Got a good amount of posts out this month, which is always cool. 10 posts in a month is quite solid. Don’t have much in the oven since I just posted a bunch, but Xenoblade 3 is coming out tomorrow so yeah.

August may be lacking in HUGE releases, but it does have some COOL SMALLER releases. I like me some less budget-intensive, good games. Here I’m highlighting: 20 Multiplats and 2 PC games. I’m probably getting 6-7 of those. Shame Massage Freaks was delayed for stupid reasons.

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, some more niche stuff 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.

As a big fan of SNES RPGs, this is one that I’ve always wanted to try, but never have. There was a translated rom (which is how I got into some of the classics like FF5, Seiken Densetsu 3 and a few others) but still this is one I never ended up checking out for some reason.

I was pretty excited when this was recently announced at a Nintendo Direct, using the HD-2D style.

Well let’s see what I’ve been missing all this time!

A bit of a random pick-up from me, as I wasn’t super sure I wanted to pick it up… but I did. The trailers looked kinda fun. It’s obviously a take on Contra. It’s been said that it’s by the devs of Contra 4, though I’m not sure if people say that just because it’s a WayForward game, or if it’s the same actual people working on it, but either way, there’s some good possibility of them making a good game in this style since WayForward did some amazing work on Contra 4.

So let’s go and check it out!

This game came out last year. I played the demo, thought it might be okay, put it on my wishlist, and waited over a year to get it.

I am calling this a review, but honestly I wouldn’t normally do that. But I DID finish the game, I just don’t know if there’s anything more to it because… well… read the review. I might actually be wrong about some things here.

Let’s go? This will be a short one because there’s weirdly little to talk about here.

This is from a classic series that started on the Famicom as Kiki Kaikai. It came to the US later, on the SNES, and was renamed to Pocky & Rocky, probably because a title like Kiki Kaikai would be a harder sell. It was a shoot ’em up, except you have control over the scrolling, and you can shoot in 8 directions. It got a sequel on the SNES and one on GBA called “Pocky & Rocky with Becky” which seems a bit more similar to the NES original than the SNES games from what I’ve seen (never played it myself).

There has been a few games kinda like this since, such as Heavenly Guardian on PS2 and Wii, and Mamorukun Curse on PS3 (which took on a more bullet hell approach), but Pocky & Rocky itself has been dormant for quite a while.

I was really hyped to try this one, let’s see if it’s a good revival!

This popped up at the recent Nintendo Partner direct, as a shadow drop (and a new announcement, as far as I can find). I thought it looked fun. So I picked it up.

That’s it. That’s the intro. Let’s see if it’s good!

While isekai anime is this thing that people think is just bad because there’s so much of it, Overlord happens to be one that I think is a pretty good example of the genre. It does have some of the normal points some of the really bad ones have, namely that the protagonist is overly powerful, but it handles the world itself and the goal of that main character very differently, and is overall really fun.

This game is based on the light novel/anime, but it’s something of a non-canon entry. I was curious about the metroidvania aspect of it, and the kinda-weird character choice.

Let’s see if it’s good!

I like Warriors games. I don’t get all the ones that came out because there’s too much, but one every year or two is pretty nice. Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes is the latest one. I finished one of the (at least) 3 storylines. And I just don’t really feel like reviewing it. Because, in my time reviewing, I’ve reviewed many a Warriors game. And those reviews all describe the exact same base game, with pretty minor alterations. And those minor alterations… I don’t know if they’re worth reviewing.

Three Hopes is a standard Warriors game, but with the FE: Three Houses class system, a similar version of the relationship system (though the payoff isn’t quite as good as in Three Houses), and otherwise the gameplay is fairly standard Warriors with the order system FE Warriors had so your teammates can be semi-useful. The performance is definitely better than Age of Calamity though, so that’s nice. And this one doesn’t have a substantial post-game like some of the other Warriors games on Switch, instead focusing on restarting from the beginning and doing alternate stories, so it might be for you content-wise if you’re a completionist.

I think Three Hopes is a top-tier Warriors game, though objectively some of the others are probably a bit better (namely Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition has way more stuff in it).

But Musou is Musou. You don’t need reviews to know if you’ll like Musou games. If you liked previous Warriors, you’ll like this. If you didn’t, this won’t convince you otherwise. If you’re not familiar with Musou… Just get one that is licensed to something you like and try it out.

This was shown at a Nintendo Direct and it instantly got my attention. A fast FPS with an interesting card system for weaponry. It wasn’t entirely clear to me if it was some kind of roguelite or if it was a level-based game, but I knew I’d be getting it on release.

It got a release date during not-E3 2022, and I bought it the moment it released. Let’s see if it was worth me getting excited for it!

I feel it’s been quite a while since we got a good Turtles game. The last I played is Mutants in Manhattan, by Platinum Games in 2016. That game sucked balls, unfortunately. This, however, is hell-bent on bringing back the classic style of TMNT games in the NES and SNES era, either from the arcades or home consoles. And it looked great in the 2 trailers I saw. And it’s Tribute Games who made good shit before. And DotEmu who has been responsible for publishing very good shit as well. So it certainly had my interest.

Let’s see if it’s good!