I went in expecting Mario & Luigi, and that's what I got. If you were expecting any more or less, well, I'm not sure what you were expecting Xp. I have played the previous 3 games, but not the most recent one, so my review will mostly mention this game in relation to the others in the series. If you just wanna know if it's a good game, I'll save you a read and just tell you "yes, it is."
First off, this game is probably one of the lightest and least surprising in terms of story. The other three had some sort of play on who the bad guy would be, or how dark the theme might get at times, but this one is much more straightforward in terms of story. What this game's story is, though, is entertaining. Even playing it in Japanese and not totally understand the exact semantics going on all the time, there were many times where I legitimately laughed out loud because what was going on was so silly (when Yumeppu and Starly are having a covert discussion about Bowser's butt had me absolutely in stitches). Another thing I appreciated from the story, is how much actual characters from the other 3 games were in this one. The other three games were VERY separated, to the point where you could probably play them in any order, and aside from the first one being on GBA, you'd probably have some trouble deciding in which order they were made. This game is far from reliant on the plot of past games, but there were just so many reoccuring characters, comparatively. Starly is back from Bowser's Inside Story, there are members of the Bean Bean Kingdom and Woo Hoo Mountains vacationing all over the island from Superstar Saga, and there's even the koopa reporter from Partners in Time. I hope this trend continues in Paper Jam (when I eventually get around to it). I absolutely loved the Massive Twins X3 (I'm sorry, but I have no idea what their names are in English. That's just what I call them. They're the two strongmen who teach you lots of special moves). The gameplay is fairly standard, but there are a few things that can make things really interesting. One thing, is that Bro Items are completely gone. I'll admit that I can't honestly remember if Bowser's Inside Story had Bro Moves or Bro Items, but this game is back to Bro Moves. More importantly, both Mario and Luigi don't share their respective Bro Moves, somewhat similarly to how their moves worked in Superstar Saga. So in addition to how their stat biases differ, their special move sets are also very different. Where Bowser's Inside Story had the Bowser sections and Bro sections, this game has the real world and the dream world. The real world is just like normal Mario & Luigi fare, with both bros walking around, but the dream world is inside Luigi's dreams, and is a side-scrolling section. As a result, there are a completely separate set of special moves for the dream and real worlds, with many in the dream world involving some manipulation of the 3DS's inner gyroscope feature. The gyroscope stuff works well enough, but it was probably one of the mechanics that gave me the most trouble, just because sometimes it would be fairly difficult to aim something very precisely (granted you don't gotta do that too often). Giant battles are also back in this game, and I wanna say there are a good handful more of them. I only remember Bowser's Inside Story having like 3 giant battles, where this game has 6. They're fun set-pieces, and its a cool change of pace. The only somewhat troublesome thing is that because they're so separated from the normal battle engine, your equipment and items don't really mean anything in the giant battles. It's either you master the timings of the hits and dodges, or you die. There's really no before-hand preparation you can do for them. Another thing, this game is probably the Mario & Luigi game I'd say is the hardest in the group (of the first four). Especially because of the dream world, Luigi acts as more of a support role, and just Mario gets turns, similarly to how Bowser was all by himself in Inside Story. Bosses hit REALLY hard though, and if they stun you with one hit, you can be on a very quick path to death. Dream Team is definitely up there with Superstar Saga as being one of the harder Mario & Luigi games, in my opinion. Especially considering there's a hard mode once you beat the game once, and I'm not sure I wanna find out how hard that is right now Xp Verdict: Highly recommended if you want a fun, quirky JRPG to play on your 3DS. It's another great entry in the series. I enjoyed it more than Bowser's Inside Story I would say, but they're all good games, and they're all worth trying
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This is a game that I loved, that is very hard to talk about, because I know that is so fundamentally bad.
Samba De Amigo is a rhythm game by Sega, with a very heavy Latin-rhythm theme. Originally for the Dreamcast, and then remade again for the Dreamcast (only in Japan), (almost) all the content in those two versions were bundled together and coupled with about 20 more songs to be remade for the Wii back in 2008. The original game used special maraca controllers and a sensor bar to detect the actual height of each maraca, one in each hand. The Wiimotes have no such relative height detecting feature, so instead their "height" is determined by the way they're pointing, up, horizontal, or down. There in is where the game's biggest problem lies: It has the Kinect problem in that it just fundamentally doesn't work well enough to play the entire game. The Wii remotes can't detect their positions being changed quickly enough to actually play the harder modes. However, you NEED to play the single player modes on all difficulties to unlock not only all of the extra weird things, but also about a third of the songs in the game. There is NEEEEVER any reason that music should be locked out of a rhythm game, limited by skill level (broken or not). It's the exact same problem that fighting games had with their obsession with unlockable characters in the past decade: Not everyone has the time to grind for a million hours to unlock all of that shit, when they just wanna play their favorite fighter NOW. The Easy and Normal career modes are fun and well balanced, and I got through them just fine. I could barely even beat one stage on hard mode though, let alone even unlock super hard mode, so there were like 10 songs I can just never actually play. It's such a shame too! The harder modes add a ton to the presentation, with not only the Samba De Amigo characters dancing around in the background, but you have backgrounds inspired by other Sega franchises with their characters dancing as well, from Sonic to Space Channel 5. Sadly, I only ever got to see the Sonic one All that whining about gated content aside, the game is actually really good fun with what's there. I had hours of fun just playing songs on normal in the free-play mode. The presentation is fantastic: Bright and colorful characters and classic Latin rhythms coupled in with actually quality upbeat Western songs. Compared to something like Donkey Konga, this is a perfect example of how a Japanese rhythm game has songs that appeal to Western audiences properly. Verdict: Unless you really like Latin music like I do, it's not easy to recommend this game in good faith with the knowledge that it's so broken. The music is great, and the normal modes are also great fun, but because of how it gates its content behind its broken harder difficulties, I have to give it a fairly middling review, no matter how fun the normal game might be. Granted, it's pretty easy to find for under a dollar, so if you're okay with that kind of stuff, it's a great way to spend an afternoon Saw someone raving about this on the forum the other day, comparing it to the likes of BOXBOY! in terms of being an underappreciated gem on the 3DS eshop. It was only $4, so I decided to give it a go. For that price, it's not too long (took me 2.5 hours), and it's not a bad Metroidvania.
There's basically zero story. Tengu captures princess, you try and defeat him, but get kicked out. You've gotta go collect Metroidvania equipment upgrades and subweapons to be able to unlock the door to his castle. I wouldn't say the theme carries as much in this game as in the Metroid or Casltevania games though. Perhaps that's due to lack of story, but I just felt the Ninja theme wasn't that memorable (sans the Kappa Tank, which was a great boss). It's a straight up action game. Go around the map, occasionally collecting health upgrades. The game uses a Portrait of Ruin-style map where the overall world is fairly big, but there are doors which contain full-dungeons around the map which is where most of the upgrades and bosses lie. You have a sword and several subweapons, but your sword is what you'll mainly use. Once you get the double jump fairly early on, you can slash enemies in mid air to get extra jumps as well, which calls for some tricky platforming occasionally. The jumping is so crazy once you get the Ninja Gaiden-style wall cling, that I actually found a fairly neat sequence break that allows you to skip the 3rd to last dungeon (the ice one) if you're good at triangle-jumping. The normal enemies aren't too thrilling, but the boss battles range from pretty good to really great. You can also carry quite a lot of potions which you can buy with gold enemies drop, so the game is more or less as difficult or as hard as you want it to be with how you'll limit your own potion use (much like the DS Castlevanias, imo). My personal favorite boss was the aforementioned Kappa Tank. I had far more fun against him than the final boss (even if you can more or less kill the bosses fairly cheaply with an early item). Dodging and just using your sword was the most challenging and fun way I found. Verdict: If you're REALLY worn out of all of the Metroid and Casltevania games on DS and GBA, then this is an okay thing to tide you over. It's certainly one of the best non-Nintendo or Konami Metroidvanias I've ever played, but I'd frankly hesitate to put it above even my least favorite Castlevania game not only because of the fairly short length of the game, but more so becuase of the lack of combat depth. |
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
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