☆20211227 produced yayoi (best of the best). the minigames are mostly really bad and i wish the idols interacted more with each other... still, really cute game and songs and idols! i hope we can get more im@s games (fan)translated in the future ;_;

☆20211225 one of those games i didn't think i could ever manage to beat lol but once you properly get into it and try to memorize/write down the maps it really isn't too hard, just try to notice the tile patterns! loved how oppressive everything felt... and how experimental it is for a nintendo game! i'm not super into metroidvanias because i find something like hollow knight to be too convoluted but i'd like to try out some "simpler" ones like this one.

☆20211223 it's a dlc, but i found it isolated enough from the main game to consider a separate entry for it which is... not good. i mean, what's the point of creating a café or a restaurant and not being able to bring your friends there!!! however it's also basically animal crossing's creative mode, which is a lot of fun in its own!

☆20211222 doshin doshin doshin such a chilling and comforting game... with a really sad ending, it made me cry!! it's completely optional to reach though. if you're interesting in god sims, tropical vibes or pikmin-style games i'd recommend checking this out!! also, i would suggest not checking out the manual and just learning the game organically by following the narrator's tips

☆20211215 i'm not a big jrpg person but i loved this!! really really easy to get into and it has a lot of unique ideas. it's an um evolutionary jrpg where you start out as a fish, become a dinosaur and so on... and then it gets really weird (in a good way). also that ending!

☆20211210 rare nintendo game with high soul levels. i love a simple coming-of-age story about kids having to amend the shitty world adults created... exploration was really nice and while i was playing i kept thinking of how this game might have inspired outer wilds... i looked it up and turns out i was right!! sadly, its glaring pacing issues keep it from being a truly great game though.

☆20211204 ahahaha... yea. it was easy to see the developer's influences but i thought they meshed well with each other and the author's own style.

☆20211203 really solid shmup all round. feels great to master the powerup system but the second loop was too hard for me (enemies start shooting debris when dying) so i left it at 2-1. still, i love when loop systems make sense like it does in this game!

☆20211125 liked this one a lot more than the first game! the difficulty issues are mostly gone and everything else gets much more expanded. you now have different routes to follow and i absolutely loved how your dragon keeps getting bigger... the narrative design in this game is super interesting and inspiring even if it seems to have a really simple story ahh~

☆20211123 this game sucks and it's terribly unfair but i love cotton

☆20211122 checked this out because the artstyle was nice and pixel helped out with development, but i don't remember much about it... except that it was sad and gay and pretty

☆20211121 probably the best co-op action game ever made!! it's interesting to me how a game like cuphead took so many cues from this and yet fucked it up so badly.

☆20211120 cool artstyle but like. i feel that's the only thing it has going for it? the simplistic gameplay is fun at first but it ends up being tiiiiring as hell, which is not a good look considering how short the game actually is!

☆20211119 gonna get crucified for this one but i didn't love it. it's def a good vn, but... some doors drag on for too long. eventually you end up getting the red herring gimmick so it's a bit like, more predictable? anyway. there's some stuff i can't fully discuss here because of spoilers but some things with the main two characters didn't make a lot of sense to me, which i wouldn't probably mind if they hadn't decided to overexplain almost everything else @_@

☆20211114 super interesting early "walking" rpg maker game. ihatovo monogatari is an earlier example of this type of game so now i'm wondering whether sogabe got inspired by it or they just had similar ideas! anyway, it's a bit amateurish which imo only makes it feel even more sincere especially when considering the themes it talks about, it reminds me a bit of higurashi in that sense. it's been fantranslated to english so please check this one out!

☆20211102 i played this with my boyfriend and neither of us liked the game... like i can see why grasshopper/suda fans like this one so much, it had some interesting ideas, the grasshopper retrospective angle was cool, HOWEVER... its emphasis on suda being a misunderstood genius came off as a bit masturbatory. i don't blame him though, after all, this is something the fans have been preaching for years. once again, travis acts as a representation of the average fan, trying to psychoanalize juvenile via her games, but they didn't go much further than that! they could have talked about how fans try to do that stuff all the time when in reality their preconceptions couldn't go further from the truth, since we're talking about regular people that just happen to be creators, but they didn't. btw, don't listen to the people who says you have to play their entire ludography to understand the plot, you really don't lol. not counting the shadows of the damned arc, most references consist on a random 2425 character appearing, saying 2 lines and travis going "whoa! what a wacky guy". yep. it's good knowing their career beforehand so you can understand the subtext though. anyway, this review pretty much aligns with my feelings on the game's themes and they explain it better than i ever could. now on the gameplay itself... it's really bad for such a long game. not only that but it serves absolutely no purpose! it's pretty sad how the other player character doesn't even get aknowledged in the in-game dialogues. i especially felt ripped off when the cutscenes for the different death balls showed a cool ass looking game and then it was the same boring combat time after time. but hey, credit is given where credit is due, the presentation was great as always and it's nice that this game could be made at all. even if i don't particularly liked its themes, it's amazing that commercial games can now talk about this sort of stuff!

☆20211028 this would've been sooooo good had it not been rushed. i played on normal difficulty and it became a grindfest to get some decent upgrades which you really needed just to be able to do some damage in the later levels, my boyfriend played it on easy so he could skip the grind and he beat the final boss with like two hits and his whole playthrough lasted less than two hours so there's that. i would suggest doing easy first and then beating it on normal like in good old times. that aside, what i really enjoyed about this game and what makes me feel so sad it had to be released like this (endless grind, the same rooms all over and over again, etc) is that it truly feels like they wanted to export 2d shoot em up sensibilities to a 3d third person shooting game. there's more obvious stuff like some enemy attacks resembling bullet hell patterns, but also the fact that your bullets have travelling time instead of being hitscanned, so you can get creative with the shooting and the acrobatic dodging... idk it has some really cool ideas and that's the reason this is one of the only games i'd love to see remade one day (not gonna happen tho lol). also vanessa hot

☆20211025 definitely more kuso than i expected it to be but also quite enjoyable if you like super cheesy stuff or just games with lovecraftian themes~ playing it is just so boring though like i wouldn't blame you if you just followed a guide unlike me when i spent coutless hours just going back and forth thru the whole school everytime i got a flag. fantranslation here, it even comes with a waklthrough!

☆20211024 as expected, it's not great if you've already played the newer games in the series. i didn't mind it's relative lack of variety early on and really liked the "arcade nature" of it, since this game is way more centered on time optimization than modern entries and also every action you do adds or substracts points to hidden counters that will give you different endings depending on what u do, and i love all that, but after you get the gist of it (and get to know how to exploit for maximum min-maxing) there really isn't much left to do until you get to the ending (which doesn't appear until the middle of the 3rd year, and the game already starts wearing off on the first winter). so in the end i was so bored of it that i just rushed to the ending ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

☆2021023 LORAA....... the puzzle with the wheel pretty much sucks but overall very nice game top notch atmosphere amazing horror b-movie charm... can't way to play more stuff from warp

☆2021020 i hate the binary moral system i hate that the canon mc is male and romances bastila i hate that the game both denounces space racism AND implies that some of the alien races are inherently bad or evil i hate that the story is so cliche at times. however it has juhani in it and i love being able to live my jedi power fantasies and visiting the different planets and having a cyan lightsaber so i can't say it's a bad game. combat wasn't difficult at all but it was easy to mess up because the movement/trying to place your characters while in combat was a bit wonky

☆2021006 hmmm this game... it is really pretty and visually unique. every chapter of this game looks like a whole new game! i also like its lack of in-game interface. it is, however, a slog to get through because you kinda fight the same enemies over and over and over again, and the combat was nothing special, so i can't fully recommend it. still, i appreciate the game's tone even if i didn't know what was going on half of the time (x i also really liked lucifer as a character and how "meta"(?) he was, the finger snap sound while pausing the game was a nice touch!

☆20211003 interactive fiction about a woman who gets harassed not only online but also by her own computer, released in 1985! it's only in french but it's really easy to understand since its text is really straightforward, check it out if you're interested in early feminist games!

☆20210930 it's not the kind of thing i usually play but it was pretty neat to see a 1-2 hr game reach such thematic depth! i played this at the same time than some other people and it was a bit sad to see so many of them only keeping the "immediate" story/plot and not bothering trying to see what else could be lying between the lines but like it's whatever. i liked that the puzzles felt tedious and could be seen as brainwashing exercises that serve the plot really well!

☆20210923 not me liking an annapurna game u_u but i was greatly surprised by it, it's been some time since a newer game made me feel this level of wonder!! i didn't know anything about it prior to playing it (i thought it was gonna be a walking game...) and it was def a great decision hehe i didn't even know making games like these was possible in terms of its scope :0 loved how every planet had its own mechanics in terms of how everything worked

☆20210918 it didn't need to be that much on the nose

☆20210916 it's not perfect but i like this one way more than the original! i'm not a super fan of the new graphics and i feel like everything gets a bit too bright sometimes, but i think it's fairer than the og and i dig the new mechanics (like having cotton's broom as a "melee" weapon so your rear isn't defenseless) and the scoring & power-up systems are v good too!! also original cotton for the x68k is included too~

☆20210903 hmm, this game... i can appreciate how it's its own thing (it reminded me a bit of lovedelic stuff but not too much) and i really like all the character designs, but while helping them was pretty enjoyable, ultimately i couldn't really care about the "villain"'s backstory and motivation :(

☆20210829 played this one with my dad, didn't love it :/

☆20210826 one of my childhood games... that isn't as good as i remembered it. mostly cuz back then i couldn't get past marble zone most of the time. the level design once you get past green hill zone is... bad, but also, it's the first sonic game and there weren't many platforming games based on this level of velocity around. it makes sense they wanted to spend a lot of time perfecting the level design in green hill zone (first thing people were gonna see when trying out the game at an event or at the store, and look at them, they succeeded since stage 1 is one of the best remembered levels ever), but there still are some really bizarre decisions in here: why is the hardest zone the fourth (out of seven)? why did they also put it again at the end of the game when said zone sucked so much? idk idk some parts felt borderline proto masocore. still it was really fun getting to learn where all the traps were, but i'd be lying if i said labyrinth zone didn't sour my view on the whole game

☆20210821 super fun and i keep getting back to it, also helps that you can pick which levels you want to play so your playthough will be easier or harder depending on what you choose, pure arcade fun!

☆20210818 new fave! it is a myst-like directed by osamu osato, who i'd say is mostly known nowadays for lsd: dream emulator. it starts off by feeling very confusing and directionless, but once you spend some time wandering its surreal landscapes you start you really become used to the "language" and the logic of the game and becomes truly special... one of the puzzles kinda fucked me up and i had to look it up online, and... if i understood it correctly it's only possible to get the correct answer AFTER you beat the game, which would be kinda hard without already knowing the answer? super weird if it actually works like that, but also, i feel it's a super genius puzzle since the main theme of this game is ... reincarnation! super cool game plz play if you enjoy weirdo games :>

☆20210815 good shmup, love marion

☆20210806 the characters are cool and it's all mostly well-written but i didn't think this was good. this visual novel starts introducing some apparent "mechanics" like thirst which kept me interested but they are just like decorations, they don't actually do anything nor affect the plot in any way. it's all so stupidly pointless! still, i enjoyed the character substories and it has really good atmosphere, but that's kinda it.

☆20210802 this game has no business being this addictive >.< i was kinda worried at first because i expected it to be uh... really cynical towards the idol industry but thankfully it was not! it wasn't all sugarcoated like love live! or the idolm@ster AT ALL though, it was, i guess, realistic and not hiding the ugly parts of the industry but also not being preachy towards idol culture or reducing it as lol wacky japan, and it still can make you feel the satisfaction of producing great idols and groups just like in the former franchises :) i'm kinda glad they toned down the horniness of it, and thank god the idol dating mechanics were easy to ignore. i just wish you could date the rival manager lol. the plot was surprisingly good too!

☆20210802 i played it alone and it's cute but, as the name implies, it's probably better with friends :S still had a good (but short) time with it!

☆20210728 two dudes bein' dudes (in shanghai). i really liked the vibes and i can see why some ppl see it as a 'subversive' game. like the first one it's a very crude game but this time it has a really cool 'found footage' presentation that supports that. however you get used to its portrayal of violence after a while, which i guess could be seen as us, the players, getting as used to this nasty stuff as the titular characters, but also... i felt it was a really aimless game. like it doesn't do much w its ideas after all, but also the foundation of the game is really mediocre, i feel like if they really wanted to alienate the usual 2010s shooter audiences they could've done more interesting stuff and not just leave it at that, bc in the end it feels like the type of shitty games the mainstream at the time used to eat up but w an alienating audiovisual style on top of that (in fact, most ppl at the time hated the game just bc "the camera sucked!")

☆20210726 idk about this one. on one hand it uses its photography goals to show you stuff about its world but on the other it contradicts itself by relying too much on "hehe environmental storytelling"-esque posters and graffitis in a *living* world. it doesn't work because you keep seeing posters that say stuff like tresspassers will be shot on sight yet you are there running around the police takin pics and stuff and they pay u no mind! also, why is there a timer when this is a game abt observation? i could understand if there were some sort of timed events that stop happening after this mark or something like that (and i think it could be a cool way to add replayability), but i only remember one such timed event ever happening and they just gave u an steam achievement lol. however i liked the real-life parallel of being forced to do your job (taking super specific pictures in this case) while a catastrophe is happening given the covid situation, but... i don't know...

☆20210723 i had never played anything like this, it's a really unique little game where the central mechanic revolves around literally playing the animations, please check it out!

☆20210712 it's a shame bcuz the arg stuff seemed interesting but lmfao

☆20210705 i... literally have no words. skip this one

☆20210622 pretty much disliked it. its charm wears off on the first couple hours and it feels like a pretty damn long game bc of the grind. i usually don't mind grinding in games because most of the time you can focus on something else, but since this is a rhythm game you cannot do that, so it's super repetitive. also the drops are random but the bosses level up each time you beat them so if you get a shit drop you gotta reload OR fight them again in their more powerful versions, i mean why ;_;

☆20210619 i'm not a pokémon super fan but this was fun, i esp enojoyed discovering the little secrets scattered thru the levels!

☆20210611 super charming retro-style shoot em up that's being developed by my friend and super talented multimedia artist kidmarscat! it's on early access atm and the first two chapters are completed and playable, you can get it here!

☆20210606 idk how i found this rail shooter with ost composed by haruomi hosono (my favourite ymo!) but when i did i knew i had to play it immediately. i don't know how i managed to beat it since some parts were kinda obtuse and there was virtually no info on it online (which i thought was p weird given the composer), but after playing it i can see why... it's kinda shit tbh. it'd be just fine if the developers chose to leave at the "we're making a shooter on rails that goes super fast and throws a lot of shit at u" since i enjoy those, but they also decided to make it a maze game? and not only that, but every path you can take looks EXACTLY THE SAME! and attempting to look (and comprehend) the minimap is pretty much suicide. and it pains me a lot to be saying this but the ost is also mediocre.

☆20210531 i was really enjoying this game until i got to that kinda lolsorandom shocker ending :/ it was a bit too tryhard for my tastes but also... 2015 game that started development in somethingawful, so it kinda fits i guess. i loved helping everyone (puzzles were fine) and the message of redemption it has, but as i said, everything kinda fell apart for me at the finale.

☆20210528 just two dudes bein' dudes. i know people love to bring the sequel as a misunderstood art game and usually ignore this one, but... i also don't feel like this one wasn't attempting anything? like maybe i haven't played enough commercial games from this era, but there's something really crude abt this one, particularly in its portrayal of violence towards women, makes u feel sick about controlling these not-very-good people... this is also shown in one of the endings [and we're now entering spoiler territory] when they manage to escape but kane's daughter (whom he didn't really know until the events depicted in the game) gets killed, and kane keeps saying something along the lines of "see, i saved you! i'm such a good dad aren't i?", showing that he only ever cared about the idea of "redeeming" himself and never about his family (or so was my interpretation hehe)

☆20210516 idk if i need to replay it cuz i feel like i didn't understand shit but also think that's somehow intended lol

☆20210515 frogy

☆20210511 it's one of those games where u start messing around and you pretty much have no idea what you're doing until it somehow clicks and you get a pretty cool a-ha! moment, aka the best type of game!

☆20210427 i was super good at this game when i was little and now i suck real bad! it's pretty good though, but now i feel more nostalgic for dkc3 x) still have the same issue with this series where the camera feels a bit zoomed in sometimes, however, the harder levels have great flow if you take the time to learn them!

☆20210423 i thought this was destined to become my favourite style boutique game since it revolves around idols but i ended up wishing it'd finish! it's waaaay too long (it really becomes a grindfest... and this is a dressup game) and it's also missing a lot of additions from the previous entries (even stuff as basic as fashion contests) but uhm. well at least the clothes and the songs are really cute. also some really weird design choices, like why in the hell don't hairdressing jobs give u money

☆20210412 cute!

☆20210410 you can't touch this! suuuper cuuute japan only game that's somehow fully translated to english. the gameplay was a bit basic but .. i'd say it's worth playing 4 the vibes! it's also really short so please play this!

☆20210409 really solid pinball game, i just wish there were more tables, but thankfully we have the remaining crush pinball series for that (although i think i'd feel kinda ripped off if i paid for the game on release!)

☆20210407 what if we were bf & gf and we had to sit at the kuukiyomi train haha 😳 really fun to play w someone, also a really unexpected ending. it's cool how some of the solutions get you different paths in the story.

☆20210402 i thought it wasn't going to be my thing but it turned out to be a fine game! i like the minimalistic approach to its design. i don't know if it was intended but i liked that yorda wanders around, she feels like her own character and not that she's just "following orders". i had a bit of trouble because the elements in the environments looked a bit samey sometimes so i had to pixelhunt, but overall it was an enjoyable experience.

☆20210327 when i was little and the klonoa wii game came out i used to despise it because i thought klonoa's design was a sonic rip-off hahaaha. finally played after all these years, it was pretty good overall and it gave nights vibes, but it was also super sad :( plz play. i need to find some other 2.5D platformers, i crave more after napple tale and this one!

☆20210323 i forgot everything about this game but i remember it being pretty eh. cotton a cute

☆20210320 LOVE!!!! this game is mafia in vn form with a twist. you have a set of stats you can improve after winning "loops" (each loop is a new mafia game) and there are different playstyles you can choose from: you can lie and deceive, be really charismatic and start accusing people even if you have no idea about who the impostors are, be super perceptive and see through everyone's lies... and the npcs also have their own stats according to their personalities. there's a plot too, and you start uncovering new details with each loop. really cool stuff!

☆20210315 i don't know how to describe this game. i went in expecting a raising simulator a la princess maker but simplified, while also having story checkpoints, like in long live the queen. well, the whole game revolves around those stat checkpoints, which i disliked. you cannot really "customize" the character you're raising, if a story check demands having idk a 50 arm power level, you have to do that, there are not alternate solutions or the like (if i recall correctly), while in lltq there were alternate solutions for various situations. so basically your kid has to become really smart to advance in the story, but maybe the next checkpoint requires a lot of physical strength, so you train your kid to become strong and then he becomes dumb. yeah. i guess i get why it works like that but what i mean is, most stuff you do doesn't really have any permanent consequences for the kid, since he learns and unlearns stuff all the time. anyway, the setting, artstyle and plot itself are real nice, but after beating the game they ask you to beat it all over again to get the true ending, like, really?

☆20210310 i mean it's an old vn but... it's not good at all. the concept of one person dying in a week and then looping is a nice idea, but it is executed really poorly. the characters are all pretty forgettable, the story is mostly uninteresting and unfocused... i don't have many good things to say about this visual novel, but props for trying i guess!

☆20210305 it doesn't aim as high as ace combat 5 did, but that also turns it into a more "personal" game so to speak. as the younglins say, this was "ludo". sapin = spain 🤯

☆20210302 i'm not a die hard superfan but this game is just a lot of fun to play w someone

☆20210228 replay. whether you're a veteran shmup player or you're just starting out, as long as you're interested in the genre this game is for you! it has a ton of references to other shooting games and i keep recognising them in the ogs even today... ooo so this is where zeroranger got that idea from...! but even then it has its own personality and quirks, it doesn't really feel like some of those other "homages" to older games that copy a lot of stuff and that's it lol. now you're probably thinking why would i recommend this reference-heavy game to a newcomer... this game teaches the player how to actually enjoy shoot 'em ups, it shows her the appeal of aiming to the 1cc (this means beating the whole game while using one single credit, so no continues), and ties it all together in the themes of its plot bringing a really cohesive and super cathartic experience... first time i played i respected the game but didn't really see the appeal, which was my own fault bc i wasn't in the mindset of properly finishing it (don't be like me, kiddos), but now i've achived enlightenment. no really i already loved shmups but like, zeroranger has opened my third eye lmfao

☆20210227 love. i don't know what else to say, but this little digital children's storybook made me feel really inspired afterwards... i wish i could have experienced something like this as a kid, but thankfully emulation exists so i could play this little gem as an adult<3 you can check it out online here, where u can find the other games made by theresa duncan too! the audio lags a little but hey, it works

☆20210225 🤷

☆20210222 terribly generic apart for the ost, which is obviously the reason my bf and i played this since that one song happens to be in taiko no tatsujin.

☆20210218 i love you kenichi nishi but this was peak kusoge. we all gotta start somewhere so good for him, good for him

☆20210216 essential

☆20210215 play this a.s.a.p!!!!!! it made me feel this type of childhood nostalgia i haven't felt since i first played nights into dreams... it made me cry. a lot. so if you're interested in a female-fronted retro game with original music by yoko kanno, get the english translation here, and you can also visit the site for the game, archived by the translation team!

☆20210201 i looooove the characters and the story and the musical numbers were everything!!! the simpler combat was also a good addition, i could chill while playing the game. but there's this little thing that i really really hated, and that is the dungeon navigation. every room looked the same and not only that, in the later sections of the game it also seems like they are just designing the dungeons as confusing as possible, and i think this pretty much mismatches with the overall tone of the game and the easy combat... i would've probably dropped it if i was a child with no internet access while playing this, since i had to look up a guide so i could stop running in circles, but i'm glad i didn't. with that in mind, i'd still recommend the game if the shoujo-like vibes speak to you.

☆20210123 had a magical journey, and i will never forget my traveling companion

☆20210123 great vibes!!!! but also this game could be sooo much better. it takes a while to properly understand all of its systems since you get new mechanics tossed at you that are not covered in the tutorial but once you get the hang of it (delete yr logs, dammit!) it's pretty easy to beat. however after a few hours it stopped being exciting, mostly after realising that you could get by by repeating the same steps most of the time with little to no variation except for the names of the people/companies you're hacking... i think it's funny most of the tips given by this game's (surprisingly still alive) community could be easily seen at exploits; however, i'd say that the game's real charm is that you can just do whatever, like closing down companies, robbing banks, "killing" people off the legal system, stuff like that, but my hacker persona is too much of a goody-two-shoes so i didn't really attempt much of that but it's still cool af. it has some rogue-lite design elements that don't do much at all, like permadeath and some randomized stuff, but as i said the anxiety caused by knowing you could get busted and lose everything disappears at some point and the randomized elements are mostly just locations and names so it's just annoying, remembering all the new names and shit when you start a new savefile. i lost my save after getting randomly traced (either a bug or some undeleted log) and that soured me a bit but i got back in track after grinding all my gateway upgrades again. oh and by the way, andromeda is based

☆20210113 i know i know, it looks like a pretty average 90s stg. but it's a really unique game! i won't spoil anything but it features strong narrative design for a shmup, and if you're a beginner in the genre you have no excuse since it's a pretty easy to beat. give it a try!

☆20210112 frenetic as hell. couldn't put it down. recommended!

☆20210111 i keep trying out the rest of the guild0x series after playing attack of the friday monsters! and i really like ghm's output so ｡•́‿•̀｡ however it's one of those games that start out super cool and then you realize that the whole game is basically the same thing. it's understandable bc it's just an small game on a collection of similarly short games, but since it's so action-focused once the novelty wears off it just gets tiring. also i hate using that word but the plot etc are just cringey

☆20210110 yeah no, i found this game to be just plain bad... however i could find myself becoming oddly obsessed w it if i played it at like eight years old since the characters and everything are pretty damn cute and charming. as a rhythm game tho, you're better off playing any other rhythm game on the ds imo. this one tries mixing up ddr mechanics with some weird ouendan-style gimmick on the touch screen, having you play w the d-pad on one hand and the stylus on the other. it's so damn chaotic, however there are other games on the platform that are able to pull that off greatly, like the world ends with you, but this just feels off. also i forgot to mention the ouendan-type thing isn't even rhythm-based? you just... touch the little colored notes while ignoring the black ones and that'd be it if the game wasn't an a-hole by hiding the notes behind stuff and at the corners of the screen. and the songs aren't even good, but thankfully it's short and it can be beat in an hour or so.

☆20210110 p cool, shame about the controls tho. people should be playing this, if u want me to sell u the game just listen to the michiru yamane + sota fujimori ost. it sucks that the lamest character is the only one that's unlocked at the start but what can you do

☆20210109 so the thing here is that i would love to get into boku no natsuyasumi buuuut i can't properly read japanese yet, so until i learn enough of the language (which i plan to get serious about once i finish my final uni project, which is due this july september) or a fantran is released (funnily enough, the psp port of the first entry is now being translated to both english and spanish after many years) and this was the closest thing to it since it was designed by kaz ayabe. i guess it's kinda like a "smaller" version of bokunatsu but more plot-oriented? i loved the vibes and the characters but i liked its first half more since it felt more "free" and you are not sure about what's going on yet so it was more magical that way. it's a cute little game but i think i'd like it more if i was into tokusatsu, i guess. i don't know how to put it into words in english but even then, i really liked its concept of how children see the world and having their conceptions abt adults and their imagination/fantasies actually being true.

☆20210109 this is game is pretty cool on paper, it's like a collection of fake retro games, encompassing super differnt genres like jrpg, racing games, shmups, etc. it's also based on gamecenter cx, which is pretty cool if you love arino like me x) demon arino first gives you some challenges for each game, which helps you learn each game in a smooth natural way. then you're asked to beat every game. i think the challenges system works fine for more arcade style games, but when trying to beat the nes-style jrpg you're pretty much on your own. that minigame really soured me on the whole game ngl, but then i also realized that the minigames are mostly nothing special. i'd still recommend it to people who'd like a "push" on getting used to retro games, since there're also optional cheats you can use (that you can read about in the in-game magazines, which is pretty neat! the game also acts as a celebration of 80s game culture)

☆20210105 had to play this because i will play all the rhythm games period. also the artstyle. it's not translated (i don't know japanese) but it's not really hard to understand what's going on. the rhythm game is okay and the music is serviceable. i like this song because it sounds like if trent reznor was in a cartoon

☆20210104 i really liked the novelty w the controls but the 5th level soured me a lot on the game. i just wanted to chill -_-

☆20210103 i liked it way more than doom ii! i didn't think the horror vibe would fit doom that well xD (lookin @ u, doom 3). the new sprites are super charming and i like the moody soundtrack. however the level design is weirddddd i feel like they relied too much on puzzles that, on the previous entries, were only necessary to get secrets, but you are now required to push walls in order to proceed. i tried playing one level in the easiest setting and the puzzles disappeared lmao