Category Archives: 3 Star Games

Sword of Vermilion Review

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It’s time for another old Genesis title. This is actually the last one that I had yet to play so this feels like a really big milestone. Older games can be really hit or miss and it all comes down to if they had good quality of life features or not. This one doesn’t really have anything like that unfortunately so it ends up being a bit of a chore to get through. I don’t see how you would have had much fun with it back in the day.

The game introduces us to a hero who must stop villains from destroying the world. There are 8-12 rings of power that have been scattered as if they were Fire Emblems. If they are not united quickly, then all hope is lost. This hero is rocked to his core when he finds out that his father isn’t really his dad and everything he knew has been a lie. Still, he emotionlessly processes this and goes on the journey. There will be time to grieve later on.

Okay so there are some different gameplay styles here. The main one is an overhead style like Legend of Zelda where you have to walk through the map and go to the next town or dungeon. Here is the twist though, random encounters will attack you every few steps. This means you are in battles nearly constantly. Yes, you can run away but often times it will be difficult to do this without taking some damage. You will be surrounded on all sides and attacked. Additionally sometimes the enemy will appear right on top of you which causes unavoidable damage. That was super annoying.

Then the overhead map is not visible so you are walking in the darkness. To get around this you need to find a map. You can get this by talking to everyone in the town after a special event has happened. You did that and still didn’t get a map? Then you have to do it again! Sometimes it can take up to 3 times for someone to give you a map. I don’t know how you are supposed to know this initially and so I played the game for close to 2 hours scrambling around in the dark before I had to go online and find out what was going on.

Once you have the formula, then that helps a lot because the game sticks to it. You will be going to all of the towns and getting the maps. Towards the end of the game they will stop giving you maps and then you have to find them randomly outside. That part is rough but fortunately in one of the last towns you get a new item that lets you activate a fake map for all areas. Super awesome but way too late in the game for that. Then you also have the caves which are the same thing but even worse. You are wandering through them in total darkness until you buy a lamp or get a luminous spell. That lets you see your immediate area but the rest of the map is dark until you find the map in there.

I spent a good amount of my time in the game just wandering around the caves. Not a good feeling, trust me! I must have gone around in circles so many times with dead end after dead end. The game took me nearly 20 hours to complete when the actual campaign is much shorter than that. The enemies also deal a whole lot of damage so you’re going to want some time to grind them down in order to build up both EXP and money. If you are lacking in either category then you’re in trouble. You need the money for high powered equipment and you need the exp in order to buff up your stats. Both types of grinding can take a little while and you will need to head back to town often to heal.

The game does get better by the very end because that is when you have all of your quality of life upgrades but man does it take a long while to get up to that point. That’s really the problem if you ask me. You shouldn’t have a game that is this painful to get through. The problems all boil down to the crazy high spawn rate and the lack of a map. The game should definitely provide you with one while exploring the caves and land or at least heavily reduce the spawn rate. Doing both things at once is diabolical.

I’d also say that the boss battles can get a little cheesy. You have to swing at fireballs coming at you while also taking down minions before you can reach the main boss. Then once you’re there, if you touch him you will end up dying. So you have to slash from a safe range and your sword doesn’t go very far. It makes every boss fight a matter of inches instead of just letting you relax and slice away at him. The Switch Online allows you to rewind which is something I had to do a whole lot of here. Without those features I don’t know how I would have gotten past this.

I suppose the realistic answer is I would have had to keep on leveling up and getting stronger but it would really be an annoying process from start to finish. Boss battles are supposed to be fun, not an active chore that you try to avoid. That’s the big error that this game makes, it simply isn’t fun to play. More than once I would beat a boss and go back to base to talk to the king, only to find out that I missed an item in the dungeon and have to go all the way back. The game keeps on hitting you with the most random effects like in another instance hitting me with a super poison that cannot be cured and the only way to stop it is to find a plant deep in a random dungeon.

The graphics aren’t bad, they are pretty standard for the Genesis. The soundtrack also isn’t impressive but again it’s nothing crazy. So I can’t fault the game in those areas. The game simply struggles across all of its gameplay mechanics and not thinking of the player in how they all work. This is really an experience that is more for people who really want to take their time exploring a new world. Even then, I dare say that they will have a much better time with almost any other game. I mean that quite literally as there are very few games to get under a 5 for me.

Overall, You should definitely give this one a skip. It’s not the kind of game that will change your mind on retro experiences in general. This just makes you wish for a return to the 2026 type of titles that just wow your mind with how amazing they are. You want a game that plays very smoothly and has the top of the line graphics and music. Those are the games that really get to you. Go play Kigndom Hearts for PS2 instead of this one.

Overall 3/10

The Tower of Druaga Review

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This is easily one of the worst NES titles that I’ve played. I’m afraid it just hasn’t held up at all. Any game where you have a missable item that makes completing the title almost impossible is definitely going to be a thumbs down from me. It’s a super obscure gameplay decision but this isn’t the first time that I’ve run into this. So that’s already a bad thing against this title. The gameplay actually had some potential too so that’s what makes this one sad.

There are 50 levels in the game. You essentially start off in a Pac-Man type of maze. You have to find the key that is scattered somewhere within the maze and then use that to unlock a treasure chest. When you’ve done that then you will have completed the level. Rinse and repeat for 50 levels. There are various enemies and ghosts that will try to get in your way. If any of them touch you, then you lose a life. You seem to be able to slash at them and can defeat most enemies but it is unclear on exactly what enemies you can defeat. I didn’t have very much luck with defeating them.

So far this doesn’t sound so bad right? It means you will be getting a good amount of exploration done and you have to move quietly and carefully so that you don’t bump into the enemies. Well, the main problem comes midway through the game when the title suddenly turns the lights off. Now you can’t see anything and it turns out that the reason for this is because there is an item you have to get from one of the minions. This would have worked as a flashlight of sorts and by missing it, you are now in big trouble. With the help of rewind I was able to power through 2 of the dark levels but it takes an incredibly long amount of time to do that in each instance. It’s definitely not easy, to put it mildly.

This was an absolutely massive misstep by the game. It makes the later levels virtually unplayable as a result. Not only can you not see the various paths but you can’t even see the enemies in some cases which causes you to bump into them. Your only recourse is to start the game from scratch. When that is the only thing to do, you have essentially failed at being a game. There should never be a case where you are effectively soft locked like this.

To an extent you can get a small pass on this in strategy games but even then it should be something that is difficult to achieve. For example in Fire Emblem games it is absolutely possible for this to happen but in general I would say that it should be rare. More the exception to the rule if you would. In this game, odds are very high that you won’t get the light because defeating enemies is already very difficult.

The game incentivizes you to skip them and to focus all of your attention on the key. So now you have a gameplay mechanic that goes against the game itself. There also could be more gameplay mechanics like that within the title. I don’t know about them because I didn’t make it to the end of the game but it certainly feels likely to me. This is a game that is all about punishing the player and that’s a problem.

The gameplay also isn’t very smooth which is part of why defeating enemies is so difficult. It is very ease to just move too quickly or to miss something. If you really want to make a game about finding things and going backwards, well then I’d suggest making a rogue-lite kind of game. The kind of title that encourages you to play over and over again with quick runs on the back-end. If you develop a game like that, then you could have game ending scenarios. I would still recommend not making it quite as easy to fall into as this game though. No matter how you look at it, this feels too excessive.

As for the graphics, well it looks okay. The game is definitely old and the graphics reflect that but at the same time it doesn’t look below average or anything like that. I would say it fits in with the rest of the games well enough. As for the soundtrack, it’s certainly on the bland side but that was the case for a lot of the NES titles back in the day. So even this is more par for the course really. The technicals are not holding the gameplay back, it is simply the game design which did that.

In terms of replay value, well I believe the game does loop after 50 levels so you can keep on trying to play it and see how far you go. That’s the only kind of replay value here though and the original 50 levels should only take you around 2-3 hours to get through. As long as you don’t lose or miss any items. The amount of content here is about up to standard as well.

Overall, If you have the Switch Online then you have access to hundreds of other great games. I would recommend playing those instead of checking this one out. It’s easily one of the weaker games that I’ve played through and that’s saying something. It is definitely not the kind of game that will become your favorite franchise going forward. Trust me on that one. That said, maybe I’ll check out another game in the series because it sounds like it is a very different kind of experience. You can only go up after a title like this as well. It’s pretty rare to play a game that I would say is downright “bad” so in a way that will end up making this one fairly memorable, more so than if it was actually good.

Overall 3/10

Mario & Wario Review

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It is always a shame when you have a pretty solid game that is really ruined by a single aspect of it. Unfortunately that is exactly what happened here. The game has solid graphics and an interesting level system but alas the controls are just dreadful. They actually make the Wii Remote look good in comparison! Trust me, you’re going to be feeling rather down about the whole thing by the time you’re done. Still, this was the first new Mario game I’ve played in quite a while so that was pretty cool.

The game lets you choose between Mario, Yoshi, and Peach. Naturally I had to go with Peach because she doesn’t get many chances to shine, but also because her walking speed is slower. That is actually very important in this game because the character is always moving. How it works is that Wario has thrown a bucket over the hero’s head and so you play as a fairy who has to keep the road clear. You will tap on blocks to summon them in front of the player or attack enemies who would have been in the way otherwise. This takes a lot of precision timing and you have to react quickly. So when the player is slower, it ends up helping out a lot.

There isn’t really a plot beyond that unfortunately. There are 10 worlds here and each world has around 10 levels in it So that’s a lot of levels but they tend to be very quick. Most levels you can beat in around 2 minutes or so. The levels start to become more like puzzles once you get deeper into them though. In World 10 there were several times where I just didn’t know where to go. That’s rather impressive in a game like this where there are only a limited amount of actions you can take.

You really have to memorize how high the springs will send you here for example. Otherwise you won’t reach the target or you will go way past it. So it’s definitely something to chew on a bit there. You can use the fairy to reverse Peach’s direction as well which will be key in the final levels. You have to do this a whole lot and with quick timing to avoid the various traps. I can tell you this, without the rewind feature this would have really been a very difficult game to complete.

The artstyle is pretty fun and has definitely aged well. It’s something that Nintendo in particular has done really well over the years. The soundtrack also isn’t bad. It’s not extremely good or anything like that but the main tune doesn’t get too tiring even after hearing it for a large chunk of the game. It’s clear that some real thought was put into the game and that’s why it is a shame that the controls are no good. The gameplay itself is fine. It’s all about pointing and clicking but I have no problems with that.

No, where the problem lies is in the controller itself. To play this game on the Switch Online you need to use the Joypad and then convert it into mouse mode. Nobody wants to use mouse mode. I don’t even know why this is a thing in the first place. Sometimes Nintendo just develops new gimmicks for no real reason. It has really hurt this game and it will hurt others if it continues to be a mandatory style of playing.

There is some replay value here as you don’t have to clear every level to get to the final one. If you go back and do them all, you unlock a final boss level. So you may want to do that to see how the story really ends. Ultimately I just couldn’t get past the controls to do that though. They are really draining the whole time and so you don’t get a whole lot of enjoyment out of them. You’ll die quite a few times even when you know exactly what to do because the controller just isn’t listening to you. Those are always the worst ways to go out and you’ll be left just shaking your head.

Overall, Mario & Wario may have finally arrived on modern consoles but unfortunately it should have been left to history rather than return in this form. It tarnishes the Mario brand and ends up being a waste even with Wario being the big villain. This is the kind of game that could desperately use some kind of high budget remake. I think there are many ways they could improve upon the source material without drastically changing things. It could be a worthy puzzle rival to Mario vs DK. In the meantime though, this is the kind of game you’ll want to skip. If you have the Switch Online then you may as well check it out for free but otherwise I certainly wouldn’t spend any money on it.

Overall 3/10

Mario Paint Review

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Mario Paint is one of those games that you never forget because it’s just so bad. The game had some real potential initially but unfortunately it could not live up to that. The biggest issue here are the controls which are some of the worst that I’ve played with. It decides to turn your controller into a mouse and so you have to click on things as if you’re playing on the computer. It takes away all the potential for a smooth gameplay experience and turns it all upside down. A massive mistake if you ask me.

The game has 3 main modes, the paint, the music, and the fly swatter game. The painting part lets you make fun little pictures with a lot of tools that the game presents you with. There are a good amount of options to be sure but good luck using them without clicking on the wrong things multiple times. No matter how many times you try to grab something, the mouse will fail you. In a way it’s like the original version of motion controls so it is every bit as clunky as you might have expected.

Then you have the fly swatter minigame which is an interesting concept. I’d rather be swatting robots or something but it does take a lot of skill here. Thanks to the controls, I would even say that it is ultra hard. It’s going to take you a long while to take down all 100 flies and odds are that you will die before beating 30 of them. Conquering this mode would really be a feather in your cap.

Finally you have the music mode which was my personal favorite one. Basically you get to put different icons onto the music sheet and Mario will play them out for you. It’s pretty fun and gets you used to composing your own music. You can slow down and speed up the tempo as well to really get the exact sound that you want. So it all works out pretty well but I will say that you will still run out of content very quickly.

That’s probably the second biggest problem with the game after the lack of a good control setup. Even if you did really enjoy the game, there just isn’t a whole lot to keep you busy for very long here. The game will really only serve as a brief distraction and then after that it is time for the next title. So that will keep this game in the backseat for quite a while until they ever announce an update with more content.

The soundtrack isn’t bad at least. There isn’t much in the way of music but in the music portion all of the sounds are very familiar. That part feels very inviting at least. Meanwhile the graphics are good as well. It’s the Mario that you remember and it’s not like it suddenly looks low quality. So I have no negatives on that front but at the same time, it would be hard to mess up on a small game like this.

No replay value will also end up hurting this game bigtime as well. There just isn’t a whole lot for you to do here. I’m not even sure that this game would be something you could use to distract your kids since they would get bored too. I have high hopes that Mario Teaches Typing will not disappoint me the way that this one did. It’s no stretch to say that this is one of the weakest Mario games that I have ever played and that’s saying something!

Overall, Mario Paint is not quite the experience that I thought it would be. It is okay at best and unfortunately never manages to get beyond that. It’s not the kind of game that you will likely play for more than one hour unless you’re on a dare. If you have the Switch Online then you should definitely check it out since you will have access to this title. That said, you can really do a lot better with virtually any other Mario game. It’s no wonder why this one is so unknown. It just doesn’t have that usual 5 star seal of quality from Nintendo.

Overall 3/10

Survival Kids Review

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Survival games never really tend to be my thing. There’s just not a whole lot to them gameplay wise and of course it can also be pretty rough to get any momentum going because of how realistic the game is going for. Give me a fun arcade style any day. With that I can really be having a lot of fun and it could be like a collecting type of game. Certainly a big improvement over this one with how narrow the whole thing is. Ah well, at least I can say I’ve played the game now.

You start off with a big accident and then the main character makes it to an island. He must now try and survive until help can arrive but he has literally nothing. So you now have to scrounge around for wood, food, drinks, a backpack, and many other items. There are also many wild animals out there which would be all too willing to make a nice meal out of you. So this kid is in a really tough spot but he’s not someone to be underestimated. Where there is a will, there is a way.

First off the graphics are definitely nothing special. This is an older game so I get it but it’s just not the most impressive looking title. I do enjoy the overworld though which reminds you of Pokemon in a good way. I appreciated that and it’s not like you’ll get lost or anything like that. The items all look clear on the hub world after all. This is about where the positives start to vanish though. I’m generally not a fan of survival games and this one is really just no different. It takes forever to do anything and it feels like you’re trapped in a cycle. As with most things, I understand the appeal of it but it definitely doesn’t work for me. I don’t want to just be running around trying to grab things for as long as I can. I want to get to the point where the game is really fun.

You’re left to your own devices immediately with a ton of menu screens that take forever to get through. For starters I grabbed a backpack to put things in but then it fills up almost immediately. I merged different items and got advanced items like a baseball set but what am I gonna do with that? Your top danger will immediately be the fact that you need to eat and drink at regular intervals or you will die. I found a water container but couldn’t find any actual water. So once my character got real hungry it was over. There was just nothing I could do at that point and so I lost. It turned into a bit of a spiral of doom for me with no way back.

I did grab some food but all of it was spoiled like the raw meat or not safe to eat like the clams. Why are clams not safe to eat? I know I don’t eat them in real life but I figured that technically they would be safe. I suppose I underestimated exactly what happens with those clams. I also wouldn’t say it was a whole lot of fun to fight the various animals running around. They were all just minding their business after all and weren’t trying to cause any trouble. Why did I have to take them out of the running so decisively? Maybe surviving at this price was just too much.

The only time a survival game works is admittedly on the mobile where you are matching fruits and that unlocks resources to help you stay alive. The gameplay should be kept separate from the survival gimmick and then you actually have a chance at a high quality game. A survival title mixing in the gameplay and everything just seems like a recipe for disaster in my opinion. Maybe one day there will be a survival game that I have a lot of fun with but it definitely wasn’t this one. It’s not a game I can ever see myself going back to.

Overall, Survival Kids is really not for me. It could be worse but it could also have been way better. At no point while playing the game did I feel like I was having a blast. It’s all too limited and while it feels like the kind of game that would quickly start to get more and more fun as it went on, I need a quality beginning to really get me invested. Without that, it just feels like I’m basically stuck. Give me a quality platformer or something like that any day.

Overall 3/10

Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV: Wall of Fire Review

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It’s time for another tactics title and unfortunately I am here to say that it is definitely not a particularly good one. As with the others that I’ve played recently, it takes away all the fun from the concept. The game goes too far in trying to be as realistic as possible and completely forgets about the fun factor. You always need a good balance in order to succeed here and the game completely forgot about that. It’s a shame since I think this could have really ended up being solid but in the end it definitely did not live up to the potential.

When you begin the game you get to pick which event you want to play through. Big history buffs will recognize the differences but to a casual player it all looks the same. Fun enough and all that but nothing to really hang your hat on. They may as well have only had one level for all the difference it would make. The levels can also be quite long as I managed to survive for well over a decade before dying and that’s considering that I had no clue what to do.

Aside from combat you can also make deals among the men, give them food, barter for items, etc. The game lets you simulate almost every part of a real war from back in the day. You definitely have a lot of control this way and I can definitely see someone getting a kick out of it but the problem is that everything takes so long. This is probably unavoidable for a game of this scale from back in the day but it also means that you wish it was not so intricate.

You want to be able to just rush in and start fighting but of course you are penalized for doing that. It puts you in a really bad position because you are meant to do all of the side parts of the game but in that case it will be forever until you see any real combat. The actual combat is slow enough as it is since you can barely move in each turn. It ends up feeling like a real RNG fest. I know a lot of it comes down to skill as well and I couldn’t figure that out either. So as a result everything ends up going sideways here. Not really the way to go about things.

At the end of the day this feels like a war simulation game but without any real hook. It doesn’t help that the graphics are not particularly good. They’re not awful or anything but they also aren’t testing the limits of the SNES architecture. You’ll forget all about them by the end, same with the soundtrack. It’s just very generic and doesn’t do anything to elevate the experience. At the end of the day it means that this is a game that will not withstand the test of time, not even by a little bit.

Throwing in a true story mode would really help for this kind of thing. Adding that in addition to the simulation mode would have been a really good idea. For starters it would give you a way to really identify with the characters as well as make you want to keep playing. There isn’t much reason to play through otherwise since there are no real cutscenes. You just have to absolutely love the gameplay and it feels like that would be a very limited audience. How many people actually enjoy that kind of thing? Give me a classic 3D beat em up instead any day. Then no matter what happens with my allies and the A.I., I know that I can do in and just start taking names. That’s a way more fun experience.

Overall, This is definitely not a game that you have a whole lot of fun with. It was too ambitious for its own good although even in the modern day I’m not sure how good a remake would be. If it can make things very cinematic then that could work but the key will be ensuring that every part of the game is fun. Counting up the money and distributing among the warriors doesn’t really seem like a good idea if you ask me. It’s just not the proper way to play a game and have a blast. Definitely skip out on this title if you can.

Overall 3/10

Wario: Master of Disguise Review

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“At what point did you realize you were playing the worst game of all time?” I always like thought prompts like that. Usually the answers are pretty fun, especially when the person is still playing the game. Well, I started to have this question pop in my head as I was playing the game but I know deep in my heart that this isn’t the worst game of all time. Man did it try though. The gameplay is really bad and the stylus destroys any potential that it might have had. Make no mistake, this isn’t a game that you play…it’s a game that plays you.

The game starts with Wario watching TV as he wishes he were rich but then he comes up with a brilliant idea. Why not teleport inside the TV show and get rich??? He is a mega genius after all so he invents a helmet that lets him break the boundaries between dimensions and hops inside. He steals a wand from Mr. Cannoli and now wants to assemble the missing relic pieces to get his wishes granted. Yes, everything is going well for Wario but is he dabbling with powers beyond his comprehension?

The story isn’t particularly interesting so you’ll tune out early on. There are parts that are ironically fun like Cannoli’s theme that plays whenever he appears. That was pretty fun because it was a quality theme. Additionally I would say the game does try to throw in a lot of lore and hype by the end. It was just so deep into the game that it was basically over by then. They should have found a way to make things a little more interesting before then. The idea of a more plot based Nintendo game is always fun, you just have to handle it with the greatest of care.

It all comes down to the gameplay though. A game can have a terrible story but still be fun with the right gameplay. Well sadly it doesn’t deliver. The game is built around transforming into different Wario forms and using their abilities to solve puzzles. The goal is to get to the end of the level and find a relic or beat up a boss. The levels range from being 20-90 minutes long. I think they’re all meant to be more like 20-30 based on how the play time goes red as it gets too long but good luck figuring these out so fast. The levels are as poorly developed as possible.

To switch costumes you have to draw on the screen but the game is very particular about the drawings themselves. This means you often have to try and transform more than once in order to actually get into the form. This part is what will have you shaking your head. It just doesn’t make sense…none of it makes sense. So yeah that part definitely stings and then the powers themselves also use the stylus. To fly you have to blow into the 3DS microphone so be prepared to do that a whole lot near the end.

You have to open treasure chests to get key items and these require you to play through the same 5 minigames over and over again. Definitely brutal stuff and some of them just feel rigged. There is one minigame about tracing objects that I never got right even once. Fortunately the treasure chests do change the minigame every time so even if you lose once then you can try again and it’ll be a different minigame. That should provide some solace at least.

Then you have a 1-2 checkpoints in a level so you respawn there when you die. Yes, if you die to a boss be prepared to have to go through a few rooms again to get back there. Additionally some of the puzzles deactivate so you have to solve them again. You already know the answers by this point so it’s not too bad but it’s still tedious. The game almost goes out of its way to be as tedious as possible and that’s what will have you shaking your head. This was not supposed to go this way. The game was supposed to be intense and awesome, not a total letdown like this.

It comes down to why you don’t want to tie your game into a gimmick because it will always backfire. The stylus just isn’t fun to use. Never was…never will be. When I play a platformer I want to be actually playing it. At least I can say that the graphics aren’t bad. The character designs are actually good like with the final boss. The game does turn out on the visuals. The soundtrack is way more on the repetitive side but I still wouldn’t say that it’s bad. The Cannoli theme is good like I mentioned before. I think there is some kind of true ending if you get all the treasures in the game too so it had a bit of replay value. Not enough to even be remotely tempting mind you, but if you enjoyed the game then there’s that. Although none of the treasures are even hidden so if you liked the game a lot then you will have probably gotten them already. The game feels rather long so I guess it earns the price you paid to get it at least.

Overall, Wario: Master of Disguise feels rather disgraceful most of the time. You’d think it would be on the level of Mario or something but it’s not even close. The game is definitely not up to Nintendo’s seal of quality the whole time. Everything feels slapped together without a lot of care or consideration. I wanted the game to be better but I had to shake my head while playing it. The game doesn’t have any quality of life features and so playing through it can be a bit of a chore. It’s just not the big game that I thought it was. You want to stay far, far away from this one. It’s just a recipe for disaster.

Overall 3/10

Nobunaga’s Ambition Review

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It’s time to get into the old time strategy games on the SNES. Nobunaga’s Ambition is definitely a game that everybody has heard of but I’m sorry to say that it has not aged well in practice. The gameplay takes too long to get to and there is too much RNG. Hardcore strategy fans will have a kick with this but it is lacking the quality of life features that would make this a winner. You end up watching more than actually participating which is not a good idea. Maybe one of the sequels will do the trick but I have my doubts.

The game starts off very ambitiously as you decide how many players will be participating between 0 and 8. Yes, 0 is an option as you can then watch the war going on. I tried that mode once and watched for about 10 years of in game time but the war just never ends. The world is too large so when one faction gets a lot of land, the others end up capturing some eventually. It’s an eternal war you can say. When you are actually playing the game with 8 people you can prevent that but of course it will still take a while. Playing as one person? Well you’re going to get crushed.

I do appreciate the game allowing you to choose if you want to watch the computer’s turns or not though. I made sure to say no because the game would absolutely take forever if you did that. Each match is a very long experience because of the amount of details put into it and watching all of the 28 countries duke it out would really take forever. When it’s your turn, you can choose to attack a neighboring country, make a deal with them, or flat out bribe their citizens to join your country. I suspect these options don’t really begin working until you have a lot of money and prestige though because I tried on several accounts and it just didn’t work. Even with rewind so I know the chance was 0% there.

As for fighting, well that’s something you can win but without rewind I imagine you would be dying a lot. When the match starts, you position where you will put your men. The kicker? You don’t actually know where the opponent will put their men until the match has actually started. So worst case your king will be immediately surrounded. If that happens then you are really cooked because it’s not just a loss if your king is defeated, it’s an instant game over! It’s quite the harsh punishment.

You also keep all injuries and deaths from the previous rounds. So lets say you start with 100 men and lose about 30 in the first fight. Well, now you will have 70 fighters left for round 2 and that number will only continue to be reduced in each ensuing battle. That’s I guess where the bartering would come in. You can try to buy and sell rice and even order more men but it’ll cost you gold. So in addition to the fights you have to really take all of that into account as well. You’re also surrounded by 2-4 enemies no matter who you pick to play as so you have to hope that they don’t all attack you back to back. If they do then you’re really in trouble.

Sites list the game as 50+ hours and I can definitely see why. I imagine that eventually you will beat enough opponents to really make a name for yourself and improve your reputation but it’s definitely not going to be easy and is going to be a long time. You will have to suffer some losses to give your other forces time to marshal their defenses. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Where some modern quality of life features could have helped would be with the speed of combat and the little cutscenes here and there. If you remove those then everything probably gets to be a whole lot easier.

As far as the graphics go, the game looks quite old. None of the character models are all that descriptive and the game also just throws you right into the fire. If you want a tutorial then you’d best look for that online because you won’t be seeing anything here. No as far as this game goes, you just need to try your best. There’s not much of a soundtrack but I wasn’t really expecting that anyway. This is an old time war game so it’s meant to be very somber.

To me there just isn’t a lot of incentive to playing this. If you want to try and take over the world, I imagine it would be much more fun irl in a dungeons and dragons kind of setup. One of those real rpg games where you play with everyone and just enjoy the game itself. That’s the way to do this kind of game rather than in a video game. Still, this game got enough sequels where it makes sense that a lot of people do have a good time with it. I will also say, it is still better than Harvest Moon for what it’s worth although I can’t see myself playing either game for very long.

Overall, Nobunaga’s Ambition just makes you want to play some Dynasty Warriors. I think that series spoiled me a bit because uniting the world through combat just makes way more sense than this strategy title. If you’re gong to do strategy, then do it in a straight forward way like in Fire Emblem. You keep the strategy fights while also not having to worry about the smaller stuff like supplies, grain, etc. Just focus all the way on the combat. Hey it’s free on the Switch if you have the online though so maybe you ought to give it a shot.

Overall 3/10

Rafa Nadal Tennis Review

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This is one of those games I had never heard of until I saw it in store. I always tend to like tennis games so this felt like a safe pick but unfortunately I couldn’t have been more wrong. It takes the stylus to the absolute extreme which really doesn’t work well for the sport. You need to have easy movement options to really make this worth it and unfortunately that is all gone. It’s easily the weakest tennis game that I’ve played and probably the weakest overall sports title.

The game has a training mode, exhibitions, and then the main mode is the career. You start out as the 100th ranked player and have to try and win a lot of games so that you can be the best in the world. There is no kind of story or anything like that so this is really just about excelling and doing your absolute best at every turn. You can unlock different shits and rackets but yeah there’s not a whole lot of replay value here either. Thing is, that’s not necessarily a big deal for a sports title. You’re playing it for the gameplay and everything else is meant to enhance that.

Well, that’s where the stylus comes in. You have to tap different points on the screen in order for your player to move there. It means you can’t change directions very easily because that’s a lot of tapping and the balls are coming in fast. Then you also have to swipe your stylus in order to make the shot and that’s also how you aim the serve. A whole lot to consider there and the game is very sensitive so you will be hitting the ball out a lot as well. You’re basically having to calculate a whole lot of things all at once which isn’t super fun. Tennis should be a game that you play on instinct.

I should be able to be dashing back and forth landing hits and countering blows without having to worry about the exact inch I swiped the stylus. That’s just not a good look at all. It took me a while to even get a good serve and while the A.I. isn’t particularly good, their movements are very natural so it’s even hard to score on them. That’s not even getting into lobs and slices. There are just too many details here.

Meanwhile I suppose the graphics aren’t bad. It’s fairly standard DS stuff. Nothing particularly high grade but I wasn’t really expecting that in the first place. It’s just enough to get the job done and that’s really it. So it doesn’t lose any points there. The soundtrack is generic but that’s true even for AAA sport titles so it’s not unexpected. With good gameplay, the title would easily have gotten past all of that.

I generally don’t care for gimmicks much and titles like this are a good reason as to why that is. There are many games with good gimmicks of course but it is just something that is really easy to mess up. If the game went with the “generic” option of normal controls then it would have been many times better. Sometimes the generic controls are the way to go and they are the standard because they have worked for many years. Why change something that is already working really well on its own right? Don’t fix what isn’t broken and I definitely don’t miss that part about the DS. The stylus was almost as bad as the Wii’s motion controls. Almost.

At least the game is very cheap. I only spent $5 on it which is less than the going price of a Subway sandwich. So even though the game wasn’t particularly good and I don’t expect that I will ever be playing it again, it doesn’t really feel like a waste. It’s pretty rare for me to play a game that I would consider to be straight up “Bad” after all and that helps me to really appreciate the good titles out there.

Overall, This is not a particularly good game. I have my doubts on if the devs really put a lot of time into this one. It feels like a very rushed product where the core design doesn’t even make sense for the kind of game that they were trying to make. It’s all a big mismatch and tennis is something that should be absolutely difficult to mess up. I think that’s even the worst part when you really think about it. This should have all been really easy and straight forward, instead it wasn’t. I would advise you to stay far away from this game. It really doesn’t have anything to offer you.

Overall 3/10

Banjo-Tooie review

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Banjo-Tooie is one of those games that gets worse the longer you play it. Initially it isn’t so bad but as the worlds go on and the mechanics get more and more annoying, you really feel it. It’s a game that should only be around 12 hours long and yet it ends up getting stretched to over 30 hours. The game just keeps on going on and on and on. Even after you unlock the initial ending, then there is a true ending after that. The main goal of a game is to be fun but the problem is that this one stops being fun early on. It lacks every possible quality of life feature and that’s just a shame.

The game starts off with a few years passing since the first one. Gruntilda is back and she is definitely aiming to take her revenge on Banjo. It starts out well for her as she murders one of our friends. We have to take her down now and avenge him but to do that we will need to collect all of the Jiggies and stop a bunch of powerful monsters. This may sound like a tough mission but it’s nothing that Banjo hasn’t done before. He is a trained hero after all.

Okay so the basic gameplay style here is that of a 3D platformer. You run, jump, and fight your way through the levels to grab some Jiggies. There are 10 of them per level which can be gained by completing different tasks and sub missions within the world. You need 70 out of the 90 in order to get the true ending here. As you complete the worlds you will learn more and more abilities that let you get more Jiggies. So in that case you could almost call this a vania type of game. There is a lot of backtracking that you have to do over and over again.

The worlds are all connected by the hub world but another way to phrase that is you have to constantly be going to the hub world to then go back to the actual level. There is no instant travel or anything like that. There are shortcuts and warp points but none that will ever get you to where you want to go directly. Trust me when I say that is a very annoying thing. With a huge game like this that is absolutely a must.

Additionally the actual walking speed of Banjo is incredibly slow. You should run with Kazooie as much as possible but the more the game goes on, the more times you have to completely use Banjo to get the jiggy which means that running is not an option. Just travelling will take you a very long time. The game also has a gimmick where every world has you control Mumbo at different points and also transform into various objects. You have to go to their huts to do this and then to transform back you have to run all the way there. Often times they have to take different routes around the level which means even more places to explore.

The worst one is definitely the dinosaur world which is absolutely massive. In addition to the usual transformations your dinosaur mode has two forms. You guessed it…you have to run back to Mumbo’s each time to set this up and then go back to the magic tent. Nothing is made to be easy here and that is a massive problem. It’s not something you can just handwave either. Not when it takes hours upon hours to get past this.

The annoying part is that at first it’s actually rather fun. It’s enjoyable to first enter a world and start to check out each of the passageways and find the Jiggy that you are looking for. That is the heart of this genre after all. Where it all goes horribly wrong is when you have to keep on coming back. At the very least they should have a limit like you have to only revisit world 1 once, or something like that. It’s fine to gradually unlock new powers but you shouldn’t spread them out so completely. Every time you have to go back to the same worlds again is more time that is just wasted. It wasn’t planned out very well at all if you ask me.

The technical aspects of the game are surprisingly good though. The graphics are quite sharp with all of the character models being good and the stage deigns are on point. They hold up really well to the current day. Then there are quite a few catchy tunes to listen to in the game as well. At least that helps you to ignore how long you’ve been playing the game. It’s not enough to block the negatives to be honest but having a bad soundtrack would have made it all way worse that’s for sure.

Throw in some maps, basic descriptions of what’s missing and an effective quick travel. Adding those 3 things would do a whole lot of good for the game. Keep in mind that it took this long even with all of the rewinding and such to avoid going down random paths that lead nowhere. If not for that then this would be even worse. That’s a rather terrifying prospect because some Jiggies require an insane amount of platforming while others are very unrelenting with the damage count. A single death will send you wayyyyyyy back which is definitely something to consider. When I say there are no quality of life considerations here I really do mean it. They were all ditched long ago which is a real shame. his may be the most realistic treasure hunting game in the sense that it is so hard and you are given no direction but that’s no a good thing. The game manages to squander some really entertaining writing and a good story which is an absolutely tragic feat.

Overall, Banjo definitely fell down pretty hard here. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the first by any means but it is worlds better than this one. Whenever you have a sequel that is worse than the first one then you’ve got a big problem. That kind of thing just should not be happening. The core concepts are here that could make this a good series but this game did not reach its potential. I’d definitely advise you to stay far away from this one. It’s just not worth the playthrough and makes for a very exhausting game.

Overall 3/10