Rtheom

This game is a mess. It's TikTok the Sonic Game. Within a 3 minute level, you'll be switching between 4 different mini games about every 15 seconds. There are soooo many bug, glitches and crashes. I'm a long time Sonic fan and this game is packed with nostalgiaberries, but it was hard to get through. The multiplayer was clearly tacked on at the end with very little thought put into it. If you're new to Sonic, skip it and go to Mania. If you're a long time Sonic fan, wait for this to get to $10.

This is a Mech Arena combat game from the days of PS1 and Sega Saturn. It tries to paint itself as slightly different with short, empty "levels" with a few enemies that take no effort to beat, but most of the time you're just battling a boss mech inside an arena of some sort. Spin in a circle around the arena while the boss spins in a circle, and use the gun that will let you hit their weak point. Rinse and repeat. At least Elden Ring had an open world you could walk around in and explore. This does not have that. Also, it really bothers me that there is zero gravity in this game. I'm a big hulking mech. They're big hulking mechs. Why do we all just slide around like we're on ice skates? Even things with massive tank treads just glide over the ground and turn on a dime. This just feels silly.

If you played Dead Island 1, then you know exactly what to expect. The main difference is that you have cards instead of Skill Points that let you mix and match your abilities a little bit, but none of them are really super necessary. Just wailing on zombies with a big weapon is effective enough, which is all you should really be hoping for if you're playing this game. Unfortunately, it feels a lot smaller than Dead Island 1 with a more sectioned off set of small maps instead of a few big overworlds with some smaller dungeon areas. Still, if you were hoping for more Dead Island with a new coat of paint, like I was, you'll be happy. If not, you'd be fine playing through the first game instead for a lot less money. Hopefully this comes to GamePass. Pick it up if you enjoyed Dead Island 1. Skip it if you didn't or haven't played 1.

It's a fine enough shooter. There's nothing remotely original here. If you want the same plot but better, play Half Life. If you want the same combat action but better, play Doom. If you want the same progression system, play BioShock or Fallout. Unfortunately, I had high hopes for this game because of the original trailers that made it seem like this was going to be a psychological nightmare ****. Unfortunately, it feels like they really toned that back and stuck to the tried and true first-person shooter tropes. Oh well, it wasn't bad, just not worth recommending. If you do play it though, just play on the easiest difficulty. None of the enemies are challenging to fight, and they just get more bullet spongy at higher difficulties, which just makes killing them take way too long.

Be warned, this isn NOT XCOM with Marvel Characters, which is what I wanted. This is more akin to Slay the Spire, Card Hunter, SteamWorld Quest, Hand of Fate, Voice of Cards, or any number of other games where you draw cards to make characters attack. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy these types of games too, so this game is pretty fun so far (see edit below). I'm just disappointed because it's much less intriguing of a format than XCOM with Marvel Characters. Really I just wanted a re-skined Chimera Squad and i would have been happy, which I think is what everyone kinda thought it would be. Worth playing, but it's NOT XCOM. It's a card team battler with very minor positioning mechanics. Edit: Unfortunately, after playing through the full game, I can't recommend this. The lackluster writing only becomes more apparent as you go through the story. The endless accolades and exclamations that you're the best friend anyone has ever had ever get very old. The combat is fun initially, but toward the second half of the game just dragged on. I started playing at the highest difficulty settings (raising it each time they unlocked), which was minorly challenging, but dropped it down to the easiest at the end just to finish the game. A real disappointment. It started okay and literally went nowhere, but it took ages to get nowhere, too.

This is a great Beta for a future game. It has A LOT of great aspects that are pretty much all implemented haphazardly, but could be downright awesome with enough thought and planning. They clearly spent all of their programming time getting the open world movement/controls down but just ran out of time to make the world(s) actually feel real. I'm a lifelong Sonic fan, so this was a decent game for me. I appreciated the callbacks, references, and cheeky nods scattered throughout that you'll only pickup if you've actually played nearly all of the other Sonic games out there. I'd probably recommend any non-fans just wait for the next game, though.

Do NOT get this on Switch. The base game is fun, but the Always Online Connection requirement is a REALLY bad thing to have on the Switch, where you're intended to be able to move the console away from a stable internet connection. It's so poorly optimized, it constantly loses connection anyway, even when wired to my router/modem, and it crashes and slows down like crazy. Like their other attempts (Rogue Book), the developers clearly didn't actually take any time to optimize the game for Switch. It's too bad, I think I could really enjoy this game if it wasn't so absolutely frustrating to play.

It's kinda cool. They mix up the battles with some mini-games that are simple, yet just different enough to keep things from going stale. Unfortunately, the card game itself gets pretty frustrating once you realize that the computer opponents aren't using actual random card draws, but their decks are instead perfectly stacked to give them really powerful combos. In addition to that, the game actively stacks your deck against you, placing your high cost cards near the top to slow your own combos. Overall, pretty well made, but I wish the battles were genuine. I get why they did this, it's easier to program and ensures the game has "boss battles" that you need to defeat, but it also gets tedious losing to the same perfect sequence of plays for the 10th time. If you're a Shadowverse die hard, give it a shot. If not, skip it. There are better card games on the Switch.

The game itself is good, but it runs completely jank on Switch. The controls are super sticky, the load times are horrendous (minutes in some cases, and just for basic fights, not bosses), and the text is tiny. You can tell they just ported this over and did ZERO optimization on it. The game is fun, but these issues make it really hard to want to play this multiple times, like you're supposed to. Buy this on another system. Do NOT get it on Switch until they do some more work on it.

Axiom Verge is one of those rare indie games where it manages to serve as an homage to past greats while also improving upon them in significant ways. The story is intriguing and told in a way that draws you in. The combat is good and the controls precise. Even the overall gameplay is great. In particular, I loved the way Boss Battles were handled. It was not what I expected, but much more pleasant and interesting. Overall, I have played this game several times through and would highly recommend it for anyone looking for a good Metroidvania fix.

As others have said, this is not a card game, this is an RPG using cards as the art style. That being said, the RPG itself is okay. There's nothing new here. If you're a veteran RPG player, then the gameplay is something you've seen before and you'll find this game to be incredibly easy. If you're new to RPGs, this is actually a pretty good place to start. It's pretty straightforward and incredibly forgiving. Unfortunately, that's also a bit of it's downfall. The game is short. You could beat this in 6-8 hours easy. I looked at all the extra material, so I took 12 hours. This feels like 1/4 of an RPG, but you're also kind of glad that it didn't go any longer, once you've beaten it. A lot of the animations and mechanics aren't slow enough to make you quit the game, but they're slow enough to make the game feel long without actually being long. A setting to speed up dice rolls, attack animations, speech text, and such would be very welcome. The entire game's premise is that you've got a Game Master that's talking you through the adventure, kind of like a Dungeon Master for D&D. Unfortunately, the GM speaks pretty much evenly the entire time, never bothering to make the characters sound different in any way. All of the characters speak the same, flat monotone, no matter what is happening to them. The game could have upped itself quite a bit just by adding a few more people to the voice acting mix, or by having the game master actually try to add some sort of tone to his speech. It kinda feels like they paid a guy $500 to read every line of the game over the course of 10 hours. Likewise, the music and sound doesn't do much here. There's basically 3 background tracks. They're all incredibly well done, but they don't help the already monotonous GM add any sort of excitement to the game. The sound effects are all pretty dull and samey as well, but I wasn't expecting much from an RPG in that area. Finally, the story and characters are all... fine. It's a pretty predictable, tried-and-true plot. You'll know every beat and every twist well before it happens. The characters don't really develop and the emotional moments of the game don't feel earned, but that's also because the game is just too short. Were this a 40 hour game, I could see myself really feeling the weight of some of the things that happen here. As it is, I just kinda went "oh" to most of it. The dialogue does need some serious overhaul though. The dialogue feels like it was written by a space alien that was studying human interaction through movies and TV, but has never actually interacted with a human before. Funny at random times, but mostly just left me going "Well that was awkward." All that being said, this isn't a bad game. It's just not worth what they 're charging you. The only real criticism I have is that the random encounters happen a little too frequently. Fortunately, they're pretty fast, but when you just kinda go through them automatically without any thought, they just kinda get in the way and aren't very interesting. Reducing these or making them not random would also help this game a lot. Again, the encounters aren't so frequent that you want to just walk away from the game, but they are frequent enough to be annoying by the end. Overall, this isn't a terrible game. I'd play a sequel. I would NOT recommend buying it at full price, however. They're asking $30, I'd say it's worth $10-15. None of the DLC is worth purchasing, either. A good first experiment, and I'll likely play the next one, but they've gotta improve and redo quite a bit if they want to really make this into something that will keep bringing people back.

This definitely feels like a sequel we would have gotten in the old 16 bit era. It does borrow a lot from the first game, but it changes a lot too, and not necessarily for the better. Mapping has gotten worse, the enemies are much less interesting, and most disappointing of all is the arsenal. In the first game you were given a lot of fun toys, far more than you needed, that let you approach enemies in a huge number of ways. In this, you get a limited selection of lackluster items and a skill tree to power them up. Perhaps worst of all, the story doesn't grab you nearly as well as the first game's did. You're given hints in the same fashion, but the first drew you in right away with the giant mysterious creatures and the absolutely bizarre environments. This one doesn't have that. I had high hopes for this game after the first one (which I played several times through), but this one I may not even finish. I'd recommend it if you really liked the first, but wouldn't suggest it to just anyone. A bit of a letdown overall.

It's okay. The controls are fine and the general gameplay is good, if not a bit tried and true. The problem is that there are now many metroidvanias on the eshop that are just as good for far less ($15 instead of $60). This game isn't really worth the full asking price, but that won't ever be going down, since it's a Nintendo game, unfortunately. If you can find a used copy or borrow it from a friend, go ahead, but I can't recommend this at the full price of $60. The one big detractor from the game is the robot chase parts. We've seen this done in video games so many times before that it's not scary or tense even the first time that it happens. It's mostly just an annoyance because it just adds extra reload time. The map is pretty decent, but there is some fail. It's often a little too confusing figuring out where you need to go next. The rooms are mostly samey and the environmental design does little to help this. That's okay because the environment was never really a big part of Metroid anyway, typically having black or flat color rooms with enemies in them, but it does feel a bit lame when you have graphics this nice otherwise. A fine enough Metroid, but there's better out there for cheaper now. Edit: Dropped my score by a point because I'm already bored of the game after 6 hours of play. It's just too monotonous, the exploration is really non-existent, and the E.M.M.I. sections are just an annoyance. Go buy "A Robot Named Fight", it's a much better, much more interesting Metroid. Ironically, this game actually got me to finally try Axiom Verge.

The first one on the DS was awesome because of it's unique (if awkward) control system, and its mesmerizing art, music and story. Unfortunately, I feel like a lot of what made the first game great has been lost here. The switch to 3D gameplay really minimized the art style to just the characters during cut scenes, which is too bad. The music is still pretty good, but definitely not as sharp as the original. It feels like they've tried to go with a more modern style or hip hop/rap, which I think fits the gameplay and story less effectively. The story itself, pretty good, but definitely doesn't have the interesting bite the first did. Overall, an okay game, but I'd only recommend it if you've played the first one, and I'd really only recommend that you play the first one on DS.

This still has a lot of charm of the original DS game, but it's lost a lot not having the dual screen battle system. It was a little awkward at first on the DS, but it was unique, and that was what made it fun. The controls on this are sub-par. Fortunately, you can kind of just button mash and flick your wrists around randomly and get through most encounters anyway. If you can find a copy of the game for DS, absolutely play it on that instead. Otherwise, this is an acceptable replacement if you don't have that option, because the story, art and music are still fantastic.

Unfortunately, it's lacks the awesome enemy corridors from previous iterations, which is what I was looking forward to the most, but it kind of makes up for it by creating even more enemy variety than before, and mixing it up nicely to make the battles slightly different each time. Still, I miss the days of standing at the end of a "hallway" and mowing down thousands of enemies all charging at you. That's not to say the battles aren't big, just not as big as I was hoping for. I assume they did this as a trade off for better graphics, which I'm not certain was a worthwhile trade. TLDR: Fun, particularly if you're a Sam Fan, but I'd recommend Serious Sam 3 over this.

I agree with most of the actual reviewers on here. I'm a huge fan of the Zero Escape games. Those were an interesting (if a bit muddled) story broken up by a series of (mostly) interesting mini-puzzle games. AI, however, is much more akin to a visual novel. There aren't really "puzzles" in this game and even the few that are there don't make much logical sense, so it's hard to really call them puzzles in the truest sense. You have control over the order you ask questions or the places you visit, but that has absolutely no effect on anything. There are branching paths, but the split points are so obvious as to be silly. Story-wise, AI is comparable to ZE, but not nearly as good. It's pretty obvious the writer knew that the two series would be compared, so he tried to differentiate them a bit but also come up with some twists that were mostly telegraphed a little too much. And some of the humor is WAY over the top, which sometimes utterly destroys what should be really serious, emotional or tense moments. Overall, if you're a fan of the ZE games, then sure, pick this up, but at a discount. If you haven't played the ZE games yet, just go play those. If you're not a fan of ZE, there's nothing here for you.

An interesting concept, but lacks in execution. Like other's aid, it really needs a map system of some sort. The vast majority of my game was spent circling through the same rooms again and again. Combat is... eh... it's kinda fun initially, but you quickly learn just flailing wildly works most of the time and it's not super exciting. Finally, I feel like the concept is a bit wasted on pixel art. I get the idea that you're a hideous flesh mass that consumes and absorbs other living creatures like The Thing, but there's no real shock to any of it because it is just red pixels on pink pixels with some white pixels for teeth. I feel like if this was redone in a highly detailed, third person format with a bit of effort put into level design, you could have a really solid horror game.

Don't pick this up on Switch yet. They haven't optimized it for the system (or something like that), so it sputters and chugs all over the place. At some of the locations where you're switching from one area to the next, it can take as long as a minute to load. It makes the game virtually unplayable for any length of time and makes it nearly impossible to react to the monsters properly. Wait for them to get a few patched out before picking this up.

This is a card-based RPG that is mostly just meh. It's fine enough, but this format has been done before and done better, so it's not worth picking up for the mechanics alone. The combat is a bit repetitive and you find yourself mostly just trying to pull the same 3 combos as many times as possible. My biggest problem with the game though is the fact that it doesn't seem to have any connection to SteamWorld beyond the art style. The characters keep making references to being "hungry" or having "flesh wounds that heal" and you get "trashium" and other gem types from the dig games as crafting materials, but you never actually see them in the world or anything like that; they're mostly just a line of text. It feels like Image and Form made a mediocre RPG, knew it was mediocre, and so changed the art last minute to make it "SteamWorld" to try and grab a few extra sales off of that. This will be worth picking up once it goes on sale to $15, but you're fine until then. It is worth playing in the end, but it's not creative or unique enough to warrant a day-one purchase, even for SteamWorld fans.

A fantastic series of games. I have bought each 3 times (hard copy, digital on 3ds and now on Switch) and it has been worth it each time. Even though you know the answers to all of the questions ahead of time, the thrill you get when the music builds and the characters start slamming their hands down never gets old. And it does look absolutely beautiful on the Switch. If you're a fan at all of these games or looking for a great set of light puzzles linked to some fantastic stories, this is well worth picking up at only $30.

A good metroidvania, but not great. It's fun, but repetitive and there are some questionable mechanics that seem to be there simply to pad out the run time of the game. The map mechanic is just annoying, needing to find an NPC in a maze of identical rooms with traps and pitfalls that you often can't see unless you've hit them once. Several of the broaches you collect that give you "abilities" just end up making your character feel normal, instead of improved, like the broach that prevents you from bumping backward after a strike. The game does get more fun as you play, but the first several hours are a slog and it doesn't feel like it was a necessary one. It just feels like you start of lacking several basic abilities/characteristics that any standard metroidvania needs to make your character competent, and the only seeming explanation is "We needed a level up type system because all games have them now." The art style is interesting, but a little too bland for its own good as the novelty of it quickly wears off. The music is there, but doesn't really add anything. The controls are good, but could be a little bit tighter. The gameplay is fun, but its been done much better very recently. TLDR: Skip Hollow Knight. It's fun, but there's better stuff out there.

I'm sure this game has come a long way since it was first released, but it still has a long way to go. If this game could have a baby with Fallout 76, we'd probably actually have something worth playing. The terrain is pretty, but so empty that it's hardly worth looking at for too long. And we're not talking a lack of civilizations, even the animals and plants are blah at best. The survival elements are fairly unforgiving, and I would be okay with that if they just made a few basic quality of life improvements that would help make it much easier to recover. A tweaked mining tool that doesn't need to constantly be fed carbon, a slightly bigger ship to make death less painful early game, and a better variety of resources scattered across planet surfaces would be nice. Eliminate the fact that running and jumping drains your oxygen, up the amount of time you can spend outside in hazards and make it easier to locate you ship, base or other people. Do all that and you'd have a half-way acceptable game. As it is right now, it's too janky and demanding for any but the most dedicated of players. A solid basis to build from, but this game still needs about 5 years of work to get to something worth talking about.

Meh. Not the worst game in the world, but having friends to play it with is a must. The game is mildly boring with friends, and it only gets worse if you attempt single player. There are bugs galore, but they are nothing we didn't see in Skyrim or Fallout 4, so I'm not sure we can call them bugs anymore. On the upside, there's not enough world immersion for the bugs to break you out of it, so whatever. A thoroughly mediocre experience.

Unfortunately this game could have been great if they had just worked on the controls a little bit more. The big main mechanic of the game is "cloud stepping" where you can jump again in mid-air after attacking an enemy or object. The problem is that they tried to bog the jump mechanic down with so many other functions that the game often has trouble figuring out what exactly you want to do. Not only do you have the double-jump after an attack, you can also jump and press jump again to glide, jump and press a button to do a downward attack, jump and press a button to launch a grappling hook and you have wall claws to cling to walls. Because so much is tied to jumping, I often found myself gliding when I didn't want to, clinging to walls at the worst moments and missing critical grapples. Worst of all, there's often a big of lag between your aerial attacks and your ability to jump again, meaning that you've often fallen a fair distance from your target before you get that second jump off. Other than that, the enemy designs are meh, mostly just copy pasted from other games, the platforming portions are meh, neither too hard nor really interesting, and as others have said, the "skill tree" is utterly pointless. TLDR: This would be a fine game to pick up for $5 or less. It's not worth the full $20.

Monster Hunter World was fun, but for a lot of us veteran hunters, it was just too easy. While Generations Ultimate is easier than previous iterations, it feels more visceral and satisfying than World did. The grind is there, the collecting efforts are there, and the monsters are much more devastating without proper preparation. For any vet, you'll be happy with this, particularly with the ability to finally play a real Monster Hunter game on the big screen.

This game is a neat idea, letting you find your own solutions to puzzles to progress, but it's terribly unfinished. There are bugs, glitches, and the neighbor gets caught on objects constantly. Controlling your own character is mediocre, the musical score is bare minimum, and overall the game feels like a really early test build for something else. If you're looking for this kind of gameplay, pick up Prey. That did the same thing (stealth horror where you choose the solution) but much much much more effectively.

Unfortunately, the biggest flaw with this game is the fact that you're not playing 1 overaching story with 8 contributing paths, but 8 parallel paths that really don't have much to do with each other and literally no interaction between the characters. You're not playing with a party of adventurers so much as a group of strangers silently hanging out together. In a game that gets half of its merit from story alone, this is a bit of a failure. The characters by themselves are fairly interesting with decent stories to them, but that just makes the lack of connection all the more frustrating. However, If you're looking for old school JRPG, that's what you're getting. But beware, there have been A LOT of "quality of life" upgrades RPGs have gained over the years that this game deliberately leaves out, to be more like the older games. Fights are very repetitive, menus are needlessly complex, the story is slow, and you're going to have to grind A LOT. If you're looking for all of that, which is what us older folks knew growing up, you'll be pleased. If you're a youngin' whipper snapper, this probably isn't the game for you. As an adult that grew up on these games with relatively little free time now, I'm torn. I want to like this, but I don't want to devote my life to it and the failing of the story to unite these individually interesting characters really ruins the momentum I had to play it. Buy at your own risk.

Strangely enough, if you're a fan of any of the many "mecha arena combat" games that came out in the late 90s, this is a simpler version of those. It's extremely light on content, so it's kinda tough to actually recommend picking it up, but it's mildly entertaining if you don't want to think much. it's equal parts weird, silly and simple. Worth maybe $5 to waste an empty afternoon on.

Be wary, this is a game for hardcore RPG gamers only. The user interface is absolutely one of the least intuitive interfaces I have ever interacted with and it will definitely drive most folks away before they even start the first quest. If you're the kind of person that likes to go to bed reading D&D manuals, then you might do okay with it. Anyone else is going to feel their eyeballs fall out at the wall of text presented to them. Unfortunately, the gameplay itself is just as repetitive and, while fairly entertaining, you basically end up repeating the same 4 steps over and over again. The game is also incredibly punishing. While not a problem in and of itself as challenge is a good thing that most games lack, you will find yourself restarting a lot in the early game, especially as you're getting used to the flow of the game. If you're not a fan of that, you'll also want to avoid this game. Finally, also be aware that this game pulls the "Ooops, the enemy barely survived with 1 health" thing A LOT. If you're like me and find this an incredibly annoying trick to add "challenge" to fights, then you'll also want to avoid this. It is likely to happen at least once in every fight.

This is just silly. It's a slightly entertaining "game" to watch, but that's all that you do. The game plays itself, there's auto-set, auto-select and auto-battle buttons. The only two effects the player really has on the game are choosing what order you want to go on the quests in the game (just the order, not actually doing anything on them), and choosing whether or not to pay money to make the game go faster. Since it's a free download, you might as well check it out, but I don't know why anyone would ever spend money on this. There's literally nothing to do here.

A fine enough game, but pick it up on sale. It's too limited in scope to be worth the full $20, but if you have some friends to play local co-op with, you'll get $10 of fun out of it. It's also very difficult to play in handheld mode, so if you're the kind of person, like me, that mostly uses the Switch as a portable, this game won't be very good for you.

This is Minecraft with a little bit of direction. There really isn't much to make this a Dragon Quest game besides the style. There's a little bit of direction because the other characters give you quests, but you can do them or ignore them, it really doesn't matter too much. Unfortunately, unlike Minecraft, you lack the ability to look straight up or straight down or go into first person mode, so it's Minecraft that is distinctly harder to navigate and control. Overall a fine game, but there's nothing new here and no reason to call it Dragon Quest.

This is a fun little zelda puzzler that worth checking out if you're into top-down adventure games. It's funny, has a good art style, nice music and pleasant little puzzles. Unfortunately, there really isn't all that much going on in the game beyond that and by the end I was mostly just rushing through the game to finish it, and I doubt I'll even do that. The excitement just kinda drops off once you've found all of the items and you start seeing the same puzzles repeated with only slight variation. In the end, this game is not really worth the $30 asking price, but if you can grab it for $15 or less, you'll be okay.

I'm a long time veteran of Monster Hunter, I've got 1000+ hours in the other hand-held titles (PSP and DS), and this game is pretty great. While I agree with other veterans that some of the more complex and hardcore elements have been sacrificed, the trade off is that I'm finally able to get friends to join me that tried Monster Hunter in the past and just couldn't get their heads around it. The graphics are great, the monster variety is interesting and fun and, as usual, hunting the same monster 15 times in a row is still exciting on the 15th time. Overall, I'd say the game ranks pretty much with all of the other Monster Hunters at a solid 8, but it gets a bonus point for finally bringing in non-Hunter folks without completely destroying what makes it so unique and interesting. If you're a veteran, you'll enjoy it a ton. If you're new to the series, it's definitely worth giving a shot, especially once it starts going on sale/you find copies used.

If you're a fan of Monster Hunter, this is basically Monster Hunter on rails. Instead of learning monster attack patterns to more easily harvest that monster for parts before moving on to the next, you learn level segments until you can move on to the next. It's not a bad game, but I didn't really feel any drive to keep going . I didn't find the story or the settings interesting enough to want to continue this game for very long and the meager level up bonuses just didn't feel exciting.

This is a fantastic little tactical RPG. It's XCOM light, basically. Thoroughly enjoyable and a perfect game for the Switch because it's super easy to pause the game and swap between the different play modes. At only $20, it's pretty much an auto-include in any Switch library. I played through the game completely on the 3DS when it came out and I rebought it for the Switch day one as well, and I am enjoying it all over a second time. Great music, great controls, great characters and even the story helps beef out the universe a little bit. I am eagerly anticipating Steamworld Heist 2.

This was a surprisingly solid little game. It was pretty easy to grasp and readily enjoyable. The controls are pretty solid and the different weapons are fun to use. I'd have rated it one higher, but the game has a problematic case of last-level-itis where the difficulty suddenly spikes at the end, and for some reason the creators decided to make one of the last areas a stealth level, which wasn't fun at all after playing 5ish hours of straight shooter. I'd recommend this if you can pick it up for under $5. It's fun for a time, but you may end up feeling cheated toward the end if you pay full price.

I'll agree that this story isn't nearly as emotionally amazing as Unwound Future (which I hold was the best story out of the whole series if only for that ending that just stabs you right in the heart), but I think I was ready for something lighter. The Professor Layton games have always been great, but the scale just kept getting bigger to the point where it started to feel less special with each one. So I don't think a scaling back to simpler plots is really all that bad. The cast is fantastic. Sure, no one will ever replace Layton and Luke, but Katrielle and her crew do a pretty great job of endearing you to them pretty quickly. They also did a fantastic job of instilling just the right hints of Layton's personality into Katrielle that make the transition all the easier and help to forge the father-daughter connection all the better. Unfortunately, this game does end up faltering. The mysteries all wind up being solved via "dues ex machina" discoveries made by Katrielle, things that you could never predict from the other 5 clues that are gathered or any of the conversations or cut scenes previous to that moment, so you end up feeling cheated for even trying to think ahead. Likewise, the puzzles are a big miss, and they are, of course, the main draw of the game. Nearly all of the puzzles either end up being Gotchas ("Oh, you didn't think about the fact that some people don't like apples!") or they end up being answered either with 0 or the smallest possible number. They were either barely a puzzle or impossible to solve without knowing the exact thought process of the puzzle writer. In the end, the game still has a little charm, but the lackluster mysteries and puzzles end up growing stale. I'd actually recommend skipping this one unless you're a die-hard Layton fan, then you might get some minor enjoyment out of it.

An alright game, but its predecessors, Fairune and Fairune 2 are far superior. Kamiko is fun but incredibly repetitive, and lacking any real puzzles like the Fiarune games had, so it feels very lacking. Unfortuantely, the controls are also lacking as the character attacks either force you to pause or pull you forward as you attack, making it very hard to control your character precisely and causes you to suffer a lot of damage that feels like it wasn't your fault. However, at only $5, it's hard to feel cheated on this. If you liked the Fairune games, pick this up and you'll have some mild fun. If you haven't played the Fairune games, go play those instead.

This is an excellent little game that offers rewards for careful planning and creative puzzle solving. If you like to explore and collect things, this is your game. If you're looking for a combat-based Metroidvania type game, this isn't the game for you. If you found the most rewarding part of Metroidvania to be exploring the levels and finding secrets, this game has you covered in spades.

As others have said, if you're a fan of the Fate Series, you'll probably play this game and find it enjoyable, but its definitely lacking in many areas. The game runs smoothly enough and the graphics are decent, but the combat is pretty repetitive and the tactical aspect of each mission is somewhat difficult to decipher. The story is a convoluted mess much like everything else Fate, but it's the characters you watch the series for anyway. Unfortunately, I don't feel like the characters in this game are as well fleshed out as they are in the other offerings in the series. If you're a Fate fan, check it out when it goes on sale to $20 or so. If you're not a Fate fan, skip it.

This is a fantastic little game and was a system seller for me. I bought a Switch just to play this game and I am not disappointed. It plays very similar to the first with a few tweaks and additions that keep things interesting, but the heart of the game is still there. The controls are as tight as ever, the secrets and challenges throughout the game are well thought out and fun, the music sets the mood of the areas you're in nicely, and I can easily see myself playing through this several times. If this is the only game that I play on the Switch, I would still consider it $300 well spent.

This is a really great fan game. It never quite feels like a real sonic game because too much of it is just recycled from older games, and the new stuff that is in there feels just off enough to be easily recognizable as not from the original creators of sonic. The controls are just a hair too loose, sonic's hitbox is just a little too big, and the rings bounce in just the wrong way, but overall, a very solid effort. You can tell that this game was created by people that love the entire Sonic Universe (and I do mean ENTIRE). Small tweaks aside, this game really just needed to be all original content and it would have wound up being better for it, but its still a must play for old sonic fans. For newcomers, you should really return back to the originals, though, Sonic 1, 2 and 3.

I had my doubts when I heard that this Prey had nothing to do with the original, but I was very pleasantly surprised. This was a fun, open world game that let you explore and actually did as promised, it let you solve puzzles your own way. Most games say they will but then make only one option the actually feasible choice. This game isn't trying to force you into one route, which is very refreshing. Also, a lot of people are saying that the ending is a bummer, but I think it's actually a pretty cool twist. You could see it coming from a mile away, but still very nicely executed. Controls were smooth, animations were fine enough, voice acting was good. The only real complaints I would mention are that the load times between areas are atrocious (which becomes a HUGE annoyance at the very end of the game), and the environments are kind of bland. But overall, I was pleased with the 60+ hours I put into it.

Definitely the weakest game in the series, unfortunately, Echoes is kind **** all around. Between poor map design that forces you to spend several turns just moving to combat while heavily funneling you, forcing you to fight with only a couple of characters at once, enemies that infinitely spawn more enemies, the fatigue system that does nothing but drag out already boring battles, the lack of the combat triangle to add tactical depth, and the extreme simplification of the item system, you really feel like you're spending A LOT of time putting in work just to advance the story of the game. Fortunately the characters and story are very strong and the only reason I did push though this mostly frustrating grindfest. As others have said, newcomers should stick to Awakening, this is really only good for vets that are already willing to put the time in.

Much like no one expected crossing Sonic the Hedgehog with comic books was going to work, crossing Sonic with an RPG works surprisingly well. If you're looking for regular Sonic sidescrolling action, then you're out of luck, but the story here is pretty fantastic. It pays homage to the series very well, has a bunch of hidden inside jokes, and was clearly made by people that love the Sonic franchise and it's surprisingly deep backstory. Definitely worth playing if you like Sonic and RPGs.

It's not much ****, but it is beautiful. There was a lot of effort put into making this game look as realistic as possible with the current tech we have. It's enjoyable with a nice (a little bit awkward) story that ultimately brings out the feels in the end. It won't take you very long to complete, but it also doesn't cost much. Worth picking up if you like games that give you things to look at and think about.

Visually beautiful game, but be warned, this is a platformer. I thought that this would be more of a narrative game the way everyone talks about it, so if you don't like platformers, like me, don't bother with this. The controls are just shy of perfect and most of the jumps are too precise for my tastes. It's also one of those games where the abilities you gain as you progress make the game significantly more playable and you're left wondering why you didn't just have all of them from the start. If you like platformers, this is a must. If you don't, avoid it. You'll only be frustrated like I was.

Yes, Andromeda does have a lot of weird technical issues, but don't be fooled by the same people that complained about the ending to Mass Effect 3. Andromeda is a whole lot of fun and much much bigger than the previous Mass Effect titles. It takes everything right from the original games and just adds content from there. A more original story would have been nice, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't having fun. However, if you're a newcomer to the series, I probably would recommend you start with the original trilogy first. This game kind of assumes you'll be familiar with them anyway in the sense that it gets you used to the combat for which it offers relatively few tutorials or other information. TLDR: If you've played Mass Effect before, you'll enjoy this one. If you haven't, start with the original trilogy, but you won't be doing yourself a disservice starting here either.