FanOfFanservice

(First time player didn’t play the original) Honestly a 7.5 but I’ll round up since I was able to get through with no issues. The obvious stuff, beautiful looking, water physics are amazing, naval combat is really fun, plenty of exploration. The story is like a C- where it doesn’t focus enough on the assassins, Creed aspect or it doesn’t focus enough on the pirate aspect. It does a middle ground too much and feels awkward and unsatisfied at the end. The demon gloom is a nice touch of reality, but also wish there was a little bit more flow; by the end when he has his kid on the boat, I was like where the hell did this kid come from? Parkour, annoying sometimes because he would stop in the flow would just be so guttered, but on the other time, it was be nice still. Combat had issues were targeting would always Target the distant person, and that would really be annoying during large combat scenes Lots of immersion breaking things, like when you’re fighting multiple ships and one stops to wait for you to take over another ship is just kind of weird, and how he takes his hood off during every scene. I was most annoyed by that fact and feature, even though it was so tiny, it was yet another crumb of mediocrity that this game kinda offered (easy option of just put the hood back up when out of cutting scenes, sure it’s one button, but I hate doing it every single time)

(Played on hard; 28 hours)Combat-felt like old school Zelda but updated in all the right ways without sacrificing anything good. -bosses were super enjoyable and got pretty challenging at times. They had the AOE mechanics like FFXIV.Story -it was a cozy 8 and then the true ending journey brought it to 10; the last fight was beyond epic imo, especially if you keep retrying. Don’t want to spoil anything but you’re in for a treat if you like time traveling stories. -the time traveling was very grounded and felt authentic to this setting and theme. The main hub area would always change for the era making me feel immersed in time traveling. The other parts can have the features staying simpler throughout eras but tbh I had so much fun killing stuff and collecting things. Game design -graphics and style was great, artwork was impeccable. Sometimes the cast seems to hit the only 20 look but that’s fine, better than 16 lmao. -music is outstanding and really goes hard. Orchestral music at its finest. -plenty of weapons and equip-able mod pieces that can make weapons feel powerful and unique, accessories were good too and added some variety in gameplay too. Before true ending 8/10True, true ending 10/10

Man did i thoroughly enjoy this. It’s definitely challenging but it’s not as punishing or rigid as og dark souls. Imo 100% recommend. This world is super unique and well thought out. The simplicity of the dialogue and the different points of the journey for Mina are fresh yet familiar; like in the main hub town of Ossex and various towns in the surrounding area who you’re helping restore the spark generators. There’s a nice build up and it’s well told imo. - it’s $20, so cheap- Modifiers are an option; making it as easy or difficult as you want. (I went unmodified and felt like it was hard but not too bad )- Controls are tight; burrowing is a nice alternative to the dodge roll we’re used to in 3D games, gives a lot of paths you can take while fighting.  Might take a second to get used to, but once you got it it’s really fun. - Open world (like Zelda but not restricted to one way, although one is suggested for us)- Plenty of rest areas and breaks between. That said sometimes you can have an area or two with longer stretches but seriously it felt very considerate for the player. The “repeat over and over” dark souls moment only happened right at the end for me basically.- Good platforming portions. Very difficult at times but never excessive. - A lot of variation through weapons, accessories/trinkets, side weapons- Charming Zelda on Gameboy feel. There are some puzzle like aspects to expiration per se. - Unique bosses; give a lot of variety to the difficulty. Although towards the end, some of the bosses gave me a lot more challenge, but I still obviously made it through. - npc dialogue is funny and has that classic old school vibe.

Ys X is a competent action RPG with solid production values, but it ultimately ended up feeling pretty average to me despite some strong qualities. The game runs extremely well with no noticeable stuttering or technical issues. Visually, the color saturation and overall presentation look good, and the story starts off with a unique premise centered around the game’s two-faction conflict. The combat system is well-crafted and enjoyable for much of the adventure, while the addition of naval combat helps add some variety. I also appreciated that the DLC is included and that there are at least a few cosmetic options, particularly the Raven avatar and Karja costume. The Grieger are one of the more interesting aspects of the narrative. Their origins and relationship to humanity give them a fantasy spin on ideas that might otherwise feel like standard zombie enemies. Unfortunately, many of the game’s strengths begin to wear thin over time. One of my biggest issues is the extremely limited party system. You only ever have two permanent party members, which makes progression and combat feel less dynamic than other RPGs. Costume options are also surprisingly limited outside of DLC and simple color variants. The story starts strong but gradually loses momentum around the middle chapters and never fully recovers. By the end, it felt like the plot had plateaued and was simply going through the motions. Without spoiling anything, I finished the game feeling as though very little had actually happened despite the length of the adventure. Combat, while enjoyable initially, becomes repetitive due to the lack of party variety and enemy diversity. Exploration suffers from similar issues. Sailing the ocean sounds exciting at first, but eventually becomes little more than traveling from Point A to Point B. The environments lack enough visual variety, making many islands and locations blend together. By the final dungeon, I was actively bored by both the visuals and level design. The final dungeon itself feels heavily padded, and the ending boss fight was one of the weaker parts of the game. Rather than presenting an interesting challenge, it relies heavily on area-of-effect attacks that felt more frustrating than engaging. Thankfully, the game includes accessibility options that allow players to reduce enemy difficulty. I also found the Grieger’s role in the story increasingly frustrating. They’re presented as this overwhelming force, yet they spend so much time manipulating the protagonists instead of acting directly that it eventually starts feeling contrived. What I would have liked to see:* More party members.* Greater costume and customization options.* Cosmetic armor systems similar to Xenoblade Chronicles.* Older protagonists instead of another cast of teenagers.* Character creation, although I understand that would fundamentally change the Ys formula.* More meaningful exploration with unique rewards, weapons, armor, and visual customization tied to discovery.Overall, Ys X has enough quality and polish to remain enjoyable, but its repetitive combat, limited party system, weak late-game pacing, and lack of exploration variety kept it from being anything more than average for me. It starts with promise but loses steam as it progresses, leaving me with a final impression **** that is serviceable rather than memorable.

Combat: While it’s technically turn-based, it relies heavily on a parry/reflex system. Once you master that, strategy, planning, and meaningful choices matter a lot less. It feels more reaction-based than tactical.Progression: Characters feel mostly pre-built, with limited room to experiment or create unique builds. Party development ends up feeling shallow.Exploration: The world is big and looks nice, but there’s very little dungeon depth, risk/reward, or mechanics to make exploration engaging.Story / presentation: The art is appealing, but environments don’t feel very tangible. The story felt more self-serious than emotionally engaging, and the music didn’t really stick with me. I just don’t think it’s the genre-defining turn-based JRPG some people are calling it. Totally fine if you loved it—this is just why it didn’t fully land for me.

Overall, the game itself is good and has its great and amazing moments, however, some things did tack on some negative points that made it not as masterpiece worthy. The world itself looks amazing. All the environments have very detailed and lush, lighting and contrast and a lot of environmental things going on. The bosses felt challenging and most of the enemies were fun to fight, but the grievers brought the most challenge and felt like the space pirates in previous primes. The edition of characters brought an interesting element where at first it wasn’t really super bad and I didn’t get all the intense vitreal that some of these characters supposedly garnered. They only felt a little bit heavy-handed more towards the end of the game, where I just was sort of like why are you guys talking so much and it almost sounds like Marvel movie aspects so that was kind of offputting with the whole ambience that Metroid gives off usually. Then there was one point of where you had to collect these green crystals and that felt a little grinding, but it wasn’t super boring, but it wasn’t like the most fun I’ve had in the game that’s for sure. The final battle gave a real good challenge and was a perfect amount of gameplay because I was like almost ready to just put it away, but I wanted it to be over and it was like right there so I kept going and the last time I did it I didn’t really take much damage so it was nice; should also add that they added checkpoints to the different stages because there’s three parts of the final battle which added a nice cushion because the first phase takes so long. With all that said though it was a really fun and enjoyable game that I would recommend any Metroid fan, but for the developers something I would say is that either Samus needs to talk in the next game or we need to go back to the more stoic kind of bounty Hunter vibes where her comrades/villains could be more what Sylux was; because I imagined where you replace all the other characters and make them more in the style of Samus or Sylux.

Imagine if Mario kart, Mario party, and super smash Bros had a baby that would be this game. Definitely a chaotic casual game at its **** way I look at it is this game is like your firstglass of beer, it’s weird at first and takes a little getting used to, but you grow to actually love it a lot more than you thought initially. You really have to kind of go with the flow, kill everything in your way, and work on how you feel best when turning and moving around the course without losing speed.City trial is a really cool unique game mode that has a lot of variety and if you don’t take yourself too seriously it is a lot of fun. There is a ranked feature in a quick match for online so you can have that more serious tone or totally nonchalant. The story was awesome. New game plus is really cool. The only thing I really am still getting to appreciate is the top down races but they still are fun. So many characters and they all have unique abilities the stars/machines all have unique characteristics to them that make them all play very differently, which gives you a lot more choice. The only thing possibly holding it back from a 10 out of 10 is that itsort of recycles super smash Bros content in terms of UI and sound effects but with that doesn’t ruin it it just doesn’t make it fully unique. Also, the online has some room for improvement, but it’s really good still.

For a warriors game fan, definitely a must play. For a Zelda fan (BOTW and TOTK fans too) it’s a must play. Plays similar to Age of Calamity but so much better and cleaned up. The combat is so fluid and seamless. Lots of new characters that are equally fun to play as and make the combat super interesting since you often want to switch characters to level up. Everything looks so crispy and the colorful-saturated environment and characters/monsters look really good compared to even the og totk/botw. One gripe at 8 hours I could see someone saying is that all the characters start use same weapons (sword/1H, great sword/2H, spear, bow) but bow only has1 at this point. But with that, they’re all so cool and like give the essence of a lot of background story that gives this lore so much life and depth. Ancient history of hyrule really pulls back the curtain to see how the “formula” can be symbolically used in many ways that correlate to our way of looking at the past games characters being involved in the role they find themselves in wherever hyrule they are in. But truly as someone who likes the formula for warriors games time to time, this game scratches that itch and also is a great installment in the series of Zelda as it is filling in cannon story from tears of the kingdom. Switch 2 games now are showing that seamless 60 fps is possible and this game keeps that stride going.

Haven’t played Pokémon since Sword/Shield and before that it was the gameboy games. So I’m an old school fan that isn’t buying every iteration. So to those who do buy every game, this isn’t your review. This game is strictly more focused on a fun time imo. The story is engaging enough but not groundbreaking or super climactic which is nice imo since sometimes I need a game I can just play. The action combat feels like the perfect upgrade to the turn based system while still keeping that simple old school feel. Yes the environmental graphics and overall feel isn’t pushing the limit but it’s not as bad as people say; I don’t play Pokémon for the realism or intense graphics, it’s the fun and nostalgia tied to it. I’m 30 hours in and haven’t finished but if you’re curious and have a switch 2, definitely get this, especially if you’re like me and a Pokémon fan and need to scratch that itch for a good time rather than super dramatic storytelling/world building that can make you lose focus of what games are meant to be, FUN!

Below is my frustrations I had and are valid but I did find the answer. Since I did I do like the game a lot since it is basically one of the og fanservice games. Love me some good Shantae battles and exploration since it’s a comfy fun time. This game is a lot more difficult than the newer ones since I’ve played both of those but QoL goes a long way. There’s another tomb (gray stone frame, not dungeon and not cave) to the left of Naga Cliffs entrance and you need to go to into the background and press button to switch foreground and then go back in foreground and climb up to next door to background to go top of hill with tomb. Was going great and enjoying it a lot until after found the second relic hunter and she asked for pumice. Googled and found I need the elephant transformation and I can’t for the life of me find it. I’ve scoured and resorted to googling and totally ruin the pacing. Not even sure I’ll finish now or even want to buy the other Shantae games again. No in level maps to track location and found items/caves also really makes it a slog and with the stated issue of one specific item holding me back is funny but very sad because it’s so infuriating and frustrating to the point where I have to stop or I might have a heart attack ngl

I Want to rate higher because graphics, combat and exploration is amazing. Commander Honglan ruins the experience for me atm. I am reminded of Stellar Blade and how the difficulty never spiked this aggressively. Please fix these types of fights as I want to enjoy the game but I hate dying 300 times just to finally win; such a poor pacing issue that makes this first playthrough tedious because of how weak we are. (If there is a new game+ even) Got to phase two now without taking any damage really and I keep dying again. I am lowering score from 7 to 6 because this game has the workings of a 8-9 but these mechanics with the bosses halts progress with artificial difficulty that feels rewarding only briefly because you’ll have the same experience with the next boss. Definitely a game for die hard souls fan and really no one else.

Game is poorly optimized, have to put settings on low and it still doesn’t run that great. The story is written with AI and the voice acting is done with AI; making it very tasteless and lacking true depth. The gameplay boils down to this: you start on floor 9 and work your way up, to say floor 5, if you die you go back to floor 9. Pair that rinse and repeat with a generic, dark, black and yellow/grey color scheme throughout that also looks poorly done (looking up at the sky and I’m like oh that looks terrible for one example). The combat isn’t super polished and not satisfying for me. I love stellar blade but this game is not even in the same ballpark let alone the same state. I wish I could get a refund.

(62 hour playtime) Such a fantastic fun time. The battles start out pretty easy for the first half of the game, but halfway and on its a fun time sensitive combat system. I would say the only things I would've like to improve this is having cosmetic weapons and costumes (would've loved to run around as Wario and Waluigi), extra playable party members (was really hoping Peach would join us personally), and voice acted dialogue could help too. Otherwise there are also pretty funny parts where I literally lol'd a little at times. It did have some pacing issues and seemed to kinda drag out but I had fun.