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I really wanted to like Pit People, as I'm a big fan of Behemoth's previous games, Castle Crashers and BattleBlock Theater. Unfortunately, the core gameplay of this game, the combat, is dreadfully dull.


Let me start with the positives though. As is usual for Behemoth's games, the art style, soundtrack, and witty writing is on point. The story is comedic and self-aware leading to some good laughs, there's a plethora of ridiculous situations, and the excellent music during combat can really do the heavy lifting to keep you engaged while playing. I feel this game isn't as creative as their previous works, but is still very entertaining nonetheless. Some of this humor can also bleed into the gameplay with these "Out of left field" mechanics that suddenly get introduced as stage gimmicks, then are never seen again. It makes it for a pretty novel experience. There's a metric load of cosmetics you can get to customize your units too which is very welcome too.



Now when it comes to the gameplay itself, that's where Pit People drags badly. This is a Strategy RPG (or "Tactical RPG" as some call the genre), so naturally a lot of the depth would be predicated on building a proper team with proper gear and thoughtfully executing actions in battle. However, the combat is simple, extremely simple. So simple that I think the game significantly suffers because of it's choice of being a turn-based SRPG. The only thing you can do during your turn is move your units. On top of that, there's no form of skills or abilities whatsoever; units simply attack (or heal) when they move to their designated spot. Another very annoying mechanic is, if there are 2 or more enemies within a unit's attack range, then the enemy the unit decides to attack is simply random. I can't fathom why they chose to implement this, as it makes it quite difficult to strategize with the already dismal options you have during your turn. These make the progression and general difficulty very stagnant for the whole game, as units don't learn any new abilities and, aside from the unique class role abilities, are exactly the same across the board. There are a decent handful of different classes to be fair, but it doesn't change how they're all interchangeable to where it doesn't mean anything getting more than one of a unit type. There are type counters and elemental damage, but because of the aforementioned semi-random attacking, it doesn't leave much room for strategy to take advantage of this, and you also don't know what enemies you'll be facing until you haul it all the way to the mission objective.

Tangential to that, gear is also very underwhelming. You do get quite a lot of equipment in the game, but the vast majority of them are simply cosmetic and do not affect stats at all. Now, there are a handful of gear that do actually change up how they function, but they are few and far between and behave very similarly. Really, the only true difference is the general type of gear. There are 4 melee weapons, 4 ranged weapons, 3 levels of armor, and 3 shields. The differences between these is very negligible and doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things outside of choosing whether to focus on defense using shields or focus on dodging not using a shield. You could realistically stick with your starting gear for the entire game and not notice a single difference all the way to the ending.

Another thing I want to single out is that enemies are VERY much damage sponges. Because of the simplified combat, I assume they tried making the game more difficult by just having everyone have very large HP values, including your allies. All this does is drag out missions and leaves you very bored just waiting for the level to end. There have been multiple times where I didn't even move my units on my turn and left them in the exact same spot because there's literally nothing I can do to raise my damage efficiency. Not good.


So to put it short, Pit People has great writing, humor and music, but the gameplay flops due to being overly simplistic with enemies being damage sponges and extremely limited combat options. If you're a newbie or are not good at SRPGs, then I still think this game can be worth your while, but for anyone else I'd say it's not worth recommending.

Atelier Marie was the very first title in the long-running franchise, and this remake is a VERY faithful adaptation of the original. If your only experience with Atelier is the more modern entries (Arland onwards), then you'll find Marie to be extremely rudimentary in a lot of respects. Synthesis is as simple as having the necessary materials on hand then making the item. The recipe list is also very small, among other things. There are some unique quirks this game has that the other games don't, such as hiring party members to be able to adventure with them, or having a "Knowledge" stat to increase Marie's ability to synthesize and come up with more complex recipes. The world of Salburg isn't terribly fleshed out, but there are a fair bit of event scenes for all party members, and you'll be able to see their stories unfold as you progress through the game. It is nice to see.


Older games like this have the issue of being cryptic in a lot of ways, but thankfully the remake added a "Story" tab to the menu that shows you a list of every single event scene in the game, and how to trigger them. You can sort by character, and understand when, where, and how to trigger each of these scenes. It's a very nice addition to have if you wanna get as much story as you can.


The only other things the remake truly adds is having explorable environments in both Salburg itself, and gathering areas; in the original, you solely navigated menus to move from place to place ala point n' click adventure. Certain events that were chance-based menu prompts are now full-fledged minigames you can play, which is also fun.


But as a whole, Marie Remake is pretty much the original game with a fresh coat of paint and QoL features for all intents and purposes. I do believe it is still a fun romp you can get enjoyment out of, especially if you're curious about the world of Salburg. However, considering a single playthrough is only 6-10 hours, the $50 price point is pretty steep, so I recommend you pick this up on sale.

The Atelier series before the Mysterious games are more of a mystery to most people, and there's some reasons for that, namely the existence of time limits and the lack of various quality of life features. After playing through Escha & Logy, which was my first time with a pre-Mysterious game, I can say this:

Your first Atelier experience should be with Mysterious or Ryza since the streamlined features and mechanics make the barrier to entry much less rough than the older games. However, if this isn't your first rodeo with Atelier, then E&L is certainly one of the games to experience. I can also say you can play the Dusk series in whatever order you desire since the stories are *mostly* not connected to each other unlike Sophie's journey in the Mysterious games as an example.


Let's go over the story first. The Dusk series looks like it's more serious and dark due to it's... well, permanently dusk sky and ruined/post-apocalyptic looking areas. However, this is mostly untrue. The trademark slice of life, lighthearted vibe the series is known for is here and is the center of attention. The background about the world is slightly more grim, but the tone never fully shifts to that. However, that contrast between the world and the actual tone is quite interesting, and is unlike anything I've seen in any other Atelier I played.

Protagonists Escha and Logix (Logy) are both alchemists that become government officials for Escha's hometown of Colset, and their job is to help with the townspeople's troubles and investigate the many ruins around them to learn the truth about them. It's quite an interesting angle that the protagonists are government employees, but it's a unique perspective on being an alchemist and the troubles they face together. The blooming relationship between Escha and Logy is also quite a fresh thing to experience, since very few Ateliers have both a male and female protagonist in the same game. Those two really carry the story; the supporting cast is also quite good, but not perfect across the board. Some characters can be rather one-dimensional or simply not have enough screen time to flesh them out. Regardless, it's still a good cast and there's quite a big number of them, just as much as Ryza 3 if you can believe it.



Now for gameplay. As you might expect for an older entry, there are some hiccups and lack of quality of life features that are present in future entries, but E&L makes up for this with it's own unique quirks that make it stand out from the crowd. The main thing to point out is the quarterly assignment gameplay loop. Like most other older Ateliers, you have a time limit. In E&L, you must complete a primary assignment given to you within the "term", which is 4 in-game months (Think of it like Persona 4 and 5's deadlines). Aside from that, there are also dozens of optional assignments that will give you more rewards and further increase your rank, but will no longer be available to complete once the term is over, as the next term will have an entirely new set of assignments. You can finish the primary assignment in no time, but the real challenge is trying to complete all optional assignments in time as well, since it does require some planning ahead on where to go and what to synthesize. It really gives a different feel to the gameplay loop as it forces you to plan out your actions much more to get the highest possible rank you can. The story is also slightly affected by how many assignments you complete, along with some side activities here and there. Not everyone will be thrilled by this as it may sound stressful to some, but I feel that it's a very interesting way to experience Atelier, and I wouldn't mind seeing a formula like this in a modern entry.


Synthesis is rather simple compared to future entries, as you simply add 2 to 4 ingredients, and spend points of a certain element to enhance the item as best you can. It does have it's depth later on, but the concept is far easier to grasp than something like Sophie's synthesis. It gets the job done, even if I think it could be better.


Unlike Lydie & Suelle which was mostly just cosmetic flair, E&L goes farther with the dual protagonist premise. The biggest part is when you start a new game, you choose whether you want to play as Escha or Logy. You could consider these two different "routes", but it's mostly the exact same story. The only big change is exclusive event scenes here and there, along with exclusive endings for each. Escha uses the traditional cauldron to make synthesis ingredients and consumables, while Logy uses a blacksmith-esque method of alchemy where he can make weapons and armor. It's a really nice way to contextualize each of their own skills and where they grew up. Escha and Logy are also the only ones who can use items, and have unique skills together, so the two working together translates well into gameplay which is neat.



Now I wanna highlight the notable issues I experienced. The writing and/or localization for some of the gameplay mechanics are either not well-explained or nonsensical. For example, Traits aren't actually called "traits", but "Properties" while Traits are something else entirely. I also noticed a fair number of trait and assignments descriptions that are either misleading, vague, or flat out factually wrong. An example is a SPD Increase trait has the description of "Increases the speed on accessories", but you can also apply said trait to weapons and armor as well as accessories. This doesn't ruin the game by any stretch, but it makes certain aspects of the game more difficult to understand than it should be since it's just not well explained at times.

The in-game guide and enemy info is also sorely lacking. Unlike modern entries where you can sort and filter items to find what you need quickly, E&L just has a simple list with no pictures until you roll over the specific item. On the world map, there's no pictures of enemies or monsters in an area, just the name. And in both combat AND guide, you straight up have no information on the enemy, not even something as simple as their HP value. You also know no stats of theirs whatsoever, or even what their resistances are which makes it pointless to attempt to strategize using specific elemental damage.


But all in all, Escha & Logy is an entry that's very much worth playing despite it's few drawbacks. The tonally different world and unique gameplay loop of completing assignments feels so different from the modern entires that I believe it's worth experiencing at least once. Undoubtedly a good game in spite of it's age.

Pizza Tower is an example of a spiritual successor done right. Not only is it a love letter to Nintendo's Wario Land series, but it has so much of it's own unique flair that truly gives it it's own identity. Many indie games that try to follow in the footsteps of the games they're inspired from fall into the trap of basically making it the exact same game with little of it's own personality, and sometimes not as well designed; Pizza Tower does not have this issue at all, though.

Firstly, the visuals are simply outstanding. The crude, almost MS Paint-style art compliments it's homage to old 90s cartoons like Ren & Stimpy, which is what I was constantly thinking of when playing the game. Everything from the character designs, sound effects, and enemies and obstacles absolutely scream 90s cartoon. Even stuff like Peppino's scream when encountering a boss sounds like it could come straight from one. The animations themselves are also very nicely detailed, Peppino has so many frames of animation for all his moves despite being such a simple character with a simple art style; the developer really squeezed everything they could out of making this art style look as good as possible. Beyond that, there's so much little cosmetic flair that makes the game feel so alive, such as the TV in the corner of the screen at all times, or the intermission art that appears when you switch characters or fall into a pit.


The gameplay is also equally amazing. The controls do take some time to get used to and it'll feel kinda janky and unintuitive at first, but it WILL eventually click, and it will feel amazingly natural. Peppino has a dash where he can reach absolutely ludicrous speeds, and this is the crux of the game. Not only that, but there's also many movement options like a diagonal dive, high jump, ground pound, and much more moves for practically every situation. It makes it feel like the game was designed with speedrunning in mind, because you can absolutely blow through levels in no time if you master the controls and know exactly how to get through a level. Every level has a ranking system that gives you a grade depending on the amount of points you earn, and this is dependant on getting high combos and finding all of the level's secrets. When you get to the end of a level, you need to run all the way back to the entrance before time runs out which further encourages you to master the controls. The movement is the heart and soul of the gameplay, and it passes with flying colors.


Even past the controls themselves, almost every single level has a unique gimmick or quirk associated with it, and I truly never felt like I was playing the same level twice. There's only a handful of levels in the game, but they're so uniquely designed and are so distinct from one another that it will surprise you with the mechanics it introduces until the very end, and that is the testament of excellent level design.


Basically, Pizza Tower is worthy of all the praise it's gotten. I was skeptical of it at first admittedly, but those doubts were cast away instantly, and is one of the best indie games I've played in a very long time.

Lydie & Suelle.... *used to* be the finale of the Mysterious series, but now that we have Sophie 2 that released in 2022, we can instead say it's chronologically the last in the Mysterious series. L&S goes back to basics with the hub-based format of Sophie 1, and deviating from the more open-world format that Firis set. This has it's upsides and downsides of course, but the main advantage is much less downtime between tasks, and being able to see all the content the game has to offer pretty efficiently. Firis had a pretty grievous issue of inconsistent pacing because of Firis' slow movement speed and limited fast travel options, so it's nice that you can go practically anywhere in L&S with the simple tap of a button to bring up a fast travel menu.

The main gimmick of this game is the titular Mysterious Paintings, which can be entered and explored to gather new materials and meet colorful characters. In terms of pure gameplay, these might as well be just larger versions of the usual outskirts areas you can explore and adds a dungeon-esque feel to the story progression. However, it makes up for it in spades in terms of the visual style. These are paintings disconnected from the real world, so the art team were able to create some wacky and fun environments that don't abide to the rules of reality. You always get a very nice coat of paint whenever you explore a new painting, so the game never feels like it's retreading the same ground.

The story, tonally, is much more comedy-focused compared to Sophie and Firis. It chooses to throw a lot of zingers in event scenes rather than more insightful stuff. That's not to say there isn't emotional weight in the story, because there are some questlines that I would argue have the most emotional and heart-gripping scenes in this entire sub-series. This is in part thanks to previous protagonists Firis, Sophie, and other recurring characters getting the book closed on all their arcs, and it's very satisfying if you've been sticking with it from the beginning. The twins don't get the shaft though, their whole arc hinges on a pretty heart-wrenching motivation, and you want to see them succeed because of it.

The twins are the star of the show though. The studious, rational Lydie, and the energetic, instinctual Suelle (or Sue for short). Of course they deserve to stand alongside the others as protagonists. They're quite a bit younger compared to most other Atelier protags so they can be immature, mischevious and naive. All of this ends up adding a lot to their charm though as they slowly end up realizing their purpose in life and why they do alchemy at all. Being surrounded by the other party members who are adults puts their world view into perspective, and it's a lot easier to see them grow as characters than some other Atelier protagonists. Lydie & Sue can also be swapped out as the controllable field character at any time in the story. They also have their own music mixes of not just the Atelier and Battle, but almost all of the explorable gathering areas in the game. The game does a fantastic job putting emphasis on the twins being dual protags, and encouraging you to switch between them every so often. There have been dual protags in Atelier before that used these same features, but these two were the first in quite a while.


In short, Lydie & Suelle is pretty much taking Sophie 1's structure and further refining it to be more enjoyable with it's own bells and whistles. The story and characters are also a joy to watch as it typically is for this series. If you enjoyed Sophie 1 and don't mind L&S playing it a little safe, it's absolutely worth your time.

Ryza 3 is the pinnacle of the trilogy without a shadow of a doubt, and makes for a very fitting conclusion in that sense. The sense of scale of the world downright dwarfs Ryza 1 & 2, and the Atelier series finally has a fully loaded in interconnected world with no separate loading smaller chunks of areas; and there's even multiple massive areas to explore instead of just one. You are also given so much creative freedom in general compared to the previous entries. For the environments, you're very rarely restricted on where you can go, and you can go anywhere as long as you have the appropriate item to reach it (You are given the vast majority of the exploration items very early on too). For skills and synthesis, you can get ANY skill you want in any order as long as you have the required SP to do so (and branch out the skill tree). Along with that, the titular "Secret Keys" can enhance your items in various ways if you're smart, and can potentially make up for a lack of quality materials to get very good stats earlier on. A big criticism I had with Ryza 1 was how railroaded the game felt both exploration wise and synthesis wise, so Ryza 3 addresses all my complaints and then some. This also helps Ryza feel more in line with the older Atelier games like the Mysterious trilogy which also similarly had lots of creative freedom and exploration despite the smaller areas and scope.


Speaking of that, if you've played Atelier Firis before, it seems to me that Ryza 3 accomplishes what that game set out to do and fell short on. Much like this game, Firis was more focused on larger open environments. However, areas were still separated by loading screens, and Firis' movement speed was pitifully slow with limited fast travel options making getting around to be a chore at times. Ryza's ability to fast travel instantly anywhere with rideable animals that move very fast give just the right amount of pacing, and does Firis' ideas justice. Even other minor things like random sidequests you find by talking to people were also in Firis. Honestly, the fact this game is just not separated by smaller areas loading in helps the pacing a lot.


The combat has also been very refined from Ryza 2 which I already had very little issues with in the first place. Attack animations are very quick, snappy, and satisfying to just watch. You also earn AP & CC much quicker in this game, so it helps to speed up the fighting when you're grinding for materials. If you wanted more depth though, then that also is delivered. The aforementioned Secret Keys are also used in combat to give various stat buffs, and can be equipped on characters as gear to also give buffs. This along with the new Order Drives and up to 5 party members being able to be used in active battle gives a nice healthy dose of freshness to the mostly similar combat, making it more fun to go through.


The only truly negative things I have to say about Ryza 3 is that the soundtrack is not nearly as good or memorable as Ryza 2, maybe even Ryza 1. It's still not bad by any means, but considering Atelier's pedigree of fantastic OSTs, I think it fell short in most instances.

(EDIT: I found out the reason I felt this way about the music was because the main composer for this game was Kazuki Yanagawa who is usually the head composer for the Atelier series as a whole. Hayato Asano was the head composer of Ryza 1 and 2 which explains why it sounds so different. Upon further listening, I don't think the soundtrack for Ryza 3 is necessarily worse, but I did experience some tonal whiplash when I was expecting Hayato Asano's style.)

Also, when trying to discover landmarks, the world map is covered in clouds until you walk right up to the nearest landmark, and a portion of the clouds are uncovered. This can sometimes make finding the appropriate path to the landmark needlessly confusing as the environments are so much bigger than before with many alternate paths. This means you can sometimes just take the wrong path into a dead end or just flat out not know where the entrance to the area is until you look everywhere first. The map is always uncovered on the mini-map which does help, but it's very zoomed in and doesn't always help you out when you need it.


In short, Ryza 3 surpassed my already high expectations of Ryza 2 and fixed just about any issue I had with the Ryza trilogy in particular. The game does assume you already played the last 2 games because it explains very little and has lots of callbacks, so if you haven't played the other two, play those. Otherwise, Ryza 3 is a no-brainer to purchase.

Lost World is a very odd duck. It was originally a Wii U exclusive back in 2013, and thus had some Gamepad gimmicks baked into the experience. The design of the game also changed from the usual boost formula to something more like a Mario-esque 3D platformer which is... quite different from any other 3D Sonic out there, even the Adventure games. It even features lots of these spherical anti-gravity planets reminiscent of Mario Galaxy.

I can't really say anything about Lost World is bad, and there's no other Sonic game quite like it, but I don't really think this type of platforming fits Sonic very well, which also goes for the wonky parkour mechanic which doesn't work perfectly. Despite that though, if you can look past this game's strange premise, I still think it's something worth experiencing as the gameplay can be fun. There's also various gimmicks and power-ups to spice up the level design, and can be quite entertaining to do time attacks on.

Sonic 4 Episode 1 is uninspired at best, and downright boring at worst. It tries to invoke the spirit of the 2D games, but fail on almost every front. The lack of momentum, lack of varied power-ups, bare-bones level design, and over-reliance on homing attacks and enemy chains all add up to make this a failure in comparison to even Sonic 1, much less Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Nothing is particularly abhorrent about this game, but the difference in quality to the classic games is far too great to even consider playing.

Nobeta is a shockingly well-designed game for appearing so simple and low budget. Despite that, developer PupuyaGames pulled out all the stops and managed to make a nicely crafted souls-like experience. Nobeta primarily attacks through ranged magic which have different properties depending on the element; it's almost like a third person shooter in that sense. Not only that, but they incorproated a skill-based mechanic of not relying on magic too much by being able to recover MP faster by doing dangerous close-range physical attacks with Nobeta's staff and perfectly timed dodges. You can run out of MP very quickly, so you need to not mindlessly spam attacks and put yourself in danger to recover more. The level design is simple but works very well as Nobeta goes through trecherous areas full of pitalls and enemies.

As an added bonus, most of the bosses in the game are voiced by Hololive Vtubers such as Shirakami Fubuki and Shirogane Noel.

Nobeta really surprised me with how mechanically solid it was. It's pretty short, but you'll be getting a great soulslike with some cute anime girl flair.

Ryza 2 improves on practically everything Ryza 1 did, and then some. It seems like Gust was being highly experimental with Ryza 1 to see how they could modernize the Atelier series, but they nailed on everything that works in 2.

The unique gimmick of this game is exploring ruins to piece together what happened there a long time ago. It gives Ryza as a sub-series a very unique feel compared to the others, and is a different kind of exploration for reasons other than gathering materials. This along with the addition of new traversal tools like a rope, a giant animal to ride, and the ability to swim, the environments are much more dense and expansive which makes Ryza one of the best Atelier games to flat out explore like crazy. The main hub being a massively populated town is much more interesting than Kurken Island from Ryza 1 since there are much more NPCs to talk to and more sidequests to receive from them.

The biggest improvement is the combat, which I already felt was one of the best mechanics in Ryza 1. It's got the same core foundation, but you can now chain regular attacks into skills into other skills, and even swap party members in and out of combat mid-combo. The UI makes it far easier to execute commands in quick succession, and the change of core items being something you save up points to use in quick succession also adds a lot to the strategy of the game. It's excellent, fast, and frantic.

Synthesis is just about the same as Ryza 1, but the method of obtaining recipes are more nuanced rather than simple story progression, as you learn a lot more recipes by doing sidequests or using the skill tree to learn more recipes, giving you more freedom on what you want to create. They also more properly explain the importance of item quality to make better items.


If you liked Ryza 1, then Ryza 2 is, like I said, better in every way. There's no reason not to play this one. Might even be one of the best soundtracks in the series too.