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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.
I have no complaints about this game. There is perhaps room for improvement in a sequel, but this is a masterpiece. It’s extremely unlikely that there will be a game to come out this year that will unseat this game for my game of the year. Of course, as a Soulsborne fan, that was a likely outcome. But even I was surprised at how well this turned out. Honestly it is pushing on Bloodborne to take my favorite FromSoftware game. But time will tell, I do still have 2 more endings to go before I have the Platinum trophy. For my first time through, exploring absolutely everything and defeating every single boss and mini-boss available, it took me just over 60 hours. Of course, the game can be finished in much less time than that if you know exactly where you are going and you don’t take the time to farm all the materials for every Prosthetic Tool upgrade (except two which will require NG+ to get more Lapus Lazuli). Either way that is a whole lot of game for the $59.99 asking price. I would have easily payed double for the game. But if difficult games are not for you, or if you are totally turned off by being a ninja, then this may not even be a game for you no matter the price. The game is punishing, but for those with the courage to put in the time and effort, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice will reward you for it.
Overall, I really enjoyed 428: Shibuya Scramble. The story is excellent; incredibly engaging, getting my very emotionally invested in all the characters especially as things ramped up in the later hours. The writing style perfectly combines seriousness and occasional lighthearted jokes when appropriate, making it enjoyable even during relative downtime. None of the main characters stand out as particularly weaker than the others, and each of their stories carries the same weight and quality all the way throughout the game. That’s a long way, too; completing everything took me just shy of 50 hours, with just playing through until the end of the epilogue taking just over 40 hours. Even though it’s on the longer side, it still kept me fully engaged through all of it, and is definitely worth the $49.99 USD, having easily earned the respect it has among visual novels. If you’re at all interested in visual novels, mystery and detective stories, or you just want something exciting and different (there’s even a demo on PS4 if you don’t want to take the full plunge right away), I can’t recommend 428: Shibuya Scramble highly enough.
By the time the credits rolled, I had spent about 4 and a half hours and gotten 80+ deaths in Mechstermination Force. While I rather enjoyed it overall, there were some features that held it back from perfection. And also, though the final boss is beyond epic, it too suffered from the same complaints I had about earlier battles. But for the base package, I feel you get a lot for your money. My main frustration is that once it’s over, there’s nothing left to do, other than trying to beat the bosses without taking damage to acquire medals. Thankfully I’m not quite that masochistic, so I think I’ll pass. That said, for $11.99 it’s easy to recommend to fans of hardcore games, though I can’t say the same applies to those who identify as more casual gamers. But if you love giant robots and are up for a challenge, Mechstermination Force is the game for you!
Overall, National Park Girls is a unique must-read experience. My only problem is the length as I find myself wanting to read more and felt that where it ended was a bit anti-climactic. However, my interest is at a high and I’m counting the days until the next episode comes out. National Park Girls is out now on Steam for $4.99, and after clocking 100 minutes in this adventure I can say it’s worth every penny.
Overall, the Braveland Trilogy is very middling as far as quality is concerned. Each game is not bad by any stretch of the imagination, just not compelling. For fans of the genre, each game can serve as an okay distraction while on the go, where each adventure ranges from three to five hours of total playtime. There is also the option to duel with friends, but unfortunately I was unable to test this feature out. However, for $14.99, it’s perhaps wise to wait for it to go on sale before purchasing. Best of luck to Tortuga Team in any future endeavors, as they can easily improve on what is established here.
All in all if you own the PlayStation 4 version of this you can get the new content via DLC, so you’ll probably want to skip this. If you don’t own the PlayStation 4 version, are a huge Girls Und Panzer fan, or just want to play it on the go, this is a great option for you. It does come at steeper price than usual with an import running $72.99 on the Switch. You can snag this on PlayStation 4 from Play-Asia for much less at $38.99. In the end, no matter which version of this you buy I think you’ll have a lot of fun and I do recommend anyone that is a fan of the series or that loves tank combat games to check it out.
Considered as a whole, Blaster Master Zero 2 is another fantastic offering from Inti Creates. It did enough to differentiate itself from the first adventure while innovating in mostly successful new directions. Furthermore, I really grew to love the characters in the game, both old and new. If Eve wasn’t a top tier waifu before, just wait until you get the True Ending. My only real complaints were how a couple elements weren’t clearly explained and how beating the game with the best ending didn’t seem to unlock anything. Given how beating the first unlocked New Game+ and other modes, this was a bit of a letdown. But even taking that into consideration, I can wholeheartedly recommend this game. At $9.99, I got more than nine hours of gameplay from it. Blaster Master Zero 2 is a hell of a steal for any fan of retro, Inti Creates or just a Switch owner looking for a system exclusive. Now to bide my time and hope we get some DLC with some new MA pilots in the near future!
Under One Wing is a journey through the skies like no other. Harmorise carefully crafted each and every detail of this game to create an overall outstanding experience, and with the help of Sol Press fans got to experience it just a bit quicker. The lack of a thought-provoking and memorable overall story keeps it from being one of the all-time greats. It’s still a very different story from the ones on the market right now, and one of the best releases early on this year. I clocked in at 28.4 hours mostly running the game on auto and reading all the routes. A worthwhile experience for your time and wallet.
The aspect of the game that held me back from loving it the most was really the lack of variety in shot types. Three different types that can only be upgraded twice is quite underwhelming. Most other space shooters that have that few of different types and upgrades at least have other space ships that change the shape of the shots at least. I do like the burst idea and the progression system is also innovative (although not without precedent). So I would still overall recommend this game for hardcore fans of the genre, and the 5-8 hours I spent with it more than made the $19.99 price worth it. But I cannot recommend this game to casual fans of the genre, you are likely to get your face smashed in. There is no doubt that it is beautiful in the visual and sound department, though, so at least check out some gameplay footage to see if it’s right for you.
I went into Summer Lesson: Hikari Miyamoto pretty blind just to see how someone would feel after importing it on a whim. I expected a game filled with fan-service and interesting uses of PSVR’s interactive controls. While it definitely lived up to both of those expectations, I was also quite pleased to find that the gameplay itself was both solid and incredibly complex (in a good way). My main point of frustration came from the subtitles which were very hit or miss. Sometimes they would be slightly out of sync with Hikari’s spoken lines and other times they would simply not be present at all. There are also points where being too close to Hikari will hide the subtitles from your view. These annoyances were minor though and I didn’t lose too much sleep over them. In the end, I spent somewhere in the ballpark of 10-12 hours playing. A single playthrough takes around 45 minutes to complete, but you won’t be able to see all of the Second Feel events or attain a high rating in just one playthrough. I found myself wishing for more content, but in the end I was still very happy with what was presented. The game’s $59.99 price tag may seem a little steep for what’s included, but it offers a type of experience that you’ll be hard-pressed find anywhere else. For those who don’t mind a language barrier, there’s also a 3-in-1 release which is only $10 more and includes Hikari, Allison, and Chisato’s routes (albeit with none of the DLC). Any way you slice it, this one’s worth picking up even if only for the sake of curiosity.
Overall, I found The Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibbia to be a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, the main focus of the game was on the boss fights and those were handled exceptionally well. While the difficulty will certainly seem daunting to some people (myself included), I can’t fault the game or the developers for making it hard as nails. After all, that’s really the point of such a title. On the other hand, I found the other big piece of the game, the story, to be somewhat lacking and deserving of more content. At the risk of assuming too much, I think that the boss fights were likely created first and the story was added as an afterthought. Some players may not care about this as much, but I was slightly disappointed nonetheless. Using a heavy dosage of macros to crawl through the later boss fights, I was able to clear the game in around 15 hours. I’ve seen people on Steam claiming that the game took them only a few hours to complete, but I see no way that those claims hold water. Even with macros, there are ten boss fights and all but a few require a great deal of trial and error to beat. Because the story was lacking, I can’t give this game a perfect score. What I can say though is that it’s certainly worth your consideration if you’re a masochist or just really enjoy interesting shooters. With its regular price on Steam set at just $14.99, The Textorcist is certainly worth picking up and trying for yourself.
Fate/EXTELLA LINK proves that sometimes little tweaks can make a huge difference in a game. The combat here is so much better than in the previous game. It’s much faster and far more fluid. The new mission objectives make the stages feel alive and ever changing. Last but not least, the soundtrack here is one the best I’ve heard in a long time. At its $49.99 price tag, you get about 15 hours of story missions and a slew of extra missions that unlock while you’re progressing through the story. If you are a fan of the Fate series, this is a must own title. The characters and story alone are well worth the price of admission here. If you love Musou games, this might be the best of one of this generation. This game did what a good sequel should do, it improved on the first game in every way possible and I cannot wait to see what’s in store for this series down the line.
Regardless of how many people you play the game with, a match of BATTLLOON generally takes less than 5 minutes, or possibly up to 7 minutes. As such, I was able to encounter all the features of the game in less than an hour, spread across two different play sessions. While that may dismay some, since usually more content is always a good thing, I still think that’s fair for a game that only costs $6.99 on Switch. If you think that’s too much, I suppose you could always wait for a sale. That said, I was mostly pretty pleased with the game. It may not be the strongest UNTIES title to date, but it’s a lot of simple fun for a low price. Sure, I wish it had a bit more content, and it seems a huge missed opportunity it doesn’t have online play, but this could still be a fantastic party game when played with drinks and a group of close friends. If you’re looking for a relaxing and colorful title, then BATTLLOON might just be for you.
Killer7 is a game that defies convention at every turn. Nothing it does ever feels by the books, sometimes it seems to deliberately break certain “rules” just for the sake of breaking them. It’s a shooter, but it does things so differently from other shooters, its hard to really put it in the same category. The game oozes style in all aspects. If you’re in the mood for something that’s astonishingly unique, it’s really hard to go wrong with this game. It’s $20 on Steam, a single playthrough will last about 15 hours, and there’s extra modes you can unlock to play around with for added value. It’s well worth the money and certainly worth your time.
I feel like RemiLore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore is a must buy title for fans of hack-n-slash and rogue-like games. This game combines both in one flawless package and plays just as good as it looks. The story and writing here are both very high quality and will have you laughing out loud at the character’s antics in no time. My only complaint is having to restart the entire level when dying on a stage but this is a very minor beef with such a great package. If you have a sweet tooth for a solid game on your Nintendo Switch, RemiLore will certainly satisfy your craving.
Elli is the textbook definition of a simplistic platformer. While nothing was overly outstanding, it was just fun. If you can ignore the plot holes and plain soundtrack, it’ll definitely be a treat for the gameplay alone. However, it’s just not right now as the game is priced at $19.99 USD, and I clocked in eight hours from start to finish. In conclusion, please consider picking this up during a sale to get the most out of your dollar.
That being said, I still feel what the game does right by far outshines its flaws. If you’re looking for something different that is a bit darker than your average JRPG, I would highly recommend you pick this game up today. You will not regret it, and while I can compare certain aspects of it to other titles, there is really nothing else like this out there today. I spent about 30 hours on one run and quite a bit more to get the other endings via New Game+. This one is well worth the $59.99 price tag, just be prepared for a rough ride and be sure to save often. Death is around every corner and you will be re;Questing a lot!