Noy
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noydacoy.bsky.social
Noy
@noydacoy.bsky.social
18 followers 50 following 150 posts
Gamer, Coder, Climber
Writing game reviews on tumblr and crossposting (https://www.tumblr.com/blog/noydacoy)
23 | OSU '24
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noydacoy.bsky.social
Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy
A screenshot of my Tumblr review of Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy. The review says the following: Rating: 8/10 Played on: 3DS This was a great final entry in the Layton anthology. It manages to continue the legacy of what makes the series what it is, while expanding it to a global adventure of epic proportions and evolving game mechanics to new heights. It’s a bittersweet, melancholic journey about tradition, breaking tradition, and forging a new path forward, ironically describing the future of the Layton series perfectly. The story was great, and kept me interested throughout the game’s 25 hour runtime; an impressive feat for the longest entry in the series. The pacing slowed down a little bit during the long Chapter 4 egg hunt, which was essentially 5 mini Layton games in one, but there were enough plot teases and interesting environments to not slow the game down too much. The mysteries were well foreshadowed, and it was a great conclusion to the overarching plot line through the entire prequel trilogy. It evolves Layton as a character further, being the first time that he feels blind-sighted by a trademark ending twist. It provides a satisfying arc for Emmy, who mostly just existed in the previous two games, and follows in Miracle Mask’s footsteps when it comes to sympathetic villains. There were good emotional moments, especially in the ending cutscenes, but they never quite hit the highs of Unwound Future in my opinion. This is also one of the prettiest 3ds games I’ve played. Every background is beautifully crafted, and the environments are more “point and click” than ever, with fun interactions on every inch of each screen. It’s another reason that Chapter 4 didn’t slow the pacing too much, it was exciting to see what new fantastic art awaited in the new regions. The soundtrack is especially beautiful this time around as well, with the London theme being a stand out. It’s perfectly melancholic, and a great reminder that this was the last Layton game for a while. I think the one weakness in this one is the puzzles. They’re decent, but they definitely felt too easy for Layton. There were also a lot more sequel puzzles than usual, and many just felt like Miracle Mask puzzles but slightly altered. I would have liked some more variety. Maybe this is just series fatigue, with me playing 6 (7 if you count PL vs AA) Layton games within a year and a few months. Overall though, I really did enjoy the series finale. I’m glad to join the rest of the small following of Layton fans in the wait for New World of Steam, I can’t wait to see where the series goes next. PS: in case you’re curious, my ranking for the Layton games is as follows: Unwound Future > Vs Ace Attorney > Azran Legacy > Diabolical Box > Miracle Mask > Lost Specter > Curious Village
November 24, 2025 at 3:16 PM
noydacoy.bsky.social
Pokémon Legends: Z-A
A screenshot of my Tumblr review for Pokémon Legends: Z-A. The review says the following: Rating: 7/10 Played on: Switch 2 Modern Pokémon continues to exist in the nebulous space of fun, but not good. Did I have a great time battling with my favorite little guys? Yes. Do I think this game is the peak Pokémon experience? No. The gameplay loops starts off pretty interesting, especially with the new battle system. I like the way that it makes different moves more or less viable than they are in the main series, and running around commanding your Pokémon is very fun. The big Rogue Mega Evolution boss battles are interesting, but get a little tedious and HP spongy later in the game. Wild zones are an interesting concept, but with the whole game being in one city, the areas don't feel very distinct. Most of my problems with the game are due to the incredibly small scope of the environment. Lumiose City is pretty big, sure, but spending 50 plus hours exploring the same buildings and alleyways with zero changes in environment gets really boring really quickly. Especially when most of the fun, unique Pokémon you can encounter are locked until much later in the game. I was so excited to use some of my favorite Pokémon like Heliolisk and Falinks, but you just can't encounter them for over half of the main story, and then they're outclassed by all your early game Pokémon from the start of the game. I've learned that I prefer to adapt my teambuilding as I go in these games, especially after playing so much Persona, so to see that very little effort has been put in to make it easier to edit your team as you go whie aso locking so many Pokémon in the late game is extremely annoying. That being said, even if you did want to keep your options open, you don't have many. Say what you will about Sword and Shield and Scarlet and Violet, but at least they had more than 230 Pokémon to choose from. The dex is SO small in this game. I get that it's difficult to port so many Pokémon in with a brand new battle system, but this feels so limiting, especially when DLC adding a bunch more Pokémon is on the way less than 2 months after launch. Why not just push the game back 2 months and include the DLC in the game? Money, obviously, and they're catching me hook, line, and sinker. There's more I coul say, but it's all just typical GameFreak slander that has been paraded around the internet for years now. The game is fun, the characters are great, the mechanics are new and exciting, the new megas are pretty good overall, but so many areas just fall short in terms of quality and quantity that it feels half baked as is typical for a modern Pokémon outing.
November 10, 2025 at 6:38 PM
noydacoy.bsky.social
Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask
A screenshot of my tumblr review for Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask. The review says the following: Rating: 7/10 Played on: 3DS Stop me if you’ve heard this one before about a video game franchise: Professor Layton had a rough transition to 3D. Miracle Mask is definitely an early 3DS title, and it shows. From the uncannily motion captured 3D models to the stiff, over animated expressions, this game is… ugly. The juxtaposition between the beautifully rendered backgrounds typical of the series and the beautiful 2D cutscenes alongside the awful 3D cutscenes and character models gives the game a weird dissonant feeling throughout, which especially sucks when this is the most character driven Layton game yet. I loved the story here. The plot doesn’t focus on the who or the how of the mystery, explaining, instead highlighting the why. We delve into Layton’s past, showing him as an imperfect teenager with flaws. We learn to care about a supporting cast of characters. There are even loose ends that are left loose to tee up the final game in the prequel trilogy. I’d argue this is right behind Unwound Future in the story and character department. Unfortunately, the visuals aren’t the only thing bringing it down. It’s clear that the transition to the more narrow audience of the 3DS had the developers rethinking the puzzle design too. Many of this game’s puzzles aren’t logic problems, clever wordplay, or unique math equations, but are instead more gamified. Solving mazes, horseback riding minigames where you dodge barrels, puzzles where reaction time is required, dungeon crawling, using the gyroscope of the 3DS, etc. While I can understand the reasoning behind these choices, it makes for a less cohesive experience. Overall, I think that’s my main problem with this game - it lacks the cohesive tissue to connect a lot of its elements together. The story is great, but the visuals and character models are ugly, taking me out of the experience. Some puzzles have me using my brain and thinking hard about a logic puzzle, while others are just sliding block puzzles from an old Zelda dungeon. I liked the game, but it was definitely worse than it could have been.
November 4, 2025 at 11:38 PM
noydacoy.bsky.social
- November -
Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2
A screenshot of my Tumblr review for Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2. The review says the following: Rating: 8/10 Played on: Switch 2 Let's get one thing out of the way first. Galaxy 1 is my favorite game of all time, and Galaxy 2 is also really really good. This review is specifically rated in regards to the Switch port released last month. I love both of these games, so the score doesn't decrease too much for all my problems with the ports, but my problems are significant enough to warrent a decrease. I won't be talking about why I love these games, this will just be a quick dunking on how bad these ports are, even in comparison to the 3D All Stars port 5 years ago. Galaxy 1 is actually pretty decent, mostly because it's practically identical to the 3D All Stars port. The upscaled textures and resolution are great, the new storybook chapter is cute, it's mostly just Galaxy again. There are some cutscenes where the lighting looks a little strange, but overall, it's a decent port. Not for $40, but fine if you've somehow never experienced this masterpiece. Galaxy 2 on the other hand... how did they mess this up so bad? The storybook chapters are the only worthwhile addition here, and they're fine. Nothing super groundbreaking, just the origins of Lubba, who I didn't really care too much about in the first place. Otherwise, this port seemed pretty intent on removing content, and making the experience worse. Most aggregiously, the Banktoad is gone. Really cool feature on the Wii to put extra star bits into and then transfer over to other files. It was really helpful for speedruns, prevented grinding for The Perfect Run at the end of the game, and was overall just a neat little feature. I don't know why save file interaction was deemed so difficult in this port that it was outright removed, and replaced with an amiibo shill, when the amiibo gives you a grand total of 5 star bits when scanned. FIVE. This made me way more upset than it should have. That's not even mentioning all of the technical problems I encountered. The lighting and bloom effects on certain stages (Tall Trunk Galaxy) made some parts of the game absolutely blinding to look at. Somehow, the game crashed on me once, which I have NEVER had happen to me on the original Wii version. While it had no gameplay effect, I also noticed that the Mario jumping sound effect would play when I pressed A on the world map? Overall, the QA testing just really didn't seem up to par for this port, which especially sucks when $40 is being charged for it. There are so many other ways to play these games, that I can't reccommend these ports, especially for the price point. By all means, play these games, they're both masterpieces, but through any other way.
November 2, 2025 at 4:59 PM
noydacoy.bsky.social
Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth
A screenshot of my Tumblr review for Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth. The review says the following: Rating: 7/10 Played on: 3DS It may have taken me over a year after beating the first Persona Q, but I finally finished this game. And it’s… not as good. Still fun, don’t get me wrong, but I preferred Q1 in almost every aspect. First of all, let’s talk story. As a spin-off with the memory loss/it-was-all-a-dream trope to make it ambiguously canon, the overarching plot isn’t too important here, but they still tried their best to make the crossover aspect make sense in Persona lore while pretending PQ1 never happened. I would’ve preferred to see the two games be a bit more connected, but oh well. With the cast of Persona 3, 4, and 5 here, surely this will lead to an epic story of crazy proportions, right? No, you’re mostly just helping one girl gain self worth, which is arbitrarily extended to the general public near the end of the game. And it’s all done through watching movies? I’m all for fiction affecting reality, but this story was pretty silly overall, and didn’t hit the same way that the first Q game did. Surely with this big of an ensemble cast, the character moments are better though, right? Well, the game staggers when you obtain everyone, so for the entire first dungeon, you only have the Persona 5 cast, making the beginning of this game feel like yet another Persona 5 game. The end of the first dungeon introduces Persona 3 Portable’s female main character, the second dungeon introduces the 4 cast, and the third brings in the 3 party. This gives you nearly 30 characters to include on your party, explore dungeons with, and see fun character interactions for. In theory, this is great, there are so many combinations of characters that would be awesome to see interacting. In practice, the sheer quantity of characters and interactions hinders the overall quality of those interactions. Every character feels flat, with their personalities being pretty much locked to what they start as in the game they’re from. Ryuji and Morgana hate each other, Chie likes meat, Yukiko can’t cook and has giggle fits, Akihiko loves protein, Junpei is the ace defective, etc. There are a bunch of side quests that attempt to help develop everyone’s character, but most of them just reinforce the tropes they’ve already been assigned. The smart kids team up, the protag’s best friends hang out, the foodies talk about loving food, etc. It takes a lot of the characters I love for being cool three dimensional people and flattens them to just their basic characteristics, which even Q managed to avoid despite having the same crossover concept. This unfortunately also had the affect of slowing the pacing down dramatically. Much of the driving force to keep playing long Persona games is falling in love with the characters and talking to them more. When none of them evolve and grow with the story, and are all characters you’ve seen before, just without the character development and growth from the main games, it’s difficult to get reattached to these hollow shells of the characters I love. This, combined with the idea that every character should get an equal amount of screen time, results in long cutscenes where characters will say the exact thing you expect them to, and then every other character will follow up with the same sentiment. It makes the plot drag on, and in combination with the long dungeons, makes this game a crawl to get through. I will give credit where it’s due, though. In battle, every character is unique, and has a distinct role to play, especially in the latter half of the game. Each party member has a unique skill alongside their level up moveset, differentiating party members who would otherwise feel similar. No longer are you just choosing party members based on their elemental damage, they all have different unique supporting options as well. While Morgana and Yukari are both backline, wind-elemented healers, Morgana focuses on luck, crits, and avoiding attacks while Yukari is the more reliable healer and reviver. Despite both focusing on bless and almighty skills, Naoto has instant kills and curse coverage, while Akechi focuses more on support, binding the enemy and healing status effects. Thus, in addition to the sub-persona system carried over from Q1, makes the battle system a lot of fun to experiment with and customize. My only complaint is that you only have 5 main party slots, which isn’t nearly enough to experiment regularly. That leads into my biggest gameplay complaint: the level curve. I was under-leveled for the entire time I played this game. By the final dungeon, I was about 15 levels behind what I should have been, and regular enemies on the last few floors were slaughtering me before I could even move. I played on normal the whole time, and 100% explored every floor and side quest as I went, so the game wasn’t hard and I had plenty of resources. It just kept being annoying - most of my party wipes were due to unlucky enemy attack patterns or ambushes, along with massive difficulty spikes at boss fights. The main problem was that I wanted to interact with as many of the party members as possible, and frequently switched up my team to keep everyone around the same level throughout the entire game. This was a mistake, and not how the game was meant to be played. You are definitely expected to have a “main party,” and then switch out party members every so often for side quests and unique circumstances, much like the Etrian Odyssey games this series is based on. That being said, the massive ensemble cast is practically begging you to experiment and try different party combinations, so the level curve and difficulty spikes actively discouraging that was frustrating. I ended up using the DLC item to triple experience growth to grind up a few characters in the final dungeon because I couldn’t progress and just wanted to beat the game. Overall, I still had a good time with the game, and there were definitely some good moments, but it was mostly just a downgrade from the first Persona Q game in my opinion.
October 15, 2025 at 9:37 PM
noydacoy.bsky.social
Pseudoregalia
A screenshot of my Tumblr review for Pseudoregalia. The review says the following: Rating: 9/10 Played on: Steam In an era where most companies don't make very many movement-based 3D platformers anymore, I'm glad indie developers are still here to carry the torch and create fantastic schmovement games (very real and technical genre name). Pseudoregalia is an incredibly smooth and well put together 3D Metroidvania, with satisfying mechanics, a gorgeous retro aesthetic, and an atmospherically catchy soundtrack. Even before getting all of the upgrades, it's extremely satisfying to just move around. Controlling Sybil is fun and intuitive, and most of the upgrades you get throughout the game to unlock more moves and progress slot in very naturally to your existing moves. I even managed to take a pretty long break from the game and got the hang of the fully upgraded moveset fairly quickly. My one complaint is probably about the combat. It's not the central focus, and the game definitely is aware of that, so it's not throwing you in combat situations left and right, which is a good thing. However, a lot of the upgrades have to do with combat, making them feel slightly underwhelming at times, because the combat takes such a backseat. Things like charging your attack for more damage and a ranged projectile don't feel very substantial compared to the movement focused upgrades. This overall isn't too big of a deal, but it's something to consider. Otherwise, I really don't have anything else negative to say. My playthrough clocked in around 8 hours, which is the perfect length for a Metroidvania game in my opinion, and I was having fun the whole way through. I'll definitely be listening to the soundtrack for a while afterwards, it's so peak.
October 13, 2025 at 7:48 PM
noydacoy.bsky.social
- October -
Sayonara Wild Hearts
A screenshot of my Tumblr review for Sayonara Wild Hearts. The review says the following: Rating: 9/10 Played on: Steam You know, they weren't kidding when they said this was a playable pop album. What a wild and unique experience. There are so many different rhythm mechanics that perfectly match the music, a bunch of banger songs, extremely satisfying collectables, and, of course, lesbians. The soundtrack reminds me of a lot of the music that I've recently grown quite fond of, with some future funk, synthetic pop, and plenty more. If you like bands like CHVRCHES or Magdalena Bay I highly recommend at least listening to the soundtrack. For a rhythm game, it's surprisingly accessible. Typically, games like this can rely on you having near perfect timing to even just pass the level. This game is relatively easy, with some difficult spots here and there, but whenever you die, you just spawn a few seconds back with a broken combo. Makes it a bit annoying when going for gold ranks on all the stages, but makes just getting through them a breeze if you just want to experience what the game has to offer. I ended up gold ranking every stage, and it was quite satisfying to find some sneaky collectibles and areas to rack up a bunch of points in each level. I don't want to say too much more so as to not spoil the surprises and the experience, but I encourage anyone to check this game out, not just fans of rhythm games. If you need more convincing, it's gay as hell and Queen Latifah is the narrator. If that doesn't sell you, I don't know what will.
October 5, 2025 at 2:39 AM
noydacoy.bsky.social
- September -
Catherine: Full Body
A screenshot of my Tumblr review for Catherine: Full Body. The review says the following: Rating: 7/10 Played on: PS5 This game is wild. I honestly still don't know how I feel about it. I completed two of the endings, and looked up some of the other ones, and still don't know if I liked the game or not? I'll start with the easy stuff to talk about, the gameplay. Taking a page out of Persona's book, this game has two separate gameplay styles. One is a daily life segment, where you are chatting with friends and strangers at the bar, getting to know people, and drinking your troubles away. The other is the nightmare segments, where you climb blocky towers until you reach salvation. I really liked chatting in the bar, the ambiance was great, and the characters are all fun to hear about. The blocky tower puzzles, on the other hand, I feel very... mixed about. I started on normal mode, figuring that the game couldn't be that difficult. I'm not bad at puzzles, I've played and enjoyed plenty of puzzle games before. But even on normal mode, this game was unbearable. An extremely strict time limit combined with unclear rules about exactly how to interact with the blocks made softlocks way more common than they should have been, and made it extremely frustrating to progress. Near the end of the game, I had to switch to easy mode, as it was really hindering my enjoyment of the story to spend hours resetting a level until I stumbled into the intended solution. Easy mode was much more bearable, but it felt like it took ALL of the challenge out. I wish there was some difficulty setting between these two, where I could still use my brain on more complex puzzles without an extremely threatening time limit attempting to softlock me at every turn. Now, for the story. The main concept is that your player character, Vincent, is suddenly in a situation where he has to choose romantically between three different girls, Katherine, Catherine, and Qatherine (also called Rin). There are some interesting themes here of order vs. chaos, loyalty and trust, happiness and love, and what freedom truly looks like in a relationship. I think that the game plays with these themes in some very interesting ways, and offers some genuinely good commentary on what makes love "true" in a relationship. That being said, there are some themes that the game handles... poorly. It simultaneously manages to have some of the best representations of queer people I've seen in a game, while also being quite transphobic. Because these developers also brought us Persona 4, they are clearly scared of committing to a character being completely transgender, and settle for deadnaming, lack of respect for pronoun switching, and other-ing the trans folks. And yet, there's still a character who is just casually trans and the game only makes a big deal of it in a few endings. I can't tell how much of it is just commentary on transphobia and how much it is the developers being afraid to put proper representation in the game. With the release of Full Body, much of the extremely disrespectful transphobic things seem to have been taken out, but the fact that it was present at all rubs me the wrong way. Even the non-queer representation of women feels weird. It feels like the game boils down women to being either controlling or seductive, which feels reductive and disrespectful in its own right. That being said, I think that these characters have enough time in the limelight to get proper development, and show that they aren't just those stereotypical traits. Overall, I think I enjoyed the game? It's problematic and controversial, but mostly in an interesting, thought-provoking way. Sometimes, the serious themes of the game are so jarring compared to the insanity that occurs during the story, especially in the endings, but it's still plenty of fun to play and think about. I don't think I would recommend the game, but I can definitely appreciate it for what it does.
September 27, 2025 at 3:28 PM
noydacoy.bsky.social
this game will end in 205 clicks.
A screenshot of my Tumblr review for this game will end in 205 clicks. The review says the following: Rating: 8/10 Played on: Steam With In Stars and Time being my favorite game I played last year, I had to play the next tiny game from insertdisc5. The humor is perfectly in my wheelhouse, the 4th wall breaks are fantastic, and Royal is fantastic. Only 15 minutes long-ish, and it had me feeling for this funny little guy. All of the art is adorable and I love it. Can't wait for the next installment in The Girls series!!
August 6, 2025 at 11:00 PM
noydacoy.bsky.social
Mouthwashing
A screenshot of my Tumblr review for Mouthwashing. The review says the following: Rating: 8/10 Played on: Steam I didn’t know anything about this game going in. I thought it was just the next popular indie horror project that I’d just ignore because that genre isn’t usually my style. But when my girlfriend played it and implored me to give it a shot, I listened, and experienced a game I won’t be forgetting anytime soon. Take the dread of the Lisa games, mix it with a unique nonlinear narrative structure, a beautifully eerie blend of visual fidelity reminiscent of something like Inscryption, and dashes of fantastic characterization in just a short 3 hour runtime and you get this game. I was enthralled the moment I started playing the game, and finished it in just two sittings. The narrative is confusing, out of order, and hiding mountains of subtext and ulterior themes, but it truly is a terrifyingly realistic plotline. The sound design is spectacular, keeping you tense and anxious for the entire runtime. I would have preferred if the game stuck to the simple walking around and using items gameplay rather than trying to introduce some action sequences, as it depleted some of the tension in later scenes. Even the title of the game, which I didn't give much thought before playing, was explained in a horrifying way. I don’t want to risk saying too much more and spoiling the experience for anyone who hasn’t play this game yet, but overall, I’m glad I gave it a shot.
August 6, 2025 at 10:16 PM
noydacoy.bsky.social
- August -
Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit
A screenshot of my Tumblr review for Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit. The review says the following: Rating: 8/10 Played on: Steam (through the Collection released in 2024) If I had a nickel for every character in this game with daddy issues, I would have quite a lot of nickels. Not sure why that’s the central theme for this game, but I genuinely think it’s over 75% of the cast. Jokes aside, this game is great. I personally enjoyed all of the cases, and it was extremely satisfying seeing every last one of them being important for the final, overarching mystery. There was a good balance between goofy and serious moments, and the twists were surprising and satisfying. Characters were very fun throughout, and most of them had fantastic arcs throughout the story. This is probably my favorite depiction of Edgeworth yet, and there were so many standout new characters, like Gavélle, Fender, and good old Sebastian Winner. My one major problem with the game is the length. Every single case feels like it’s 1-3 hours too long, and could be trimmed down significantly while keeping the same substance. The final case especially really dragged in the beginning, and then resolved so quickly that it felt jarring. While I still enjoyed all of the cases, there was quite a bit of filler that just felt boring to trudge through to get to the juicy parts. I understand why this game is a fan favorite, but the pacing really keeps it from being in the upper echelon of Ace Attorney games for me personally. Still good and worth the time, just be prepared for a commitment. Excitingly, with this game done, all I have left is the Great Ace Attorney Duology and then I’ve played every Ace Attorney game, and will be right alongside the rest of the fan base in waiting ever so patiently for AA7. With how slowly I’m going through these games, I thought it might at least have been announced by now…
August 3, 2025 at 3:38 PM
noydacoy.bsky.social
- July -
Mario Kart World
A screenshot of my Tumblr review for Mario Kart World. The review says the following: Rating: 7/10 Played on: Switch 2 Nintendo really swung for the fences with this game. Personally, I think it was riding the foul line the whole way, almost too close to call if it's a home run or not. There are some parts of this game that outshine the entire series, but for every cool, creative decision like that, there's an absolutely baffling game design choice. First off, it's still Mario Kart at its core, so its a fun game no matter what. Racing feels just as smooth as ever, and with the new wall riding, rail grinding, and charge jumps, the game feels more technical than ever, while still being simple for newcomers. Simultaneously, though, this feels like the simplest Mario Kart. The tracks don't feel super memorable, with most of your time racing on them being on the intermission sections between the tracks. Cool in concept, sure, but kind of lame after the first few times. Most of these feel the same, just a straight line to get you to one lap of the actual track. The fact that this is what most of the online play consists of makes the game not all that replayable to me, which is bizarre for Mario Kart of all things. When you aren't on the straight lines between the tracks, most of them are enjoyable and unique, with the overhauls to retro tracks slotting them in perfectly into the world and the new tracks having some fun theming surrounding them. Shortcut potential is crazy high with all your new tools, and they are scaled well for the 24 players that now occupy the track. While the track design is scaled nicely, the item balance doesn't feel the same way. Despite all of the shortcuts possible, this is a game where you want to front-run as much as possible, or sandbag to get all of the power items and shoot up to first place. If you are in the middle of the pack unprotected for more than a second, you're getting pelted with shells, boomerangs, and stars for the entire rest of the race. This is exaggerated completely by the doubled player count, and is honestly quite frustrating. Then there's the free roam mode. I love the idea here, its an open world sandbox for you to drive around and collect stuff in, a la CTR and Diddy Kong Racing from back in the day. There's fun missions, neat secret challenges, and parts of the maps that you never would have seen otherwise. So... why are none of the collectables meaningful? All you get for doing anything in free roam is more stickers for your kart. They're cute, sure, but after your hundredth one, obtaining new ones doesn't really feel very satisfying. Even if I wanted to collect them all, the map doesn't even show you which ones you have collected, so there's no way to track your progress without looking it up online. Speaking of unlocking stuff, I love how many characters and costumes there are. Unlocking the costumes throughout the game was fun, and seeing all of the different food items that correspond to each new outfit was adorable. The random enemies being playable was what I was looking forward to most, and the game did not disappoint with the selection. However, it did disappoint with how they were unlocked. I genuinely think the Kamek orb was the worst unlocking system I've played in any game I've ever played. Randomly needing computer players to hit you with this item in very exact places of the map is not fun, and trying to cheese it with 2-player mode is just as grueling, if not more with how many checks they put in place to try and stop you from doing exactly that. It took me hours to unlock some of the ones I was looking forward to playing as most, like Swoop and Fish Bone, and killed all my enjoyment for the unlocking process. As you can tell, I felt very conflicted about this game. Everything came with a caveat of some sort. Except for the music, I only have fantastic things to say about that. It needs to come to the Music app as soon as possible so I can have a 24/7 Mario jazz radio all the time, it's genuinely incredible. Other than that, everything else had me feeling very mixed. Kind of a shame for the Switch 2 launch game, but hopefully it gets some more content down the line to make it worth that massive price point.
July 30, 2025 at 11:59 PM
noydacoy.bsky.social
Earthbound Beginnings
A screenshot of my Tumblr review for Earthbound Beginnings. The review says the following: Rating: 8/10 Played on: Switch 2 Yes, you read that right, the first game on my fancy new Switch 2 that I've completed is an NES game from 1989. Sue me. I had a surprisingly great time with it! I tried this before I played Earthbound back when it was first officially translated on Wii U, and could not get past the rough opening. Its an early NES RPG, and it is very dated an grindy compared to its sequels. I dropped it pretty quickly and just moved on to Earthbound and loved it, never giving this one a second shot. Last month, I replayed Earthbound and somehow grew even more fond of it, and decided I finally needed to finish the rest of the series, starting with this classic. As an 80s RPG, its quite grindy and has some very strange difficulty curves here and there, but if you can push past that, you get a game with such a charming story, characters, and humor. While it never quite hits the same heights as Earthbound in terms of quirkiness, there's a fair share of funny dialogue and goofy bits throughout. It's rare that a game as old and dated as this can keep me interested for long enough to finish it, but everything was just so charming that I had to see it through to the end. Seeing the DNA of all of the things that Earthbound inspired was already quite fun when I played that game years ago, but now seeing all of the DNA that inspired Earthbound is beautiful. All of the music in this game went on to be remixed into Earthbound's soundtrack, the party dynamic and the collectables throughout the adventure are the same, it all felt like this was the prototype for one of my favorite games, while also being cute and original standing on it's own. Overall, I'm quite glad that I finally gave this game another shot after all these years, it was very worth it. I'll be playing Mother 3 soon, which I'm very excited for, since I played about 80% of it before losing access to my save about 5 years ago, so I'm finally ready to revisit it! (Also I promise I've been playing other games on my Switch 2, Mario Kart World review coming soon lmao) #2025 games #earthbound #earthbound beginnings #mother series #mother 1
June 16, 2025 at 1:55 AM
noydacoy.bsky.social
Fortune Street
A screenshot of my Tumblr review for Fortune Street. The review says the following: Rating: 6/10 Played on: Wii I've been chipping away at this one for about a year now, and am glad to finally have it done. I wanted this game really badly as a kid, but never got it. Found it pre-owned at a GameStop for $20 last year and said why not! It's quite a fun and frantic board game, with similar rules to Monopoly, aside from the stocks system. While I'm sure it's plenty of fun in multiplayer, I never tried it out, so my rating is based only on the single player experience. The CPUs are either way too dumb or target your downfall as fast as possible, making the tour mode you need to do to unlock all of the boards and characters kind of nightmarish at times. By the time you do unlock all of the boards and characters in single player, you'll probably be way too good at the game for anyone to want to play with you in multiplayer, and it really isn't that worth it. While the combination of Mario and Dragon Quest is cool, you have to be your Mii in single player, so you don't even get to choose the fun cast of characters. I definitely had my fair share of fun and memorable moments, but that was coupled with plenty of rage at the higher ranked CPU competitors draining my bank account in one fell swoop. Glad I finally got to play it for myself, but probably not coming back to play with friends anytime soon... they won't be my friends for much longer if I do. Although, I would love to see a new game in the series localized, I think it would be pretty cool.
June 9, 2025 at 12:54 AM