GRIS - 5/5

Visuals and storytelling are heavily prioritised in this game but it didn't bother me as the presentation is about as good as it gets. It's a short game but I'm glad it wasn't much longer as many games of this type becomes repetitive after a while, and I have personally experienced way too many games over the last six months that greatly overstayed their welcome.
There is one thing to consider though, in my opinion: actively going after the achievements really hurts the experience. It is best if you can ignore them, or at least wait until after you have finished the game, as searching every nook and cranny for secrets will break the flow of the game and make the experience a lot less enjoyable.

Well, another one bites the dust. This time it's The Coma: Recut, a side-scrolling horror game.

The game starts out decent but the more I played the more frustrated I got. I don't know if it was just my Switch that refused to co-operate with me but the game was unresponsive beyond belief and I often had to press a button 2-3 times before the game recognised the input. But even if that was a problem on my end, there are other problems with The Coma that makes me unable to call it a good game. This is the kind of game where you have no means of attacking the enemies so you have to dodge, run and hide, and you have the "slasher" type of enemy that lurks around and suddenly appears to chase after you. What really infuriated me was that the game often spawned the enemy right on me when entering a new area, making it extremely hard to react, and combined with the lousy input response it made for a terrible experience. You also have sound effects and music that at times are way too loud and they annoyed me so much when I tried to listen to footsteps or other sounds from enemies.
The story seemed decent and the horror element was pretty good in the beginning but the many issues turned it all into a tedious mess.


The Coma: Recut - 1.5/5

Tetris 99: 5/5
It's ridiculous how good this actually is.

Final Fantasy IX: 4.5/5
My first Final Fantasy, and I'm enjoying it. The design of the worlds is a bit.. different and difficult to navigate, but the story, music and gameplay are all great.

Wargroove - 5/5

Bulb Boy 3 / 5

Decent but short side-scrolling point & click adventure game. It is also on the easy side so you won't need a fully functioning brain to complete it. I would not recommend playing it while eating because it is kinda gross, at times too gross for my taste.

Final Fantasy VII (RPG) 3.5/5 - The story and music are good, but I'm not feeling it as much as I did IX.
Tangledeep (Roguelite RPG) 5/5 - A perfect example of what the genre should be.

Blaster Master Zero 1 and 2: 5/5
Buy it now or else!

Old Man's Journey - 5 / 5

A short puzzle-adventure in which an old man recieves a letter and sets off on a journey, and your job is to build a pathway and get rid of obstacles so that he can procede forward. It's very simple and easy but still worth it because of the great presentation and story.

Wish I'd discovered this thread earlier, but I chip in my two cents.

Hollow Knight Metroidvania 5/5
The lonely, foreboding atmosphere of Hallownest quickly draws you in and the tight combat and deep exploration keep you there. This game is huge and every minute of it is fantastic. The art is perfectly suited to the tone, the characters are strange and intriguing,and the content has been constantly expanded on. The only criticism I have is that maybe the story shouldn't require an obsessive documentation of all the scattered tablets across the world to understand it.

Crypt of the Necrodancer Rhythm/Dungeon Crawler 3/5
The beats and core premise of this game are great; it's easy to function perfectly in time to the beat as you fend off a veritable horde of varied enemies. The problem I have with is that the rougelite nature and lack of ability to remove certain items means that there is no guarantee you will find decent weapon. Which might not be a big deal if not for the second and much worse problem. The attack button is the same as the movement button. Despite nominally being able to remap controls these function could not be separated. Whether you move or attack is subjective based on enemy proximity and I often found myself jumping right into a monster's attack instead of slashing them.

Kamiko Beat-em-up 3/5
A fun, short little game about killing enemies to gather enough key to open up a boss fight. It's as simple as video games get in everything: story, characters, graphics, and gameplay. But still it's typically cheap and worth playing through it's two hour campaign two or three times for some easy fun.

Crash Nsane Trilogy 3D Platformer 4/5
Maybe this shouldn't count, but I got it on the eshop so I'll add it in. Crash is a storied platformer and a lot of fun. This was my first time playing these games aside from a few quick levels at a friend's house. The style and characters are a lot of fun, but there are too many instances where pixel-perfect platforming is expected. That's fine in a 2D platformer, but in a 3D one with a life system? Horribly frustrating.

Ittle Dew 2+
Zelda-like
4/5
A fun game that makes it's homage to the Legend of Zelda clear and present. But unlike it's inspiration Ittle Dew is unrepentantly goofy and leans of the fourth wall enough to crack it. Most of these jokes were chuckle-worthy although one or two did become a bit stale at the end. The combat is basic enough fare, although it becomes something more akin to bullet hell when facing later bosses and especially the secret boss. The puzzles and exploration are solid, but at times the puzzles can seem to simple or overused. This is likely because the game is done in a loose, 'any dungeon in any order' way which means many puzzles can be solved with just your starting gear.

Owlboy
Puzzle-platformer
2/5
I've heard so many good things about this game and went into it expecting a lot. The characters and storywere everything I was promised, but the gameplay just felt very underwhelming. I'm not sure if it's the annoyingly slow flight movement, the fairly simple puzzles, or the unsatisfying feel of boss-combat, but I just didn't enjoy it. I put the game done and have not finished it. I am planning to revisit it at some point and I will update my score if my opinion of it changes.

I am Setsuna
JRPG
2/5
Another game I had high hopes for as I prefer older, turn-based RPGs over the current ones. The story is interesting on the surface, but none of the characters were engaging and I honestly don't remember anything about them individually. The combat system included a real-time function mixed with a positioning system. I don't think either of those alone would've worked for me and the two combined definitely didn't.

Nefarious
Shooter/Platformer
3.5/5
I don't think think Nefarious is the first game to have you play as the villain, but it certainly gets it money out of the idea. Crow, the main character, hams it up in every scene and the nods/spoofs to a large variety of gaming icons and tropes are everpresent. The gameplay itself is basic, but the variety is interesting as you gain different abilities according to which princess you've captured. The boss battles also switch things up as you control a variety of giant robots to destroy the tiny hero attempting to take their princess back. The base game is fairly short, but there are a few secrets to find and extra levels to unlock to give it some extra playability.