April 2025
It should be noted that this is both Evoland and Evoland 2 in a single package. This may be something you already know, but it wasn’t immediately obvious by the title. Needless to say I have a separate Evoland 2 copy in my library that I will have to replay later. Now that that’s out of the way, these games are love letters to the progression or RPG and RPG adjacent games and their EVOlution through the years.
Evoland 1 has you start as a basic classic Zelda like and with each pickup upgrades your bits and gameplay as you progress. The game is a nice bite sized adventure packed with varying gameplay mechanics and loads of references to some of the greatest RPGs out there. Aside from having to repeated traverse some dungeons while looking for secrets, this was a fairly enjoyable experience and the way the game goes from the basic 16 bit top down to a Final Fantasy-like (among other games) kept me constantly engaged in what was going on. There is a basic story but it isn’t particularly deep or drawn out.
Evoland 2 takes the concept of the first game but sets it in a far more expansive story with greater adventure. Starting as an amnesiac you go on an adventure with a newly made friend to figure out your past and potentially save the world. Since the game has a much greater average play time the your transition between game styles is much slower. In fact, much of the changes are a slow burn until later in the game before they pick up the pace. Regardless, at all times you gain companions who have abilities you can use to better traverse any obstacles and enemies in your path. With a much more interesting story there is also an immense amount of NPC interactions. Not only is there humorous and lore dialogue, but a card game that you may or may not begin to loathe pretty quickly as most players are well out of your league from the start and having to retrack them down later can be quite a pain. Speaking of retrack, trying to go back through all the levels especially with recurring dungeons is incredibly frustrating as knowing which version of the same dungeon can be confusing. It’s not to say that this fleshed out game is bad in anyways, in fact it’s pretty great and well rounded. However, the immediate back to back whiplash from the first game and the completionist requirements for this game can feel like an incredible slog. Needless to say, give yourself a break from the first game before diving into this.
Recommend? Absolutely, both games have so much charm and plenty of references that are bound to give you some sense of nostalgia.
Now that I finally completed all of Replicant, I thought it was due time I gave Automata a try. Admittedly I was a bit reluctant after Replicant’s Dynasty Warrior-esque gameplay, but much of that was immediately relieved in Automata’s more complex combat system that was closer to a character action game like Bayonetta. It was about half way through my first ending that everything suddenly clicked and I understood all the praise this game received. We are immediately introduced to our character 2B. An android responsible for destroying alien machine lifeforms that threaten humanity. With the help of 9S, another android, they traverse a post-apocalyptic world filled with much mystery as the themes of duty, honor, and what it means to be alive (among others) are embedded throughout. Needless to say, the writing and story is an enjoyable experience. It does not necessarily require you to play Replicant to enjoy, though it does give much more insight and background to some details and interactions.
Aside from various melee weapons and a ranged support bot, you have access to a collection of chips you can equip to enhance and/or gain new abilities. Some chips are more mandatory than the other and you can only equip so many at once due to cost values. It seemed tedious at first, but learning to combine chips to optimize your gains while limiting your costs was oddly satisfying especially when you get to that perfectly synergized build. The various areas throughout the land give you plenty to explore in their wonderfully diverse beautiful environments and your various tools to traverse reduce any fatigue when needing to revisit any one area. The characters themselves are not only well written but the actors behind each one did a fantastic job invoking their emotion and personality in every line. Aesthetically, I love their designs. Giving off an aura of cool if not a little extravagant. You can unlock costumes and gear (purely aesthetic), but I rarely felt the need to as I absolutely loved their base looks.
When you’re not busy taking on story or grinding chipsets/materials, there is plenty of extra content including side quests and fishing. Fishing is a bit of a downgrade as all you do is cast your line and react when a fish bites. No interactive minigame or bait required. So, if you are trying to hard complete the game… well you may tear what hair you have out. The same frustration can be found when filling out the enemy data. Each side quests further builds the world and offers great interactions and rewards though they typically are just hit lists or fetch quests. Only a few side quests carry over through playthroughs, so be warned but also never feel you need to do them all on your first… unless you are already invested that is… As for endings as opposed to Replicant’s 5 endings, Automata sports a total of 21 endings. Now, there are only 5 actual story endings whereas the remaining 16 are situational “bad” endings that you can checkpoint from. One of which is missable so be sure to stagger your saves and maybe look up one to save yourself some potential headache. Somehow I staggered my save just perfectly to avoid a total meltdown. If you were to just go for your first main ending, you might feel the game is incomplete as opposed to Replicant which has a more complete single ending story. Automata’s first ending feels a bit abrupt and like much is left to question. HOWEVER, Automata makes up for it by making each ending playthrough much more diverse than the repetitive playthroughs of Replicant. I won’t divulge further as to leave the experience for any potential newcomer, just know it’s very much worth it and that just about everything carries over.
Recommend? Absolutely, it is one of the cases that truly lived up to the hype and only wish I did not wait so long to give it a shot..
Choice: Chose to help others even at a cost.
Note: This probably could have been a 10/10 had the hard completion required so much frustrating RNG and nierly nearly having to start a save from scratch for all the endings. I also probably forgot to mention a few things, but to be fair that's probably better for you to experience on your own.
Zelda inspired dungeon crawler that takes the classic top down Zelda experience and combines it with the sea focused environments of Wind Waker. To put it simply, you do a lot of travel between islands where you will engage in puzzles and basic combat to eventually stop a living fortress, Oceanhorn. Though it does take a lot from the top down gameplay of a classic Zelda, your movement is 8 way which can cause some awkward traversal as it does not feel it was meant to have 8 way movement. Visually the game is kind of bland as the 3D models look very generic and kinda blobby. I frequently find myself lost or confused as far as what I need to do next. You do have a log in your pause menu but the UI/UX is atrocious and often had issues parsing what I was looking at. At times it would overwrite itself with what I did most recently even if it was not objective related. The sea travel often becomes cumbersome as it is just an on rails shooter with low engagement and repetitive gameplay. At least with Wind Waker I could enjoy leisurely sailing with boat dad and treasure hunting or exploration and an engaging aesthetic.
Recommend? Not really, aside from it not being my thing neither the story or the visuals ever captured my interest.
So, I bought this in a mega FMV bundle kind of expecting games like Dark Forces 2 where there are FMVs embedded into your typical boomer shooter or other gameplay. Instead these are more just movies with choose your own adventure timed choices strewn about. Granted this is my problem for not investigating more and it’s not inherently bad… just not what I was hoping for.
This game specifically focuses on an everyday waitress/bar assistant who stumbles upon an ancient pirate adventure. The problem is that there are a few plots that happen fairly quickly only for it to all just kind of end abruptly. At some point it just kind of seems like they lost the plot or didn’t have the ability to follow through fully. In essence it is just half baked and most situations feel uncanny to say the least.
Recommend? No, the story just doesn’t feel complete and has a surprisingly low venue variety to justify any sort of interest.
Multi-shaped and multi-ruled mine sweeper. In short, numbers on a revealed spot tells you how many mines there on connecting shapes. You must reveal non mine spots while marking the suspected spots that have a mine. Some rules only count parallel shapes, while other puzzles will include diagonally connected shapes. With more and more rules and varying puzzles the difficulty ramps up quickly and getting a perfect run can feel near impossible. Supposedly there is never any guess work, but I often run into a situation where I don’t realize a specific square and end up ruining my perfect puzzle solution. Luckily you can rewind the failed action at the cost of your solution being marked as a perfect run. You can always start a fresh run of that and any progress made can be returned to at any time in case you want to try another puzzle or just need to rest your bloodshot and fatigued eyeballs.
Recommend? Generally yes, it has plenty of varying puzzles that will force you to think outside the box (or whatever shape is in the puzzle).
Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth
3DS
P4 Playthrough
Max Lvl 69
First I should preface that my experience is through Hard mode so I can’t say how much that affected my overall playthrough versus a normal run. That being said, a lot of the time I didn’t really notice it and even would forget I chose that difficulty. Very key moments and situations it was very evident I was on hard difficulty. So, for the most part any decent JRPG player can get through the game fine on this difficulty, but it may not be worth it for these select lynchpin moments that will just obliterate your momentum.
General and Dungeons
Spin off game that brings characters from both Persona 3 and Persona 4 together for an all new dungeon crawler RPG adventure. Despite being both a spin off and a handheld exclusive, Persona Q Labrynth has a lot of love and polish. Both well designed 2D art, cinematics, and 3D models look fantastic with their chibi designs. All characters are fully voiced with amazing performances including a stellar English Dub which is even more surprising that almost all lines are read in full instead of a short remark to represent a full text of dialogue one might expect. Though it takes character and gameplay aspects from the newer age of Persona, the actual dungeon crawling is closer to that of the first two games where you are traversing square by square in first person. In fact, you use the second screen of the 3DS to draw and customize your map as you go. The variety of tools provided allow you to uniquely draw and identify squares on each floor as you traverse to your preference and needs. Fully traversing a floor will give you both a complete map to easily navigate, but also the ability to open up a specific chest on that floor with valuable items. Each dungeon is incredibly unique thanks to the focus on floor puzzles, visuals, unique mechanics and the FOE system. FOE essentially is a pursuer type enemy that is far too strong for your party and must be avoided at all costs. Returning to these dungeons later in the game will likely let you take down these fearsome enemies and often will have a side quest require you to do so, though still a challenge with payback not coming so easily.They are typically used hand in hand with the dungeon’s specific puzzle mechanic.Party
Though I appreciate bringing the loved cast of both Persona 3 and 4, I quickly found out that there were just too many characters to swap out from. More often than not I utilized the same few characters with the occasional swap out character depending on the dungeon focus. Luckily characters not in your party can still gain XP with items, though seemingly at a reduced rate and would still require grinding to bring them up to speed. It also seemed the P4 characters had a much higher ability ceiling compared to their P3 counterparts. Perhaps there was a tradeoff for such, but I didn’t look too closely. The newly introduced duo, Zen and Rei, are absolutely amazing both with their writing and their abilities. They were a staple of every team I used without question as they are the perfect support and offensive team member. Interactions from all characters feels like a wish come true that would otherwise not really happen in their respective games.
Combat
The combat is a mixture of old and new as you will engage enemies in a turn based fashion with a front and back party. The key difference from most Persona games is the Boost system. Hitting an enemies weakness or landing a critical puts that character in a boost state. This not only empowers them, but nullifies the cost of their next ability. Unfortunately if they miss, don’t land another weakness/crit, or get hit the boost immediately goes away. Because of the boost system your SP/mana is drastically lower than a normal Persona game. One one hand, this makes SP preservation and moves that cost HP far more valuable. On the other, this can lead to incredibly frustrating situations if an enemy is constantly casting a party wide spell removing your hard earned buff. This makes inflicting status effects and the new stat binding inflictions all the more vital to a successful dungeon crawl. Bosses are pretty standard, though I found a couple being particular nuisances requires much preparation and even then one took 89 turns of uninspired strategy to defeat.
Inventory
You’ll want to make the most of each adventure into the dungeon as you have limited item space (materials do, in fact, take up item slots) and if you ever need to gain health/SP from the Nurse at the hub it will cost you a steep price. Selling materials not only nets you money but allows you to purchase new items, but those too are very pricey. You are going to be very broke for most the game. Especially if you don’t realize you can store items at the shop like me who spent 7/8ths of the game without this knowledge as I had everyone’s unused gear sitting in my inventory at all times.
Personas
Plenty of returning and beloved Persona’s return. You can only carry so many Persona’s at one time. Any time you trigger a Persona that can be obtained, you are forced to take it if you have room or swap it out/discard if you don’t. The auto obtain can be annoying if you need to avoid overwriting the same Persona when you go to save them to your Compendium. You still get to combine and equip Persona’s not only to your character but to all your party members. The key difference is that everyone has their unique persona always equipped and any obtained Persona after that is equipped as a sub persona. Main persona’s hold the main strengths/weaknesses, present ability tree, and 4 open ability slots, while the sub persona simply offers a separate set of it’s own abilities to add while equipped to the character. This is great if you’re like me who never wishes to abandon the Persona assigned to each character as well as balance out their weakness.
Recommend? Though I doubt most will get the chance to actually play this, I very much recommend it if you do and love Persona. The story, gameplay, and general quality are all equally excellent and I can only hope a port or collection comes out for other systems one day.
Note: Great to have excellent returning Persona music
I think they can be played. I seem to remember that i missed the side mission from my operator worth the flower. And then did it with the travel back thingy.
However, that memory is from ten years ago. It might have errors ^^’
So, the problem isn’t missing the side mission, it’s finishing it that is the issue. The ending requires you to fail the side mission by death, but if you succeed before dying at least once then the side mission is complete and cannot be restarted thus missing the ending.
I have very fond memories of Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas. I played it when my kids were 4 1/2 and would watch me play. We called it “The Boy Who Breaks Jars.” When I came across a treasure chest, they would take turns being allowed to press the button on the controller to open the chest. When I finally 100% it, I told them that it was time to stop playing and delete the game. My son cried. I was so proud. :>
Sounds like great memories and glad you could enjoy that game together.
It’s certainly a good substitute for LoZ and is otherwise solid gameplay, but sadly I can’t share the same great experience.
At least happy my post could remind you of such things and thank you for sharing. ^_^
Oooh Nier! I really should replay sometimes.
Also I had no idea you were posting, I usually only show up to make a report at the end of the month!
Only noticed your post because I was working on my monthly report (currently in progress). So, I guess be on the lookout for that (or not, you do you).
Also yeah, play/replay Nier. Do Replicant if you haven’t already. Do all endings. They’ve been pretty great games if you are not as familiar.
Which of the Nier: Automata endings is missable? It’s a long time since I played and I thought there was a device to go back in time. This should cover most stuff in the game.
Also - and as achievement hunter i would be reluctant to do this myself - you can buy achievements near the end of the game, in case you missed something or you think it is to tedious. Then again, to get the most out of the game, one should play all sidemissions.
Ending Y which has to do with a side mission. From my understanding side missions cannot be replayed even with going back to previous chapters. I was aware of the “achievement shop” but it was something I wanted to avoid and luckily didn’t have to utilize despite one of the achievements not triggering initially (had to reload a save to defeat a certain “enemy” to get their achievement to finally trip). So, I understand the necessity of the achievement shop.