beard ひげ @beardalaxy@gameliberty.club

I'm recommending this game with two extremely big caveats.

1) It has some serious tech issues that did actively prevent me from enjoying the game in some parts. Wait for a patch, wait for driver updates. Hopefully it will be fixed by the time this game goes on sale, which will be a perfect time to buy it. I'm not just talking about poor game performance, though that was an issue, I'm talking about weird shader issues that fucked with some of the important cutscenes and even a crash that seemed to make things perform far worse than they were beforehand. For right now, play it on PS5 if you can instead. Maybe you'll have less issues with a more powerful system than mine too, but I can't say for sure since people with 5090s were also getting crashes right at the beginning of the game. It's really unfortunate because this holds back what would otherwise be a fantastic game.

2) This is not a Silent Hill game. This is its own thing completely. There are similarities here and there, but it is much more apt to say that ƒ is inspired by Silent Hill, like many other games that share those same similarities and themes. I really wish that the game could have been given its own title, because it would have helped it stand out so much more. If not that, I wish it would have been connected to Silent Hill in a much bigger way. This game takes place before any of the other Silent Hill games, and it could have been the genesis for what happens in the future, but they went a completely different route and it is really its own story entirely.

With those two things out of the way, yes, I do recommend the game for anyone who is wanting a survival horror game that has a really wild story with a Japanese theme. It really does scratch the "Fatal Frame" itch quite well, to be completely honest. If you like both Fatal Frame and Silent Hill then this game will be right up your alley for sure. It never gets into combat so much that it becomes a Resident Evil type of game and running sometimes is the better option. The audio is fantastic, the graphics look amazing when they aren't glitching out, and there were some moments that had me truly awestruck. It's not SUPER scary, and it doesn't have quite the same vibe going on as other Silent Hill games, but I did still enjoy the setting well enough.

As far as that combat goes, it's pretty hit or miss. There are some combat moments that are really awesome, some that had my jaw on the floor even, but a lot of the time the camera really works against you. When there is more than one enemy on the screen, that camera really does not work well. The FOV is very narrow, which makes sense for a horror game, and that leads to very frequently not being able to see the enemies or environment around you. Trying to dodge out of an enemy's attack only to get stuck on some railing or wall and then attacked does not feel great. It doesn't help that a lot of these areas are really cramped, as they are in horror games typically, and the camera is constantly sliding along walls and getting closer to your character which makes it even harder to see what's going on. This is why, beyond technical limitations, fixed camera angles can be REALLY good for horror games especially, but even action games if you want some fights to take place in a particular area and have an interesting setup for them. Leaving fixed camera angles behind entirely is a poor choice, and I vastly prefer the SH2/SH3 method of camera control where it strikes a great balance between the two modes.

There was a decent amount of enemy variety, with the enemies all having a second variation too. Most of the enemies I found kind of annoying to be honest, but I don't know if that's because the enemies were actually annoying or the combat was just annoying because of those camera issues and the fact that the enemies are all really spongy. I think enemy health pools could have easily been reduced by half and I would have been happy with it. I was playing on "Story" difficulty too, which is kind of funny because the only other difficulty is "Hard." I would not recommend playing on Hard if Story was already quite a slog. I feel kind of conflicted about the combat because like... I enjoyed playing the game, but I was also routinely annoyed by it. Kind of strange.

Weapons have durability, and there are only melee weapons. In basically every survival horror game out there, you have guns that have ammo and can be used at range with higher damage, and then you have some melee weapons that you'll use to conserve ammo but at a risk to your health. It is all about managing all of your resources. In Silent Hill ƒ, for a typical playthrough, you can carry 3 melee weapons and all of them can degrade and break. Nothing long range. It kind of removes the aspect of feeling like you're in control of how you survive, right? It feels like you're just along for the ride with whatever the game decides to give you. The biggest choice you'll ever have to make is whether you want to replace a certain weapon with another one you find, or what weapon you want to use a precious tool kit on to repair it slightly (of which I only found like, maybe 5 or 6 in the entire game). Even worse, when I ran into the only time all of my weapons actually broke, the game just spawned in two more for me. Is there even a point to having weapon degradation when you have no way for the player to engage in the combat without them, so you have to spawn in weapons anyway? It seems like an idea some guy had in a board room and then they never wanted to remove it. I'd highly recommend just playing with an infinite durability mod while making sure you don't equip any Omamori (the game's upgrade slot system) that give you boosts based on your weapon durability.

Where the actual survival management gameplay comes in is the upgrade system. You can trade items that replenish your Health, Sanity, and Stamina for Faith Points. Maybe that's what the ƒ stands for? Faith? Anyway, you use those faith points to upgrade your stats, upgrade how many Omamori slots you have (up to 3), and receive random Omamori that will give you a different special benefit. You will have to be really picky with which of these options you decide to upgrade at any given point, and you will have to forego some healing items in order to get the most out of it. I decided right from the beginning of the game, practically, that I wasn't going to use any of the Sanity features because it just didn't really interest me, so thankfully I was able to just pour all of my Sanity items into getting more Faith Points. I ended up with a pretty good kit. So there is a unique element to the "survival" aspect of survival horror in there, it just feels a little undercooked for the genre. This is much closer to an action horror game than a survival horror.

The audio is probably the only thing that is recognizably "Silent Hill" other than like, there being a lot of fog and "trauma" or whatever. The sound design is FANTASTIC and the soundtrack is done by Kensuke Inage and, of course, Akira Yamaoka. You can 100% hear his Silent Hill stylings in there all the time. It's great too because it's like a blend of the Silent Hill style and traditional Japanese folk music. Hearing those smooth guitar riffs right alongside koto, taiko, and Japanese choirs is awesome. I felt like Mr. Yamaoka might be losing his touch a bit because SH2's remade soundtrack seemed really stiff, but ƒ's soundtrack is proof that's not the case. This might partially be due to the collaboration as well, but either way I'm very happy with the soundtrack. I do still prefer the soundtracks for the original games because there is something just entirely otherworldly about them, but this one is still fantastic.

Now, for the story. It is wild. It is absolutely insane. I think I understand the main plot, but I'll probably have to go searching through a few explanation posts and videos to fully grasp all of the intricacies. What's on display for your first playthrough is honestly confusing as fuck and doesn't make a whole lot of sense in a lot of parts, but you can sort of piece a few things together. There are 4 endings (plus one joke UFO ending, also a good Silent Hill nod), and you can only get the first one on your first playthrough. The second and third you can get on your subsequent playthroughs, and you can only get the fourth if you have achieved the second or third on yet another playthrough. So it does require four playthroughs to get every single ending, which is asking quite a lot of the player to be honest. The game is about 10 hours long on a first run, but I suppose that subsequent ones would be a good deal shorter. I do wish that you could achieve endings 1, 2, or 3 on your first playthrough, and that the conditions for getting them didn't revolve around only a couple of items, but I do still understand what they were going for. I ended up just watching the endings on YouTube, but I do think I'll play through the game again regardless, which is saying a lot honestly because I don't often do that with games.

Without spoiling much, the worry about the game being feminist propaganda or something like that is pretty unfounded. The game does take place in an era where, especially in Japan, women obviously didn't have as many rights and still had to fall in line with very strict roles, but also during a time where things were beginning to change. It's interesting to get a little glimpse into that time period here. On top of that, though, Hinako's family is just pretty fucked in general so it isn't just all about "boooo men bad, feminism!" especially because there is a strong male character here with Shu, Hinako's best friend since childhood. Every character is pretty heavily flawed in some way or another though, so yeah... I never felt like I was being talked down to or anything like that.

Beyond that, though, I think Hinako's core struggle is something pretty much everybody can relate to. Having a lot of societal expectations and navigating all of it while growing up and then entering adulthood is really hard to do, especially if you lose people who were your rocks as a result of those societal expectations, and you aren't wanting to just play along. I certainly related to that feeling quite a lot. The story that they wanted to tell does really seem like it pretty naturally fit within the time period they chose, it didn't feel forced at all. It does make me really interested in what something like this would be like in the modern era, though. It would probably be extremely political though, so I don't expect any AAA studio to touch something like that and even if an indie did, they would get a lot of pushback I'm sure.

Anyway, all of that is to say that I did really enjoy the story. I haven't ever read Higurashi, but from the Japanese horror media I have experienced I can tell that there is a lot of that sort of vibe going on here too. It's extremely mystical and symbolic. It is exactly what I like from Japanese games, for them to actually be Japanese games.

All of that being said, of course this still isn't really what I want out of Silent Hill. I'm really hoping that Townfall brings back the classic Silent Hill experience and setting in an awesome way, because so far the series is in an even weirder place than it was once Konami started giving the development rights away to western studios in the late 2000s and early 2010s. You have a remake of a lightning in a bottle game that is still good, but not anywhere close to what the original was. The rest of it just doesn't really relate to Silent Hill at all, and ranges from shit quality to meh quality to great quality. If I'm recommending any Silent Hill games to anyone, it is still going to be 1-3 and then they can explore the rest of the franchise if they want, because this is not what Silent Hill is. My roommate said "I don't know anything about Silent Hill" and I told him that he could play ƒ and still know nothing about Silent Hill. Unfortunately, that does impact my score of the game a little bit, and I can't really help that. I can't look at a game that is called "Silent Hill" and just not take into account the fact that it has nothing to do with what I love so much about Silent Hill.

Don't get me wrong, this game is still fantastic and I did really like it, but is it Silent Hill? Does it still give me the same feeling to play? Hell no. It is probably the farthest removed the series has ever been and I really wish it would have been called something else. I got more of a Silent Hill feeling playing The Evil Within 2, honestly.

Oh, I almost forgot about the puzzles! Yeah, they are actually really forgettable and are definitely not the main focus of this game at all. The fact it has puzzles period is kind of funny actually, because at least half of them are the exact same puzzle with a different riddle attached. You basically run around and find amulets and then shove the amulets into a door in the right spots and then something opens up. If they aren't amulets, they're keys or keepsakes or something like that. The structure is the exact same thing every time. There are a few puzzles that REALLY stuck out to me in the school section of the game, being a slide box puzzle and a locker puzzle which actually had me writing down and decoding cyphers on a piece of paper. It wasn't anything CRAZY, but it did feel really good to write down puzzle stuff like that. Other than those, though, honestly the "puzzles" were laughable at best and felt like they were mostly only included so that the game could more justify being called "Silent Hill." This is nothing compared to some of the highly memorable puzzles in the other games, or even other games in the genre. It did also seem like the puzzles really just completely fell off in the latter half of the game, because there were much more unique ones earlier on and I thought they would continue in that fashion but as soon as you reach that halfway point it's pretty much all action from there on out.

Anyway, yeah, good game, not a Silent Hill game though. Wait for a sale, because by then hopefully the awful graphics bugs will be fixed and maybe there will be some mods to help enhance your gameplay a little bit. If some coding wizard came down from the skies and put fixed camera angles in the game, I also think that would elevate this to a 9/10. Seriously, the camera is rough and does NOT work for this kind of game. Maybe if they dialed up the action more and showed prompts when enemies were attacking off-screen and decreased health pools for enemies and bla bla bla... yeah just not this game.

If you read this whole thing... thanks, you're cool. I'd love to hear any thoughts you have or answer questions about the game. If you've played it, let me know what your favorite part was.

#beardgamereview

Where to start? This game was incredible! I ended the game with just over 500 of the 777 bananas to collect. There were plenty of them that were just "dig terrain, find banana" but the majority were found in bonus levels or in the main world with unique challenges. There were a lot of those challenges that repeated a similar theme, such as "collect all the puzzle pieces" but they all had their own twists to help them feel like they belonged in the current level you were playing or for a specific transformation.

Speaking of the transformations, they were all super unique and really fun! Definitely weird seeing Donkey Kong turn into all these Sub-Saharan animals, but they all had abilities that completely transformed the way you play the game. The only real exception to that was the Kong transformation, which is basically just "DK but stronger." That one being so simple is a great introduction to the transformations, though, and it is one I found myself using the most often because of how it compliments the game's main gameplay loop.

Which is, of course, terrain destruction and manipulation. This is a platformer through and through, and most of the other transformations certainly compliment that aspect, but Kong and one other one play into the terrain stuff perfectly. It is way more fun than I thought it would be to blast your way through terrain, especially because a lot of it isn't just for show... all of the different terrain types have different properties that will interact with other terrain types and various other gadgets/gizmos differently. They get really creative with the terrain in the later levels, too!

The amazing thing about this game as opposed to, admittedly, a lot of other Nintendo titles is that every single collectible is meaningful. You aren't just collecting things to collect them. It's really FUN to collect them, which certainly helps push you to always be on the hunt for more (and that hunt is extremely well paced, too!), you are collecting things because they meaningfully play into the game's "economy."

Banana gems give you skill points, which let you unlock more things that DK can do with and without the Bananza transformations. Banana chips can be accumulated and then traded for banana gems. Each level (called layers) have their own unique fossils, and you can use those fossils to unlock new outfits and accessories which also give you extra benefits. The last collectible is gold, which you can use to buy things like power-ups, unlock shortcuts, and open up little safehouses where you can sleep and get some temporary bonus hearts depending on how many safehouses you have on a layer.

When you're sleeping in those safehouses, Pauline will wake up DK and have a little bit of cute dialogue. I always found what she had to say pretty charming. Pauline is a fantastic addition to the game and a super adorable companion character. It's great to see moments where DK cares about her almost as much as he cares about bananas! Really though, I loved both characters, they were super charming throughout the whole game, as was pretty much the whole cast!

The story is simple and sweet. Nothing too crazy, but it didn't really need to be anything crazy. I still don't know exactly where on the "timeline" it is supposed to be... it kind of hints at it being both pre and post Odyssey so I'm not really certain. To be honest, I don't really care though! Unlike Zelda, the story of Mario and Donkey Kong has never been something I think the vast majority of people have cared much about, including myself. As long as it is serviceable to get you from point A to point B, it's good enough! It even has a little bit of a post-game story that is a lot more simple, but fun nonetheless.

There are a couple of weak spots for the game that prevent it from getting a perfect score for me. For one, the frame rate is at a solid 60 FPS most of the time but usually drops whenever lots of voxels are being spawned in or destroyed at a quick rate. It wasn't anything that harmed my enjoyment of the game, but it was certainly noticeable. The second thing is that, by and large, the game is extremely easy. There are challenging moments to be had, namely the final boss fight and some of the post-game challenges, but I only had one game over and it was during that final boss fight. I think the difficulty was tuned mostly for a general audience because that's the kind of audience that is playing the game, but there does exist an easier difficulty so I was expecting at least some resistance.

Overall, I expect this game to win some Game of the Year awards and maybe even a couple soundtrack ones as well. It is heaps and bounds better than Mario Kart World, and I can only imagine MKW is priced the way it is and was the launch title for the Switch 2 solely because MK8DX is Nintendo's highest selling game of all time. Even still, I'm surprised that DK Bananza wasn't the game Nintendo tried to schmooze their way into the $80 price point with. It is better than MKW in literally every way except maybe the soundtrack. It feels like an actual, full fledged game instead of something a bit closer to a glorified cash grab, by Nintendo's quality standards.

I don't think it's going to beat out something like Expedition 33 for the vast majority of people who would be voting for game awards in the first place, and I can't really say if that's fair or not because I haven't played the competition. I do, however, think that just by way of the amount of people who can actually play E33 versus DK Bananza, due to it being on everything but Switch 2 while the opposite is true for Bananza, means that E33 is probably going to have a bit more of a cultural effect on the gaming landscape as a whole. Bananza is a great game, a brilliant one at that, but it is limited by its platform and potentially the fact that it really is a game for general audiences and not a more mature kind of gamer.

Anyway, awesome game. Took just over 30 hours to beat so that's a pretty long game in my book! I had a great time with the whole way through. Towards the end I was getting a little bit antsy just because I want to play other games, but that doesn't mean I wasn't still having fun. If you haven't bought a Switch 2 yet, hopefully by like next year there will be a decent amount of games for it and it will be more worth your cash to pick up. This one is a MUST PLAY whenever you do so.

#beardgamereview

This game is decent. It's hard enough on the normal difficulty and will require you to actually learn how to play the game and interact with all of its systems and weapons to survive. Nothing about the story is particularly groundbreaking. There are some weird graphics issues although it looks fine enough for the most part. The combat is pretty par for the course, with the ONLY unique aspect being that you can slow down time but even that's not wholly unique.

The best part about this game is the dialogue, man. I never understood what people meant when they said something was "gay coded" until I played this game. I don't know, something about what the characters talk about, especially the character Burns, just makes everything seem hella gay.

The ending was extremely unsatisfying. It definitely seems like they wanted to link it into a second game but that obviously never happened.

I don't know, if you want a 6-8 hour generic cover shooter with a generic story but some unintentionally funny characters, this is your game. Maybe worth getting on a steep sale.

#beardgamereview

If you're looking for a cheap, fast racing game this is going to be up your alley. Provided you have a Switch 2, of course. The music is great, the tracks are fun, but the graphics suffer due to the developer's insistence on packing in as much useless crap in as they can and letting DLSS do the rest. There is a "pure" mode that runs the game at a dynamic 1440p resolution, but it removes anti-aliasing. The resulting image is still a mess, but at the very least it doesn't have the extreme DLSS artifacts that the other modes do.

I was also a little bit disappointed in the jump mechanic. It's useful for very defined shortcuts, but I feel like they could have done a lot more with it. It is great that you can use it anywhere you want, but there are specific places you are meant to use it with the game punishing you for more creative uses. This feels particularly bad when compared to games like Aero GPX where, although you can't jump on command, you can take routes that let you soar through the air and use deeper mechanics to gain massive amounts of speed.

There is also no online play, so it's going to just be bot matches or local split screen. Don't even think about using game share to play this. The bots, as is par for the course in many racing games, have ridiculous rubber banding. You know it's bad when you're in the vehicle with the highest top speed, taking the perfect lines, and the bot racer shoots ahead of you only to slow down just before the finish line. It just feels too manufactured.

The new Fusion mode is kind of an interesting concept, but to be honest it feels more like a gimmick than anything else. All it takes is one look online to see what the best vehicles are so you shoot for those. They're the best by a long shot. Getting any of the others feels really tedious, and instead of sticking around as options to play as you have to go around unfusing and fusing all these vehicles together. Not even in multiplayer are you able to play from your total selection of fusions, just the ones you currently have. It feels simultaneously over and under cooked. I would have vastly preferred to have just some more vehicle designs without the fuse mechanic.

Altogether, this game does feel a little bit on the lower end of the Fast franchise. It feels apparent to me that they tried to get it out for the launch of the Switch 2 because, with their aggressive pricing, they knew it would sell well. For the price, I actually do think this game is 100% worth it. The core racing gameplay is still just as good as it always has been. Just don't expect anything too robust and take it for what it is.

#beardgamereview

Right out of the gate, I'll answer the burning question. Is this game worth $80? No, not even close. I got the game in a bundle, so I only paid $50 for it and I feel like that is far more reasonable a price to ask for. Nintendo worked on this game for a long time, evidently, so I think this may be a case of the phrase "just because you spent a lot of time on it, doesn't mean it's good." That's not to say the game isn't good. There are many things that keep it from being truly great, however.

Starting with the good things about the game, the first is the soundtrack. Every single song is a recreation of Mario tunes you've heard before. They have been beautifully composed and performed in the same style of the Mario Kart 8 soundtrack, which was also amazing. This is a soundtrack I'll likely be listening to outside of the game as well, and in fact I've already been humming several the songs when I'm out and about in the real world. The rather unfortunate part about the soundtrack is that the support for it in the game is practically non-existent. Tracks seem to be far more arbitrary than they should, making it feel almost like you are listening to a Mario-themed radio station. However, you can't listen to the songs in the game independently and there is no way to toggle them on and off, see what song is playing, or even adjust the volume of the music versus the sound effects. The UI in general is something of a sore spot in this game, something I'll describe later.

The individual tracks are really fun. Utilizing all of the different strategies and shortcuts makes them so much more dynamic than previous entries, and there are always new paths to take. This allows for some skill expression, but in all honesty that skill expression mainly exists in the Time Trial mode and not in regular gameplay due to the insanity of having 24 racers all flinging around crazy new items. Mario Kart World's iteration of Rainbow Road in particular is, in my opinion, the best Rainbow Road in the series. It takes you through what feels like a celebration of not only Mario Kart but also Mario itself, in a way.

Another great part is the visual style. Some of the little details can fall apart on closer inspection, with some even being very noticeably low resolution (I'm talking N64 texture size without anti-aliasing here). That normally wouldn't matter at all, but with the game going open world, players are going to scrutinize things with a microscope and a lot of it doesn't hold up to that scrutiny. Still, under normal circumstances the game does have a marked improvement over Mario Kart 8, even if you have to be a little bit more technologically inclined to notice it. Besides the raw increase in visual fidelity, the game exudes a lot more personality in its art style and its animations, with everything moving in a very bouncy and playful manner.

The same bouncy playfulness affects the core gameplay too. The racing. Funny physics seem to play a large role in how this game handles whether you're drifting, flying, wall riding, or even getting hit by items. I find myself still vastly preferring Mario Kart 8's tighter handling, but it is evident that Nintendo wanted to push this interation into more goofy territory than a competitive vibe. Unfortunately, as Nintendo is apt to do, they did go a little too far in this endeavor for my tastes and it ends up making the game feel like your proficiency matters a lot less than getting lucky with items. In fact, the better strategies seem to entail waiting in the lower placements throughout the duration of a race and then using items to propel yourself forward quickly, a strategy known as "bagging." Online matches are a complete mess when you have a group that is all of a higher skill level, because all of these goofy mechanics and items plus the sheer amount of players on the track means that your racing skill does not matter much. It's all in the way the items roll out. Mario Kart 8, in comparison, always felt to me like my skill mattered more and every now and then I would get unlucky with items. Mario Kart World's online can sometimes feel like you would have more luck punching yourself in the balls repeatedly while holding the acceleration and seeing what happens. The rubberbanding is also quite bad on the computer players, and it feels particularly bad in the Knockout Tour mode where they'll pass you on the last stretch pretty often.

Despite all of this, I still am having a fun time mostly playing in the Grand Prix and Knockout Tour modes offline. Grinding for the perfect 3-star rankings in all of them has eaten up a considerable amount of my time and it is time I am happy that has been eaten. The only problem with this is that it seems like accomplishing this gives you nothing. Previous Mario Kart games would often have some sort of reward for completing this monumental task, even little ones such as the title screen changing in Mario Kart 8. I like things like that, and seeing nothing like it in Mario Kart World is certainly a disappointment.

The other thing that is a disappointment is the open world itself. I'm actually not that disappointed by it because I had zero interest in it to begin with, but I can put myself into the shoes of someone who was. It is quite expansive and there is a lot of variety on display, but never have I traveled around an open world that felt so pointless to travel. There are P Switch missions, which range from being extremely easy to extremely difficult challenges, littered around the world and they can be pretty fun to try out. They are more varied than I thought they would be, even if the basic goals are "collect the blue coins" and "travel through the rings" the developers manage to squeeze a lot of unique challenges out of them.

Then you get to the two collectables. The "? Panels" are just unique floor textures that give you a little sticker (which can be added next to your online nameplate). The Peach Medallions are also just another way to give you stickers. What do the P Switch missions give you? That's right, stickers. What do you get for collecting all of them? Nothing. This makes the open world feel, to me, like it is actively dissuading you from exploring it. What's more likely is that Nintendo wanted to make a Mario Kart game where all of the courses were connected somehow, and they developed a world that would fit all of those courses into it. Then, they realized they could just let the players roam around it so they threw in some things for them to collect and do if they felt like it, or in the downtime between online races. For being the main selling point of the game, seemingly, it is woefully under utilized.

I would have found it so much better if the only ways to get stickers was from the "? Panels" and reaching milestones. Then, the Peach Medallions could be used to purchase things like outfits, characters, and vehicles from a shop. The P Switch missions could maybe unlock some other little nice things every bunch you complete, such as alternate title screens, colors for your nameplate online, etc. Incentives like these would make me so, so much more willing to explore the open world. Instead, all you get are quite pointless stickers, and all of the unlockables are done mostly through just playing the game for long enough instead of actually going and seeking them out. Thankfully, I wasn't too keen on the open world thing to begin with so I'm not let down by this much, but if it were integrated more into the gameplay loop I think it could have propelled the game to actually being worth $80.

This isn't my most major complaint with the game though. That would be the UI. I cannot wrap my head around how Nintendo can do so much right, and even if they do get things wrong they are still very polished, but their UI is still what you would see in video games twenty years ago or more. There are no audio options. No display options. No way to track where your completed P Switch missions or collected "? Panels" and Peach Medallions are. No way to invite friends to an online lobby against other random players (you just have to join a match and hope that there is a spot for them to join in too). No way, as far as I can tell, to specify you want to play a single course instead of a lead-up to a course online other than choosing Random for your stage selection (which most people do). Still no way to view hidden stats even though they're still important. It is appalling how bad it is.

By far, the most egregious UI decision, is that every single costume for every single character takes up its own slot on the character selection screen. Even before the game was released people were talking about it. Whose idea was this? Why did nobody think this was a horrible design decision? There is no reason whatsoever to not just put the costumes on the character slots and display all of the characters on one screen instead of having to painfully scroll through pages of costumes just to find the character you want to play as. It's obscenely annoying and such a glaring flaw that I cannot believe it ended up like this.

With patches, I think they could fix a good amount of stuff. Certainly, everything wrong with the UI could be mitigated with a patch quite easily and that's something I would love to see. That alone would bump this up to an 8/10 for me for sure. There's no way they'd be able to rip out the open world and replace it with something better at this point, but I still feel like they could probably add in more outfits, vehicles, and maybe even things like tracks or alternate colors for vehicles/outfits that you can purchase with Peach Medallions. I would really hope they would add some more rewards for completion of certain things too, because as of right now the only truly cool unlockable things are the Special Cup and Mirror Mode, both of which are really easy to get. I think a little bit of balancing for online is needed too, as well as reducing the rubber-banding on the computers.

What's mainly lacking in this game is incentive. The only thing driving me to want to complete stuff in it is personal accomplishment. I wouldn't have any drive to do that if the game wasn't fun, because in the immortal words of Reggie Fils-Aime: "If it's not fun, why bother?" Nintendo did still certainly make the game fun to play, but it does really need that extra push to turn it from just a piece of entertainment to a fantastic video game. There is effectively no meaningful gameplay loop, and you would think that masters of the gameplay loop would understand how much this game needed it.

As a little extra note, I would say as far as the Switch 2 goes, this is not anywhere close to a convincing title to sell the console if you haven't purchased one. My advice is to wait until more games get announced and more reviews come out for newer games to jump in. I am still going to keep playing Mario Kart World and I am still having fun with it, but again, just because I'm having fun playing a game doesn't even necessarily make it fantastic. I'll be looking forward to what the Switch 2 has in its future and hoping that there will be some truly fantastic games for it soon.

#beardgamereview

This expansion is incredible, with a lot of great and difficult content. I didn't die at all during the main game or the Echoes of the Fallen DLC, but I did game over around five times during this one. The story is really unique, the boss battles are awesome, and it is overall just more of the same amazing game. I was astonished to see that, after completing the main quest, there were still side quests after it that even somewhat connected to the Echoes of the Fallen DLC. I would heavily recommend this, as it contains about 6-7 hours of content that is all really great.

I don't care much for the Leviathan Eikonic abilities, but part of that is because I got a really good flow going down with what was already in the base game and I didn't really care to learn more stuff. It seems interesting enough but I've never been a huge fan of water magic in general. That's completely subjective though so I'm not really going to factor that into my overall impression.

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It's short. Really short. It only took me a couple of hours to beat. That being said, the final boss battle was awesome with some amazing music to go along with it, and you get great rewards for completing it. I would have preferred it to be a little bit longer than what amounts to a standard quest in the game, and paying $10 for that really isn't worth it so I'd wait for a steep discount.

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A worthy sequel to one of the most cheery VNs I've played! I would highly suggest playing the first one if you haven't already, because it will make this game hit a lot harder. You'd be missing out on all of the melancholic nostalgia otherwise. TwistedScarlett's art never disappoints and there are even more scenarios with tons of options to mess around with this time around. The story is just as compelling as the first one, and so are all of the characters with their alternate-universe selves. Obviously, this is still an eroge so plenty of adult content is to be expected, but both this game and its predecessor are able to set themselves apart by having that great story and very likable characters beyond their assets. That's what makes these memorable and enjoyable.

This entry does actually fix a lot of my criticisms with the previous one, given that it includes moans and some motion, but it is extremely rudimentary. Still, it does make the scenes a bit more dynamic. Not really enough to push it into the 9.5 range, however. There is also still no real "gameplay." You'll only be reading, though what is here is very good with mistakes in the text happening very rarely.

Again, I highly recommend this one as well as the previous game. They're both so good. I'd even say that they'd be worth playing even if you aren't a fan of ponies, but I know that's a bridge too far for a lot of people to cross and they probably won't even be reading this lol.

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Sweet and simple game. There were a few moments where I was shouting at my screen in glee at how cool and brutal it all was. The enemy and weapon variety is good enough and the systems all work together to make sure that there is little downtime in the action. It clocked in at just over 4 hours for me so it's nothing crazy, but then again the price isn't anything crazy either. I would heavily recommend this if you're a fan of movement shooters.
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It's a real shame that this game never got a continuation because it's actually a really cool idea. I'm not a huge fan of the control method (which only uses the mouse), the frame rate is weird and modifying it to not be weird causes some desync on voices in cutscenes, and the doctor guy talks way too slow. Other than that, though, this is a really unique mystery story that unfortunately gets cut short right when it starts getting good. I would still recommend playing it, or at least looking up a synopsis of what the game's story was like on YouTube.

All of the characters in this game are super wacky, too. There was personality just oozing from it. I'm really sad I can't see more.

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This charming and horny VN is so good that, although I had originally pirated it, I went and actually purchased it. I'm looking forward heavily to the sequel as well!

TwistedScarlett is one of my favorite artists, and their art really shines here. There is SO much of it in this VN, which lasts well over 20 hours and has tons of secrets and scenes. The writing is actually really good, even going beyond "good for a porn game" into actually good territory. Each character has their own little story that plays out and ties into the larger narrative and there are hardly any typos. The characters are all lightly inspired by the My Little Pony ones, but they all have their own quirks and personalities to really differentiate them. Even the side characters are like this, of which there are quite a lot!

Now, for the reason why this is only a 9/10. The audio pretty much just amounts to a bunch of schlicking sounds and I wish there were a few more things like moans in there. There is no gameplay whatsoever other than clicking through scenes, whereas in many other similar VNs I have seen something even like light combat systems. That is kind of nice if you're looking for something to just sit back and enjoy but I do wish there would have been a little bit more of a game-y aspect. There is also a lack of motion in scenes, with the vast majority of them just being one still image. Even then, the images are always serene so it's not too bad of a downside.

If you like erotic VNs like this, even if you don't particularly like these anthro ponies, I would highly recommend it. Sex is the core foundation to it, of course, but I was routinely engrossed in the stories of each of these characters and some even made me tear up a little. It was a great experience!

As for who the best girl is.... that's extremely hard to say. My gut feeling wants to go with Moxie, but Butters, Honeycrisp, Blossom, and Melody are all pretty high up there as well.

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This game is really nothing special in terms of the actual game being presented, but the way you play it is fun. There are lots of audio glitches and the graphics are definitely dated, but typing to kill enemies is a novel concept and I enjoyed it well enough to give it a recommendation if you can get it for cheap and enjoy typing. The story and characters are all over the top and it borders on cringe sometimes, but it's actually meant to be that way so it's easier to give it a pass.

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Forgot to add the #beardgamereview tag... I'm going to look at all the games I beat this year and see how they stack up against each other.

This game has great atmosphere and a great soundtrack. The audio of the characters is really charming. I just can't bring myself to keep playing it because it has a lot of padding and is really, really slow. It has a similar issue that I find in the Dark Souls games where you'll wander around for a long time, find a boss, get killed immediately because you don't have any clue what their attack pattern is yet, and then get launched way too far back to the last checkpoint. The core gameplay is really not interesting enough for me to keep engaging with it. I've played tons of metroidvanias and action platformers and this is the only one I've not wanted to continue playing. 7 hours is a pretty honest playtime for me, and there were parts where I did get a little invested, but it's just not enough to keep me playing.

If there were a way for me to unlock all of the abilities and play through the game like that, it might be a bit better. It really seems like a lot of the expanded kit should have been the default moveset and then some extra stuff could be added on top of that. It's hard to blame Team Cherry for this though since this is the first thing they created and it was only by a few people. It's good to start small, but the issue is that the world is so much larger than it has to be for how little options you have for combat and traversal. There is a mismatch there, and it really should have been like half the size or less.

I have no doubt that this is a good game with a lot of appeal, but you really have to understand that this is going to be an extremely slow-burn game with elements of Soulslikes. If you are cool with that, then you'll probably enjoy it. If you're not, you probably won't. For that crowd, I would recommend something more like Axiom Verge or Touhou Luna Nights as far as Steam games go. Metroid Dread/Super Metroid/Metroid Fusion, and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night are much better picks for the kind of gamer I am and that you may very well be too.

I have no intention on returning to continue playing the game, but it may very well happen down the line. I have heard stories of people putting the game down and then coming back later and really enjoying it after that. Even my roommate, who wanted me to play the game as it is his favorite, did that. So, who knows.

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This is a Rogue Legacy clone with ero game elements, and minus the whole feature of unique character traits refreshing upon every death.

It originally intrigued me because of the art style and the fact that it is an ero game, but upon looking at the gameplay footage and reading the reviews I got way more intrigued by how close it looked to Rogue Legacy, which is one of my favorite games.

It doesn't do anything special, not even in the erotic department, but the core gameplay was still very fun.

I completely stopped caring about any of the erotic stuff after only playing about an hour. Some things are copy-pasted and others are just a little bland. There are a few interesting animations but they don't last long enough and aren't varied enough to get your rocks off too. They are the equivalent of little emoji animations you'd see on a forum years ago or something. Not bad but they definitely didn't feel like the core of the game to me, despite that being its gimmick. You know what, though? I don't really mind, the game was still really fun and would have been fun with or without the ero stuff.

It's not one I'll ever go back to, since I'd sooner just go back and play Rogue Legacy 2, but it definitely filled that void while offering something just different enough that I didn't feel like I was replaying the old game again. It took me about 16 hours to complete which isn't too shabby considering I think I only paid like $6 for it.

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