VG Review 2019-2020

--- PREAMBLE ---

I've played a lot of good video games over the past year, and you should too. These are all blind/first-play playthroughs for me. There'll probably be spoilers, but I wanted to give a review of each game, as I enjoyed all of them in one way or another, and I hope you will too if you haven't already.

tldr play FE4, DQ11(S or no S), and all Kirby.

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--- FIRE EMBLEM ---

First off, in the latter-half of 2019 I played games in the Fire Emblem series. I liked Three Houses a lot (I did two playthroughs of each of the routes). I wanted more.


-- Fire Emblem (9) - Path of Radiance --
Ike was a refreshing protag to see. Black Knight is a jerk. Solid game that felt very similar to the GBA games that I had played already, down to the artwork of the characters. Shove is a good mechanic. Had to retry a few missions for survivability, but nothing too frustrating. Highly recommend if you enjoyed the GBA FE games.


-- Fire Emblem (10) - Radiant Dawn --
Shoutouts to people who like to use the Dawn Brigade, but I had nothing but trouble with them. Lots of characters with not much flexibility to use the ones I wanted to because of split paths. It was both good and bad; good because of requiring use of all characters and their unique traits, but bad because I could never really decide what characters were my favorites to use at the very end except for the blatantly obvious (to me, anyway) overpowered ones. Very nice that you could save mid-map because turns could take a very long time. Endgame tower has best jams, which was definitely the highlight for me. The Price (3-10) was the most painful FE experience I ever had, even with skip animations on. Good game still, but hard to go back to for me.


-- Fire Emblem (4) - Genealogy of the Holy War --
My favorite FE experience of all time. I don't know if it was the engaging story and protags or the early SNES tunes, but I loved it all. Also another tough one to go back to, but it's a treasured memory of a game for me now. Sigurd is blue-haired Ted Danson. Enjoyed the big map setup, sequential objectives, and saving mid-map, since the game doesn't have as many maps as other FE titles. Highly recommend for anyone considering a little bit of a different FE experience with a number of the same mechanics.


-- Fire Emblem (5) - Thracia 776 --
I used save states, and I'm not ashamed. It was as hard as I heard people say it was. None of the tunes really stuck out to me except maybe recruiting theme. I go back and watch streams of this, and every single map I think "oh, it's this map." Definitely easy to remember the struggles I had with each map, which shows that it was a refreshing challenge to me. If you think FE games are too easy and predictable, I'd give this game a good try. Watch out for stars.


-- Fire Emblem (11) - Shadow Dragon --
I was hesitant to play this. The reviews I heard of the game mentioned that this game was relatively bland compared to the others. I will agree that none of the chapters particularly stood out to me as memorable except for the last one (rip Minerva). I liked some of Caeda's dialogues for recruitment; good character. I did play this vanilla though, so I think I'd get more out of it if I played around with the character classes and let characters die to access the "secret" chapters. I honestly had to push to finish the game. If you play it, play on a higher difficulty if you can or explore the different classes. Otherwise, it wasn't remarkable to me.

-- FE12 someday I'll get to... --

FE has some good tactical games. The first one I played was Fire Emblem (7) after watching iateyourpie play on Twitch. If you like tactical games in any format, I'd recommend starting with that or Three Houses just for the pure video game playing experience. Video games are good, and this is a good series of tactical video games.

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--- DRAGON QUEST ---

First half of 2020 was Dragon Quest. It started when I downloaded the demo of DQ11S on my Switch and started playing it. Got through it in about 5 hours, but I enjoyed the characters and music. I felt I took a bit of a risk in buying DQ11S because I wasn't 100% sold, but I went ahead and tried. No regrets, btw.


-- Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age --

After playing all the other ones after this game, DQ11S still holds up as my favorite Dragon Quest. It scratched my traditional JRPG itch. The music is phenomenal. I had no idea that a number of tracks were remixes of older game tracks until I played them, which made me appreciate them more. As trope-y (I don't mind tropes much btw) and predictable the story was, I had a hard time not thinking about the next thing that could possibly happen. Very engaging story with a great cast of characters. It probably helped that I like Toriyama's character designs to begin with. I liked hammering things with crafting. If you've never played a Dragon Quest game before, I'd recommend giving the demo a try at the very least.


-- Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King (3DS) --

I'd heard a lot of praise for this game. I think I may have gone it with too high of expectations, but I still very much enjoyed the game. Boss theme is a banger of a tune. If there's anything that I discovered playing the Dragon Quest series, it's that they all have very good traditional stories. I got walled at the same point probably everyone else got walled at in their first playthroughs (Dhoulmagus). Kitty is great. Very relaxing overworld tune. Decent crafting system, but I never did unlock the ultimate item (the tensifier or whatever it's called). Although the soundtrack isn't as good on 3DS as it is on PS2, I'd still recommend 3DS for the extra content. I guess you could play with a hack to modify the soundtrack if you have homebrew maybe? Anyway GG I'd give it a try if you are able to.


-- Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (DS) --

The gap between 11 and 8 was a lot smaller than 8 and 5 in terms of feel. This felt like a completely different RPG. Not much to say about this game, but I did enjoy the monster system. I picked Bianca and regretted it. I'm sad that I never used Sancho, in retrospect. Good game that I'd recommend, but not for any particular reason.


-- Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen (DS) --

Refreshing game where you start off playing as different characters that eventually all come together. Out of 4-6, this was probably my favorite. My final party consisted of MC and the Alena crew. If you want a cast with a lot of variety without any real downsides that makes you think about the crew composition, then this is the game for you. Feat. Torneko Taloon.


-- Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation (DS) --

Uhh....I got lost. A lot. That's what I remember. This game is a great challenge, and it was my intro to Alltrades Abbey and the class system. The customization for classes was very nice to have on set party members. I could've cared less about the cast of characters, but the gameplay was fun. I did enjoy the endgame story with the despair and overcoming it. Final boss is a jerk. Battle theme was my favorite part of the game. That's all I can really say.

-- Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past (3DS) --
This game takes a REALLY LONG time to get started. It's also a game that you have to take a lot of time and investment to complete compared to the others. If you can manage that, you'll be rewarded with great tunes and a really neat story. As many times as I got stuck, I challenged myself to not look anything up, and I completed that challenge. Another game featuring the class system partway through with Alltrades Abbey, it did an excellent job once again utilizing classes. Big fan of monster classes. If you are looking for a game with a lot of hours to sink, here you go!


-- Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation (Switch) --

Disclaimer: Don't play the Switch version. Play the SFC version, if you can. It had nothing particularly bad, but it took out some of the charm by removing enemy attack animations. The port itself feels particularly sloppy, but I can't place why.

I wanted to play this mostly so that I could watch speedruns, because the speedruns are impressive. Another Alltrades Abbey game, although this time the levels reset along with the classes, and there doesn't appear to be any real benefit from switching classes besides regretting the classes you already have. Definitely got stuck a number of times (getting past the volcano comes to mind). I don't know if this or DQ8 walled me more with the midboss dude, but Baramos was a pickle in this version. Good classic game. I can appreciate what the devs did back for a game this old. Highly recommend for a good perspective on DQ series.


-- Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (DS) --

I...I really don't know what to think of this. I think I enjoyed it by the end? Another Alltrades Abbey game (I played 4 of the games in a row feat. classes without realizing it). I enjoyed it a lot more once I understood class point allocations. The story felt a bit disjointed to me, but I liked the customization that this game offered. There's also more with postgame that you can do if you can access it. Apparently postgame dungeons require some codes that you need access to wifi to, but good luck setting that up nowadays. I had to push to finish this game, but I enjoyed the tragic tale of the final boss similar to DQ4's. This is a very grindy game if you plan on crafting things. I had a difficult time getting engaged with the game, but it may be worth a try if you enjoyed the other DQ games (especially DQ3).

-- --

Good series overall. Not amazing for gameplay unless traditional JRPG is amazing to you, but they tell really good stories with accompanying music. I'd still recommend DQ11 demo if you can try it to see how you mesh with it. No regrets playing this series, as it has been one I've wanted to try for a very long time. Also heard good things about DQ Builders that I'll have to try someday.

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--- KIRBY ---

Interesting how I got into this kick: I was playing Kirby Star Allies for my kids (3 and 1), and I got interested in the bonus characters featured in these game that I wasn't too familiar with. I replayed some of the other games I already had associations with the characters on (Gooey, Ade, Magolor), but I hadn't played the other games. Kirby games aren't groundbreakingly amazing by any means in terms of features, but I've never not enjoyed playing a Kirby game. I figured that I could try the games through Wii U Virtual Console and 3DS Digital, so here's the list.


-- Kirby: Squeak Squad --

This was the first one recommended to me, so I decided to try it. Squeak Squad theme is super good. Didn't understand the appeal of the bubble ability. Good classic Kirby title.


-- Kirby and the Amazing Mirror --

Warranting several playthroughs for me, I enjoyed it a lot more when I discovered there was a button to view the map. I had no idea there were maps up to that point; I was simply pressing buttons. One of my favorites in the end. Also liked :3 fire bat miniboss. The mechanics for a number of bosses were my favorite to encounter. Highly recommend.


-- Kirby: Triple Deluxe --

Archer ability is super good. Hypersuction was...it was something. Sectonia theme is a banger tune, along with miniboss theme. I just loved the original themes in this game (I think they were original? IDK because Kirby uses a lot of remixes). Dedede Drum Dash was fun. Good game.


-- Kirby: Planet Robobot --

Based Jet. This game has my favorite remixes of any Kirby game. Thank you for bringing back Dark Castle theme. I liked punching cars. The overall dun DUN duh dun DUN Planet Robobot recurring theme was well-appreciated. I had no idea about the final boss, but that was a pleasant surprise. Please play this game if you like Kirby games.

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I replayed a lot of older Kirby games too. I'm still in the process of doing so because my kids love Kirby (we have a Kirby Chef plush that my 1-year-old daughter adores). I have nothing bad to say about these Kirby games.

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--- EPILOGUEish ---

Thanks for reading some or all of my reviews. I had fun reliving these through typing. Play more video games. Try new/old video games that you have yet to play. I will keep doing so because I like video games.