In this episode of “buying random older games because nothing is coming out right now”, this is a Metroidvania that I thought looked a bit interesting. It’s made by a studio in Israel, and as far as I can find it’s that company’s first game, which is pretty cool (and the studio itself seems a bit strange, actually being the internal game development company of a school? Huh).

So let’s check it out!

Got a bunch of reviews out since the last monthly release post, that’s nice. Those were mostly for March releases though (and a game from last year). April has been a whole lot of nothing, so the only actual April 2022 game I might end up having a review for is one I didn’t even list last time because I completely missed it, that being the Gotta Protectors sequel.

May isn’t quite as dead as April, but it’s still a bit on the quieter side, with no BIG releases. There is some cool smaller stuff though. Some game companies (specifically Nintendo) seem like they might be waking up starting in June, with a bunch of games being on the way at that point. For May, I’m highlighting: 11 multiplats, 3 Switch games, and 3 PC games. And there are games I will actually get in there. I’m thinking there are 4-5 games I might get.

Let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, small interesting ones I may notice, and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

I kinda completely missed the first Blue Reflection game (though I did research it very mildly before writing this review). I’m not entirely sure WHY I missed it, as it’s an RPG made by what seems to be the team behind the Atelier games, or at least a team somewhat related to it (considering how crafting works), and this offers something pretty close to Atelier. You figure I’d have checked this out, but it took me until the sequel to notice it.

I ended up buying it recently while it was on sale at Amazon Canada, and then I waited because early this year was super busy game-wise, and I had plenty of other stuff to play through, so this took a backseat for a while. But finally, game releases calmed down a bunch, and I got to finally play it.

So let’s see if it’s good!

I was pretty excited about this game. It looked really cool. It’s pretty okay, but by the end, I was just tired of playing it. I have 92% of the game done now and I’m not feeling like finishing it.  I don’t really have a whole review’s worth of things to say about it. So I’ll keep it quick, and vague, and I will not even have a real “read more” link.

The game is kinda fun with the deliberately slow movement/attacks (which makes sense, to simulate the kind of stuff you see in Kaiju movies… it’s not a complaint I’m actually completely fine with this) and an okay amount of okay attack options, but every level is the same thing with the same combat scenarios over and over, there’s barely any level design, and not much going on other than the fact that it’s a super cool concept that’s executed okay-ish. I like what it’s doing, but I wish it did it a bit better.

I’d recommend this one at a good discount only, as there are lots of much better recent beat ’em ups like Streets of Rage 4 or River City Girls or the Kunio-kun + Double Dragon collection. Get those before getting this one.

I’ve mentioned a few times recently that I previously gave a very negative review for the last Kirby game, Kirby Star Allies. It was pretty pathetic how bad it was in every gameplay aspect (a game that actively hated the fact that someone was playing it, so it beat bosses for you and solved puzzles for you and had no actual… design). Star Allies is the only bad mainline Kirby, as Kirby was previously a solid series with only good games. So when this was announced, I was definitely liking what I was seeing, but I was a bit wary of it. You know, just in case.

But I still got it at launch after avoiding the demos and every trailer other than the announcement one. So let’s go and see if Kirby is back to his usual quality!

Well January, February and March were quite the decent first couple months for 2022. Things are certainly calming down now, evidenced by the fact that fucking nothing is coming out in April. Game industry giving gamers time to breathe, finally. Heck, unless announcements start happening soon there’s also nothing coming out in May. Hopefully game companies actually start announcing release dates for the rest of the year because things are getting a bit empty other than some of the stuff Nintendo announced at their recent Direct.

As for me, well I just reviewed 3 pretty solid games, and I have started Ghostwire Tokyo and Kirby, and Tiny Tina’s Probably Crappy Game is downloaded, so those are getting reviews soon. I actually don’t know if I’ll be buying anything that’s coming out in April, I think there’s 2 “maybe” games… but there’s a few other 2022 games I haven’t gotten to so it’s not like I ran out of stuff to play… thankfully. And I’ll have time to catch up on anime which is nice.

April 2022 has basically nothing to highlight, so I’m trying hard to get any content here. I’m highlighting: 3 multiplats, 5 Switch games, and one game journalist Sony fanboy fail. There’s one game of note pretty much. The rest is filler. This is also a “why is this a game that actually exists” kinda month, half these releases should probably not be a thing.

Let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, small interesting ones I may notice, and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

I had high hopes for this one, it being a game made by ex-Persona staff. So I got it at launch last week and played it a bunch in-between playing Elden Ring.

I am now 20 hours in and I’m fucking done. That puts me around the halfway mark of the game, and I feel like things are either getting worse, or I just can’t take it anymore. This is very unfortunate, but wow, this game is something else. And not in a good way.

So I am NOT reviewing it since… you know… I can’t (because I didn’t finish it… take note, “professional” reviewers), but at least I’ll give my impressions so far and explain why I’m done with it… This is as much as you’re getting from me review-wise for this one.

Let’s go!

Well, I’m going in with this post a bit earlier than usual. The reason why is the same reason I posted my Sifu review before fully finishing it… because things are about to get WILD. Monark is out tomorrow, Elden Ring is out on Friday… and March has a LOT of games. So I’m just getting a bit ahead of the game here, basically.

For March 2022 I’m highlighting: 15 multiplats, 7 Switch games, and 2 PC releases. That number doesn’t look like anything special in a vacuum, but what IS special is what games are there.

Literally, I’m buying at least 8 of these for sure, and there are several “maybes” as well. And even some of the games I’m not interested in myself ARE huge, or look really cool but might not be something I’m that interested in. This might be one of the biggest months in gaming in YEARS.

Let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, small interesting ones I may notice, and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

Konami almost made a game! Whoa! Actually, they got someone else to make it, but it’s nice. What’s even nicer is that this is a sequel to a classic game that no one knows about because it never made its way outside of Japan (random note: stupidly, you can get the classic game alongside this, but you need to get the deluxe edition of this game and it’s not available otherwise… which is fucking stupid… also it’s not translated).

Getsu Fuuma Den was a bit similar to Castlevania, but it also had a world map to explore, NPCs to talk to, and dungeons where you’d have a cool “behind-the-back” view of Getsu Fuma. It was pretty darn cool, and it never got a sequel up until now (with a sequel planned for PS2 that was canned). You may have seen Getsu Fuma in a few places, like the shitty Castlevania smartphone game, or as a few cards in Yu-Gi-Oh, or as one of the playable characters in the also-japan-only game Konami’s Wai Wai World (also a great game). He’s been around, but generally, it’s been a dormant series since the Famicom. So I was pretty hyped when this was announced… and then the release was shadow-dropped during the last Nintendo Direct, so that’s fun.

Let’s see if it’s a good revival!

This was a bit of a random buy. A friend told me about it, and the one trailer I checked looked cool, so I picked it up, knowing not too much about it otherwise. Had some cool retro game inspirations there.

I think I’ll make this a fast review, so let’s not waste time in the intro. Let’s go!