Introducing myself to the Shantae franchise now. In short, the overworld portions are meh or worse in some spots due to enemies taking a lot of hits especially in night time where youre better off just avoiding them. Theres also no map in the entire game which may be a negative. Pretty odd for a MV game, eh? Meanwhile, the labyrinths (essentially your usual Metroidvania dungeons) are otherwise where it shines the best. As a very late game on the console, like one of the very last official games released for it late, I didnt know it was even capable of some of the things found here. Its a pretty simple game with a transformation mechanic but seeing how the sequels are praised, I will await my time to play them and see how they did things better. (Hopefully.) Its near above average for me. (5.5 / 6.5 since I dont count .0s is the alternate rating.)

What if an action RPG was actually just a giant escort mission the whole way through with some puzzle solving to go with that? You get CIMA: The Enemy. It is a unique concept, but not one that is probably not going to hit with a lot of people. I am one of those people. Three major things that made me drop this: In this game you use pointers to direct escorted characters where to go. Thing is that they constantly get stuck on walls due to the dated pathfinding of this 2003 game, so you have to keep an eye on them a lot more than you are already supposed to. Since they all walk slowly, they get hit a lot so you find yourself constantly healing everyone especially the bigger your group gets. You do have a tag partner of your own who follows right behind you, but she herself is also a liability most of the time that attacks once every few seconds, and can also get stuck on walls. Secondly, combat is not fun. Enemies like to spawn on top of you a lot and there are basically no invulnerability frames. Most of the game youll be controlling Ark, who has a fairly short sword swing. The way he moves kind of makes it hard to be precise and keep your distance as you engage sometimes. I think I would be even be more content with this game if the partner Ivy instead took the lead, since she has a gun and therefore range when you briefly play as her, but alas. Bosses are pretty boring, some can just run into you with fast speed and its almost immediately game over due to the lack of frames as I said before. And finally, simple repetition. With little changes from level to level, it kind of reminds me a lot of a mobile phone game. Its around 10 hours long, no thank you. Some people have called this a hidden gem, I cannot share this sentiment.

Too many repeating patterns and boring bosses for it to be notable to me. Its just okay.

I forgot to rate this but I played this so much and even 100% it because it was the easiest thing for me to pick up at the time.

Finally got around to this. Nothing new I can say about this, its one of the best exploration games of all time, and is even bigger than Yume Nikki considering that it is a community effort that is still getting updated 15 years later. However, while playing I get the constant reminder that this game is indeed unfinished when I run more into dead ends - often denoted with the yellow _to add a warp here later_ signs, more than I find somewhere new to explore. its why I refuse to judge this game like it is a complete experience, its still basically in beta. It is absolutely capable of being 10/10 dont get me wrong, but I will withold that for the time being. Another thing I want to talk about is because a lot of developers are involved with making maps instead of just one, many people have said that Urotsukis (this games character) dreams lack connection and meaning unlike Madotsukis (YNs character) dreams as some sort of flaw with this game. But truthfully the brain is very complicated anyways, and can produce dreams that often make no sense or have no relation to anything. Perhaps Urotsuki is one of the people with this type of brain. I prefer that interpretation, because I feel like people depend on meaning way too much when they talk about video games, its kinda annoying lol. Now, the only way to definitively _complete_ this game by getting to its endings is to collect all 36 effects, special abilities Urotsuki can use to navigate and unlock new places in the dream world. I think it will seriously take any one person some months and good enough navigation of at least the near surface level of the dream world to get all of them legitimately, because thankfully you dont have to go deep into the game to any of them. A lot of them are just like 4 or less worlds to get to, some are even just a few steps from the entrance of a hub world. The reason why I used a guide to speed up the process, was because I was tired of running into dead ends where I didnt have the effect to continue exploring yet. I know some people may frown at that, but I prefer to explore uninterrupted. The game should not be over once you collect the effects, theres still a good chance that you have missed out on many spots considering how massive this game really is. I do like most of this games maps, I just wish some had more interesting things to see. A select few are large with just one copy and pasted object, and now you gotta find the one single unique object or pathway on the map to progress, spending several minutes on an honestly lazy map trying to do so. Also, the docks suck. Its like a connecting hub with 4 or more exits, but you can navigate it for like 10 minutes and still get nowhere. And as you may know, there is an online version of this game you can just go play with no problem right away in your browser. Setting up the .exe version of this game might be a hassle because its running on old RPG maker software, and the online game has a single player option. Its the easiest way to get to this game by far, but exploring with friends is probably really really fun, too bad I dont have em. Anyways Im not done with this yet and will continue to explore it on and off. (0.120)

5/29 Its been almost 10 years since Ive touched an AC game, since number four back in 2014. I had completed all but Revalations and this first one up to that point, but I had fell behind for the following console generation. The series has changed so drastically since then, basically entering action RPG territory and becoming distant from its stealthy origins, at least thats what people say, and I see that there are indeed damage numbers and stuff now. I saw it fit to finally revisit this franchise by starting off this one, then perhaps replaying the others and then at some point completing revelations. Now yes, of course this is really repetitive, primitive in terms of what this series would become later, and the controls are really janky by modern standards.. Combat is quite dated too. but I still didnt mind my experience playing it. AC2 and Ezio had defined the series after this, so I think I would have hated this back then alongside all of you since that was also my first game into the series that I so loved. However, I must say that I think that the setting and time period is mostly what I like about this game really. Just seeing the setting of the crusades in a video game without it being an RTS or something, but open world action is a very rare sight. Its a very eventful era in history that oddly isnt as romanticized in fictional works like the world wars or what have you. (But obviously it isnt all the way forgotten, but as far as video games go it somewhat is.)