Digimon games! Don't kill me. Digimon world ds, dawn and dusk are rpgs that involve you going through dungeons with your digimons and isn't like pokemon at all, really. The digivolution method is pretty good and it's really satisfying getting a strong digimon. They do have problems though. Ds has random battles and dead ends with a kiddy story while Dawn and Dusk are slow paced in the beginning and in my opinion is also too easy in the beginning, but I can recommend them to anyone whos interested. Digimon World Championship, on the other hand, is unique and awesome and definitely the best digimon game. You raise your digimon like pets to prepare them for battle. The battles are ai controlled, but it's about raising your digimon's stats and digivolution is a complex and detailed system. You can simply wait to have your digimon digivolve, have it fight battles, or increase it's elemental ap to get ready for the championship, all the while having ways to increase it's stats. If youre interested, get World Championship first.

Harvest Moon/Rune Factory: Underrated series in my opinion. You may or may not have heard of Harvest moon, but basically its a farming sim. You kinda have to play it yourself to see why it's so good (it's really hard to explain), and thats if you like it at all, you might not. Some aren't as good as the others but I'll rate the ds ones first. Tale of Two Towns: 9.5/10 This one is good to start with. I should know, it was my first Harvest Moon game and I couldn't put it down. 1/3 of my 8th grade summer went to this game lol. Reception is mixed, but I think it's good.  Sunshine Islands: 8/10 Basically Island of happiness, the GOOD version. IOH isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be but SI is way better and is mostly the same. Ds (cute is the girl version) 6.5/10 Do not start with this one. If you get really into the series it's pretty good, but things are super expensive and the game design just isn't well thought out but one can still enjoy it if they get past those problems. For the 3ds: A New Beginning 8/10 SLOOOOOOOOW beginning but if you get past that you got a good game. Story of Seasons 9.9/10 So close to being a perfect Harvest Moon game but small problems hold it back. Stamina drains fast, things are expensive, and the beginning is super slow but great game.

Now lets talk about Rune Factory. This is a spinoff, the tagline is literally "A Fantasy Harvest Moon". Farming is a big part still, but there's combat, forging, mythical creatures and monsters and the like. 4 for the 3ds is amazing and in my opinion one of the best games ever just for the sheer amount of effort put into it but I'll get into that later. (1-3 are for the ds) 1 is a classic. It's simple, which is good, and it really balances the farming and combat well. The characters are ok, but there not really a focus. 2 dropped the ball a bit. It's pretty boring and just isn't as good as the others. 3 completely changed the formula. The mechanics are now more loose (which is good), more effort was put into the supporting cast, good story, better combat, and it still manages to balance farming and combat really well. This is where another 1/3 of my 8th grade summer went. In 4, everything that was good about the first 3 games have been upped to the max. The company could really use the help, too, as they're struggling financially. If you're in Europe, you have to buy it through the eshop, but it's worth it.

999: The first part of the Zero Escape trilogy. It's a mystery game with a cool premise. 9 people are kidnapped and stuck in a sinking boat and must play "The Nonary Game". They have 9 hours to escape. They must find door 9, the exit, while following all of Zero's (the mastermind behind this) rules. They all have a number on the watch on their wrist (Junpei, who you play as, is 5) and if they break any rule, the bomb that was planted in their stomach as they were knocked out will detonate. Every character involved is linked to the story and there's a lot of story. Pay attention to every detail. There's past and present elements, amnesia, past friends, murder, and trust in the story and you choose your own path. As you can probably tell, this is not for the faint of heart. Death and blood is pretty common. The rest of the trilogy (Virtues Last Reward and Zero Time Dilemma) is on the 3ds. The series doesn't have that many fans so the budget was limited and the third game had many production difficulties, but great series. This is where the last 1/3 of my 8th grade summer went. I had no life during that period. :/

Lock's Quest: A tower defense game with you on the front lines. First you build your defenses and then you fight the robot enemies called clockworks yourself with the help of your walls, cannons, and traps. Good story and game design, and it's criminal how little people know about this game. I will say though, this game gets HARD, you get just enough supplies to last each turn and some bosses are probably gonna take a few tries, so if you can't handle big difficulty, I'd skip it.

Advance Wars: Fire emblem but with an actual army, tanks and guns and that. Seriously, same company too. You probably haven't heard much of it because Nintendo acts like it doesn't exist. The first two for the gba are really good, 2nd one is better, and the 3rd, Dual Strike for the ds is the best. Days of Ruin, which is the fourth one, Is completely different, no returning characters or factions, dark story where 90% of the human population has been killed off by meteor strikes and the sky is covered in dust, making crops near impossible to grow. I could recommend any of them, and if you get into the series, go nag Intelligent systems to make a 5th game because they're putting so much effort into Fire Emblem. FE HAS BEEN SAVED FOR YEARS, NOW SAVE ADVANCE WARS!!!

Petz Dolphinz (Yes, I'm serious): I know, I know but hear me out. My sister bought this years and years ago at a flea market and I was bored out of my mind so I decided to play it. I found that it can actually be pretty addictive taking care of the park and it can get pretty challenging as the game goes on. I haven't played any other Petz game, but after playing this one they might be pretty good. Overall, much better game than I expected.

Fossil Fighters: POKERMANZ WIT DINOSAURZ 5.874653229/Turnip LEWL-ign. Not really. Some similarities, but it stands on its own. The first 2 are for the ds and are simple and good, but the second one felt REALLY short, like, I beat it in less than a week short, when most of my summer was devoted to Rune Factory 3, Tale of Two Towns, and 999. The third is for the 3ds, but I heard it was pretty bad.

Pokemon Conquest: Pokemon and Nobunaga's Ambition. Not the first combo I think of but hey. Decent game and you don't really have to play Nobunaga's Ambition to get it. The big problem I have with it though is that since there is no more ds wi fi, you can't get the post game missions, so most of the game you can't even play.

Oh and medabots for the gba, the rpg one. Itz gud :3

You can choose which player you'll become. You have all their powers and talent, and will start as skilled at all aspects of being a Pokemon trainer as you were in those aspects in video game Pokemon.

You can use passwords, but the following are banned: field passwords, freemegaz, anything that lowers opponent levels, EVs, or IVs, passwords that solely debuff opposing trainers without buffing the player, nobattles/storymode, yoink (snag machine password), and debug

Note: For Reborn, while you'll be an actual person and not merely an avatar for the player, you'll retain the powers that the protagonist had as an avatar for a player (save and load, pausing, HUDs, etc.). This does mean you don't get any increase in talent, since canonically the protagonist had the talent of the player.

In light of that Overwatch has become a bit more prominent since the holidays, and the Discord server for Reborn having an Overwatch channel now, I decided it may be fun to host a bunch of gaming sessions so we can play with-- and against each other!

The idea is that these matches will be held on the PC version of Overwatch, considering it's the most accessible version to a lot of people. During the weekends, we'll round up people who are interested in playing a few rounds, and hopefully gather enough people so we can do 6vs6!

But of course, there's a few requirements that you'll need in order to be able to participate without any problems:

• You need to have the PC version of Overwatch.
• It's preferrable if you're verified on the Discord server. It's not required as you can communicate on Overwatch though voice/text chat, but it lets you participate in the voice calls on discord, making things a bit easier altogether.
• Most matches will be held from around 2 PM EST during the weekends (Saturday and Sunday). If there's no one to host, it'll be mentioned in the chat (but of course you can still play together if you want.) 
  • Length of the time played depends on how many people want to keep playing too, but if you want to play, make sure to be online around that time. You can join in later too, but it's easier to set up early.
  • If there's not enough people to do 6vs6 but enough to create a group with, we can hop onto quick play as well.
  • Alternatively, the open spots in matches can be filled by AI characters.

Since we all want to have fun, there's a few rules too:

• Most important out of all of them: Don't be disrespectful towards your team members or the other players in the game! These matches are for fun, it's only a game, and not intended to get salty about.
• If someone's not doing very well as a certain character, ask them kindly to switch. Don't be rude about it.
• To make things fair, teams and members will be switched around after each round.
• Both teams will play both on attack and defense on one map once before switching maps.

Share your battle tag here, and what region you usually use to play on! Depending on where most people are from and how stable their internet is, we'll play on either the US or EU server. Note that you'll have to add friends again depending on the region servers you're playing on, so you'd have to add the same person on both US and EU if you want them to be on your friends list on both.

So yes! If you're interested, drop your Battletag here and drop by at the Overwatch channel on the Reborn discord channel. Hopefully we'll be able to get a few games in during this weekend as well, to kick this off nicely.

If anything's unclear, feel free to ask me questions here in the topic or on the discord channel.

(PS: For convenience's sake, my battletag is Honnojis#2574 and I usually play on EU. My internet is pretty stable so I'm capable of playing on US as well, although I highly prefer playing on EU.)

He used to take notes on his favorite heroes with a pen, right? The saying is, “The pen is mightier than the sword”, right. That would imply that the pen is indeed comparable to a sword. And since he’s from an anime, he qualifies as a Generic Anime Swordsman.

The reddit post that contains the blurb for selling the idea both as a game and an experiment is right here if you're interested. It's got a little google form attached to it for players signing up, too.

That aside, do you guys think this is a good idea? Have you felt the need to create your own Pokemon regions before? Do you think Pokemon is doomed to fail as a TTRPG?

Kind of a noob question, but somehow I avoided stone evolutions in all my years of PKMN play, so I have a question about it, especially for a certain case:
Nidorina learns Crunch with Lv. 43. Nidoqueen learns Earth Power on the same level. How will this work exactly, when I train Nidorina to Lv 43, teach it Crunch and then use the Moon Stone? Will Nidoqueen immediately learn Earth Power? Later on? Or just never?

Can anyone say if that horrific scaling is going to be a thing in the upcoming expansion, too? I remember i could pass through grey mobs without them attacking me, or soloing a dungeon at +20 levels, but now such things are nigh impossible. I honestly hate what they 've done with the game.

Utawarerumono Trilogy [Review and Thoughts]

Oh boy this series. So I've heard the name now and then and just never got around to playing it. Well more like duology of Mask of Deception and Mask of Truth. I can honestly say I'm so glad I waited as a few months ago the last of the trilogy Prelude of the Fallen came out on the PS4 and I think Steam. I played them all on the PS4 so I'll be referring to that. And I just want to also get something out of the way. One of the translations for the first game is A Song for the Fallen Ones which upsets me so much because that title makes so much more sense and fits with the storyline so much more. I imagine they renamed it to make sure people know it takes place before the Mask games. But before I lose half of you, I will make something clear and if you get into the series you'll thank me later. The game order is:

Prelude to the Fallen > Mask of Deception > Mask of Truth

Play them in that order. You can technically skip Prelude to the Fallen and start with Mask of Deception but if you do that, then there's not much point going back and playing the first game since everything but some humorous scenarios are spoiled. If you want to be an absolute madlad you can start with Mask of Truth but pretty much mute playing the other two games. I played the games in that order and am so glad I did it that way.

And for people who only care about scores. PttF is a 7.5. MoD is a 7.5. MoT is a 9.25/10. I felt it was better than a 9 but some stuff was holding me back from giving it a 9.5 so I decided to meet in the middle. Overall I'd say the series is a good 8.5/10.

Where do I even begin with this trilogy? I guess I can start by saying that this series is not for everyone. It's actually a Visual Novel Strategy RPG which I'd say is 60% VN and 40% SRPG if you count the postgame content. For the sake of clarity I'll be using Fire Emblem as a comparison since that's about the only mainline SRPG that most people are familiar with. There's also going to be lots and lots of redacted stuff for the story just because each game quite literally builds off of the rest but I'll try to give you the simple down low on what to expect and keeping the surprises well surprises.

Story and Music

I suppose I should try to give the rundown of the story. I think the best way to describe it is an Isekai slice of life. Obviously being a Strategy RPG it's much more than that but that sentence alone should tell you right now if you should pick this up or not. The first game starts out with an amnesiac masked man who cannot remember his own name. When he tries to remove the mask, it will not come off. A girl named Eruru alone with her grandmother help nurse him back to help. He is given the name Hakuowlo which was the name of Eruru's father. And so Hakuowlo decides in return to help the village out with their everyday needs becoming a full time resident. The other big thing you'll immediately notice is that Hakuowlo is the only character without ears or a tail which comes as a surprise to him. The second game starts off similar with an amnesiac man given the name Haku who Kuon found and decided to be his caretaker until he could find his way in life.

And you're probably going to want to ask me a number of questions which the most prominent one is: what the hell is an Utawarerumono. And unbelievably no, it is not a food based item. The game really, really likes to take its time. You'll pretty much be stuck in a single village for I think what feels around 10 hours. It really likes to go slow and lollygag with man subscenarios which can go from silly ones such as two major generals spitting their tongues at each other to really deep and sad scenes of a character barely suffering from their own actions. You will being doing this for a long while before the main plot decides to move forward. And I have to be honest, it can be very, very annoying waiting for the next battle because it will be hours before you will be getting into combat. I want to say at least 3-4 hours before any of the SRPG gameplay. And that's the beauty of this game. You do so many things that really feel inconsequential letting you build and get to know these characters. And if you don't care for these scenarios I suppose you can honestly skip them.

And now I can talk about probably the only big gripe I really have: the fanservice. I mean I literally said at one point in the first game is, "How did they get away with allowing that in?" Definitely don't want to be playing this when grandma is in the room. By the third game they calmed down with the previness but the second game is the worst contender. It was certainly an unnecessary amount. Though I am okay with keeping the male fanservice where it is. Those scenes were great. That alone with some of the character tropes can get a bit on your nerves. That's one thing I liked about the first game's cast a bit more since they were more down to earth and not completely defined by some trope like the second one. Especially Nekone. Nekone is more annoying than Eruru, but those probably are the only two I think I had issues with.

And now we have the cast which honestly I ended up liking most of them by the end. Except Eruru. Bloody healers who are only good at dying. Aruru the shy, spoiled child is one of my favorites because her brain is incomprehensible. Also easily the best hide and go seek player ever. There's also characters like Karalau who is the embodiment of thirsty. She also punched the head off a soldier in the anime. There's also Ougi the shadow who knows everything. There's a lot that I could unload here but the reason why the third game is so high is because all of those pointless moments and silly mini-adventures really do have a massive payoff at the end. You get attached to them and even when you know what's going to happen the writers know exactly how to pull your heartstrings. It really sucks that the voice actor for Haku died recently. He did such a good job with the role.

Speaking of loses. The composer for this series died recently as well. The soundtrack has few songs but all of them work rather well. Especially the final boss theme which is just beautiful. It really gives that ancient Japanese feel to the games and while I wouldn't call it the greatest of all time, it definitely served its purpose very, very well. The graphics are a bit dated looking more like PS2 styled ones, but I enjoyed them. The 2d art is really well done. There's a lot of uniquely designed characters with the 8 pillars having some of my favorite designs. You take one look at Vurai and question if he even has a soul. Which is ironic given the plot of...nevermind.

And there is one other big gripe before I get to gameplay. The game's lore order is a bit of a jumbled mess. The best way I can put it is that there are two different sets of lore. The first one is about the land in front of you that they spend a lot of time developing Tuskur and Yamato and their way of life. The other one is shrouded in mystery which they try piecing together bit by bit. It didn't all click for me or actually a number of people until you see it fully spelled out in order (or the wiki page) where it all suddenly makes sense. I can't say much else but it doesn't ruin the enjoyment but maybe scratch your head about a plot point or another as many of them are brief and you have to connect the dots yourself.

Gameplay

And now I get to talk about combat. It's a barebones basic SRPG in the first one but by the third one it gets to be rather complex. First game you basically have a set of characters each with different movements and elemental types though none of that really matters to much. Each has a pretty basic role from being nuke, tank, mage, or the one and only healer who cannot do anything but heal. What real interesting is that exp is gained by damage and opponents level not by killing them. The first game you have a pretty small map with the goal of clearing 4-8 enemies. The main trick to the first game is that you dish out and receive damage based on where an attack is targeted. The back does the most while the front does the least. At the end of every action you set which way you're character is facing. You also have this gauge called zeal which pretty much once it hits 100 you can unleash your ultimate attack and more or less knock out an enemy. Unless you are Mr. OP lance unit, it does take a few turns to build up. You also have a team attack special called Co-op attacks with usually are better for groups of enemies which and cost less Zeal for both (70 for the attacker and 50 for the partner). The only other thing to note is that you have consumable items in the first game to heal whenever.

All-in-all the first game is pretty barebones. There's actually one defense map, one escape map, but most are pretty much route or defeat boss. They do try to make it interesting by throwing destroyable objects out of the way for good items. You also pretty much have to deploy your lord, Hakuowlo who is a pretty decent attacker but while there isn't permadeath, if Hakuowlo dies it's game over...unless you rewind to a previous turn. Pretty much an infinite Mila's turnwheel. Pretty handy for when you screw up. The animations at least look nice and there's a small zeal bonus for timing your attacks right in Legend of Dragoon styled timed hits.

The second game pretty much took the structure and scrapped everything bad about it. Your characters can't control what way they are facing which is okay since only one character (*cough* Ougi *cough*) even has an ability related to it. Healing items are replaced with equipment which are rewards clearing objectives on maps which range from dodging abilities to reducing damage from certain elements. Picture skills from Radiant Dawn more or less. Characters come with their own skills again but a lot less of them have random buffs. Also, magic attacks don't have a use limit per map. The most significant change is that characters have about three options each turn. Basically when you have an attack or healing move there are a set number of actions you can do called chains. This count can go up to 5 plus a final strike one. First game they all more or less only had one. This cast has three or more. And instead of timing the actions right to get more zeal, you get crits which deal more damage and give more zeal.

There's also one more mechanic that really helped make the game more difficult. Whenever your zeal hits 100, you go into overzeal mode. This lets you take an extra turn along with your stats getting a slight buff. Each turn you stay in Zeal mode you lose 50 Zeal and if the counter goes down to zero you exit out of it...unless you use a final strike which ends it immediately. The fact that enemies can use this as well makes them more dangerous and found my units dying quite a bit more. Not too often but way more than the first game which really only the healer I rarely needed died...a lot. The maps also were a lot more interesting as they played with more mechanics beyond beat up the enemy such as some retreating to another part of the map midway through. The elemental chart also plays a greater role as you do way more damage and take significantly more. Also Haku may be much weaker than Hakuowlo but goddamn he makes up for it with an amazing heal skill.

Then we have the third game. You lose some abilities you start out with but regain them all through leveling up. More enemies have counters with is retaliation for hitting them with certain attacks. They added more crit times called hidden crits. Status effects are more prevalent, and abilities that will make you internally scream. The game isn't too hard but I certainly had a few shares of game overs having to retry all over again. Especially what would be the equivalence of 3-13 archer sniping my ass from a cliff. The man may as well have a brave bow launching four javelins in a row at me. Yes, the man launches javelins with a bow. Don't question it.

I really ended up loving the combat in Mask of Truth. The game really loved to throw curveballs at you often with the goal completely changing halfway through. There also would be side objectives for a better piece of equipment for doing something such as koing all enemies before the boss. Often times it'd be some random sniper in an obscure hard to reach place. The maps may look simple but these ones always some kind of "but wait...there's more" and even by the final map they still managed to find ways to throw me off my feet. Also holy shit that was one hell of a final boss.

This third game also has the most elaborate postgame in the series having some very difficult fights along with some of the weirdest ones you'll ever see in a SRPG. There's one where you beat up flying plates of food to rescue your man from a yaoi fanfiction come to life. I wish I could say I was making that up.

Conclusion

I kind of went into this series not knowing what to expect and I came out of it rather amazed. I know there's the Zan game and the anime but it honestly does not really replace the game trilogy experience but if you do need to cut down then watch season 1 of the anime and play the mask games. Season 2 really butchered Mask of Deception and didn't even bother to include what has to be one of the most important scenes in the game. You can really only experience this trilogy for the first time once. And I can honestly see why the VN database has Mask of Truth as the third highest rated VN on their site. Is it perfect? No. But it's actually those imperfections that made some really impacting scenes for me. If you can make me an emotional wreck by the end, I think that's a 9. If they do happen to make a fourth game continuing the series, I'll definitely buy it. I think the first two are around 40-50 hours while the third one I hit the 60 hour mark at the final boss. Each is definitely a full fledged adventure.

I'll give the tl;dr version first. While there is a lot I really liked about the game, I'd have to score it a 6.5/10 or maybe a 7. 65% of the game is really good but the 35% is all kinds of degrees of bad. There's basically two polar opposites in this game making it hard to truly give a good score. If this is the improvement from Color Splash, I really don't want to even consider touching that game. And as a warning the first two Paper Mario games are some of my absolute favorites so of course I'm going to bring them up, but more to explain this whole split.

There's a lot to unfold here, pun not intended. I'll start off with the simplest positive. The music is pretty good. It's very smoothing and while not as memorable to me as the first two games I can definitely say it really helps hype up the battles. The game really gives off Sunshine music vibes which honestly is probably the one thing that keeps my sanity when battling which we'll get into. The graphics are also very crisp and most areas look very pretty and are quite the enjoyment to walk around and explore. There are some areas where I felt they did a bit too much. Peach's castle they tried polishing it a bit too much which feels off. But I must say I do appreciate the heavy nod of recreating two of the most iconic backgrounds from the original N64 game. Any vet will immediately recognize those two.

Now let's jump into the story and characters. So the overall storyline is what you'd expect or well should expect from this series. Someone is trying to take over the mushroom kingdom/world. I'm just thankful it isn't Bowser for the 4th time now. I'll be putting this all in spoilers as I will be covering a lot of big surprises in this game but I can honestly say that I liked it almost as much as the N64 one and I could see it argued that it was done better than that. It actually kind of shocked me how good the writing was at points which it felt like the TTYD writers were put in charge. This alone is what really made the game worth playing. So let me just get into it here. And reminder that this is going to spoil a majority of the game:

Something I'd really like for them to explain is the timeline. The first three games very likely take place in the same universe which is often why it is referred to as the Paper Mario Trilogy. Interesting enough there are references to the older games but not really anything to confirm such as a name drop of older characters which would've honestly been kind of nice of Kolorado or Frankly had a mention which actually would have made sense in this game. But we'll just have to assume the originals are permanently discontinued with 0 sign of coming back. But I feel there is a good mix here with the humor and storytelling. The game is a humorous adventure and ended up surprising me how much I liked it.

Now for exploration. I haven't played Color Splash or Sticker Star but the connected world actually felt more connected than the first two games. Everything really flowed quite well leading from one point to the next without really any need to backtrack. Toad Town/Rogue Port were the central hubs for those games but Origami King does have its own. You can quite literally beat the game with only visiting this game's Toad Town twice. The second time is only for about 5 minutes at the most. There is stuff to do after each chapter but not that much. I'd say 90% of the content can be done and completed with almost no backtracking. Which actually really helps make exploring fun. You wander around looking for hidden objects to complete a map. My biggest complaint is the confetti system. After chapter 1, it's a pretty pointless system for padding. I would've liked to see a much more clever use of it.

There is a major thing about exploration I don't understand. I have no idea who this game was made for. It has quite a number of really clever puzzles which require quite a bit of problem solving. A lot of them I felt like you'd have to be 10-12 to really figure out since they aren't super blatant. Which is really funny as this game has mechanics that make you feel like you're stupid. There's a flame puzzle where you have to jump on tiles in a specific order. Each time you fail they make it easier which you have no option to turn off. I actually failed a few times because I screwed up the jumps. So the game provided a handicap. They do this for everything that may be a challenge.....except for a couple things that are really quite challenging. I leaned I hate Jeopardy. I really feel they should remove some of that hand holding because people will fail a few times and it's okay. That really did piss me off a bit.

Now to rip the band-aid off on why I wouldn't want to replay this game: the combat. The combat isn't so bad that the game is unplayable. In reality, there's a number of good things it's done. There's three types of battles in this game: normal enemies, bosses, and paper machete. I'll start with the normal enemy battles. You'll see people spazz out about the no experience system. I don't have an issue with that. Experience is the easiest form to show progression. We'll get into the what I would've wanted after talking about this mess. Random battles are pretty much you solve the puzzle and win. There are only two types of enemies in the entire game that cannot be one shot. And these enemies you have a partner who can one shot them. It's actually counter productive to not one shot them as you gain less profits. And even better is the timer. If you can't figure it out on time, the most efficient solution is to cheat and have the game solve it not by paying for more time. In fact, the timer mechanic just makes the combat even worse and even more reason to avoid battles.

I'm not here to say it's absolute trash. I didn't hate these battles. I just dreaded hard puzzles because half the time I just would end up having to take an L and suffer damage. Which isn't that big of a deal since recovering HP is abuseable due to an accessory that recovers some health at the start of the battle. But let's remove all of that for a minute. Enemies actually have pretty unique and interesting attacks. Not as big of a variety as the original two but definitely will see quite some interesting attacks such as an enemy sacrificing another enemy by chucking them to do more damage. Would enemy battles be that interesting? In my opinion not really as they are very limited. You really only have three actions in battle: jump, hammer, and item with the last being the least useful in most scenarios. There are definitely ways to make it challenging as all Paper Mario games are rather easy, but the question is if it'd be fun. I'm more on the side of no but who knows.

Then we have boss battles. Basically you have 3 moves on a game board to plan out and take an action. The first few bosses are pretty basic especially the first one who does nothing to the board. These fights get pretty crazy from clearing sets of the board to a burning pit of doom. I'll admit this part of the game is so much more interesting as there's a bunch of choices you have to make. My main gripe is for the lategame bosses where you'll never want to do an attack action making more of them puzzle type fights and not strategy. Which is invalidated by either A) being so confusing nobody would figure it out or B) you pick up the hint invalidating the whole puzzle gimmick in the first place. I'll admit I had to kind of rely on them since it's pretty hard to really know how to win these fights. I liked a lot of these bosses (especially ones who weren't Mr. Green Streamer guard) but I just see a lot of wasted potential due to how in-depth it's made. But they are very enjoyable and make up for the lackluster combat.

The there's paper machete battles. There's the normal ones which honestly aren't that exciting. Just hit the weak spot to expose them and wack them 3 times to win. They have some variety but not really all that fun. There are a couple of unique ones which ho boy those are actual bosses. They are pretty easy but I definitely can say they didn't bore me. It has more of a focus of dodging attacks and then making sure you're within range to do damage. I definitely would say I had more fun with those than anything Super Paper Mario threw at me. They moved faster and you had to approach them in different ways. In other words, they all didn't feel the same.

If you have been reading this whole thing, you probably understand why I give it the rating I did. It's not a predecessor that is holding itself back but more like itself being its own issue. It just feels like the combat and gameplay are the real problem. I had fun and got almost all collectibles and toads in the game only missing a single one which is the Bowser one. I'm not doing the trophies though. I don't have the memory or reflexes like I used to. I think it's a game worth playing but I feel like everyone can find enjoyment, but want it to be something else due to lacking in some parts. Really makes me want to replay the first two games again.

Now I'm pretty sure everyone is going to say it's completely impossible to both do this new style and satisfy the old fans. You have a lot of people saying to go back to the old style. There is a way and it has to do with both this system and a game called Radiant Historia. All they have to do is two things: split currency and reverse the combat. So take what we have here and turn it from a ring into a chessboard. The difference here is that you have mario and up to two other party members who have various abilities to move enemies around. And lining them up boosts damage but more importantly you can attack more of them at once leading to easier KOs and a better multiplier for beating the battle. Let's say you earn red coins at the end. And those red coins are used at shops to buy power ups such as more HP or maybe even new equipment/abilities. I'd love for them to bring back the FP and badge system, but the current system of breakable weapons is fine. It'd solve the two biggest problems I had: lack of combat variety and lack of linear growth.

I'm glad I played this game, but I'm also glad I'm done. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be trying the Masterquest mod for the original and suffer.

New Pokemon-like game goes into Early Access in a couple of weeks. Thoughts?

Drop you fav video game trailer(s), with video links, duh. As for me, I gotta stand by the fact that Assassin's Creed Unity's premiere still stands as one of the best trailers out there IMO

Ring Fit Adventure is honestly quite the interesting game I've only played half an hour into and my body can feel it. Actually, it can't really but that in itself is a good thing. So to give you some background, I'm actually not some overweight loser, more just a right on the edge of fatness loser. I gained about 30 pounds too much over the past year after getting skinny but my goal isn't exactly to shed that off. It's more about getting back into the shape I was around 5 years ago back in my high school days. That would require the greatest barrier and most failed New Year's Resolution to overcome: actually exercising.

I already know most of you are probably looking at me funny because what would a fat gamer know about exercising. I actually took 4 years of marching band and let me tell you I had calves of steel from that. But we actually had to do all kinds of stretches for warm ups which many are now ingrained into my head. Marching 8 hours a day for a month then 3 hours every single day plus 4-6 hours on a Saturday really makes for a wild workout. You also feel the pain of holding a chunk of metal for all that time. So yeah, I do have some background on this. I'll get more into my band stories which will tie into what I talk about in a minute. There's actually something I know more or less everyone reading this will understand. One issue that plagues a majority of the US.

People don't like to exercise. That's just a fact. It's grindy and painful and there's a lot of things that should be done that people just don't want to do. Most people's daily exercise if they do any is to just jog for 30 minutes a day and be done. All you're doing is just working your legs slightly which is good. But once it becomes routinely, it's just some lull in the day to stay healthy. Now there are still a number of people who go to the gym and work out there which I say, "Good for you." There are actually issues doing that which is ties into my issue from marching band. There's areas of your body that you just don't do workouts for because it's tiresome and troublesome so when you have the option to not do it, you don't do it. One of the reason I have stick arms even while in marching band. It grinds down to one of the simplest answers to the biggest problem: people don't like to exercise because exercise is not fun.

I want you to remember this: "People don't like to exercise because exercise is not fun" as this entire review and discussion will be centered around that. Ring Fit Adventure is a very niche game that became mainstream for some reason that was designed around that philosophy. So what exactly is Ring Fit Adventure? It's an RPG where you have a ring and jog in place while you run through the level like a sonic character while dealing with enemies in battle by performing different exercises. There's also minigames and normal excercises but for the sake of discussion, I'll leave out anything I haven't tried yet and I'll talk about them when I get around to doing them. The game's story is also relatively simple in that you travel to a bunch of worlds to stop a dragon named Dragaux from corrupting the world in evil darkness.

I really want to be proven wrong here but I can't imagine seeing people putting this into their daily regimens which they should. Personally, I think this game was suited perfect for me. What I really like about the game is the combat. I won't beat around the bush in saying that combat is miserable. When you get into combat, you have to do things such as pullups or pushing the band in and out. And it's not some simple cutesy 2 times. You have to do 15-30 depending on the difficulty you set. Considering they are color coded based on the core getting the workout, there will be ones you dread to do. I died inside every time I had to do the chair pose. It deserves to burn in a pit of fire. Squats I really liked doing (I have the thighs of a First Class Soldier) so I often went for those when I had the choice. But enemies are color coded so you'll be either suffering more doing what you love or suffer a little doing what you don't want to.

That really is the secret to Ring Fit Adventure. It rewards you for doing things you don't want to do. I don't want to be in pain, but I'm willing to put up with it to progress further in this game. Getting through the first world was rough for me doing it on the normal difficulty. I felt tired, worked up a good sweat, and needed water and fast. When the game says have a towel and bottle of water ready, they aren't kidding. You need those. World 1 took me around 10-12 minutes to do and I did a few of the rhythm games (gotta have my Odyssey) while I did a bit of world 2 for 8 or so minutes leaving it around 20-25 minutes. Let me tell you something: I burned more calories in those 20 minutes than I would in two hours with the Wii Fitness. And the even crazier thing is that I'm in much, much less pain.

And given I'm probably like one of the 5 people who can actually talk about this, Ring Fit is different the Wii Fit. People like to compare the two but they are two entirely different entities which a majority of people prefer one for a reason. Wii Fit is more about posture and stretching muscles to become more nimble and be able to balance more. Ring Fit focuses more on a daily regimen on what you should be doing in a day and slowly pushes you to do more and more to get a full workout like you would in a gym or more specifically a gym class. Ring Fit does a lot more to what will feel natural. The other crazy thing is that it doesn't eat up my day like Wii Fit would.

So as this is not something you can simply spend a week on to give a good review we're going to be doing a little challenge here. My end goal is to be able to play this an hour a day on the higher difficulty each morning but for now I'll slowly start from 20 minutes each morning and try going longer and longer. At the end of the month, I'll do a weight check to see if I actually lost any weight (that's not a goal but a good thing to check). I plan to keep doing this daily but only through September I'll actually be jotting stuff down. But here's my quick thoughts version:

This is a good game to get into an active lifestyle which is something myself, and I imagine a lot of people also have issues with. Personally, I am not that bothered by tedious or grindy games so this fits up my alley but I could see a lot of people being turned off and dropping this after a month alone. This also is going to simply be a supplement to losing weight and not a heavy hitter to knock those pounds off as while you do workouts, there isn't anything intense to really shed those pounds off. But regardless, it'll be good for a better rounded workout than a simple jog a day like I've considered getting into and haven't...for the past year.

Also I'll probably make a quick blurb daily but here's my Day 1 Suffering Workout

Day 2 in a nutshell: F*@# you doors. I shall burn every door in the vicinity down. Also, I did not sign up for Through the Fire and Flames but with my body

Day 3 in a nutshell: Maybe I shouldn't have done the Rhythm game. Also, screw you Mr Boss. You can't take two turns in a row. That's against the rules.

Day 4: When I said chair pose was the worst I was so, so wrong. Planks are much, much worse. So much worse. My arms feel like they're about to fall off.

Day 5: Oh my abs. I decided to crank it to level 30 as I thought the stage would be simple to test it...it was actually a boss stage. I'm in a lot of pain.

Day 6: When I said I had the legs of a first class soldier, I was so, so wrong. This one mastery workout pooped me out early.

(also is it possible to refund games bought on sale on PS store?)