Pembroke_Watts

Future Redeemed, similar to Torna the golden country, delivers a new campaign that has the size of many 60-70$ games. Unlike Torna, which artificially pads its playtime by forcing you to do most sidequests before completing the game, future redeemed allows you to experience the story without any roadblocks, while also highly encouraging you to do side content through the new affinity system. Although a prequel to the main game, fr manages to tell a new story that manages to connect all three games, and alludes to the end of the trilogy and what the future holds for the series. Unfortunately, this story also highly requires that you have played all three Xenoblade games, so it is hard to recommend this game without having played all 3 games. However, if you are a fan of the series, this expansion is well worth it.

The original game already looked quite good even today, but this remaster makes the original look completely outdated in comparison. Retro did not simply upscale the textures, but rebuilt everything almost entirely from scratch, to include more polygons, better lighting, and more effects. There is also a bunch of control customization, including the original gamecube and wii controls, as well as a more traditional dual-stick layout. This is probably the most effort any Nintendo remaster had recently.

Before playing Death Stranding, most of the opinions I had heard about the game were negative, but it quickly became one of my favorite games of all time. The gameplay is like no other game. Overall, I would say the closest thing I can compare it to are open-world survival games, but it is still quite different. Your goal is to deliver packages, and at first, your only option is walking over extremely rough terrain, where a misstep can send you rolling down a hill, destroying your packages. However, as you progress, you unlock more options, like structures, vehicles, or tools that make traversing easier. At the same time, you also have to make more and larger deliveries, over bigger areas. Furthermore, as you progress through games, structures from other players will start to appear, which adds a great social aspect to the game. The game also has an incredible soundtrack and story.

This is the ultimate smash experience. Compared to brawl and smash for Wii U, this game feels faster and more responsive, while also allowing casual players to have fun. As a single-player, this game has quite a lot to offer, but smash truly excels when you play with friends, locally or online. Although online can **** at times, feeling like you are playing from a TI-84 if one of the players has a bad connection, from my experience, more often than not, I can play online with not much lag.

This game is a great new original 2d Metroid after almost 20 years. It combines what made the older 2d Metroid games great, while removing some of the flaws. Furthermore, new welcome additions were added that expand Samus’ movement options. The game felt a bit difficult, but always fair, and finishing a boss fight felt like an accomplishment. My only complaints about the game are that the music at times felt bland, and for some boss fights, it might be hard to determine how well you are doing, as there are no visible health bars. For the first playthrough, it took me a bit over 8 hours to finish the game, but this game has great replayability, as there are some sequence breaks, that can completely alter the way you experience the game the second time around. This game is one of the best on the switch, and I would definitely recommend it.

Samus Returns is a great reimagination of the original that is not afraid to diverge from the source material. The bosses are extremely challenging and it feels very rewarding to beat them, especially on the Fusion difficulty. Even the Metroid bosses feel different each time you fight them. Furthermore, the new Aion abilities add an extra layer of depth to the combat. However, the regular enemies deal a bit too much damage on Fusion difficulty, which can make the gameplay a bit frustrating at times. The map layout and area themes are well done, but I personally think that AM2R did it better. Additionally, on the original 3DS, the game can run a bit slow at times, especially with the 3D on.

The story and especially the voice acting is so bad, that at times it can be funny. Everyone sounds like they were reading the script at 3 am for the first time while trying to not wake up anyone. The plot sounds interesting, but the way it's told is atrocious. The game doesn't understand "show, don't tell". Instead, the game feels the need to overexplain things through Samus' inner monologue. Furthermore, the character of Samus in this game does not match at all with her character from the other games. This character could have maybe worked better as an origin story, but this game is supposed to take place close to the end of the timeline. On the other hand, the gameplay is at least not that bad. The game is incredibly linear, even when compared to more linear Metroid games, the camera is locked, and the controls are extremely clunky and were probably made by the same people who made the n64 controller. Despite that, there were moments when I thought the game was entertaining, particularly with some boss fights, although I would rather have the gameplay of any other mainline Metroid/Metroid prime game. Furthermore, the game didn't have any major bugs, and the visuals of the prerendered cutscenes looked good.

I found the gameplay to be lacking. The combat is fun but has little depth, and after a while, it felt a bit repetitive. The soundtrack is not at all memorable, and I disliked much of the side content. Nonetheless, I liked the plot, and was mostly what kept me interested throughout.

One of the best games in the franchise. The game focuses more on the narrative, at the expense of being more linear. However, don't let that mislead you, the game still has many moments where you can explore and find the way to the next objective by yourself.

This game is definitely a fresh take on a repetitive formula. The main focus of the game is on collecting pokemon, and it does that better than pretty much any other game in the series. However, it also at times feels like you are play-testing an upcoming title. For one, the graphics look like something from 20 years ago. Furthermore, the main plot could be improved by voice acting. However, many vital features like online battles are completely missing.

A great remake that reimagines the original game without the strict limitations of the NES. Additional powerups, structure, and controls bring the remake closer to the standards set by Super Metroid, while the additional content in the game provides additional lore and increases the playtime of the game. If you are a completionist, getting all of the end screens can be quite hard and annoying.

One of the best video game collections. The games have aged almost perfectly, and are still some of the best games in their genre. Furthermore, for Wii/Gamecube-era games, their graphics surprisingly hold up.

Although this game took a lot of controversial decisions, at its core, it's still a Pokemon game. if you liked the previous games in this series, you are probably going to enjoy this game.

This game is awesome, although a bit short. The blade combat is extremely satisfying, especially with the blade mode, which slows down time and gives you precise control of your sword, and allows you to do a lot of damage! Unfortunately, the combat is not very deep and customizable. It works for a game as short as this one, but if the game was any longer, the combat would probably feel stale. The worst aspect of the game however is the camera control, which at times can be a huge inconvenience. On the other hand, the ost is not only amazing but also perfectly fits the action of the game. Lastly, the story is quite fun, although it many times assumes that you know the story of the other games.

Xenoblade 3 takes what made the previous games great (music, story, exploration, combat, etc.) while avoiding the mistakes of its predecessors(bad tutorials, weird art style, unnatural dialogue, etc.).

It takes two and consists of a sequence of different stages where you and your partner have to solve many challenges to progress through the game. In each stage, a new mechanic is introduced, which in theory prevents the gameplay from becoming stale. However, not all mechanics are created equally, with some just being there to fill time. In addition, for a lot of stages, the game does a lot of handholding, and overall, the game never really provides a hard challenge. The story starts good, but later on, it only serves to make up new rules and poor excuses to extend the length of a stage/game. On a more positive note, the game has many fun minigames that allow you to compete against your partner. Overall, it takes two has a lot of fun parts, but despite only being only 10-15 hours long, it feels like it drags on forever.

As my first souls game, I wasn't sure if I was going to like Elden ring or not. However, after playing it, I can confidently say that this game is one of the best I've played. This is one of the few games where dying does not feel frustrating but fun. Furthermore, the game allows for huge playstyle customizability. On the other hand, I found the story to be uninteresting. In addition, there is no quest log, which in my opinion makes the experience of doing sidequests worse. Lastly, the pc performance can be laggy, but not to a degree that it makes the game harder or unplayable. Despite some minor flaws, I would recommend this game to even newcomers.

Originally, as a fan of the first Xenoblade, I was not sure if I should even play the game. It has some big flaws, like a slow start, bad tutorials, and horrible visual character designs, but the good parts of the game were so good, that despite all the issues that would completely ruin any other game, I was still able to enjoy this game. Gameplay-wise, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 follows a similar philosophy as the first game, but with a lot of changes, that make the gameplay feel like a new experience. One of my main issues with JRPG’s is that a lot of times, you will need to grind, especially if you are focused on the main story. However, in this game, you almost never need to do that. Even if you are under-leveled it always feels like you have a fighting chance. Unlike the first game, where enemies that are more than 5 levels above you feel impossible to beat without special items, in this game you can be quite behind in levels compared to the enemy, but if you have developed your blade affinity charts and have ok items, it always feels like you have a chance, by making slight changes to your strategy. Furthermore, even if you are the type of player that tends to do every single side quest before fighting the first boss, you will not be significantly overleaved, as part of your exp is stored as bonus exp, that doesn’t add up to your actual exp, and can be consumed in inns. Essentially you have control over your level. Lastly, with the addition of challenge land with the DLC, the game truly tests your understanding of the mechanics, and you are encouraged to come out of your comfort zone and use different setups. Sound design: xc2 has probably my favourite soundtrack of any game. The music always matched up to the area you were travelling, or the boss you were trying to face. And then there are tracks like drifting souls, which are true masterpieces (speaking of drifting, Nintendo, pls fix joy-con drift). Lastly, although the voice acting starts off bad, and improves later on (the screaming of the main protagonist remains bad until the final 5 minutes of the game, unfortunately), the Bri’ish accents are refreshing, compared to the more commonly used American voice acting in other video games, and give help differentiate between the different races. Story: Without spoiling much, the story starts slowly, and has a lot of cringe scenes, which can be a turn off for a lot of players, focusing mainly on developing the characters. But by the end, I felt like this was one the best stories in any game, worthy of being a sequel to Xenoblade Chronicles. While the first game focused mostly and developing the main character, xc2 does a great job of developing the story of all characters of your party, which made me much more interested in the story of the game, and how their characters arc concluded. Conclusion: This game has some flaws that can potentially push off a lot of people, but for my money, this is the best game I have ever played. I would recommend this game to fans of long JRPG’S, and especially people who like the first Xenoblade.

In breath of the wild, you have the freedom to play the way you want. If you choose, you can go the final area as soon as you finish the great plateau, or you can spend 300 hours exploring every single corner of the map. Every playthrough will be different, as the game does not have a strictly linear way of progressing through the story. Lastly, you always have quite a few options on how to approach each fight, with no clearly superior choice, which makes the combat extremely creative.

Easily one of the best indie and Metroidvania games. If you like games like Metroid, I would definitely recommend this game. The game can be quite challenging at times as well. However, hollow knight is not perfect. The shop system in the game in my opinion is not that good, as you will have to go back and forth between shops quite often, which adds quite a bit of unnecessary backtracking.

This game feels less like a Xenoblade game, and more similar to open-world games like a breath of the wild. Xenoblade Chronicles X focuses more on exploration and side content and puts less emphasis on the story. Despite the differences with the other games in the franchise, this game is still amazing. Unfortunately, some things that this game shares with its siblings is a bad early game. The tutorials of this game mostly consist of textboxes that tell you of new features but do not really go into detail. Therefore, it is kinda hard to understand all the mechanics of the game. But once you get the hang of it, the gameplay is extremely satisfying.

Portal 2 takes what made the first game great, and adds new refreshing mechanics, and a fun story and characters.

Portal is a simple yet brilliant game. Would definitely recommend this game to anyone, especially considering how cheap you can find it on steam.

One of the best expansions to any game. If you liked the base game, you should definitely play this next. As a warning, make sure to do many side quests as you go, as you need to have completed a certain amount of side quests in order to progress through the main story.

This version takes what was already a great game, and improves the graphics while adding welcome quality of life improvements, that makes scrolling through the menus and customizing your setup much more comfortable and quicker. Furthermore, a new epilogue story is added that expands on the story of a few other characters. The extra story should take a bit more than 10 hours to fully complete, however, you start at a high level, which makes you feel like you are simply continuing where you left off after you finish the main game, instead of starting over the beginning.

Both the single-player and multiplayer modes are great. Different weapons add great variety to the gameplay. One negative is that the maps and game modes change every two hours, so you might not be able to play the map/game mode you want.

Skyward sword could potentially be a solid game. Unfortunately, it is often held back from the wii motion controls, which sometimes are not responsive to your actions.

Mario’s movement and control have never felt so fluid. Unfortunately, the game rarely ever challenges you to use any of the movement skills you learn during the game. Most of the time, you will spend your time simply collecting moons that are just waiting for you to pick them up, without providing much of a challenge. Nevertheless, this game can be fun to play at times, and the capture system, which allows you to hijack and control various enemies with different move sets is a fun mechanic that is used well in the game.