Favorite tracks

• Trust Me

• Fog

• Youth (feat. Skaai)

The series starts strong but unfortunately crescendos at the midpoint of its run. While the second half is enjoyable if you treat it as spectacle, there’s not much substance and it falls off rather quickly by the end.

This isn’t one to miss, even if you’re not into manga. If you prefer this in television form, watch Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

I played this game entirely on Steam Deck with few issues. At one point I got strong nostalgic feelings of playing Golden Sun as a kid while playing in bed!

Story and Length

There isn’t much to dislike about the narrative in Chained Echoes. It was hopeful as JRPGs usually are, but kept things mature but never hesitated to inject humor where appropriate. The world building was sublime and plot beats kept me guessing the whole time. The writing overall did a good job balancing fun and serious, but the English localization was stiff and unnatural at times.

My clear file was 50h with extras but not 100%. Some of this might be Steam Deck weirdness, some is from retrying longer encounters. I think the story could be cleared in 35h. The game dragged on a little at the end of the second of four acts, but ultimately I wanted more time in this world, not less. Make sure you read the flavor text!

Combat

The unique spin on turn-based combat didn't get old, and even now I’m considering going back to fight some of the optional bosses. There are no random encounters, so battles are tuned to require strategy more than brute force. There are several encounters that flip the battle system on its head that made me really feel like this solo developer had complete understanding of the ins-and-outs of his systems in a way that felt refreshing and rare.

I thought the skill system that replaces traditional levels is great, despite some of the discourse online. It keeps you from needing to mindlessly grind, which I was more than happy not to do. What takes its place is exploration and puzzle solving, which while sometimes frustrating was ultimately a lot more enriching and rewarding as time spent.

Unfortunately, the crystal system for modding equipment, while promising, is too clunky. It feels like a nice homage to materia in Final Fantasy VII, but is hampered by clunky menuing and a heavy handed approach to balance that ultimately hinders experimentation too much. The good thing is you can clear the game without paying attention to this system at all. The bad thing is it’s so close to being good that it’s haunting for the entire playthrough.

Sound and Visuals

The land of Valandis is beautiful and the sprites feel like a natural evolution of FF6 had 3D not taken hold in gaming's fifth generation. There’s a myriad of environments and the largely 3x3 maps per zone felt like the right size to tuck in lots of little secrets without getting too overwhelming. That being said, I consistently ran into issues pathing (invisible chunks of terrain that made my character stop or stutter when) and had trouble knowing where I could and couldn't go. There are some nice things—doors are clearly marked with green arrows if you can enter them—but I wish the same care was placed in the overworld sometimes.

The music was great and never got old, but I wouldn't say it's a legendary soundtrack. I did think, “do I want to buy this soundtrack…?” which is rare for a PC game at least. Jury is still out on whether I will. However, the sound design in general was very rich with effects that gave scenes a lot of life.

UI and Menuing

I’m a designer so I came back to add this section as I’d be bereft to not mention it. The UI is generally very clean and unobtrusive, but there’s a lot of menuing quality-of-life features I’d like to see.

Menus don’t have memory, so usually when you go up a level (B button) you are placed back at the top, which is frustrating because there’s no quick traversal. In most JRPGs, the left and right directional buttons let you traverse up and down one full page at a time so you can get through faster. Not here. This is mainly a problem in the aforementioned crystal system, but proved annoying in other contexts like navigating loot as well.

Sky Armor being not only separate from Equipment, but also spaced away by a whole menu item proved very annoying, as I think I went into the Equipment menu every time when adjusting mech pieces.

This is major nitpicking, as the menuing here is much better and cleanly presented than in most games. However after 50 hours, something’s start to grate on you!

Summary

There's a lot I could say about this game, but I think you should just play it instead. Did I mention this was mostly a solo developer? At $25, this is a steal if you like JRPGs and worlds with rich lore. This is a game any fan of turn-based games should play.

It's worth noting that I played entirely on the Steam Deck, mostly docked, and experienced no technical issues whatsoever.

Story and Length

Hi-Fi Rush's story is pretty straight forward and you get into the action from the second you pick up the controller. There's never really a lull—the story doesn't stop for the entire 15-18 hours you're playing the game. If nothing else, the writing is efficient. It takes you where you need to go and shows you what it needs to show you in order to tell the story that wants to be told.

Personally, I enjoyed it a lot! It's cheesy and hammy and a little cliché but it's fun, and that's what matters. The voice acting isn't over-the-top and I found myself invested in all of the characters by the end. There's a lot of sequel potential with this one too.

Combat

This game is definitely Devil May Cry meets your favorite rhythm game and it's a match made in heaven. Even if you don't have rhythm, the game has accessibility options and various difficulties to make sure that everyone can enjoy it equally.

I consider myself to have rhythm, but I don't have very good mechanical control to make combo-heavy action games easy for me. I played on the Hard difficulty and still had a blast. I used a lot of continues so my stage ratings were usually poor, but that's okay. I found that the increased challenge let me appreciate the combat more and ultimately made me better—even if I had to redo some encounters and bosses so much that my thumb cramped up.

The only thing that I hesitantly wish for is a more precise—or at least visually apparent—targeting system. There's no real way to manually control which enemy you're locked onto, which makes some encounters difficult to safely navigate and can ultimately lead to fatal errors.

Sound and Visuals

There's not much to say about the music. It was perfect. The mixup of classic songs with songs recorded by the game was a great choice (although scary for licensing in the future). The game takes a similar approach to Nier: Automata where the songs change based on your environment and gameplay, an obvious choice for a game so heavily focused on music from both a gameplay and thematic point-of-view.

UI and Menuing

The UI in this game is cute and completely serviceable. It's not without its shortcomings though. The game tries to educate you on how to equip certain items fairly early in the game, but you don't actually have enough money to really experiment at that point, so I found myself unable to figure it out later on when I actually had more money to experiment. It's easy, so it didn't take long to find, but I distinctly remember being confused for about 5 minutes. (Hint: You can only equip items in the shop, and you want the Left Trigger button on shop screens where you can buy equippable items).

Summary

It's incredible that Tango Gameworks decided to shadowdrop Hi-Fi Rush without any sort of marketing, but that confidence was well-placed: this is an incredible game. It takes modern game design and marries it with the best of the more experimental gaming eras. At $30, this game is a steal and everyone with access should play it.

You are the Prince of All Cosmos, going down to Earth to collect raw materials to fix your dad's fuck-up erasing all the stars from the sky. There's not much of a story: Katamari is all about it's gameplay after all. It's fun, the premise is wacky, the music is stellar. Length-wise, this first game is a little bit shorter than the sequel that was just announced. At 5-6 hours, it's fine since there's almost infinite replayability, and you can easily close to double that going for 100% on achievements if you don't collect the presents in every level the first time.

There are some nits that I have with the controls. Ultimately, they're just Katamari-isms, but the main thing that irks me is how bad it feels to boost still, after all these years. You have to flick the analog sticks up and down rapidly to charge up the Katamari, but there's little to no feedback to know when it's done charging, and sometimes it takes a second or two to recognize that you want to initiate a boost. In a game with timed stages, boosts can be incredibly important, so it's frustrating not really having them on command. This games stages are fairly forgiving, but if I remember correctly there are some stages in the second game that really make you manage time well.

This is a great remaster, but at $30 I'd say it's a little steep for the ~6 hours of gameplay you get. At $20 or less, it's perfect. Don't skip the game altogether though—there's nothing quite like Katamari Damacy.

While the minute-to-minute gameplay is addictive, the character writing, chart design and set pieces are what truly make this game shine. The game is subdivided into "acts", and in each one are 4-5 levels with front and back sides to enjoy. However, you also are introduced to a new pair of characters and experience the game through a series of cutscenes--many of which are weaved into the gameplay itself. Crazy, I know, but in that time you really do start to feel for and care for the characters introduced.

While the final act of the game isn't out at the time of this review. I'm counting down the days to the 1.0 release and what I can only assume is the conclusion of the story.

Rhythm Doctor is a must-play for rhythm game fans, but its accessibility and gradual introduction to rhythm concepts make this an apt pick for those who maybe haven't gotten into rhythm games before too. Other reviews mention that you can probably play the game blind, and I tend to agree.

On top of all of this, Rhythm Doctor features a level editor and extensive community support through custom levels. I'm not a charter, but the few levels I downloaded through Steam Workshop were insane testaments to how powerful this editor is.

On a personal note, I picked this game up due to its rave reviews without watching trailers or much previous research at all. I don't regret going in blind and I think this is probably the best way to go into this game.

If you're on the fence, this game is well worth your time and money. I loved this game so much I bought it two more times for friends. Rhythm Doctor has shaped up into one of my favorite gaming experiences of the year and I'm looking forward to many more hours with it in the future.