The 2023 Backlog Challenge

[Reed Rothchild | 9,558]

Just in time before today's festivities start:

Ori & the Will of the Wisps

 

Loved it.  Improved some of the things that annoyed me with the first one, and kept things a bit more nonlinear, which I enjoyed.

Phase 3 of the final boss reminded me of some NES shit, and would be an absolute nightmare without modern quality of life checkpoints.

 

 

Anyways, that's another winner for this year's list.  I really selected a great crop of games:

1. Elden Ring (10/10)
2. Hades (9.5/10)
3. Deathloop (9/10)
4. Baba Is You (9/10)
5. Gradius V (8.5/10)
6. Super Mario 3D World/Bowser's Fury (with the kids) (8.5/10)
7. God of War (8.5/10)
8. MGS: The Twin Snakes (8.5/10)
9. Ori & the Will of the Wisps (8.5)
10. Ghost of Tsushima (8/10)
11. Sin & Punishment (8/10)
12. Nier Automata (8/10)
13. Dusk (8/10)
14. Into the Breach (8/10)
15. Deus Ex (7.5/10)
16. Xenoblade (7.5/10)
17. Hellblade (7.5/10)
18. Ace Attorney 2 (7.5/10)
19. Uncharted 4 (7.5/10)
20. Eternal Darkness (7.5/10)
21. Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold (7/10)
22. Resident Evil 3 (7/10)
23. Onimusha (7/10)
24. What Remains of Edith Finch (6.5/10)
25. Everblue 2 (6.5/10)
26. Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order (6.5/10)
27. Pilotwings 64 (6.5/10)
28. Contra Shattered Soldier (6/10)
29. Strife (6/10)
30. A Short Hike (6/10)
31. Mischief Makers (6/10)
32. La Pucelle (5.5/10)
33. Buck Bumble (5.5/10)
34. Indigo Prophecy (5.5/10)
35. Yoshi's Story (4.5/10)
36. Winback (4/10)

TBD:

1. Shenmue (crap)
2. Paper Mario (decent)
3. Resident Evil 2 remake (great)
4. House of Fata Morgana (too early to tell)

Not started

1. Yakuza Kiwami
2. Control
3. Nioh
4. Dark Souls II
5. Last of Us Part II
6. Danganronpa
7. Doom Eternal
8. KotOR 2
9. Trails in the Sky
10. Ion Fury
11. Shadowgate
12. Prey

[Sumez | 2,969]

1 minute ago, Reed Rothchild said:

modern quality of life checkpoints

[Sumez | 2,969]

Crash Banderole 3 - Beaten 1/7 + (100% completion 4/7)

Based on what I've previously read on the series, I honestly expected to like Crash 3 the least. Of the original three games, it's the one that relies more on unique tools and gimmicks that change up the gameplay for different stages, rather than sticking to classic straight-forward platforming.
Surprisingly though, I think the game does a great job at maintaining focus despite this. There's a very clear line going through the three games, and this one literally takes off exactly where the second game ended. Not only does it literally start out during the ending cutscene from that game, the menus and interface is carried over as-is, making it almost appear like an expansion pack at first.

Once you start playing the game however, you can immediately tell the devs took care to make it feel a bit different regardless. They definitely got more experience making stuff work on the PlayStation now, because the game looks way more sprawling and impressive for the hardware. Lots of reflections everywhere, more changing camera perspectives, and Crash's shadow now actually looks like a dynamic shadow rather than a black blob. The controls are largely similar, but now also allows for a bit more in-air movement. It makes precision landing a little less mechanical in nature, making jumps feel a bit less reliable, but at the same time provides you with the tool to compensate. The result is a game that actually feels a lot more smooth and modern, which I imagine is part of what makes it harder for some people to return to the first game.
The game recognizes a controller with analog sticks, and enables it automatically, but I'd still recommend using the D-pad for a lot of the platforming, while analog control is a great advantage on the jetski stages, some boss fights and a few other places.

I can see why the new gimmicks are a bit of an issue though, since they do change up gameplay in ways that has little in common with the classic Crash gameplay. The jetski stages are a completely different type of game, and so are of course the racing stages, which were some times a little frustrating to me who isn't very good at racing games. The new underwater stages feel more at home in a platform game, but tend to hit a much more crawling pace than the classic stages, even if they aren't nearly as bad as the jetpack ones from the last game. None of these new types of stages are severely bad, though. While they do result in a less focused game, they are still mostly enjoyable. That said, I'd gladly have traded every racing stage for more platforming, and by the time the dogfighting plane stages show up late in the game, they really do feel like a waste of effort and stage slots.

The best new addition in Crash Badincoot 3 however is the time trials. Like I said regarding the speedrun trials in Crash 2 - the games always felt designed for challenging the player to push their forward momentum, and this game doubles down on that, enabling a speedrun challenge on every single stage for a secondary reward, outside of the usual bonus gems. What that naturally also means is that the one-life stage clear conditions from the first game are back baby! and not only are you challenged to learn the stages well enough to complete them flawlessly, you're also expected to do so fast!
With that added challenge, the game also seems a little reluctant to truly challenge the player in the base playthrough, with fewer moments of pure platforming obstacles in general - but activating time trials will also change up the distribution of bonus items, actually giving you more "aku aku" masks that can take a hit for you, which seems sensible even if it makes clearing the trial much less of a victory than attaining a gem did in CB1.

One type of stage that was actually improved in the second game was the one where you're riding an animal into the screen and have to dodge obstacles with no way to stop. The third game makes them better yet, taking great care to make the obstacles more easily readable from a distance. But where they really shine is the time trial challenge, because while you can't stop your feline steed, you can hold a button to make it go faster, which you of course want to push as far as you can, resulting in what feels like a really fun platformer racing game! Definitely a much bigger highlight than the "actual" racing stages of this game.

 

I think Crash 3 represents a pretty good streamlining of the series. While it did go overboard with gimmicky vehicle stages, the overall structure in terms of secrets and extra challenges feels like a reasonable rebound towards what the first game did, without sacrificing the more casual-friendly appeal of the second game. While none of the game's challenges manages to top the rush I felt 100%'ing Carsh Banditooc 1, I could see this formula being a good approach going forward for the series - too bad it would end up being the last one these people ever made.

[Sumez | 2,969]

M.I.A.: Missing in Action - Beaten (1 loop) 6/7

Putting arcade 1CCs on my backlog list is a bit of a risk, because what if I just can't do them? But I have so many I want to get done with, so it's absolutely a part of my backlog. Ultimately I only dared putting one on my list this year, but I guess I could have fit a few more.

M.I.A. took me a single evening of practice, with the barely couple of hours I had after putting the baby to bed, and it was ultimately enough to get through the first loop of the game. That makes it easily one of the quickest 1CCs I've attained.

This seems like a game few people have played, and even fewer talk about, yet everyone probably knows about its predecessor, Rush'n Attack. M.I.A. is basically the exact same gameplay, level structure, and enemy types, just with a few more things going on and a prettier layer of graphics, even though it still looks a bit dire for a 1989 arcade game (compare Ghouls 'n Ghosts from 1988).

I think M.I.A manages to take the basic structure of Rush'n Attack, build on its strengths, and ultimately create something more varied and involving than the original game was. Initially the core gameplay is a bit simple - nearly all enemies are the basic zako which just rushes at you with a knife, and you use your own short range knife to take them out with a well timed jab, not unlike Irem's Kung Fu. But at the end of each stage is a challenging boss encounter which is usually near unapproachable unless you make clever use of the weapons you can find on the way.
While you'd only be able to hold one subweapon at a time in Rush'n Attack, and typically only one type per stage, M.I.A. lets you juggle four different types that you can use until you run out of (the very limited) ammo or get hit, which takes away the currently equipped one. Normally you want to keep either the bazooka or flame thrower for the bosses, but every weapon has its situational use in this game, and employing them both strategically and tactically is where the game gets a lot more fun.

It takes a while for a more varied throwdown of enemy types to show up, and the game being only five stages long means that things don't get really interesting until the last two stages. But just like the original game, M.I.A. is designed to loop forever, and the second loop shakes things up a lot! You'll need to deal with different enemy types more frequently, and the ones you know now have a few new behaviors, while new obstacles have been added to the stages to catch you off guard. Classic Konami was good at this kind of stuff, and if you've never tried looping Castlevania 1 or 3 on NES, I'd recommend that for similar reasons.

As is typical for an 80s arcade platformer, the toughest challenges in the game is a fair dose of jank mixed with a couple of choke points where you kinda just have to know how to approach them in order to consistently make it through. I'm not sure there's a consistent way to get through specific places if you don't manage to keep specific weapons, but that honestly creates a pretty enjoyable tension befitting this sort of game.

I'd lump this one in with tactical action platformers such as Shinobi, Rolling Thunder and Elevator Action, rather than more freeflowing action games like Contra or Ninja Gaiden. But if you do enjoy the former, I think M.I.A is worth checking out as well.
Is it a super well designed classic action game? Probably not, and I can understand a lot of people not liking it much. But I do think it's quite a bit underappreciated, especially given how prevalent the original game was.

[Jeevan | 8,915]

@Reed Rothchild +1, shitty paperboy 64, wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have to grind paper points or whatever you wanna call them, up to 200.......

[Reed Rothchild | 9,558]

Did another side quest since it was dirt cheap on the eShop,and people like it, but I didn't feel compelled to get the physical release all these years.

Yoku's Island Express.  Fun little game I could play while watching movies,and only a few hours long.  Probably like a 6.5/10.

[Brickman | 4,000]

LoZ: Triforce of the Gods (alttp) is finally done. I played the GBA version and ended up really enjoying it. 

I tried playing this long ago on the SNES but got very bored with it and moved on. I got up to the same place (first time entering the dark world) and was finding the same thing. This time I was committed and pushed through. Turns out this game really takes off once you start exploring the dark world.

The dungeons were a lot of fun and the game has a nice level of challenge. I don’t think the game breaks my top three Zelda games (OoT, BoW & LoZ) but it definitely would come in fourth. 9/10.

[Sumez | 2,969]

3 hours ago, Brickman said:

Turns out this game really takes off once you start exploring the dark world.

[Philosoraptor | 468]

Finished up Mega Man 5 this weekend. I ended up giving it an 8.5 as opposed to the 9 MM6 got because I thought the music wasn't as memorable, the last Wily fight was kinda garbage, and it was never clear what Gravity Man's power does once you get it. 

Overall, it's harder than 6. In MM6, only a few of the robot masters were tough (i.e required an E tank when going through the last boss rush in the Wily stages), but in MM5, about half the bosses were tough. The last Wily fight was harder as well. I didn't think the platforming was super difficult or required extreme precision in either game, outside of one or two sections. However, I think the Wily robots were more difficult in 6, and I think the stages were overall more difficult in 6 as well, albeit only slightly. Shout out to those giant stompy robots, though. Those guys can get a computer virus for all I care.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,558]

Resident Evil 2 (remake)

Pretty sweet.  Not sure I like it more than Resident Evil VII, and it didn't impact me like Resident Evil 4 did, but it's still in the upper echelons of the series.  I'll probably try to knock out Village and 3 Remake next year.

1. Elden Ring (10/10)
2. Hades (9.5/10)
3. Deathloop (9/10)
4. Baba Is You (9/10)
5. Gradius V (8.5/10)
6. Super Mario 3D World/Bowser's Fury (with the kids) (8.5/10)
7. God of War (8.5/10)
8. MGS: The Twin Snakes (8.5/10)
9. Resident Evil 2 (8.5/10)
10. Ori & the Will of the Wisps (8.5)
11. Ghost of Tsushima (8/10)
12. Sin & Punishment (8/10)
13. Nier Automata (8/10)
14. Dusk (8/10)
15. Into the Breach (8/10)
16. Deus Ex (7.5/10)
17. Xenoblade (7.5/10)
18. Hellblade (7.5/10)
19. Ace Attorney 2 (7.5/10)
20. Uncharted 4 (7.5/10)
21. Eternal Darkness (7.5/10)
22. Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold (7/10)
23. Resident Evil 3 (7/10)
24. Onimusha (7/10)
25. What Remains of Edith Finch (6.5/10)
26. Everblue 2 (6.5/10)
27. Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order (6.5/10)
28. Yoku's Island Express (6.5/10)
29. Pilotwings 64 (6.5/10)
30. Contra Shattered Soldier (6/10)
31. Strife (6/10)
32. A Short Hike (6/10)
33. Mischief Makers (6/10)
34. La Pucelle (5.5/10)
35. Buck Bumble (5.5/10)
36. Indigo Prophecy (5.5/10)
37. Yoshi's Story (4.5/10)
38. Winback (4/10)

TBD:

1. Shenmue (crap)
2. Paper Mario (decent)
3. Knights of the old Republic II
4. Yakuza Kiwami
5. House of Fata Morgana (too early to tell)

Not started

1. Control
2. Nioh
3. Dark Souls II
4. Last of Us Part II
5. Danganronpa
6. Doom Eternal
7. Trails in the Sky
8. Ion Fury
9. Shadowgate
10. Prey

[Jeevan | 8,915]

@Reed Rothchild +1

RE2 done, first time i beat the game!

[Reed Rothchild | 9,558]

1 hour ago, Jeevan said:

@Reed Rothchild +1

RE2 done, first time i beat the game!

Look at us.

If you do Leon I'll do Claire 

[Jeevan | 8,915]

Just now, Reed Rothchild said:

Look at us.

If you do Leon I'll do Claire 

whut?  I will next year?  It was a super fun game, except the controls.....the tank movement sucks 

What release was it that did away with that, @ikk said gamecube maybe?

[Reed Rothchild | 9,558]

17 minutes ago, Jeevan said:

whut?  I will next year?  It was a super fun game, except the controls.....the tank movement sucks 

What release was it that did away with that, @ikk said gamecube maybe?

N64 has non-tank controls you silly man.

[Jeevan | 8,915]

Just now, Reed Rothchild said:

N64 has non-tank controls you silly man.

whut?  do i need to change settings or something?

[Gloves | 11,801]

12 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

N64 has non-tank controls you silly man.

I don't think he knows what tank controls are.

[FireHazard51 | 2,047]

1 hour ago, Gloves said:

I don't think he knows what tank controls are.

Never drove a tank but have driven, and was licensed, on a M3 Bradley which uses tracks like a tank....

Once you turn so far it will make one track go forward and the other backwards.  This can be quit jarring when driving forward at like 25 mph.  As you may suspect, a track vehicle will stop on a dime so you are basically throwing the occupants inside at 25 mph into a non-padded interior.  That day in basic resulted in the vehicle instructor being full of bruises and and some privates getting the shit smoked out of them.

[Floating Platforms | 728]

Last night I actually got around to beating the main story for Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

It took me 145 hours according to the switch clock but a lot of that time was spent exploring and doing other side stuff before deciding to head for the endgame and avoid more detours.  I don't want to say too much in this mini review, but BOTW became one of my favorite games and this is somehow another level to me. I was worried that there wouldn't be any sense of wonder with a "re-used" map, but I can't tell you how many times my eyes got wide from a discovery or I gasped to myself asking "what is that?" or ran away from a new danger I never would have expected.  It's been a while, so I may be wrong, but I feel like there is more actual main story this time around and it went places I wasn't expecting (a rarity for Nintendo). With BOTW I completed all the quests and shrines, but did not 100% the map or find even half of the koroks. I think this game will be back on my backlog list for next year with the intention of doing the same thing - 100%ing everything except the Koroks. That may take another 100 hours since there are so many places I still haven't even touched.

Since I haven't hit the halfway mark of my 2023 backlog goals, and the year is half done, I'm probably going to beat one or two quicker games before jumping back into my Yakuza Kiwami platinum quest. I've also recently started my first ever playthrough of Super Mario RPG on my SNES Mini and I'm 3 stars in already.

[Floating Platforms | 728]

Gargoyle's Quest 2 is done via the Wii U Virtual Console

It's been a couple of decades since I beat Gargoyle's Quest for Game Boy, which is one that I absolutely loved back as a kid.  I won't get to play that for my Game Boy challenge until I beat another 200 or so games, though.  What I'm saying is that I don't recall the story at all from that, but the sequel seems very separate.  The story was really nothing to write home about and, like many NES games, was really more of an outline rather than something with a fleshed out arc. "Firebrand, you need to go here to get this thing." "Thank you for getting that thing, here is your upgrade." Everything was a bit more linear than I expected, since there is an overworld you can explore. Exploring doesn't typically get you anything since it's just a hub for the locations with the exception one enemy square you can farm for vials that get exchanged for lives. I remember a greater sense of exploration and even backtracking with new abilities when I played on GB, but maybe I'm imagining things (or I got lost back then). The progression of the level design works well and the stages and bosses got tougher. I beat most of them by the skin of my teeth. The second to last was a joke and the final boss took a few tries (after going through a long, dangerous gauntlet that used multiple abilities) before I found the sweet spot.  Overall, not bad because the level traversal and boss fights were still fun, but not great because of the lackluster story and fake openness. It didn't give me the same sense of magic and wonder that I remembered feeling. I could be jaded by now, though.

I may jump right into Demon's Crest through the SNES NSO to see how that compares.

[fox | 1,668]

Star Wars Jedi Survivor

[Sumez | 2,969]

On 7/15/2023 at 6:12 PM, Floating Platforms said:

Everything was a bit more linear than I expected, since there is an overworld you can explore. Exploring doesn't typically get you anything since it's just a hub for the locations with the exception one enemy square you can farm for vials that get exchanged for lives. I remember a greater sense of exploration and even backtracking with new abilities when I played on GB, but maybe I'm imagining things (or I got lost back then).

This is really the biggest wasted potential of the Gargoyle's Quest series IMO.

Neither game has a very good overworld. The first one has random encounters, so that makes exploring the world actually a part of the game, but the encounters are all the same which just makes them annoying rather than engaging.
The second game is the same except without the encounters, so it's just a slightly convoluted hub like you said. All it does is making getting from one place to another other a bit more inconvenient. I really wish the overworld in both games would have been a much more fleshed out aspect of it, even if it were just something more akin to Zelda 2.
Both games needed to be longer too, they feel very rushed, which again is disappointing given what is there is still really good.

Demon's Crest ditches the presumption of an overworld entirely, it's just a map where you go directly to each individual platformer location. You do have to fly around on it, and it's possible to miss the existence of some hot spots (especially since some only get unlocked later, and they won't look different), but it's an even smaller part of the game than it was in GQ1 and 2.

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

Took a short detour and played through the Link's Awakening remake on Switch. 

Pros:

• Classic Zelda-style gameplay
• Great music
• Lots of secrets and hidden items
• Quality of life improvements including more warp points (and probably others but I never played the original version)
• Final boss requires use of a wide variety of weapons and strategies

Cons:

• Old-school game design (backtracking, fetch quests, occasional confusing puzzles, simple story)
• Small overworld and short dungeons
• 2D sections are not fun or interesting and should've been cut
• Very unstable framerate, particularly in the overworld
• Minigames are not fun
• Exceedingly easy, particularly the bosses. I did not die the entire game.

Undecided:

• I can't decide if I love or hate the graphics. Sometimes they look good and other times they look terrible.

Overall: 7/10. Definitely a step up from the the original LoZ on NES, but way behind the ALttP. I doubt I'll ever play it again, but I enjoyed my time with it.

Just for fun, here are my LoZ rankings for the games I've played.

1. Breath of the Wild (Switch)
2. Link to the Past (SNES)
3. Link Between Worlds (3DS)
4. Ocarina of Time (N64)
5. Wind Waker (GC)
6. Phantom Hourglass (DS)
7. Link's Awakening (Switch)
8. LoZ (NES)
9. Spirit Tracks (DS)

[Philosoraptor | 468]

Pokemon Scarlet is done. 34 hours. I'm PISSED.

...But I'm going to try to focus on the positives. The Koraidon pokemon you get is a lot like toothless in how to train your dragon, personality-wise, so that's cool. You save a kid's dog with sandwiches. That's neat. The new mons are, for the most part, good. Solid generation. Uhhhhhhhhhhhh...Oh yeah! That streamer gym leader (Iono) was fantastic and probably the best character in the entire game. Sadly, she was only like...ten minutes of it. I guess it's cool that trainers don't automatically challenge you even when they see you. Uhhmmmmmmmm...yeah. That's all I got.

Bad things? Where to start. First, aside from Iono, everyone is unlikable to downright annoying. Nemona is your main rival and is an insufferable battle maniac. Most are tropes if they even get that far. The character designs are, for the most part, bland by Pokemon standards. So bland, in fact, that you have to fight a worn-out Japanese salaryman TWICE as a main-story character. The writing is lackluster, with most main story people saying the same-ish things after defeat, especially gym leaders. The game is extremely light on story, and the "big bads" are all inconsequentially minor and nonthreatening (Team Star was formed as an anti-bully group, but they were kind of becoming bullies themselves and they were skipping classes). The "biggest bad" of this group is helping you disband them...and is a sad-looking kid with an Eevee backpack. The final big bad is an AI who inhabits the body of a Pokemon professor, and they're keeping a time machine running that is bringing dangerous Pokemon from the past. But, you know, not so dangerous that a kid who didn't have Pokemon until 20 hours ago can't beat them. The Pokemon that have been brought from the past and are in the overworld aren't even hurting anybody or anything, and no one ever really mentions them outside of the handful of characters in the questline.

Speaking of writing, the whole game story is based around you being in the equivalent of junior high-ish, so you start the game going to basic-ass classes instead of, you know, a proper tutorial, which you don't get for a startling amount of features. Instead, in class, stuff like "how much damage will supereffective moves do" are covered. Did you know you could fly to a point on the map you've visited immediately? I didn't. Wish I learned that in class. The whole school class thing is about as well done as the classes you can optionally go to in most other mainline Pokemon games, but it's mandatory, making the first hours of the game absolutely drag.

And once the subpar classes are finished? You're told to go find your "treasure" and put on extended vacation from classes. If I were a parent with a kid at this school, I'd be pissed.

So, now you get to go out into the wide, glitchy as hell world. The textures look, with no exaggeration, straight from a PS2 launch title. Framerates outside of about ten feet of your character drop into single digits for anything and everything. You want to know how to break immersion in a video game? Have background people and Pokemon move around like Mr. Game & Watch. The massive crowds watching gym leader battles in Sword & Shield have been replaced by crowds of a dozen or two dozen of the same four NPCs in 8 FPS. The epic gym battle song from Sword & Shield with the crowd in full voice has been replaced with an aenemic version in this game. It sounds like a Drake version, but somehow more halfhearted.

Outside of the city, things aren't any better. The gigantic, open world is full of bugs, and not of the Pokemon kind. Framerate issues, chugging, clipping, sprites and Pokemon loading only if they're about 30 feet from you (if at all), being attacked from Pokemon loaded inside walls in caves, the camera going into the ground...and this is six months after launch. They're about to launch DLC for this train wreck! The glitches wouldn't be as bad if they weren't happening literally every minute or two. I'm shocked this game didn't crash on me.

When the game is working, it's lazy. The caves the sandwich kid's herbs are in are all the exact same, as are the cutscenes. You can't change out of the four seasonal school outfits, only accessorize, which you can do in basically every mainline Pokemon game since X and Y. No set mode. You still can't turn off EXP share. The lazy postgame raids from Sword and Shield are back. They even phoned in the Elite Four. Aside from the final battle, all battles took place in a bland, lifeless, white room. They couldn't even do themed rooms like in, you know, RED AND BLUE.

But that's not all! Pokemon can now wander around and watch your battles, meaning they can GET UNDER YOU during a battle and trigger multiple battles after you get done with the first one. I get how some Pokes would be aggressive and attack you, but this is literally Pokemon clipping into your sprite during a battle and triggering successive battles.

I did a fire-type-only run. However, each gym until the last only one boosts the level of Pokemon that can listen to you by 5, which made me scramble from story locale to story locale. I avoided all battles because the experience from catching Pokemon (i.e. the main point of the entire franchise) threatened ot overlevel me. This made the game extremely linear and destroyed the open world concept.

Other issues:

• You can also attempt to target Pokemon like Z-targeting in OOT, but it doesn't work more often than it does.
• Shinys don't make noises when they appear, meaning the player has to rely on the 30-foot draw distance to spot a shiny before it's deloaded and gone forever.
• The map does not not stay pointed North, and when you rotate it, the Pokemon it decided to load on the map don't stay in the same spot on the map.
• They removed the Pokemon Day Care in lieu of camping. If you camp with two Pokemon in tall grass, they'll lay eggs after a while, but it means you can't do anything else while you're breeding. This gets incredibly boring very quickly.
• They attempt to gate off content using terrain or water, but you can still easily get to areas you're not supposed to with Koraidon.
• Cities are sparse and you can't walk into most buildings. When you can, most are just PS1-era menus. Exploration and rewarding the player for talking to people is almost nonexistant.
• HMs and their functionality are now gone, and TMs are one use, but you can make more using a half-baked crafting system.
• The music is probably the worst in the series and is completely forgettable at best or out of place at worst.
• The new "gym tests" that you have to complete before taking on a gym are mostly errands or minigames, but they're all time wasters and none are implemented well. 
• The transformation gimmick in this game, Terastallization, crystallizes your Pokemon, changes its type (cool idea), and gives it a stupid hat based on its type. For example, fire's is a candelabra and bug's is bug antenna. It's not epic, unlike gigantamax, megas, or even Z-rings.

The biggest crime, however, is that the Metascore as of writing is a 72. Some critics gave this game 100s. Most of them praised the open-world leap to whatever dead end this game is heading to while ignoring the menagerie of issues in the game. If this game didn't say Pokemon on the front, that critic score would probably be a lot closer to the user score, which is currently a 33.

It's no exaggeration to say that this is the Sonic 06 of the Pokemon franchise. I'd argue, however, it's worse. Pokemon is the biggest media franchise on the planet. Bigger than Star Wars. Bigger than Mickey Mouse. Bigger than whatever else you're thinking of. The fact that this game has this many problems and saw the light of day is jaw dropping and irredeemable. There are no excuses worth entertaining from an entity this large or this established.

All things considered, this is probably the worst game I've ever played, or maybe even ever will play. It's atrocious, and I could keep going, but this write up is long enough. On Reed's scale, it's an absolute 1/10. I've never felt like a game wasted hours of my life as much as this one has, and, as a lifelong Pokemon fan, this is the first Pokemon game I can wholeheartedly say that I'm sad it exists.

Edited July 17, 2023 by Philosoraptor

[Sumez | 2,969]

1 hour ago, DoctorEncore said:

Cons:

• Old-school game design (backtracking, fetch quests, occasional confusing puzzles, simple story)

What a con

[Reed Rothchild | 9,558]

I had the weekend to myself and binged a ton of Yakuza Kiwami.  I'd say I'm probably like 75% done, dabbling in minigames and doing a decent amount of side quests.

Good stuff, probably hovering between a 6.5-7.5.  But you can tell it was a PS2 game, and you can see why this is generally considered to be one of the weakest in the series.

I'm excited to get to 2 though.  If it doesn't happen this year it's definitely on the slate in 2024.