Poochingus

This game is almost average. Gamefreak still has a long way to go to justify their literally biggest media franchise in the world budget. What this game did right is being a fun spin off with great out of the box thinking. It was fun to actually find new pokemon and keep coming back to interact with them. The concept was solid as could be. The feeling of pokemon being a genuine danger came across quite well, and it was fun to actually focus on how it would be in real life. I also enjoyed the different pokeball types too. I appreciate that for the most part, you are finally just allowed to explore and enjoy the game instead of being stopped every 10 minutes for some exposition. You get to take the story at your own pace. The actions in the game being tied to speed and having two additional combat styles was also a very neat concept that I think was done pretty well. That, sadly is about where it all ends. The bad outweighs the good. This is still a game that had the world of money behind it, and it felt more like an indie game than a real AAA game. Overall, the general UX and UI were half baked. I look forward to the day gamefreak realize you can speed up combat by adding a 2x, 4x, 8x speed shift too. Combat may start and end faster, but its slow as ever in the actual fights. Speaking of that, the battles were sparse and boring. They also often pit you against 2 or 3 enemies with your just 1. Why can't I use multiple pokemon per battle? They fell back on being to conservative in that aspect. Combat was sadly easier than any game to date, and I realized I hardly ever needed to fight. The boss fights were all literally the same, and it was boring every time after the first one. Graphics improved, animations improved, but are still sub-par, in time it seems that will be iteratively improving, but I don't excuse it either way in the here and now. The end of the story felt very rushed and messy. Overall the story had me rather bored, and side quests were also a literal waste of my time so I stopped doing them. There are no unique quest rewards, just common items I can craft in low quantities. Crafting, while interesting, was admittedly, rather limited. I'd have liked more than just 3 pokeball types. Also full heals were pointless because after battle you got cured of status conditions. Another weird thing was a glitch that for me at least, %100 accuracy moves would often miss, for both me and the enemy. The only items I ever seemed to use were pokeballs and potions, and then occasionally food to feed to wild pokemon for pokedex goals. The "HM" pokemon were nice here. They were a great idea in sun/moon but the goofy baby safety gear ruined the vibe, so here they looked good. However I did find the way they worked didn't quite make sense. The flying one was especially bad, it was really just slowly falling, not flying. The lack of ability to do anything multiplayer of note outside of trades was also wildly baffling. This could have been a chance to explore and fill out the pokedex together with a friend in the survey corps. and each task you both did together filled out both pokedexes at once. Of course the biggest thing missing is battles. Honestly why not let me battle someone else? Makes no sense except to keep people buying the terrible gen 4 demakes. This would make up for the fact that this game has no satisfying battles in it at all. Also they removed held items and abilites. So there is that. Overall I feel this was a promising step forward, but gamefreak still need to learn how to step up to the plate, and they need to stop pumping out games too fast. This will probably be my last pokemon game that I buy for myself. In future I may borrow a game or sail the high seas, but this feels like the last I'll be playing. The franchise is giving out at this point in the videogames department.

This was so much of a let down. This is the first time a pokemon main series remake has removed content and features instead of adding them. I don't know why they made this game if they were going to somehow make it worse. What was the point of this game? Multiplayer in this game is about on par with the technology from the gameboy days. Yes, it hasn't been this stripped down since gold and silver version. No more global trade. No more multiplayer union rooms either. Underground multiplayer was also gelded. A sad sad sad game. Everyone bashes the art direction, but to be honest, that is the least of my concerns. It is terrible gameplay that really ruins it. There are tons of bugs and glitches. Exp share has no toggle anymore either, which was the worst change added in the previous games and completely ruins the balance of this old game. They included no post game content, where omega ruby/alpha sapphire added amazing post game story and it was fun! These games added nothing, and removed more too. Platinum content simply consisted of just letting you catch giratina and get his origin form. Also they did not include the more fleshed out story for team galactic. Controls are also pretty weak. The originals had great menu layouts and touch controls, they removed the ability to touch menu items for some reason and the menu in combat is pretty weak too. In good form they did not have a fun or engaging post game challenge area. I'm really sick of the battle tower for the 5th or 6th game in a row now, its just the same old thing and it is more luck based than about trying to fight skillfully this time around more than ever. Gameplay is sluggish, despite speeding up movement and hp bars, it doesn't matter when you can't do what every good rpg has been doing for a decade now by having the ability to speed up the combat encounters, and I wish I could turn off the "friendship" emotes, just more wasted time. The little things add up to just annoy you to death and mash the A-button. Loading is also so slow that I thought I bricked the console when I first opened the game. Its amazing how these ugly looking very simple looking games make the console struggle this much. I have had more fun with indie games for less than half the price of these cheap imitations of the DS games.

Overall this was less than it should have been. Every remake up to this point has at least added something new and interesting. This one does not, and leaves out a fair amount of content too for some reason. While Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire were heavily criticized for leaving out battle frontier, it at least added tons of amazing new things, including a brand new post game story line. These games left out way too much. The art direction is also a massive letdown and looks worse than every 3DS title. It is very jarring going from this soft and sterile overworld to the fully realized art style in actual battles. What they did well was speeding things up, faster movement, health bars drain faster etc. The underground having a little bit of new content was nice, but its nothing that big. There is a lot I could say, but overall, I would suggest to anyone not interested in competitive pokemon skip this title, and even then it is a hard sell at $60 for a game with a value of $40 that doesn't live up to its own heritage. Overall, it will sell amazingly, so it doesn't matter, but just save your money and if you want competitive, find some other outlet. If you want a good pokemon game, look to titles from the 3DS and earlier. a 3DS is at the time of writing quite affordable still, and the 3DS games are still mostly not overpriced, so get it while you can. I wish these remakes had soul, but they simply do not. If we ever get a real pokemon game again I will be surprised, but for now, just play if you want to. Its just not something I think has good appeal or value. Maybe if they add in some real QoL that other Jrpgs have had for a decade at this point, and push for more content and restoring the ability to catch and own all the pokemon again, then we can start to talk about a 5/10 game at least.

To sum the game up, it is fun everytime you unlock new material, and feels oppressive until you reach the next milestone. Overall I enjoyed my time with the game. I thought it was pretty, I thought it had a lot to see and photograph. But it only just barely bellies up past the bar of mediocre. So why? 1. It misses the spirit of the first game in many ways 2. replaying feels stressful and confusing as to what you need to photograph, instead of photographing what you want What I really enjoyed here was the amount of pokemon on each map is way up. To be expected with better hardware. Changing your controls and sensitivity is welcome, and so many games need control options. This isn't 1999, so bonus points for that. Like the original game the score doesn't follow what actually looks good, but hey that is expected. However it is not so clear what makes a good shot anymore. Size score isn't consistent anymore strangely. They also give you 4 behaviors per pokemon to capture and I love this idea. However, sometimes it seems impossible to know the difference between any behaviors at all, and even more odd, two different behaviors are often considered the same. WHY? So if you play this game and don't know what you did wrong, it might be nothing, try a similar shot again. Honestly as annoyed as I am at $60 games for the less potent games, like zelda links awakening remake, I think this game is actually priced appropriately. Maybe $50 would have been better, but now that Playstation games are $70 I'll take what I can get. What can I say, I agree with most people. While I actually don't mind a XP system, I don't like HOW it is used. The original game rewarded your clever thinking to unlock new areas. But now you have to grind for xp to unlock the next level in a map or new map altogether. I would have loved the XP system to unlock different cameras or camera gear like a longer range or wider field lens. An infrared attachment, a rapid fire attachment etc. Same with the on rails cart, maybe choose different cart attachments, like a stealth version, one that can get taller for a better view, or a faster or slower cart depending on your needs, a booster perhaps? Breaks? What I like is how the pokemon interact with the environment, but I wish there was more chance to effect the pokemon with my actions. I remember how often you could actually make pokemon evolve by coaxing them into a certain area or feeding them apples. What I do appreciate is more of the map paths with a single "boss" like encounter. Though again, I feel the level up system is not helping it out at all. Lumina orbs are really cool, and I find them a fine enough change over pester balls, I get it, round corners so that you don't make babies cry at the pokemon being bothered by pester balls, but I wish they did a little more with them and remove the scan feature. I hate the scan feature, it seems very lazy and unintuitive. I feel like I need to scan because I don't know when or where scans will help or do something, it is a general sweep instead of giving me the chance to target a spot like with apples and lumina orbs(or pester balls in the past). Its only use is for when a path branches, and it doesn't seems to be useful for that either, why not just let me hit a button to go to the fork without scanning in the first place? It isn't like you are unlocking new paths with clever actions anyhow. In the end, I enjoyed it. A bit of stress took a lot out, and the spirit of the game was forgotten with not much in the way of innovation. Still, I look forward to perhaps some DLC maps to bring more life to the game in the next year. Perhaps a visit to the original maps and meeting Professor Oak would be a cool idea. As it stands though, I can't rate the game as highly as the first game, short as it was to beat. The first game never overstayed its welcome, at times this game can drag. Skip this unless you are the type who likes to %100 games, otherwise the XP system will be frustrating and take you out of the fun of photographing wildlife in search of some silly particular photo.

If you want to play this game or this series, just get a 3ds and play bravely default 1 and bravely second, both amazing games. BD2 is frankly borderline bad. This game is the poster child of a mediocre sterotype in terms of a classic JRPG. This isn't praise, but it isn't an insult, it makes it exactly as medicore as it gets. The story in the first 2 games(why isn't this called bravely default 3 by the way?) Short list: THE GOOD -Looks pretty -AMAZING dynamic music -character classes are fun -the combat style of brave and default is still fun(frankly should be adopted by other games) -more voiceover than before, slightly less quality in some cases, but overall top tier English VO -Great as a handheld switch title -You can FINALLY put status effects like poison on bosses!!!(the first games didn't allow for this meaning you had to use other strategies, making most status effects useless since normal mobs were pointless to status). -Farming job points(JP) to level up your jobs(classes) on each character is much much faster than before if you know what to do. The Bad -removed tons of quality of life features. single hand combat isn't as easy or good -removed the bravely second feature(a really really cool feature from the first 2 games) -removed the calling in friends feature for battles -passive resource gathering is reduced to simply sending out a boat to gather instead of a cute village building minigame that gave you specific items you could farm and control what it passively gathers. -grinding isn't very passive like in the past(these games are built around grinding, in the first two games you could grind by mashing a button with one hand while watching tv) -terrible story. I cannot overstate this enough. The first two games had great plot twists, subverting expectations, like real life, nothing is so black and white. Here, everything is pretty straight forward. They tried to make the sub-stories have conflicting characters, but nobody stays around long enough for me to care and then they just disappear forever. Nobody sticks around for very long except the main bad guy you first meet. -removed any sort of overworld airship to travel easily like in the past 2 games -really boring anticlimactic ending -removed the ability to save equipment set ups, so you have to manually redo any good set ups. -most character development left to unsatisfying side quests. -lack of romantic tension(okay maybe this one is just me, but I liked it in the past games). Neutral changes --overworld monsters mean you can choose to attack or avoid monsters if you want, after a certain level, monsters run away from you, no annoying random battles, just changes how battles work -some jobs(character classes) are better, others are worse than in past games, but that is always the case. I think bravely second had the best overall in terms of jobs. But this game fixes the annoying and useless issue of the one job that uses items(salvemaker in this game) and its a great and valuable class. -they added an action meter, this brakes a lot of potential careful strategizing. Some people will say its negative, and I agree, but it opens up other strategies if you can work around it. I never liked action meters in RPGs though. This makes the speed stat more powerful. summary: Seriously just buy a 2ds and get bravely default 1 and bravely second. This game isn't really worth it. But if you insist, play this game first, then bravely default 1, then bravely second(the first two games have linked stories, and this game is unrelated story wise). You will see the games get better. Sadly I can't suggest this game, even to a seasoned RPG player. Only a fan of the series would be able to enjoy it, and even at that, I was frustrated the whole time knowing they could do better. I don't know what happened.

Kind of wish I could suggest this, but I never would. In theory, it was a nice idea, to give you a chance to prove yourself with different play styles and get to each different goal. However it just doesn't do it chief. One aspect of game design I always hated, was to reward players who are good with an easier game, and to punish bad players with a harder game. So if you are good you will find all the secrets ****, get the special bonus power ups you only get for being super good, etc. In this game it comes in the form **** timer. Do you want to get the hang of things, explore, and think **** way to play? Too bad, this is a mad dash towards the objective chevron. After I realized that there after each character, the world stays the same, I thought I could leave useful things for my future runs, but there is no time for that. Do you like stealth? There is no time for methodical and avoidant or sneaky game play. I am not really upset because I got the game at such a good price, but it just wasn't anything like what you would hope it could be. If this game were a corridor on rails type thing, I would be okay. It works for Time Crisis for a reason. However this game gives you an open world to romp in, but punishes you for exploring it. It makes me think of zelda Majora's Mask and how that game actually drives you to focus on your task by giving you a very clear path before each reset. However it always gave you time, and even more you could slow it. Not here. It really **** because this game has such an arcade style feel, but instead of giving challenge in a good way, it scuffs it, and uses the worst aspect of the arcade, which is trying to make you lose faster to get more money from you. But there are no quarters here to pop in a machine. Just the remnants of a stupid system. Why not give players an option? Like by putting a difficulty multiplier in that you can turn up to give bonus points? Why not also give points for restricting your own actions? Like another modifier that makes it so you can't use ability upgrades? This way a good player can rack up points faster, but a newer or more slow paced player can take their time, maybe doing a couple runs before getting the amount of points they need while giving each player the experience they would desire! A missed opportunity. Then on top of that you realize the game was made around the concept of exploration and story first, and combat second. So why didn't they improve the combat? Why not give us more weapons, and make the gunplay less clunky? There are a lot of things that should have been done different to get across what they wanted. However it was clearly just a lame attempt to smash one gameplay idea into an already finished game system that it was not compatible with. Shame really, because the replayability of this could have be great. Instead it just put me off trying to figure it out any further due to conflicts in gameplay. So is it worth it? Eh, if you get it bundled on sale, why not pay $1 more and see if you like it? But I think even people who like the arcade idea of this game will find the actual core movement and gunplay subpar for the idea too. So this game really isn't for anyone unless they can put up with a great game and a great idea making each other somewhat mediocre.

I'm shocked I'm giving a game a 8 that I had expected to be nothing special. This game is what I wish more were. A tight driven narrative, but it gives you options to play about with the story too. Your choices aren't to simply get the ending you want, but to express yourself. That is because there are always at least 2 ways to solve any roadblock. I hate crafting at this point in games. So while it was here, it at least was simple. Every item can be turned into 4 basic material types and then built into whatever you need. I would rather that there was no crafting, but I think it is excusable here because it plays on scarcity of resources like games in the horror genre tend to, and yes this game is scary sometimes. I hate to say it, but I was on edge any time a new enemy showed up. Of course that wears off, so thankfully the game stands on its own. Because even after you get all the upgrades you'll need, and you start to bore of the same enemies and their tricks, the story is there for you. And in the very end it gives you an actual score screen. I haven't seen that in ages. So then you can simply go and try again. While the game is a little too long for me to want to replay for a better score, I would do it for a different playstyle for sure. It is just under 30 hours for me, and I took my time. You can probably do it in under 20 easily. I wish we had more games that didn't fluff up with nonsense and respected your time like this game. They made a clean design, where the space you play in is much smaller than most, but there is still so much to explore, and many interesting secrets and side quests. I didn't do them all in the end, and that is okay. I didn't expect to be this invested in the end. However I enjoyed **** that is a hard thing to get me to feel anymore with games. I genuinely wanted to play through to the end. I doubt I'll see another game like this for while. Everyone is too busy milking decades old franchises to death and adding in microtransations, but for a while I remembered what fun felt like with Prey. The one thing that held the game back was probably the combat and movement. I actually liked that there weren't 100 BS weapons you never use and just a handful because they all had a distinct job. However there was room to make it better. So the shotgun and pistol could be upgraded yes, but I would have liked to be able to ironsight for better range, or have crit spots on enemies for the pistol. They could have also made special ammo, like psi-bullets and elemental or explosive rounds, or armor piercing rounds to deal with different enemies. I again, found movement could have been used better. The only real upgraded around movement was to make you run and jump better. In the end, they gave a lot of what you needed and none of what would have been a clutter. And just to end it I will say I hope to get Prey 2006, which also seems like a good game and its just not easy to find, so looking forward to that game next maybe.

Dead cells is beautiful. I love the game. I'm not good at it, but the success of progress feels good. I'm not a huge fan of how you progress, having to grind back to the furthest reaches each time you die gets kind of old fast. I get it, rogue like and such, but it feels needlessly annoying once the earlier parts become super easy after you get enough upgrades. That being said, the fighting is tight, and amazing considering it is a 2D platformer. It out performs most 3D games with combat of ANY sort outside of 1v1 fighting games of course. On the Switch this game is well suited. You can choose lots of controller layouts, take it on the go, and the game is great to pick up and put down too and is good for shorter gaming sessions. This is why I always loved handheld consoles, games used to be made to be picked up and set down. Overall, there are a few flaws, there are lots of tactics you can choose and almost all of them have pros and cons. Nothing is too OP or UP. No matter the platform, get this game if you have the reflexes for it.

Only buy this game if it is on a major discount. I beat the game in about 3 hours, so it is extremely short. If I tried to play through again, I could probably finish it in 2 hours, maybe 90 minutes with the secret ending which is faster than the regular ending. The game is atmospherically very interesting to look at. However the character model of the character and other NPCs is very basic, so they look out of place compared to the background. A very enjoyable puzzle platformer, but it never gets very complex, which I liked personally. It was just continuous movement and only one time I got stuck trying to figure something out, and only one puzzle was particularly complex and I realized that it was a drag because it took forever to continue moving forward. Overall you don't get much of a story. The game seems to promise some sort of closure as you near the end, but ultimately there is nothing to be learned. Everything about this made me feel like I get more story and plot from a 2D mario game. Don't expect to feel closure and satisfaction. Expect to be frustrated and dissapointed and feel like everything you did was pointless. In the end, it was good enough, I want more games that play like this, but this one in particular failed to deliver on story, and was too expensive, I bought it at $7 so I feel like I paid the right price, but at $20, don't bother. You would be overpaying by far.

It is hard to give this game a lukewarm score, but that is what ended up happening with this game. From a gameplay standpoint, it is very surely animal crossing. It includes most of the features from past games, some which were lost including some bugs and fish. This is all nice. It is as expected. The good: -better graphics with dynamic lighting based on weather -customization of your Island allows for making the exact town you want -putting furniture outside for the first time -nook miles gives daily and long term motivation to do many varied things in the game and allow for faster progress and reduce boredom -You now progress more than just your house and the store, which gives a better sense of growth -museum is way more pretty -custom items are an amazing addition, custom hats, shirts, pants, skirts, face art(think adding facial hair) , and even ground tiles can be added. The Bad: -Made multiplayer very poorly -multiple people in the same town cannot help add to growing the town, and can get soft locked by recipes that aren't given to them -Island tied to your console, not the game save on the cart or even your nintendo account/profile -you cannot transfer you Island(save data) to another console -Nintendo refuses to provide cloud saves for no good reason(claiming to prevent cheating and manipulation, even though time travel is still possible and used heavily). -Not enough new content. The game needed a new villager type or two. Needed way more new bugs, fish and fossils to keep me trawling the waters and carefully treading between trees. At that, different tree types would have been nice too. -crafting only 1 item at a time. It gets tedious and annoying to craft tons of items in a sitting. No idea why I can't craft 20 fish bait at once instead of one at a time, watching the animations over and over. That isn't gameplay, that isn't fun, that isn't relaxing. -Would have liked to see other static town NPCs make a return, especially bather's kin with the observatory and the cafe. The police dogs are also sorely missed. This had the chance to be the quintessential animal crossing, but it failed on all fronts and just became another iteration, a fun one, but nothing special. It isn't a Smash Ultimate, but if you want a relaxing game or just a return to the series, it is adequate. Just don't expect to enjoy any multiplayer, this is a very single player game, and be sure you have the switch console you want to have forever, don't settle for a console you don't want, because upgrading either means a new console, or losing ALL your game progress.

I can't believe the absolute trash fire this game is. WC3 is a classic, a masterpiece. They not only ruined the remaster but retroactively ruined the original game by forcing it to update with the draconian policy and glitches and reduced features of the new version. The fact that they removed so much leaves you wondering why they did this at all. All they had to do was spruce up the graphics, modernize the UI a bit, and maybe MAYBE also redo some of the sound design and voiceover work. But instead they falsely advertised many features which I would have been fine without, but was happy to see, mainly, the more cinematic cut scenes. That is morally wrong, as well as lazy. I am done, I'm never purchasing a Blizzard game ever again.

Not really a great PC port. The UI is scuffed. And they changed the way you unlock halo reach armor for some stupid reason to make it worse. But then after spending ALL this time changing the UI, they don't add anything like Anti aliasing. I wonder what they were thinking. In any case, the number of issues is not as bad as most AAA games these days somehow. But it is decidedly mediocre thus far. I am just waiting for halo 3 to play with friends. There are lots of things I could nit pick but others have gone into it. It just isn't amazing. It is just okayish.

Overall a nice throwback to a beloved title in the series. This game brings a lot of natural quality of life changes due the fact you have more than the A and B buttons from the gameboy. However it also introduced an art style that I can't love. The whole game looks like plastic and I personally don't like it, and link's design is not very appealing. That being said, the game is still Link's awakening. A fun romp on koholint island is welcome after about 2 decades. I would have liked there to be more to do with Dampe's dungeon creation tool as well. It is very restrictive, and you can't even share your creations(not that I would considering how lame it turned out to be). I hope the feature was just a test run for a dungeon creation tool ala mario maker. In total I can say the game is fun, but not worth the full $60 asking price. When the original game on gameboy released for $30, it is a big ask when so little has been changed or added. If this were a new game and not a remake, I'd understand. But I'd say wait to buy it used on Ebay or a sale. If you are a diehard fan, there is no other reason to put it off though. So snag it and play it. I had a great time, and you will too!

It was a fun and silly game like the first game in the series. Sadly, somehow, I encountered a bug that made that game difficult. I couldn't change attacks, and one of my characters had an empty attack slot somehow... So I couldn't customize my party's attacks anymore, making it harder than normal. Otherwise the combat was interesting and fun. It felt like the best strategy was to get baba yaga to 200 chicken power, and get her to full hyper meter and poison high HP enemies and bosses. Other than that, tactics seemed to be a little more varied than in past. This time around it felt like the game characters were a little too brazen with 4th wall breaking. However it was witty as always, and cthulhu didn't learn a thing about the magic of christmas in the end. Overall it was fun.

A great game, made with some flaws. Despite this, the gameplay is stellar and a wonderful game to look at. The backgroud and foreground elements are clear and I appreciate that as many pixel art styles over do things and you can't tell what is scenery and what is going to kill you or get in your way. The upgrade system is satisfying, although some upgrades are pointless, and balance is terrible. Forget being a magic user. The fun part is each time you restart you pick one of 3 characters with random genetic traits, some detrimental, some helpful, others just humorous that don't change gameplay. What I like is that you can choose which level of difficulty you tackle after going through the first level of difficulty, and to kill the 4 sub bosses in each area of difficulty before going for the end game. So you don't have to worry about slogging through too much over and over, it is more about getting enough money to upgrade enough for you to beat everything, and hey, if you are really good you can quickly beat the game with more of a difficult go at things. A forgiving game, that isn't too hard, but how you tackle the game allows you to make it harder or easier on yourself. I just wish they would make a sequel with some expanded choices, new enemies, and better balance of abilites, upgrades etc.

Finally had a PC powerful enough to play modern games, and this was sitting in my list of purchases for years! I bought it just to support CD Projekt Red for their ethical practices in the industry. What I found was a game where I realized very soon, that I would have done myself a favor playing the first two games. Many characters, locations, and history were all painfully learned about through exposition that I swallowed at times(yes, you can skip such dialogue chains) or I'd get so fatigued that I eventually found myself spamming the space bar to skip the talking in quests, hoping to get to the playing. If you think you'd like the game, either read the books, or play from the first game to get the story. Still I enjoyed the world building, and the characters, all of whom are flawed, and have you loving them one second, hating them another. Like all open world RPGs though, it is wide as an ocean, and deep as a puddle. While the enemy variety is actually respectable unlike games such as Zelda Breath of the wild, it is still just not enough for how big the game is. This is mitigated somewhat by diversions in plot and characters breaking up the action. Minimal puzzle solving, less than skyrim, but never anything repetitive. Combat is odd here. The potions are a vital and interesting part of the game. However it sadly is hard to get a variety that will serve you well unless you complete many many many side quests, and even then, if you unwittingly make the wrong choice, can miss ingredients forever. That is what baffles here, as well as needing diagrams for each potion and each upgrade for the oils which power up your swords against different enemies. It can feel annoying not knowing if you have all the recipes yet or if there are more. Still, once created and used, these potions are one of the best ways to overcome an enemy and it is satisfying and fun to use them. Combat in general though, is pretty basic. Strong attack, fast attack exist. You can dodge toward and away, but also sidestep. You can also do a parry, which doesn't work on all enemies, but is the only way to actually kill anyone with a shield which is annoying. Ranged is almost non-existent. It is clunky to use, and you just have a crossbow, and bolts are rarely looted. Magic is fun, but annoying because you have to pull up a quick menu to swap spells because you have only 1 spell **** game really wants you to use melee combat, and it isn't really all that in depth or exciting sadly. Still, no matter the style you choose, you will always use a combo of spells, potions and melee combat because they are all, always helpful. The upgrades are a bit limiting, which is a shame because of how much more fun I think could be had. Putting points into upgrades does not activate them, you have limited slots to active unlocked perks. Strangely the game punishes mixing combat styles via mutagens. Every 3 unlock spots can be paired with a colored mutagen, that corresponds to one type of upgrade. There are 4 types of upgrades. red upgrades are direct combat related, swinging your sword. Blue is for the game's magic called "signs". Green is for getting more use out of potions. Fourth is colorless, and general, while more powerful, they don't combo with the colored upgrades. If you have 1 green mutagen, let us say, it gives you 100hp extra. But pair it with one green ability and you get 200hp extra, 2 green abilities, now its 400, and 3 nets you 600 extra. Now you see why it punishes mixing. To really get the most, you will want to most likely stick with one niche, at least making 3 of your 4 mutagen slots one color. Thankfully there is a potion you can buy which resets all your skill investments incase you want to try something different or you goofed up early on. Sadly the game is almost bethesda levels of glitchy. Many graphical, but lots of crashes that force a PC reboot, some where I have gotten stuck of geometry, and at times enemies who freeze up and let me kill them. Thankfully nothing locks you out of quest lines or anything else vital. The story is fun, lots of dialogue and good voice over work, even for the nothing little side quests! However I feel like once the game reaches its climax, it goes on for far too long afterwards. I thought I reached the end but did not, and it felt wrong, and I lacked motivation to continue playing. The end felt rushed, or at least I felt rushed by the game, as my choices no longer seemed to matter, they forced me down one path. This is my ultimate gripe with RPGs of this type. I want you to either spoonfeed me a story and let me relax and enjoy it, or respect my choices enough to let things happen! Overall I had fun. But like all open world games, I want less space, fewer fluff quests, and more quality. Thankfully I can say the game was pretty high quality, I found myself listening in on NPC banter and would wait till they finished. A rushed product, but solid.

I don't give this a low score lightly. In fact, I kept myself aloof from all spoilers. I'm sure people will make their arguments, but at the end of the day, I will say some people are just hateful, while others are foolishly defending a company because of a sense of religious zealotry. I'll give a bullet list Pros: -new pokemon look pretty cool(except for the trash box legendaries which are impossible to tell apart). -many fun new moves and abilites on the pokemon -galaran forms are mostly good. -the opening town looks pretty -the open wilds area was a pretty fun idea -mixing the old style of wild encounters with the type from Let's go was nice -bede and Mr.Rose were cool characters -There is a pokemon named fapple and it is a flying apple. -I enjoyed the core gameplay as much as ever. cons: -$60 price point -first time in series history when it jumps to new hardware and there is no graphical upgrade(outside of pokemon models, which I always expected to be the same). -no improved shaders or textures, in and out of battles -battle backdrops dropped in quality from Sun and Moon including a now static camera. -random fps dips despite the lightweight load this game should be putting on the Switch -Cutscene animations were very sloppy, and highly recycled looping animations used for non-cutscene interactions - I found out that I can't import my living dex(the collection of 1 of each pokemon in existence because I gotta catch 'em all). This includes half of my competitive battlers from generation 4-7 - doesn't use pokemon bank anyway(wasn't the point to future proof transferring?) - Literally makes it so that you can't catch pokemon over a certain level without a badge. - routes and town are incredibly short and devoid of exploration. - exp curve is whacked out, you don't need to fight/catch wild pokemon for exp ever to beat the game. - No large "Celedon City" location. No Victory Road. No Elite 4(recycles gym leaders instead). - Character designs for gyms and gym leaders left a lot to be desired. Each gym was the same stadium just a different color and icon. The gym leaders were half good, and half bad. The champion design was also pretty bad. Dark gym leader was the only one I truly thought was actually great. -pop in is really really bad. Many times I'd run into pokemon that appeared right in front of me, same with characters in the more "big" towns. -repels are glitched and don't seem to work. Stupid little level 3 pokemon popped up after I used repels in the post game and I kept running into them. They worked in Gen7 and the let's go games. Overall the real crime is the price. I was expecting them to either cram in content, or really stretch into a new console that has things as breathtaking as Zelda Breath of the Wild. However they did neither. It feels like these games belong on the 3DS, and I can't help but feel like they are less impressive than sun and moon were. If they had released these on the 3DS for $40 it would have been an okay game, still a massive step back in some ways, but at least okay. I don't know where that other $20 is supposed to be going and they left a lot on the table with the Switch and the hardware's capabilities. For now I will say this is my last pokemon game despite being a fan from day 1, sticking with it even when it wasn't cool anymore. This is the first time there are objective steps backwards with core features and a lack of wow factor when jumping onto new hardware. GBA color graphics and sprite design impressed me. the 3D in DS titles impressed me, and the full jump to 3D with the 3DS blew me away knowing how much hard work that was. This was downright tepid. I don't know where all the money goes, but clearly someone at gamefreak is pocketing it and not reinvesting it in games. I wonder if they just maybe got lazy and pushed this out for the holiday rush. Until they bring back the ability to bring all my pokemon up I probably will stick with ultra sun and ultra moon to battle a while longer. Outside of that I'll just use online battle simulators to have access to everything old with everything new. That is fine, but I am just sad I have to give up another beloved series because it decided to do silly things.

As a diehard pokemon fan, it almost feels wrong to say, but this is the best monster collecting RPG on the 3DS. Combat is fun, using a rock paper scissors system that rolls into a system to use powerful combos with your monsters. I realized as someone who knew nothing about monster hunter games that now when people talk about the actual monster hunter games, I know EXACTLY what they mean when they talk about things. The weapons, items and monsters are all pretty much the same. It is amazing, I could now easily start playing any monster hunter game, which is genius from a marketing stand point. What I like here that it beats pokemon on soundly is story and emotion. There are actual stakes the feel real in this game, your rival is actually a rival and someone to be weary of instead of your happy little friend who rolls over for you to beat up. And best of all the characters actually emote and are animated, instead of being stiff and lifeless. A nice aspect as well is the ability to make a monster more powerful using the DNA tic tac toe system. Taking otherwise useless monsters you catch **** swapping them for one of their tiles to make another monster more powerful. It is a great way to get through some tough patches of the game when leveling just isn't enough. I'm usually not a fan of upgrading items, but the way it is done here doesn't leave you endlessly grinding for something or looking for the rarest resource on earth. In addition to side fetch quests are not at all bad, and actually quite often have very desirable rewards. Additionally finding poogies is just really satisfying and the reward for finding them all is actually worth it. They are cute to boot. Strangely this game has a ton of amiibo that I highly suggest you try to get at least one of which gives you a good(but not overpowered) monster, plus they are some of the coolest amiibo, and the riders on top are removeable too. While the story is a bit campy and childish, it doesn't ever make you feel like a braindead baby as you might find elsewhere, though I do think the dialogue is lacking. In the end, everything pays off though, and the final area is actually quite a challenege as is the final battle, one which you work up to the whole game. This is a must have for any 3DS player.

This game has its ups and downs. Sadly this sequel is not the kind you can just love on the face of it. It makes trades. There is recycling of assets and such yes, but that doesn't make the game bad in my eyes. The worst aspect is that the two new characters aren't as strong as the ones they replace from the original, though the new baddies are every bit as interesting as one could hope. Back are the moralistic sacrifices of the first game, and we get a better glimpse into the greater mystery of the games, making you want a third title all the more(which I doubt we will ever get). But while characters aren't as good, the story still has great quality, and the combat is even more polished than before as well as adding new classes and removing some of the less popular and useless(or just plain broken) ones from before. The balance is much better, though I will miss the cheese combo to farm, which they do make up for by adding a new system to stack XP quickly when you farm. I will forever credit the developers for making it possible to play the game with one hand, making being super lazy while playing the game something I start to miss in other games.

Rarely does a game I've never heard of make me a diehard fan. I cannot say how much of a hidden gem this was when I first played it. I bought a physical copy and a few months later everyone discovered how great it was, and being out of print, people turned heads and wondered why that was. I'll tell you why. Solid gameplay, beautiful design, excellent story. Gameplay of this game is amazing. It is just the old jobs system, but mixing and matching aspects makes it fun, as well as the simple yet exciting brave/default mechanic. Store up extra turns to attack on a character by defaulting which is just a fancy way to say, block this turn. Next turn that character has an extra turn to take, meaning they can attack twice. That is what braving is. When you use brave, you use an extra turn. However you can brave to go into debt for several turns. Meaning that if you don't defeat the enemy and your whole party goes 2 turns into debt with brave, you will be helpless for 3 turns in a row! It truly becomes a resource of its own, with many classes and abilites giving you extra turns, or costing you an extra turn for a more powerful attack. Enemies can also use this mechanic, so watch out! The art is charming, like a hand painted set from a fairytale. The character designs are a sort of chibi design to make up for the 3DS and its lack of horsepower, and doing so increases the charm of this game somehow, while keeping game performance at the same time. Rough around the edges yes, this game wasn't expected to be anything special. But the solid classic final fantasy combat mixed with what is honestly the best story I've seen out of square to date(I really can't say much lest I spoil it). This game is a sleeper hit. Sadly though it does have more filler than it should, and could easily give you more than enough play time without it(My first save file clocked in at almost 90 hours). The value is here for the price. It is polished for the most part overall, and has a shocking amount of voice over for a 3DS game. Sadly the audio of voices is compressed somewhat to make it fit, but the performances of the actors is top tier save for the memeable "mrgrgr" moments....that...that isn't how onomatopoeias work love... Music is top tier too. Whereas some games have nice, but ultimately forgettable music, bravely default tunes are catchy and emotionally engaging. So go out and play this game if you are an RPG fan, you will have a blast!

I'm amazed at how this game improves what the base game created so well. Everything that caused me irritation was fixed here and streamlined. Making a comeback from Xenoblade 1 was the area affinity chart. By helping different NPCs by doing their quests you increase area affinity, and the friendship between other NPCs and yourself. It gives you a sense that your actions matter, even by doing the boring fetch quest or kill quest that such games are rife with. Though on its own sometimes you want the rewards these quests offer anyhow. For the price you get this expansion plus all the DLC for Xenoblade 2. All this at $40? That is the best deal on the switch to date. The whole Gatcha system was totally removed, and instead you get a curated set of blades for your party members. Even more fun is that your party members now actively can participate in combat which is pretty cool from a gameplay and story aspect. Making a better connection between the blades and their drivers. This prequel game gives you insight that is sorely craved in the main game, all this talk about the great hero adam, and you finally get to meet him! Voiceover performances are MUCH improved in this title as well. I think they just cast a few bad apples and rushed the recording sessions for the base game. Combat is also more forgiving too. Before you had to stack elemental orbs in specific combos, and if you didn't have the right combo, you couldn't finish a combo and break the orbs. For this game you can do any combo of 3, but if you get those same combos from the base game, it does bonus damage and applies special debuffs to the enemy, where any 3 random elements stacked just does a bit of extra damage. I think this was the right move, sure it makes the game easier and require less tactics, but even I had more fun just being able to not NEED to line things up perfectly every time, allowing me to experiment more in combat. Story is good as always. Monolift Soft have great story telling, and this game is no different. Overall the amount of hours of play for the price is great. It is fun, and far more accessible for new players, and still engaging for veteran players. Truly a majora's mask type follow up. A game I'd suggest to almost anyone.

I love xenoblade games. So why a 7? Well, I'm a realistic person, I don't rate everything a 10 just because I like it. Xenoblade 2 is a great game with a lot of rough edges. The most difficult part is the English voiceover. The main character "Rex" has the most embarrassing fake yelling I've ever heard. I have no idea how the director didn't storm into the booth, slap him in the face and when he yells "ow" tell him, good, now yell like that. He isn't the only one who gives a lackluster performance, "Gramps" the dragon looking creature and animal familiar of the party is just some old guy who reads his lines in a voice. That is it. The game's graphics are honestly really good, but like breath of the wild, probably pushes the graphics to the limits of the console. I wish I could have lowered some settings to get fewer frame drops in some cases. I would love to see this game on PC for this reason, so I could max out the settings and see it in its full beauty. Storywise this game is quite compelling thankfully, so it can make up for some of the poor acting. Not much else to be said without major spoilers. The depth of the RPG elements is what will make you want to play or not want to play this game. If you like complexity, you will enjoy this. If you want a simple straightforward system, you might want to skip this. It has lots of stuff that you will probably forget about. In terms of characters, the catcha system is what KILLS the game's fun. You have to open silly little crystals to get new characters to use, and getting good ones is almost impossible. Worse still, each one is bound the party member you open it on. This means you might open a great tank character on your healer party member. It feels bad. Only Rex, the main character is able to use any character you open, which you won't want to do anyhow, because he by default has the objectively best character anyhow. Getting over that slog, the ability to chain together elements and combo into huge amounts of damage is even more satisfying than xenoblade 1's chain attacks which were already fun to pull off at the right time. The combat early on may seem slow and boring, but that is to give you time to warm into it, which is good for players who aren't deep RPG players. Once you get a full loadout and party, you will find yourself being mindful in hard fights of when to change, attack, and use combos. With the right line up you can create some really powerful and engrossing parties. In the end, I was sad that it ended, and sadly this is one of those games with no post game content like the old days where you load back to the last save before you beat the game. But considering this game was such an early title for the console I can forgive that along with the already large amount of content.

Probably one of the biggest let downs I have personally endured. I played since launch, and it became clear that the developers didn't care much about the game. I look at other games with a purely multiplayer aspect and wonder where all the money is going from lootboxes. TO start, most games like this are at least free. LoL, TF2, DOTA2, SMITE, and more. Then on top of that you can't just outright buy cosmetics which isn't a good feeling. But the real letdown comes from the utter dearth of content. For $40-$60 you'd think they would add new characters, maps and gametypes on the regular, but no. In the 3 years this game has released, they finally have over 30 characters to choose from. LoL, an indie game(at the time) released for free with 50 unique characters. Again, lootboxes are a cash cow for this game. They make millions on this game. Yet somehow on the regular that money disappears into thin air. The servers often glitch out and do odd things like boot you from the game, while still being able to chat with everyone in the game, or randomly swap you to the other team 3 seconds before you were about to win. Another big gripe is the moderation. I have encountered dozens of people who just belittle you for no reason even in the non-competitive mode, but people get banned on the regular for saying "GG WP". Events are the same every year. Halloween event in particular is one that was fun for a while the first year, but 3 years in a row and you unintentionally memorize the exact spawns of enemies. Blizzard is known for their ability to tell grand stories and flesh them out with amazing cinematic sequences and character interaction to progress the story. In 3 years this game has had the most underwhelming cinematics(that you have to hunt down on youtube because they aren't even in the game anywhere to watch). The stories are often non-canon just for things like Christmas and Halloween too. In the end the world is very sparse and almost no progress has been made in telling it. Hell, half the characters have yet to have any story told. From a gameplay stance, it is a decently entertaining casual level of competitive combat. If you want to go MLG pro, there are a couple characters for that, and some easy mode characters if you aren't super good at aiming which is nice. Balance in the game is a joke. They have reworked one of the characters like 3 times at this point, and it makes you wonder why they can't get it right with just tweaking numbers. In the end, this game is not worth the money no matter how you look at it. I'd just suggest playing Paladins, or find another game.

Hands down the most fun I've had in a long time. Grab up to 3 friends and fly your spaceship together. Don't let your friend with a driving record to fly though... Upgrades are fun in this game, combining elements to make new combos for guns, shields and engines etc. It is so fun. Deciding when to hop from one turret to another or if you can ditch the shield for a while for more fire power, so much team work. Unlike other games to play with friends it is nice to work together instead of compete like in other party games like mario party or your favorite racing game. The looks of the game are admittedly simple, but with any more complexity I imagine it would become very hard to make it clear to players where enemies begin, and the backgrounds end. The cutsey theme may make some uncomfortable, but at the heart of it, the game is super fun, and hits all my checkmarks. Another good point is that this is probably one of the only games where using a single joycon actually doesn't feel like I'm hindering myself. So it is good for you budget gamers who want to entertain your friends without breaking the bank for 4 pro controllers. I highly suggest this game be in everyone's library. You never know when you might be in a place where you and some friends are bored. Just pop out the switch and boot up Lovers.

Pretty much the most infuriating game of this genre I've seen and played. This game has terrible upgrades. Only a few are actually desirable, so it pays off to NOT unlock things because you can't choose to use them, it just means they randomly pop up. So don't unlock the stupid powers. Oh and fun fact you can't just straight up upgrade your health and stamina. The only way is an item that randomly upgrades or DOWNGRADES your hp. Yes that is right. You start at 100hp. But i went up to 120 from the upgrade item, and then I got several in a row that removed so much HP that I ended up with 90HP. YUP. So don't pick up those items because it might make the game harder. Combat comes down to three things, dash, heavy hit and light hit. Sadly there are only like 3 combos too. So that means you get bored quick. What is that? You think different weapon types give you different and more interesting combos and tactics? NOPE. That would make sense. Also dashing does nothing for you. Dead Cells is a fun game right? Know how dashes give you invincibility frames? Not in this game. You can end up face dashing into a flurry of bullets. Story wise this game is decent. Nothing special. You are Remi, a random lazy school girl who gets transported by lore(a sentient encyclopedia of recipes) to a magical world of demon robots that have killed everyone made by the game's tsundere antagonist who dislikes Lore. Don't waste your money. This wouldn't be a game I'd waste my quarters on if it were an arcade cabinet, and it is the worst part because it is just an arcade style game. Run from this game. RUN!

Not the best in the series, not by far. What Breath of the wild shows us however, is potential. This game lays the groundwork for what a truly great breath of fresh air the series could see. However ambition clearly outpaced the ability to make a game as deep as previous titles. Zelda games are known for being handcrafted experiences with unique areas, wonderful music, and compelling characters and story. While this game is huge, most of it feels the same. The same looking NPCs fill the roads and stables wearing the same clothes. The same design is even used in every dungeon and shines(the mini dungeons littered across the land). In addition you only get the sword, bow, bombs, and 3 other dungeon tools, the fewest tools we have ever seen. Considering how much they did with these tools though, it makes me wonder what amazing things they could have done with a few more fun toys to play with. At the end of the day, the story takes a backseat to gameplay too. What little story we do get is almost entirely optional, and that feels bad, like the noble sacrifices made, and the people inhabiting the world don't matter. Music was the biggest letdown for me. The lack of any real music outside a handful of tracks made me very sad in a series that utilitzes music as a gameplay mechanic extremely often(ocarina of time, Link's awakening, spirit tracks, oracles). After a while I got tired of fighting the same enemies and finding rewards that were just more items meant to be sold for money to buy what, a house? That being said the item system was exciting. Shields as surfboards, elemental swords and weapon types were fun to use. While breaking weapons was a little easier than I wished, it was fun to try new strategies on enemies and in boss fights. The combat is where the game shines. Overall I would say the game is great as a game first, and that must be remembered. I hope the next main title learns from the mistakes here and can try to use the new systems in a fun and unique way while bringing back what made zelda games so beloved.