A quick disclaimer that, since I wrote about all but the very last bits of Sea of Stars already, this post is going to be rife with spoilers in probably every paragraph below this one (and especially rife in the paragraph immediately below this one)! It is impossible to discuss the things I want to without wading deeply into the various themes, plot beats, and even the final resolution of the game, so check out my first review if you just want to know whether or not you should play the game and then read this review if you don’t care about spoilers and want to know what I think about the game now that I’ve finished it. I will say that, regardless of what you might read below (and to give a pre-spoiler final conclusion on the game), I think you should play it. I had a blast and while I have a lot of thoughts about the story’s wrap up, it is still a point in the game’s favor that they put so much in the game that I have a burning desire to talk about it, even if I might not be as happy with the wrap-up as I would like to be. I put about thirty hours into the game and it was absolutely worth my money and that much of my time. I have no regrets about spending my time on it and I’ll probably even replay it eventually, using the New Game + mode to get the final achievements so I can rest easy knowing I did everything there was to do in the game. Now, with that said, on to my final and full review of the game!
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Another Trip Down Memory Lane With a Pair of Superstars
In the little chunks of time I had between work, trip preparations, and rest, I started playing Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga from the Game Boy Advance collection I got with the expansion pass to my Nintendo Online account. That has long been one of my favorite Game Boy Advance titles and I was excited to play it again since my GBA hasn’t worked properly for a few years now and my DS, which I used to play GBA games with a backlight, broke a couple summers ago (and my attempts at fixing it fell by the wayside when I couldn’t find a decent 3D printable shell design to use). Having it on the Switch means it is easy to play in fits and starts, and its nature as a somewhat straight-forward RPG means I won’t have any trouble coming back to the game if I wind up not playing it for weeks or months at a time. Plus, I first played this when I was right on the cusp of reclaiming gaming for myself, without interference from my parents or brother, so there’s a decent bit of nostalgia to the game, even if I’ve played it fairly frequently over the years thanks to the slow roll-out of titles in the same general series.
Continue readingFire Emblem: Engage Is Anything But
While I did not manage to finish my most recent Fire Emblem: Three Houses play-through, I decided to go ahead and start playing Fire Emblem: Engage anyway. It had just come out, after all, and I needed something new and exciting after the week I’d had. I needed something to keep me engaged and, well, it was right there in the title. Unfortunately for me, my first evening of playing the game was marked by multiple restarts, no ability to shift the difficult up mid-game (which accounts for one of the restarts), and a whole lot of trying to figure out if the mouth movements were bad and making everything else seem good by comparison or if I just couldn’t see anything because the mouth movements for the English dub prevented me from noticing anything else happening during the dialogue and cut-scenes.
Continue readingWildermyth Is Great In Single AND Multiplayer
I’ve been steadily working my way through Wildermyth during my vacation. I meant to play a bunch of other games during my winter vacation time, but I wound up getting sucked back into Wildermyth thanks to a combination of my Wednesday night gaming evening with a friend and watching the VODs of a collection of the Friends at the Table crew playing through one of the stories (something they started doing as one of the donation goals from their charity stream back in July). I don’t regret it, aside from how much I’ve wrecked my sleep schedule by “one more task before I stop for the night”-ing my way to four in the morning, because it’s a lot of fun to grind my way through mechanically and narratively. The battles are satisfying, the random events are interesting, and the storytelling is always fun to read through. It really is just a great game to sink my time into.
Continue readingThe Best Game I’ve Played This Month is Lil Gator Game
Recently, I purchased and played through the entirety of a game in a single day. I stayed up very late to do it, but I managed to one hundred percent Lil Gator Game in an extended evening. I’ve been following the development of the game on Twitter for a while now, ever since I saw a retweet and was instantly charmed by the blocky but detailed aesthetics and the clear homage to The Legend of Zelda that the main gameplay revolves around. Over the months since then, I’ve watched as more and more detail has come out via small videos and trailers for Steam and then, on the 14th, I bought it immediately. While I’m normally leery of any kind of hype train, I can definitely say that this game delivered on every promise it made.
Continue readingSpiritfarer Is A Beautiful Game
Content Warning: the following post is about the video game Spiritfarer and contains spoilers for the game, along with discussions of grief and mourning.
Continue readingFire Emblems Warriors: Three Hopes Is More Than The Sum Of Its Parts
I’ve been playing a lot of Fire Emblems Warriors: Three Hopes lately. It has been a lot of fun, since it combines one of my favorite entries in the Fire Emblem series with a style of game I’m fairly new to (at least in terms of the lifespan of the game type) but definitely enjoy. I was introduced to the Warriors style of game by the IP crossovers they have been doing lately (again, an incredibly subjective term), namely the previous Fire Emblem game and the two Legend of Zelda entries, but I’ve never really finished any of them. I think I’ve gotten through the plot on one of them (the original Hyrule Warriors game), but I also didn’t play that one alone. My roommate and I took turns playing through it and I doubt I’d have made it through to the end without a friend along for the ride. I genuinely enjoy the games since a relatively mindless beat’em’up style game appeals to me when I’m tired or not terribly interested in being challenged, but I’ll admit the previous games didn’t really catch my attention in a way that made me choose them over any other game.
Continue readingIs It Worth Unearthing the Good Game Beneath the Bad Battles in Paper Mario: The Origami King?
I was recently struck by the urge to replay Paper Mario and, instead of going through the hassle of digging out my old systems or signing up for the more expensive Nintendo Online account so I could play it on my Switch, I’ve spent my time finally playing through Paper Mario: The Origami King. I bought it shortly after it came out two years ago, based on some reviews I read, started playing it right before I moved into my current apartment, and then never played it again after moving. I’d gotten distracted by getting my wisdom teeth removed and the PS4 I purchased with the moving and dental work budget I had leftover when those were all finished. Ghost of Tsushima was incredibly compelling and I had some other PS4 games I still hadn’t played. I barely even used my Switch for months.
Continue readingLet’s Game It Out is Video Game Hilarity To Die For
One of my favorite passtimes when I’m feeling down is to browse through videos on the YouTube channel “Let’s Game It Out.” A zookeeper friend introduced me to this creator (who goes by Josh in his videos) when one of his videos about an unethical zoo showed up in some of her zookeeper circles a few months before the pandemic kicked off in the US. It started a pleasant night of YouTube video watching, almost entirely focused on this guy’s videos, and had us all laughing so hard we were crying. It was a lot of fun for a single evening that eventually tapered out when we realized we were out of zoo-related videos to watch, and it wound up being one of the last times we gathered as a group for a long while. With everything that happened in the start of 2020 and then that happened as the pandemic revved up, I completely forgot about the videos until last summer.
Continue readingClosing Thoughts On Death’s Door
I finished Death’s Door. I have officially completed 100% of the game on the switch, experienced all the game has to offer (unless there’s more secret stuff I have somehow missed), and am thoroughly satisfied. I have a lot of notes about how it could have been better, but honestly it’s like taking notes on how a pizza could be better to the granular level of “there were only 9 pieces of pepperoni on this slice, 1.7 pieces lower than the average per-slice pepperoni count.” A lot of it has to do with the ease of commenting on something already made than making something better from inside it. It wasn’t one of my top 10 games, it wasn’t something that hit me hard like Celeste, and it isn’t something I’ll replay for years like Breath of the Wild. It was a very fun, enjoyable game that I looked forward to playing, even after I completed the main story beats and was working on the fiddly, specific collection and secret-finding phase. Given how many games fail at being this thoroughly and consistently good, I feel like this should be taken as enthusiastic praise.
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