Top Games I Played in 2022

     Well now 2022 is coming to an end, and it was actually a pretty eventful year with plenty of games to buy and for me, new experiences to enjoy and get obsessed over. A ton of big announcements to get hyped about, a lot of anniversaries that I wish that I could've properly celebrated but it's alright. (HAPPY 5TH ANNIVERSARY TO XENOBLADE 2). So before we talk about the games, I wanted to say that I've actually been getting back into anime lately thanks to a friend nagging me to finally sit down and watch Mobile Fighter G Gundam all the way through. It's a fantastic series and I'm actually planning a video about the animes that I watched this year which admittedly wasn't too many but considering 2 of them were over 40 episodes and the rest were shorter, I'd say I spent a decent amount of time doing something else besides playing games. The two other things I spent time on was working on my YouTube channel. I think I had like 25 or whatever subscribers at first but now at the time of writing I managed to get over 125, so I'm very grateful for that, honestly didn't think I'd get to 50 let alone 100 subscribers. And with me making videos throughout the year I began to appreciate certain games more since I spent more time with them in order to create fun videos that I would enjoy not only making but also watching it back myself. Like I feel I appreciate Dead or Alive 5 Last Round more due to how much I've played it this year but I don't feel like putting it on this years list lol. Anyways onto the games.

SAMURAI MAIDEN / サムライメイデン
(PC/Switch/PS4//PS5 Developer: Shade Inc. Publisher: D3 Publisher. 2022)

I was really curious about this game ever since it was first shown off by D3 Publisher. In my opinion they've been really growing as a maker, with a lot of unique and interesting games, as well as continuations of their previous series like Earth Defense Force 6 (I still don't have it ugh), Oneechanbara Origin (a game I seriously need to go back to), and Omega Labyrinth Life (still need to revisit this too....). So then I saw this brand new game from Shade, the developers of the Bullet Girls series and wanted to give it a shot. Samurai Maiden is a fun Lighthearted yuri action game with very lite rpg elements set in ancient Japan. The trend this year really seems to be isekai, and that's exactly what happens to the main girl Tsumugi who was just sitting around at school studying for her Japanese history class when a disembodied voice just comes outta nowhere and straight up just warps her back in time to the Edo period in the middle of the war. Armies are trying to take down Nobunaga Oda and Tsumugi just so happens to bump into him and 3 other Ninja girls. Tsumugi is just an ordinary high school girl and doesn't know how to fight so they give her a katana and tell her to figure it out lol. She's too busy freaking out about the fact she's in the middle of a burning castle, Nobunaga is seemingly real and literally in front of him, she's being told to fight demonic creatures and worse of all she has no phone service. This is all way too much for a high school girl isn't it.

I mentioned that it's an action game with very lite rpg stuff sprinkled in, and yeah it's not really an rpg at all but I wanted to give it the rpg comparison due to the fact that you can upgrade and level up your weapons and increase your max HP and damage output but that's as far as it goes lol. So Samurai Maiden's gameplay is pretty similar to Devil May Cry and a bit of Senran Kagura mixed in. There's no style or combo counter but there are moves similar to the Dante's stinger and even his launch move that has you jump into the air to do combos. It's very fast paced and energetic but like Senran Kagura it shares some of the same annoyances and nitpicks when it comes to how enemies work. For one, the enemies are for the most part kinda basic and don't do a whole lot, but can deal a good amount of damage but the problem is that the game has varying damage values per stage, which is why you need to level up your HP and weapon's strength. So just like in Senran Kagura there can be some bosses or mini bosses that literally just damage sponges or enemies that just deal a ridiculous amount of damage while you're barely doing any. I've never really liked this approach to enemies in action games because it feels it can make the action less important, and making your character's level and hp/damage output the deciding factor. With that being said you don't need to endlessly grind to get anywhere in Samurai Maiden. I'd say only like mild grinding, but how exactly are you grinding? Well by just replaying levels and collecting those purple orbs things that are dropped by enemies. Every enemy you defeat drops something called Igna, it's used to level up your weapons damage and Tsumugi's HP but can also be used to buy alternate colors or even level up your partner's weapons too. Grinding won't feel like much of a chore because if you level up a bit and replay some previous stage, you'll be stronger than before so I guess just be careful so you don't die constantly. So in a way this grinding reminds me again of Senran Kagura but also Earth Defense Force since you also needed to increase your HP as much as possible and get better weapons, but in that games, the really good stuff was usually tied to difficulty levels, so in EDF it's ideal to try and grind early. Oh shit wait I'm going off topic lol

 So the way the game works is that you go through a bunch of linear stages, fight tons of enemies, do some platforming, fight some mini bosses and that's kinda it. It's more than I expected going into this game to be honest since stuff like Senran Kagura and Oneechanbara kinda focus more on the enemy count, leveling and obviously the anime titties to distract you from the pretty basic level design. But even with all that the games are fun button mashers I feel, not anything super in depth like DMC or Ninja Gaiden but not every game needs to be. You can perform basic light and heavy sword combos, parry attacks, double jump, do air combos and a lot of other small things like aerial recovery and even unlocking a cool charge attack. The thing is that you actually need your partners to help evolve your arsenal, since you start off with what's essentially the bare minimum. Oh yeah let's talk about those partners. So those 3 ninja girls that Tsumugi met alongside Nobunaga all end up joining her as apparently she's the maiden that's supposed to stop the demon lord and save Edo period Japan. And apparently 2 of them came from alternate versions of ancient Japan as well but let's not focus on that. So the 3 ninja girls are Iyo, Hagane and Komimi and they all have their uses throughout the various stages, you also learn different techniques from each of them. Iyo is the fairly normal and energetic ninja girl that has a crush on Tsumugi, and is loyal to Nobunaga. She throws aflaming kunai spread shot that has a high chance of stunning enemies and it even works on bosses, making them easy punching bags when it all comes together. Iyo can also carry around and place objects wherever you tell her to, knowing when to best use these things can really make a difference in battle. Most of them tend to be bombs so you need to be careful because you can still take damage from your own explosives. There's at least 3 bombs, which are a simple timed bomb that blows up after a few seconds, a mine bomb that obviously blows up if enemies get close to it and a regular bomb that can be thrown by Komimi but let's go back to that later. The other 2 objects are a healing jar which I believe you only can use twice per stage and a decoy which is literally just a huge wooden log with a picture of Tsumugi on it lol. You use it to distract enemies and it can be surprisingly useful.  Hagane is meant to be the sexy one with the biggest tits in the game lol. She also has the "ara ara" cougar/big sister/hot mom energy and she often teases Tsumugi. She's also apparently part robot and gets drunk a lot. Her attacks are electric based and she launches her arm out in a straight line and it shocks any enemies in from of her, it's more of a situational move if anything to be honest. Hagane's attack isn't useless or anything but I wouldn't say it's better than Iyo's. Her other thing is more useful since she can use that rope  thing in her robo arm to help you swing across large gaps to continue the stage. usually the levels base their whole design around using this rope swing thing so better get used to it. All you need to is essentially aim the camera at the green orb things and then you start swinging, and then obviously press jump when it reaches the other side. It's pretty linear but at least you can do it from different angle if you can reach it from different spots, The last girl is Komimi who's a tsundere fox girl complete with the twitchy ears and fluffy tail too. She uses ice and carries around a big hammer which can just slam the ground and damage surrounding enemies. I think shes has the best assist move in the game to be honest. It's really simple, just use this lol. Oh yeah she can use that third bomb type that Iyo can summon, what you do with Komimi is just aim it wherever and throw it at enemies and you just see like a MASSIVE fucking explosion lol, it can mess up the framerate at least on Switch. 

What I like about the partner system is that you can use these assist moves while you're attacking so combining these moves with your basic combos can just deal massive damage and kill mini bosses quickly. The thing is you can't easily spam these moves since you build up least 1 of 2 bars per girl to use their attack, and the bar only fills up for the girl you have active, so even if you're not using them at the moment, that's important to keep in mind. So I mentioned earlier that each girl teaches you different moves but how does that work? Well through friendship lol. Every time you defeat enemies you essentially get friendship exp and it all gets piled on once you clear a stage, and it only applies to the active partner, so if you're grinding and need to boost everyone's friendship you need to switch between each girl often thoughout the stage. It's a bit easier with stages that are just a boss battle because all you need to is have the specific partner on hand when you defeat the boss, so you can use like Komimi for the whole fight but if you switch to like Hagane right before finishing them off, she'll get the exp instead. So every 10 levels of friendship or so, you unlock special conversations with each girl, which help flesh out their personalites a bit more and are really entertaining at times, like Tsumugi getting mad and telling Hagane she's the enemy of women because she has giant tits, a hot body and doesn't even need to diet lol. So once you finish these conversions you unlock new moves. Iyo teaches you new light attack combos both on the ground and the air, Hagane teaches you heavy attacks, and Komimi gives you defensive moves like parrying, dodge rolling, air and ground recovery. So based on what you wanna prioritize more, you gotta pick a girl and try to level them up more than the others. It's obviously worth leveling up all 3 of them so you can have everything unlocked. The other thing you can learn from each girl is the Hyper Mode. After you get past a certain point in the story, Tsumugi is able to channel the strength of her ninja friends through the power of Lesbian Friendship. So once you unlock the hyper mode, you can further level these up to level 3 once you increase friendship to max I believe, I've only gotten them to like level 1 or 2 so I don't have the full yuri power unfortunately. So level 1 is like them hugging each other, level 2 is like a more intimate hug or even kiss on the cheek like with Tsumugi and Komimi, but level 3 is full on lesbian make out time lol. (I wonder what would happen if it could go to level 4 or 5...) It's worth leveling up the hyper modes of each girl since you can use it to destroy enemies and bosses, it's not a win button obviously since you can still die from taking damage but it's pretty strong and you can still switch between partners once powered up and attack in your hyper mode while using assist attacks. It can get pretty hectic and the screen just gets covered in effects.

So graphically I think the characters look great, Tsumugi and her buddies have great cell shaded graphics and a lot of shading on the clothes and their hair especially. The eyes have a ton of detail too, and comparing it to the unlockable artwork, you can tell they worked hard to make the models look as close to the 2d art as they could, and I think it worked out. Only real areas where I feel the game suffers from artisticly is the levels themselves. The texture work can often looks pretty flat or kinda bland, like we have these great looking cell shaded anime girls but they're in almost low quality textured environments that honestly clash with how they look. I'm not sure why that is, maybe because it was made in Unity or whatever, or this is specifically a switch related issue where they had to downgrade the texture quality but idk. So even with the somewhat bland environments, the characters, enemies and all the visual effects for attacks and enemies make up for it at least in my eyes. There also seems to be self censorship in this game, as whenever you pause the game and try to peak under Tsumugi's skirt or at anyone else's crotch area, there seems to be this mysterious black void but only when pausing the game, if you take a screenshot like immediately after unpausing you can see her panties in all of their glory. I think it probably has to do with possible Sony guidelines and the fact the game is CERO C in Japan instead or the usual D like Senran Kagura or even Z with Oneechanbara. To me it doesn't feel like the game is trying to push the boundaries like the other two games, but it's also not trying to be super tame, so it's kind of a middle ground. Well at the very least we have DLC bikini costumes that show a good amount of skin and pc mods to give us more control over the camera and remove the black void lol. There's also some weird localization in this game that at the time of writing has been patched out. Like when Tsumugi is explaining the different types of schools back in the modern era, she's supposed to say like elementary school, middle school and high school. But in the initial release she would instead say Gen Z, Millennial and Boomer. It still sorta has the same meaning, but it just feels a bit odd seeing those terms actually used in a game, especially when it's a Japanese game. Granted Tsumugi is teenage high school girl, but still kinda sticks out.. I thought it was funny but I don't know why it was there. Seems enough people complained to it changed for the sake of accuracy. "Son of a Submariner"

Overall Samurai Maiden is a fun action with good gameplay, cute girls, yuri friendship, and some fun mechanics. The story isn't really much to write home about but the characters have fun personalities and the dialogue in the friendship building conversations are a real highlight. It's not like a masterpiece or anything but I'd say it's worth your time. You can tell the developers put a lot of effort into this, but maybe they needed a tiny bit more time to polish it up a bit, mostly jn the texture department, still it's a cool game from D3 and they usually release cool and interesting games, so maybe get the game if D3 ever has it on sale.

MECHA RITZ STEEL RONDO 

(PC/Switch. Developer: HEY. Publisher Hanaji Games. 2016-2022)

Mecha Ritz Steel Rondo is a super unique and quirky tate shmup from the same guy behind the amazing Dezatopia, and is actually an update to the original game that came out nearly a decade ago as a doujin game, and then on Steam, and while I'm not entirely sure what brand new in this version compared to the original, but I think this game is fantastic. The story is actually interesting, where it's about this girl who invents Mecha and essentially becomes mad with power, and creates the world how she sees fit, eventually civilization is born based on her ideas and a lot of the bosses are seemingly her creation, at one point you even fight a teddy bear because why not, There's stuff in here about her being the potential big bad and the will of humanity living on through machines so she can finally be defeated.. Every time you clear a stage you get more of these story bits and afterwards, some stages allow you to choose to play either the A or B side of the next one, and I believe B is tougher than A.  So I gotta say this outright, I do not like when Shmups have grade systems as the constantly scaling difficulty as you play can make it difficult to practice and it punishes the player for being too good at the game lol. Games like Battle Garegga can get so hard, that super players will lose lives on purpose just to tone down the difficulty for certain section due to how absurdly evil it can get. That being said, this game actually takes the concept of a grade system and the scaling difficulty, and makes it actually fun  believe it or not.

So in Mecha Ritz the game's grade system can alter based on your action and you can even start off with a high amount of grade. There's actually a lot of freedom with the huge amount of ship types, the shot types that each of them have, and of course the flexibility of the difficulty. You can choose to start easy and have the game gradually get a bit easier, or you can do the opposite and start at 0 grade, play really well and then have it get tougher. You're probably thinking "wait but that just sounds like the grade system you complained about earlier" and on the surface, yeah it's more or less the same, but this game handles things a bit better than something like Battle Garegga or even Ibara and Pink Sweets. When getting hit, it gradually gets lower and makes the game slightly easier, but you don't lose your life right away since you have a shield, and the shield itself can take a few hits, you can even give you shield more HP so to speak to take more hits, and this still lowers rank but preserves your lives. So on average you can technically take over 10 hits before getting a real game over, since you start with 3 shield hits, and if you die after losing your shield, the shield refills, so the game really goes out of its way to not discourage you, which is usually the source of frustration for new players. Even with all this help you shouldn't be comfortable just taking easy street. The real challenge comes from learning how to handle the grade system and getting through bosses and stages with a No Miss or even No Bomb, for bosses you actually get a bonus for beating the boss and taking no damage or using bombs. Funny thing is tho is that bombs are plentiful in this game as it basically encourages you to use all the ones it gives you. It actually reminds me of Cotton where the game is really generous and encourages the use of its magic system which essentially are like bombs, or even some Toaplan games like Kyuukyoku Tiger where they weren't built as a last ditch save your ass sort of tool just yet in the shmup genre.

Another thing that I definitely think sets Mecha Ritz apart is the art design and sprite work. HEY has proven to be a really talented dude, being able to not only make good shmups but also making them unique in terms of play mechanics and visuals. Like with Dezatopia, it had all these crazy colorful graphics contrasted with the softer darker color palettes of the environments, while also including wacky characters and boss designs. He also made a great game that played no other shmup I had tried before, And he does it again in this title too. The dark looking backgrounds I feel are probably on purpose to not confuse the player with visual overload, so they can just focus on what's important; the enemies and bullet patterns. So to contrast the darker background elements, the ships bullets and enemies are all bright neon like colors, and they all stand out. You even have the option to use purple for the enemy bullets and for a Cave fan like me, I prefer purple bullets lol. The soundtrack has this sorta grungy electronic feel to it, and it also has synth very similar to the Genesis and it sounds great, like Dezatopia it's very distinct, HEY is really good at what he does. There's training options and leaderboards but unfortunately that's only local and there's no online ones or even online replays either which is just not acceptable in a shmup, but hey it's made by a single person so I'll cut him some slack. At the very least he added Tate mode for vertical displays and that's essential for any vertical shmup. Check out Mecha Ritz Steel Rondo it's a great game and makes a mechanic that I usually hate in shmups actually fun and enjoyable. The artwork in this game is beautiful too.

 

DNF DUEL

(PC/PS4/PS5/Switch Developer: Arc System Works/Eighting/Neople. Publisher: Nexon. 2022-2023)

Arc System Works has kinda been on a role in the past couple years. Dragon Ball FighterZ was on one of my previous lists for being an awesome love letter to the franchise that had tons of fan service, while also being a highly competitive and hardcore fighting game. And while they didn't technically develop it, they helped to release Under Night In-Birth on consoles and helped it reach a wider audience, myself included and that's another one of my favorites. And recently they even had Guilty Gear Strive which while a fun game, I don't consider it good enough to be on my list. And while everyone was busy with Strive, I was way more interested in DNF Duel. So DNF Duel is a crazy no holds barred "unga bunga" anime fighting game made primarily by Eighting and Arc System Works. The reason I call it unga bunga is because everyone seems to think the game is completely unbalanced and that it's just wild crazy combos and offense. I don't really agree with it being unbalanced but I think it is crazy but in a good way. DNF Duel is the fighting game spinoff of the Korean MMO called Dungeon and Fighter, or Dungeon Fighter Online (DnF or DFO) which is a game that supposedly has like millions of players but I had literally never heard of until this particular game got announced. So what sets this game apart from other Arcsys fighters is the combat, it's hyper offensive and lets the player go wild. You have a light and heavy attack, specials and MP moves. 

You can combo light and heavy into a special, another special and then MP moves, and you can use as many MP moves back to back (not able to repeat the same one) until your bar runs out to recover. I main Striker in this game and she's the up close fist fighter and once she gets in, you're basically gonna be stuck blocking if you haven't gotten hit already. Her ground combos can be pretty long and deal a ton of damage. And she doesn't really keep you in the air for long. Honestly everyone in this game does big damage, it's the standard, if your character didn't do like 50% of the opponents health in one combo, you haven't learned their actual combos yet lol. One reason people feel that this game is kinda crazy (and also a bit too easy) is that it has Simple inputs where it's not very execution heavy, it's similar to Smash where all you have to do is hit the MP or special button either neutral (no direction) or up, down, left or right. When I first played this game through the online beta, I thought the inputs were bizarre because even in a game with simple inputs like BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle, they still required basic quarter circle motions at the very least. Nope these are just s single direction. I actually don't mind it as it makes the game a lot more accessible, so more new players can learn it quicker. Some other things to keep in mind are the lack of both air dashing and air blocking which is something that anime fighters like Guilty Gear and Melty Blood typically have, and for the most part it doesn't bother me, but oh boy some characters can control the entire screen just by spamming long range attacks or projectiles. The more you fight, the more the MP bar fills up, I forget the exact conditions but I'm pretty sure it's when your health is under 50%, but the MP starts at 100 and it can go up to 200, and once it's at that, you can probably use all your ground and air MP moves, if they combo correctly that is. Whenever a character is at low health, their special ability kicks in, that gives them an edge in battle, like Striker gets a boost to her damage when low on health. And universally everyone has access to their ultimate attack in this state, which you can combo into obviously with the right combo, they're really cool cinematics and can deal massive damage. There's also some defensive options in the game, not just offense. Everyone has a sorta of "get off me" move, Typically it's meant to be an uppercut. It's a great tool due to the invincibility on start up, but obviously can be punished if the opponent blocks and sees it coming. There's a dodge roll move similar to the King of Fighters, but from my experience, I always forgot it was there lol. When you block attacks, your health has a grey part to it, which can be recovered over time, but if you keep getting hit it'll all get wasted, if you're feeling risky, you can actually sacrifice all that health for instant MP recovery.

Besides the games mechanics and combo system, the other thing that sets the game apart is clearly the cast of characters. They're all based on classes from the original Dungeon Fighter Online game, so the names aren't super creative, it's kinda funny. We have close up fighters like Striker, grab happy characters like Grappler, long range keep away scum bag- I mean characters like Ranger, and even a really hard to learn puppet master with Enchantress. All the characters play extremely differently from each other and more or less stay within their archetypes. Craziest thing is the amount of range the majority of the cast has like wtf. Ranger obviously can shoot his guns all over the damn screen making sure you never get it. Kunoichi can throw flaming shurikens, summon a giant fire tornado (fuck that move) and summon a toad that shoots fire and she can teleport behind you, trapping you in scary mixups. Ghost Blade essentially fights with a stand and has ridiculously long range sword slashes can take up half the screen, and use attacks that can connect to his stands moves and vice versa, wild character. And then Trouble Shooter has a giant ass shotgun that he can blast you with, he can lay bombs on the ground and even hit you with moves that have bombs on his sword lol. His combos are pretty fun. Grappler is slow but is exactly what the name says, a grappler, nearly all his moves are command grabs, he can anti air grab, and has a variety of grabs on the ground, he's scary if he's up close. He kinda looks like Ryu tho. Enchantress similar to Ghost Blade can use her little teddy pair thing to synch up attacks between the two of them. But she has more freedom over where the teddy bear goes and at the cost of MP she can even move it freely and the attacks change based on if it's active or not, She's a very complex character, I tried learning her but damn it's hard to wrap my head around. Crusader is honestly pretty hilarious. He's like the buffest religious dude I've seen and his get off me move is him just flexing on you. He can power his own moves up to give them a lightning effect which not only increases their combo ability but also does more damage. He can summon these giant ass holy cross walls behind the opponent and trap them in what I can the torture chamber. And once he starts spamming that hammer swing, your ass is getting juggled for over 50% health. Secretly one of the scariest characters in this game. Last one I'll mention is Lost Warrior who has crazy teleport combos, the ability to fucking STOP TIME freezing the opponent in place, and his special ability is that he can do a big fuck you attack that I believe is an instakill or does enough damage in most scenarios where it's pretty much a one hit KO lol. He's the final boss so it's only appropriate that he's bullshit.

Modes include the story mode which is technically the arcade mode, but there's so much text lol. Mostly just visual novel style conversations, I guess it ties into the DNF MMOs lore but I wouldn't  know. There's also Combo Trials, Training mode, Versus and Online modes, and similar to Guilty Gear Strive and Melty Blood, this game does feature Rollback netcode so the online actually plays great. And with the new grand balance patch that came out recently, I'm hoping there's a decent amount of players. There's lobbies too and it functions like the pre-Strive Arcsys games with the chibi 3D models and little arcade machines. It's pretty straight forward and easy to use. The modes feel a bit limited but the fighting is so fun, I don't mind it, but I understand why people think it's a bit barebones. That being said DNF Duel is a super underrated and fun anime fighter that deserves more attention. It reminds me a lot of Eighting's older games like Tatsunoko vs Capcom with all the big damage moves and crazy ideas, but a bit more grounded with how its combat is. I initially wasn't interested in this game, but after playing the beta, I was convinced to buy it, then I did and well I wrote all this shit about how fun it is and the cool characters. Buy DNF Duel.

DEVIL SUMMONER 2: RAIDOU KUZUNOHA VS KING ABADDON / デビルサマナー：葛葉ライドウ対アバドン王

(PS2. Developer/Publisher: ATLUS. 2008-2009)

Raidou Kuzunoha is back and better than ever! The first Raidou game was one of my favorites from my 2020 list. and once I had taken a long enough of a break from game to not get fatigued going into the sequel, I was all in on Raidou 2. Once again SMT series co-creator and main demon artist/character designer Kazuma Kaneko wrote the main story and designed the characters, he's even said the Devil Summoner series is is favorite. So obviously Raidou vs King Abbadon is a sequel to Raidou vs the Soulless Army but how much of it is the same and how much of it is fresh? Well I'd say it's more of a 40% old and 60% new. You still go to most of the same areas as before but the bulk of the story takes place in the new town of Tsukigata, new dungeons and the surrounding environments. But obviously returning demons and their models from the previous game are all reused as nearly ever Shin Megami Tensei does. There's a lot of retreading old ground and seeing the same shop keeper again, Victor in the lab fusing demons, and Narumi's office etc. I think it's enough where it doesn't feel like they got completely lazy. So what even is new? Well first off is the story, which isn't as wild as the first game but there's definitely some crazy bullshit that happens in Raidou 2. Raidou has to help a lady named Akane Narita look for a man named Dahn. While Raidou is helping her, these samurai looking dudes start appearing and constantly disappear like they're ninjas or some shit. They also carry around these flies in bug cages called Luck Locusts that have the power to manipulate people's luck both positively and negatively. 

So not only is Raidou hunting down these mysterious samurai assassin ninja dudes, they also have these giant ass bugs that they constantly summon to get in your way, and yes you have to fight them REPEATEDLY. Raidou is also working with Narumi again in order to find Akane's relationship to Dahn and what his plan ultimately is and it's a pretty big one. Eventually it's revealed that Dahn is the leader of these assassins that he's gathering up all this luck from the locusts in order to become the titular King Abaddon. But what the hell even is King Abaddon? Well you'll have to play the game yourself and find out. Along the way, Raidou meets a badass old man called Geirin Kuzunoha, who also works for the Yatagarasu as Raidou does, and has his devil summoner in training, Nagi. She's a bit odd, well both of them are but what happens with them in the story is beyond the bounds of your conjecture. Just play the game yourself lol.  In additon to all this assassin fighting, demon fighting etc, there's a lot of exploration involved. When you're not fighting demons, you need to solve puzzles, investigate every nook and cranny, use demon's exploration skills to reach certain locations, get through the huge dungeons, and even do side quests received from Narumi's office. While exploring there's also the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the rest of the Fiends that were also in SMT Nocturne. These guys were a real pain in the ass to deal with but I'll get to them when i talk about the gameplay. There's also two other mysterious enigmas in this game. A preppy looking white guy you see in the church called Louis Cyphre, he seems like a nice guy. There's also the god or spirit called Shimano that talks to Raidou at various points in the game that likes to be very cryptic but also doesn't like it when Raidou keeps digging his nose into what's really going on with the Tsukigata village. There's also some stuff like freaky grasshopper kamen rider mask looking rape goblin things, they marry into the Tsukigata royal family but that ends up mutilating or getting the wives killed. And then the Goat Bro Taotie, who plays a big part or and the Dragon Taxi, but I'll stop there.

So the second new thing is how the battles work, it's actually in 3d this time, polygon environments and all, none of that Resident Evil/Parasite Eve shit where it's just the model on top of a background like the original game was. It's still like that for the rest of the game but still 3D least it's there for battles. So before the combat super basic where all you could really do was mash the attack button for a 3 hit combo, occasionally shoot your gun at demons to damage them or stun them, and then capture them to put them into tubes, forcing them to join your team. Well they got rid of trapping demons into tubes, but to make up for it, they added demon negotiation like the main SMT series. Negotiations work similar to a lot of the previous SMT games where it can feel random at times, but with enough practice and definitely after enough repeated encounters, you can get the demon to join you with the right answers. So hopefully you don't screwed over and end up dying after giving them a ton of macca, HP and or MP lol. Another way to make demons join you more easily is with the negotiation skills your demons have. Some skills work better with certain demon personality types, so trying to woo one type of demon may work, but will completely fail or even piss off another type, so you gotta be mindful. Another thing to take note of with your demons is Loyalty, It's a staple of the Devil Summoner sub series where the more you use a demon, it's Loyalty meter goes up and once it reaches max, it'll always listen to your command, so it won't randomly do something else, go back into its tube or just straight up disappear for a bit. The more Loyalty you earn from demons, the higher Raidou's title in game gets, and while the title seems like nonsense, it actually allows you to carry more demons with you, obviously giving you more of an advantage in battle. But you have to grind it A LOT to max it out and reach the highest title, and even when I did take time to Loyalty grind, i barely got like halfway so for the most part I'd say don't worry about it unless you really want like the max amount of demons on you. 

So back to Raidou and his moves, he can still do a basic combo and the DMC style stinger move, but now you have this MP meter that you earn from killing enemies and from damaging enemies that got stunned from exploiting their weaknesses. So you'd use a demon's magic attack or even shoot elemental or regular bullet with your gun to do a super effective hit on them, and them you can damage them for critical damage and MP recovery. And you're gonna need that MP bar because it helps Raidou keep up with the demon's ever increasing damage throughout the game. With the MP meter you can dish out a special move, and this move actually varies based on what sword you have. You get a sword and an axe special move that can deal massive damage to enemies. So the game plan is to expose a weakness, stun them, combo the crap out of them, and then get all that sweet MP and wail on them with your crazy special move and have your demons attack them. And it's even more fun to completely wreck enemies thanks to the fact you can actively have 2 demons in battle whereas in Raidou 1 it was only 1 demon lol. So you can have like Jack Frost and Cerberus kicking ass alongside you while you do big damage. Oh yeah demons not only have physical and magic attacks they can use, but you can also get a team attack and a power up, some demons have this cinematic team super with Raidou, and some enhance your sword temporarily with a different element. and depending on the demon learns by default or how you fused them with, the element can be completely different. Raidou also has a dodge move and can you can even use the menu to set specific commands to a demon like have them heal the party, target a specific enemy, buff/debuff etc. All of this stuff honestly makes the combat feels completely revamped from the original, and it's amazing.

There's plenty of boss battles, and most of them are pretty unique ones, but there's also some very repetitive ones. Some of the cool ones were actually the fiend battles. I mentioned the fiends earlier but after meeting Louis Cyphre, the fiends start showing up to attack you. You see them appear alongside normal random encounters, but if I remember correctly the game prioritizes the fiend encounters first and until you either run away from them or finally defeat a fiend, you'll only encounter them otherwise, even if you reload a save so it's not completely random. The way fiend encounters work kinda reminds me of how it works in Nocturne, where they're also triggered from the encounter rate reaching the max, but those are random and you have a chance of escaping them. Anyways in Raidou 2 the Fiends are tough battles all with some sorta trick or gimmick either from the boss or the battle having a time limit or something. Usually if you didn't defeat the boss in time they would just leave but the four horseman were tough and had some annoying gimmicks like constantly teleporting or making clones of themselves. For the repetitive ones, there's the giant fucking bugs. God I hate these bugs The ninja dudes constantly summon them throughout the story and I swear more than half game is just boss battles against these fuckers. Damn it Atlus lol.

The combat is great but sometimes grinding can get tiring, and that's where the music comes to the rescue. Like the environments and demons, a lot of the music is reused from the original game, but there's a good amount of new music as well. Some of my favorites include "Adventure" the forest theme, it's a calming piano track with a saxophone in the background, it's kinda the same tune over and over but it really got stuck in my head for months even after beating the game because it's just very relaxing. My other favorite ones are some of the battle themes, like "New Battle" the main battle theme in the game" and the "Decisive Battle" theme used for bosses. The normal battle theme is an awesome rock track that eventually leads into this amazing sounding piano and violin sorta tune at the end. And the boss theme really gets you amped up with a hard rock tune. There's even a few songs from previous Devil Summoner games in the same musical style as the Raidou tracks, like the boss battle and map first town or map theme from Devil Summoner on Sega Saturn. And there's a remix of the Soul Hackers theme is even featured in this game but I won't say where it is, because it's cool. 

Raidou Kuzunoha vs King Abaddon is a great follow up to the original PS2 game, and it's also a fantastic game in its own right. I recommend playing the original first since this is a direct sequel with a lot of the same characters, locations, terminology etc and has a lot of references to the original game. But maybe don't immediately play them back to back since they look pretty identical. This game desperately needed more Rasputin, dude didn't get enough compared to the first game.

BUNNY MUST DIE! CHELSEA AND THE 7 DEVILS / チェルシーさんは7の魔神をブッ殺さねばならない。

(PC/Vita/PS4/Switch. Developer/Publisher: PlatineDispositif/MediaScape (PS4/Switch). 2003-2022)

Another cruel game from PlatineDispositif, the Super Zangyura creator. He's a really interesting guy and his games are just as cruel and unforgiving as they've ever been, even now. Hopefully one day I can do more of a deep dive into this guy and his games, because he has a lot of obscure and forgotten about games or games that are just abandoned lol. Like most of his works, this game originally started out as a doujin PC game, and like Super Zangyura it got remade and released on consoles and the PS Vita. Bunny Must Die is no different from his previous games, as it's the same masochistic, cruel and unforgiving level design that's become his signature, but instead of being a linear Castlevania action platformer, and instead it's a Metroid style 2D action exploration game instead.  So that means a lot of backtracking, getting upgrades getting all the McGuffins and secrets scattered around the map, and needing to actually filling that map out. Usually I'm not a big fan of these Metroid style games but Bunny Must Die is an exception to this because it's a pretty fun and charming experience, I love running around attacking enemies and trying to find the secret rooms or solve the puzzles in certain rooms. There's these colored orb things that open up statues of the same color, but you have to leave them there, you can't just open up multiple purple statues all around the map. And so far I've bumped into statues that are a completely different color from the ones that I have. You see the thing is that this game doesn't tell you shit besides some gameplay tips lol. The most you get are sections of the map being separated by color, some little buts in certain rooms that hint towards a hidden room or a power up, and telling you about whatever colored have or haven't been to, and what colored orbs you've left at any particular statue. Everything in this damn game is extremely well hidden to the point where I'm still fucking stuck, running around like a headless chicken.  Hopefully I don't bust my brain trying to get through this game. 

As you explore the map there's tons of enemies to kill and weapons that you can swap out similar to grabbing a sub weapon replaces Castlevania Rondo of Blood and makes you drop the old one, but you can keep regrabbing them lol. You start off with a projectile weapon that can be shot rapid fire, a big mace that can swing around, and my personal favorite, the sword. The sword is a giant lightsaber slash that can even attack through walls, floors and when you jump forward and attack, it spins around you which can easily kill enemies. The Sword also gets rid of enemy projectile attacks, so a long as you keep your distance, not getting hit shouldn't be an issue. You can also do a super dash and wall jump like in Metroid and a falcon kick sorta move to get across gaps, kill enemies and even aim it slightly up or down in mid air. You can jump off enemies too to damage them but I don't think it's as effective as just straight up attacking. There's also some defensive moves like a dodge backstep move which is same as Alucard's in Castlevania Symphony of the Night The parry move can be done by pressing forward right before a projectile hits you, but from my experience it feels pretty situational, since you can just move out of the way. Killing enemies causes them to drop some purple stuff which actually ties into the games main gimmick (besides the difficulty), the time mechanic. Chelsea the bunny girl is able to not only stop time but also rewind it, but at the cost of meter obviously, and it's more useful than you think since some are actually required to get through certain rooms, puzzles and can even help against boss battles. When time is stopped you can't attack enemies until the effect is turned off, and stopping or rewinding time can cause switches or doors to open up, and revive enemies lol. It's important to keep in mind that you can't use these everywhere, because some rooms in the maze have stuff hidden in the floors, walls etc. There's also a bunch of spiked floors an ceilings with some annoying enemy placements, so sometimes it can just feel like suffering trying to go from one area to another just to end up dying and getting sent back to a previous save point that's really far away. To be fair it's my fault for not saving often lol. It's even hell trying to get a damn power up, because when  got the wall jump upgrade, they had a small wall you could test it on, and then i died after hitting the spikes on the ceiling... This game is cruel... but that's why it's enjoyable.

Story set up is funny, Chelsea gets cursed, ends up trapped underground and grows extra ears, and for whatever reason she has a bunny outfit on, but that's not really important. Chelsea is a pretty cheerful girl but in the boss encounters, she gets pretty short tempered lol. Speaking of bosses, there's some wacky ones. I thought it was funny when Super Zangyura had a peeing angel statue for a boss battle, but this game takes it a step forward. There's a goddamn giant cat png as a boss that literally just goes MEOW and that's it. It summons giant cat paw pngs and shoots fire at you, it's amazing. There's also an embarrassingly easy tank boss that you can just jump behind and whail on until it dies. Bunny Must Die is a pretty fun Metroid style game and I actually enjoy the challenge, my only real nitpick is the game gives you like absolutely zero hints, but that's another thing that adds to the brutality and masochistic nature of it all. 

POPFUL MAIL / ぽっぷるメイル

(1991-2006. Developer: Nihon Falcom/HuneX (PCE)/Sega Falcom (Sega CD)/Bothtec (Mobile). Publisher: Nihon Falcom/NEC (PCE)/Working Designs (Sega CD, USA). PC88/PC-98/Sega CD/SFC/PC Engine CD/Mobile/PC).

Oh god this is nearly Deathsmiles and Resident Evil 4 levels of messy with all the different publisher/developer names. I've never really been a Falcom guy, my first exposure to Falcom was in the Neptunia series, with Falcom chan herself. Wasn't until a little while later that I learned about Brandish, Ys and Xanadu lol. Popful Mail is another Falcom title that I was aware of, but I never really took the time to play it until now. I got the Sega Mega Drive Mini 2 recently and it's amazing, and Popful Mail is on there, only in Japanese lol. Apparently the reason it's not available on the Genesis Mini 2 is because the former head of Working Designs who originally localized the game (and made unnecessary gameplay changes) claimed Sega offered a flat upfront fee for the game, but this dude wanted royalties for the localization lol. Because of that, he screwed over fans who desperately wanted this game and the Lunar RPGs, Anyways Popful Mail is an action platformer with RPG elements that's full of a ton of charm and humor. It's been ported to tons of platforms that you can see above, but the SEGA CD port is considered the best one. It's stars Mail, a red haired bounty hunter elf girl that totally doesn't look like she's from Slayers. She's trying to hunt dow this wooden puppet dude that looks like a nut cracker and in the english version he's called.....Nuts Cracker, very original. Mail is pretty funny, like there's NPCs that want her help and she haggles them to get a good deal because she's only really doing it for money, gotta get paid premium. And then I remember this dumbass dude that got stuck in a cave, and then he uses a bomb while in the fucking cave surrounded by stalagmites and shit, and Mail is yelling at him like "wtf are you doing, why would you go do something so stupid???" and then she's like "you better pay me for helping you." The voice acting really helps put icing on the cake when it comes to the dialogue, even when it's all in Japanese, even with my subpar language skills, I've been able to understand it decently enough. It's not just the sound that's amazing but the graphics as well. 

Everything is extremely clear and very detailed, compared to other versions of Popful Mail, I'd say the SEGA CD port looks the most legit. Some versions like the PC Engine port look really underwhelming. With it's windowed borders and the really tiny looking sprites. I don't know but for PC Engine you'd expect something like Rondo of Blood or Legendary Axe where the character sprites are a bit larger. The characters match the art pretty closely with Mail having really long kinda pointy looking hair that's animated almost every time she does something, levels have layers of parallax scrolling to give the backgrounds a sense of depth as well. The animated cutscenes are done by the SEGA CD itself with sprites instead of a horribly compressed FMV sequence like most games on the console did. It's a lot like how Final Fight CD and Snatcher did their cutscenes where it was all in game. It really felt like you're watching an anime too, or even watching cutscenes on a PC Engine CD, and that console was full of games with scenes like this. Dialogue in this game also has animated character portraits and their mouths even animate too. I'm not sure if the lip flaps match up with what the actors are saying 1:1 like in anime but it sorta felt that way, although the Mega Drive Mini 2 has a ever so slight sound delay of a few frames, so the voice acting for one dialogue box, overlaps when it changes to the next one. Overall the presentation makes the game feel like a complete package and that you got your money's worth. 

Best way I can describe the gameplay is that it's like Zelda 2 and Actraiser, just without having an overworld, it has a map but it's not liek a normal RPG like Dragon Quest or something. It's more like the map in Super Mario Bros 3 where you just pick a stage and go. The levels consist of running around, slashing, jumping and slashing enemies, earning money for items and equipment, finding treasure etc. Mail's jump can feel weird at first, like it felt she stays in the air a bit longer than expected but you get used to it easily, depending on the level, you can actually get on top of platforms from underneath like in Kirby, and you can also crouch to drop down to anything below, this can make travelling around pretty easy, especially since Mail moves at pretty fast speed. Crouching also has the benefit of letting you block incoming projectiles and as far as I know it's the only real way to defend yourself besides getting out of the way. In the original PC-88/98 versions you had to attack by bumping into enemies like in the old Ys games, but now you can just attack normally, and you can attack in the air too. There's also projectile weapons too but instead of ammo they use up your magic meter, so you can't just spam magic attacks whenever you want. Attacking up close with Mail's basic sword does more damage than the knife, to make up for the fact that it has less range. Defeating enemies usually causes them to trop money and occasionally small herbs that recover some of you health, don't try to rely on enemy drops to heal yourself tho because it's way more common to just get money. Items and treasure chests are scattered around the map, all with different rewards. I ran off the top of this huge mountain in one of the early stages and all I got was a goddamn orange, which to be fair does restore a ton of HP but still I was expecting some super rare item lol. There's shops and inns in some areas letting you heal up and buy new armor, weapons and healing items. In Popful Mail there's actually up to 3 party members in this game, Mail the elf, Tatt the wizard and that blue dragon looking dude I haven't gotten yet. They all have separate equipment and weapons, so you need to upgrade each of them individually. Another thing is they actually have separate HP bars, so if one of them is low on health you can just switch to someone with more health to avoid a game over. It really sucks that you can get a game over just because the character you're controlling dies, you have other characters, can't it just switch to the others instead lol, I guess that's too generous lol. The only thing that they all share is itmes, so food items that restore your health can be used by everyone. Mail is fast but her jump is the lowest, Tatt is more balanced so while he's slower, he jumps lightly higher, and I think the last guy runs the slowest but jumps super high.

You gotta get used to close up and ranged attacks, because some enemies are really annoying up close. When enemies hit you, it feels like there isn't a lot of invincibility frames to prevent you from getting constantly taking damage. There were times where I'd still get while I'm still invulnerable and still take damage anyways. Some enemies are placed below some platforms or right above the one you're standing on, so you need to be careful not to get hit and get your ass sent back down to the bottom of the floor. There's also some annoying bat things too because of course the bats are the worst enemies lol. It's really odd at times. The worst part has to be  when you're swimming underwater, I swear this game has some of the worst underwater sections. It's like in Mario where you basically can walk slowly underwater and you keep pressing jump to keep going up, but getting hit by enemies underwater makes you fucking drop like a goddamn rock. There's these jellyfish things in the cave area in the 2nd map, they're so annoying because you need to jump on top of them to go from one side of the stage to the other, but that's not really the hard part, it's getting up to them so then you can use them as a platform. So you need to go underwater to reach the other side, you keep swimming to reach the jellyfish. and there's some fish enemies that can attack you and make you drop back down. You finally try getting up to the jellyfish but it keeps swimming left to right, if you swim up a little too fast, you'll just get hit by it and fall down and if I remember right, it shoots out something below it to attack you. So you need to swim up to the surface, and land right above it, but that's also tricky because you jump out of the water, it's not as high as jumping from the ground so you kinda have to try it a few times. Once you do land on it, you gotta jump off of it and get back on land as soon as you can because it starts to sink back into the water if you stay on it for too long. Honestly the water sections cause nothing but frustration an can feel like a waste of time, but once you get through it, the rest of the game is enjoyable.

Despite all my complaining, I really like Popful Mail, and it's actually the first SEGA CD game I've played besides like Sonic CD. It really shows off what the hardware at the time was capable of with its great graphics and sound, fun gameplay and charming characters. It's not perfect (goddamn water sections) but you can tell it was made with a lot of heart. It's weird because I only ever see Falcom fans get excited about Trails games, meanwhile the old people get hyped for Ys. And only certain neckbeard retro collectors talk about Popful Mail, but usually about how expensive it is and how it's a working designs game. So nowadays it's looked at more as a collectors item similar to Panzer Dragoon Saga which is a shame because getting a real copy is completely out of reach for the average person, still tho you can just emulate them.

ALESTE COLLECTION / アレスタコレクション

(Switch/PS4. Developer/Publisher: M2. 2020)

I really regret not buying this when it first came out because this collection is fucking awesome. Aleste is an old school shoot em up series originally made by Compile for a variety of consoles. From the MSX computers, Sega Master System, Genesis and even the Super Nintendo, the Aleste series was usually pushing boundaries on the consoles it came out on. The series may have been dead for a while, but with M2 buying up the rights and releasing Senjin Aleste in Arcades recently and the upcoming Aleste Branch hopefully releasing in 2023, now's a great time to get into the series. Some of the more notable games have actually released in the west, unfortunately they aren't in this collection but I still wanna bring them up. Super Aleste (Space Megaforce) and Musha Aleste (MUSHA) are like the most talked about especially MUSHA. But anyways let's get onto the actual games on this collection. Aleste Collection has all the 8bit console and handheld entries which are Aleste 1 and Power Strike 2 for the Master System, and GG Aleste 1 and 2 for the Sega Game Gear. And what I consider the main reason to pick this up, the brand new made from the ground up GG Aleste 3 made by M2 with original Compile staff members and other classic shmup makers. Aleste 1 is a port of the MSX game and in my opinion is the weakest entry, it plays fine enough but I think it suffers from Gradius Syndrome, where if you die and lose your power ups, you're completely fucking screwed and you'll die easily before you can even think of powering back up lol, You start with a basic pea shooter, and the starting subweapon is so bad, it's a single shot the shots the opposite of where you're moving. So like Left shoots right and so on, to shoot in front of you you gotta literally stop moving which is a bad thing because you're a sitting duck and shit is always coming at you lol. Luckily there are some useful power ups like the #2 that has a charge shot that grows larger the longer you hold it, so it's a good defensive tool, and then the #8 shot in my opinion is the most broken of them all because it's this laser that wiggles from left to right towards the top of the screen, and it just murders all enemies and wipes away any bullets that it touches, and this is what I consider the best tool for surviving Aleste 1, because without that the game is just a brutal road to hell. Being a console game, you don have to do everything in one go as I believe it saves progress if you choose to quit, but even then the game doesn't let up. And the stages are ridiculously long so it feels like it takes forever just to clear a stage, a true test of pain and endurance. This game is not for the faint of heart. In the collection you have access to the FM synth when playing Aleste the Japanese version, but you get the classic 8-bit PSG sound that Master System is known for.

GG Aleste 1 for the Game Gear is a really impressive handheld shmup and that I believe is way better than the original Master System game,  Instead of numbers, you have letters for the power ups instead. This game kicks ass, and nearly all the power ups are useful. D is a flame that cycles around you, to attack approaching enemies, H is a homing shot, L is the laser and your staring power up, N is the Napalm which shoots little bombs in front of you with a large hitbox to destroy enemies, S is a spread shot that at first shoots out a bit shot and then splits into two smaller ones. finally is my favorite one which is W aka the wave shot, it's a super wide spread shot that can attack in front of you and from the sides. All of these weapons and your basic shot can be powered up and just like grabbing the points in Aleste 1, grabbing these grant temporary invincibility upon pickup, it's only for a split second  but it'll probably be all the time you need. and once powered up, these weapons become ridiculously powerful, especially the wave shot where it's just these big ass wave attacks going all over the screen. It's great. This game is a lot more forgiving than Aleste 1 but it's also no pushover, by the 3rd stage the game is gonna start throwing some nasty enemy setups at you and while the game isn't even a bullet hell, it stops playing nice after the second boss. If you die the game is nice enough to let you continue in the same stage. but at the cost of losing your score obviously, so if you just wanna power through the game and keep dying, the option is there. The graphics actually feel like a step up from the original Master System game despite the tiny screen of the Game Gear, they were able to cram in a lot of small details and bullets on screen without it constantly slowing down. The music also kicks ass, with the stage 1 theme being this super energetic fast paced theme, and then my favorite, the stage 2 theme being a lot more relaxing, that stage is fairly easy but the boss is annoying lol. The entire soundtrack is great.

GG Aleste 2 is up next and this one actually did get a western release as Power Strike 2, not to be confused with the other Power Strike 2 in the collection, I'll explain that situation later. First thing you'll notice in GG Aleste 2 is the graphics, they're so detailed for a Game Gear game, and compared to the first, it's clear that a lot of work went into this. The first game still looks great but the sprites have more detail. The other thing you'll notice immediately is an options menu to listen to music, select difficulty and a speed option. And finally there's the fact that you can actually choose your starting weapon before stage 1 starts, which allows for easy practice and experimentation since you can just try each one and see which one doesn't suck lol. There's the triple Delta weapon that has 3 things spinning around you in a triangle formation to attack approaching enemies. the Napalm returns and shoots out a bunch at once this time instead of only a few, and there's the Laser weapon which is the weakest and honestly sucks ass and feels like a huge downgrade. Like yeah it shoots 3 lasers but they're so weak it feels like they're doing absolutely no damage. I didn't spend as much time with this one compared to GG Aleste 1 but this one brings back the right off the bat brutal difficulty of the original Aleste on Master System, and it honestly feels worse if you can believe it, this game just hates you even on normal lol. So I'd say proceed with caution.

Now for what I feel is my favorite game in this collection, Power Strike 2. Okay to clear up confusion, this Power Strike 2 is an original game made for the ground up for the Sega Master System, and isn't a localized version of an Aleste game, but obviously uses the western name, Thing is Compile made this game as the Master System was still popular in Europe even in 1993, and since the Japanese Sega Mark III was long dead, they released it exclusively in Europe and I believe Brazil because Tec Toy and the Master System never fucking die lol. So this game is a unique entry that not only skipped the US but was completely missing in Japan until this collection came out. The other thing with this game being for Europe only is the fact that it runs at 50hgz instead of the NTSC standard of 60, so if played on an American or Japanese console or TV the game would run faster than it's supposed to, and I believe it's an issue on emulators as well, but M2 seems to have gotten it right in the collection at least. And due to it being a European game, the screen size is all fucked up, so you have to do a lot of adjusting to make it look right, but the overscan from the PAL signal is gonna leave some empty bits of the screen. Alright so no more technical jargon, let's get into the game.

So Power Strike 2 carries over the ability to choose your starting weapon like the GG Aleste 2, but the weapons a bit different, there's actually 5 weapons in total. Type 1 is the Shot Gun aka the spread shot, this covers a good amount of the screen and is what I prefer to use, Type 2 is the Missile which can target enemies and spread across the screen, Type 3 the Burner is the Laser like in GG Aleste 2 but not fucking trash. Type 4 is the Absorbtion which is a homing shot, Type 5 is the DESTROYER which shoots a bunch of missiles from behind you and then spreads out and shoots forward, this one is also pretty awesome and helps to protect you from bullshit. Type 6 is the Napalm which is completely different from before, now it's these two ball shaped blasts that spin around in in a circle in clockwise/counterclockwise and hit whatever is on the sides before disappearing. And I guess if you don't like choosing, you can just choose to not use anything sub weapon. Grabbing the same number powers up your ship's basic shot and then your current shot, and of course grants temporary invincibility. You can also grab these little colored gem things that give you a weapon that spins around your ship like in previous game, but without being forced to swap into a different weapon. Holding the second button actually lets you charge a giant spread shot, and if you save it for the boss, it can end them a lot sooner,  it's great. And occasionally you'll be able to grab these blue things, that are a screen nuke, wiping out any enemy on screen, so wait for the right moment when they appear. Just like the Game Gear game you can go to the options menu and select difficulty and the ship speed, I prefer 1 Speed as i think 2 is too fast, so bet anything higher is too much. The graphics are some of the best on an 8 bit console, with detailed backgrounds, lots of  enemies and bullets on screen, all while blasting to some good tunes. Compared to another top tier 8 bit shmup, Summer Carnival '92 Recca, Power Strike 2 looks more impressive, but Recca is no slouch either especially in the speed. But that game has a lot empty looking backgrounds since it takes place in space so just bland black backgrounds, the only time Power Strike 2 has empty backgrounds is during bosses since it saves all that for the gigantic boss sprites, and are all so detailed, but fuck the second boss he's annoying. But yeah everything about this game is great, and the story set up is funny because it's a pissed off bounty hunter killing sky pirates and the opening talks about how things have changed since the great depression lol. I highly recommend playing Power Strike 2. a real hidden gem.

And now the main event and what's considered the main reason to get this collection: the brand new GG Aleste 3 made for the ground up by M2 with some veteran Raizing/Eighting and old Compile devs, a dream team of veteran shmup talent. So yeah they made a goddamn brand new Game Gear game in the year 2020 which I still think is funny, M2 always goes beyond what they need to do.So GG Aleste 3 may be designed as a handeld experience, it feels like a fully fledged console game. The graphics are better than ever, the controls are tight and responsive and it feels almost like it's not running on the Game Gear. Well whatever mumbo jumbo is going on, doesn't take away from the fact that this game is great, and feels like a best of all the previous Aleste titles. It has a lot of the same sub weapons and overall game feel. I really like the speed of the and how the stages aren't super long like in Aleste 1, There's a fair bit of difficulty in the and even if you die you're not massively underpowered to the point where it becomes impossible, so even for newer players I'd say it's fairly accessible. The power ups and overall mechanics are pretty much the same as the ones in the previous games. Really wish it had some stuff from Power Strike 2 like the spinning gem things, the charge shot move and some of the other power ups, but still it feels fresh but familiar. It still has the familiar point grabbing invincibility, weapon leveling and the well designed enemy placements and bullet patterns that most of the games have. It feels well balanced for the most part. but I really gate the stage 2 boss with the giant claw things, he's super annoying lol. There's a lot I could say about this but I think this has gone on long enough.

 

One final set of notes is all these games support M2 signature Gadgets, which is a cool overlay on the sides of the screen with useful gameplay information, like when you become invincible it shows how many seconds it lasts, your current weapon level, current score and other things. For Power Strike 2 I can't really take advantage of this due to having to zoom the screen in to see but it works fine with the GG Aleste games. There's also the Materials Room where you can look at all the key art of each game, the box arts and even some brand new art for the older entries. For whatever reason Power Strike 1 on Master System's box isn't in full color so I'm not sure what's going on lol. The porting of these games are great with low latency and tons of options to adjust like with remappable buttons, the ability to credit spam, even a debug mode for Power Strike 2 lol. There's also local and online leaderboards and replays, you can even download replays from the leaderboards and study up on how the top players and learn some tips and tricks, a feature that needs to be in every modern shmup release. This collection is really important because Compile back in the was a really top tier developer with Spriggan, Blazing Lasers, Puyo Puyo and of course Aleste, they're long but thankfully their legacy lives on. And we have great developers like M2 keeping the classics alive but also making new entries. 

MELTY BLOOD: TYPE LUMINA

(2021. Developer: French Bread. Publisher DelightWorks. PC/PS4/Switch/XBone)

I gave Actress Again Current Code the spotlight last time, so now I can make room for Type Lumina. Melty Blood Type Lumina is the long awaited return of the classic anime fighter, and alongside the Tsukihime remake finally being released and the new port of Witch of the Holy Night, Type Moon Fans are eating good. Type Lumina was originally being developed as a remake of the original Melty Blood but since the Tsukihime remake took so fucking long, they ended up changing it to coincide with the Tsukihime remake's story and character changes. So instead of taking place after Satsuki's non existant route of the original universe, it's both a prequel and sorta takes place at the same time?? I don't know it's very odd. At the very least it's still made by the same developer French Bread and Raito the composer even returns with a soundtrack which while good, it doesn't compared to the original, but it's definately no slouch. There's a lot of new here but also a lot of familiarity. There's still the same 4 button layout of light, mid and heavy attacks, and the shield button, but initially the combo system felt annoying due to the fact forced you to used auto combos. So if you were mashing too fast to get hit confirms. your character would just do the auto combo right away and do the easy air combo. It made it really hard to just play how you wanted since it would always get in the way. Luckily now the auto combo (Rapid Beat) can be turned off, and you can even choose to have it completely off or just for air combos only. New to this game is the moon drives. Before the moon motif was tied to the different moon styles which determined how that character played, like what was later done in Mortal Kombat with variations. Essentially giving each character 3 play styles. Well they got rid of that for this new Moon Drive mechanic. It's like having a second EX bar actually. Like you can still use meter to use EX moves, but these are like quicker versions of them with different attack properties, and even be cancelled INTO the EX moves, which really lets you cut loose and figure stuff out. Another new thing is the super meter (Magic Circuit) meter getting an additional 4th part of the bar when a player is at their final potential losing round. It's sort of a way to help create a comeback without being a super annoying mechanic, I like it because it makes practicing combos super fun so I can see how hard I can push the game's mechanics. The Shield mechanic got a big boost, with tons you can do now besides just parry. So obviously you can just parry like normal, but you can then immediately counter attack into an air combo, teleport behind the enemy for a 50/50 follow up, or even go into a crazy back to back parry war until one of you decides to grab the other guy or just stop trying to bait parries lol. There's also the ability to use your ultimate move just by blocking an attack when you're in Blood Heat mode.

Meter based mechanics like Blood Heat do return, but there's also two other ones one that drains your Moon Drive but powers them up temporarily, and can be used to cancel moves and continue your combos. And a defensive one that can push enemies away and reover your health bar at the cost of your Magic Circuit meter. The fighting is more fast paced than the original and reminds me a lot of Under Night in Birth, and this game gets pretty chaotic with its crazy characters. A good amount of returning characters from the Tsukihime/Melty Blood series return and were given some new tools to play with and new combos too. Shiki, Aoko, Akiha Arcueid, Ciel, Roa, Hisui, Kohaku, Miyako etc all return and they even added the funny cat Neco Arc into the game finally. Okay but where the hell is Chaos?? Apparently he's missing due to changes in the Tsukihime remake's story which is seemingly saving him for the second part of the story? I don't get it. Instead we get this new fire and ice wielding vampire due called Vlov voiced by Seto Kaiba's voice actor (he's also Zeke in Xenobladee 2 lol). Some other new characters are Noel, and her Dead Apostle version both of them were new characters to the Remake, some dude also from the remake called Mario (no relation to Luigi) and then some DLC characters from the gacha game Fate Grand Order...for some reason... Yeah Nasu I really wanted Saber and her gacha buddies to get shoved in here when we could've gotten characters like Nanaya, Len, and Chaos lol. Still at least the characters are fun enough and gives me an excuse to at least try them out, but I'd rather not use them at all. The main reason I can't complain is because French Bread is able to release all the DLC characters and their stages for free (probably because Type Moon is literally swimming in FGO money).

The game has some great features too. Every character gets arcade endings, and little bits of visual novel dialogue thrown in, Miyako finally gets her own route, in the form of boss rush mode lol. She just really wants to be with Shiki. That boss rush is no joke. forcing you to fight overpowered versions of various characters, and if you fail to beat Shiki you gotta do it all over again. And there's unlockable artwork, voice clips and pixel art sheets with the returning characters showing certain animations and comparing them to the orignal Melty Blood, it's great. The online is also great too with Rollback netcode and a simple to understand lobby system. Training has tons of options from the ability to set your position when you reset, quick access to changing characters, other parameters you can alter. And a decent tutorial and combo training mode, although the latter is mostly practicing stuff that requires auto combos. And of course there's good old classic 1v1 local versus which every fighting game needs.

Melty Blood Type Lumina is a pretty great game, Not as amazing as the original series, as Actress Again and Current Code still have a special spot in my heart despite my time with them not being as long as other games, but they're really unique. But I feel the newest game is totally worth checking out just to get your feet wet with the Tsukihime universe.

SOULCALIBUR II / ソウルキャリバーII

(2002-2014. Developer: Project Soul. Publisher: Namco/EA (PS2/Xbox)/Nintendo (GC, EU)/Bandai Namco Games (HD). Arcade/PS2/GameCube/Xbox)

I've been obsessively playing Soulcalibur 2 again for old times sake, and in 2022 one of the biggest surprises ever. So a group of dedicated modders have done the impossible and did what ever fan has dreamed off, a version of the game that includes all 3 guest characters. Link, Spawn and Heihachi can all fight each other now! After nearly 20 years this dream can finally happen. Only catch is at the time of writing the mod is technically incomplete so the models for the newly inserted guests of each respective versions don't have their models imported but at least have the movesets and voices lol. So at the moment they use characters as a substitute with some hilarious results. But before we get into all that, let me talk about the game on its own. I'm gonna be talking about the GameCube version primarily since that's the one I play the most, but a lot of what I'm gonna say applies to PS2/Xbox versions anyways. Soul Calibur 2 was originally released in 2002 for the arcades, and then and a year later got a port to all 3 major consoles, Gamecube?PS2/Xbox, and each one had a unique guest character. Link was on Gamecube obviously, Heihachi for PS2, and then Spawn for Xbox. Spawn might seem out of place but the reason he got in was apparently because Namco at the time was working with Todd McFarland's toy company to make Soulcalibur 2 toys and figures, and that relationship also led the creation of the original character Necrid, who sadly only appears in this game lol. So since both characters share the same creator that's how Spawn got in lol. Soulcalibur 2 is all about the evil weapon Soul Edge wreaking havoc across Europe and warriors from all over Asia, Europe etc going to the source to find their own answers, and whether they'll use it for good or evil.

Soulcalibur 2 is a fully 3D weapons based fighter that doesn't really emphasize combos, but movement, positioning and poking. Poking is usually about getting a one or two hits it when your opponent keeps trying to hit you, so you hit their blind spot or when they're wide open to get the advantage. Since it's all weapon based, there's a lot of longer ranged attacks, with Nightmare and his giant zewihander, Astaroth with his giant ass axe, and Kiik with his long staff. There's some mid range fighter too like Raphael, Yoshimitsu and Ivy, and up close fighters like Maxi and Talim. Usually when I play I use Nightmare, Sophitia, Yoshimitsu and Lizardman but you can't use him in arcade and other modes unfortunately. I said the game emphasized movement and that's mostly because you can freely move around in 8 different directions and while moving your attacks change depending on the direction. Those are 8 Way run moves. So in this game, attacks are separated into 3 buttons. A is horizontal, which can be crouched or even jumped over, but you can't easily side step them. B is vertical so these can hit from above or below but can be side stepped. and K is Kick which can feel like a bit of a wild card, since there's kicks, punches, headbutts etc. And you can combine the buttons too with AB or BK, AK attacks. There's a lot of variety in each characters movesets, and there's even various stances than you can even transition into from different attacks which adds another layer of to the combat. You can move in 8 directions, run, crouch, and even jump. And of course block, but be aware of guard breaks and unblockables. You can also press A+G or B+G to grab the opponent, and you can grab them from different sides, like from the left, right and behind. Two other things include guard impacts where you can parry an attack and leave the opponent wide open, one pushes them back to give you a chance to counter attack, and the other one hilariously knocks them down tot the floor. You can use this as often as you want but obviously you will punished by the opponent if you mess it up.

The last thing is the environment. This can actually play a big part in a fight, depending on the stage, you can use walls, fight in wide open spaces or even ring out the opponent. Sometimes a quick decision can turn the tide of battle. You can knock opponents into walls giving you a chance to hurt them even more, and potentially do combos you normally couldn't. Ring Outs are pretty straight forward with out you can just hit the opponent out of the ring and get a round. Sometimes it may not feel honorable but if it lets you win, then you win. There's also a wide variety of modes, Arcade mode with endings for each character, Time Attack mode, Team Battle where you can use up to 3 fighters and fight through an arcade gauntlet of CPU teams. Versus mode and there's even Team Versus with up to 8 characters per team and it's hilarious. And Training and Weapon Master. Weapon Master is this sort of adventure style mode where you go from stage to stage, with lite dungeon crawling (not 3d dungeons or anything lol) and it's mostly fights against CPUs that have different gimmicks. You can get different weapons for each characters and they have different effects like doing more damage but drains your HP or something that boosts vertical or horizontal attacks. After clearing Arcade you unlock Extra Team Battle/Arcade/Time Attack/Versus which allows you to fight with these gimmick effects.

So the main thing is the Soulcalibur 2 Plus mod made by a group of dedicated modders (check out the discord) where they've done the impossible like I mentioned, with Link, Spawn and Heihachi are in each version of the game. It's a work in progress at the moment for all 3 consoles as the models for each character hasn't been ripped from their respective versions to inject to the others. So for now it's other characters models used in place of whoever isn't originally from that version lol. Their entire movesets, character profile and voices are in the game, only thing is you can't use them in Weapon Master, so for Gamecube for example, only Link is usable. They also added some extras like tons of bonus skins for each character and even made Inferno playable, although they got rid of his fire so it looks pretty funny, he plays the same as Charade which is essentially a mimic/random character that uses other characters moves. The SC2Plus discord have been constantly been updating the mod for all 3 platforms with the Xbox and Gamecube ports having the most progress. I'm hoping this mod can be truly complete one day and that this mod can be like the competitive standard for community tournaments. Soulcalibur 2 is an important fighting game with great gameplay, competitive history and is still loved by people to this day, and modders being so dedicated to a 2 decade old game shows how much of an impact it had on players. PLAY THIS MOD.

SPLATOON 3 / スプラトゥーン３

(Switch. Developer/Publisher: Nintendo. 2022)

Splatoon 2 was one of my favorite games in the early life of the Nintendo Switch, along with Xenoblade 2 and ARMS. Sadly ARMS hasn't gotten a sequel yet (not sure if it will) but both the Splatoon and Xenoblade series have been prospering in these past 5 years. When Splatoon 2 first came out, it felt like more of the same as the original and it wasn't until about 2 years after that game felt a lot more like an evolution of the first, but most of the special moves sucked like the Ink Armor lol. There were some cool ones though like Curling Barrage (please bring this back), the falcon punch sorta move, and the Booyah Bomb. And of course there was also Salmon Run, a sorta Left 4 Dead or Gears of War horde mode where you fight off wave after wave of these salmons and gather their eggs or die trying, we'll get back to this later. It was all pretty fun. The story mode expanded on the series lore and was a great 1 player mode with fun challenges and creative levels. And the DLC was great too. So now going into Splatoon 3 a few years later after 2, what's new? On the surface it might not seem like a lot, but I don't think that's a bad thing. Originally Salmon Run was only available at certain times, and wasn't 24/7 which was annoying as fuck so that's automatically an improvement. Octolings are usable from the beginning instead needing to clear the second game's dlc, but I still think you shouldn't be allowed to play as an Octo if you didn't beat the dlc, only OG Octos only lol. As for the story mode, uh I still haven't done it yet. I know, over 130 hours of play but haven't touched the campaign. But I already know the lore is gonna be insane. It's all woomys veemos and funny squid music until you realize this is a fucking post apocalyptic world with hybrid squid/octo demi-humans, humanity is completely wiped out and the statue of liberty trying to start WWIII as a final boss. Some of this shit gets dark man it's pretty funny. 

 

Anyways back to the new gameplay stuff. There's new maps, weapons and special moves. There's this katana like weapon which can shoot some ranged ink swipes, but it's kinda weak, but if you charge the sword, it does a full swing and can instakill if you aim just right, but obviously you need to be right near them, so it's a pretty high risk weapon. There's also a bigger and heavier chainsaw looking alternative that does essentially the same stuff, just slower and does more damage, This one is a lot better in my opinion. The bow is a long range weapon that shoots a 3 way spread shot, the regular one has these little exploding things after they land on the ground, and the smaller one can rapid fire more easily. Both of the bows can be charged for a power snipe shot. The Dualies returns giving you dual wielding rapid fire and the ability to dodge roll out of enemy fire. The Umbrella which is like a shotgun but if you hold the fire button the umbrella opens up like a shield to protect you. There's the Buckets which just tosses a bunch of fucking ink at enemies but it's annoying to use cause like the bow, these aren't auto fire, so you can't hold the button, you need to tap it constantly, so your fingers can get tired easily. And then the Sniper rifles I still never use lol. The basic Splattershot, and the ever reliable close range Splat Roller. All of these weapons are viable in my opinion, but I kinda stick to the same weapons, it's better to main a small set of weapons than to constantly switch. That's why my silver Aerospray is at 4 stars lol. 

So typical Splatoon gameplay consists of Turf War. It's a 4v4 battle to see which team can cover the most ink before time runs out. Kills don't really matter but it can turn the tide in your favor. Because if the enemy team keeps getting wiped out how can they cover turf lol and same applies to your team. You run around spraying ink all over the place which can kill enemies if you shoot them directly, there's various bombs you can throw that cover ink and can kill. And once you cover enough turf your special gauge fills all the way up and you can use a special. There's highly offensive specials like the lock on Tenta Missiles, the triple Inkstrike nukes, the Booyah Bomb which is a mid air charge with super armor that throws a huge ball of ink that just gets bigger and can instantly kill enemies. The Killer Wails which shoots a bunch of these laser things at you, not as good as the one from the first game but this one is more annoying because it can keep aiming a you. And my personal favorite which is the Reef Slider or as I call it the TOTSUGEKI because of May's Dolphin move in Guilty Gear lol. You fucking ride across the stage, do an Akira bike slide and then the shark floaty explodes and kills anyone in range, this move is so goofy I love it. There's the Ink Jet from the second game where you fly in the air snd shoot down your opponents, and the ink that's keeping you in the air can even kill lol. And the big one in this game is the goddamn  robot crab thing, I hate this shit, you can only kill the opponent from behind and it's essentially a mobile turret that can curl into a ball and move away. The rate of fire is stupid and you're better off not fighting it. And right and the ink bazooka, I like it but I think the shots go in a bit of an angle so lining up your shot can be tricky, instantly kills tho so I won't complain too much. Some support ones include the barrier which is pretty straight forward, it protects you but gets smaller as it takes more damage, and eventually goes away, sadly doesn't move. That one that's like a big cooler, that refills your teams ink temporarily and can increases your damage and swim speed, and ink refill. And that soundwave one that seems like an offensive move, feels more defensive since it's kinda stays there, and if you don't jump over it you can take damage or just straight up die. There's that ninja one that let's you Spiderman around the stage for a short time and you can use it to get to the enemies side to ink their turf or just use this to kill lol. I believe that's all the specials at the moment hopefully I didn't miss one.

Anyways back to the modes, so I talked about Turf  War, but there's also Ranked modes. And they changed up how they work this time because now it's Anarchy Battle! In the first two games, you would just enter rank and win or lose points based on that, and your rank would change, it was pretty simple. But now in Anarchy Battle you enter a Series of battles, where you try your best to win 5 matches, but only have 3 chances to lose, and if you lose that's it lol. So if your wins are higher than your loses, you'll earn more, and obviously if you win 5 by the end and don't lose 3 you earn a fuck ton of points. The thing that makes this feel pretty soul crushing is the fact you need to bet points to enter a series, and if you get completely destroyed, you'll basically earn the bare minimum amount of points. So try your hardest or else you'll suffer. I know I have. The other thing is what modes are available during ranked. In Splatoon the maps for ranked and turf war change every 2 hours so you need to check the in game schedule to play the mode you want. There's like 4 ranked modes. Rainmaker has you bursting the bubble of the golden Rainmaker and needing to carry it across the map to the checkpoints on the enemy side. This is a lot easier said than done because 90% of the time you're all gonna be too busy fucking killing each other and bursting the bubble, the bubble bursting can and will kill you if you're too close. So this mode is pretty chaotic. Splat Zones is a goddamn warzone, this is the mode where basically everyone comes out swinging and shooting all over the place. The objective is to cover one area in the middle with your ink, and maintain it for a total of 100 seconds. Since everyone gathers in this one spot, it's a literal war zone with everyone trying to hold the line, and not letting the other team get the advantage, it's wild and I love it, it's hyper aggressive, The bubble shield special and the sonar wave thing are super helpful in this mode since they're static and can effect the entire zone. Then there's Clam Blitz which is like I don't even know, it sucks. You gather up a bunch of golden clams, they form into a football and you throw it into a hoop, it's honestly confusing and I swear nobody cares for this mode lol. But my absolute favorite is Tower Control. You gotta get on the tower and try hard to stay on it until you each the enemy side. Like the others it's easier said than done. For the most part you're a sitting duck on the tower, at most you can shoot back to defend yourself, throw bombs, use specials or try to hide in ink but you will die, it's inevitable. But that's where the team is supposed to come on. If you have a good team, they'll back you up and throw out tons of firepower, bombs and support. but you know when playing with randoms that doesn't always happen. You can play all these mode alone with randoms or even with your friends. They actually made it super easy to team up with friends now, now you can just easily join a friend's game instead of the first two games where all you did was join the lobby but wouldn't be on the same team for like 80% of the time lol. It was kinda annoying.

Briefly I wanna talk about Salmon Run and Splatfest. Salmon Run as I said is the horde mode. You take down a variety of salmons that all have annoying and scummy moves of their own, you gotta survive 3 rounds per session, and collect the minimum number of salmon eggs to win the game. This mode I swear is more brutal than Splat2, the salmons feel more ruthless and the game loves making you get the near impossible waves of enemies in the first goddamn round. There's a gauge that feels in between each session and once it's full,  you get to fight the big boss after clearing 3 rounds in the next session. You get to fight the King Salmonoid and he's like this Godzilla salmon thing, you can throw eggs back at him for damage, but while you're all trying to shoot him down, the other boss salmons are also attacking you, so it becomes this fucking chaotic frenzy to try and take down the King Salmon. But a majority of the time I couldn't take him down, it's so crushing. Luckily if you clear the 3 rounds but lose to him, it still counts as a clear because he's the bonus round. As you win Salmon Run, your rank goes up, you can earn money to spend on new gear, and you get a huge amount if you get like the higher tier rewards, so it's a good incentive to keep playing. You can also get these gachapon capsules which provide rewards like ability chunks to apply to your gear giving you a bunch of different passive abilities. Oh right, gear lol. So besides all the weapons, you get different clothing as gear. They all have different abilities and can level up and earn new passive skills to fill up to 3 extra slots, the abilities you earn are random, but you can buy drinks to manipulate your chances of getting certain ones. There's so much freedom to customize how you want your squid or octo to look, and you can still have great abilities if you grind a lot. Money isn't only used to buy gear, you can also use it to upgrade the star rank on your gear, giving them a higher EXP gain and an additional slot if they don't have it already. You can also buy stuff for the new lockers. Lockers are pretty much just a cosmetic thing and doesn't add anything to gameplay but they're so fun to customize, you can add shelves, put a bunch of junk on it, hang your clothes and even slap a million stickers on it to really personalize your locker. It's a great inclusion and gives you something else to do at least.

Okay so the final thing is Splatfest, every once in a while this special event comes around and you gotta pick a team based on a theme. In the past it was only 2 sides, but since the new idol group Deep Cut is 3 members, with Shiver, Frye and Big Man, you get to choose one of 3 teams that's connected to each member. At the time of writing the newest one is Spicy, Sweet and Sour, and I'm on team sweet lol. But it's not just all aesthetics, it ties into the Splatfest battles which are normal turf wars but the ink changes to your team color, and it's at night so all the ink has this cool neon color. The new gimmick is the Tricolor Battle, where now all 3 sides are fighting at once. Two teams of 2 vs one team of 4 members to even it out, so Team 1 and 2 need to work together to defeat Team 3, and you can still kill the team you're suppoesed to be working with, if you really want to be the winner. You can grab the Ultra Signal thing to summon help from your corresponding idol and they'll give you a big boost to help you win, but even with that, it's not an automatic win. There's so much to talk about regarding Splatoon 3 that I feel I can't really do it justice, it's one of those games that you just need to play yourself instead of listening to me rambling on about it lol. Great sequel and an awesome game! Damn my hands hurt from writing this whole section about a damn squid kid paintball game.

STRANGER OF PARADISE: FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN

(2022. Developer: Team NINJA. Publisher: Square Enix. PC/PS4/PS5/Xbone/XBSXS)

The game for true chads. JACK GARLAND SIMULATOR.

Is it ironic to put a game from modern Team Ninja after my big rant video shitting on them copying From Software, and complaining about them only making souls games? Yeah, that's true well I DON'T GIVE A FUCK! Is Jack Garland Simulator awesome? FUCK YEAH IT IS! Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin or as I like to call it Jack Garland Simulator, was honestly one of the biggest surprises for me this year. Like initially I was interested in a rumored Final Fantasy action spinoff by Team Ninja, so I was expecting something similar to Ninja Gaiden, and well no it's nothing like that. It's more like Team Ninja's recent Nioh series and maybe it's because I need to give it a second chance, but I wasn't the biggest fan so I was reluctant to get this game since it sounded like more of the same dark souls shit. Then gameplay and cutscenes from the demo showed Jack Garland being a fucking badass no nonsense protagonist and I got convinced lol. 

The story follows Jack Garland who's on a mission to kill Chaos, he's joined boy Jedd, Ash and later Neon to take down the servants of Chaos, restore the crystals and eventually save the world. The plot is actually meant to be a retelling or reminagining of the original Final Fantasy's story. A lot of the major bosses or characters from that game do appear here, and for the most part seem faithful to Yoshitaka Amano's artwork. There's the major bosses like Tiamat, the squidman, the Chimera and the Iron Giant. And all these bosses were fucking tough, especially Tiamat for me, god that boss was tough. The first major boss is even Garland who's serves the same role as the original game, being the tutorial boss lol.. Jack is very straight to the point and like I said he's a no nonsense badass. He doesn't have time for all this fantasy mumbo jumbo, villain monologue or even other people's feelings lol. He heard Neon's monologuing about how trying to become Chaos would help guide humanity and have them unite together to take down a singular evil instead of blaming everything else. All Jack had to say was "Bullshit," blasted music on his phone and walked away. Then when Lich has some shit to say about how crops and fertility will never prosper as long as he lives, Jack literally interrupted him to punch his dumbass face and said I DON'T GIVE A FUCK WHO YOU ARE. A majority of the bosses he fights he finishes them off with his bare hands, he just fucks them up, rips them to shreds or just straight up punches them into oblivion, it's amazing, All Jack wants to do is kill Chaos, does he end up doing that? well play the game to find out.

 So Jack Garland Simulator like I mentioned is a Dark Souls style action RPG which focuses more on being fast paced and being more aggressive. Nioh sort of did that but still kept some of the shit that I didn't like about Dark Souls, like the limited moves and the lame stamina mechanic. Yeah it had a way of recovering stamina by canceling the recovery animations of attacks but it felt natural to me. Like anything regarding dodging or attacking required stamina even running like what is this lame shit, lemme play how I want.  Luckily Jack Garland Simulator does allow you to do whatever you want for the most part. So instead of stamina you have an MP bar which is used for all your class/weapon specific special moves, and running around doesn't waste MP at all thank god, even blocking is separated to its own bar. You have a basic combo move where you just press the attack button 3 or 4 times, but you can also do a different move if you press a direction. And if you have MP to spare you can use some of those special attacks to extend combos or use them as a proper finish, you can even do like one move after another if you have enough MP, you can just go wild. The moves you use are based on your current class, weapon and how far into a combo you are. So since I played on PS4, Square Square + Triangle would be one special move, but then I i do just Square + Triangle it can be a different attack. And just pressing Triangle usually defaults to your class's special move. So once you have your moves and combo paths set up you can really get creative and do what you want as long as you have MP to spare, Way more fun than the limited combat of Dark Souls and Nioh. The other thing that elevates the combat is the ability to switch classes mid combo, if you got MP, you can switch to your second class after doing a special move, and continue to wail on the enemies, it's amazing. The combat really becomes its own thing when it finally lets loose. There's a good variety of weapon type too such as the Great sword for low but strong moves, regular sword with a shield for faster attacks and some shield based moves, the gauntlets which is my personal favorite, because you attack the fastest and beat the shit out of enemies, there's another reason why it's my favorite but we'll get back to later. The Staff funny enough is a melee weapon but also allows you to cast magic spells, and the longer you hold the magic button, the stronger the spells can be. The Lance what has great range, and even the ability to fucking chuck it at enemies and severely reduce their guard meter. And the twin daggers which honestly I used the least amount, not a bad set of weapons but I wasn't a fan of it lol. Honestly one of the coolest things in this game are the finishers. So enemies have like a guard/defense meter and once you break their bar, they get stunned, and regardless of health, you can finish them off instantly with a brutal looking finisher. Reminds me of the Obliteration finishers in Ninja Gaiden or the glory kills in the modern Doom games. And there's a benefit to doing these since it helps restore MP and the little burst after enemies die can effect and kill other stunned enemies, creating some chain kills.

The Soul Shield is a sort of parry move that can actually stop enemy and boss attacks if timed right, not all of them tho, some are better to just block, but the Soul Shield also wastes the block meter so you shouldn't try to spam it. It's useful as it can give you back some MP, and if enemies throw projectiles it lets you steal them and throw them back. You only get a limited amount of one or two uses per projectile but you're able to cancel combos by using them midway through and some of these are really strong so it's worth using them when available. One that I remember stealing a lot was the bat enemy's sound wave move, as it would stunlock you if you didn't block it, and it would essentially trap them leaving them wide open. Blocking is the usual way to reduce potential damage and outright save your ass from devastating attacks, some attacks are capable of guard breaking so be careful since it can actually stun you. Once you get stunned you're a sitting duck and you lose your extra MP bars and projectiles that you took from enemies, and any buffs you used. Jack isn't alone though, since he has his other party members to back him up, I mentioned them earlier but that's another thing that's unique in this game, you're not alone. You can bring up to 2 active party members at a time and they can help you out in battle, and the AI is actually pretty smart, taking out enemies and even coming in to assist you. I don't remember if they can use the finishers or not but doesn't really matter. They can also use some of the same classes as you but are limited, like only being able to use certain weapons, despite the classes saying it could use others. Let me talk about the classs real quick. there's basic classes, advanced classes, and I think two more tiers of classes, basic ones are locked to one weapon type, advanced can use like two and it increases the higher on the tier they are. The higher tier ones actually require you to max out (or at least just unlock it in the skill tree) the next class requirement in your current and the other class that it requires. Like I think black and white mage to get red mage or something. Each class has a skill tree so the longer you use them, the more each class levels up, the more moves and passive effects you unlock, like being able to do more damage overall with a particular weapon type.. My personal favorite class is the Ninja. The Ninja is able to use the twin dagger or the gauntlets and you're better off using the latter. So the speicals you can use with the Ninja include the Ninpo which is similar to the mage classes, where it gives you a small menu to select spell but these use their own ninpo resource and aren't MP based so in my opinion they're actually better lol. Some of them are kinda crazy like the earth ninpo just piercing through enemy guards or the windmill shuriken just doing big multihit damage and also easily devouring the guard bar. That's a useful spell but it" not my #1 favorite, my favorite is what you unlock afterwards and when you press Square Square + Triangle, it's the fucking IZUNA DROP. I wanna emphasize; Jack Garland KNOWS THE FUCKING IZUNA DROP. I was freaking out when I saw this shit. and it works on most enemies too. my only problem is it doesn't work on huge enemies or even bosses lol. that would've been sick! so yeah Ninja best class in the game in my opinion.

Oh yeah so in addition to the specials and magic you can obtain from classes, there's also commands, where you use the d-pad to apply either a buff, enemy debuff or even a special dodge move. It depends on the command used but that's another layer to combat but I kept forgetting to use them a majority of time, the commands cost MP obviously so use them wisely. Some of my favorites made it easier to break the enemy's guard or just activated Haste so I could attack even quicker. One command you always have access to at the cost of 2 MP bars is the Lightbringer, Jack's signature, he unleashes an aura around him that buff him and allows you to major damage to enemies and even destroy their guard more easily, it's not invincible but it's pretty awesome, I always saved it for the bosses. Speaking of bosses, I forgot to talk about them and the basic enemies and levels so let's go in order. Bosses are these huge guys that require you to read their attack patterns, find blind spots and figuring out what they're weak to to do more damage. Being a Final Fantasy game, elemental weaknesses are still present so regular foes and bosses still follow these rules. That's another reason why the Ninja class is so cool since it can use all elementals but that's besides the point. A majority of the bosses are fucking tough and have some crazy attacks, and if you don't learn to respect these attacks and react them to accordingly, your ass is cooked. 

I've died in this game so many times lol but that's part of this subgenre. Bosses also have guard meters, but you don't win right away, as the first finisher basically leads to the end of their first phase, then the real battle begins in phase 2, and if you break their guard here then yeah it' game over for them. But you really gotta earn that shit. These fuckers don't let up but the genuine difficulty and admittedly some bullshit going on with some of these bosses made it fun, and felt a real sense of accomplishment that a lot of modern games lack. Enemies range from skeleton dudes, flying mono eyeball creatures, to these deer like guys, and even some blob looking dudes, there's also robot soldiers too. Enemies have their own special moves too, and even have unblockable grab moves that ignore your guard and can do devastating damage, avoid these as much as you can, when they glow red you gotta get out of the way. These guys can even gang up on you too, a lot of times, the toughest fights were when it felt like 3 or 4 monsters were trying to attack me at once, it's crazy man. Defeated monsters drop loot just like in Nioh, you can salvage these and either sell the equipment or equip them right away to replace your current gear. Just like in Dark Souls and Nioh, you can level up and increase your stats do have better defense, attack etc, and for the most part it felt like your equipment wasn't super important. Like it still plays a part in your ability to survive but it never felt like grinding was super necessary, so for the most part you can just focus on the action part of the action RPG. Levels are linear and are based on areas of other Final Fantasy games, although I'm not sure how close they are to replicating them, since I'm not really an FF guy. You run around fighting monsters, collecting loot, and do some backtracking. Sometimes this is easy to do because you'll find a door or ladder that acts as a short cut. Some of these areas can feel confusing because the walls and floors can look the same, reminds me of the interior parts of Halo where it's like "have I been here already??" it can feel really maze like. Some levels even have gimmicks like raising water levels, needing to point giant last beams to reflectors etc. You can find treasure chests that usually have good loot or even potions. Potions are pretty straightforward, you can carry a few at a time gain more from defeated monsters or even find them around, and they refill at the Cube stations These Cube stations are essentially the bonfires in Dark Souls, where you can use your accumulated EXP to increase your level, change party members and save your game. These levels are long and you'll probably die a lot, so it's worth saving and coming back to the game, since it can feel like it takes hours just to get through a single map. You can even play the game online with other people but I never bothered to do that but I imagine it's fun lol  

With an entertaining story starring an awesome manly protagonist who literally doesn't give a fuck, great action based combat, and easy to understand rpg mechanics, Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin (Jack Garland Simulator) was a welcomed surprise and a game I honestly loved more than I thought I would. On the surface it feels like a strange idea and yeah people treat it like a meme due to Jack being this super serious edgy "gigachad" protagonist who has massive tunnel vision, but that's why it's amazing. It's so laser focused on what it wants to be and proudly wears it on its sleeve. Highly recommended. All my homies hate Chaos. And fuck Tonberries' pieces of shit.

XENOBLADE 3 / ゼノブレイド３

(Switch. Developer: MONOLITHSOFT. Publisher: Nintendo. 2022)

YOU ALREADY KNOW THIS WAS GONNA BE MY GAME OF THE YEAR. Whenever a new Xenoblade is out, I'm always there for it, and always there to play for like 200 hours, I love this series to death and Xenoblade 3 was my most anticipated game in 2022. I never thought we would get to this point where the series is over a decade old and now it's at its 3rd numbered entry. Before I get into the details I just wanna say that Xenoblade 3 is an amazing game and it's a game, like the previous entries, really grabbed me emotionally. The story, the characters, the world, it's all amazing. I can't thank Monolith Soft and Tetsuya Takahashi enough for this game. So Xenoblade 3 is the newest entry in the now long running series, and takes a lot of elements of the past games and elevates those elements for the most part. The story takes place on Aionios, a war torn world that looks like a fusion of the Bionis, Mechonis and Alrest, where two factions the Kevesi and the Agnians have been fighting endlessly. Noah and his friends from Keves end up fighting some enemies from Agnus, They start trying to kill each other, but this old man named Vandham tells them how it's pointless and how they need to work together to take down their true enemy, the Moebius. They end up having to work together to try and stop this huge monster looking guy, who's horns look like the one on Grahf's helmet from Xenogears lol. Afterwards they become a party officially. With Noah, Eunie and Lanz from Keves and Mio, Taion, and Sena from Agnus all  pairing up. Noah and Mio are both Off-Seers of their respective groups and help send the souls of dead soldiers to the afterlife, they play these cool flutes, and the flutes were custom made for this game to give them a unique sound, so it ties into the game's plot, and even the soundtrack, but the music will be talked about later. One of the things that Xenoblade 3 improves upon is the character relationships and character dynamics. They always talk to each other, have witty banter and always say funny things. And the team is split into 3 pairs so that's another layer of interpersonal ineraction between them. 

In Xenoblade 1, the characters all got along with each other, but I think it never got super deep story wise with the other party members aside from Shulk, Dunban and Melia (especially not until Future Connected). But the game didn't need to rely on that to tell it's story. It was more about the overall narrative and what was going on around them. With the Mechon wreaking havoc,  Shulk trying to figure out the Monado's secrets and avenge Fiora and so on. It's still my favorite game of all time but I think talking about it so much over the years has maybe messed up my original perception. Like you could say they're as deep as the plot demands it but I don't know. Xenoblade 2 I felt that while the plot wasn't as bombastic as the first like you don't go killing literal god or have to stop the titan you live on from literally trying to kill you, it's the storytelling and the pacing in the middle to later half of the story where I really began to appreciate the story and characters. Like I already like Rex, Nia and the rest but their personalities, hardships and seeing them grow throughout the story (except Morag lol) was what made it even better. Like how we got a ton of flashbacks showing the characters motivations, showing characters like Rex and Jin at their lowest points and overcoming their hardships, Zeke being the coolest party member, and Poppi and Nia being the best characters. I love the whole main cast of 3, my favorites in the main party are definitely Noah, Eunie and Mio. Noah reminded me a lot of Shulk, a guy who cares a lot for others, wants to change the world and is very motivated in wanting to reach his goal. Eunie talks a lot of shit and has a potty mouth, and has some of the best quotes lol, Easily best girl in the game. Speaking of potty mouths, everyone in this game basically curses, but instead of saying fuck they say Spark, so whenever something bad happens it's like WHAT THE SPARK!? or SPARK THIS!! I actually think it adds to their personalities, because the world has like its own set of bad words lol. Okay back to the characters The catgirl Mio is a really strong character, her accent is kinda funny, and her cat ears even flop around more than Nia's, she goes through a lot, and a great love interest to Noah. The others are fine too, Lanz is a lot like Reyn where he's the meathead that everyone likes to say is an idiot. But he's one of the coolest guys, I want him and Reyn to hand out.. Taion is the smarty pants that likes to talk shit with Lanz lol. And then Sena is also a muscle head, she's like the peppy one. The Moebius are great villains, they're these over the top silly looking guys in red armored suits with cape and all have different helmets, and they're all named after letters of the alphabet. There's also extra characters that get to join you called Heroes, but I think it's more important to talk about them when I get to the game's mechanics.

Just like the previous games, Xenoblade 3 is an action RPG with commands, attack cooldowns, auto attack and emphasizing things like positioning and breaking the enemies guard to deal big damage. The gameplay is a mix of the first 2 games, where Kevesi arts have timed cooldowns like in 1, and Agnian arts are an auto attack cool down like 2. The roles of the party are more defined now or more obvious lol. Noah and Sena start off as Attackers, so similar to Rex and Shulk, they deal damage while trying not to get targeted, Lanz and Mio initially are Defenders, so they function like Reyn, taking all the hits and keeping the enemy's attention while Eunie and Taion are the Healers Besides just healing the party, Healers can apply various buffs and other effects to support the party. Also Healers are the only ones that can revive party members (until you get a specific item late game) so keep them alive. Each party member has a different class you can use, and if you reach at least level 10 with a particular class, you can use arts from that class if it's from the opposite faction but you can use the passive skills regardless. You can even use each party members classes, so Noah and fight like Mio, Lanz can fight like Eunie etc. You also get classes from Heroes, they temporarily join you and you can do their quests to inherit their classes and then spread them to the rest of the team. Hero classes are some of the best ones in the game, like Grey, Alexandria and Ethel's class are hyper offense that can just tear through enemies and do massive damage. Some Healer classes like Miyabi and Fiona's provide tons of buffs to the party, especially Fiona who can just keep applying millions of buffs to the party, buff herself and then give them to everyone else. And some Defenders like Ashera can be a tank while also being on the offense. There's so many ways to customize, optimize and have your party built exactly how you want. And you're able to use arts from ther classes you've mastered like I mentioned earlier. Learning arts from other classes is useful due to the new Fusion arts, where you combine Kevesi/Agnian arts together for a powered up version of the attack with the effects of both arts. These are fun to use, because you can mix and match arts to get the right combination. Mastering arts is the key to victory! But Fusion Arts aren't just for attacking, it also ties into the other big mechanic that's also important to the story; the Ouroboros. In the story, the main party are able to fuse together with their partner (Interlinking) and becomes these big guys called the Ouroboros. In gameplay they're a temporary transformation where you can use arts exclusive to these forms, but in order to really take advantage of these arts, you need to use the fusion moves a bunch of times so that the Interlink levels are at 3, you can go crazy like using Noah's art where it Breaks all enemies, and then using other moves to just Topple or Launch them. Ouroboros has a timer that can run out sooner if you take too much damage but the upside is you don't actually take damage while in the transformed state, but your HP will be whatever it was before fusing. So from my experience, Ouroboros is best used in emergencies, it really comes in clutch.

We haven't even had a chance to talk about Chain Attacks, when your party guage is full you can unleash a chain attack just like the previous games. In a Chain Attack, you select 1 from a random set of chain finishers, that can give out bonuses effects after that chain has finished. To execute these special finishers, you need to make the TP bar reach to at least 100, if you get 150 it's great, but the third tier at 200 points is Amazing. There's some RNG involved with this but if you're smart you can plan around certain attacks to easily get above 100 points. It's also worth noting that Healers stop the bar from going past 99 so you can save a character with higher TP for later, like I use Eunie to stop it at 99 and then use Mio's fusion art which is at 70 TP to reach over 101 points so then it becomes 200. The main reason you wanna do this is to reactivate characters to attack again in the chain, since using them once technically makes them unable to act again, so getting 150 and above gets you at least 2 characters reactivated. There's also Hero chain skills that can guarantee a free 200 or 150 at the cost of the hero being unable to act again, but also adds to the strategy. All of this shit while also trying to Break, Topple and either Daze or Launch enemies to keep them from fighting back once the chain is over, and so you can deal bonus damage. This is also a great time to use healing arts because you can just get everyone back to full health while kicking ass lol. The combat system is extremely deep and I could really go on all day about it but let's move on. 

Xenoblade has always been known for its gigantic environments and this game is no different. The world of Aionios is fucking HUGE. It might be the biggest Xenoblade world yet and I have no idea how they fit this shit into a single switch cartridge. The world is like a fusion of the worlds of Xenoblade 1 and 2, so you'll see some familiar scenery if you've played them, stuff like the Mechonis Arm, and the distant fingertip, the Urayan titan is now like a mining facility and there's all sorts of monsters from both games. You can find treasure, jump off from like anywhere, do tons of side quests, or explore parts of the map you couldn't before when you get field skills. These are so much better compared to 2's, thank god. In Xenoblade 2 the problem was the field skills like burning obstacles or whatever were tied to the blades, and a good amount of blade were obtained via RNG gacha shit so if you didn't have enough of a curtain skill, tough luck farm for more blades. It got annoying because at times it could halt your progress, and felt more tedious if anything. Luckily it's more streamlined here so you just do a certain quests or get far enough in the story to obtain these. The new stuff is being able to slide down these rope things to get to other areas, climbing walls for whatever reason got locked behind this lol. They also added the ability to just easily walk across poison floors without any issue which is great, some areas suggest that you need it to reach them, but nah i figured it out without it. As you explore the maps there's campsites you can visit and use those rest post to use bonus EXP and level up faster if you really need it, but if you just goof off and actually explore the vast areas like the game wants you to, you'll already be plenty strong. There's tons of hundreds of quests to do, Heroes to recruit, and Colonies to help out and raise their affinity with your team, to help unlock more quests, and even help the heroes ascend to their max level so that you can also get their class to level 20. The desert area is so huge these maniacs at Monolith made it like 4 goddamn areas in one map, desert, grass land, marsh land and huge mountains and cliffs to explore. And that's not even talking about the ocean area WHICH IS EVEN BIGGER THAN THE DESSERT. It's so huge you need a giant boat to explore it, and it's probably bigger than the entire map of most fucking games, goddamn. Every area in this game looks amazing, and the sense of scale is out of this world, you really do explore the entire fucking map, and I loved every second of it. All this fighting and exploring is made even more fun thanks to the amazing soundtrack. A ton of tracks that are a fusion of drums, guitar, piano and the new flutes, which are what Noah and Mio's Off-Seer flutes are based on. i love that the flutes seamlessly incorporated into the soundtrack. Yasunori Mitsuda and ACE+ really knocked it out of the damn park. Calm and relaxing area themes, energetic and hype battle themes, songs with callbacks to Xenoblade 1 and 2's previous songs. The hugely bombastic choir filled Moebius boss theme, and so many other tracks. A few of my favorites are Kaleidoscope Core, the Moebius boss theme, Keves Battle, and the Unique Monster theme You Will Know Our Names ~ Finale. This has to be one of the best Unique Monster themes in the series, but I still think the Unique Monster theme from 2; You Will Recall Our Names, is my favorite of the 3 (Besides the one from X). But we all know the best Xenoblade battle theme is still the Mechonis battle theme,  Mechanical Rhythm.

Xenoblade 3 is a game that made me go through a lot of emotions, it had a great story with memorable characters, a lot of hilarious moments, fun side quests, amazing combat, a great soundtrack and a heartbreaking bittersweet ending. Sure it reached its peak at the end of Chapter 5 and into Chapter 6, but I think what happens in those scenes are some of the best moments not only in the game but in Xenoblade as a whole. It also shows how much Takahashi loves reusing ideas and motifs from Xenogears lol. There's also the amazing graphics, I said the environments looked great but the characters do too. Perfectly capturing Saitom's art style. The cell shading techniques and the way eyes and hair are rendered are so detailed now, they even keep all the details in their eyes, just like in Saitom's art. When I got the artbook in the collector's edition, I took a good long look at it, and man the 3d models come really close to what was drawn in 2D, a real testament to Monolith's skills. There's so many things I could say but I feel like I've already gushed enough about Xenoblade 3. This is my game of the year, and it wins best soundtrack, sucks it got snubbed at the game awards. It doesn't matter because the game is game of the year in my heart. Beautiful game, Xenoblade 3. 

THE TRUE GOTY

Madman Takahashi really fucking repeats Xenogears again lmao he's insane. Never stop.

That's all my stuff for the end of 2022! This post was late as fuck because I got really busy during the christmas reason and kept delaying it but hopefully this does a good job at making up for being late. I didn't get to clear as many games this year, but I'm greatful for the games I did get to play and I'm so happy Xenoblade is doing the best it's ever been! Jack Garland was a big surprise and the game was very memorable. Xenoblade 3 was also the first time a did a full game playthough on stream, and first time for an RPG as well. That as fun, so now if I ever wanna see the parts where I cried, I can rewatch it again and again lol. Well's that it, hopefully we get cool stuff in 2023 like M2's new port of Dodonpachi DaiOuJou

HONORABLE MENTIONS

MEGA DRIVE MINI 2: I mentioned it in my Popful Mail segment but I feel I wanna give it it's own segment next time, because I haven't taken the time to explore the full included library, like I really wanna play Ranger X and some of the other underrated games on the Genesis. There's other CD games on the Mini 2 that I wanna play more of but in due time. I actually got the Micomsoft Cyber Stick which is a new USB reissue of the Sharp X68000 controller of the same name, originally released to play that PC's ports of Space Harrier and After Burner, and you can do the same here on the Mini 2, I love oversized controller so it's really fascinating.

FRONT MISSION 1st REMAKE: This came out pretty late in the year and while I freaked out when it got announced, I haven't had the time to play through it yet. The remake is pretty cool, and I'm glad the 2nd and 3rd games are getting remakes, Front Mission is back! I'm gonna be there day 1 whenever Front Mission 3 remake comes around.

SUPER ROBOT WARS T: Part of my giant robot anime binge obviously means you gotta eventually get around to an entry in this series. These types of crossovers are always awesome because you can always get introduced to something you've never heard of and discover something new. Anyways same reason as Front Mission, lack of time in 2022 lol.

SOUL HACKERS 2: The controversial sequel that I don't think anybody was really asking for, but from the few hours I played of it, I think it's okay. I just don't get why it doesn't just say the word "Devil Summoner" in the title but whatever. It being a "sequel" to my favorite SMT is also weird because it barely seems connected at all. NEMISSA IS A DLC DEMON WTF.

GAL GUN DOUBLE PEACE: Gal Gun 2 was a game I enjoyed and featured in one of my previous lists, but I never got around to playing the previous entries. I think out of the 3 main games, Double Peace is the best playing one, I just wish it had pointer controls. I might play this and Gal Gun Returns on Switch since I got it as part of the GAL GUN HORNY TRINITY lol.

EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 2 FOR NINTENDO SWITCH: EDF EDF EDF. I was anticipating the Switch Ports of the EDF games because I think it's awesome to see the series branch out from playstation and because these newer ports would more or less be complete versions with all the content. Only problem with all the Switch Ports (2/3/4.1) are there's no split screen like what the fuck, aside from that the games run fine and I can play these at work.

MISS KOBAYASHI'S DRAGON MAID: BURST FORTH!! CHOROGON BREATH: That title is really long wtf. Anyways, I've never really been into this anime series but I think Iruru is best girl. unfortunately she doesn't seem to be playable in this game. I wasn't really expecting a shmup of all things to be made for slice of life series with cute monster girls but okay. It's a decently fun game but the hitboxes I swear are so bad in this game.

NEPTUNIA X SENRAN KAGURA NINJA WARS: A crossover that should've happened like 5 years ago back when both of these were in their prime. Being made now with the Senran Kagura creator leaving Marvelous for Cygames, it feels empty. The combat doesn't feel like Senran Kagura at all, and wasn't even made by Tamsoft which is odd because they did most of the Senran Kaguras and even those Neptunia action spinoffs so not sure why Way of the Samurai and Akiba's Trip developer Acquire had to be involved. A game with good potential that feels sadly wasted.

AKAI KATANA SHIN: Cave re-releases have been on a roll thanks to companies like M2, newcomer Livewire and City Connection. Problem is City Connection is a bit hit or miss depending on the original game or port's source material, that's why the Cotton Saturn Tribute was a laggy mess over about 10 frames. This port of Akai Katana is based on the Xbox 360 version that came out like a decade ago and it seems to perform fine, still more or less the same.

HISHOU SAME SAME SAME: M2's 2nd entry into their Toaplan Game Garage series, with this collection containing Hishouzame (Flying Shak) and Same! Same! Same! (Fire Shark). Features wise this is the same as the Kyuukyoku Tiger collection with nearly all console ports of the games (no FM Towns Port of Hishouzame unfortunately). And even the bonus game Forest of Wardner seems to be missing the Sega Mega Drive port but it's not a total loss, since the arcade and Famicom versions are fine, Low lag, great ports, and multiple arcade and console versions make this collection woth the money. Hopefully M2 can get to the true Toaplan heavy hitters soon like Batsugun. Also where's the Zero Wing collection with the Mega Drive and PC Engine ports?? Don't leave us hanging M2.