you’ve got a pair of Move controllers handy, Prison Boss VR is certainly worth a look.
Sabbat of the Witch is my choice for the best visual novel localization of last year. It’s without a doubt a masterpiece of a story featuring a very lovely and memorable cast. Furthermore, you’re going to get your money’s worth. For clarification, the game currently sits at $29.99, and I spent well over 40 hours reading. It’s worth every penny and second. The question remains if anything will release this year that will fill me with as much joy as this one.
Moero Chronicle Hyper is an excellent port. The new features such as auto travel and HD Rumble make the experience even better than before. If you love dungeon crawlers and want to spend some quality time with amazing monster girls, this will be the best 20 bucks you ever spent on the eShop. I highly recommend it.
Sweet Sachiko’s Hysteric Birthday Bash may hold appeal to hardcore Corpse Party fans, giving the chance to see several characters from different schools meet or reunite and interact with each other. Beyond that, the story can’t figure out what it wants to be, tries to be everything, doesn’t do anything particularly well, and ends up undermining what it does right. Padded out to about 10 hours in length, it’s at least worth the $20 price tag in that regard. I’ll still play the regular Corpse Party games some time, but ultimately I took little away from this spin-off.
After playing for roughly 10ish hours, I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game. There isn’t much in the way of replay value since the game is very linear, but that’s in no way a detriment to the game. For about $4 a chapter you get 10+ hours of enjoyment per chapter. If you ask me, I’d definitely try to get into this series if you can. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some catching up to do.
Despite some quibbles and the now trademark EDF performance problems, this is a very solid arcade shooter. It builds on the strengths of past games while addressing some of the issues that have cropped up. Less of a grind for a normal playthrough with the introduction of some very engaging enemy types. If you love EDF, you’ll be sure to love this. If you’ve never played these games before, this is basically as good as it gets, so feel free to jump in here. I sunk in about 100 hours into it, though it should take probably around 40-50 to beat it. It’s $60, which is a bit on the pricey side. If you’re a fan of past EDF games, I can recommend it at that price, if you’re a newcomer, waiting for a sale might be a good idea.
All in all, most of the issues addressed above happened in the second half of the game. Vaporum almost literally felt like it lost steam the farther I progressed. Which is, personally, the most disappointing aspect. The beginning and most of the mid-section was where I had an actual wonderful time, where the later half continually soured my perception. There was definitely heart put into the project, which only serves to disappoint me even further. The game is priced at $19.99 on both Steam and Humble Bundle, whereas it’s priced at $24.99 on Switch, PS4, and Xbox One. I am not sure why there are two different price sets, but even at $19.99 I recommend for the game to go on sale before purchasing. I appreciate Fatbot Games’ attempt, especially at the beginning, but I can’t in good faith ignore the second half of the game.
I won’t say Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists ~Ateliers of the New World~ is a bad game; it’s just not a very exciting one. The game looks good and has a wonderful soundtrack, but the gameplay is just kinda boring. After around 25 hours of playtime I was totally burned out on the city building. The lack of exploration, way dumbed down alchemy and combat really hurt this one. It is wonderful to see all your favorite alchemists from previous games hanging out and having fun together. These interactions are pretty much the highlight of this game, and everything else is lacking. At $59.99 I would only pick this up if you are hardcore fan of the Atelier series. For everyone else I’d recommend you hold off for the upcoming Atelier Lulua ~The Scion of Arland~ to get that alchemy fix.
Having said all that, it’s impossible for me not to recommend Katana ZERO. Not only is it a great game, it’s a perfect example of why I have such faith in indies. For $14.99, you get a fantastic and unique action platformer with some of the most phenomenal boss fights I’ve ever experienced. Sure, it could be longer and the plot could make more sense, but it’s still a wild and satisfying ride. And when you factor in how one ending hints at a sequel, it’s very possible my minor complaints could be cleared up in the near future. I’m really happy Askiisoft and Devolver Digital brought this gem to Switch, and I can’t wait to see the next game they have up their voluminous sleeves.
I think the developers largely succeeded in achieving their vision for Rym 9000, so I don’t want to come down too hard on it. It’s not like there are any bugs or real problems with the game, the speed of the ship and the art style just really make it not a game that I enjoyed very much. The 5 stages do offer some good variety, even if the game is rather short. While it may take less than an hour to play through the game, you are very unlikely to be able to complete it until you have put in at least 5 to 10 times that amount of time. It’s hard to argue with the $7.99 price point, the game is worth it for the soundtrack alone. But if you are going to actually play the game, you may want to watch the trailers, which will give you a better idea of how the game plays than I can with screenshots or description. Even if it didn’t work overall for me, I have a lot of respect for the developers bringing a different artistic aesthetic to a very crowded genre.
All in all, I really enjoyed SteamWorld Quest. Despite the linearity and a few small issues, this is a game I can easily recommend. Even though there’s a lot of different teams you can bring to battle, there is no wrong group, though I found Copernica, Galleo and Orik were an amazing team. You can’t go wrong with amazing damage output, shields, regeneration and a magical onslaught. More than anything, I just wanted a little more of the game, though given the way it ends, I expect we may get a Quest sequel. For $24.99, you’ll get a really enjoyable RPG with a lot of customization options. If you’re a fan of Image & Form or just like deck building RPGs, you owe it to yourself to give this a shot.
By and large, Where the Bees Make Honey is more of a linear, semi-interactive series of stories than an actual game. I didn’t find any of them to be particularly engaging or meaningful, though I again take no pleasure in saying that. This is a rather short title clocking in at around 3-4 hours, but it tries to pack a lot into that short span of time. A few reviews back, I was rather preachy about the concept of games being an art form. While I don’t intend to get back up on my soapbox, I must say that I think this game was trying just a bit too hard to be artistic and different. The concept of playing through childhood memories in fantasy worlds based on them sounds great, but I feel that none of them correlated and they were way too linear. If your intention is to hearken back to the joys of being a child, then the ability to explore is very important. The gameplay was indeed varied and took on many different forms, but the execution of each (with the exception of those Fez-like levels) was very disappointing. Had the existence of constant bugs and glitches not been present, I could have justified a slightly higher score. I appreciate the great deal of effort that I’m sure went into making this title, but unless some serious revisions are made, I can’t recommend picking this one up, even at its current price point of $9.99.
At the end of the day, The World Next Door is still an incredibly unique title. Mixing fast paced battles with wonderful characters and a rather curious story, it’s a standout indie game you should be giving a look. I clocked in six hours when I culminated my playthrough. No doubt you’ll get your money’s worth in multiple runs at the base price of $14.99. A congratulations to the developer on the launch and may they learn from this to make even better games.
All in all, I spent over 15 hours going from Zama to the farthest reaches of the game’s world and back. It’s extremely ambitious for Kiro’o Games to dive into the deep end with a game of this scope right off the bat, even with the framework they built up from years prior. Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan is a game which shows tremendous heart and dedication to making a legitimately fun and beautiful game, but also some of the pitfalls of a developer’s first big title. That said, in spite of the technical issues, I do recommend playing Aurion. It’s available right now on Steam for $14.99. For those who want more of the lore behind the game, there is also a comic which delves deeper into the game’s events.
If one were to judge Neo Atlas 1469 on its title and cover art alone, it might be tempting to categorize it as just a generic eShop title. That couldn’t be further from the truth, though. In my roughly 27.5 hours playing though it, I found it to be a very enjoyable and entrancing game. The core gameplay was admittedly a bit repetitive at times and lacked much difficulty, but I found myself on multiple occasions thinking “just five more minutes” only to find myself saying the same thing five minutes later. With its procedurally generated world mapping system, it’s weird clashes of different styles, and its ability to prey upon my completionist instincts, I walked away feeling very satisfied. Without having paid the full $49.99 price tag myself, it’s hard to say if that is a reasonable price or not. What I can say is that this is one of the more unique titles that I’ve played in a good while and it offers a great deal of replayability. Everyone has different tastes, but if you enjoy mapping things out or playing games that involve a fair bit of micromanagement, this one’s worth taking a look at.
Is this an EDF game that EDF fans will enjoy? Honestly, I ended up feeling fairly disappointed. Which is a shame because I think there are a lot of neat ideas here. Weapons feel rather underpowered across the board, and enemies just have far too much health for their own good. Couple this with incredibly annoying AI, and it’s just a very frustrating experience. Suffice to say, it’s pretty lackluster compared to the mainline EDF titles. The game took me 10 hours to beat, though I put about a total of 30 into it with harder difficulties. At a $60 price tag, I can’t really recommend it. A sale might make this a more tempting offer. Overall, if you’re looking for a good EDF game, I’d give this a pass and look into the mainline titles instead.
In the end, I did enjoy Yoshi’s Crafted World, though that was never really in doubt. But unfortunately, in many ways Yoshi’s Crafted World felt like a step back from Woolly World, which in many ways felt like the better game. It’s far from bad, and even is challenging enough that I died a handful of times, but it just felt like it was playing things too safe. It might be better if I had tried the two player mode, though I tend to doubt that would have influenced me much. For $59.99, I do feel you’ll get your money’s worth, as I easily spent 10 hours beating it and many more trying to unlock everything. But your mileage may vary for how motivated you feel to unlock everything the game has to offer. If you’re a fan of Yoshi, I’d say it’s worth buying, but if not, you may want to try another Switch platformer.