thecricket

Game is super fun. I'm glad this review was posted, otherwise I never would have heard of this game and picked it up. It's a relaxing gem, highly recommend especially at the price (was only $5 on itch)

The only thing better than Vampire Survivors is more Vampire Survivors.

@XandertheWise Same here! Mine is unopened though and I just ended up rebuying it when it came out on Switch 🤣

Looks gorgeous. I enjoyed Alliance Alive quite a bit (except the final boss....), so I'll probably give this a go.

Great review, l played this way back in the day for a few hours before getting super sick and dropping it, never to return. Sounds like it may not be a priority to play this remake, but might grab it on sale. And like many others, it made my day to see more content from @KateGray!

@Nanami_Ataraxia Thanks for helping me discover The Smile Alchemist! Never even heard of this and it's right up my alley.

Great article, would love to see this become a regular feature like twice a year!

This is not what I was hoping for at all.

@Ulysses Yeah, the performance is still pretty terrible. If you have a decent PC and don't need portability, playing it there is a better choice.

For my partner and I, it's about finding the right game that we can co-op together without ruining the experience with our different approaches to gaming. So far that's the survival crafting genre and open world action games. Anything else is him wanting to dilly dally and read every little detail, and that just doesn't work for me!

Yeah it's buggy and the performance is pretty bad, and it lacks the most basic of tutorials, but I've put in about 12 hours so far and have loved it. Personally, I like this more than Golf Story. Instead of being a sports game, it feels like an adventure game with puzzles solved by various sports. The lack of direction makes it pretty challenging since you actually have to explore and pay attention. The Zelda-like dungeon was awesome!

This was one of those Gamepass games that I saw and was like, "guess I'll try this for 10 minutes before I write it off". Ended up completing it in two days!

NICE! Was expecting this to cost more, and ended up having enough eShop credit to grab it! Golf Story was such a quality surprise that I don't even care to wait for reviews. Will try it out this afternoon!

Was hoping the Williams' return to game development would be a little more exciting, but hey, I'll buy it!

Didn't notice any improvements to my game and it still runs pretty badly. Reporting better/worse performance at this point seems anecdotal and there are a number of known factors that can contribute to it (freshly opened game, different times of day in game). Who knows.

So disappointed. A friend and I bought the opposite version like we always do, got about 8 hours in, and for the first time decided to shelve the game because it just runs so terribly on our Switches and has numerous bugs. And we're casual players. Crossing my fingers for a performance update or something. Just a shame.

Would you say say this performs better or worse than Rune Factory 5? Cause that was abysmal.

Golf Story was brilliant so buying this is an easy decision. Very excited to finally play!

Thought this game was going to be terrible but grabbed it on PC anyway, and to my surprise, it is super solid. Feels like an old school action JRPG you might play on Vita, with farming elements obviously. Sidequests and storyline are quite good, combat is simple and engaging, and I appreciate the absence of relationship elements as they always feel like a grind. It's fun and paced well, and while I can't speak for the graphics on Switch, looks nice for what it is. Definitely don't regret the buy.

Performance concers are super disappointing to hear. The wild areas in Sword and Shield ran like crap though and I enjoyed the hell out of that. So hopefully the end result is fun enough and make the technical issues worth it.

@Supadav03 Nice, thanks for the reply, those dialog tweaks were not something I noticed. Makes me even more excited to grab these!

Fingers crossed these come with translation refinements. Two of my favorite JRPGs, but man is some of that dialog rough..........................................................

Super excited about this, got a ways through it on DS and it'll be nice on a larger screen for sure.

No Siralim on this list? They are great monster catching games! And hopefully Siralim Ultimate comes to Switch soon.

Really excited to see some combat for this game and how punishing "Quietus" will be. I love the laid back feel of Rune Factory 4 & 5, so hopefully a season where everything dies and you're stuck inside doesn't make it too stressful.

Risen is awesome, but the 360 port was trash. If this is based on that port it won't be worth buying, so here's hoping they've massively reworked this new one...

@RiasGremory Yes, but thanks for reminding me anyway.

@Shadowthrone Same! The skells kind of killed the sense of scale for me and I felt like it undermined the meticulous world design of X. Hopefully 3 will measure up.

Hoping my copy arrives on time so I can get it updated and binge this weekend! Xenoblade is my favorite JRPG series and since the first game, NONE have ever arrived on time. Maybe this one will break the cycle!

This game is amazing and I enjoyed my time with it, but it stressed me the heck out so I dropped it before beating a campaign. With new content, maybe now's a good time to jump back in.

Every time I hear the Monkey Island theme my body tingles. I think that means it's ready for this game!

About time! Even if it's not perfect it's a definite improvement. I really appreciate the quality of the English VA for these games and it's nice to finally see an effort on the animation side as well.

@TowaHerschel7 That sucks because it really is brilliant! I've been wanting the rod attachment for years but can't stomach the asking price. What a bummer.

Every time a fishing game comes out that isn't a port of Wii Fishing Resort, a part of me dies.

Dunno about everyone else, but those boxes of text need to be about 50% bigger. Otherwise, looks great.

Looks really good visually and some of the character animations are definitely improved. Hoping for a deep post game to sink some hours into. And day one trading/home integration. Looking forward to it!

Put in a good 60 hours with this and was glad when it was over. I enjoyed my time and got my money's worth, but it definitely felt like a step back from RF4S (shorter story, poor performance, no seasonal fields, tasks took longer) and the move to 3D didn't really add anything. That it's selling well makes me happy, though, because even if this entry was a bit lackluster I'd gladly play another.

Am I the only one who thinks the real story here is the apparent bad editing on those book excerpts?

Maybe they can take the profits from this crazy (beautiful) thing and finally fund a remake of VI for us.

As a massive Trek, Zelda, and N64 fan, this stirs up feelings inside me I've never experienced. Blisstalgia?

Rune Factory 5! At 50 hours now and still having a good time with it.

The reviews seem totally fair and the beaten to death performance issues are a real thing that definitely take a lot away from the experience. Despite the loading stutters and lag and sub-30fps choppiness, I still get immersed in the gameplay loop of goals and levelling and asking myself "what was I even doing?" because I got distracted. After an hour each session it becomes less noticeable. The core game itself is really great, it just runs poorly and if you're at all sensitive to framerates it WILL drive you nuts.

Disappointed to hear the performance issues are still present, but excited for this release nonetheless. RF4 was one of those, "fine, I guess I'll try it..." games for me and I ended up sinking well over 100 hours into it. The sandboxy and unique do anything you want (and rarely get penalized for it) gameplay seems to be duplicated in this, and I can't wait to experience that again. The art looks just fine to me and 3D will hopefully be a nice change. Bring on the bachelors!

Tunic is the best Zelda game in years. Hopefully it does come to Switch, seems like a perfect match. In the meantime I'll continue to enjoy it on the Series S!

Call me when there's news about sorting your PC boxes/pasture.

Nice interview. Quite excited about the seamless battle system and graphics upgrades. Shame there won't be a dub, I love Sophie's English VA.

As a massive Xenoblade Chronicles fan, I couldn't be happier with the character design and voice acting in this trailer. Goodbye my life in September.

The text box is a huge improvement - better late than never! Will definitely be nice for my dark side playthrough.

Beat the game last week with this "feature". I thought it would be more annoying based on the screenshots and comments I've seen, but it was fine. Other than the game crashing pretty often (mitigated by save anywhere), it is a really solid port and I enjoyed my time with it. Looking forward to the sequel one day!

"...those who wrongly preferred Sierra Online" HA. The good thing about PC gaming is that you can still play and enjoy both, so my friends and I got to enjoy both LucasArts and Sierra games back in the day. LucasArts was great for generally logical puzzles and not being mean and killing the player constantly, and Sierra was great for their UI (both classic text and mouse) and continuing series.

Those were the days!

As a casual player the messages during battle and additional time it adds to them is highly annoying.