Lurker > Kamekguy

Psychonauts 2

Unpacking

In the context of their original games, I'd say Teddie. He's a really fascinating character from the perspective of how his personality slowly develops based on the dungeons he goes through and those he hangs out with. He starts pretty reserved and just wanting to impress, but as he hangs out with horny teenagers more and goes through a bath house and strip club, he starts learning the wrong lessons on how to interact with others. He's almost entirely shaped through the plot of Persona 4, warts and all, and yet remains an indispensable member of the team. The whole game is a learning experience for him, and while it's a straightforward and on-the-nose arc (which, to be fair, 90% of Persona arcs are), it's a nice slow burn narrative that toys with the idea of a traditional mascot being reflective of what they represent - in this case, the Investigation Team. Koromaru, by contrast, is a good boy who can and will never do anything wrong, and Morgana has his own arc that... actively eats into other characters' development and is ultimately a lot more traditional while getting swallowed up by P5's massive pacing issues.

... but remove Teddie from the context of P4 and he's absolutely insufferable. No character suffers in spin-offs more than Teddie, him losing his purpose and only being left with puns, harassment, and constant fits of whining that he's not in the spotlight enough. It's really obtrusive at best and writing bad enough to want to stop playing at worst. Morgana, meanwhile, just kind of stays at the same spot, not particularly interesting outside of P5 but less of a weight around the game's neck, and Koromaru gets meme'd into being "the best boy always comes out on top does everything right". And that's really fun.

Overall I'd go Koro > Teddie > Morgana, but Teddie > Koro > Morgana for debut appearances.

Unpacking

Yes

Few characters I associate with growing up more with. Just absolute comfort thinking of her.

Mankey's the savior of Pokemon Yellow early game and is relatively fun in Pokemon Snap, and Makuhita is actually a pretty clever design and fun to use after, like, Level 15 or so in its debut... but both just kind of fall in the "it's okay I guess" kind of design. Like they work, they just don't stand out. Everything from there is sort of diminishing returns on the same kind of concept, and then Pancham, who is great and leagues ahead of the pack.

Somehow making Farfetch'd look less like a dumb weird duck makes me like it less.

The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles
Omori
Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart

That voice clip that plays when you get a 4-chain combo in Pokemon Puzzle League as Cloyster is burned into my brain. The "Cuh-luh-luh-loyster~" is too strong.

All of them are really strong though.

Resident Evil Village
Inscryption
Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye
Guilty Gear Strive

https://youtu.be/EUh5nq0-ZKE

Inkay and Clobbopus also really good, the others I feel pretty mid about.

I sat there, writing my review, staring at the keys. How would I voice myself? Voice... something established when we grow. When we develop language, to communicate, to transmit our thoughts between one another. That was something that The Baby never had. Yet it still communicated to me. A voiceless bond. A silent cry. That is the gift that is left to me. I was a hunter, solitary and alone. Even with companions, I was alone. This is the situation I found myself in now. Among soldiers, among those who I'd fought with... but alone. That is my silent voice calling out.

1

Like, even taking the character portrayal and delivery aside, it's got a script so redundant it'd make Persona blush it's so redundant, combined with utterly glacial pacing in the actual storytelling. There are ideas here that aren't terrible and add a bit to the Metroid world and lore, but its presentation absolutely kneecaps it at every single opportunity. It's pretty fun to make fun of, but it's a great example on how to avoid telling a story beyond anything else.

I wish that Jynx looked like... anything else. Tremendously fun Pokemon to actually use, absolutely crushes both E4's in the first two gens outside of, like, Houndoom. Would easily make #1 if not for... uh... yeah.

Honestly I like all of them to some degree! There's usually some caveat attached, but whenever one isn't a solid design, it's pretty damn fun to use (Jynx, Mega Glalie, Snowy Darm). Will go Froslass as it's just a really strong interpretation of its mythological inspiration, but all are at least good.

Machamp is too much fun in Pokken for me to not vote for him, even if Mr. Rime is aesthetically excellent, gross tap dancing clown man is a STATEMENT to beat others with.

Honestly a great set, though not at all a fan of the Gen V final stages, think their middle stages have much stronger designs (and I don't really care for Gurdurr).

New Pokmon Snap
Psychonauts 2
The Forgotten City
Persona 5 Strikers

I kind of love how much of a little punk Morgrem is, gross little counter-culture gremlin. Think I'll put it above my love for the Kadabra legal controversy and how Machoke's belt is the only thing keeping it from exploding from its sheer muscle mass.

Metroid Dread
Sumire
Hitman 3
Mario Party Superstars

3.5

I miss "there's a mafia", it was a plot that made sense. From a purely worldbuilding standpoint, it's absolutely fantastic - taking the land reclamation environmental debate in Japan and expanding it to two conflicting teams taking the extremist ideologies of each side, yet showing a people entirely satisfied with working harmoniously with both land and sea is inspired. But it both doesn't play really well outside of Japan and it muddies up the whole "be the very best" quest. It takes what was a simple journey and story of growing up and self-improvement and turns it into a very straightforward hero narrative that you REALLY don't have any business getting into other than "you're here I guess" that seems like a side note to a less inspired retelling of the Pokemon narrative than either of the past two games. It's well-intended, but it's incredibly clumsy to the point of being laughable at times, and I'm more just disappointed that Pokemon COULD'VE really moved forward with the pieces of this story, but just... didn't. And continued to not.

Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights
Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker
Neo: The World Ends With You
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart

The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles
WarioWare: Get it Together
Omori
Returnal

Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye

Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye
Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection
Guilty Gear Strive
Bowser's Fury

https://youtu.be/2-_unC-g_rY

Lost Judgment
The Forgotten City
Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage
Persona 5 Strikers

Really strong first match, though.

3.5/10

I am significantly less forgiving of a story that wants to present itself in a linear, non-fighting game arcade ladder "haha okay but what if" fashion. To its credit, the continuation of the Labrys story is solid and makes sense, and (P4 spoilers... I think? Is it spoilers given this game relies on the spoiler being out in the open?) Adachi is generally written pretty well. But Sho is an incredibly flat villain who fails to do anything from the P4A cliffhanger, it's clear that they have no idea what to do with the P4 cast as a whole, the entire P4 side of the story is an absolute slog of bad fan fiction comedy (y'know, slightly more than usual), and while the P3 cast generally is better off... they're also usually the P3 cast. Outside of Junpei and Aigis, they kind of just deal with their theme and work in their self-enclosed game; what they do is a lot more interesting than who they are.

In P4A, there's at least moments where each character gets to be cool or amusing in a given story; vignettes will do that. P4U takes those moments away in exchange for pacing and focusing more deeply on a story that's even more disconnected from the casts than P4A's was. It's definitely my least favorite interpretation of Persona spinoff schlock; they're all fluffy fan fiction, but there's usually a bunch of highs to get past the basic anime writing. P4U is just constant, numbing mediocrity and infuriation and then sometimes Labrys and Adachi do something or they remember "hey, Naoto/Aigis is competent, let's give them a scene or whatever".

... wow that's more than I intended to write on that lol.

New Pokmon Snap
Deltarune Chapter 2
Psychonauts 2
Pokmon Unite

I owned the Super Nintendo in the neighborhood, so all the neighborhood kids would come over and we'd play Kirby Super Star together. I was always the youngest, so I usually just sat around as Player 2 and used very basic attacks. And of those, Wing was nearly useless, every single time, with its weak feather shot. For weeks, we tried to beat The Arena, but to no avail, mostly because Meta Knight existed and we were really bad at shooters so Heart of NOVA was basically guaranteed damage. But one time, we managed to get to Marx, on very low health with no tomatoes left. And, unfortunately, the only ability available... was Wing. We thought the run was over, Kirby was taking damage and little feathers weren't going to take him down. So I was just told to hit buttons, and mashed them randomly... and managed to do the Shuttle Loop. We were dumbfounded, and just had Kirby hold guard and run from black holes as we desperately tried to do it again. And again. And again. Slowly, Wing kept racking up damage, but we couldn't predict where Marx would teleport with our tiny child brains. So we closed our eyes and mashed the feather shot. We heard an explosion. Opened our eyes.

Kirby was holding a trophy. We praised Birdon's name for the rest of the evening.

Anyway I vote Mirror.

Yo-yo

Yoyo

-
Hitman 3
Unpacking
Mario Party Superstars

Yo-Yo

9

As crass as it was and how "we literally can't change the remake much content-wise or else incur copyright law because we ripped off Dracula and Saving Private Ryan wholesale" it was, Conker is legitimately great parody, and a lot of that comes down to how well-written of a character Conker is. As a straight man who gets punished whenever he gets carried away and basically solves video game puzzles like a smartass, not to mention calling genre shifts and video game trends a few years before they happened, it's still some of the best satire of video games as a whole that's out there.

And then there's some grossly dated shit like the cogs, but that core behind Conker is something special that's rarely touched without becoming pretentious.

Ninja

Yo-Yo

Metroid Dread (Nintendo Switch)
-
Ys IX: Monstrum Nox (PS4, Switch, PC)
Sumire (Switch, PC)

When I was watching the first episode of Squid Game, I was like "damn this is such good character establishment. This guy is gonna do well in favorite character of the year tournaments".

Seong Gi-hun

Yo-Yo

Familiar with it, but never played!

Popeye: Rush for Spinash

Seong

7/10

If you only play Yosuke, Naoto, Aigis, Labrys, and Elizabeth, in that order, it's a really strong story. Labrys legitimately has a very strong narrative and it ends up giving a bunch of characters strong resolutions after their initial stories.

... and the characters that they have no idea what to do with stand out like sore thumbs and range from inoffensive to some absolutely dreadful bits of boiling down characters to their base traits and nothing more. I don't feel that it entirely mars the good experience, as what works REALLY works, and the required emotional beats end up stronger than Ultimax and stack up well against most Persona spin-offs in general (want to emphasize Labrys is great), but God help you if you picked a story path of Chie/Teddie/Akihiko or something.

Group 1
Lost Judgment
Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye

Group 2
Ghosts and Goblins Resurrection
Nier Replicant

Group 3
Valheim
Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World: The Prophecy of the Throne

Yo-yo

Yoyo

Yo-Yo

Doctor

Can't tell you how many GSC challenge runs Kenya the Fearow has bailed me out of.

Species is pretty mid but Kenya pulls it up by herself.

Yo-Yo

Doctor

Fighter

-
Bruno

Su--

... ah, I see. Well. Damn. Arena runs Suplex-only are so incredibly gratifying and fun.

Doctor

Seong
Sholmes