I am not as attached on it as I am on Resident Evil. I did not spend countless hours watching video essays about Metal Gear, or Hideo Kojima or the history of it all.

I first came in contact with the series when Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain came out back in 2015. I remember I saw the first part of a let’s play of some Spanish YouTube creator and was very intrigued by the idea of stealth, and the graphics.

It didn’t take long for me to find out about Peace Walker for the PSP. I eventually tried it out, but I gave up on it after 4 hours or so, when one of the boss fights proved too much for my teenager brain who refused to look up a guide. It was one of the first games I tried on the system based on internet recommendations, no friend of mine had talked about Metal Gear to me before!

Nowadays, the franchise seems to be back on the spotlight with the Metal Gear Solid 3 Delta remake, and with Konami more active in the gaming world overall—they are going to release a new 2D Castlevania soon!—so I thought I may as well check this game. After all, if I beat the archaic Resident Evil games, a PSP title shouldn’t be that hard, right?

I played it on original hardware, no save states or fast forwarding was used for this title, yay!

Story

In this game we follow Snake, or Boss, or Big Boss (again, confusing story or something), a highly trained soldier/spy/agent who has abandoned his allegiance to any nation, and decided to form his own military organization: “Militaires Sans Frontiéres” (Army Without Borders, MSF for short) with the goal of providing aid to smaller nations and do good things overall—as much good a private army can do at least?

Anyway, the story is set somewhere in the 70s, and begins when a mysterious professor and a teenage girl called Paz (Peace in Spanish) ask him for help to uncover a military operation in Costa Rica. While Paz is oblivious to the situation and is genuine in her pursue for pacifist ideals, Snake and his friend Kaz can tell the “professor” is has some ulterior motives at play here. Alas, they agree to help out given Paz’ enthusiasm, and because there’s something fishy going, and Snake wants to seek answers.

As Snake makes his way through enemy terrain, finds new characters, and learns more about the secret military activity in the region, we will realize that there are nukes in Costa Rica, unmanned AI technology, and worst of all, a Metal Gear, a bipedal weapon able to deliver a nuclear bomb from any position in any terrain, called the Peace Walker, powered by an AI built on the image of Snake’s very own mentor. Snake’s mission is to do everything in its power to stop a nuclear launch that would send the world into disarray.

Explaining all that in just two paragrphs feels like a diservice to the game, honestly.

The story is full of twist and turns, revelations, betrayal and ethical dilemmas. I cannot stress enough how strong the writing and plot development of this game is. There are a couple of things that go on a bit of a roundabout way, but I found the conflict to be extremely interesting, and I loved the characters that we met along the way.

There are also lots of cassette tapes with extra dialogue before every mission, which contain story and information about the characters, areas, history and concepts mentioned within the game. These are fully voiced, so it never feels like you are just reading a whole encyclopedia of each character. I listened to all the tapes and it was very entertaining.

Snake’s development is great too. He has a cool demeanor, but we’ll soon see that there is a lot of regret and trauma in the things he has done in the past. Either way, he has a lot of great moments and fun interactions with the characters during cutscenes and on the cassette tapes, doing his best to inspire others and command the situation.

The rest of the cast is not far behind, Kaz is cool, Paz is inspiring, we’ll meet other characters like Amanda, who leads los Sandinistas, a resistance who want a revolution to free themselves from the americans and corruption, and are happy to join you to achieve it. There’s more characters and they have a lot to say, but no need to mention it all here.

Overall, I really loved it all, the dialogue, the discussions on nuclear deterrence, the political intrigue, plenty of conversations about AI and its military use. All of it is handled quite well and it even holds up and feels familiar with some of the things going on today, 16 years after the game’s release. Good stuff.

Gameplay

The game features two phases, which reminds me a lot of something like Fire Emblem, normal missions, and base building management.

The missions are done in a map divided by section (similar to old school Monster Hunter), each section with enemies patrolling in a certain pattern, carrying weapons and ready to alert everyone as soon as they spot you.

Snake has a variety of equipment: rations, radar, grenades, sleeping guns, assault rifles, and heavier weaponry which can be picked before each mission. One of the main items is the Fulton Recovery System, which let’s you take unconscious enemies or rescue prisoners, to recruit them to your team.

The movement set is great, you can walk or or crouch, lay down, hang from ledges. You can hide behind walls, knock to call an enemy’s attention, use close quarters combat (CQC) to incapacitate enemies, among other things.

As the adventure progresses, enemies will get tougher too, wearing better armor (which make the sleeping gun less effective) and be more resistant to CQC in general. Even then, most of the missions can be completed without ever having to fight or alert the enemy, this is the case even for some of the boss fights.

When a mission is complete, you return Mother Base, where MSF manages its operations. You can assign personnel to different teams, such as Combat, R&D, Medical, Mess Hall and Intel. The members of each team affect different parts of the gameplay. The most noticeable is the R&D team, which will let you unlock new weapons and level them up.

As you recruit more people, the base will grow, and members of the MSF can be sent to missions. The game has a CO-OP element similar to Monster Hunter, as many missions can be done in multiplayer as well, there’s also PVP modes. I didn’t engage in any of these though.

Boss battles in the game are pretty great. However, the limited controls of the PSP are a big negative. Aiming weapons is not ideal in any of the available control schemes and some of the boss fights will need some precision.

There are a few different styles of battle. Some are against military vehicles, which are accompanied by infantry. These can often be completed with pure stealth, using smoke bombs and approaching enemies from multiple angles to get rid of the infantry and make the captain come out of the vehicle, confused as to what’s going on. Of course, you can just dispatch enemies with gunfire if that’s more of your style. All the vehicles can be seized for your use in MSF, so the less you damage them the better.

The boss battles against AI machinery are different. They unmanned weapons are much bigger in size and feature a variety of attack patterns. However, the weakspot on them is pretty clear and you can make use of different equipment to stun them and allow you to deal a lot of damage.

The game features plenty of items to aid you on your way, but they can run out as well, so being mindful is important, although requesting aid is also possible with certain equipment you unlock later in the game.

All in all, I enjoyed the constant cycle of mission -> manage base -> listen to debrief files -> repeat.

There are also lots of side quests to train marksmanship, recover files or kidnap recruit more members for MSF. You can also replay any mission and get more resources like that.

As you recruit more personnel, the base will grow and you will be able to send them to their own missions, which will let you level up faster and the like. You can eventually develop your own Metal Gear, but I didn’t delve deeper into that mechanic, since it requires grinding boss fight missions to acquire materials to build it, and I didn’t feel like doing so.

There is one big, HUGE bummer featured in some parts of the game though… the absolute worst quick time events ever. Many are pretty easy and normal, but some are truly horrendous stuff. For example, if you are knocked down, you’ll have to move your analog stick like a maniac to stand up again. There are also cutscenes featuring sections where you’ll have to press the same button AS FAST AS YOU CAN, and there will be some that just have a very very short time frame to perform. This is the one really big miss of the game, as there’s no accesibility option to disable these. Some people will never complete this game because of that terrible mechanic. Don’t feel bad about using the Turbo function of your emulator if that’s how you plan to try this game.

Art

The art direction is top notch. The game has incredible 3D graphics that are truly at the top of what the PSP can manage, shoulder to shoulder with the God of War games on the system. All the characters, weaponry and vehicles are modeled with incredible detail. The most impressive feat of course is the size and the scale of some of the boss fights, which rival Monster Hunter’s Ancient Dragon quests, with textures and character models similar to Portable 3rd.

Maybe the comparisons make no sense to you, but seriously, it’s mindblowing. The game is as close as it gets to PS2 quality, and with the small screen it’s just perfect. The performance is also fantastic, without any noticeable performance issues other than the loading screens which could be a bit long for a modern day gamer.

Every action of the game has animation work to match, when you walk, faster or slowly, the way enemies react and change behaviour, etc.

Huge props to the UI design as well. I found managing the base became a breeze, with a very practical UI that hasn’t dated a single day. The menus were cool and there was something to read or learn at any time.

Most of the cutscenes however, are not done with 3D animation.

Instead, this game features comic-style cutscenes, with dialogue bubbles and a scrappy-looking artstyle that looks absolutely awesome! I must admit that 16-year old me was very, very dissapointed by this for some reason, but reality is that the style holds up excellently to this day, and allows for some absolutely thrilling panelling and action shots. There are also some very emotional scenes, flashbacks and quiet moments that feature strong silouettes or changes in the color palette that are incredible to see, and realistic cutscenes wouldn’t be able to compare.

Music & Sound

The soundtrack has a very military style to it. It is actually very similar to what Into The Breach does, mostly staying in the background, but pretty present when you are managing Mother Base.

During missions, usually set in forests, swamps, jungles and military facilities, a lot of the sound will remain atmospheric, the chant of birds, the steps and hums of the enemy, the crickets singing, and trees swaying will be most of what you hear. Sound is another of the factors to take into account when making your way through each section of the enemy territory.

All the sound design is excellent too, and rather satisfying.

Music is affected by the actions you take, of course. If an enemy manages to get a glimpse of you, you’ll definitely hear the “What’s that?”, as the music becomes more suspenseful and you feel the enemy getting cautious as it walks in your direction.

If you are completely discovered, the surprise sound that made the series iconic will play, and music will start to be more stressful, alarm bells will sound and the enemy radio will request for backup, as they go into an alert status. All of this is perfectly made clear with audio queues and I honestly love it.

The sound of the AI enemies is also worth bringing up. Each of the bosses has a certain character to it, and they will also “sing” during cutscenes and during the fight against them, all of this is also a hint to get familiar with it, of course. It’s all rather excellent.

There’s nothing but praise for the voice acting as well. David Hayter is Snake, simple as that, and this was his last game before Kojima became kinda obsessed with getting a hollywood star to play the rule. Konami, for all its mistakes, brought him back for the Delta remake, so that’s fun.

The rest of the cast is equally amazing. All the extra story and details shared via cassette tapes is so fun to play through. I listened to all of it, it was really enjoyable.

Overall

What can I say? This is a fantastic title with excellent production and passion behind it, it plays like a miracle on the PSP and is only really limited by a couple of dumb decisions, and a little bit by the hardware itself. I loved going through all of it, but here’s a list with some good stuff, bad stuff and other thoughts about it:

The good

• Story, voice acting, graphics, sound effects, music, UI design, it nails it.
• The writing, the intrigue, thought provoking moments and suspense.
• Artwork and cutscenes with a comic book style.
• Missions are rather short and self-contained, perfect for portable gaming.
• The cast of characters and the interactions with Snake are interesting.
• Base management and some customization to upgrade equipment.

The not so good

• Quick time events that are super obnoxious.
• Limited controls due to the PSP’s lack of a second stick or L2 and R2 triggers.
• Annoying button mashing and stick wiggling mechanics.
• Loading times can be a bit annoying, nothing unusual for a PSP game.
• Way too many extra missions can be repetitive.
• Base management can feel like a grind sometimes.
• There’s an extra ending that requires dozens of hours of grinding.

Some tips and reminders

• You need to keep the arsenal in check for every mission, some things are only useful against bosses and the like.
• Just use turbo button controls if you emulate, save yourself the button mashing headache.
• Get familiar with the available control schemes of the game, some are better for boss fights such as “Shooter Mode”.
• Don’t forget to use the radio for extra tips! You can also get extra info from enemies under your grip.
• Try to kidnap recruit everyone and there will be tools later to see which enemies are worth recruiting more later too!

There’s a couple more things I could say but I’ll leave it here for now. This game is truly awesome, I was on the edge of my seat multiple times and I really jaw-dropped at some of the moments and the fact that all of this was running on a PSP in the first place.

You can get this game on the PSP of course, but there’s a new release of it coming out in the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol.2, which will release on August 27th 2026, so maybe waiting for it will be best!

Give it a try either way, it’s worth a shot.

This is day of 63 #100DaysToOffload

When I played RE2, I thought going to the original may be kind of a drag, that I would have more difficulty getting used to it, that it would be clumsier, unfair, and outdated.

I heard everywhere that Resident Evil for the PS1 was not worth playing when the Remake for it—originally released on the Game Cube—exists. Most people said it was too archaic and not as fun in comparison.

That was not my experience at all.

You should be aware though, that I’m someone who—thanks to the sequel—is completely on board with prerrendered backgrounds, fixed camera angles and tank controls. I completed RE2 and have never even touched RE4 or anything after it. So, giving this game a try for the first time, I have to say I had a great time, so, here’s my review for it!

Everyone is aware of the Zombie-apocalypse trope by now, popularized in the late 60s by Romero’s Night of the Living Dead—a fantastic film that holds up well even today—which became a franchise of its own, and explored different facets of the idea.

Those films inspired and changed the landscape in the industry. The film took itself seriously, and it showed. Watching the original, during that news report explaining the situation with that monotonous news presenter voice so common at the time, the challenge the characters faced was made clear. When the story continued and that ending sequence happened, I could only watch as history was made in cinema.

However, not every horror movie gets to be Night of the Living Dead. Even the good ones still had plenty of caveats, and even some of the later entries in Romero’s franchise, as great as they were, would inevitably contain a certain element that is always present in those old horror films: they are campy.

My native language is Spanish, words like “camp” weren’t really in my vocabulary for most of my youth. But once you learn what they mean, you just know it when you see it.

This game pretty much let’s you live through an 80s horror movie, and it delivers. Although it’s relevant due to its unique setting and memorable characters, it’s the bad writing and the absolutely horrendous yet charming voice acting what has made it a culture icon, and source of memes and references that have stayed with us to this day.

You control either Jill Valentine (my beloved) or Chris Redfield, members of S.T.A.R.S, a special team of Raccoon City’s Police Department, investigating some mysterious murders and dissapearances in a nearby forest where a previous team had already been sent and lost contact with. However, you and your team is suddenly attacked by wild beasts, who chase after you, until you come across a strange building and manage to get in, with only a few other members of your team, trapped by the dangers outside.

Not an infested city, a scary cabin or an abandoned mall. You are in a mansion, a huge place that felt lived on until recently. Here’s where the horror begins as these characters start to speak, and the writing and voice acting make their appearance. Truly horrifying stuff, they didn’t even try! But even so, I love it.

After you are sent to investigate and look around, you will encounter your first enemy. You see a bald headed creature eating something, you hear the sounds of bones and flesh tearing, a dead body with its head chopped off—one of your teammates. The creature turns, its pale face looks at you, its eye popping out, no consciousness to be seen, and now, it is walking towards you…

The introduction of the first zombie remains in the memory of anyone who got this back in the day. I looked it up, and the instruction manual doesn’t even feature the word. The original game cover features some distressed guy with a military uniform in a room with strange shapes and some giant spiders.

As an aside, the game cover gets weirder the more time you see it. half of the guy’s face and body language is ready for action, while the other half shows him absolutely terrified, it seems like the cover was meant to emphasize that. Even the gun held by each hand is different, but merged in a weird way. It ended up looking rough, but it was definitely eye-catching. Still, there was a real chance that someone picked up this game and didn’t even know it would be about zombies (fine, the back of the game makes it very clear, but anyway).

The very early CGI of the FMV may not be that scary today, but the audio design is still more than great. And the scene itself is well done.

However, Resident Evil is Resident Evil.

Right after the horror, the stressful music, the creepy atmosphere; it is time for the campiness and bad voice acting of the game to take over. Jill runs away back to Barry—one of your teammates—who quickly deals with the zombie—“Let me handle this”, he says—voice lines performed by people who clearly were not in the same room, probably not even directed, simply read aloud. And after such a traumatic experience, what does Jill have to say? “Anyway, let’s report this to Wesker!”

You may think that such a contrast ruins the atmosphere and tarnishes the story and characters. The bad voices, the terrible script, not even giving some time for the characters to grieve the loss of a teammate or just be silent for a bit.

So what do we do instead? We go back to the dead body of our friend and pick up a couple of clips for our hand gun out of him, we backtrack a bit to see another cutscene, and then we learn how to save the game, yay!

Resident Evil as a series is not afraid to say something that a lot of modern videogames fear more than a zombie: It’s a videogame.

This game is absolutely focused on its gameplay, so much so the formula barely changed from here in the first three games. Go from room to room in some labyrinthical space, unlock doors with keys hidden all over the place, solve puzzles that nobody would conceive in real life—except the paintings one, that one is masterful—avoid enemies by taunting them to attack where you are not, get a couple of jump scares and even some FMV cutscenes out of nowhere. Have fun!

The mechanics of this game would only be minimally revamped on RE2—they control virtually the same. You have eight inventory slots, you get different weapons as the game goes one. I only played as Jill, and she can use a lockpick, letting you unlock many rooms that aren’t available to Chris without a key.

The way you save the game is a game mechanic in itself, this game introduced the Ink Ribbon, an item that let’s you use a typewriter to save your progress. This is a limited resource, it should be used sparingly and takes up a slot of your inventory.

The mansion is an huge place, with a lot of rooms, and I am truly amazed by how easy it became for me to know where I was in most cases. Every room in the game is pretty different, and besides the main building, we also explore a courtyard, an underground area, a guardhouse and—beginning of a long-standing tradition in the franchise: an underground laboratory.

There’s a map, but it does lack a couple of features that RE2 would implement. You don’t see an arrow pointing to where you are facing, the doors aren’t marked with the color of the key that opens it, you have to select the map that you want to see, instead of opening the one of the area and floor you’re already on; switching between floors needs you to go back and select it, instead of pressing up/down. All of these are nice to have, but they are also not a must. Using the map pauses the game, so it didn’t really hinder my experience, it only took more time to do things.

The enemy variety is pretty good, but later entries would improve on the designs, as most of the zombies look exactly the same. The other enemies are fun though, there are zombie dogs, mutated plants, and zombie crows and a couple more as the story continues. such as the Hunters, which actually chase you, ramping up the difficulty once introduced, with one of the most scary but also campy FMVs in the game, showing they are smarter, faster, and can open doors—even if they never do it during the game itself.

The back and forth in this game is quite big, some puzzles take place across multiple rooms and even multiple areas. You will need to keep the inventory in check, or you’ll end up stuck. You can’t drop items, but you can combine herbs, and even waste ammo if you need an extra slot. Every choice matters here, as your survival and progress will be at play. One thing that is used very well in the inventory is item-checking. You can inspect and rotate items in 3D to see what they are and even find something inside it. In RE2 you can check an item, but they can’t be manipulated in 3D, although the mechanic has been implemented in plenty other games.

I really enjoyed the puzzle design, even more than the in the sequel—which focused on more action. There are some rooms in RE2 which will have four or five zombies in one passageway, but in RE1 there will only be one or two, and it’s likely that only one of them notices you, while the others are far away. I was able to save ammo better—but this is also thanks to my experience on the other game—and plan routes easier, which helped given how many puzzles or keys are used throughout the many areas.

The bosses aren’t very good, lackluster when it comes to battle design—you only need to move to some good location and shot away until it dies—however, due to the status of the game, they are memorable as set pieces, and often move the plot forward in interesting ways. For example, you can end up quite hurt, with some character taking you to another location to heal you; or the way to the boss can contain certain puzzle elements beforehand, to make the eventual battle easier.

As the story continues, there will be plenty of encounters with different characters of the game, depending on who you play as. These are in-game cutscenes, and I need to say, as cringe and badly acted as they are, I always found them rather charming, and it was nice to always get a new sense of direction, or a new useful weapon, or a plot twist here and there. Sometimes, the game atmosphere was rather tense, or I was low on health. Which makes getting to new rooms rather nerve-wracking at first, so I was always glad to see a cutscene that made things more chill.

A cozy cutscene is nice, but there is nothing quite like finally hearing that sweet sweet melody that let’s you know that you just made it to a lovely, beautiful save room. Even better when it contains an item box, which allow you to store away items you don’t need, and recover them from any other item box in other rooms of the game—yet another unrealistic mechanic that Resident Evil shoves away because gameplay is more important.

Honestly though, all the music and ambiance in the game is stunning. There’s plenty of tracks for different rooms and sections, as well as action moments, reveals and similar, all of it is very well done and maintains the atmosphere perfectly. So long as you are not playing the Dual Shock’s Director Cut, or that there’s not some cheesy dialogue happening at the same time.

Things get real creepy with the audio design as well, every step, every grunt, the sounds of the water flowing and the dogs howling, I can’t praise it enough. Also the effects when moving on the game’s inventory/map/status screen is just as satisfying. The doors opening and closing, the screech of an old door, the elevator going up and down. The sound department of this game did wonders, and thanks to the PS1’s usage of CDs instead of cartridges, the quality is top notch. The sounds of the guns shooting and reloading is also a pleasure.

Animation work is also remarkable, even if it lacks some of the polish RE2 introduced, like character animations to indicate health status. It’s still pretty good and the models are awesome for the time. The way all the different items come with 3D renders you can inspect is also appreciated, every gun, herb, key and the like has a nice amount of detail to it.

There are other 3D models during game besides the characters, like interactable objects and items, making them easy to notice against prerrendered backgrounds (which are unfortunately pretty low-res for modern screens, but still charming). This is useful to solve block-style puzzles—like moving a shelf to reach something behind it, or finding green plants to restore health.

All in all, as cheesy as all the dialogue is, as arcane as tank controls may seem, as slow as it may be to aim guns as Jill. Everything is just part of the course. Every obstacle or hiccup, is only one more challenge for your survival inside this mansion. There are plenty of resources for Jill to take, the amount of enemies is more than manageable, and there aren’t that many bosses in the first place.

This game, like its successor, is pretty much a 3D Metroidvania game with zombies, and I am extremely amazed at how well it still runs. The gameplay from start to finish was a pleasure to experience. The utility of most items is made clear rather well, and my instincts started to develop soon enough. Judging when an item may make sense to keep or not, or when it was better to backtrack to an item box when I could feel that I was about to get a lot of items soon became second nature somehow.

Resident Evil gives you all the tools you need, the designers really want you to beat it, it is only a matter of understading its mechanics and everything will become clear. I am looking forward to a second playthrough of this one as Chris—even though I hear is much tougher—because the game has taught me all I need, and it trusts me so much. No tutorials, no GUI other than the status screen that gets out of the way when you don’t use it. It is a rather cinematic experience.

As someone who grew up with no nostalgia for these games, who wasn’t even aware they were games until 2015 or so and only knew of the franchise because of the Milla Jovovich movies—which I didn’t even get to watch because they were way too violent and my parents wouldn’t allow me to—I am really starting to love this series more than I thought, slowly taking on my top 3 alongside Halo and Metroid.

This is just gameplay and mechanics perfectly executed. A game meant to be played over and over, to be mastered. Learning techniques, optimizing routes, avoiding enemies, everything is so clear and the controls are so fluid when you get good at them. Once a run is done, you get your credits and a final screen showing you the time and the amount of saves you did. There’s a challenge and a goal there. How fast can you do it now? How well do you know your own skills? Not to mention unlockables!

There’s plenty of speedruns out there, but I found this particular walkthrough to be fascinating—great if you don’t plan to play the game even after all the praise I got for it—since the player simply walks most of the time, not running from enemies, and being as efficient as possible with the inputs. It’s such an interesting thing to watch, as you simply get into a state where you are aware of everything and no longer fear the creatures anymore.

If there’s a problem with starting with the first game instead of the other two from the original trilogy, is that it will train you very well to what’s next. The whole formula is already here, and it’s excellent. I am kind of looking forward to Nemesis now, and how that game will mix things up a bit. I played the game on my Anbernic RG35XX SP without any issues.

By the way, make sure to play the PS1’s Final Director’s Cut romhack to get the best version possible of the game in emulation. Of course, you can also acquire it via GOG or Steam—but the latter is DRM protected.

This somehow becamse my longest game review, so I’ll stop now. Play Resident Evil, it’s very good.

This is day 49 of #100DaysToOffload

I have lots of memories of watching speedruns, challenges, reviews and retrospectives of the Resident Evil games, I have to say I’m just not sure where the interest for the series came from, I never had a friend with a console who played them, and they never figured in the list of games I’d emulate when I got introduced to that world.

It wasn’t until I had my PSP and realized that I could play PS1 games on it, that an interest on the franchise developed, so I got them for the system. This was the case for Resident Evil 2, a game that I actually tried out years ago, even mentioning it as one of the many games I just left abandoned when I tried playing it on my PSP, as other titles simply stole my attention from it.

I was seriously kind of enamoured with the lore of the franchise, and I had an interest on Zombie movies, like George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead films, I think Parasite Eve played a role as well at the time, since I even read the novel back in 2020.

The point is, despite it all, I never gave the games a fair shot until now.

Resident Evil 2 was picked for February in the Low Key Game Club from the TWG Discord—which is also the reason I played Jet Lancer and Soul Reaver—and for some reason it just felt like the perfect time to actually play this title and survive through Raccoon City myself.

Story

The story of this game is presented in a great way, letting you experience two different points of view and two alternate stories. While playing as two different characters in the game.

Leon Kennedy is a rookie cop who got a job to work in Raccoon City’s Police Department, where as Claire Redfield is currently looking for his brother, Chris—one of the protagonists from the first game—who is currently missing, but worked as an agent in the STARS division of the police.

Each character will see different moments of a single narrative, and there are moments where you’ll encounter and see the effects of what the other character did on their side.

These characters meet while trying to survive the zombies running rampant in the city. However, they end up separated in the chaos, and the game lets you choose who to play as. The characters planned to meet at the Police Station, so now you have to find your way there, where the adventure truly begins.

As the story progresses, you will find reports and documents detailing the events prior to the game, unlock doors, solve puzzles and survive against enemies that want to eat your brains. You will also meet new characters as you venture deeper into the police station, and even meet companions during certain parts of the story that you’ll get to control as well, slowly uncovering the truth behind the virus spreading through Raccoon City.

Gameplay

The gameplay that makes the original trilogy so special—and controversial among new players who want to get into them—are the tank controls and the fixed camera angles. These two features limit both movement and vision, and while they can be hard to get used to at first, they are essential to the original experience, and they don’t really take much effort to understand, after half and hour or so of playtime.

This is the franchise that coined the term survival horror, and these limitations and lack of agency challenge the player as they try to survive and explore the environments of the game. The limited ammo and items you can carry with you, means you’ll have to be strategic about the path you follow as you try to make progress.

Of course, multiple rooms will be overrun by zombies, and other enemies like the lickers, or worse. However, enemies don’t respawn, which makes killing them worth it to make traversal and backtracking easier.

When it comes to horror, it really isn’t that scary, yes, the atmosphere is amazing, but it’s kinda campy and other than some jump scares, it really won’t mess with your mind that much.

All of the Police Station is a giant escape room, and it is where the game shines most, as it is basically a sort of Metroidvania.

The game features no interface during gameplay, something that heightens the cinematic camera angles. You can know your health based on the character animation while standing and walking. You can find herbs, ammo and other items scattered in the game to help you out. There’s a menu you can access to see your items, combine them, and check them for clues, there is a section to access files and documents you’ve collected, as well as a map screen, which shows the doors available to you and the color of the key needed to unlock them.

Saving your progress is limited too. You can only save in specific rooms with a typewriter, and you need ink ribbons to use it, occupying an extra item slot too. Save too often and you’ll run out of ribbons, putting your progress in danger until you find more of them. You can also find item boxes in some save rooms where you can store items and access them in other item boxes in the game, very handy to free up your storage.

I honestly think this game is designed masterfully. It makes you feel powerless at first, and you are scared of the dangers around each turn of the camera, but if you explore more and take risks here and there, you can be rewarded with more resources and weapon upgrades, which are useful against stronger enemies and bosses later in the game.

There are bosses, but they just sponges that require you to shoot them with your strongest weapon and nothing more, making them kinda meh, and unfortunately they will deal tons of damage, so a lot of healing items are required as well. The bosses go through different transformations and are definitely cool to see the first time, but the boss battle design isn’t great.

The game is also very replayable, thanks to the different scenarios you can play, and the unlockable modes it features. The game featurs the zapping system. A fantastic mechanic that let’s you perform actions that affect the other character’s scenario, for example, you can take a weapon as Leon which will become unavailable on Claire’s side.

Each scenario changes the route, features very different puzzles and also exclusive bosses and characters you meet on them, it’s really amazing stuff that expands the game while cleverly reusing some assets.

In my case, I only went through the Leon A and Claire B scenario, but the story plays out differently if you do Claire first. I will probably replay this game at some point starting with her, just because it is that fun.

Art & Music

The amount of work that went into these games is just incredible. As stated before, the game features fixed camera angles, making use of incredibly detailed prerrendered backgrounds that allow for the game to look extremely nice. The areas of the game, especially in the police station, really feel like a place that went through a lot, as everything looks messy and real, with most rooms being rather memorable, even if they can feel a bit croweded sometimes. Everything blends in perfectly.

It is important to note, that these graphics were made for the PS1, at a 240p resolution, and they don’t look nearly as well as they would on a proper CRT display, like was common at the time, and that often blended things together, smoothing out the pixels beautifully. The images shown in this review are edited with some blur and a filter to mimmick the effect.

There are some great fan projects out there that upscale those backgrounds for the bigger screens, such as RESHDP, but I think they all look way too smooth and shiny compared to the gritty look of the original art. I feel like using a CRT filter is the best way to play these if you don’t have a proper display.

I played the game on my Anbernic RG35XX SP, which features a 480p 3.5 inch display, and given the size and pixel count, I enjoyed the game on the go without complains.

Besides the backgrounds, the character models of feature a ton of detail, we see faces, although not many expressions, and the textures change as the story continues if the character gets injured. There’s also some outfits you can unlock.

The music is also amazing, I played most of the game wearing earphones, and the atmosphere was awesome and very terrifying. There are many tracks in the game that fit very well, like the beautiful yet melancholic melody that plays when reaching a safe room, or a character theme playing when you meet them . Other themes build up the tension or get you hyped up during a boss fight or action sequences, and everything just works.

Audio is actually a core part of the gameplay, as it often signals enemies that can’t be seen on screen due to the camera angle, so staying alert is very helpful to avoid getting scared by a zombie popping up around the corner. Gunshots, steps sounds varying due to the floor surface and the like are very well done, so much detail has gone into this, it’s unreal for the time.

This game also features voice acting for everything, there’s actually no subtitles for them, which is a little annoying at least on the PS1 version. Still, the voices are iconic at this point, even if the delivery is cheesy and a bit over the top, it works really well and I found it really enjoyable and it kept me invested on these characters quite a lot. Don’t expect something on the level of Soul Reaver, but it fits the vibes of watching an old campy horror film and it’s perfect from that perspective.

Overall thoughts

The good

• The background art and character models look amazing.
• The map design for the police station is very good.
• Cinematic camera angles and sounds that keep you on your toes.
• Lore scattered in files and documents that is intersesting to read and find clues.
• More than enough resources to complete the game if you manage items well.
• Lovable characters and voice acting that is charming, if dated.
• The zapping system and events where decisions affect your next playthrough.
• Short playtime and lots of replayability.
• Lots of extra weapons and different modes to unlock and try out.
• Great side characters that we can control in some sections.

The bad

• Bosses are average bullet sponges and not cleverly designed.
• Sometimes the camera angle will be messy, when hit by enemies or due to weapon recoil.
• Item management is part of the deal, but backtracking to organize it can be annoying.
• The game gets more linear as it goes on, this is good for me but maybe not you.
• Poison status is a thing that exists, although it’s not common.
• The puzzles are not as complex as other classic RE games, I didn’t mind though.
• Turning around completely with tank controls is a pain, fixed until Resident Evil 3
• It’s not really that scary, don’t expect to be traumatized or anything, just jumpscared.

Some tips and reminders

• There is more ammo and healing items that you may expect, just explore and clear out rooms with zombies freely, you’ll get all you need.
• Since the backgrounds are prerrendered, most interactable objects stand out quite a bit, keep an eye on things out of place.
• Overall you can just inspect every corner of a room and there can be a variety of messages or at least fun texts to describe things
• You can usually find the big weapons at least twice, so if you can’t carry (or decide not to) carry a certain weapon, you can often find it later, or you can do without it anyway.
• It’s great to feel the weight of your own actions, don’t just reload a save if you feel like you did bad, try to keep going and you may surprise yourself.
• Or you can just be lazy like me and use save states because you worry too much, you’ll end up with plenty of extra ammo in the end, by the way.

Finishing words

The game is currently on sale until March 3, 2026, excusively available for PC on GOG, you can even get the whole original trilogy there, in case you want to give them a go! I’ll stick with my emulation handhelds though.

Everything this game tries to do, is done perfectly well. Maybe the difficulty is not as high if you have already played other survival horror games like Signalis, as the item and ammo is actually plenty, but what makes it difficult is not being familiar with how these games should be played—exploring every nook and cranny to trigger as many checks as possible.

Also, yes, the bosses are not great. After experiencing the immaculate boss design of Soul Reaver, these bullet sponges that deal a bunch of damage and can make you lose a bunch of progress really didn’t do it for me, they were just a matter of healing items and ammo rather than actual skill.

Other than that, I really loved everything about this game. I played it on my commutes to work, like 20 or 40 minutes at a time, and I always managed to do some good progress and find something new to explore in those sessions. Even if it was not a game with portability in mind, it really lends itself well to it perfectly, at least thanks to the autosave and resume feature of my device when closing its lid.

The game holds up and is perfectly playable today, and very close to taking a position in my personal Top 25 Games, something I didn’t expect to happen so quickly, especially with a title I had abandoned before. Highly recommended!

This is day 23 of #100DaysToOffload

I don’t have a huge history with the Streets of Rage series, but I am quite familiar with multiplayer games, and this just happened to be one of the popular ones when I looked at lists online. Still, I never prioritized it as much when I had plenty of other options, and I also wasn’t a big fan of the artstyle from the screenshots, since I really preferred the pixelart style the series had had during its original trilogy on the Sega Genesis.

In any case, I saw the physical edition of Streets of Rage 4: Anniversary Edition for cheap online, I lost control again, and by the time I noticed I had the game on my collection and pretty much played from start to finish with friends on a weekend.

While this is a fantastic game I will return to many times, I didnt’t have that much to say about it and it’s not like I am incredibly passionate for it—or so I thought. I almost didn’t feel like writing a review and sharing it because I don’t think I add anything new to the conversation, as someone who isn’t super familiar with beat’em ups and such.

However, I write whatever I want here so that’s irrelevant :P

The story is simple and to the point. The children of Mr. X (a villain from previous games) started their own Crime Syndicate and have brought the city to chaos once again, so it’s up to you to save the city once again, venturing into the streets of rage to clean it up from the criminals raoming around.

The gameplay is great! it’s a beat’em up after all. It’s fun, it’s easy to learn, but there’s a high ceiling to master especially if you are chasing high scores. You basically have regular attacks, throws, and Blitz moves. A new addition to the series are some special attacks, which will lower your HP, however, succesive attacks will let you recover it, unless you get hit, providing a great risk-reward balance that I enjoyed a lot. There’s a variety of characters, some new ones and some old ones, all of them with their own unique styles. Tanks, lightweights, etc.

The art was neat. As I mentioned before the franchise started and stuck on the Sega Genesis, and never went through an early 3D graphics phase or high-res pixelart like other classic series did. This new entry—a couple decades after the previous one—went for hand-drawn character art, which looks absolutely incredible. At first I wasn’t a fan, but as soon as I started playing it, the animation work did its magic. It works perfectly and the lightning, shadows and other visual effects make the whole thing amazing. The locations and background art is good too, some of it is inspired by old stages from the original trilogy , but most are brand new ones that fit right in with the overall aesthetic. Every boss and enemy has pretty good animation and attack patterns too.

The soundtrack of this game is as amazing as it gets. It fits perfectly with the rest of the franchise and it’s one of the main standouts of the game. This will hype you up like nothing else and get you in the mood to go to the streets and punch some criminals and corrupt policemen. Seriously though, it adapts depending on the action going on and is something I’ll definitely listen to while going to the gym or running around.

Some other cool things this game offers are a Roguelike mode, which comes included in the Switch version (both physical and digital) and some great extras like concept art, pixel art, character profiles, a PvP mode, etc.

Overall, this game was a fantastic experience to go through. This review was made after a single playthrough of the campaign and a couple of runs of the roguelike mode, I think there’s quite a lot of other things yet to experience, and I kind of want to get better at it on the Roguelike mode.

I thought it was some kind of Zelda at first, I had only seen another older friend playing that on his computer before. However, this felt much more mature, given the violence of it all. Both games looked incredible to my eyes.

At some point we moved to another city, and years passed. We visited those friends again, but it had been a while and, although I have a very faint memory of asking for the name of the game, and writing it down, I probably lost the note and forgot once more, and asking the same thing felt extremely ridiculous to me.

Despite it all, that blue character with an edgy haircut and an awesome shredded cowl stayed in my memory, and years later, it would finally return to me.

Back in the day when I was all in on the Miyoo Mini Plus, I was looking for some PS1 games to add to my SD card, and many of the greats like Final Fantasy VII, Parasite Eve and Metal Gear Solid showed up. Checking some lists online, I immediately recognized it: Soul Reaver. That was the game I had been looking for, that I had never known for more than a decade.

And then, just a few months later, the Remastered edition was announced, containing the first and second games, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I got it.

Earlier in the year in the TWG Discord community, the Low Key Gaming Club opened submissions for games to play in upcoming months, so I nominated it, and it was selected! The game was chosen for October, and I finally got to experience what I never could during my childhood.

Story

The game happens in the land of Nosgoth, a regiond ruled by Kain and his brethren of vampires, with Raziel, the protagonist of the game, serving as second in command. However, as everyone awaits the evolution of Kain to a basically divine status—after a thousand years of ruling over Nosgoth—Raziel evolves first. He grew a pair of wings before his master, and for daring to do so, he’s thrown to the depths of the Underworld.

Burned, ravaged and disfigured, Raziel is waken up hundreds of years later by an Eldritch being, an ancient god who has chosen him to be the Soul Reaver, to fulfill a purpose, set in motion from the very beginning. As a Soul Reaver, Raziel now has the ability to absorb souls, and to traverse both the physical and the spiritual realm, which becomes a game mechanic used throughout the whole journey.

Raziel will discover a world in even worse condition than his own, abandoned, in decay, invaded by abominations descended from his own clan and his brothers’ as well. The whole region is filled to the brim with environmental storytelling, of endless war, desperate tactics and mutual destruction.

As the story continues, facing threat after threat and overcoming every obstacle and dungeon, Raziel will face against his fallen brothers, and Kain himself. Each of these duels begin with a dialogue that leaves place for plot twists, revelations, and arguments from each character that will let us understand motivations, relationships and the story of how things ended up like they did.

Soul Reaver is actually a sort of sequel for an earlier PS1 game: Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen, where Kain is the protagonist, thousands of years before. There is a lot of imagery and a couple of characters that are borrowed from the previous game, but given the timespan between the entries, the previous story itself may be considered a myth and history of its own, and it’s not really necessary to enjoy this. Most of it amounts to interesting references, some areas getting redesigned and changed by the time, and of course, Kain himself being the antagonist this time around, engulfed by a greed for power and dominance over everything.

Simply put, there is a lot of story to enjoy here, and you should check it out for yourself.

Gameplay

This game is a masterpiece of its time, wonderfully designed and overcoming many limitations that even PS2 games still struggled with, in very clever ways.

You are Raziel, on your quest to explore the land of Nosgoth and uncover the truth of what happened, after centuries of war and despair under Kain’s empire. The game revolves around one main mechanic, switching between the physical and spirit realm. You can go to the spirit realm anytime, but you can’t turn back to the material world unless you are on a special portal and at full health. You can perform a limited set of actions on each realm, and different enemies will spawn as well. You can also jump and hover around, using your broken wings to reach far away platforms.

The physical realm and material realm also completely change the layout of the environment. If you are surprised at the “rotated” rooms in Ocarina of Time, this will blow your mind. They somehow seamlessly modify the polygons and textures of the game in subtle, but effective ways. Some platforms are unreachable in the physical realm, but get closer in the spirit realm—this must have been a completely mind-boggling effect on the PS1. Observation is key, use the camera controls.

The traversal mechanics are interesting too, other than regular platforming and moving around, you also have teleportation gates. These are one of the most impressive feats of the game. Modern Metroidvanias like Hollow Knight and The Lost Crown, have the same thing, however, only Soul Reaver pulls off seamless teleportation with no loading screens to be found, in fact. There are no loading screens anywhere—except when you boot the game. This is absolutely ridiculous for a title in the PS1, and yet it’s here. Not even Monster Hunter got this on the PS2.

The combat in this game is rather simple, you can focus on an enemy and throw punches. There is no parrying or timing or combos. Most enemies are vampires who cannot die by regular means. You have to impale them with a weapon, throw them on fire, or in water, and absorb their soul afterwards. However, you can also just run past a lot of the enemies, or switch to the spirit realm, where enemy spirits can be beaten and absorbed. Eventually you will unlock a weapon that you can use while your health is full, but other than that, you are on your own, using the surroundings to defeat enemies.

Another mechanic of the game that is present from beginning to end, are block puzzles! which can also be found in some Zelda games. But don’t sleep on them. Some of the puzzle design here is equal to the most clever shrines in Breath of The Wild and the dungeons from Ocarina. I was in awe at how much my head was working to solve these, and once they click I felt like new neurons were growing in my brain.

You will unlock many other abilities later, that will allow you to pass different obstacles in the game, all of them interact with the mechanic of switching between realms and pushing blocks. For example, eventually you get the ability to go through walls—only in the spirit realm—which gives you access to some rooms, you will also gain the ability to move blocks at a distance—only in the material world—which expands the possibilities for puzzles. A couple more abilities are unlocked, which are implemented wonderfully in the dungeon design.

Here is another surprise, the boss fights are puzzles themselves. Even if the bosses look like something out of Dark Souls, you can’t kill them by throwing punches or hitting them with weapons—okay, a couple will need that. The boss and its environment are one. You will have to look at its behaviour and the surroundings to realize how you can beat them, and once you do, they are not that difficult, to be honest.

I’d say the gameplay here is fantastic. However, it is still and old game, everything here will be kinda janky and kinda clunky. Movement will be kinda slow and the camera will be kinda confusing. There’s also a water level, which is as great as any game at the time. Nothing unusual if you ever played Ocarina of Time.

Art & Music

If there is one thing where this game has not aged a day, it would be the art, especially the voice acting.

There is some incredible talent that worked on this game, some of which you may have heard in films and media of the time. The dialogue scenes, conversations between Raziel and his brothers, now enemies, a mysterious woman spectre that offers guidance, along the ancient deity that brought you back to the spirit realm, all of them possess an incredible gravitas and power to them.

I can’t say it enough, the conversations happening before every fight or when a new area is visited are just great, the animation, and the shots, while simple for today standards, work to convey the story and give a dramatic tone to every scene, it was a pretty cinematic experience overall rivaled only by Metal Gear Solid.

As I said before, the game features some incredible storytelling told through every environment. Even if the polygons are rather simple, The world of Nosgoth feels truly alive (or rather, dead?), it was pretty well represented and I found myself admiring the design of the areas and attention to detail. Even if some puzzle design is only serving the gameplay, I thought the contraptions were interesting and I truly wondered “what was the purpose of this when the place was not a wasteland”.

The textures of the PS1 graphics, while obviously low resolution, work amazingly to make this game stand out above the rest, managing to look like a PS2 title, especially when viewed through a CRT screen.

The Remastered version, which is what I played, features updated, high-res textures that add more detail and retain the original feel and vibes of the game. You can freely swap between original and updated graphics by pressing the R3 button (the analog stick), on the Switch version. I genuinely thought I was just looking at the game in the way it always looked to me as a kid.

While the texture work of the environments saw an uplift, the biggest change has to be the implementation of higher resolution 3D models. Pretty much every character in the game got a complete remodel with updated textures and a higher polygon count. All in all, it’s just fantastic to look at, although some of the models look a bit more bulky than the PS1 counterparts, which is a bit weird. I was genuinely suprised at the designs of the bosses, they wouldn’t feel out of place in a modern Soulslike.

The music of this game is excellent as well, it offers a vibe that no other soundtrack quite has, with a very environmental style to it, which feels like a mix between ambient sound, drums, strings, screams, and chants. I don’t know how to explain it, it just works. The music also adapts to whatever is going on screen, rising in tension when you get into combat, and going back to normal after a victory, without missing a beat. Just listen to it

Overall

Well, let’s just finish things off by listing the good and the bad this game has to offer!

The good

• Fantastic art, music, and voice acting.
• Deep lore and engaging story with great writing and scenes.
• A linear progression of the game.
• Fantastic puzzle, dungeon and boss battle design
• There are no unfair deaths or areas, other than platforming.
• No loading screen, seamless gameplay between realms and areas.
• Extra goodies if you return to previous areas with new powers!
• The game is short! And the Remaster comes with the sequel included.

The not so good

• Clunky, old school camera and movement controls
• Kinda slow walking speed and action animations.
• Platforming sections not aided by the camera and movement.
• The map in the Remaster is basically useless (there is no map in the original)
• Some areas may feel empty or confusing to traverse
• Enemies respawning in puzzle areas are annoying
• A couple of obscure puzzle mechanics (not many)
• The game ends in a cliff-hanger (just play with the sequel immediately though)

Some tips and reminders

• You can avoid most of the platforming struggle by crouching and walking at once, crouching won’t let you fall off platform borders.
• The Remaster has tooltips to know if you can interact with objects, this is apparently not a thing in the original so keep it in mind if you want to emulate.
• Keep using the camera view, it will save a lot of confusion, there is a lot of verticality in the puzzles, look up, down and behind you.
• If you see no path forward, try switching realms since the shape of many things will vary and open new options.
• Once you can shoot projectiles, you can also aim with the camera view.
• A couple puzzles will requires trial and error, it’s not complicated but it’s also not as logical as others.
• Keep looking at your surroundings, all the clues will be there—except for the trial and error puzzles.

Final thoughts

All in all, I absolutely loved this game. All of the “bad stuff” I mentioned barely affected me at all, I just point it out in case it might be an issue for you. I think this game and its world are just incredible, I really enjoyed it a lot.

Raziel is such an awesome character, and Nosgoth is a very unique setting, I really want to see what is next for the sequel and the series. It is such a shame there has been no new games in a while, I really hope someone greenlights more adventures with Kain and Raziel at some point.

I am definitely going to be playing the sequel to see how the story evolves, I have so many games in the backlog though, so we’ll see.

This one is a bit of a special case, I actually completed it in a pretty different way to other games, I simply played it with a friend!

Hyper Light Drifter came out in 2016, almost 10 years ago at this point, a great indie game with a sucessful kickstarter campaign. I heard of it all the time since its release, and it was one of the biggest reasons I grew interested in game development and pixel art, and the only indie game I ever obtained through alternative methods—until I felt guilty about it and deleted it after 20 minutes. I was just a teenager so, yeah.

You get the drill. I’ve been aware of this game for a while, and for some reason, I took a long time to finally get around to it.

It wasn’t until I bought my Nintendo Switch that Hyper Light Drifter became one of the first games I purchased for the console. However, among so many games I had to try out, I shoved it aside.

If you look at my log journal, you’ll see I played this game for a grand total of 6 days. Two times in December 2023—the month I bought the game for Christmas—one time in July 2024—where I somehow played it for 3 hours—and three times since September 2025—where I finally completed it. All but one of these sessions were done in multiplayer with the same friend. I could’ve beaten this game in a couple of weeks if I had focused on it, but I felt like I had to complete it with my friend—it’s also a good way to excuse myself.

But really, the game has an awesome 2-player co-op mode, uncommon for titles with an actual story and a world to uncover, with a sense of wonder that gets you to actually challenge yourself, think about what it’s trying to say, and uncover the secrets hidden everywhere in the map, pretty rare and unique, honestly.¹

So, whenever a friend came over and we felt like playing something a little bit deeper that required more than just smashing buttons or pushing each other off of platforms, Hyper Light Drifter became the go-to.

The story

Hyper Light Drifter is not very explicit on its story telling, there is pretty much no text other than the instructions of the game itself. NPCs don’t have any dialogue, and only some of them will tell stories in the form of graphics and drawings depicting what happened to them.

You are The Drifter, and you have some sort of disease that weakens you and makes you cough up blood. You journeyed to this place looking for a cure—although the game doesn’t really tell you that. Your goal is to collect the modules required to raise four pillars, located at each cardinal point of the map, for something to happen that may give you the answers you are looking for.

The world is kind of rotten, there are bodies in many places, after some sort of event, or a series of events, occurred on these lands.

Most of this I got from the wiki. The game is really obscure on this. What you actually know is to collect the modules and get to the bosses shown on the map.

The story itself is kind of a mirror to the experience of one of the devs working on the game, who suffers from a heart disease and has dealt with it constantly throughout his life. This changes the outlook of the game immensely.

Overall, the game mostly consists of visual storytelling, via flashbacks, characters sharing their experiences and the environments around you, who are in a state of decay and abandonment. It’s not very clear but it doesn’t have to be.

The gameplay

Your main weapon is a sword, made of solid light, you can also dash, and use guns.

The game plays like an old school adventure game like The Legend of Zelda, it features with minimal dialogue and text, you are supposed to explore the world and collect modules, keys, skill points, as well as lost technology that can help you get stronger, unlock doors and new paths.

The world is divided in four regions with different climates and enemies, and also different types of challenges while traversing the world. Falling platforms, spiked floors, moving obstacles, projectiles, gauntlets and puzzles are going to be present along the way. The variety of enemies is quite big too.

The combat system is simple, but difficult. You have a sword combo and you can dash to get close or away from enemies. There is no parry system. Once you unlock more abilities, you can shield certain attacks or redirect projectiles, as well as get more attack combos.

With skill points, you can learn new sword or dash techniques, such as charged attacks, or chain-dashing. You’ll also be able to unlock more slots for your gun ammo, and grenades to target groups of enemies.

The chain-dashing ability lets you dash in sequence, and can be performed forever, similar to bomb-jumping in Metroid games. However, it needs a certain rythm to perform well, and it’s kind of annoying to master. Thankfully, you can complete the game without it, but it’s nice to get a feel for it especially to make traversal faster—unless you crash against every wall like me.

Each area will also contain bosses. I think the boss design is pretty good, but some times the attack range felt too short, and there are moments where I would get hit and stun-locked after multiple attacks. Hit-boxes are slightly wonky, but nothing too bad.

The art

Hyper Light Drifter is probably one of the best showcases of modern day pixel art that I have ever seen. There really is no other way to put it. The game looks absolutely gorgeous, one might say the whole budget of this game went towards making sure everything looks as slick as possible.

During the covid lockdown, I clearly remember having screenshots of the game side by side while designing pixel art for my own projects, it is so inspiring and beautiful to look at.

The character animation is simply immaculate. I absolutely love every little detail about it. From attacks to movement to the simple idle animation, it is extremely well done.

While there are not many regions in the world, each of them is distinct and familiar, and one can’t help but wonder at what their original purpose was, and how they ended up on the state they are during the game.

There will also be incredible animated cutscenes with unique and mind-blowing visuals, in a similar style to Neon Genesis Evangelion, although I must admit, it feels like too much flare and not enough meaning, or at least, it’s just confusing overall after a first playthrough.

The music

The soundtrack of this game is simply magnificent. It is instrumental, environmental, with a mix of electronic sounds that merge seamlessly and provides the game with an atmosphere unique to it. Elevating it above and beyond and giving a certain grávitas to the quietest of moments. I simply cannot imagine this game without the music here!

A few songs of the soundtrack were on my now defunct Spotify playlist for relaxing videogame music, years before I even got the game, it was just that good, and yet another reason I wanted to play this so badly—but not that much given how long it took me, I guess.

Panacea, one of the main tracks of the game, deserves a listen, along the rest! You can also get the album on Bandcamp too.

The sound effects for the environment, item collecting and others were also quite good, although it’s mostly just checking the boxes rather than doing anything too special. In fact, sometimes the music would (welcomingly so) take over every other sounds of the game and play regardless of what was happening on screen (usually during battles or cinematic moments) and it was just fantastic.

Finishing thoughts

There is a lot to like here. It is one of those indie games that really does everything right, and has managed to build an identity for itself.

In modern days, there are others that have surpassed some of its elements and design choices, but I think it deserves a playthrough nonetheless. I also think there are not many action adventure games that keep things as simple as this one. No complicated builds or charms or anything like that is here, just a small selection of weapons and a small moveset focused on combat.

The game is difficult, but not as much as something like Hollow Knight or Silksong. However, some of the bosses and hitboxes can be a little janky, so there will be some times where you will get hit when it looks like you avoided the attack, and there will be times where the attack is touching the enemy, but they don’t lose hitpoints.

The chain-dashing mechanic is rather finnicky and annoying, and there’s some challenges that are a pain to do, but they are never essential to complete the main game, so I think it’s alright.

Overall, I am glad I finally got to play this game, and given how short it is, I am probably going to revisit it and try to beat it by myself sometime.

Hollow Knight. The indie Metroidvania to rule them all, the game that redefined the genre for the modern era, inspiring many developers for years to come to follow on its footsteps.

This is one of those modern games that I thought weren’t really that big of a deal. I wasn’t much into gaming other than whatever ran on my PSP. For a while I was happy with emulating Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission, but well, I thought it would be nice to get into some more modern games, so I decided to buy it on Steam, alongside CrossCode and Axiom Verge—two games I’m yet to properly play.

So, I played it on my laptop for a while, up to 9 hours of playtime, more or less. I even used my PSP as a controller with it, and it worked well enough.

However, playing it on my laptop just didn’t work that well for me, so I abandoned it in the end.

It wasn’t until much later, that I finally bought my Nintendo Switch, and well, I finally felt like giving it a go! I started the game in November of 2024, and I finally beat it a couple days ago!

You are the Knight, an explorer that ventures into the fallen kingdom of Hallownest, a dangerous endeavor, especially when your only weapon is a nail with the smallest hitbox ever.

As you explore, you will find obstacle after obstacle, and enemies that will make traversal difficult, especially in the early hours of the game. However, soon the kingdom will open itself to you, as you unlock new abilities that will let you reach new areas, face against difficult bosses, go through platforming challenges and uncover every corner of this region.

This game is available on every modern platform, I own it on Steam and Nintendo Switch.

There is a lot to unpack here, so let’s get into it!

The story

The story of Hollow Knight is not crystal clear, it is not necessarily the focus of the game, as it’s more of an adventure done in solitude.

However, there are a lot of events and lore that you will uncover throughout your quest. Some of it is difficult to understand, hidden in poems and strange texts scathered throughout the lands. The story of how Hallownest ended up in ruins, is something that the player uncovers as the game continues, and it’s actually very interesting.

Every character in the game will have something to say, some of them will follow their own personal quests, and you will find them multiple times in different areas. Some times you can even help them out, or save them from certain demise.

Other characters will tell you stories when you give them antiques or certain items. Even some of the bosses will have something to say, from dialogue, to just their name alone, they will spark questions and make you wonder how everything ended up as it is.

It feels like everything has some meaning, why is this boss attacking like this? What was the original purpose of this area? Why certain enemies only spawn here?

So many clues, riddles and thought-provoking moments can be found. And character moments that might not seem like much at a glance, but are charged with meaning and melancholy.

I found the story here, the lore and the characters to be simply amazing.

The gameplay

This is a Metroidvania, borrowing heavy inspiration from Dark Souls when it comes to its difficulty and world design choices.

You can move around in the map and attack with your nail. There are some hidden mechanics as soon as the game starts, so I won’t spoil them here, it’s nice to discover your movement options naturally.

The health system is interesting. You can recover health by “focusing” soul. Health is represented by masks, and you can increase it by collecting mask fragments. There’s also a container for soul, which you use to focus and recover health. You can gain soul by dealing damage and defeating enemies, as well as destroying statues filled with it. Soul will come handy to use for spells, a variety of extra attacks that will allow for long range and area-based damage, for example.

Health is a valuable resource, unlike games like Zelda or Minecraft where you might lose a quarter or half a heart, here each mask is a full health point, gone as soon as you are hit. And as the game progresses enemies will be able to deal more damage. Your attacks cannot be rushed or just spammy, there’s a timing to how you should move and to how enemies do.

Over time, you face difficult bosses, which you will have to defeat, to unlock more abilities or just get through an area. You can learn more skills with the nail itself later on. Expanding the offensive and traversal possibilities.

The most important aspect of the gameplay is exploration, the areas available are pretty open from the start, but with some sections you can’t reach yet, because you’re missing some skill here or there. The game features a cartographer, that sells you a map of the area you’re exploring, which gets filled as you explore every room within that portion of the map.

The platforming mechanics might be one of the deal breakers for many. Movement speed is pretty slow, and the jumping physics feel weird compared to other games. This is because the jump is slightly floaty (sort of like in Super Metroid) and the jump height varies depending on how much you hold the jump button. Once you get used to it it’s not bad at all, and again, the movement options will expand over time.

The game also features Charms. They are essential to customize your gameplay style and add some variation to the game. Basically, each charm will boost certain stats, or give you a different skill. From more health, wider range of damage, quicker soul focusing, faster attacks, etc. You have a limited amount of slots, so you can only wear so many charms at once.

The save system is based on benches, which are scattered throughout the world, and will replenish your health, also respawning the enemies you may have defeated in the area. Benches are a rare sight, and sometimes their placement can be annoying, especially when a boss fight is far away, and you have to get past all the enemies in the way there after dying.

If you die, you respawn in the lastest bench you were on. However, you will lose all your Geo, the money in the game. You have to go back to the place you died, and defeat your own soul (it only takes 2 or 3 hits) to recover it. However, if you die again before recovering your soul, you’ll lose the Geo forever.

There are a couple of fast-travel options in the game, that will let you backtrack between sections of the map. Some can only go back and forth between areas, and others let you go to any area you have access to.

The art

This game is absolutely gorgeous!

It’s not pixel art, it’s not 3D models or environments, everything in Hollow Knight is hand-drawn, and it looks completely amazing to this day. The game features a few animated scenes, although they are pretty uncommon, when they happen, they are rather cinematic, if simple in execution compared to some titles working with higher budget.

The animations during gameplay are equally fantastic. The Knight’s design and animations are simple and clear, without many flourishes to it. The enemies are also quite simple for the most part, but where Hollow Knight excels is in the boss designs. All of them have pretty cool designs, and their movements and patterns are well animated. Not everything is perfectly telegraphed

There was no game like it among the indie scene in 2017, the details, the animations and design behind everything on it is commendable. Almost a decade later, the game still looks fantastic and dare I say, timeless. Although other indie games have catched up in the art design department in modern times, the way everything fits together in Hallownest is still really well done.

Seriously, this is one of those games where you can tell “That’s Hollow Knight” just by looking at a screenshot, and it’s just as easy to tell “that’s inspired by Hollow Knight” on every game out there that borrows from it.

The soundtrack of this game is absolutely superb, with orchestral and environmental elements to it, words cannot describe it well enough. If you’ve listened to any sort of videogame media, it’s likely you’ve heard to Hollow Knight’s soundtrack. There is an air of melancholy to it, but it’s also pretty elegant, it really is an instant classic.

Finishing thoughts

This is a beautiful game, that introduced a lot of people into the Metroidvania genre, and is considered a masterpiece by many, including myself.

The wonderful yet desolate Hallownest, the diverse regions, and fast-travel mechanics made traversal fun for me, accompanied by the occasional lore drop in statues, structures and characters found along the way.

The power-ups, nail arts and charms really let you customize the Knight to fit a few different playstyles, you can focus on casting spells, or just dealing raw damage, or if you only want to focus on quick traversal and grinding for Geo, you can do it as well.

The music is awesome, and I also enjoyed the sound design of everything, it was eerie and immersive. Enemies have their own sound effects, and character dialogue is accompanied by charming and memorable voice acting (“sigh… Bapanada”).

This is an excellent game to get fully immersed into, it’s a difficult and challenging quest, and there will be many roadblocks and no handholding, but if you can stand until the end, you will have gone through an experience like no other.

The way the world slowly opens up and reveals itself, both in the paths availabe, as in the way the story unfolds, is seriously quite masterful. I really loved this game, and I look forward to a replay, a few years from now.

Compared to modern games, like Metroid Dread and The Lost Crown, and even some older titles in the genre, there are a few annoyances, and missing quality of life features that Hollow Knight doesn’t have. For example:

• The distance between boss fights and benches can be cumbersome, no “retry button” or possibility of reloading a save file.
• The loss of progress when you die twice in a row, while on purpose, can be pretty annoying at some points.
• Death due to environmental damage isn’t uncommon in other games, but paired with the scarce benches, it’s painful.
• The map system pales in comparison to Dread’s, even more so with Prince of Persia’s built-in screenshot feature.
• Some attacks lack any indication whatsoever, or the window is extremely tight, no difficulty options are available
• No life bars. I’m not annoyed by this since I’m used to Monster Hunter, but some people like them.

Basically, it all boils down to how much you are willing to deal with the mercilessness of a Soulslike, in the gameplay style of a Metroidvania game. Honestly, I didn’t mind it at all, and I had a blast playing it, but, as you can tell by the span of time I took to beat it, I had to take breaks and focus on other things from time to time.

In any case, Hallownest always managed to entrap me within its setting and mystery, and I’m happy it did.

The game also comes with a lot of extra bosses and DLC, I completed it to a 100%, but that’s taking into account some of the DLC. The real percentage is 112%, which I did not go for. However, I am more than happy with all this game has for me, and I may try out the rest of the extra content later on.

Jet Lancer follows the journey of Ash, a mercenary pilot of an experimental jet, tasked with dealing with the Sky Pirates, some evil doers who bring terror to the skies.

From there, you’ll end up uncovering some ancient giant weapons that will head to the city and put everyone in danger, only you are capable of defeating them before they destroy everything, while also uncovering the mystery behind them and what is actually going on.

The story is actually much more interesting than that, a shooter with an actual plot is not common, and a shooter with an actually actually quite good story even less so! Still no masterpiece of storytelling, but I actually looked forward to the all the cutscenes between the missions and the dialogues during the gameplay itself.

Speaking of which, the gameplay here is amazing. It is an “aerial combat shooter” with tight controls and frenetic gameplay. You can fly through the air in every direction—unlike classic on-rails space shooters—dodge enemies, boost and use special weapons to survive. It has a very simple set of controls, but a really high skill cap, and it gets highly addictive whe trying to go for a damageless level clear.

The game is mission-based and you can move through every level in an overworld, although a selection menu is available later on to quickly get to previous levels.

The art during gameplay is mostly pixel art sprites, and it looks rad, it is pretty simple, but full of colorful and contrast, so it’s easy to distinguish everything around you, including the different kinds of enemies and the like. I really loved the whole aesthetic of the game. The overworld where you pick the levels is in a low-poly 3D style but it doesn’t feel out of place at all.

As the game progresses, you’ll be able to unlock upgrades to your Jet that will make life harder or easier, depending on your choices. From auto-dodging, shields, more fuel and other power-ups. You only have a limited set of skill slots, so your build will vary, and some levels will be easier depending on the upgrades you equip.

The game features 38 levels, 11 of which are boss fights, that are definitely a highlight of the game, I felt great when I finally managed to pull off a victory. You have to be in the zone at every moment with the frenzy going on, but everything somehow just flows and you end up feeling like a complete Ace in the sky.

Another aspect I’d like to point out is the absolutely glorious sound design and soundtrack. It is so incredibly cool and it gets your heart pumping the whole time especially with all the action going on in the screen. The sound of the engines and the shooting and explosions, especially after you beat a boss, chef’s kiss.

A very good thing this game has too, is accesibiliy features, from expanding the dodge window, taking less damage or disabling it altogether, turning off screen-shakes and the like, you can tweak your experience to your liking and feel just as awesome.

It was the game of the month for July in the Low Key Game Club on the TWG Online server, so I’m glad I got to finish it! If you are up for an awesome challenge and a fast-paced gameplay experience that will make you feel like the best of the best once you get the controls, this is it! It even features a New Game Plus mode with harder AI and new upgrades to get, but I think I feel satisfied with my experience. Check it out!

Fire Emblem is a franchise that I haven’t played very much, I wrote about the series in the past, and this will be the first one I actually complete.

Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade was the first game of the series to come out overseas, after being released exclusively on Japan for years. It is a tactics RPG series that has remained popular since the apparition of its characters in Super Smash Bros Melee for the Game Cube.

On this game, you control a variety of characters who can move inside a grid-based map, and attack enemies. These attacks are done with melee weapons, of which there are three of them: swords, axes and lances, that best each other, like in rock, paper, scissors. There’s also cavalry, archery, mages, and other classes with different uses in the game.

One of the defining factors of this series is perma-death. If a character dies during a battle, they cannot be used during the rest of the playthrough. In-story, they may just be incapacitated sometimes, but it’s practically the same thing.

In the game, you become the strategist for a group of characters, helping them achieve victory battle after battle. You join forces with three main characters, Lyn, Eliwood and Hector, all of them have multiple goals throughout the game, from finding lost family members, to uncovering a conspiracy against the kingdom, to saving the whole world from calamity itself.

I think the story is pretty great, but not the highlight of the game, at first it seemed like filler to me, but as it kept progressing, I grew interested in these characters and I wanted to know what was next, the last third of the game really elevates the stakes quit a lot, and I really enjoyed the dialogues and the character developments more than I expected.

The game is divided into chapters. Unlike other traditional games, you don’t traverse a map from town to town or get into random enemy encounters. Every chapter will show some story bits, with character dialogue and scenes explaining the story. After that, you will have a preparation phase, where you can select which characters to use, equip them with weapons and items, and position them in certain tiles of the map. Once ready, you will start the battle and do your best.

Each battle consists of multiple turns, a player phase and an enemy phase. You can move and interact with as many characters as you have, and after your turn ends, the enemy will do the same. As the amount of enemies grows, this can be a bit tedious, but it’s no big deal. It’s actually a way for the player to realize the consequences of each move. Positioning, attacking, healing. Everything you did during your previous turn will affect the outcome of the enemy phase.

The Blazing Blade came out for the Game Boy Advance, which influences its design in a couple ways, given it’s a portable device with a focus on pick-up and play, the maps aren’t too large and it’s very easy to suspend and resume a session if needed. I think this makes the game a perfect point of entry to the series.

This game looks absolutely gorgeous in 2025. It is one of the best looking games in the platform, and it is hard to find pixelart as good as this one even in modern games. Just look at this sweet critical hit:

I do have some caveats though, which are not really a big deal.

I am sorry to the fans of the franchise, but I couldn’t really stand the permadeath for the most part, I must confess I absolutely abused emulator save states to avoid losing characters, multiple times. I replayed the same bits over and over trying to get the outcome I wanted.

This however didn’t make me hate the game or anything, it actually turned it into a bit of a puzzle game. It was almost like playing minesweeper or something, I would do multiple variations of a turn, trying to attack enemies in the right order to avoid a character dying during the enemy phase.

Also, during a battle, enemy reinforcements will show up sometimes, and if I left a mage in relative safety, a knight could spawn right beside it from off-screen and kill them, so I’d end up restoring to a previous state and moving that mage away from danger pre-emptively, or leaving other characters to intersect the new enemies.

I much prefer how other games do it, where death only affects during the battle itself, but in the end you get all your characters back for the next battle. This is the case on Jeanne D’Arc, Triangle Strategy and The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy. But again, to each their own.

Besides, it was only annoying when a character dies for a really, really dumb reason. There will be times, when everything seems lost, when I made so many bad choices for a long while and it is not worth it to go back, that I will come to terms with letting someone die, by making them fight and deal enough damage so that one of my other characters can do the final hit.

It’s in moments like that when the game actually succeeded in making me care about them, the noble sacrifice for the greater good and moving forward when everything seems lost.

Again, it really is kind of neat and helps create your own story sometimes, but many times, a random enemy would just one-hit kill a character I had been leveling up for a while with full health and all, which was really, really annoying.

In 2025, this game is very easy to emulate, it can be done on the Nintendo Switch via an Online + Expansion Pack subscription, or you can use a GBA emulator on your phone or laptop. I played part of this game ages ago on my PSP, but played most of it on my Anbernic RG35XX SP, which was a faithful recreation of the experience I would’ve had on real hardware, but with better screen brightness!

The music was great, the art was awesome, the animations are absolutely a feast to the eyes, the gameplay loop is solid, I don’t know if I need any more words, pretty much everything in this game holds up today, even more so if you don’t mind the challenge of permadeath.

All in all, this is a really cool game and it’s worth playing it today.

1000xRESIST can be described as a story-driven 3D adventure game with a bit of platforming. While technically correct, I would be doing a disservice to what this game manages to achieve, way beyond the constraints of the artform.

This game was developed by a group of theater actors who didn’t have a lot of work to do during the pandemic, so they teamed up to learn game development, and started working on this game as their first venture into this artform.

I am writing this, without doing something I really wish to do right now, which is to find every piece of writing, video or audio from people who have played this game before. I already listened to many of the episodes of Into The Aether that brought it up, including their 2024 Game of The Year Spectacular

Right now I just want to write down my thoughts on my own mind, which has already been altered by a lot of external influences anyway so whatever, bias and all that.

Story

1000xRESIST tells us a story of a dystopian future where all of humanity has been wiped out by a deadly virus, that came along an alien species (more like, cosmical entities beyond our understanding) known as The Occupants.

The last remains of Humanity can be found in a society of clones, all from a single girl, Iris, who is immune to the virus, and cannot perish or age. Overtime she became a sort of deity among her clones, and came to be known as the ALLMOTHER.

The clones are divided in groups, they can’t die of age either, but they are not immune to the virus, having to wear special facemasks and suits. Each of them is led by a Sister. There are six main Sisters: Principal, who is in charge of the whole thing, Knower, in charge of the library and keeping archives, Healer, healthcare, and looks for a cure for the virus, Fixer, who maintains the infrastructure, Bang Bang Fire, in charge of defense and monitoring the Occupants activity, and Watcher, whose job is to look, and observe. Each of them, named after their function.

The rest of the clones are “shells” and they are also assigned a function at birth, and train constantly so they can, one day, become a Sister too. All of them are living in an underground structure known as The Orchard.

When a Sister is deemed worthy, they are called via train to join the ALLMOTHER on the Other Side. The train tracks are a circle with no beginning or end, the track to the Other Side is only revealed to those who are chosen.

The game begins when Principal asks Watcher to perform her First Communion. This is a process where she can experience the life of the ALLMOTHER before she became their deity, she will learn how her past unfolds, and slowly realize that things are not what they seem.

Gameplay

The game is divided in chapters, most of them represents a Communion with a different sister. Before a communion, you can wander around in the Orchard and catch up with the shells and other Sisters, they will talk about a lot of things, all of them interesting in their own right. I genuinely can’t think of another game where I wanted to talk to absolutely everyone just to see what new piece of data I could use, that could help me figure out the puzzle of what is even going on.

Inside a Communion, everyone around you will see you as Iris, and each memory is a bizarre retelling of the past. You can move around, do some platforming sections, and complete simple tasks, like finding certain people to talk to, or reaching a destination.

I feel like when I type it out, the game sounds boring as hell, like it’s nothing but a walking simulator with a couple extra things. You can think that, if you want. This is not a challenging platformer, it’s not filled with insane action moments, it doesn’t require constant trial and error or feature the best animation ever, it does not feature skills or leveling up or anything a regular game might have.

There is a couple of interesting mechanics here. During some gameplay sections, you can move across time in the same room, this is useful at first to get pass some obstacles that might be present in in a certain moment, but not in the future. This is also a narrative tool, that will let you progress through a memory and live it through and connect certain bits with others found in a different time.

The most common platforming mechanic is a sort of long jump that can be performed when focusing on some points in the environment, this is a way to traverse quick in some events, but also to avoid falling on bottomless areas where you have to perform these jumps multiple times.

There are other aspects to both of these mechanics and some others that I’d rather not mention much, since they are heavily intertwined with the story and themes of the game.

Art

The game features a cell-shaded look for the most part, but the art direction goes to absolutely crazy places some times. The design of the main hub, the design of the clones, the different camera angles, the different points of view of the character, everything is done on purpose.

One of the few things some might find annoying, is the lack of animations, for the voice active, or at all. Multiple times the characters will just be still, with no motion, and you might be lead to believe this is just because of money constraints or something like that. Honestly, that’s probably a reason, but after you accept that, you will notice how all the positions and the ways the developers worked around every limitation, ends up enhancing the experience in a different way

I played the Switch version, and it is definitely not the best way to play the game. Some parts of the game had weird aliasing, and the framerate was not consistent sometimes. I honestly didn’t care at all, and totally enjoyed my time with the game, despite a couple slow load times.

The whole game is a work of art.

Audio

The voice acting is fantastic, I really, really enjoyed it. It is a very raw and personal style, which will contain some mumbling and some weird performances from time to time, but they will fit the narrative at hand every time.

Honestly I couldn’t skip any of the dialogue, it was just so well timed, and it felt like it added so much character and gravitas to even the simplest moments of the plot.

The sountrack proved to be incredibly well made, at first it seemed like it was just going to be some perfectly serviceable atmospherical themes, but there will be more variety once the story moves forward and it completely hit me in the feels many, many times. The sudden changes in some of the chapters are handled incredibly and the music enhances the whole thing. I am glad I wore earphones the whole time.

There are also some songs with lyrics, and poems performed by some of the characters, and they hold a certain significance to them in the context of the story. It’s just incredible stuff.

Final thoughts

Each chapter has something that will simply leave you thinking, each line of dialogue is just, so quotable, something worth savouring and reflecting upon. Every shot, camera placement, lightning choice, the voice acting, everything just feels like it was tweaked and planned to perfection, to emote a feeling, to leave a mark.

The game will deal with a variety of topics, and you can tell just by the plot alone, it is about the covid pandemic, about religion, about resisting authority, about memories, seeking freedom, leaving the past behind, promises, authoritarian regimes, about existence itself.

It explores pretty much every facet of the human condition.

I want to write more, there is so much more, but I don’t feel comfortable doing so, this game is just, so worth playing. You should just experience it yourself, I don’t want to ruin the incredible moments, the plot twists, the most shocking visuals I have seen in ages, the psychological aspects of the whole ordeal. It is just, ugh, I don’t know, I run out of words to describe it without spoiling it.

It is, quite simply, a masterpiece.

I will be thinking about this game throughout my life, I can just tell already. I had already thought about it a lot even before playing it, because I kind of wanted to avoid it, for some reason, but now that I played it, it will just keep showing up in my thoughts constantly.

Now it’s time to listen to that 5 hour long dotzip episode!

This is day 86 of #100DaysToOffload

IF YOU WANNA DISCUSS ANYTHING AT ALL ABOUT THIS GAME PLEASE CONTACT ME AT ONCE

SPOILERS AHEAD, PLEASE DO NOT READ, RANDOM THOUGHTS ABOUT MULTIPLE PLOT POINTS INCOMING

Still, the series remains alive thanks to its legacy, contributing to the birth of the Metroidvania genre after the release of Castlevania Symphony of the Night in the late 90s.

Aria of Sorrow builds upon what Symphony does—although I must be clear and say I haven’t played it myself—and streamlined the experience into a pocket-sized adventure for the Game Boy Advance.

In context, this game is absolutely awesome. I can totally picture myself being a 10 year old kid with a GBA SP, and with this as the only game I own. And you know what? I think I’d be the coolest kid at school.

Think about it, the other kids have cutesy little Yoshi’s Island throwing eggs around, or they catching Caterpies in some forest on Pokemon Fire Red.

And me?

I am a super cool white-haired demon killing vampire hunter, exploring a huge castle filled with hundreds of enemies and epic bosses. I can extract their souls and use gain their powers to get even stronter. How epic is that?

Even if you are not 10 years old anymore, just go give it a go, it’s barely 7 hours long, stop reading and play it. The only excuse not to, is if you want to play Ys: The Oath in Felghana first.

But if you stay, let’s go into some of the aspects that might let you know if this game is for you, or not!

The story

You are Soma Cruz, a new character to the franchise actually, and, somehow, you are transported to Dracula’s Castle, and cannot find any way to escape. You end up there with another friend maybe it’s your girlfriend I didn’t read oops but she’ll stay in the entrance and heal you when you go check up on her sometimes.

Anyway, since there’s no exit found, you gotta explore inside the castle and see if you can find a way out. The place is full of monsters, however, after killing some of them, you realize you can absorb their souls and acquire special abilities from them.

You will face many traps and dead ends, and soon meet up with other characters that will reveal more of the story and show up during important plot events. Soon the mystery of the castle, the awakening of your powers and the motives behind the characters you meet will start to unfold, as Dracula awakens once again.

The gameplay

If you have played a Castlevania before, or the Metroid games for the GBA, the gameplay is quite similar to that.

Aria of Sorrow is a 2D side-scroller adventure game, you explore a castle, that features a variety of environments and enemies.

Like any Metroidvania, you will find locked doors and unreachable platforms that you can only access by using different skills and power ups that you can find in the game.

The limited controls featured on the GBA make this game quite easy to parse, simple button combinations allow for a variety of moves, such as performing attacks, dodges, skills, jumping and the like. Some moves are unlocked later in the game, that allow you to perform slide kicks, double jumps and other abilities I’d rather let you experience by yourself!

Here’s the killer feature of this game, every enemy has a soul ability that you can get after killing them. However, to do so is a matter of chance. Some of them can be really hard to get, while others will be obtained on the first try. This can be a bit of a mixed bag for some players.

You can complete the game without unlocking most abilities, you will be fine, it is more of a thing you can do if, like I said above, you are a 10 year old kid who owns a single videogame. Later in the game you can still find every enemy and get strong weapons that will allow farming them super simple anyway, so I don’t think this is a bad thing unless you’re a completionist.

There are a lot of different environments inside the castle, and they are quite easy to distinguish from one another, it is actually kind of surprising. There’s a library, a clock tower (classic Castlevania staple), floating gardens, an arena, the sewers, and plenty of other areas. I actually can’t recall feeling lost at any point.

There were plenty of save points, although I honestly just abused save states for this one. You can also find teleporting rooms, which were extremely useful to traverse the castle.

The map helped quite a bit, it is rather clear, even if it lacks some “quality of life” things like markers for missing items; it shows the available pathways, save rooms, teleport rooms and your current location, as well as the percentage of the map uncovered. It was instantly accesible as well by pressing select, which I appreciate.

I think the boss fights on this game are pretty good, all of the bosses had some pretty nice and simple patterns you could learn, except for a couple exceptions that would end up being quite annoying.

The sound

The GBA’s sound chip was not the best in general, and a lot of poorly programmed games and ports were kind of average at best. However, in many games they put a lot of effort into making something fitting of the handheld, and Aria of Sorrow is really one of the best in that regard.

It was great for the time, and it still sounds awesome today, if a little retro—the kind of retro indie games seek to emulate today—it is so fun and it keeps it interesting all the time. I kept bopping to the music during my playthroughs. It can be a bit repetitive sometimes, but that’s not really an issue.

There is also a bit of voice acting to be found from some characters, it is only a line or two, but it adds some charm to the thing.

The art

This game looks incredible to this day. It is so good, the pixel art is really high quality, it looked fantastic while playing it on my Anbernic RG35XX SP.

The game is in 2D and the colors just pop when played on modern screens. At the time, I imagine this was done with the purpose of improving the contrast due to the low visibility of the original GBA, but it works really well anyway.

While most of the game is basic 2D assets and sprites, the game features a few pseudo 3D elements, in some bosses and background effects, that look quite good for the time, and work well today as well. At no point does anything look out of place.

I think there is only one area in the game that looks way too bright for its own good, but even then it’s no big deal, I just felt like it had some filter on top while playing it, as the character still loked the same if it was there or in a more saturated spot on the map

The character art featured in dialogue scenes is rather nice, and seeing the contrast with the NPCs on screen, it really makes you appreciate how well designed those sprites are too. All the enemies are instantly recognizable and have great animation loops, I really gotta give props to the designers!

Final thoughts

This game is instantly replayable, as the collectibles are plenty and they are also quite easy to find, it’s just a matter of exploring around.

Games like Metroid will feature some incredibly difficult puzzles based on precise movement and that’s something that will not be present here, you can take your time and explore, instead of practicing a button press combination and perfect timing trying to get some missiles—not hating on Metroid at all, I did 100% of the items on Metroid Dread after all, but they can be a bit annoying lol.

Anyway, this game is one of those that you are just going to complete, as long as you try stuff out. There is maybe two really obscure secrets that you will be unable to find unless you think the right way, but again, no big deal I’d say!

I completed the game in about 6 hours, although I did use some save states for a few of the boss fights, I am only taking into account the in-game timer. I played the game in 10 to 20 minutes long sessions before my work schedule began.

In the end, I think this game is worth playing, and I think I will be replaying it sometime next year as well, it’s definitely on my roster alongside Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission now! It’s always fun to keep improving my times and playstyle.

This is day 79 of #100DaysToOffload

It seemed to me like a franchise worth exploring, so I set out to do just that. Eventually, I acquired Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana and Ys Origins, both for the Nintendo Switch.

The franchise follows the journeys of Adol, the red-headed adventurer protagonist of the series, across the lands and seas of Ys. There is no overarching story between games, but they are still in the same world and chronology. I like to think of every game as a chronicle, an old tale passed down through generations. You can honestly play any game in any order, and have fun with each self-contained adventure.

But why did I choose this title instead of the other ones I have on Switch?

Close to the end of 2024, my favorite podcast Into The Aether announced their next season would be all about the PSP. Because of this, I decided to look into the other Ys games available on the system: Ys Chronicles I & II, Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim and Ys: The Oath in Felghana.

So, after asking around in the Discord server and looking some things online, I realized that the latter is considered one of the best in the franchise, a representation of the best stuff the series has to offer. I had already seen what Seven had, so I wondered how different Felghana would be, so, the decision was made.

Some backstory

Ys: The Oath in Felghana is actually a remake of Ys III: Wanderers from Ys. By looking online, I realized that the original title is actually considered to be the black sheep of the franchise. Similarly to Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Wanderers from Ys opted to go for a 2D side-scrolling perspective, instead of the topdown style of previous entries, changing the gameplay significantly, it also got rid of the bump style combat, requiring a button press to attack, like most action rpgs. Therefore, it received a mixed reception, depending on who the player was. Quite a bit of newcomers liked it, but the fans felt betrayed.

Regardless, after some time, a remake of the game was made using the same engine as Ark of Napishtim, with an updated look featuring 2D assets in a 3D environment. It expanded the original story and dungeon design, and updated the gameplay to the modern age.

This remake is a complete revamp, it is absolutely remarkable. It goes above and beyond what even masterpieces like Metroid Zero Mission manage to accomplish, as it restructures the whole game to a new dimension with no real compromises. It is probably a better remake and treatment than what more recent remakes like Link’s Awakening are. Even though as a game, it may not be as popular.

The remake came out in Japan back in 2005, got a PSP port in 2010, the PC version got an English localization in 2012. The PC version was ported in 2023 for modern platforms as Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana and localized in English this year. I convinced Wouter to play it too, and he ended up beating it faster than me, and writing a review for it too.

Enough praise, I haven’t even talked about what the game is about by itself!

The story

Adol, the red-headed adventurer, goes to Felghana, birthplace of his friend and companion of his travels, Dogi. As soon as they arrive, they rescue a girl being sorrounded by dangerous beasts. She is Elena, a childhood friend of Dogi, whose brother, Chester, has been missing for months.

They soon realize that the sorroundings of Dogi’s hometown, Redmont, has been filled with dangerous monsters, and their only source of income, the raval ore mines, are inaccesible because of the threat, affecting the economy and wellbeing of everyone. To make matters worse, some people, including the town’s mayor, have been trapped in the mines.

Adol steps up and volunteers to rescue the missing miners and goes on to the adventure. Soon enough, he’ll discover the reason behind this curse on the region, and he will have to save the day once again.

He will traverse, unexplored caves, abandoned temples, the depths of a volcano, the icy top of the mountains, and plenty of dungeons on his quest to bring peace to the lands once again.

The story is serviceable, there are some great action moments, there’s betrayal and plot twists, there are wholesome times and sad scenes. I don’t think it’s a masterpiece, but it’s definitely a classic heroic tale. Pretty nice stuff.

The gameplay

This is a traditional hack & slash action RPG. Just press the attack button until the enemy dies and you’re good. But don’t worry, there’s a bit more than that.

Defeating enemies will grant you a variety of loot. health, mana, gold, raval ore, and boosters. The latter will improve your exp rate, your mana regeneration, or your damage output. Of course there is a hit count that can jump through the roof as you attack the hordes of enemies that come your way, it is a very satisfying gameplay loop, as potion drops keep you going as long as there are enemies around. It ends up being a pretty fun mayhem of destruction—as long as you have leveled up equipment and the right magical attacks.

There are three types of magic in this game. Fire, Wind, and Earth. The first lets you throw fireballs, the second lets you swing your sword in a circular motion (like in A Link To The Past!) and float for a bit, and the third lets you dash forward and parry/attack with your shield, being able break some walls too.

Other than your basic stats, you can also enter boost mode where attack, defense and speed are increased for a short period of time, the bar takes a while to fill up, but unleashing an hit chain with boost mode on is incredibly fun! Boost mode gets even better later on, letting you recover health while it’s active.

There is a basic equipment system, you just keep buying upgrades with money and raval ore. There is no way to sell old stuff, but there is a lot of money to be gathered, although ore can be a bit hard to come by at first. There are also a few items you can buy, and some hidden in the dungeons throughout the game to aid your adventure, no potions though.

Save points are easy to come by, and they fully heal you after contact with them, you will soon get an ability to teleport to any save point at any time (except during boss fights) which will prove useful. Traversal is quite quick, and the map is small, so walking around is not bad at all either.

The dungeon design can be confusing sometimes, especially those with cliffs and voids you can fall off from, ending up in lower levels of the dungeons, and having to make it back up—although there will usually be rewards hidden in such places. The paths are really quite linear and clear, most deviations are only one or two rooms long, and will usually reward you anyway.

The lack of potions is probably one of the most interesting gameplay choices, it will make boss fights harder, as there are no drops to pick up there. However, as long as you are leveled up and you have the right equipment, the game is not that difficult.

Speaking of difficulty, the game is tough as nails, yet really forgiving, letting you retry quickly any boss fight, lower its difficulty at will, or load a savefile at any point. Dying in the world is no issue either, the game will let you retry in the same room you died on, no annoying backtracking to be found—unless you’re searching for chests and the like.

The boss fights

Boss fights are actually one of the staples of the Ys franchise, they are really difficult, I can recall plenty of examples when I was playing Ys Seven , and the same is true for Felghana.

The bosses in this game are quite varied, and you will have to figure out their attack patterns to have a chance at defeating them.

Some bosses will be like playing a space shooter, avoiding lasers and shooring firebals, others will be like a 2D platformer, in a bridge instead of an arena, and others will make use of the full 3D environments.

Timing attacks, platforming, using the right magic at the right time, I think the design of the bosses is really good, and as long as you are in the right level, with the right equipment, there will be no issues.

Not all bosses are created equal, and some of them are not completely fair, as some attacks are pretty much unavoidable. I got stuck plenty of times, but when that happened, I just lowered the boss difficulty and didn’t look back.

They are a fun challenge for those willing to git gud, and they are easy to dismiss for those that just want to experience the rest of the game. I personally had a mix of both! Got plenty of satisfying victories, and plenty of “ah I’ll just skip this one” moments. It’s just a game, the point is for you to enjoy it! Honestly though, just overlevel a bit and most issues will vanish.

The audio

OH MY!! The music keeps the whole game flowing in a wonderful state of absolute adrenaline. From the overworld theme, all the dungeons, the boss battle themes. The music just rocks, and the emotional scenes also hit even harder because of it. The theme that plays in the menu screen is truly phenomenal as well, all around, great.

They mix electric guitar with piano and violin, and the song loops are much longer than your average RPG. They did a fantastic job revamping the soundtrack, compared to the original game from the 90s. And the best thing is that both the remake and the classic sountracks are available in the settings. For this one, the new compositions are definitely the way to go.

Falcom really knows what they are doing when it comes to their sountracks, both for Ys and for the Trails series, you just gotta give it to them.

The game is, apparently, not well dubbed, at least in the English PSP version, newer ports are probably better.

I personally applied a Japanese undub patch, so it felt like watching an anime. It worked great during typical dialogue scenes, but sometimes, if the character was actually talking with a certain timing (instead of waiting for a button press) the audio would cut out midway sometimes, no biggie tbh, as subtitles were still there, just kinda jarring and obviously not a problem of the game, but the patch itself.

The graphics

I played 80% of the game on my PSP 3000 and it was a complete joy! Any pictures of it look a bit weird though, because of the PSP’s resolution and the graphical style, however, in the moment it looks great.

The game, as mentioned before, has a mix of 2D assets in a 3D environment. I was slightly mixed about it because I quite liked the 3D character models of Ys Seven, but it grew on me pretty quickly.

It is kind of similar to Donkey Kong Country, with characters modeled in a retro 3D claymation style which I found really endearing, and very much a nod of the classic game. The rest of the world is pretty standard, it has an isometric perspective to it, and all the textures are really well made. Sometimes they are way too detailed though, making it difficult to see things in the PSP’s screen due to the hyper-saturation on the small screen. Playing the modern ports (or the PSP version with PPSSPP like I did) make this a non-issue.

Dialogue scenes will feature anime-style character art, the PSP version looks like old anime while newer ports use a more modern, kinda generic style in my opinion. I loved the PSP art and I really enjoyed some of the detailed drawings made during some big story moments. The game also features a couple of 3D cutscenes with anime-style shading. They looked pretty good I’d say, but they are not the same quality as what can be found on other PSP games; still, a welcome addition for a remake.

Overall thoughts

Somehow this became a review with different sections, I guess I had way more to say about this game than I thought. Huh.

Just like with Ys Seven and pretty much every non-Metroid game I play, I took my sweet time with Ys The Oath in Felghana.

My playthrough begun very early in 2025, in January 10, during a short vacation I took from work right after Christmas. It impressed me a lot then, as I struggled with the first boss fight quite a bit, however, as soon as I saw the “Lower boss difficulty” option after I died, I knew I would have a great time with this game.

I made small progress month after month, in small chunks of time I had available. Due to its design, it was pretty easy to do. Another neat detail is that the game features journal entries, in a similar fashion to Dragon Quest, the journal will remind you of every achievement and significant story event you did before, from beginning to end. This was extremely useful especially when I took breaks beyond a week long.

The Oath In Felghana provides everything an action RPG should have. Fun hack and slash combat, a really fun magic and boost system, a compelling story and characters, plenty of variety in dungeons, fun side-quests (although some are missable), challenging boss battles, plenty of save points, teleports and of quality of life features (you can even disable falling from cliffs for specific moments, which is such a nice touch).

As long as you are okay with dying sometimes and needing to do a couple of grinding sessions (leave room, go back in, kill everyone, repeat) and deal with similar caveats present in classic action rpgs, I believe that Ys: The Oath in Felghana will be a joy for everyone who gives it a try, as it was for me.

This is day 78 of #100DaysToOffload

That was my first thought as soon as I started playing it last week and, turns out, it came out in 2009, so I guess I was a bit early on my estimation, but still close enough.

My statement has nothing to do with the game feeling old, or dated, not at all. It is the biggest praise I can think of, when most modern mobile games flooding the app stores today are nothing but pay2win, always online, ad filled, time wasters. ¹

World of Goo is a physics based puzzle game, where the goal is to reach a pipe to fill a tank with goo balls, in order to advance to the next level. I started playing it because @amin wanted me to check it out! Thanks for the recommendation dude!

Goo balls stick to each other, and can be placed to form bridges, tables, towers and the like, to allow the rest of the balls to reach their goal. There’s a limited amount of goo balls for each level, use too many, and you won’t reach the pipe, not enough, and your structure might fall apart into the void.

But it’s not just about building a structure and reaching the end. This is a physics game, and the goo balls aren’t very sturdy. External factors like wind and spikes, can destroy your goo balls or make your tower crumble on itself. There are also different types of Goo for different usecases, some can float like a balloon, or light on fire, for example.

The puzzle design is absolutely superb, with many different challenges that are fleshed out throughout the levels, some require time and patience, others will need to be solved as quickly as possible, but once you figure them out, you can always try to do it better, and the progression of the levels and variety of each chapter really is something to behold.

World of Goo really allows you think think outside the box, and the most obvious solution might not always be the most efficient, the physics of the game allow you to come up with tons of ways to reach your goal, so each level will count your moves and how many goo balls were left, so if you do it efficiently you can get an OCD achievement and a little flag showing you did it! just for that extra bit of satisfaction. I personally only OCD’d one level in the whole game tho.

The soundtrack was another think I really enjoyed, it was very unique, quirky and atmospheric, it felt kind of classic and elegant, it has class, you know? My favorite song is probably this one.

The writing itself was also great, every level has little signs that will give you hints and ideas, but will also flesh out a bit of story going on behind the scenes. It was very clever and had lots of jokes and fun moments that also feel very 2000s in the good way. I don’t think I got every reference in the game, but no matter, it was still enjoyable to read all the signs just to see what they might contain.

Overall, a fantastic little gem of a game that I finished in around 6 or so hours in a matter of days, I think it’s absolutely worth playing it! I got it for my Nintendo Switch and the touch controls were marvelous. It originally came out on the Wii back in the day, with motion controls which were actually ported to the Switch version, I tried it for a bit and it seemed fun, it apparently has a multiplayer mode too using both joycons as controllers, so I might play this again with my sister!

This is day 18 of #100DaysToOffload.

Quite an interesting game I must say. You live the life of an exocolonist, you create your character, and you live a life in a new planet, as part of the first human civilization out of the Solar System!

You start out as a kid, you have friends and you can choose various activities, like going to school and learning various subjects, playing sports, helping out in the farming or the administration side of things. You can focus on certain skills that can make you better at certain things, and you can develop your relationships with all the kids and characters of the game.

Every time you choose a task to focus on, a month passes, the game has seasons and events that will change accordingly, and over time you grow up, and can do more things.

However, there is a bit of a mystery to this planet, it houses a variety of flora and fauna, there are some dangers to be faced, and losses to be experienced. There are going to be some difficult choices and you can’t make everyone happy.

Every time you choose something to do throughout the month, how well or bad it goes depends on your performance on a deck-building game. You get cards by living through different experiences and they have different values, colors and properties. You can play straights, flushes, pairs and such hands until you reach a certain score—or you don’t, sometimes you just lose—and then the result will affect that particular playthrough.

Honestly, I wasn’t that much into the mechanics at first, but it won me over time, and what I liked the most were the more cosmic and alien aspects of the whole thing. Later in the game you get to explore outside the colony, and some of the story bits that can happen out there are maybe my favorite moments of my playthrough, it had a mind-blowing experience.

This is a game that definitely suggests you to try out different things and play it multiple times, it is a really interesting take on a genre I haven’t really explored much yet. You can of course never go outside if you don’t want to, focus on studying sciences, or helping to administrate the colony itself, or defend it, it is honestly quite varied.

Citizen Sleeper comes to mind as a very similar game to this one. I have to say I liked it a little more when it comes to the artstyle, the design and concepts of it, but that’s because I like to read about dystopian and cyberpunk stuff a little too much, I Was A Teenage Exocolonist is not far behind. I think Citizen depends more on luck in many of the choices, you genuinely can’t do everything you wish to do, where Exocolonist gives more control and if you play your cards well, you can win almost every challenge.

Honestly, give it a go! I truly think that I will like it even more on a replay with the things I know now and how it ends, very cool science fiction gaming.

This is day 12 of #100DaysToOffload

My point is, I don’t really have any nostalgia or background with this franchise when I decided to pick up this game. The only reason I even cared about it was because it showed up in my favorite gaming podcast Into The Aether where they said it was a Metroidvania, and an early GOTY contender. That’s what got me interested.

A Metroidvania game once again! this year I have already finished Ori and the Blind Forest, Metroid Fusion and Metroid Zero Mission. It is a genre I really enjoy, and seeing all the praise this game received, I decided to buy it. All of this happened in May, 2024. Yeah. I really took my time for this one…

TL;DR: the game is amazing, a wonderful blend of exploration, combat and platforming, to traverse the lost cities of Mount Qaf, filled with secrets to find, enemies to defeat, and paths to uncover.

What’s the story?

The game takes place in Mount Qaf, a place where the flow of time is different from the outside world. We find a lot of different environments and they are all super different and varied. Most areas are quite recognizable too and distinguishable from each other, making exploration really enjoyable and worthwhile.

The story itself is nothing too special, you are Sargon, part of a group of warriors called the Immortals, and your mission is to save the Prince of Persia, who has been kidnapped and taken hostage inside Mount Qaf, a mythological region frozen in time, filled with mysteries and dangers. There’s a couple of plot twists, and by the end you have to save reality itself, or something like that. It has some good moments and great concepts, but the writing is not the best, and lots of seemingly important things or possibilities just never develop further.

It is a rather convoluted and disconnected plot, things happen just because, there’s underutilized characters with lost potential and, it’s just a mess. If you are looking for a solid story that will hook you to see what’s next, this really ain’t it.

There is a lot of mythology and lore to find which is somewhat interesting, related to myths and legends of Persian culture, I don’t know how much of it is taken from real life and how much is just part of the game’s worldbuilding, but it was still nice to collect and read some of the scrolls, poems and dialogues.

What does it bring to the table?

One of the defining traits of this game when compared to old and new games in the genre, is its quality of life features for backtracking and traversal. This game has a few welcome innovations—and a couple of weird caveats—with plenty of save points and teleport stations, making traversal really easy, there’s a feature to teleport between save points later on, making late-game backtracking even more of a breeze.

The game is of course, a Metroidvania, you explore all of what you can, get stuck, find some upgrade or power-up, and go check all of the places you could not reach before, face a few bosses and unlock more upgrades, rinse and repeat until you reach the end!

All of the power-ups in this game are pretty good, usually related to time and space, and a all of them, like the eventual double jump—is it really a spoiler if it is always there?—really open up the map in new ways and getting them after facing the difficult bosses who guard them, was an incredibly rewarding feeling.

For some reason, the game lacks a mini-map. I found myself constantly opening up the map screen, which is at least very well designed and has a button mapped to it.

This game has an ace though, Memory Shards, an item to literally take a screenshot of your location and pin it on the map, is an incredible feature that I will miss in other Metroidvania games from now on. This makes the exploration much better and it’s really hard to get lost!

Unique playstyles and customization

The game let’s you customize your playstyle with different amulets, each taking up slots in a necklace. They offer you different skills that will change the way you play, for example there’s an amulet to increase your attack damage, or to increase defense, or to refill your magic quicker, or to have extra combos and attacks, among many others, due to the limited amount you can wear, you can experiment and create your own builds.

The game puts a great highlight on the combat, what a parry system, a huge moveset revolving around sword fighting, and lots of mobility options to position yourself, create opportunities for combos, and deal with multiple enemies at once.

Unlike in Metroid Dread or Samus Returns, The Lost Crown’s parry system is not a must, but it is rather useful. You can develop your playstyle around it, or avoid it for the most part. I was not the best at doing it, and it wasn’t as easy as Metroid’s, but I could do it around two thirds of the time and it was always satisfying to land, both on regular enemies and of course, bosses.

There are also certain moves that will punish you if you try to parry them, which makes it so you can’t just go and parry everything, but you have to be quick between parrying and avoiding incoming attacks.

There’s a few other weapons in your arsenal, used for combat and puzzle mechanics, such as arrows and other long range weapons, as well as special attacks and skills that are available after filling up a magic bar (known as Athra in this case), these are usually more flashy and strong attacks, or buffs to your health or damage.

Difficult boss fights

The boss fights are on the more difficult side of the genre, similar to Metroid Dread or Hollow Knight with encounters that feature multiple attack patterns and phases that you need to learn and master in order to achieve victory. They are all quite challenging, and some of their attacks are harder to read. As a fan of Monster Hunter, getting to learn the behavior and attacks that enemies do is pretty important, most of the attacks are well telegraphed, but some come out of nowhere, it’s all just part of the journey.

In general, the difficulty curve of the bosses can be pretty mixed, some are hard to grasp at first, but once you beat it once, you can do it over and over again, some other bosses were a little more luck based. The order of the bosses felt a little weird too, sometimes I faced a very hard boss that took me dozens of attempts and trying different strategies, and then the next one only took two or three tries to beat. I think the boss designs and patterns were all good, but some are better executed than others.

This is not a game where you can just mash buttons at random, the parry mechanics during boss fights are really good, there’s plenty of opportunities to take the risk and deal great damage, with great animations sequences to reward the player, however, if you fail, the boss will also execute some pretty strong attack with an equally cool animation to witness.

In some boss fights there can be some quick time events, requiring you to hit some buttons to execute a certain action sequence. However they are very forgiving and didn’t detract from my experience with the game, I never lost a fight because of one, but they can be disabled in the settings.

Challenging platforming

With so many options for traversal, the game is not afraid to challenge the player with multiple platforming segments being straight up obstacle courses one has to beat to unlock some side-quests and collectibles, and even to progress in the story.

There are multiple long sections filled with with spikes, multiple enemies, single-use platforms, death traps, homing missiles, bottomless pits and plenty of other things arranged in pretty complex patterns that will need you to do some quick button inputs, memorize where projectiles come from and to never trip or lose a beat in order to succeed.

If you have played Celeste before, or similar platformer games, you should be good to go. Most of the time those environmental danges will not make you return all the way back to a save point, but will reduce your life bit by bit if you die too many times.

Personally, I didn’t found any completely crazy or unfair challenge, but I was already used to Celeste, and I think I’m pretty decent at platforming in general, with some patience, no challenge is impossible to complete. With that said, if the shinespark puzzles in Metroid Dread were too much for you, this may prove difficult as well.

The sound, and the visuals

I found most of the soundtrack to work very well for me, it has that middle east feel to it, with pretty other-worldly voices and choirs, a great set of strings and other instruments that gave it a very mythological and ancient aura. I really enjoyed it and never took me out of the experience.

I will admit, I didn’t find it super memorable, it is mostly environmental and does not have many strong leit motifs that get stuck to my head. I am currently listening to it as writing this though, because it is fantastic. I can see myself reading or writing with it in the background more often.

The dub work was well done, I think the addition of Persian dub acting was great, the kind of thing I would not have expected Ubisoft to do, but they delivered. and I picked it for 60% of my playthrough. I selected Spanish for a few segments (from Spain, no Latin Spanish option sadly), and English for the rest.

I loved the aesthetics of the game, it has a similar style to Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series, or the Spideverse movies. It looks fantastic and will age very well in the future in my opinion, it has a bit of that cell-shaded look too, especially during boss fights and the coup de grâce animations.

I played this game on my Switch in both portable and docked mode, and I did not have any trouble at any point of the game. There were some visual glitches during cutscenes, especially with shadows and rain. However, during gameplay, other than some slightly long loading times, I never had any significant slow downs or graphical issues.

The boss and character designs were great and the whole world manages to fit together, despite the variety of environments. All of the boss attacks and patterns have a ton of flare, their special movies were amazing to watch, I even let myself get hit a couple times, because they were so cool! It also made me want to try to parry their moves to get my own counter attack animations.

Accessibility options

The in-game quality of life features are plenty, as previously mentioned, Memory Shards are great, the game lets you buy maps, kind of like in Hollow Knight, and after you get the map, you can also unlock the locations of secrets and collectibles, making completing the game viable for everyone, without the need of shooting at every corner of the map, although there’s some of that in some places.

Many of the amulets and surges can ease the difficulty and help you get through to the game, but sometimes they can be hard to obtain.

The game has multiple accessibility options in the menu, like letting you parry even if you aren’t facing the enemy, colorblind and high contrast modes, highlighting secrets, and even skipping difficult platforming sections, there’s plenty of awesome quality of life features that can be turned on and off as desired, and I think that’s not to be taken for granted, specially in a game of this style and difficulty.

Finishing thoughts

If you want to find a game with similar difficulty to Hollow Knight, great fluidity of movement, boss battles like Metroid Dread, the smooth traversal of Ori and the Blind Forest, and the intense platforming of Celeste, I think you got a winner here.

Even though the story is nothing note-worthy, it gets the job done, and it still has some great moments. All the quests and objectives are clearly laid out and it is hard to get lost.

There are lots of secrets and passages to find, some side quests and extra boss fights or optional platforming segments that let you find collectibles and other things. Some of them were incredibly difficult and some of them didn’t have great prizes, but the pure challenge was pretty fun for me.

I took my time with this game, starting it in May and only finishing it until this month, I don’t know why I decided to wait so long, I even played two Metroid games in the middle of it all. However, returning was always easy, I could just look at the map, get a glance of where to go and figure out how to get there. The worst part was getting to the end of the game and literally avoiding the final boss fight for 3 hours, because I thought I still had lots to do.

In the end, I beat the game in 32 hours, and collected around 72% of the items, so, it is a bit of a journey, but very much worth it. I wish to go back to it at some point in the future.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is my Game of the Year.

This is day 92 of #100DaysToOffload, and post 7 of #WritingMonth

Sadly I didn’t manage to end the game before the club meetings on Discord, but I finished it a couple days later on August 1st.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into, and I was completely unaware of what it was about. By the title alone I thought it would be some sort of crime or detective story, and it kind of is, but it’s much more than that.

The gameplay itself is pretty much a first person walking simulator. You are on your way to your old home where you used to live as a child. The gameplay revolves around finding different items that will recreate the events behind a family member’s passing. These events feature different gameplay styles and perspectives, in one of them you control an old camera you take pictures with, in another one you’ll read a comic book and move around in it.

The game has wonderful writing, excellent voice acting and great music. The family house is quite big, and it was built with secret entrances and shortcuts that you discover throughout your journey, it’s a rather cozy, yet creepy building that I enjoyed exploring. Each vignette or flashback is unique and creative, some are better than others, but they all have something special.

There is quite a lot to think about while playing this game; family, melancholy, life, and death. The game deals with these things and because of that, they may not be for someone dealing with loss or tragedy. It feels like a complete work of art, an experience everyone should have, at the right time.

Somehow, I think I will return to this game, not because it’s super fun or action packed, but it gives you time to think and reflect in a way few pieces of media do.

This is day 65 of #100DaysToOffload

This game is beloved by many for a lot of reasons, and it is also very different to what the franchise had done in the past. It puts more focus on its story-telling, it is more linear in nature, it features a new threat to the galaxy, and an AI computer giving directions to lead the player.

A lot of people dislike the linearity of this game compared to the others. While in Super Metroid you can play it upside down, with the boss fights in opposite order, get the upgrades you want and even skip some; in Fusion, you are told what to do and where to go, and sequence-breaks are mostly impossible, due to the removal of bomb-jumping and infinite wall-jumps and the overall world design.

To me, this is perfectly justified for story and gameplay’s sake.

The story begins with Samus being attacked by a the X, a virus that deems her and her armor useless, the Federation finds a cure, but she basically starts from scratch and weaker than ever, although she’s now immune to the X which will prove useful in this adventure.

Her mission this time takes place in a space station where the X was going to be studied. Obviously, it doesn’t go well, and she now has to try and survive in this place full of enemies that can take the shape and knowledge of whatever they absorbes. Of course, the X that infected her before, have created a replica of herself, which is now free to wander around the station, wreak havoc and track you down.

With the focus on the story, they had to sacrifice some of the freedom just for the story-bits and sequences to make more sense. The upgrades are not powers left by an ancient civilization, but data sent by the Federation. And you don’t really discover them, you are told to get them to keep going.

The man-made space station is not designed to be an open canvas for exploration like the planets in the rest of the franchise. Even though it’s full of different biomes to traverse, it is still artificial and industrial. You are there to follow a mission in a more strict sense, and while you’re alone, you’re never truly free like in the other games, which makes this one quite a different take from the others.

Besides, this more linear approach makes the game ideal for handheld gaming. You can get from point A to point B in a matter of minutes, get save rooms right before a boss fight, and the map is also better than ever in the franchise, although it’s vastly improved on later games.

While the game is not as replayable—at least by the standards of other Metroid games—unless you follow a guide, you’ll still have a lot of upgrades to find, you can improve your times, master the boss fights and patterns—which are really challenging by the way—and try to go for the best ending!

I love this game, I had a blast playing it just like with Zero Mission. I highly recommend it!

My only gripe is I got 98% of the items, which makes me mad, but it is how it is.

This is day 61 of #100DaysToOffload.

Months ago I finally begun a new playthrough, since I think I lost my save file again, the farther I got to was the fight with the Piranha Plant at the Airport. This time, I started on my PSP and again, forgot about it, but after moving my save to the Miyoo Mini Plus, I thought it was time to finish it once and for all.

In case you don’t know. Mario & Luigi is an RPG series set in the Mario universe, in a similar style to Paper Mario and Super Mario RPG. Superstar Saga is the first game of the series and it was originally released on the Game Boy Advance in 2003—more than 20 years ago at this point.

The game differs from most regular turn based combat RPGs for a simple reason, not only can you attack an enemy in a variety of ways, but you can also improve your damage output, evade enemy attacks and counter them too. This is done by pressing the A and B buttons at specific times, kind of like quick time events, except they are actually fun. It ends up being more like a rythm game in the end, and it remains fresh the entire playthrough.

So, for example, instead of going through a menu, choosing an action, waiting for it to happen, be hit in response and wait your next turn. You use a hammer, press a button right before the swing’s about to happen, and boost your damage! Then the enemy get’s close to attack you, you jump to avoid it, and land on him to counter-attack.

Anyway, while the combat is really, really fun, the traversal around the World is also not bad, featuring platforming and puzzles. Mario and Luigi can use different jumps, tools, abilities and items to get where they need to be, and these can also become “Bros. Attacks” that are combo attacks where both characters combine their strenght to do much more damage together, kind of like Chrono Trigger, but with their own twist.

Storywise, it’s just great writing, the comedy is gold, and all the characters in the game are charming and well done. Basically, Peach gets her voice stolen by a fake embassy from the Beanbean Kingdom who turn out to be the main villains Cackletta and Fawful. So, Mario & Luigi have to go after them to get it back. The premise is pretty unique and ridiculous, and it’s so good!

The boss battles are really well designed and they are full of interesting mechanics and attacks to learn and avoid. They are also a bit on the easy side, which is good and bad. For example, some of them even had attacks I never saw because I defeated them too quickly, which is a bit of a shame. Of course your mileage may vary.

The most difficult areas for me were the last two dungeons, because enemies hit really hard and avoiding them was quite a pain. However, they are very useful for farming EXP and coins once you figure them out.

The game also has items you can use to change the gameplay quite a bit and help you on your adventure, there are many different badges to obtain, some will refill your Bros. Points (needed to perform Bros. Attacks), others will improve your defense, and stuff like that. You can change your pants to gain other bonuses too. There’s tons of secrets and upgrades to find, it’s quite cozy.

Anwyay, it’s one of the best games on the GBA, I think it holds up extremely well to this day, and it has a remake on the Switch too in case you’re interested on trying it, I would say it’s worth playing. It is only 16 or so hours, although I took my time with it, at around 23 hours to complete it.

Give it a go!

This is day 59 of #100DaysToOffload.

I actually completed this before on my PSP years ago, and I also started this playthrough on it, and had a couple of hours of progress, however, when I got my Miyoo Mini Plus, I also transferred my save file and kept going!

The game holds up well to this well, but of course if you’ve played Metroid Dread or Samus Returns, you won’t find the same movement and controls as those entries, first of all, the GBA does not have as many inputs as the Switch or the 3DS, not even an SNES, so some additions had to be made.

Despite this, I think there’s a lot of people who agree that Zero Mission’s controls, borrowed from the previously released Metroid Fusion, are really, really good, and even better than Super Metroid’s, specially because of the new physics and mechanics.

The game is designed to be easy to pick up and play, being a made for a portable console, save rooms are plentiful and the colors are quite bright, due to the lack of a backlight on the original GBA, this might break some of the immersion that Super had with its darker, more atmospheric look, but keeping that in mind, the art style is simply great, alongside the wonderful soundtrack, although it wasn’t the best on the Miyoo Mini speakers…

Anyway, I had tons of fun going through this adventure, defeating the classic Metroid bosses, and even completing some shinespark puzzles, which I never managed to do when I was younger. I think this is one of those games you should definitely play at least once, it is not very long. I completed it in a bit over 4 hours, with a completion rate of 67%, but if is is your first time it might take you 7 or 8.

This is day 57 of #100DaysToOffload

My oldest memories go back to playing a bit of GTA San Andreas and just being a troublemaker for 10 or so minutes before I got bored.

I also recall having a lot of fun in GTA Vice City Stories and Liberty City Stories on my PSP, the world there was quite big for the tiny console it’s on, and I usually just went mission after mission, maybe saving places that had cool cars and stuff like that. The world was fun to run around in when escaping the police or trying to jump from ramps, maybe finding some collectible, that’s about it.

Breath of the Wild completely changes this, but I won’t talk much about that one like until I’m done with it!

In the case of A Short Hike, the goal is simple, you are going to get a phone call, but you’ll need to get to the mountain’s peak to have signal!

Mechanically, you can move, glide in the air and interact with a variety of things in the map.

The Island is rather small, but it still feels like it expands the more you play, I liked that. Also there are a lot of side quests to discover! When you interact with people they will ask for your help, teach you how to fish, or want to play Beachstickball with you.

There were times where I felt a bit weird, I wanted to get to the mountain top already, but I also had the itch to keep exploring, I had my doubts that those deviations actually mattered that much. And yeah, they are simple extra things to do, but in the end, that’s what the game’s about, it’s about the journey and the friends you make along the way!

The dialogues are simple, witty and funny, I kept talking and looking for NPCs, and almost everytime it would pay off, I would get a hat, or a shovel!

There really is no rush, no big plot or grandiose scale, you are on vacation after all, and you can take your time to explore as much as you want, or to go to the mountain top as soon as you collect the required golden feathers, which work as your stamina to climb or fly higher in the game.

The game has a wonderful artstyle, reminiscent of the Nintendo DS or late GBA titles, and the music is wonderfully done too, changing as you hike the mountain or discover new places. I will probably use these for my ringtones or something, they’re quite nice.

A Short Hike is a short game, I only played it for little more than 2 hours, but it was a worthwhile experience for me and I still had some stuff to find, maybe later, there’s no rush.

This is day 31 of #100DaysToOffload