Vegeton

Absolutely loved every moment playing this. I only had a single freeze in roughly 50 hours of gameplay, but I can forgive it just due to it being such a capable and solid JRPG even if you were to disregard Digimon. Definitely recommend it to all fans of JRPGs and Digimon.

The game has gorgeous pixel art, great audio, solid controls, and lots of nods for fans. But these elements cannot save the game from its copy/paste trappings, with the two games and associated characters and enemies seemingly skin swaps. Laurie is Michael, Kelly is Ash. Gameplay becomes repetitive after a couple hours, and the fan service starts to fade. The negatives would be less glaring if it didn't sting when buying both games as a single package for roughly the price of a AAA title with dozens or hundreds of hours of varied gameplay or similarly a unique indie game with dozens of hours of gameplay packed with interesting mechanics and features. $65 CAD for the base game or $110 CAD for the special edition (an additional $55 for a small plush, a pack of cards, a small poster, and access two Laurie and Kelly).

The pixel art is great and the chiptune renditions of Rocky Horror tracks are fantastic, but the game still suffers from finicky platforming traditionally seen in other FreakZone Games. Some boss fights and levels aren't necessarily difficult because of actual difficulty but due to gating via reduced health, quickly becoming frustrating. The game also has a glaring bug in which entering dialogs while holding a throwable object can lead to instant death, which wouldn't be that bad of a bug if it wasn't most commonly encountered at the end of boss fights which can lead to having to do the boss fight all over again. And half the time boss fights can end holding an item as without any health indicators for enemies (in the HUD or visually on enemy sprites) you're left readying for another attack. Nostalgia and fanservice can only carry the game so much, and putting the art and audio aside you're left with a frustrating and short game experience. Luckily the game is quite cheap which makes most of the negatives forgivable.

Fine for speedrunners, mediocre for others. If you're looking for a fun mix of challenges to scratch a nostalgic itch, this is not it. Rather than being closer to the head-to-head original NWC, with a diverse set of games andchallenges, this new mix is purely time challenges. Some challenges have unlisted stipulations, such as requiring smashing treasure pots in Kid Icarus without telling the player the need to avoid the contents of the treasure pots and punishes the user for doing so. Or, for the Adventure of Link, original limitations in design can cause hitches in a run whereas pausing too quickly to confirm leveling can prompt the Pause Menu too soon and not populate with content requiring to unpause and pause again. Rewarded coins sometimes do not exceed the cost of unlocking challenges, such as buying Excitebike for 50 coins and beating a challenge with a top ranking like A++ or S leads to 30-40 coins making the success feel unrewarding. The game as a whole is relatively shallow, limited modes and limited replayability due to the relative ease of the challenges. Lastly, the lack of full game ROMs feels like a missed opportunity considering all the games are firsty-party and mere fractions of the cart size. Had they been unlockables for completing all challenges in a game it would've felt impactful and rewarding, instead you're greeted with another "Legendary" challenge. The Deluxe Set may be worth it for nostalgia fans though.