Recent reviews by thebigl1

Yakuza / Like a Dragon, as a series, offers a kind of experience I don't think I've seen in any other body of work. It's a sandbox, but not spread thin and sparsely like what you get in, say, Grand Theft Auto, Just Cause, or Horizon. It's a beat-em-up (at least, up to 6 and Gaiden), but with much greater variety in the ways you can approach any given fight - you can punch and kick your way through, look for weapons and other objects to use to your advantage, store up Heat to use those BRUTAL context-sensitive Heat Actions, and pick and choose what abilities you want to unlock for the battles to come. But I think my favorite part of the games is the tonal whiplash between the main story that's all dramatic and deadly serious, and the comedic side content like minigames and Substories. If you need to catch your breath between intense story beats, you can go just about anywhere and find some kind of funny or at least interesting diversion.

This happens to be the first game in the series I played, and I went in chronological order from there (which...might not have been the best idea considering the transition from Yakuza Kiwami 2 to "Blockuza 3" as it's often called). Still, I'd call this a perfectly good entry point if you're new. The chapters swapping between Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima essentially give you two campaigns in one, there's an abundance of ways to get stronger with items, equipment and skills (so if you find yourself struggling with combat it's easy to search around for stuff to level the playing field), and the ways Kiryu and Majima's plots intersect do a great job of keeping you wanting to see what happens next. So consider this an endorsement for not just this game, but the whole series - it's extraordinarily deep and satisfying if you want to invest the time.

What can I say about this that hasn't already been said? It's incredibly smooth to play once you get a feel for Peppino's movement physics, the level design lends itself well to both exploring and going fast, the boss fights are tough but reasonably so, the art and animations are absolutely hilarious (especially little details like Peppino's "oh crap, where's the floor?!" expression if you skid off a ledge while dashing), and the soundtrack is so infectious it should be a health hazard. As a composer myself, I had lots of fun listening out for samples I recognized.

Whether you just play through it once, hunt for all the hidden goodies, or decide to try and S-Rank all the levels (or even P-Rank...!), it's absolutely worth the asking price. Easy recommendation if you liked any of the Wario Land games, or just want a platformer that looks and sounds like a cartoon straight out of the 1990s.

I freely admit I'm a sucker for well-designed horizontal shmups, but even I was taken by surprise at how enjoyable this game turned out to be. It looks gorgeous, has some jammin' music, feels just as smooth and satisfying to play as Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth did (if not even more so), and tells a pretty touching story even if the setting is the same sort of futuristic sci-fi we've seen a bazillion times before. Honestly, the only problem I had was it being a bit short.

Truly a remarkable experience, with plenty of improvements over the previous 3D titles in both presentation and game feel. In particular, the automatic 'Story So Far' recap when loading your save, being able to respec your characters' skill points, the ability to automatically buy needed materials when crafting, and the way the battle UI keeps track of status effects, buffs and debuffs on your party AND enemies, massively enhance the quality-of-life factor in playing the game.

I also unironically enjoyed the English voice acting, though I wish some of the characters (especially most of the monsters with speaking lines) didn't talk so slowly. The orchestrated soundtrack was mostly on par with that of Dragon Quest VIII, but there's an awful lot of songs that were carried over from previous games including VIII, and the new ones are a bit of a mixed bag too. The story is quite by-the-book as you might expect from the series, but there's enough twists and turns to keep it from being too terribly stale, and plenty of interesting and endearing characters even beyond the playable cast.

If you're up for a classic RPG with modern polish, I can safely say this is worth checking out.

Small disclaimer: I personally had a great deal of fun with this game, but if you don't have the patience to do near-constant inventory management and keep a guide open, I can't exactly recommend it.

I've played a few of the Mystery Dungeon games before including the DS port of the first Shiren the Wanderer, so I was able to hit the ground running with this one after wrapping my head around the new gimmicks. The sheer variety of optional dungeons you can access even right from the start is quite refreshing - if you don't feel like progressing the story there's still loads of places to go as you gather stuff to power up your equipment for whatever difficult spot you want to tackle next.

I also enjoyed the soundtrack quite a bit. Funnily enough, I could've sworn it was more of Koichi Sugiyama's work like Shiren 1, but it was actually from a new composer, Hayato Matsuo, who apparently worked under Sugiyama doing stuff like arranging his compositions for the DS ports of Dragon Quest 4-6, and the Fortune Street/Itadaki Street series. There's a clear influence in some of the songs if you keep your ears peeled.

All that being said, this is the kind of game that can very easily turn frustrating with all the downright malicious things enemies and traps can do to your items, whether it's Rust Traps degrading your weapon and shield, Rotten Traps spoiling your food items, Scoopies flinging dirt that clogs up your pots, Nigiri Morphs turning random things you're carrying into riceballs, or Gyadons pecking your staves and scrolls to render them useless. Most of these things have at least one good countermeasure, and at the very least you can put tags on weapons and shields to avoid losing them for good, but it's still a hassle keeping track of all the potential hazards you might encounter in any given dungeon.

If that doesn't deter you, though, then I can definitely recommend at least trying the game.

I never really looked into Record of Lodoss War myself, but I still had an excellent time with this game. There's no mistaking the amount of love and care that went into it, from the impeccably responsive controls to the gorgeous sprites and backdrops. It might feel a bit short for a Metroidvania, but that's mostly because there's no unnecessary padding or filler.

On a side note, I played this just after finishing Timespinner, and comparing the two was pretty funny - while they both play almost exactly like the Castlevania games IGA directed, Timespinner replicates the music but not the visuals of those games, and this one does the other way around.

I've had a lot of fun with this game, but I get why it has such mixed reception. The pre-rendered sprites and backdrop graphics can make it hard to identify objects you can interact with, and there's a LOT of mechanics to learn, even if the tutorial prompts are spaced out enough to only tell you about things when they become relevant. The mapping system also has some problems, mainly how the minimap for the current room can't be made transparent or smoothly adjusted in size. Particularly with very large rooms, it seems like you can only swap the minimap between "too small to see clearly" and "too big to see behind".

That being said, exploring the various types of biomes is pretty fun, especially the sort of "dungeon within a dungeon within a dungeon" aspect of how many layers you can delve into any given square on the overworld map. I also enjoyed the soundtrack. It does a great job of conveying the game's subtle but pervasive sense of melancholy, reminding you that this jumbled-together landscape you're traversing is all that remains from a cataclysm that smashed together all of space and time.

All in all, not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I'd say it's worth at least a glance.

Noita offers a fantastically unique experience. It's true that the destructible environment, WASD movement and mouse aiming controls are a lot like Terraria, but that's about where the similarities end. Thanks to the game's incredibly-detailed physics engine, there's a near-limitless variety of ways to solve any particular problem using the various items, spells, and/or perks you can accumulate in a single run. For me personally, most of the fun comes from experimentation - finding interesting, useful or just plain hilarious interactions between spells and modifiers.

It's a very difficult game, but there's usually at least something to be learned from each death, and sometimes you can end up getting killed in ways that are too funny to be mad about. If nothing else, the built-in replay recording option can be used to look at the last several seconds of gameplay frame-by-frame so you can get a better look at what killed you. If I had to put numbers to it, a successful run comes down to about 40% experience, 40% execution, and 20% luck.

I also love the sound design. The ambient noises and realistic sound effects for everything give it kind of an auditory uncanny-valley effect that juxtaposes really well with the pixelated visuals. That being said, the music eventually got old for me, but that happens with every roguelike/roguelite I end up spending enough time with, so it's not something I consider a problem with the game itself.

On top of all that, the modding support is excellent too - there's a vertiable treasure trove of ways to tweak the gameplay, add new content and mechanics, and just mess around with things to your liking. Some of my favorite mods include the Anvil of Destiny (you can find anvils that let you fuse wands together, or modify them by pouring just about any liquid before adding a wand), Arcane Alchemy (adds new magic liquids you can find in flasks, all with unique effects), Goki's Things (a multi-purpose mod with new spells and perks, balance/quality-of-life tweaks, game mechanics and other stuff, all of which can be toggled individually), Spellbound (adds a bunch of new spells, and adds back in some unused spells), and the Varia Addon (adds new spells, special weapons you can equip and use like wands, and digging tools that spawn in fixed locations).

All things considered, Noita is easily Game of the Year material.

If you're into action-RPGs at all, CrossCode is absolutely worth a try. There's only a couple of major sticking points for me personally. First, the puzzles can get pretty frustrating especially in later areas, but there's Assist Mode options to make them easier. And second, because of the way most overworld areas are laid out, exploring tends to turn into a game of "hunt for the one place you can climb to higher ground" before you can reach any goodies.

Neither of those really spoiled things for me, though. The story is truly absorbing if you give it a chance, the battles are hectic but satisfying, and the soundtrack does a fantastic job evoking the same feelings as a 32-bit JRPG. In particular, there's songs that call to mind things like Chrono Cross, Grandia 2, Final Fantasy Tactics, some of the modern Kirby games, Disgaea, and/or SaGa Frontier. Put together, the experience is a genuinely interesting mix - it looks like a late 16-bit game, sounds like a 32-bit game, and plays like something modern.

Does blasting an army of bad guys to smithereens Metal Slug-style sound like your idea of a good time? How about doing it with your own custom-made weapon using whatever mishmash of parts you can think of? If any of that appeals to you, then this is absolutely worth a shot.

Paul Robertson's handmade sprites and backdrops do a lot to give the experience that retro/fake-retro charm without coming across as just pixelated for the sake of it. The soundtrack's combination of metal and chiptune-like tones calls to mind things like Virt's compositions for Contra 4 and DuckTales Remastered.

Once you get some momentum going, it's lots of fun crafting gun parts, bionic mods and even substitutes for your trusty knife, to put together your own personal loadout and see how it performs.

There's a couple hitches though. To me at least, the system of equipment weighing you down seems out of place, and the Monster Hunter-type layout of missions giving you different objectives in the same areas means it can get kind of repetitive, especially if there's a gun part or something you REALLY want to get the materials for.

Trifles aside, it's a fine example of mashing together run-and-gun violence and strategic weapon crafting.