Going to try to be a little less longwinded this time because I can see myself easily getting burnt out and I want to keep participating!
Kirby and the Forgotten Land - Kirby's first real 3D outing and wow was it great. I played this game in co-op the whole way and had an absolute blast. Kirby feels so good to play and it was fun to experience him and his abilities in a new way. Loved going back and trying for all the secret collectables and felt like they were well hidden but fair. It feels like they dialed up the cute here even more than usual - especially some of the unique animations they have in the hub world. The variations on Kirby sleeping are super cute and in co-op he can even snuggle with Waddle Dee!
Boss design is a lot of fun even if some of them feel a little off-brand for Kirby. And the level design is great, too! Honestly, no complaints, I had a ton of fun with this one and was glad to be able to play through with my husband the whole way! Hopefully they keep doing more games in this style as they feel like the refresh Kirby has needed after the mid Star Allies, which had particularly weak level design.
Pokémon Scarlet - I have some conflicting feelings on this one. First, I'll say that the core gameplay is some of the most fun Pokémon has ever been. Running around on the overworked and seeing wild Pokémon is a ton of fun and helps with my anxiety around random battles. I particularly love the three main storylines that you go through, so you could self-direct and keep things fresh. If you were tired of gym battles you could take a detour and take on a base or deal with a giant Pokémon. Something I want to call particular attention to is the Pokédex and the animation that happens when you catch a Pokémon - it felt so alluring and made me want to spend a lot of time catching everything I could so I could keep filling it out.
That being said, I have some pretty glaring issues with the game. Performance is one - I normally don't really care about performance, I'm cool playing a 720p game at 30 fps and I don't need super high end graphics. This game
really challenged me - performance is really bad with framerate drops being really common, textures are bland and uninteresting, and the most frustrating thing is the pop-in where Pokémon can appear and disappear seemingly at random, even right in front of your eyes sometimes. Not only is the performance bad, but that's coupled with some really bland and uninteresting world design. You can't go in most buildings and the ones you
can go in are usually only one sparse room. Towns seem populated because of folks being out and about but it doesn't really feel alive when you can't see what folks' houses look like on the inside (outside of very few exceptions). The Elite Four area in particular is just kind of actively nothing, which feels weird when the last few Elite Four areas have really been stepping up their aesthetic. That being said, Area Zero was reaaaally cool with a great aesthetic and fun music. It gave me a sense of wonder I haven't felt in a Pokémon game in a while.
I need to talk about two pieces that may seem insignificant but are really important to me. One, the human character designs just feel off, they kind of have a Bandai Namco feel and do -not- have a distinctly Pokémon aesthetic. That alone wouldn't be quite enough to put me off, but the really egregious bit is that you're stuck in your ugly school uniform for the entire game. The last several Pokémon games have gone pretty far in letting you customize your trainer's aesthetic and it feels incredibly limiting to be stuck to four pre-set outfit options. I'm also particularly bothered that there's no femme clothing options like dresses or skirts - assumedly it's part of the move to dance around player gender without ever having to directly acknowledge it, which I feel like Nintendo in general is doing in their games and feels like an unnecessarily limiting half-step when it comes to gender expression.
Oh just a quick note but I hate raids - I think the setup is weird and confusing and especially doesn't work well in online multiplayer. Why is battling realtime based when there's so much potential for latency?
All in all I'm pretty mid on Scarlet, there are some high highs but I don't think they outweigh the low lows. I much preferred
Legends Arceus and felt the formula worked better there. Scarlet had fun but ultimately I left the game with no desire to ever return to it and I'll most likely be skipping the DLCs (which I hear somehow perform
worse than the main game). This is one I wish I could give 2.5 stars to, but alas...
Monster Hunter Rise - An excellent game and a great first go around for me trying out the Monster Hunter series! I love the wide variety of weapons that all have different play styles so you can find one that works right for you. Character customization is pretty good and
wow the fashion hunter elements in particular were such a motivating factor for me to keep going. I loved being able to create new gear from the monsters I hunted and being able to mix and match parts from different sets to get the look I was going for. Special shout out to layered armor so that you're able to maximize stats and abilities while also being able to retain the exact aesthetic you're trying to go for.
I love the maps and using wirebugs to fly around and find new places was a ton of fun. There's so much movement tech in this game in general and being able to quickly zip around the map was awesome.
Multiplayer in particular is such a highlight for this game. Special shout out to Capcom and their netcode because never once have I had a bad experience playing online in Rise. Being able to mess around in lobbies as well harkened a bit back to my MMO days - I literally have spent hours just doing silly emotes and poses with my friends, liberally using the Switch screenshot function.
Honestly, I really have no negatives to this game, other than I want more! And now this makes me want to jump back in to Sunbreak.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses - My first time playing a Fire Emblem game and I was hooked from the start. The setup immediately draws you in - there are three houses and you need to pick one of them, setting you of on different adventures depending on what choice you made. Luckily they let you recruit members from other houses (with a couple of exceptions) so you can customize your favorite team of anime pals. Naturally I went with Golden Deer because Claude is the GOAT.
The story is good for what it is. There's an interesting premise that builds upon itself, culminating in a battle that separates classmates from each other and jumps forward 5 years, where the story starts to take a very different turn based on which house you sided with. I don't want to get too much into spoilers here, but basically I'll just say - I love the setup but the execution could've used some work. Each of the separate stories don't
fully work alone but asking players to go through all 4 of the story options for a complete picture seems like a bit much.
I know people kind of hate the monastery but I loved it. Teaching your students so you could have an active role in what they ended up being good at and what jobs they could take was a TON of fun. Making sure to maximize use of your activity points to have specific students hang out together to increase their bonds was a bunch of fun for me and made me feel like I had control over characters building relationships with each other. On subsequent playthroughs I mostly warped around the monastery and skipped a lot of the scenes, but since the ability to do it was there I didn't mind it so much.
This game made me a Fire Emblem fan and made me understand the hype for the series. It was one of those gameplay loops that made me keep saying "just one more day!" over and over until I was up way past when I was supposed to be to. I loved this game!
god I said I was gonna be less long winded but I still ended up saying a lot, just maybe a bit less organized than my first batch.