Game Title: Bayonetta 2
Developer: Platinum Games, Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Retail | Digital Download
Battery Life: 2.5 – 3.5 hours
Download: 12.4 GB

When I started playing the Bayonetta games, it was easy to see two major things I hear about the games: The Sexual Fanservice and the Fun with the game’s combat system. Bayonetta 1 had an almost-dominatrix attitude towards its main character and the dodge mechanic made the combat system very unique when compared to other games like it.

Of course, when I finished the first game and moved onto the second, I expected both of those themes to still be present, but much much worse. In that regard, I feel like a lot of news venues from back at that game’s launch were quite misleading, especially towards how they treated the sexual fanservice.

But I’ll get to that later. You know enough to see what we’re about to do. So, here is my review of Bayonetta 2 for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

Bayonetta 2 takes place an undisclosed amount of time after the events of the original Bayonetta. While fighting off Angels in the middle of a city, an Infernal summoned by Bayonetta goes Berserk and attacks Jeanne, leaving her soul in limbo and her body slowly degrading towards Death. In order to rescue her friend’s soul, she journies to the mythic mountain Fimbulventr, where the rumored entrance to Inferno is located.

The story of Bayonetta 2 is very different from the original, mostly that Bayonetta has toned down on her heavy use of sex humor from the previous game and has become a more serious, flirty protagonist and less of the dominatrix she was before. With that in mind, there is also a larger focus on the lore and the new story of this game with less sex humor to distract you from it.

That isn’t to say that it is all great and wonderful. The plotline around the new character, Loki, feels a little too mysterious at the start, and too rushed at the end. We go from learning tiny tidbits about him while he escorts Bayonetta to the Gates of Hell to him instantly knowing everything and explaining it all right before the final battle starts.

One last thing: I’ve seen loads of people in the Nintendo Switch community recommended gamers completely skip the first game and start with the second game and I can’t disagree with this more than I already do. A lot of scenes in Bayonetta 2 go off of lore set up in the first game, especially the nature and character of many of the major bosses and major story events of Bayo 1. If you start with 2, there will be a lot of confusion.

Gameplay

Bayonetta 2 isn’t much different from its predecessor in regards to its genre. Like games like God of War, this is a 3D action game with platforming elements. It is just like Bayonetta 1, though almost all of the puzzle aspects of the original have been removed from the sequel.

Outside of the removal of the puzzles, what is new to this game over the original? The biggest addition is a new way to use your Magic Gauge, known as Umbran Climax, allowing you to enter an elevated state and use powerful, staggering attacks to do huge amounts of damage outside of using the typical Torture Attacks on non-boss enemies from the first game.

The other addition is Tag Climax, a new Co-Op Game Mode, where you can team up with another play locally or online and bet Halos (Currency) on scores as you fight through consecutive battles with enemies.

Not really additions, but there have been a lot of balancing changes made to the game’s formula. Most enemies can be easily staggered and fought without using the Dodge Mechanic and Witch Time, QTEs give you more time for button inputs, items have bigger effects, etc. It’s all around a much simpler and easier game than its predecessor. It does have some difficult bosses, but they’ve got nothing on the bosses from Bayo 1.

This mostly comes down to how combat has changed. You still have button combination-oriented attacks, but the Umbran Climax system changes how you fight. In Bayo 1, you timed dodges so you could have openings to attack. In Bayo 2, you can fight like that until your Magic Gauge is full and use Umbran Climax, which instantly staggers and interrupts almost every boss in the game, leaving them helpless to defend themselves from the powerful combos of this new ability. Not to mention that it’s far easier to cancel attacks and dodge for near-infinite Witch Time if you are aware enough to watch your opponent as you attack.

What hasn’t change, though, is the way you play the game in terms of progression. You still explore large 3D environments, platform around various areas, collect currency from enemies to buy items, weapons, and costumes, and participate in epic giant boss fights. The core gameplay is still here. It’s just been tweaked to be easier to grasp than the original game made it out to be.

Now, let’s talk about the unfortunate length attached to this game. It took me around 15 hours to beat the Story Mode of Bayo 1, but it only took me around 9 hours to clear the same in Bayo 2 on the Normal Difficulty. Considering this game costs $50 whether you buy it alone or along with the original game, that isn’t very much time. You could add Tag Climax in there and maybe get an extra hour or so, but in terms of story completion, it’s only a big over half the length of the original game for almost twice the price.

With replayability, you unlock Jeanne as a playable character for clearing the Story Campaign on any difficulty, along with Post-Game Costumes to save up Halos to buy. But, do note that playing as Jeanne doesn’t change the story or the cutscene voices. It just replaces Bayonetta’s in-game model with Jeanne’s.

Controls

Controlling this game is slightly different than the first, mostly that some of the trigger controls from Bayo 1 have been tossed around a bit.

Moving is done with the Left Analog Stick and moving the camera is done with the Right Analog Stick. The R trigger is used for changing weapon styles and L is used for triggering Umbran Climax. ZL is used for lock-ons, and ZR is used for dodging.

Most of the rest is the same. B is used for jumpiing, X for shooting, Y for punching attacks, and A for kicking attacks. All of that is the same as the original game. It is mostly the trigger buttons that have been altered.

It’s worth noting that the camera issue present in the original Bayonetta is not present here. The camera is much smarter and I never had issues while fighting smaller Boss Fights like I did in Bayo 1.

Presentation

Graphically, the original game looked pretty good, but this game looks incredible. The cutscenes have flawless graphics and gameplay is only slightly underneath them. When you’re running around and fighting off enemies, you’ll be convinced that gameplay looks just as flawless as the scenes do. While there are occasional jagged edges to be seen in screenshots or in handheld mode, the game overall just looks beautiful.

Performance is just as beautiful. Just like Bayo 1, this game runs at a perfect 60 fps in both Docked and Handheld Modes, offering perfectly fluid gameplay experiences that exceeds that of its Wii U counterpart.

Battery Life

Amazingly-enough, higher graphics don’t mean less Battery Life. Here are my Battery Times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 37 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 48 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 30 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 36 minutes

While that Max Brightness setting is actually a little less time than Bayonetta, the Lower Brightness settings actually give you more Battery Life than the original game, which is pretty incredible considering how much higher in quality this game is.

DLC Title: Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 “Extra Pack Bundle”
DLC Type: Story Campaign, Playable Characters
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Price: $16.99 ($19.99 if the packs are bought separately)

Despite FighterZ being the new Dragon Ball game in the scene, Xenoverse 2 doesn’t fail to keep getting loads of support in the form of new patches and new DLC packs for people download and enjoy. This, of course, is great for handheld gamers. The Switch doesn’t have FighterZ (yet), but it does have Xenoverse 2 and its ever-expanding list of content.

Last month, I reviewed the initial “Season Pass” for Xenoverse 2 as a way to have reason in making a new Dragon Ball-themed review and to do a shout-out to my favorite Dragon Ball YouTubers. This month, we have loads of new Xenoverse content and I am just the person on this site to give you information and a review of it!

So, without further delay, here is my review of the new “Season Pass” for Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, otherwise known as the Extra Pack Set!

Story

EP’s new Story Scenario takes place after the end of Xenoverse 2’s prologue (along with solidifying the prologue as an alternate timeline and not part of the Main Xenoverse Timeline).

Time Distortions appear all over Conton City and a new characters known as Fu appears within them, mysteriously sapping energy from them and helping to restore them. Unsure whether Fu can be trusted, you are sent into the Time Rifts to correct changes to the Timeline and stop the source of these distortions.

The plot of this DLC Pack is so good because of how many different character interactions it gives you. There are 4 base scenarios from both Dragon Ball Super and Dragon Ball Z, showcasing character interactions from previously-released DLC characters that had no part in the story, but also because there are literally dozens of alternate branching paths for each of those scenarios. This gives you a lot of unique character interactions similar to how the Pre-Fight cinematics work in Dragon Ball FIghterZ when you have certain characters in your party.

Gameplay

Base Gameplay has not been changed, but a lot of gameplay features have been changed. BUt before getting to that, we need to clarify what content this DLC gives you and what it doesn’t. Dimps and Namco Bandai have been releasing both new DLC with new content as well as Free Updates with new content. So, let’s clarify where each bit of new content lies.

New Content in the Free Updates since the first Season Pass is detailed in the following:

– Hero Colosseum Mini-Game
– Burst Limit Ability for CaCs to give their team Super Armor once per battle
– Super Saiyan Blue transformation for CaCs (Custom Characters)
– Customization for Mentor Characters via Unlockable Skills and Costume Palette Swaps
– Friendship Levels with Mentors to unlock special Multi-Character Ultimate Attacks

New Content in Extra Packs 1 and 2 is detailed in the following:

– 8 New Playable Characters
– New Parallel Quests, Skills, Costumes, and Super Souls
– Infinite History Story Scenario

This is just for clarification. The Paid DLC is referring to the 7 new characters, Story Scenario, Missions, Skills, and Equipment. Super Saiyan Blue, Burst Limit, and Character Customization come in a Free Patch and don’t need to be bought.

Now, let’s take a look at what is new. Obviously, the biggest parts of the new content are the new story scenario and the inclusion of Jiren and Ultra Instinct Goku, two characters from the ending fight of Dragon Ball Super. It is worth noting that this is the first look Western Audiences have at the abilities of UI Goku as not even the Super anime in Japan has aired any footage of this new form in action.

The meat of this DLC is Infinite History, though. In Infinite History, you play through a 5-missions Story Scenario, but when you clear it, you gain the ability to have branching paths. Choose a different partner character for each scenario, and you unlock new mission parameters, different boss fights, and different story branches entirely, taking the story in a completely different direction.

In total, there are 10 base missions, 5 for each Story Path. Across each of these missions are Branching Routes, which affect which story branch you go to and Alternate Routes, where entire mission parameters are changed based on extra dialogue between your partner and the mission characters.

To put this into perspective, there are 23 total Branching Routes and 75 Alternate Paths across the whole Infinite History Game Mode. So, if you wanted to see all of the different Branching Paths, you will be spending roughly 5 and a half hours on the initial run and each Branching Path, and if you love character-to-character interactions, you could add another 12-13 hours for all of those paths.

So, let’s go into length. That Story Scenario has a potential of 15-18 hours of content on its own, and an additional hour could easily be used by playing the new PQs to unlock the new skills, equipment, and costumes. That’s a ton of content all crammed into a season pass and overshoots ths first Season Pass’s Length, and it had 2 extra story scenarios instead of just one.

Game Title: Deemo
Developer: Rayark Inc.
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital
Battery Life: 5 – 7 hours
Download: 2.7 GB

It’s not every day that a plotline in a video game will make me start to break down and cry, but it has happened before. The shock of many moments of the Zero Escape series has hit me hard in the feels, but one genre you would not expect this to happen is the Music Genre of gaming.

Yet, it happened. Deemo: The Last Recital I reviewed on the PS Vita, but couldn’t make a video review because it couldn’t be played on the PlayStation TV. I was equally disappointed when Deemo came to the Nintendo Switch and couldn’t be played in Docked/TV Mode.

Thankfully, that has changed. Recently, Deemo on the Switch got an update with button controls, so I grabbed it from the eShop, ran through it again, and am ready to finally get a Video Review going for it. So, without further delay, here is my review of Deemo for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

Deemo is what you would call a game that utilizes Visual Storytelling. You are given cutscenes across the game without any dialogue, letting the visuals of what it shows tell you what the story is and what is happening.

The plot of this game is about a young girl falling through the ceiling into the strange home of Deemo, a lonely, dark entity that spends his time playing the piano. After he catches the Little Girl, a tree begins to grow from the piano as he plays his music and so the two of them work together to create a way to reach that hole in the ceiling and return the Little Girl back to her home.

The story of Deemo is unique not just in its Visual Storytelling, but in its finale. I can’t say anything to spoil it, but Deemo has one of the most emotional, heart-tugging stories in any game I’ve played, let alone Music Games by themselves. It’s more than worth the journey through the music you experience as you play the game.

Gameplay

Deemo is a Rhythm/Music game with exploration elements thrown into the mix. Across the entirety of the game, you’re going to be participating in Rhythm-based gameplay as you clear the game’s library of songs, along with unlocking new areas, cutscenes, and songs by exploring each room of Deemo’s home.

How you progress is pretty simple. As you clear songs, you unlock new songs. This is very typical Rhythm-Game formula. The more uniqueness is the method of Exploration. Many Story Scenes that push you towards new objectives can only be unlocked by interacting with objects in rooms of the house.

To get it out of the way, there is one glaring flaw in this game: The lack of explanation. There’s a lot to this game’s exploration, but nothing in the game tells you that you even can explore. You have button prompts for the Music Menu and Settings, but only vaguely-flashing icons when new rooms open up, and even when you enter them, nothing really shows you what can and cannot be interacted with. This leads to a load of confusion.

The only thing that is explatined via a tutorial screen is how you play the Rhythm Game, showcasing how to use the touch screen and how to use the buttons (after this last update) to hit the notes and gain scores as you play through each song.

Speaking of that, playing Deemo is kind of like playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band, without the instrument peripherals. There are notes that fly down towards a horizontal line at the bottom of the screen and you either tap the screen or hit a button to hit the note. If you recall the PSP game Rock Band: Unplugged, it’s very similar to that, but instead of the long “hold the button down” notes from Rock Band, you have slider notes where you slide your finger across the screen for longer sequences.

As I said earlier, clearing songs unlocks new songs and also increases the height of the Tree in the story, which is directly related to reaching milestones for story scenes. The better you perform in songs, the more height the tree gets and the quicker you can reach the Story’s Finale.

That also comes into the game’s length and the content involved here. I managed to unlock the game’s Ending after clearing 55 of the game’s library of songs. Assuming you don’t fail any songs (which you will if you play on anything outside of the Easy difficulty), that gives the game’s story completion a length of around 4 hours or so.

Now, that’s not a long time, but the rest of the game’s content makes up for that. Once you clear the story, you unlock the ability to Replay the story in a sort of New Game Plus to unlock new Story Scenes known as “Moments” that further expand upon the plot that unfolds. Considering some of these cannot be unlocked until your 4th playthrough, that raises that 4 hours to more like 10-12 hours.

But that’s not to say you’re doing the same thing all over again. Songs aren’t specified for story progress. After that initial 55 songs, you can clear the rest of the game’s library of songs during those later playthroughs. As of the latest update, the game has 241 different songs to play through, so in terms of experiencing each song, we’d put the amount of content without repeating anything at around 16-18 hours. That is, of course, assuming you fail none of those 241 songs. So, you have a lot to do.

Price-wise, music games have always been odd and that’s one thing we’ll go into. Deemo definitely has a lot of content to it, but Vita gamers will quickly notice that the Switch version of Deemo costs $30 vs the $15 price tag of the Vita version. So, let’s make a quick comparison, because there is one major different. The Vita version has Paid DLC. On the Switch, however, all of the extra songs and all future songs are added via Free Patches.

To be specific:

Vita: Base Game ($15) + DLC Bundle ($35) = $50
Switch: Base Game ($30) + Free Updates = $30

So, the Switch version not only has the same content for less, but also lets you play on the TV and on the go (which the Vita version cannot, considering it is not compatible with the PSTV).

Controls

Deemo has always been a touch screen game, so everything that can be done can be done with the touch screen. However, that’s not the only way you can play. The Switch version is the first release of Deemo to contain physical button controls, and the ability to play on the TV without specialized equipment.

As far as button controls go, Deemo’s notes are divided into 3 categories. By default, one color is handed with the Arrow Buttons, one is handled by the Face Buttons, and the final is handled by holding down the ZL or ZR triggers. The Arrow Button and Face Button controls can be customized as you see fit, so you are free to make a scheme comfy for you, but the trigger notes cannot be customized.

Presentation

Visually, there isn’t a lot to see here. The cutscenes are hand-drawn animations and the actual gameplay showcases pretty simple notes traveling down the screen. It is worth noting that a lot of the artwoirk is very well-done and has a unique style to it, but there’s no gauge for graphics and whatnot.

Performance is something I have no issues with. Short load times. Smooth frame-rate. You know how that goes.

Battery Life

Given the game’s simplistic style, I expected pretty good battery life out of this game. Here is what I got, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 00 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 33 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 6 hours, 52 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 7 hours, 10 minutes

As expected, you can get a ton of Battery Life out of this game.  I’m always amazed when a Switch game can exceed 7 hours of Battery Life.

Game Title: Xenoblade Chronicles 2
Developer: Monolith Software, Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Retail | Digital
Battery Life: 3 – 3.5 hours
Download: 13.9 GB

When people think about RPGs associated with Nintendo, you probably will start thinking about games like the Mario & Luigi series and, of course, Pokemon. With First-Party franchises, though, a certain niche RPG series that has rebooted not once, but twice now, has risen up and is gaining popularity very quickly. That is the Xeno series, recently known as the XenoBlade series.

Xenoblade Chronicles made a big impression with the Wii and later the New Nintendo 3DS, and it’s long been guessed when its true sequel would come out after Xenoblade Chronicles X for the Wii U, and Switch owners got that. Not an actual sequel, chronologically and world-wise, but in terms of game releases.

Past all the hype and high esteem fans seem to hold it in, how is the game? Is it worth the hype? Is it not worth it? Let’s find out. Here is my review of Xenoblade Chronicles 2!

Story

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 takes place in a world, where land mass of the planet is gone and all civilization lives on massive beings known as Titans, which are in a constant state of decay, in danger of becoming extinct. After becoming bonded with a legendary “Blade” entity from the past, a young boy sets out on a journey to bring her to the mythical land of Elysium, in the hopes of finding a new place for everyone to live in peace and without the worry of losing their only means of living after the Titans die out.

The plotline of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is good in the way it builds its world and lore, but the character development is a little too “cliche anime trope” to go along with the story it tells. While being cliche personalities are nothing new to the JRPG genre, it feels forced and unnatural, particularly with the main heroine, Pyra. It feels like it is cliche just for the sake of being cliche and doesn’t fit in with the rest of what is going on.

Gameplay

Xenoblade 2 is very difficult to define in terms of gameplay. It is an open-world RPG with elements from both turn-based and action-based combat. I would put it with the growing number of hybrid RPGs that mix turn-based and action-based combat.

The way progress works in the game is similar to most JRPGs. The story pushes you forward to your next objective and a marker to follow to it. But, like any other open-world game, there are tons of areas you can explore instead, if you so wish. It’s not quite as open and free as games like Skyrim, but there’s a lot to explore outside of your main objective, moreso the further you get in the game.

We also need to talk about how technical this game is. Be it combat, exploration, or party management, there are a ton of different gameplay mechanics you need to be constantly thinking about. Be it combat aggro and chain attacks, Sea Tide levels and Field SKills needed to proceed in the open-world, or Trust and Upgrade systems for each of your recruitable “Blade” characters, there is an overwhelming amount of gameplay systems in this game. You are constantly being given tutorials, even all the way up to the Final Boss of the game. So much so that it is overwhelming even to experience RPG fans.

Going away from the overwhelming portion, combat is the most unique aspect of the game. Unlike games like Ys where you roam around and issues all attacks yourself, Xenoblade utilize what is known as the “Auto-Battle” system. All members of your party automatically attack enemies in combat without any input, and you only interact when your skills are charged up and can be used to attack enemies, drop HP potions for healing, bringing aggro up or down, or other effects your skills may have.

This makes the combat system a simple, yet complicated venture. You don’t have to interact very often, but there’s also a lot you have to worry about, similar to how you plan out Raids in MMORPGs with Tanks, Attackers, Healers, etc.

Another thing we need to talk about is the Difficulty of the game. Xenoblade 2 has a lot of difficulty spikes in its major story bosses. While this is normal for an RPG, the spikes are extreme enough that you’re required to not only go back and grind for levels for every major boss fight, but also fight each boss in a smart way, utilizing your tanks, combos, and more, which makes the game not only hard, but very off-putting if you don’t enjoy grinding for hours for each major boss.

Thankfully, the latest update added an Easy Mode difficulty option, making this much more doable for non-hardcore RPG players. It is in no way a cakewalk as all of those bosses will still be challenging, but you’ll be able to beat them without all the grinding from before this patch released.

That brings us to Length, a very important part of this review. Despite all the claims of this being a 100+ hour game, it really isn’t. I played Chapters 1-4 on the Normal Difficulty and Chapters 5-10 on the Easy Difficulty, and the results really shows how much grinding was involved in this game. I stuck to the main quest with a little exploring and side-quests here and there. When I finally beat the game, I’d logged around 40 hours.

Now, we take that 40 hours and think on it. If people were clearing the game in 70-100 hours on the Normal Difficulty, you could probably account for an hour or three to accomodate for how much shorter the fights are in Easy Mode, but that still amounts to a minimum 25+ hours of gameplay spent just grinding for levels before Easy Mode was a thing. That’s some pretty intense grinding.

In short, though, it’s a 40-hour game if you just trek the Main Quest and stick to Easy Mode so you don’t have to grind. There is no shame in that, either. Easy Mode feels more like the Normal Difficulty of many RPGs while Normal feels more like Hard/Very Hard.

Once you beat the game, you have New Game Plus along with extra side quests and unique bosses to fight. Though NG+ wasn’t added until this last update, so it wasn’t there originally.

Controls

Controlling the game can be technical, but the game explains it pretty well. The touch screen is not used in handheld mode, so you can do everything with the game’s buttons.

You move around with the Left Analog Stick and move the camera with the Right Analog Stick. The Directional Buttons are used, but mostly for issuing commands in battle or navigating menus. The four triggers are used. R is for locking onto enemies, ZL for switching your Partner Character, and ZR for viewing your current Quest Objective.

Then comes the face buttons. X opens the Fast Travel menu, A lets you interact with NPCs or draw your weapon, B lets you jump, and Y lets you run faster in the field. The face buttons also have skills tied to them when you’re in combat.

Presentation

Graphics are a great thing about this game, but also a not-so-great thing. When you have the Switch in TV/Docked Mode, the visuals look really good. The CG cutscenes have perfect graphics with no blemishes and really showcases the beauty of the giant environments that are built into this game’s world.

The bad part comes out of handheld mode. The game’s resolution tanks very low when the Switch is undocked, making the visuals on-the-go have tons of jagged edges, a very large blur effect, and everything looking grainy and strange. This has improved with the last patch, but it still doesn’t look very good.

Another lesser aspect is the English Dub. While the English VAs do a pretty decent job in their voice recordings, matching the character animations creates a substantial amount of pauses for the sake of matching. The end result has many scenes sounding like someone taking dramatic pauses every few words and is very awkward.

Performance, though, is great. The game runs at a nice, steady frame-rate from start to finish and loads all of its areas pretty quickly for an open world game.

Battery Life

Many people think the game’s resolution was lowered in handheld mode to extend Battery Life, so let’s take a look at how well that worked out. Here are my times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 02 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 06 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 22 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 28 minutes

I do admit, they definitely got better Battery Life here with the lowered resolution. With the same graphics as Docked Mode, I imagine the Battery Life would be far lower than 3 hours. It still doesn’t excuse the poor quality, but at least we have an educated guess for why they did it that way.

Game Title: Celeste
Developer: Matt Makes Games
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download
Battery Life: 4 – 5.5 hours
Download: 1.2 GB

Celeste is a name that is pretty big in the gaming world right now. A little indie game that combined platforming with tales of anxiety and won the hearts of gamers across the PC world, console world, and handheld world. Even before its release, I saw Nintendo Switch fans sharing IGN’s 10/10 review that the game received.

The game is also something people have been asking me to review ever since it came out. Since I had some time between my Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Review and Gal Gun 2 and Kirby: Star Allies coming out later this week, I decided to dive into this platformer and see what the fuss was all about.

Now that I have, let’s get right to it. Here is my review of Celeste for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

Celeste revolves around the character of Madeline, a young anxiety-prone lady on a journey to climb up a mountain. Despite warnings from both an old lady living on the mountain and her own inner-voice, she ventures up the Mountain, unaware that the Mountain, itself, is about to put her through a fierce battle not only with the climb, but the demons inside her own mind.

The story of Celeste is a story about anxiety, depression, and those who deal with anxiety and panic attacks. There are themes and notions of all of these things across the entire game, and you see a physical representation of the two selves of someone with extreme anxiety and the battles they have to wage with themselves on a daily basis.

Of course, I have to say this. As someone who suffers from depression and regular panic attacks, myself, I can’t say I’m completely unbiased with the story. I found myself constantly connected to and understanding of Madeline and her constant inner-struggle. Because of how easily I related to her, I immediately got into and loved this game’s plotline. While I do think it is good even without that connection, I cannot say this without any inkling of bias as I write this.

Gameplay

Celeste is a 2D side-scrolling platformer with physics and exploration elements thrown into the mix. For all intents and purposes, it is what many refer to as a Metroidvania game, where the side-scrolling environment is not entirely linear and requires some exploring around various rooms to find and unlock the true route out of each area and level.

While main progression has you going from stage to stage and exploring platforms and avoiding dangerous obstacles, Celeste does have a few unique things that you don’t necessarily see in your run-of-the-mill 2D platformers.

The most unique aspects of gameplay are the dashing and climbing mechanics. Instead of having simple platforms everywhere you can just jump to and move onto the next room from there, many of the game’s environments have tricky platforming areas surrounded by deadly spikes, flames, pits, and more that require some resourcefulness to platform around and get past.

That’s where climbing and dashing come into play. Since you can’t double-jump until later on in the game, you can use a mid-air dash to move around many of these traps and can cling to and climb solid walls to further explore areas past your initial jump. The tricky part of this is that you can only mid-air dash once after you leave the ground and dashing as well as climbing quickly use up stamina. Use too much and you won’t have the strength to hold on anymore and will, without a doubt, fall to Madeline’s untimely death.

This is where the game’s well-known difficulty comes into play. Many areas have you jumping and making strategic dashes and climbs to get past obstacles and where you need to go, since hitting an obstacle like spikes or flames results in instant-death. In this manner, the game reminds me of Super Meat Boy.

The difference between the two (outside of the storyline) is that most rooms are very small in nature and moving from one room to the next serves as a checkpoint. The difficulty along with this checkpoint system makes this game difficult at times, but the difficulty feels balanced. I never had to think about each room more than a couple times before I figured out what I needed to do to get through it.

If the game is too hard for you, though, the developers throw you a bone in an optional “Assist Mode” that reduces the difficulty. These options allow you to alter the game’s speed and give yourself more jumps, Infinite Stamina, and Invincibility. These options are also quite useful when you’re going through to get all collectibles with replaying previous stages. I would say that some collectibles actually require it to reach.

So, past the difficulty, how much content does this game have? That’s actually been a debate ever since the game came out and people saw the $20 price tag on the eShop. So, let’s break it down.

There are 7 story levels, plus an 8th “Epilogue” that adds a little bit of post-game closure on the themes present in the story and for Madeline, herself. The Epilogue requires you to find the difficult Crystal Heart collectibles for 4 separate stages, so I had to go back and grab a couple of those before I could really tackle it. Accounting for that as well as the length of the Epilogue, I cleared all Story Levels in a little over 7 hours.

As far as post-game content goes, each stage has collectibles and alternate, harder versions of themselves, including the Epilogue. You also have the “PIco-8” Game you can unlock and play from the Title Screen, which lets you play through the original build of Celeste, which is a similar, yet different game altogether. Although the original build has no story, it does offer an extra 2 hours of platforming to do in a system that feels quite different from the finished product from the Main Campaign.

I consider Time vs Price pretty important, and Celeste just barely made the passable mark, with Story Content lasting around 7 hours or so vs the $20 price tag. Alkthough some may not agree, but I believe Celeste to have plenty of initial content, plus the original build and alternate stages to keep players busy for quite some time after.

Controls

Controlling Celeste is pretty simple, and all of the controls are explained well as the game begins.

You can move with the Arrow Buttons or the Left Analog Stick. The Right Analog Stick is not used in the game. The four triggers can be used to grip and climb up walls. X and B are used for jumping, while A and Y can be used for dashing. If this isn’t to your liking, the options allows you to remap the controls as you see fit.

Presentation

Graphically, the game is built like a retro platformer. The game is built, down to its pixels, like oldschool platformers, so you can see pixel lines around the character models and everything else around. The only exception to that is dialogue sequences. Whenever a story scene plays, the portraits for characters is a much higher-quality artistic style seen in more recent games, which really helps bring Madeline and the other characters to life.

Performance is mostly good, too. The frame-rate is perfect throughout the entire game and the load times are very short.

My only nitpick is that the game crashes, and in a very strange way. A few times, whenever I complete a Story Level, the game will crash on me. The strange thing is that it crashes after the Auto-Save goes into effect. So, it does crash with the inconvenience of having to relaunch the game, but thankfully, you will never lose progress when it does this.

Battery Life

Hilariously enough, I had this game for a few days now and I didn’t actually record the Battery Times until I started writing this review. But here are my times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 09 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 18 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 26 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 32 minutes

I’d say that’s pretty good. 4 to 5.5 hours is a nice chunk of time, and enough to do probably 3/4 of the game’s Story Campaign your first run. I’m happy with those numbers.

Game Title: Gal Gun 2
Developer: Inti Creates
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Retail | Digital Download
Battery Life: 2.5 – 3.25 hours
Download: 3.3 GB

When the more fanservicy games from the PlayStation Vita’s library began to release for the Nintendo Switch, I had some pretty low expectations on what level of fanservice would actually be released on Nintendo’s new handheld-console hybrid. Sure, we got Fate/Extella and a Senran Kagura game only in Japan, but I didn’t expect anything over-the-top to leave Japan or be released in English.

Boy, was I wrong. Not only was Gal Gun 2, a sequel to one of the more questionable PS Vita fanservice games, announced for the Switch but it was announced for localization and even has English subtitles in its Japanese release. If people are wanting fanservice games on the Switch, Inti Creates is certainly baring everything they can on the newest handheld on the block.

Clearly taking advantage of not waiting an extra month when an English Translation is already available, I’ve imported, played, and finished the game. Here is my review of Gal Gun 2 for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

You are a normal guy attending school when a strange app on your phone causes an angel appears before you. She recruits you into Heaven’s special Demon Eradication Program and grants you a speicla VR Helmet and Pheremone gun that not only can eliminate demons, but also makes you the most irresistable man alive. As you live out your school life, you must defend yourself from love-struck students and teachers as well as finding and eliminating the demons possessing them.

As far as chronological placement, Gal Gun 2 takes place some time after Gal Gun: Double Peace. The 2 heroines and antagonist of that game return here and have a fairly significant presence in the plotline of this game.

This game comes with the normal, lewd, awkwardness the series is known for. As interesting as it sounds above, the premise can be simplified that girls and women are all over you and to repel them, you shoot them with Pheremones until they collapse in fits of ecstacy. The game takes no measures to hide the fanservice involved, regularly having you not only shooting girls in the butt, chest, and lap, but later on purifying them by removing their clothes and inspecting every inch of their near-naked bodies.

As far as how the story is, a lot of it is very similar to Double Peace. The real shine of the story isn’t in the quarrels between you and the demon Kurona, but in the individual Story Arcs for the side characters, Nanako and Chiru. Those dive a lot further into the lore of the series and make an interesting read outside of the constant shooting.

Gameplay

In terms of gameplay, Gal Gun 2 is a first-person rail shooter with Dating Simulation elements thrown into the mix. Across the game, you’ll be thrown in FPS sequences as well as having the option to give gifts to the girls to raise their Affection level towards special scenes and endings.

As far as differences between this game and the previous 3 games of the series (Gal Gun, Double Peace, and Gal Gun VR) is the story being far less linear than before. Not only do you have a new Score Attack Mode you can play outside of the story but Instead of just hitting a story path option the game gives you, you’ve got a Mission-based system with a limited number of days before the game ends and you must meet your Demon-Killing Quota.

Getting Kills is in a point-system and you must complete Missions to get those points. Although you can only perform 2 missions per day, there are 3 different types of missions with Attack Missions, Defend Missions, and Search Missions. There are also Main Missions that progress the Story and Side Missions, which reward you with Gifts as well as working towards Point-unlocks for Main Missions.

Speaking of, every girl in the game can be romanced, in a way. As you finish Side Missions, you earn the phone numbers for the girls and teachers, allowing you to “Redezvous” with them in various locations like the Park, Classroom, Pool, or even your Bedroom. This allows you to give them snacks as gifts so they’ll like you enough to not only go home with you, but start flirting and allow you to stare at certain parts of their bodies without immediately being weirded out and leaving whilst calling you a creepy pervert.

In this mode, the Fanservice really goes into overdrive. You can have them do any pose, be it confessing their love for you, or knocking you to the ground and grinding you under their shoes. It also lets you go into Doki Doki Mode, a special Shooting Mode that lets you shoot all over their bodies to exorcise demons in order to knock most of their clothes off their bodies.

While this aspect is more for random fanservice, not unlike the Dressing Room from games like Valkyrie Drive or Senran Kagura, the Gifting system is a big part of the game. There are 2 “Main Character” girls that the MC knows and giving them snacks and raising their Affection Level will unlock their Story Arcs, and the Quest Chain needed for their Endings to the game. So, if you want to get an ending outside of the Normal and Risu Endings, you’ll need to use the Gift System earlier rather than later as the Character Endings have very long Quest Chains.

Now let’s get into how gameplay actually works, which isn’t all that different from Double Peace, aside from the addition of the Demon Vacuum weapon from Gal Gun VR. The game is a Rail Shooting game, putting you in set positions with the ability to move your sights and move through various standing heights as hordes of girls run towards you and assault you with melee attacks as well as projectiles.

For those unfamiliar with the series, there are 2 types of enemies: Normal Girls and Possessed Girls. Normal Girls you just shoot at until they go down (or hit weak points on their body for quick incapacitations). Possessed Girls have Demons attached to their bodies, which you must first shoot off before you can incapacitate the girl, herself. These demons can also recover and possess others around if you don’t take care of them quickly.

Combat is done with the Pheremone Gun, which shoots like any other gun in an FPS game, but the Demon Vacuum from Gal Gun VR makes a return here, mixing things up. You can shoot girls, but you can also use the Vacuum to not only catch Demons like the Ghostbusters do, but once upgraded, you can defeat girls not by overloading them with Pheremones, but by literally sucking the clothes right off of them, incapacitating them in embarassment.

Despite all of the fanservice, the game is a relatively strategic shooting game. You have enemies that attack closely and those further away that require using your scope, and you’ve got a lot of tricky situations like getting surrounded and using a mix of shooting and vacuuming to claim victory, which is more apparent in the Defense Missions than the Shooting Missions.

Without dragging this out too long, let’s talk about the level of content and length of the game. Double Peace was a notoriously-short game, only clocking in at around 4 hours per Story Run. In this regard, Gal Gun 2 has a lot more to it with all of the side missions and different character arcs without needing to completely replay the game to see more than one Ending.

I’d played the game for around 8 hours by the time I unlocked the Normal Ending, which unlocked when I had a good 10 days remaining. It took all 10 of those days to unlock RIsu’s Ending and one of Nanako’s Endings, which got me between 11 and 12 hours. So, for all intents and purposes, without skipping days for the sake of seeing Endings, a full Story Run should take you around 10-12 hours.

After you do that, there isn’t much in terms of post-game content outside of replaying the game via New Game Plus for the other Endings and using the “Game Cleared” costumes with the girls in Rendezvous events.

With all of this, I’m conflicted. While you clearly have a lot more content in Gal Gun 2 than any of the previous games, you’re looking at 12 hours for a fully-priced $59.99 game with very little post-game to work with.

Controls

This aspect of the game has its ups and downs, but is one of the games I cannot recommend Motion Controls enough in. There are options for controlling your aim with motion either all the time or just when zoomed in, and it greatly increases the ease of skill in the later missions.

The control scheme is pretty simple. By default, you can move the camera/aim with the Left Analog Stick and the RIght Stick doesn’t really do anything. The L and R triggers are used for peeking around corners and cover that you’re using. ZL uses the Demon Vacuum/Sweeper attack and ZR is used for slow/steady aim. Then the face buttons come in. A is used for shooting, X is used for Zooming In and Y is used for Zooming out. B doesn’t really do anything in combat.

To make this feel more like an fps, I like moving the Slow Aim to ZL, Sweeper to L, and Shooting to ZR, but remember that virtually all controls in the game can be customized, so you’re free to make a scheme to your own liking.

Now, there is something I don’t like about the controls, and that heavily pushes me to encourage the use of Motion Controls. The Analog Controls for the game feel incredibly tight and clunky. I wouldn’t say there’s a lot of Input Delay, but when using the Analog Aiming, it feels much slower and more “tank” like. Motion, on the other hand, feels much faster and more responsive.

Presentation

Graphically, the game looks really nice. Double Peace looked good on the Vita, but this game looks much smoother to the point where I don’t think I ever saw a single jagged edge when playing the game. It really looks good, especially when you zoom in or have the special Rendezvous scenes with the girls and see how much attention to detail Inti Creates put into this new game.

But, like the Vita version of Double Peace, there are some small frame-rate issues. The game stays at a steady 30 fps in all areas, but two. In Your Room and the Cave environment, the fps tends to drop a little under 30. Not by a lot, but it’s pretty noticeable in the Cave area when you have a bunch of enemies and the aiming suddenly moves alot slower. Unlike other games that use slowdown, the frames just flat out drop and it can make aiming difficult.

Battery Life

I didn’t expect a ton of Battery Life to come out of this game. but here are my times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 34 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 39 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 11 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 15 minutes

Not exactly all that high, but you can still get quite a bit done in that amount of time.

Game Title: Kirby Star Allies
Developer: HAL Laboratory, Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Retail | Digital Download
Battery Life: 3 – 3.75 hours
Download: 3.0 GB

One of my favorite Nintendo franchises, if not my most favorite, has always been the pink puff ball vacuum cleaner of Dreamland, Kirby. Although I haven’t played a new Kirby game since the era of the GBA over not liking Triple Deluxe, I was pretty thrilled at the idea of a Nintendo Switch Kirby game coming.

Now that it’s here, we see a classic case of Fanbase Controversy. Ever since the demo dropped on the eShop, people have been up in arms with a million nitpicks, including referring to Star Allies as “Return to Dreamland 2”. That took some research to figure out and know for today.

But, let’s not talk about internet debates. Let’s talk about Kirby’s newest adventure. Here is my review of Kirby: Star Allies for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

On a seemingly-normal day in Dreamland, strange purple Hearts rain down from the sky, corrupting anyone and anything it touches. At the same time, Kirby is hit by one of these Hearts and gains the strange ability to instantly transform enemies into his own Friends and Allies.

While I can’t say much of this to avoid giving out spoilers, I will say that towards the end of the game, and the end of one of the post-game campaign modes, Star Allies does a lot to expand upon the Kirby lore. A lot more than I’ve seen in any other Kirby game, and really made me want to research the lore even more on what they expanded in this entry.

Gameplay

Like many games before it, Kirby: Star Allies is a 2D side-scroller with combat elements. Although its new mechanics have strong emphasis on co-op multiplayer, you will be navigating 2D areas and fighting off enemies and bosses, like in virtually all Kirby platformers.

For the most part, this game feels much like many Kirby games before it. The level design, optional areas and collectibles in each stage, method boss battles happen, sound effects, and even the way you unlock Extra Stages in each World are huge love letters to past titles, even going as far as making characters like King Dedede and Meta Knight playable characters.

But Star Allies isn’t just nostalgia. It brings one main aspect to the table: A Party System. Any enemy or mid-boss that can be eaten to gain a Copy Ability can alternatively be recruited into a 3-character party that follows Kirby and helps him fight off enemies and solve puzzles. These are CPU-controlled, but anyone can tap L+R on a separate controller to open a 2-4 player co-op game in the middle of gameplay.

The other addition is Ally Combination Abilities. Any elemental-themed ally can charge up a physical weapon like a Sword, Pole, or Whip with that element, letting you bypass special puzzles by figuring out not only which power is needed to solve the puzzle, but which element is needed. There are also several 4-member sections where the allies come together into different forms, like wheels and trains (similar to the transformations in the Yoshi’s Island games).

All of this pushes the idea that Star Allies is a Couch Co-op game. Although multiplayer is local-only, up to 3 extra players with spare controllers can just tap the shoulder buttons and seamlessly gain control of the CPU allies. This is similar to being able to use Co-Op in Return to Dreamland, except that all allies are CPU controlled and stay with Kirby if only one player is playing the game.

That ties into the biggest topic of debate about this game: Difficulty. You can’t go anywhere on the Internet in regards to this game without someone talking about how this game lacks difficulty unless you completely disregard the main function of the game and refuse to recruit any allies into your party unless a puzzle requires it.

Now, I’m not going to tell you the game isn’t easy, because it is. But I’m going to tell you why it’s easy. The big thing that severely destroys the game’s balancing is the CPU Allies. Whenever you encounter a puzzle, any allies you have that can solve the puzzle will immediately run ahead of you and clear it in less time than you have to even begin to think about what powers you need to clear it (not to mention that 99% of the puzzles have the exact powers you need right there in the room with the puzzle, leaving no difficulty in thinking of where you need to get the powers needed).

Combat is also where the CPUs heavily unbalance the game. From what I’ve experienced, and maybe it’s the enemies I liked to keep in my party, your allies can easily do more damage to bosses than you can. Over the course of the game, I would say I got a chance to deal the finishing blow to maybe 2 or 3 bosses out of at least 9 or 10. It’s not to the point where the game can play itself, but you can easily go into a boss fight with King Dedede and watch as your Legion of Killer Waddle Doos lay waste to the first stage of the fight in the time it takes you to walk over to where they are.

Now, let’s get into content and length. Games like Kirby are all about gameplay and platforming over following a deep story, so what all does it have? Counting Extra Stages, the Story Mode has 40 levels available to play through, which took me a little over 7 hours to clear, with only missing a couple unlocks and having to replay stages to find them.

Once you clear Story Mode, you gain access to two new game modes, one as a Boss Rush type of mode with various difficulties, and Guest Star? Star Allies Go!, which is like a mini-story-campaign where you play through a mashup of levels from Story Mode along with a few new sections as not Kirby, but any of the recruitable allies, from the common enemies to the legendary Meta Knight. This mode should take you 1.5-2 hours to clear per character and sheds more light on the lore expansion Star Allies brings to the series.

So, assuming you’re not a total completionist, running through Story Mode and doing a single run of the two new modes should set your total somewhere around 9-10 hours. That’s not bad for a platformer, but it’s not great for a fully-priced game, either. I’d call it passable if the price were around $30, but for $60, you’d probably want to be a series fan to justify the content vs price for this one.

Controls

Controlling this game isn’t too tough, though it’s worth noting that at the Main Menu, you can go into Settings to alter the control scheme (for those who don’t like Jump being set to A instead of B).

Moving around is done with the Left Analog Stick and/or Directional Buttons. You jump with A, attack with B, throw hearts with X, and Drop Abilities with Y. But, like I said above, you can alter the settings from the Main Menu and it shifts the A, B, and Y inputs so B is Jump, Y is attack, and A is Drop Ability.

I throw emphasis on this because jumping with B feels more comfortable to me, and I’ve had some folks on YouTube asking about it ever since I dropped a video of the demo awhile back.

Presentation

Graphics are one of the best parts of this game. Kirby’s world has always been very colorful and vibrant, and Star Allies looks beautiful on the Switch. The character renderless look near-flawless both in TV Mode and in Handheld Mode. Whether you’re exploring Dreamland or fighting off a boss, it is always a visual spectacle when you’re playing.

Performance I have no issues with, either. I will note that this game runs at 30 fps. I’ve seen small frame drops when entering stages, but it has never dropped on me inside stages, themselves. For the most part, it is optimized quite well.

Battery Life

Being such a visual spectacle, you could guess that Kirby would eat Battery Life like crazy. But, let’s just take a look at the numbers and find out. Here are my Battery Times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 54 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 06 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 33 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 45 minutes

It is certainly on the lower end of the spectrum, but above what I was expecting. Almost 4 hours of Battery Life out of this game isn’t too bad, considering the visual level of the graphics engine.

Game Title: Outlast – Bundle of Terror
Developer: Red Barrel Games
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download
Battery Life: 2.5 – 3.5 hours
Download: 5.7 GB

For years, people have been asking for scary horror games on handhelds. In the PSP generation, we got a couple Silent Hill games that managed to scratch that itch, but not quite live up to the heart-throbbing experiences from Silent Hill 2 and 3. The Vita didn’t get very much, outside of indie games and the new Corpse Party game.

This generation, though, developers were up to the task. Outlast, the game that was argued to be the scariest horror game of all time back in 2013 had a stealth-launch on the Nintendo Switch along with the announcement of Outlast 2 coming for the Switch as soon as next week.

Upon request, I dove into the depths and have returned in one piece. Here is my review of Outlast: Bundle of Terror for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

Outlast is about a journalist who receives an anonymous tip that the company in charge of a secluded insane asylum is performing illegal experiments on its patients and needs to be exposed. Always willing to take risks, the reporter heads out to this asylum and sneaks inside a window to find out the truth, not knowing what horrors awaited him inside.

On top of that, this also includes the Whistleblower DLC Campaign that takes place before, during, and after the events of the main game. It fleshes out a lot of the backstory of not only the events going on in the asylum, but for the anonymous person who tipped off the main game’s protagonist into seeking the truth.

Outlast is like the movie Grave Encounters. The deeper you go, the more you find out, and the more screwed up everything gets. On the surface, the story is about a company performing illegal experiments and it quickly escalates into human torture, religious cults, and supernatural forces as your search for the truth turns into a vicious fight for survival.

The game fleshes out its lore much like a horror movie and that’s part of what makes it so interesting and what kept me coming back to the game. It’s something you don’t see in horror video games much these days.

Gameplay

Outlast is a first-person horror-themed survival game. Unlike most horror games, its key element is stealth as it creates a scenario where you cannot fight against the enemies and creatures stalking you and trying to kill you. Somewhat similar to Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, combat is not a thing and escaping pursuers is all down to running, creating barricades, and hiding.

The way progression works in Outlast is simply exploring and fulfilling objectives. Once you’re trapped in the asylum, you’ve got to find a way out. Someone cut the power, so you’re sent to the basement to turn the generators back on so you can get the front doors open and leave, and then something else happens and you’re given a new objective. It’s very similar to other games around, but without always pointing you right where you need to go.

The difficult part is the horror aspect of the game. Heading down to the basement to turn the generator back on isn’t as simple as just doing it. You go down to the basement, creeping around the pitch-black underground rooms and hit the first switch, only to have a crazed lunatic with a lead pipe running straight into the room, requiring you to hide somewhere and hope he didn’t see you and drag you across the floor to beat your skull into a thousand tiny pieces.

The game creates constant tension with how it sets up the environment you’re in. Unlike most horror environments, Outlast is not a quiet game. In nearly every area, you hear strange noises, psychotic killers screaming as they are being tortured and ripped apart by something bigger and meaner, and most rooms are pitch black, making navigating them only doable with your camera’s night-vision capability until its battery runs dry.

This leads to a lot of areas with jump scares, be it an actual monstrous enemy popping out right in front of you or a brain-dead patient that’s as harmless to you as a newborn kitten. This isn’t like Resident Evil, where you get jump scares every once in awhile. In Outlast, they don’t stop, and the combination of one-time jump scares and longer sequences where an enemy will chase you and demolish doors and debris in their bloodlust of ripping you to shreds constantly has you guessing whether you’re actually in an area that’s safe or if the next corner has something even worse in store for you, making the next lethal situation that much more shocking and terrifying.

I’ll admit that I love horror games and am pretty used to playing games like Silent Hill to death. I always play horror titles in the dark because it’s fun but playing Outlast in this fashion had me jumping and overwhelmingly anxious every moment I was playing the game. A lot of people claimed it was one of the scariest games of all time back in 2013, and it definitely lives up to that title.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the game is terrifyingly-perfect. Outlast isn’t a perfect game, but its main flaw comes from its DLC Campaign, Whistleblower. While the lore bits of the Story DLC does add a lot of interesting and disturbing stuff to the experience, it is mostly littered with recycled areas, enemies, and jump scares that just don’t feel like they have as much impact as they did in the original game. In Outlast, I was constantly tense and scared about every corner, whereas in Whistleblower, I could see most of them coming and had already thought of strategy and wasn’t all that scared when the lunatic I already saw in a position to jump out at me, well, jump out at me.

As I always do, let’s talk about the amount of content in this game. Outlast is a game that people claim to be able to complete in as little as 4 hours, but that’s only true if you know where to go and you don’t awkwardly stand in corners you know lead to a huge stalker that wants to chase you down and rip you apart. Across the entirety of the game, I spent about 6-7 hours total before I finally managed to beat the game and get the ending.

Whistleblower isn’t as long, but still has some meat to it. I cleared it in almost 3 hours, putting the total amount of content up to 10 hours, give or take. There isn’t really anything, in terms of post-game content, outside of replaying the game on higher difficulties to test your skill with stealth.

Controls

Controlling the game is pretty easy to do, and there are tutorials all over the place that introduces you to different mechanics shortly before you need to use them.

The Left Analog Stick is used for moving around and the Right Analog Stick is used for moving the camera. The D-Pad / Arrow Buttons are used for looking at notes and documents that expand upon the plot. The R trigger is used to pull out your camera with clicking the Right Analog Stick will toggle the Night Vision. The L trigger is not used, while the ZL and ZR triggers are used to looking around corners before heading into new areas.

A is used to switch between standing and crouching/crawling, B is used for jumping and climbing, X lets you replace batteries for the camera, and Y interacts with doors to open them, close them, and set up barricades.

Presentation

Visually, this game looks really nice. The game looks pretty much the same as all of the other versions, down to the intentional blurriness of the camera view vs your eyesight to the detail of your treaded footprints after you step through pools of blood. I saw no jagged edges or anything of the sort. Despite being 5 years old, the game looks really nice. It also looks pretty much the same in TV Mode and Handheld Mode.

Performance-wise, it runs quite well. It sticks to 30 fps and never drops in both the main game and DLC campaign. The Load Times are a little strange because the audio for the game loads before the actual game does on-screen, but otherwise, the Loading Sequences never take more than 10-20 seconds when you load a save or die and have to retry an area.

Battery Life

I wasn’t sure what to expect out of this game’s Battery Life. It does look visually nice, but it also isn’t exactly ‘new’. But, here are my times from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 37 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 52 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 12 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 25 minutes

So, low battery life it is. Not terrible, considering everything that goes on on-screen. Plus, most people will probably be mid-heart-attack long before the 2.5 hours point and will need to put the game down, anyways, right?

Game Title: Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse
Developer: WayForward
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download
Battery Life: 4-6 hours
Download: 476 MB

Shantae was the first franchise to pop onto the site in the “Reviewed on Multiple Handhelds” category once WayForward threw Shantae: Half-Genie Hero onto the Nintendo Switch. However, I never imagined that I would start reviewing other games of the same series on said platform, after I went through the trouble of all those Shantae 3DS reviews to review the whole series.

But, hey, it’s a good series so let’s keep this review train a-going. The 2nd Shantae game to be ported over to the Nintendo Switch was the third in the series, and the game many fans view as the pinnacle of it. Originally released on the 3DS and later ported to other systems, here is my review of Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

Pirate’s Curse takes place after the events of Shantae: Risky’s Revenge for the Nintendo DS. Shantae is having trouble adjusting to normal life without her genie powers when Scuttle Town suddenly is bought out and attacked by the Ammo Baron. Putting her concerns behind her, she tries to save the town, only to be accused of assaulting the town, herself, and lured into the world of thievery by Risky Boots, whom comes to Shantae for assistance in stopping the revival of an Evil Pirate King.

Pirate’s Curse has no shortage of humor, just like the other games of the series, but there are a lot of canon-based errors. The exact time the game takes place is very confusing throughout the game, and a lot of the lore regarding the Genies and why they don’t linger in the mortal realm actively retcons the original game, despite this not being a reboot of the series.

Gameplay

Like all of the games of the franchise, Pirate’s Curse is a 2D Platformer with combat and exploration elements. You could compare it to Metroidvania games, but instead of the game’s levels being one giant world like in the first two games, it is level-based, where you choose a level from a map and each one is enclosed in itself.

As far as progression goes, Pirate’s Curse changed a few things about the formula, mainly creating spell “items” you can use instead of an MP pool, since Shantae is a full-blooded human in this game, rather than a magical genie capable of using magic.

The most prominent change, though, is something Switch owners have seen before. Instead of using animal transformations to navigate levels and solve puzzles, you collect pieces of Pirate Gear to do it, like using a PIrate Hat to hover over large gaps or using a Pistol to shoot switches in tight corners. This moveset is what inspired the gameplay style used in Pirate Queen’s Quest, the first DLC campaign for Half Genie Hero.

This might not seem such a big deal now, but when it first released, it was a big deal because the first two games both used the same ability style with the animal transformation. Pirate’s Curse remains the only game of the series to use a different style of exploration gameplay, outside of the DLC Campaigns from Half-Genie Hero.

What hasn’t changed much is the Metroidvania way you explore and open up new areas. As you gain new abilities, you’re able to reach new areas in previous levels (as well as current ones). There are lots of hidden areas in all of the levels and, unlike Half-Genie Hero, most of these areas are mandatory for story progression. When you reach the 3rd Island, you’re sent on a story quest that takes you through almost all previous locations to get items needed to get to the next area and push the story forward.

But apart from that, it is your typical Shantae experience. Platform, fight off enemies, use money to buy upgrades and usable items, and fight off bosses to unlock new areas. Time, though, is an interesting factor. One of the biggest things I’ve seen people not like about Half-Genie Hero is its completion time.

My first run through Pirate’s Curse on the 3DS took me around 7-8 hours to get everything and beat the Final Boss with 100% Completion. On the Switch, it took me less than 5 hours with me remembering where a lot of stuff was that I had to go and find for story progress.

Controls

There’s not a lot to say about the controls for the game. For one, the touch screen is still used for items in your inventory, like in the 3DS version, though the screen is brought up with the + button since the Switch doesn’t have a second screen.

The basic controls are pretty simple. Move with the D-Pad/Arrow Buttons or the Left Analog Stick. Jump with the B button, talk to NPCs with the A button, attack with the Y button, and use your pirate gear with the X button. You can also use the R trigger for the Flare Item that returns you to the Stage Select screen.

Presentation

The major problem with this game is its presentation. In terms of graphics, Pirate’s Curse didn’t look that much different from Risky’s Revenge on the 3DS, but on the Switch, it looks like it was a straight porting process. The backgrounds are blurry and the character sprites look very blown-up and without polish.

Granted, the game runs wonderfully. Perfect frame-rate, short load times, etc. But the game looks like little work went into the porting process, as the game is hard on the eyes, even in handheld mode.

Battery Life

With its presentation the way it is, I expected Battery Life to compensate, and it really does. Here are my times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 19 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 54 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 58 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 6 hours, 18 minutes

4-6 hours is awesome. If you’ve played the game before, you could potentially get an entire run through the game done without having to recharge your Switch.

Game Title: Attack on Titan 2
Developer: Omega Force, Koei Tecmo
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download
Battery Life: 3 – 4.75 hours
Download: 13.3 GB

I love Attack on Titan, from the anime to Abridge on Titan to the PS Vita game that Omega Force made to combine musou conquest with spider-man grappling and make ODM Gear feel awesome in a video game.

Of course, when they announced Attack on Titan 2, I was excited, but skeptical at the same time. Attack on Titan’s 2nd season was extremely short, so I wondered how they’d be able to make Season 2 into a game with any sort of length to it.

Now that we’re here, let’s talk about it. Here is my review of Attack on Titan 2 for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

Contrary to my guess, this game doesn’t just take place during the 2nd Season of Attack on Titan, but covers the entire saga all the way back to the first appearance of the Colossal Titan in the anime’s pilot episode.

Instead of putting you in the shoes of the various protagonists of the anime, you play as a nameless protagonist that trains with the 104th Cadet Corp with Eren, Mikasa, Annie, and the rest of the Attack on Titan crew.

The way they made this work was having this character go up through the ranks, being present and involved in the events of the series, allowing for a custom character but also not doing anything to break the continuity of the series.

Gameplay

Like the first game Omega Force made, Attack on Titan 2 is an action game with musou elements thrown into the mix. Across the game, you’ll be making bases for resources and slicing your way through lots and lots of enemies.

While the gameplay looks very similar to its predecessor, AoT2 does add a few things here and there. For one, you can make a Custom Character / CaC to play as. It also added Friendship Events for major playable characters, allowing you to see into their backstories as well as them giving you skills to equip and increase your stats based on their character growth.

Far more important, though, is the ability to save characters from dying. Once you beat the game, you can replay Story Missions and rescue all of the characters that would otherwise die with new, optional story branches that have you taking out the Titan(s) that killed them. This lets you keep them around for future missions and maxing out their Friendship Events.

As far as game modes go, you have Story Mode and Another Mode. Story Mode has you playing through the story scenarios that span both seasons of the Attack on Titan anime, while Another Mode is a Multiplayer-focused Mode that lets you play as any unlocked playable characters, from Eren to the newly-added playable form of Petra from the Levi Squad.

The way Story Mode works is similar to the first game. You have your Base of Operations, where you can upgrade equipment, talk to NPCs and grow bonds with them via Friendship Events, etc. Here is also where you can go on Missions, be it Story Missions or Scout Missions, side-quest missions with multi-stages that can be tackled in this mode or Another Mode with either CPU Allies or Local/Online Co-Op Partners.

The basics of combat is mostly the same as before, apart from special AI attacks and boss You have huge environments and you get around by either riding around on a horse or by flying through the air with your ODM gear like you’re Spider-Man. This aspect is what makes these games so great for series fans. A lot of thought was put into the physics of how the ODM Gear works, from it realistically grabbing onto
nearby objects to latching onto parts of Titans.

For those who didn’t play the original game, you have different kinds of objectives, mostly having to do with killing Titans, which are boss-like enemies that are also the only enemies that appear in the game. Instead of the typical musou fair of mashing attack buttons to wipe out mass hordes of enemies, you strategically latch onto body parts of Titans and angle yourself as you fly through the air to do more damage with the better angles.

While this is a fresh deviation from musou general gameplay, it still retains a repetitive feel in the fact that there is a huge lack of variety in enemy variety, outside of unique story bosses like the Female Titan. But the reptition doesn’t stop there. Roughly 67% of the Story Mode is the events of Season 1 of Attack on Titan and almost all of those are the same missions you participated in in the first game with small changes, so it almost feels like the same game for the first 10 hours of the game.

In terms of content, you can complete Story Mode in around 16 hours, which includes the special Original Story Ending past Season 2’s Ending made around the CaC protagonist. Once you clear the story, you unlock Inferno Mode, a Hard Mode to play through, along with the ability to go back and rescue all of the characters who died during the Story, along with special “Super Boss” encounters in the Story Missions.

All in all, I’d put Story, a fair amount of the Scouting Missions / Another Mode, and rescuing characters to around 20 hours, give or take.

Controls

Controlling the game isn’t too hard, plus the game explains every control to you as the situation arises.

You move around with the Left Analog Stick and rotate the camera with the Right Analog Stick. The D-Pad / Arrow Buttons are used for using items or issuing commands to AI partners. The four triggers are all used as well. L toggles AI Commands, R locks onto the body part of a nearby enemy, ZL swaps between Battle Items and Capture Items, and ZR zooms into the scope to use Sneak Attacks.

Then, the face buttons. X is used to latch onto enemies and attack them, Y is used for activating your ODM Gear, A interacts with your horse, and B is used for jumping/gliding.

Presentation

Graphically, this game looks pretty good. There’s a lot of detail and there are very few, if any jagged edges, which are mostly only noticeable when you’re playing in handheld modes.

Performance is definitely above the iffy frame-rate of the Vita version of AoT1, but it’s not perfect here. When you have a ton of enemies and allies on screen at once, the frame-rate drops a fair bit, and there’s some slowdown when you start charging at a Titan once you grapple onto them. It’s very smooth for most of it, but not all of it.

Battery Life

I wasn’t expecting much Battery Life, but color me surprised. Here are my times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 19 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 30 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 11 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 43 minutes

The idea of getting almost 5 hours of Battery Life out of a 3D game like this says a lot with how well Omega Force is optimizing Switch games, at least in terms of Battery Life.

Game Title: Pokken Tournament DX
Developer: Bandai Namco, The Pokemon Company
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Retail | Digital
Battery Life: 2.75 – 3.5 hours
Download: 3.9 GB

Lately, I’ve been itching to play a Pokemon game, fully knowing that the Pokemon Nintendo Switch game isn’t coming out for quite some time. So, instead, I keep checking for small price drops and sales for the one Pokemon0based game that is out on the Switch, the Pokemon fighting game.

I’ve actually been watching for sales since a little after launch, and I finally got it when I saw Amazon selling it for a little under 50 dollars. After having gotten way more into it than I thought I would, here is my review of Pokken Tournament DX for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

Just like a new Pokemon game, Pokken takes place in a new region of land in the Pokemon World, although I question how ‘canon’ it is to the rest of the series, considering there are dozens of people running around with Suicunes when there is only supposed to be 1 of each Legendary in the entire world, as far as the plot is concerned.

In this Ferrum Region, there are Synergy Stones, special forms of energy that let trainers communicate and sync their own movements with their Pokemon partners, enabling them to do a new more action-oriented form of battles and the Ferrum has their own tournament system around these battles.

You play as a new trainer doing what every Pokemon wants to do: To be the very best, like no one ever was. The plot shows your journey through the Ferrum League to be Number One as well as becoming involved with a strange plot that puts the entire Ferrum Region in danger when a certain Psychic Pokemon shows up and starts stealing all the Synergy Stone Energy for himself.

Gameplay

Pokken Tournament is a bit of a unique thing in the library of fighting games. It’s a mix of 3D and 2D fighters in its system, so let’s call it a Hybrid Fighting game with RPG elements. Across its fights, you’ll be duking it out in 1-on-1 battles in both 3D and 2D fights along with leveling your fighters and increasing their stats.

First of all, this is an updated port of Pokken Tournament from the Wii U and Arcades, so what did they add in the Switch version? First of all, every fighter that was exclusive to Arcades that never hit the Wii U version are here as well as new fighters and support sets from Pokemon Sun and Moon Switch version exclusives, marking the complete roster of 21 fighters (not counting the recent Aegislash/Blastoise DLC Packs) outside of arcades, but also in the West in one console format.

Aside from its roster, the Switch version added Team Battles, letting you go through a gauntlet with multiple Pokemon instead of just one for every fight as well as Daily Challenges, offering character-specific missions with set parameters for earning extra Skill Points, not so different from the Character-specific Raid Mode missions from Resident Evil Revelations 2.

Now, let’s get into the game, itself. When you go into the game, you have 3 different kinds of modes you can go into. You have My Town for character and Pokemon customization, Single Player Modes for the Ferrum League Story Mode, Single Battles against the CPU, and Practice for Tutorials. Finally, you have Multiplayer Modes for Split-Screen, Local Wireless, and Online battles.

But let’s talk about combat. Pokken is a fighting game where you are constantly shifting between it being a 3D fighter and a 2D fighter. Certain attacks will shift the battle between the more Shin Budokai 2-esque 3D gameplay and the traditional Tekken-style 2D gameplay. The strategy is that you will constantly shift between these two modes and all of your attacks do different things in each of these modes, so it’s like 2 battle systems in one fighter.

As with a lot of fighters, you have 3 different kinds of attacks with the action buttons: Ranged Attacks, Homing Attacks, and Strong Attacks (which can be ranged or close-range depending on your character). You also can combine buttons for Grabs and Counters.

The final pieces of the puzzle are Support Pokemon and the Synergy Gauge. As you fight each battle, you’ll gain energy for your Synergy Burst, which is your Ultimate Attack Form, where you can use your Ultimate Attack once per battle and all of your stats are significantly boosted. You also gain Support Energy over time and, when it is full, you can summon a temporary ally to buff your stats or attack your opponent, similar to Assist Attacks in Dissidia 012: Final Fantasy for the PSP.

This all comes together into a combat system that is simple and complex, depending on who you’re playing as. Some characters have extremely simple combos that even the youngest of Pokefans can learn to be competent with through most of Story Mode, while more technical fighters can take hours to learn patterns for and master. The Pokemon I chose as my main, Gardevoir, took me many hours to learn patterns for to be able to clear the latter parts of Story Mode. Thankfully, the Tutorial Mode has combos for everyone Pokemon to play as, so you don’t have to self-educate on what can be combo’d and what can’t.

Once you win a battle, the RPG elements come into play. You gain exp and level up, like any other Pokemon game, and earn Skill Points that can be assigned to your Pokemon. These can be used freely for Attack, Defense, Synergy, or Support Effects, giving you large amounts of stat boosts to help you, both in Story Mode and compatible Multiplayer matches.

Before closing up this section, there is one thing I want to talk about. When I first heard about Pokken’s Story Mode, I heard it was extremely grindy. When I played it, there was a point where it did feel like that, but I did not feel that way until the very last league, where all of the major story events had already been concluded. That league is extremely long and, while it is very grindy to get that last milestone to get the End Credits, the leagues and story leading up to that didn’t really have that grindy feel to them with shorter leagues tied with a mission-based system to unlock content as you went.

Now let’s talk about content and length. This game’s Story Mode has 4 leagues to conquer, plus the Story Quest that happens between Leagues 3 and 4. Setting aside the dozen or so hours I took to raise my Gardevoir in level and learn the game by fighting the Very Hard AI, I would gauge Story Completion at around 12 hours total.

Once you beat the story, you unlock a post-game league that’s even more difficult to master, but that’s all there is to the post-game. Outside of that, you can return to the other leagues to continue to fulfill missions and unlock the hundreds of Titles and accessories for your avatar and, of course, watch the Daily Challenges if you want more Skill Points for your fighters.

Controls

Controlling the game isn’t too hard. It is built to support single joy-con co-op play, so only two of the four triggers are used in-game.

You can use the Left Analog Stick or the Arrow Buttons / D-Pad to move around the arena. The L trigger is used to summon your Support Attack, R is used for for blocking, and both L + R are used for Synergy Burst Mode and Synergy Attacks / Ultimate Attacks.

Finally, we have the face buttons / action buttons. B is used for jumping, while X, Y, and A are used for different attacks. X + B are used for Grab Attacks and Y + A are used for Counter Attacks.

All in all, it’s pretty simple, and it’s also worth noting that Pokken has an exceptional Tutorial that not only explains how the controls work, but has in-depth Tutorials for each fighter, including all of their abilities and combos you can pull off with them.

Presentation

Graphically, Pokken Tournament DX looks amazing. There’s a crazy amount of detail, all the way down to the flame on Charizard’s tail to the streams of hair on Gardevoir’s head. Even in handheld mode, the game looks jaggie-less outisde of Synergy Burst Mode, where the aura creates a couple jaggies here and there.

Performance is great, for the most part. In Single Player and Online Multiplayer, it is flawless. However, the Wii U version of this game had a history of having terrible frame-rate during split-screen Local Multiplayer, and that is still here. If you do SPlit-Screen in Pokken DX, you’ll get a lot of frame-drops well under 30 fps. However, if you do the shared-screen Local Multiplayer, frame-rate is fine, but harder to use for the opposing side.

Battery Life

Given how graphically-amazing this game is, it is no surprise that Battery Life isn’t so high. Here are my times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 46 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 52 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 26 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 30 minutes

So, about 3 and a half hours at the max, so that’s not a lot of Battery Liufe, but not the worst we’ve seen on the Switch.

Game Title: Atelier Lydie & Suelle ~ The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings
Developer: Gust, Koei Tecmo
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Retail | Digital Download
Battery Life: 2.5 – 3.5 hours
Download: 9.8 GB

The Atelier series is something that had a rocky start with me, but has since become one of my favorite niche RPG franchises around. I played Totori and Meruru on the Vita, which I really didn’t like that much. But, once I got past the Arland series, I enjoyed the games until I played Atelier Sophie, which quickly turned that ‘enjoyed’ to ‘loved’.

The fact that the Atelier series has made the transition from the Switch to the Vita has me even more excited. Not only is Atelier reaching a new handheld, but the third part of my favorite subseries for Atelier is on the Switch.

Without further delay, here is my review of Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

Atelier Lydie takes place in the small town of Merveille, where twin sisters live with their father, running an Atelier, both for food to eat and to pursue their life-long dream of running the greatest Atelier in the kingdom.

Being inexperienced and self-educated, the twins’ luck turns around when they find themselves magically transported inside a painting, bringing back rare materials, experience, and the hopes that their dream can and will be achieved.
For those unfamiliar with the series, Atelier is a very lighthearted, ‘slice of life’ series, offering a far less serious story than many other RPGs, focusing more on the troubles and goals of the individuals rather than a world-ending crisis. Atelier Sophie kind of mixed these two together near its end, but Lydie mixes it much better, offering a plethora of events that switch between day-to-day life and how the twins’ lives affects bigger events that happen throughout the story.

One thing I will say is that Lydie feels like a proper conclusion to the trilogy. Not only do characters from Sophie and Firis appear in this game, but the way the story unfolds has a big “this is where the first two games were headed this whole time” feeling to it.

Gameplay

Like most games in the series, Atelier Lydie is an RPG with turn-based combat and an emphasis on managing tasks and combining items through an Item Synthesis system. There’s a bit more to it than that, but that pretty much describes most Atelier games.

First of all, there are a couple major differences the series has done with this game. First, Atelier Lydie returned to the roots of having a single town as a hub for events with you only leaving to go to dungeons. This is not an open-world RPG like Firis was. Second, there is no Time Limitation system. Time passes as you do things, but no story quest has a time limitation attached to it.

The way progress works is a little different, too. Every chapter has you working your way up an “Alchemy Ranking System”, where you perform random tasks to gain reputation until you are well-known enough to take the next Promotional Test for the next rank. Clear the Test and you unlock new dungeons and advance to the next chapter and keep going until you’re at the top.

This is where things get a little interesting. The biggest ‘gimmick’ of this game is that you unlock new “Painting Worlds” after each Alchemy Rank you achieve, which not only leads to rare materials and monsters, but more story events that lead you into the next chapter. So, to be simple, each chapter goes: Raise Reputation, Take Promotional Test, Investigate New Painting World, Clear Chapter.

This actually ties well into Atelier’s normal trend of unlocking lots of character events in each chapter. Since you’ll be doing micro-tasks for reputation, the story will essentially never end but in a few select parts of the story. Unless you grind out every new event the moment a new chapter starts, you’ll virtually never stop unlocking story events as you play the game, making it really have that “daily life” feel with you working on alchemy while having constant events with the other characters.

There have been other changes as well. Combat’s been tweaked with follow-up attacks from rear party members as well as special “Combat Alchemy” that Lydie and Sue can perform to create Super-Powerful Items instead of just using normal items in combat. The Alchemy system has been tweaked as well, making it easier to gauge Quality before synthesizing by gauging it solely on the quality of the materials and not how you arrange them on the Synthesis Grid.

Now, Synthesis has always been the main focal point of the series, but many previous games didn’t necessarily require you to always rely on it. You had to synthesize for quest items, but you never really needed them for combat if you were properly equipped and leveled. In Lydie, that isn’t the case. From a few hours into the game, enemies in dungeons are equipped with high resistances, requiring you to not only carry items with you like elemental bombs but a variety as lots of these enemies can barely be scratched without being able to take advantage of an elemental weakness.

This makes combat a lot more strategic and less on just grinding for levels until you can make the best equipment and get the best skills. The game basically makes you appreciate and utilize the alchemy system for usable items a lot more than most of the previous games.

Now, let’s talk about content. For handheld gamers, this will be the first Atelier to be priced higher, because this is a Nintendo Switch game and not a PS Vita game. Luckily, it’s also packed with a ton of content. Across its Story Mode, I spent almost 50 hours before I managed to reach the end of the game and started to unlock the Endings while doing most, but not all character events. (Mostly for the characters I liked more, like Sophie, Firis, and Alt).

With New Game Plus available for those wanting to do the extra difficulty setting or replaying the story, there’s a lot to do in this game, easily justifying the higher price tag.

Controls

There isn’t a lot to say about the controls, aside from the fact that there are no touch controls. In handheld mode, you’ll only be using the buttons on the Joy-Cons while playing Atelier Lydie.

The actual control scheme isn’t too different from what Vita players are accustomed to, outside of the extra shoulder buttons and A (where Circle is on PlayStation) and B (Where X is on PS) being switched.

Moving around is done with the Left Analog Stick and moving the camera is done with the Right Analog Stick. The D-Pad / Arrow Buttons don’t do anything outside of menus. THe ZL and ZR triggers are used for zooming in and out with the camera (which is what the D-Pad did in the Vita Atelier games). L isn’t really used, and R can be used to trigger walking/running for movement.

Finally, the face buttons / action buttons. A is used to confirm menu options and interact with NPCs while B is used for jumping/cancelling options. Y is used for attacking in dungeons and X is used for pulling up the menu.

Presentation

Graphically, it’s hard to really say what I think about this game. The graphics are definitely a step above the last Vita Atelier games, but at the same time, they have issues. There are little to no jagged edges and the detail quality is exceptional, but there’s a noticeable blur on anything that’s not right in front of the camera. (Think how DOOM looked on Switch when it first launched).

Then, performance, which also has its share of problems. Frame-Rate has always been a problem for the Atelier series on handhelds, and it’s quickly becoming a problem on consoles, too. According to reports from PS4 owners, Atelier Lydie can barely hold 30 fps on the PS4 Pro.

On the Switch, it depends on where you are. Some dungeons and areas maintain a nice, smooth frame-rate, only stuttering when entering battle. However, some areas, most of which are Painting Worlds, bring the frame-rate down into the low 20s, maintaining an experience very similar to some of the Vita Atelier games. Playable, especially considering this is a turn-based RPG but very noticeable at first.

Battery Life

I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of Battery Life, but I feel like the results I got were a bit lower than I was hoping for. Here are my times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 30 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 39 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 13 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 25 minutes

So, Atelier gets around Breath of the Wild levels of Battery usage. Not a whole lot, getting you between 2.5 and 3.5 hours per charge. Thankfully, most areas are very bright in color, making low-brightness play easier to manage.

Game Title: Infernium
Developer: Undercoders
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download
Battery Life: 3.5 – 4.5 hours
Download: 1.0 GB

You could say that I’m a sucker for horror games and, since playing Outlast, I’m much more into first-person horror games for that perspective element. Although I don’t plan on playing Outlast 2 for quite awhile, Infernium popped up on the eShop this week and the moment I saw “first person survival horror”, I jumped on it and wanted to play through it.

After much frustration, roaming, exploring and puzzle-solving, I’ve trekked through a new version of Hell and am ready to give you all my thoughts on it. Hee is my review of Infernium for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

The story of Infernium is a difficult one to tell. You are “someone” roaming through the alternate realm known as Infernium, where strange apparitions wander with the sole purpose of killing you and sending you to Purgatory for invading their realm.

The real story, though, is far more interesting, as is the way that story is told. Infernium is really about a group of drug and sex-filled friends who go through a strange ordeal on a vacation and discover a strange undersea cave, happening upon the very same hellish realm that you traverse in the game.

The interesting thing about this is that you learn this story by discovering writings all over Infernium left by that group, telling their story, struggle, and inevitable fate. It also leads to a lot of mystery, particularly who the character you play as really is, be it one of the friends or some other tortured soul, damned to wander Infernium as punishment for their sins.

Gameplay

Infernium is advertised as a first-person survival horror game with non-linear levels. That’s mostly true, but I would say it’s more like a first-person non-linear puzzle game with horror elements thrown into the mix. You do run through a strange hellish realm with jump scares scattered around, but I would call it much more puzzle game than horror game. There were very few parts of the game where I truly felt scared.

In a way, you could consider Infernium an open-world game because the levels aren’t very linear, though I would call it more like a 3D Metroidvania type of experience. Once you reach the main “hub” of the game, you have different paths you can take, which lead you to different levels/dungeons and have to end up visiting them all, eventually, but with different items and abilities from one that will significantly help you lower the difficulty of the other.

Basic progression is basically a matter of going to where you need to go to reach your next area. You can walk around areas as well as focusing energy to make small teleport “jumps” to reach areas you can’t walk to. This also ties into levers with doors that will start closing as soon as you open them, requiring a very puzzle-like game of running close and teleporting through the gap before it closes you out.

Your main worry, though, is enemies. All enemies are stationary until you get close to them, but if they touch you, it’s instant-death and you’re sent to a Purgatory level, requiring you to use a fountain to return to your last checkpoint and try again, so long as you haven’t run out of your total 25 lives, in which case returning is locked out until you explore Purgatory and use light absorbed into your fingers to restore one of your lives.

And light plays a large part in the game. Not only do you use light to restore lost lives, but you also use full “fingers” of light that you collect and unlock to open a lot of the game’s barriers that seal off areas you need to traverse. There’s also the fact that dying makes you lose all of your light and you have to go back to where you died to recollect it.

But let’s talk about the puzzle factor. As I played this game, it never felt like a survival game, but a puzzle game. In every area, you have to wander around, learn where everything is, and navigate it while luring enemies in a way that gives you a chance to teleport to the next area. The further you get into the game, the more levers and mini-games you have to do, which further cements the feel that this is a horror-themed puzzle game rather than a survival horror game.

And let’s talk about scare factor. I won’t say the game isn’t scary, but that -most- of the game isn’t scary. Most areas are brightly-lit and enemies are in plain sight, so the only times where there is true tension are when those enemies are following you and you have to solve a puzzle while avoiding them at the same time. I wouldn’t call this ‘scary’ tension.

There is one enemy in the game that is scary and raises that tension to true horror levels: Rain Foes. These enemies can only be seen in the rain and when it isn’t raining, they become 100% invisible. Having one of these foes follow you into a building and seeing that silhouette completely disappear, with you needing to navigate around them is nerve-racking every time you do it and that is where this game truly feels like it is scary.

Now, this game is non-linear, but how much content is there? There are over a dozen levels to navigate through and, without a guide, simple amounts of time ends up being a lot of times with trying and trying and trying some more. I spent a little over 3 hours navigating my way down one of the main paths of the early game and, upon starting a new game, I managed to get to that same point in a mere 25 minutes.

I would gauge someone who knows how to do everything being able to complete the entire game in 3-4 hours, but without the use of a guide/walkthrough and figuring it out in typical puzzle fashion, you can finish the game as well as reading through all the lore on the walls in no less than 10-15 hours.

Controls

Controlling the game is pretty simple, as there aren’t that many controls for you to worry about. The touchscreen isn’t used, so no need to worry about that in handheld mode.

Moving around is done with the Left Analog Stick and moving the camera is done with the Right Analog Stick. You can hold down the + button to go back to the Main Menu. The only other 3 controls are Teleporting, Using your Right Hand for Light, and using your Left Hand for tools.

These each have multiple buttons that control them. By default, teleporting is shown to you in the tutorial as the ZR button but it can also be used with the B button. Right Hand / Light is done with the R button as well as the X button. Finally, the Left Hand can be used with the ZL or L triggers as well as the A button.

Presentation

Visually, the game looks very pretty on the Switch. There’s a lot of detail in everything and all of the environments have a lot of good atmosphere to them. This is an Unreal Engine game, and it shows it in how the visuals are.

The only hiccup here is performance. Infernium isn’t what you would call a hog in terms of power usage. For example, my Generation 1 Surface Book can play the PC version of this game with over 60 fps without any problems. But, the Switch version has occasional fps drops. As you’re running through environments with a lot around you, expect it to regularly drop into the 20s, whether you’re running from an enemy or just casually exploring the area.

Battery Life

I didn’t expect a lot out of the Battery Life of this game. But, here are my times from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 24 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 39 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 26 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 43 minutes

This surprised me. For a 3D Unreal Engine game like Infernium, this is pretty good.

Game Title: Asdivine Hearts
Developer: KEMCO
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download
Battery Life: 5.5 – 8 hours
Download: 197 MB
eShop Page: https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/asdivine-hearts-switch

KEMCO has made a lot of RPGs in their day. In fact, there are over a dozen RPGs on Mobile and a handful of them have been released for traditional consoles and handhelds. The PS Vita and 3DS have some of these games, like Revenant Saga and Dragon Sinker.

But, the Nintendo Switch has been slowly getting them as well. The two mentioned above have already released on the Switch, and this week, my absolute favorite of their RPGs that spawned its own series in and of itself, released and I couldn’t resist a reason to play through it again.

Originally reviewed by me for the PS Vita, here is my review of Asdivine Hearts for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

Asdivine Hearts is a story about the world of Asdivine that is ruled by two deities: The Shadow Deity and the Light Deity. While the world deals with a rising population in monsters, two young orphans happen upon a strange being that possessed a wild cat, claiming to be none other than the Light Deity and pulls them into a quest to restore their power.

The story of this game is one that starts off feeling incredibly cliche in its first half to far more balanced, believable, and interesting in its second half. A lot of the character tropes around party members are overly-cliche and forced in the first several hours of the game, but if you make it past assembling the entire party, it balances itself out and tells a very unique tale.

Gameplay

Asdivine Hearts is what you’d call a Retro-style RPG. In the fashion of games like Final Fantasy IV-VI from the SNES era, it is a turn-based RPG with an overworld to explore, dungeons to spelunk, and lots of enemies and bosses to fight across its journey.

Before going on, this is a game that originated on Mobile and, as such, has special currency for special items. Fortunately, micro-transactions are no longer a thing in Asdivine Hearts, so all of the currency you need for the special in-menu Shop can be obtained from special enemies during random encounters.

Basic progression in this game is pretty much like in any oldschool RPG. You travel across the world map with story objectives guiding you to new areas filled with mini story arcs, towns, shops, dungeons, and boss battles to overcome. If you’ve ever played an SNES Final Fantasy game (or perhaps I am Setsuna and Lost Sphear), it’s very much like that. Your typical fare of traveling the world, gaining ships and airships for easier world access, etc.

Three things that make this a more unique experience than a generic retro RPG are its skill system, Trust/Friendship Events, and Gem systems. You have typical spells you use Magic Points (MP) for, but you also have character-specific skills that use Skill Gauges that fill up as you fight. Not only are these skills the key for significantly-higher amounts of damage to bosses, but they’re useful to use in random encounters since you can use the lower-cost skills and regain most, if not all of those skill bars by the next fight, making fighting your way through dungeons easier to manage than just wasting skills and doing physical attacks until your next Healing / Save Point.

Trust and Friendship Events are tied to this game’s character development and Endings. Every party member has little mini-arcs in the game’s story about them, and occasional “Rest Days” will come where you can spend time with them to increase their Trust Ranking and see more of their character growth. Raising these levels high enough lets you see not one, but 2 endings for each character, each tied to the Normal and True Ending paths of the game’s finale.

Finally, the Gem system. As you progress, you’ll gather gems that can be equipped to change character stats and even expand their range of magic spells to include types they wouldn’t learn on their own. These are equipped to a “Rubix” that is basically a Grid that these gems can fit into. Not unlike strategically placing materials on the Alchemy Grid in the Atelier games, you have to pick what you want on each character and fit them into the Rubix so you can’t just equip a ton of OP gems onto everyone.

All of this comes together pretty well in how the game is paced. All the way down to the walking speed, Asdivine Hearts feels like a very fast-paced RPG and that can really help gamers who don’t like the slower pacing that these RPGs normally are filled with.

Of course, content and length are also a factor that are important here. Some of KEMCO’s RPGs are notoriously short in length, and that’s where Asdivine Hearts raises the bar a bit. Depending on your difficulty setting, you can beat this game from anywhere between 20 hours and 30+ hours.

To give an example, I played the Normal Difficulty for most of the game and achieved the Normal Ending after playing for around 22 hours whilst adding another hour with raising Trust Levels and doing a little leveling at the end to make sure I was prepared for the True Ending route.

After beating the game, you unlock more content, including endings, bosses, and optional dungeons, but most of that is in relation to preparations for getting all of the True Endings.

Controls

Despite originally being on Mobile platforms, the touchscreen is not used in Asdivine Hearts. Everything you will do will be done with the built-in buttons.

Moving around is done with the Left Analog Stick or Arrow Buttons / D-Pad. The Right Analog Stick, – button, and ZL/ZR triggers are not used in this game. The L and R triggers can cycle through item and skill menus. The + button brings up the Save Screen.

The face buttons are all used, though. A is used for selecting options, B for cancelling options, X for the customization menu, and Y for pulling up the World Map.

Presentation

Visually, the models and renders built into Asdivine Hearts look nice in handheld mode, though they can have a slight blur effect in docked mode, mostly with the larger screen making the blur effect more apparent. This is specifically on battle models, so there is no blur effect on stationary environments.

Thankfully, the game runs great. One of my main complaints with the PS Vita version of Asdivine Hearts was the constant stuttering and semi-freezing in and out of battle. On the Switch, the load times are much shorter, and these stutters are nowhere to be seen.

Battery Life

Being a Retro RPG, I expected Battery Life to be pretty nice, but what I got was incredible. Here are my Battery Times, from 100% to 0%:

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 21 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 45 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 6 hours, 49 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 8 hours, 06 minutes

Although only by a 6 minute margin, Asdivine Hearts has set the record for the highest Battery Life of all of the games I’ve tested, shooting that supposed 6 hour “cap” way up and providing Asdivine players with over 8 hours of Battery Life on a single charge.

Game Title: Word Search by POWGI
Developer: Lightwood Games
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download
Battery Life: 5-7 hours
Download: 97.5 MB

Sometimes when you play as many different kinds of big types of video games, you want a break with something simple and basic. Past replaying Doom while I watch the TFS Plays for the game and reviewing games like Infernium, Atelier Lydie & Suelle, and Attack on Titan, it’s nice to just sit down and do a nice little paper puzzle like a Crossword or a Word Search.

The great thing about these basic games is how casual they are, and the fact that the Switch just got a lot of Word Search content with the recent release of such a game on the eShop.

Having been released on Nintendo platforms before, like the 3DS and Wii U, here is my review of Word Search by POWGI for the Nintendo Switch!

Gameplay

Word Search by POWGI is a very simple game. In essence, it is a collection of Word Search puzzles, like one of those big books of Word Searches you can buy in the magazine section of a grocery store, but with more puzzles than a book offers and in the form of a video game with built-in Multiplayer Mechanics.

The basics of a Word Search puzzle is simple. You have a huge grid of scrambled letters and a list of words that are hidden inside said grid. You have to find and circle (or highlight) each word until you’ve found them all and complete the puzzle.

When I started this review, my goals were to test the capabilities of the different features of the game and its amount of content versus going to a store and buying a book full of word searches to do.

As far as Game Modes, you have tons of Word Searches, divided by categories, to conquer, as well as a built-in Multiplayer Co-Op feature, where you and up to 3 others can work on solving the puzzle together with different controllers, or online over the Internet. The Multiplayer feature is implemented really well, since local co-op can be established mid-puzzle rather than having to start it over when you have a friend that wants to help you.

There is no real competitiveness to this, though. It’s more or less grabbing a friend to help you solve the puzzle vs speed-running against them. It’s very classic and mimicks the old situations where a family member is working on a puzzle and grabs you to help them with something they can’t find.

Content, though, is the nicest thing about the game. For $7.99, you get 320 puzzles to solve. Since I work at a grocery store, I went out and found the standard Word Search book you can buy so I could compare, which housed 160 puzzles for $4.99.

So, if you wanted to do a Word Search and were debating between an actual book and this game, here is what you would get, judging off of those two price models.

320 Puzzles (Nintendo Switch Game) – $7.99
256 Puzzles (Word Search Book) – $7.99

I calculated this by the price of 2 160-puzzle books and figuring out how many you would get for your 8 dollars. In this way, the game gets you over 60 more puzzles than a book would get you, plus the ability to connect and do co-op online instead of hunting down a friend willing to help you with the puzzles.

This also translates into the game’s length. Word Searches can be easy, but can also be difficult. Judging off of the few dozen puzzles I’ve played in the game, my average completion time was around 5 minutes. Given that there are 320 puzzles to work, that’d give you around 26-27 hours of puzzles to do for a measly 8 bucks.

Controls

Controlling the game is really nice, because you are offered both physical controlls when playing in Docked Mode, and touchscreen controls when you go into handheld mode.

As far as the actual control scheme goes, you move around in the menu or the grid with the Arrow Buttons or either Analog Stick, and can highlight words by holding down the A button. Of course, if you use touch controls, you can tap and slide your finger to do this.

There is only one thing to nitpick here, and that is the game’s tendency to not recognize your controller right away, upon booting up. There have been several instances, where I would have either the Joy-Cons or the Pro Controller hooked up and I would get no input outside of touch controls, making me go back to Settings, re-pair the controller, and re-enter the game to use the button controls.

This has also happened in Handheld Mode, so I’m fairly certain it isn’t just a Wireless Controller thing.

Presentation

There’s not much to be said about visuals and graphics. All of the puzzles are very clear and there is calming music as you play, so you aren’t just solving puzzles in silence.

Performance is pretty much flawless as well. I don’t know how you could get frame drops in a game like this, but I’m just going to note that you don’t get any for the sake of consistency.

Battery Life

Given how this game looks, you don’t need me to tell you that this game has great Battery Life. But, here are my times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 48 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 13 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 6 hours, 30 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 6 hours, 54 minutes

So, yeah. 5-7 hours of Word Searches. That’s quite a bit.

Game Title: Antiquia Lost
Developer: Kemco
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download
Battery Life: 5.5 – 7.5 hours
Download: 312 MB

After I reviewed Asdivine Hearts for the second time on this website, I wanted to play more Kemco RPGs on my Switch. Revenant Saga was on sale, though I technically already did a Video Review on that, so I decided to grab something else. I had the choices of Dragon Sinker or another game I’ve reviewed in the past, but one that I don’t think I’d ever done a Video Review for.

That game was an RPG about Slime Girls, Cat People, and Kidnappings. It has been awhile since I’d played that game on the Vita, so I went for it. Here is my review of Antiquia Lost for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

Antiquia Lost is set in a world where 3 tribes / species of people once held a great battle against one another and are now at peace. However, a string of disappearances from all three tribes has led to a lot of suspicion and tension between them that threatens to break what ltrust stiull exists between them.

Amidst all of these disappearances is a young man named Bine, whom runs into and travels with Lunaria, a girl who was born from two of the three tribes and has an ability that affects the magical power of those around him. After leading Lunaria to the city after her mother dies, his power quickly labels the pair as villains, being blamed for the disappearances and sent on the run, adventuring to find the real villain and prove their innocence.

The story of Antiquia Lost isn’t a bad one. It balances its plotline pretty well. The only thing I don’t like is how forced all of the character-specific quirks are. Every character has some strange thing about them, from Safira being someone who easily becomes lost or Lunaria referencing old books she read as a child. The problem is that these will come out in very serious situations. You will be talking to the King or Queen of a kingdom, trying to prove your innocence, and right in the middle of a serious discussion, one of the characters will derail it, running around the throne room, ranting about how much they are friends with someone else, or something similar that completely throws off the feel of the conversation.

Gameplay

Like Asdivine Hearts, Antiquia Lost is a turn-based retro RPG made in the vein of the old Super Nintendo games. Like Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy IV-VI, you traverse an overworld map, fight in turn-based battles, navigate in ships, and fight through boss battles that progress the story to the next scene/chapter.

Main progression is prettty simple, and just like it is in Asdivine Hearts. The story pushes you forward and you’re constantly traveling, buying upgrades in towns, and moving towards the next dungeon to get to the next part of the story.

With skill systems similar to Asdivine Hearts, like Physical Skills and Magic Skills both, the uniqueness of Antiquia Lost comes in the character, Lunaria, Farming, and the Tempering system. Lunaria is the main heroine of the game and doesn’t level up in a traditional sense. Her stats only go up if you feed her gems/accessories. Each accessory increases her stats in different ways, so you gain strategy whenever you get new accessory equipment: Do you want to keep and equip it or feed it to Lunaria to “level” her.

The second is the Weapon Tempering/Upgrading system. In most RPGs, when you get new weapons, you sell the old ones. But in this game, all weapons can be combined/fused with other weapons to let that weapon “level” and increase in strength. This can be done with hundreds/thousands of weapons per weapon, so once you get a weapon you like, you can use all other weapons for that character to keep upgrading it and essentially never having to buy new weapons unless the new weapons outclass your upgraded weapon (which can then be used to give your new weapon a major boost).

And on top of that is the Farm system. You gain beans throughout the game you can plant in the “Farm” part of the main menu. These beans will eventually bear fruit that will permanently increase anyone’s stats. HP, MP, Strength, Vitality, Intelligence, Speed, etc. This system can essentially override level stat increases and indefinitely keep boosting characters to max out their stats, even past the level cap of 999. This is especially useful for Lunaria during parts of the game where Accessories are rare and scarce.

Before going on, this is a game originally on Mobile and, unlike Asdivine Hearts, the In-App Purchases / Micro-Transactions were -not- removed in the Switch version. Some special equipment to give you more experience, skill points, money, etc can be bought on the eShop with Real Money. Not that you need it, as I will explain in a moment, but the micro-transactions are still built in.

Now, let’s get into the Premium Currency known as Alchemy Stones and the special Shop you use those stones in. All enemies can drop Alchemy Stones and they’re used mostly for special equipment, like late-game armor, increasing Experience and Gold earned in battle (similar to the Micro-transaction items, but not quite as potent), and items to influence Character Trust/Affection ratings for when you are going for the True Endings.

This all boils down to one very big thing: This game is absurdly easy to break. Alchemy Stones are very common and you’ll easily get a lot of them as you play through the game, just fighting battles normally. Using them in the Shop can net you big items, but you can also use them in a very mobile-esque RNG game where you dump them and randomly get powerful weapons. The game actually gives you a ton of these in a tutorial that gives you an extremely high chance of netting rare weapons that will massively overpower everything in the first half of the game.

When I did this, I was one-shotting bosses for hours, and the breaking of the game just keeps getting easier from there. You can find the optional dungeon with super-powerful enemies and knock them out with said Alchemy Stone weapons, shooting you up in level. When I first found the place, I went from Level 20 to Level 60 in about 5 minutes. After that, even the hardest difficulty could barely touch me for almost all of the rest of the game.

And it kept getting worse. The special Arena in a certain town can net you special accessories that make the most EXP-rich enemy type pop up in every battle, even furthering the mass-increase in EXP earned to the point where you gain several levels in almost every battle you fight. This game is balanced incredibly in your favor and, unless you just decide not to use this equipment, nothing outside of the Secret Dungeon Boss will stand a remote chance of taking you out or even doing a decent amount of damage to you in the Main Story.

All of this comes together to you being a power-house, which can also bring down the game’s already-short length. This certainly isn’t the shortest Kemco game I’ve played, but it an easy second. I did almost all side-quests to further extend my Play Time, but I still managed to beat the Normal Ending in around 13 hours, and the True Ending in 14 hours, with only 1.5 hours later reaching the level cap and knocking out all of the secret dungeon areas.

While 15 hours for $12.99 isn’t a bad trade-off, it’s a very short RPG.

Controls

The control scheme for this game is strange because of how it looks. The icons all over the screen where touch controls were implemented are still there, yet the game doesn’t have any touch controls built in. When you’re in handheld mode, tapping the screen doesn’t really do anything, so the UI being like it is feels odd and strange.

The control scheme itself is pretty easy, though. The Arrow Buttons / D-Pad and Left Analog Stick are used to move around the field and menus. The ZL trigger is used to see the dialogue / script in cutscenes while L switches the character leading the party.

Then we have the face buttons. A is used for confirming options and interacting with NPCs. B is used for cancelling options. Y is used to pull up the World Map. X is used for the customization menu. A pretty simple control scheme.

Presentation

Graphically, there hasn’t been much touching-up done between previous versions of the game and this game. All of the character models and renders have a bit of a grainy, blurry look to them. This was the case in some models in Asdivine Hearts on the Switch, but it is more apparent here.

Performance-wise, I have no complaints. Load Times are short and there aren’t any fps or freezing/crashing problems.

Battery Life

Asdivine Hearts set Battery Life records, so I was very optimistic here. Here are my Battery Times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 37 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 5 hours, 43 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 7 hours, 26 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 7 hours, 39 minutes

As you can see, you’re definitely gonna get a good chunk of Battery Life out of this game.

Game Title: Shantae 1/2 Genie Hero Ultimate Edition
Developer: WayForward
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Retail | Digital Download
Battery Life: 4-5 hours
Download: 2.7 GB

Shantae: Half-Genie Hero has become a game that this site has returned to a lot. First, I reviewed it on the Vita. Then, on the Switch. Then it got 2 DLC Story Expansions that I came back for two DLC reviews. And now, with the Ultimate Edition releasing, I find myself coming back to this game for the 5th and likely final time for another stroll through Sequin Land to save the world as everyone’s favorite Half-Genie, Half-Human, Shantae.

So, with Ultimate Edition, we’re getting a physical release of the game, but it’s also releasing digitally. Packed with all of the content Half-Genie Hero is going to get, here is my review of Shantae: 1/2 Genie Hero Ultimate Edition for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

Story is something a bit more expanded in the Ultimate Edition than previously, mostly because we now have 6 different Game Modes, each with their own little story arc to them.

Half-Genie Hero’s story is about Shantae being called upon to save Sequin Land when her old nemesis, Risky Boots, attacks Scuttle Town and sets off on a new quest to rule the world. This is the story HGH players have seen twice now on handhelds. It’s a good and funny story, despite having a lot of canonical inconsistencies from past games of the series.

Then, there are the DLC Expansions, most of which are “What If” scenarios. The 1st DLC Expansion is a What-If scenario where RIsky Boots sets off on her own to take over Sequin Land instead of Shantae traveling around to stop her. The 2nd DLC Expansion, Friends to the End, is the only one that stays within the canon events of HGH, where Bollo, Sky, and Rottytops venture on a quest to save Shantae during certain events of the main game’s storyline.

The final 3 are the “Costume DLC” game modes, featuring Shantae learning to become a Ninja, heading to the Beach, and playing the role of a Space Cop. Each of these are smaller “Arcade Mode” style games, but do have story arcs to them. They are all separate from any shape or form of the series’ storylines as they feature the same character encounters from HGH but can only fit into the canon in a sense of “Well, sometime after the game ends, Shantae wants to learn to become a ninja and one thing leads to another”.

But, don’t think too hard on that. It’s not meant to fit into the canon but to be a silly side-story for the costume’s campaign.

Gameplay

Despite all of the new content, Ultimate Edition is just like the normal edition of Half-Genie Hero. It’s a 2D platformer with exploration elements, like the first 2 games of the series but with set levels instead of giant side-scrolling worlds. You travel levels, fight enemies and bosses, and return to your base to solve quests and buy upgrades and abilities.

Since this is the Ultimate Edition, let’s go over everything that this version gives you. You get:

– The Base Game’s Main Story Mode, Hardcore Mode, and Hero Mode
– DLC Story Expansions “Pirate Queen’s Quest” and “Friends to the End”
– Costume DLC Expansions “Ninja Mode”, “Beach Mode”, and “Officer Mode”

Now, all of these can be obtained by buying the DLC for the original release of the game. But here is what Ultimate Edition reserves for itself that cannot be obtained with the original release and its DLC:

– Extras Gallery and Hall of Fame, full of Shantae fan-art, collected from around the web
– The Tinkerbat Dance Transformation, originally exclusive to Kickstarter Backers
– Alternate Color Scheme / Costume for Beach Mode

Now, the first question on the mind of something like this is how this price-point is when compared to just buying the original release and the DLC for it, disregarding the content exclusive to Ultimate Edition.

To calculate this, we have to look at the DLC Pricing on the eShop, which has Pirate Queen’s Quest at $9.99, Friends to the End at $7.99, and Costume DLC at $7.99. Also worth noting is that the physical release of Ultimate Edition is $39.99 while the digital release is $29.99. That brings us to the following

Original Game + DLC – $46
Ultimate Edition (Digital) – $30
Ultimate Edition (Physical) – $40

No matter which version of Ultimate Edition you are getting, if you’re buying Half-Genie Hero, Ultimate Edition is definitely going to be a better deal, no contest.

But now, let’s compare content. Having this many campaigns sounds great, but there are some things to talk about here.

Each of these campaigns basically has you running through the same levels you’ve already seen and fighting bosses you’ve already seen, but with different rules. With Pirate Queen’s Quest and Friends to the End, it did feel a bit repetitive, but with the Costume DLC, it feels significantly more repetitive. For what it did have, the first two expansions did have one or two unique boss encounters and Friends to the End had a special environment exclusive to itself.

Ninja, Beach, and Officer Modes do not. They are the same levels, just with different rules. Ninja and Beach Mode feel like you’re just playing the main game all over again with different abilities. The only one that changes things up is Officer Mode which not only gives you a Mega Man-esque blaster weapon to use instead of physical weapons, but adds a platform-manipulation mechanic that makes moving through each level significantly more strategic.

Officer Mode aside, though, if you didn’t think it was repetitive before, you definitely will now.

Now, let’s talk about total content and length. I’ve covered this in previous reviews, but let’s put this down very easily. The Main Campaign should take you around 6-8 hours to complete. The two major DLC expansions each take around 2 hours to complete. The 3 Costume DLC Campaigns also take around 1.5-2 hours to complete.

That puts you at around 18-20 hours of total content. That’s plenty of content for both Ultimate Edition price points, but especially for the digital release’s lower price point.

DLC Title: Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild EXPANSION PASS
DLC Type: Dungeons/Difficulty/Armor
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Price: $19.99 USD

I love the new Zelda game, yet I didn’t review its DLC when it released. I had every intention of diving in once The Champions’ Ballad, advertised as new Story DLC released. When it released, though, I realized I didn’t have any saves at the point of the story where you could do it. I’d started a new file, wiping my old post-game file, and I was still at the very beginning of the game. Instead of trekking through the entire Main Quest again, I just put it to the side.

This week, though, I was inspired to replay the game, from start to finish. As I fought my way through hordes of Ganon’s minions, I remembered the DLC, giving me the perfect chance to naturally play through the game and get to the DLC to not only play it but review it as well.

This might seem a little odd, though, considering this will be a full “Season Pass” review since the 2 DLC packs did not release separately. But let’s not dwell on that. Here is my review of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s Season Pass!

Story

Despite being advertised as having Story DLC, the Season Pass’s “The Champions Ballad” serves as 95% gameplay and only offers small amounts of actual story, all of which we knew before. So, those expecting to play as Zelda or the Champions and explore a post-game Hyrule will not get that.

Instead, we attempt the same trials the Champions did before the events of Breath of the Wild took place and get a couple minutes of cutscenes per Champion to see their attitude towards their role in the pre-BOTW Hyrule.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with these cutscenes as they provide us with a little more background information on the four Champions, plus some nice nods to the many of the characters that Link interacts with in Breath of the Wild. But, for an expansion advertised as being a Story Expansion, there is much to be desired.

Gameplay

The gameplay doesn’t change in the DLC, though there are some rules in place for parts of them. You still play as Link, but with the DLC, you are given new challenges to conquer which will upgrade your arsenal of abilities past what is already present in the main game.

First of all, what exactly does the Season Pass give us? Let’s detail each of the additions made to the game for us to find and play around with:

– Master Mode, a difficult and arranged difficulty mode with special chests and different enemy encounters
– Trial of the Sword: A 45-floor survival challenge to test your skills and upgrade a certain legendary sword
– Several new sets of equipment based on previous Zelda titles
– The Champions’ Ballad: 6 sets of Challenges and Shrines to upgrade your abilities, ending in a new Boss.

Of course, there have been many complaints about Master Mode being DLC. But overall, the DLC adds lots of new side-quests to go through that are all made to be challenging and test not only your combat skills but also your brain with the new shrines in the Ballad content.

Now, I view the special equipment to be there specifically for fans of previous entries of the series. There is one armor set based on the world of Breath of the Wild, but all of the others are equipment seen in games like Majora’s Mask, Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, and Wind Waker. Fans of Ocarina of Time, for example, will find much greater joy in running around, dressed like Phantom Ganon than people who entered the series due to the success of Breath of the Wild.

But the meat of this DLC are Trial of the Sword and The Champions’ Ballad. Trial of the Sword is especially interesting as it is a huge 45-floor Survival Mode that is played as a Gauntlet, purging you of all weapons and equipment and is the most difficult part of the game. If you die, you respawn outside of the Trial and if you succeed, a certain sword doubles in base attack power, making easy work of nearly everything you will ever encounter across the entirety of the game.

The Champions’ Ballad, however, is a little different as it is a huge chain of quests It starts in a super-difficult combat trial, pitting you against groups of enemies with a short-range weapon that can one-shot anything, but reduces your health so anything can one-shot you. Complete that and a Shrine Quest opens up.

Beat the shrines and 4 more shrine quests open up, which all have ability upgrades and lead to a final shrine quest with the ultimate “Secret” boss of the game and the much-talked-about Motorcycle that can send you through the fields, mountains, and valleys of Hyrule like you’re some kind of Biker. Even though it’s very light on story, it’s not light on how much stuff there is to do.

And with content in mind, how much does this add? The Season Pass is a good twenty bucks in North America, so how much time will you gain from this new content? I’ll be putting Master Mode to the side, as it’s hardly fair to say that the DLC gets you dozens to hundreds of hours for a new difficulty setting.

To start things off, all of the new equipment have lore items behind them that point you to the equipment locations. Using a guide for most of them, I managed to grab all of the new equipment pieces in around 4 hours. Trial of the Sword adds at least around 3-5 hours, unless you manage to conquer the whole thing in a single run.

And finally, The Champions Ballad. The initial quest takes about an hour to conquer, plus another hour for each of the 4 following quests. Putting in time for the secret boss, that puts the Ballad at around 5-6 hours of time to complete. And all together, doing each of those should give you at least 12-15 hours of running around and doing all of these new quests, though it will likely take you much longer if you decide to refrain from using a guide for all those equipment pieces, as they are hidden very well.

Game Title: Naruto Shippuden – Ultimate Ninja Storm Trilogy
Developer: CC2, Bandai Namco
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download
Battery Life: 3-5 hours (varies between the three games)
Download: 17.6 GB (the games can also be bought separately for smaller downloads)

Naruto is one of the great anime franchises that were featured in the Shonen Jump weekly magazine. I loved to read Jump in my high school years, yet I only seemed to really get into one of those franchises: Dragon Ball. I never really cared for what little exposure to One Piece I had, and I never really considered Yu-Gi-Oh! to be a manga franchise vs a TV franchise.

My exposure to Naruto has been an odd one in general. I played one of the PSP games’ Japanese Versions and watched the franchise through the battle with Zabuza and Haku in the first arc of the first series and, once I no longer could find episodes on TV, it dropped off my radar.

With the announcement that the Ultimate Ninja Storm Trilogy was coming to the Switch, I got back into it. I started watching the original series again and experienced Shippuden through my own research as well as the Trilogy, itself.

Now that I’m deep in the franchise again, here is my review of Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Trilogy!

Story

Unlike recent Dragon Ball games, the Naruto UNS series has stuck to becoming the go-to video game place for retelling the story of the anime as it was shown, rather than being full of “What If” scenarios.

In terms of story, the trilogy covers the majority of the original and Shippuden anime series. The first game covers the entire “Naruto” series, while 2-3 cover Shippuden up to the climax of the Fourth Great Ninja War. Despite having some arcs left out at the end that UNS4 covers, this Trilogy will get you almost all major events of the Naruto and Shippuden stories.

The only problem with this aspect is how the first game handles its story. UNS2 and 3 have an amazing story focus and playing them feels almost no different from watching an anime. However, UNS1 only gives cinematics of a few major fights of the original series and for all others, gives you a couple sentences of summary that give you just enough to know why you’re fighting, but not nearly enough to understand much of anything about any of the characters outside of Naruto, himself.

There’s also the fact that it skipped some important events, like the Land of Waves arc that first reveals Naruto’s growth as a ninja. But overall, if you’re new to Naruto, UNS1 is not a good way to learn the first series’ story, despite 2 and 3 being amazingly-well-done ways to experience Shippuden’s story.

Gameplay

All 3 games in this trilogy are classified as action games, but I boil them down to being 3D fighting games with adventure elements in their Story Modes. You have large environments to explore in Story Mode but all of your battles will take place in 3D arenas as you fight opponents with melee attacks, ninjutsu, and support attacks.

Main Progression through the game is in 2 styles. In the first game of the trilogy, you do Story Missions from the Start Menu, but must explore a sandbox hub world to do side missions and mini-games to earn points to unlock story missions. This also means that the further you go in, the more side-missions you have to track down and grind out to unlock the next story bit.

In the other 2 games, you explore large, rendered areas as you make your way towards new story objectives and missions. They feel much more like adventure games in how the story pushes you to new areas and spawns new objectives for you. It is much more streamlined than the first game, and has all of the grinding and mini-games removed for the sake of story presentation.

The one thing they have in common, though, is combat. No matter which game you’re playing, you’ll be in 3D arenas with a semi-over-the-shoulder perspective as you fight your opponent. Nintendo fans could view it as a fast-paced version of Pokken Tournament’s Field Phase. You can freely run around, jump, throw projectiles, do melee attacks, charge up your energy, and launch special and ultimate attacks. The balancing of these attacks is different from game to game, but the main feel is the same across all three.

This also is where the story is thrown at you. In the two latter games and certain battles of the first game, you have story act out as you fight, be it in dialogue and cinematic quick-time events or giant monster battles with large summoned beasts. The way these progress really help the feel that you’re not just playing a game, but experiencing an anime series at the same time. It also helps keep things fresh with a constant variety of different kinds of battles as you play through each game’s story mode.

Now, the gameplay isn’t all good. The first game has some quirky mini-games for chase sequences and tree-climbing training, which become incredibly frustrating later on in the game. Not just because they become increasingly-difficult and precise with button inputs, but due to the grind-heavy nature of unlocking story missions, you will be doing these two mini-games over and over and over again just to get your next story fight and then have to repeat the process again when you’ve cleared it.

This also translates into the online multiplayer aspect of the games. The first game, once again, is the culprit. UNS1 does not have any form of online multiplayer, while UNS2 and 3 both do. This isn’t a Switch-specific thing. The original release of UNS1 didn’t have online, nor did this remaster trilogy on other platforms. But, it’s worth noting that if you’re buying single games for multiplayer, UNS1 doesn’t offer it.

Now, let’s talk about content and length. You’re getting 3 fighting games in this Trilogy for $40, but how much content are you getting? Each game’s Story Mode should take you at least 12-15 hours to complete, which puts the entire trilogy at around 36 hours, bare minimum. The third game also has some story-related post-game content, so that can add some more time, but Main Story-wise, you’re getting at least 12 hours per game.

Controls

Controlling the trilogy is pretty easy, mostly because almost all of the controls are the same between all three games. The only controls that differ is the Guard option, which goes from having multiple buttons to a single button.

Moving around is done with the Left Analog Stick and the Right Analog Stick can move the camera. The four triggers are used for guarding and Support Attacks. Then we have the face buttons. B is used for jumping and A is used for melee attacks. X is used to charge Chakra/Energy and Y is used for throwing Shuriken and Kunai weapons towards enemies. X can also be combined with Y or A for special attacks.

Overall, it’s a very simple control scheme to get behind, despite being slightly different from game to game.

Presentation

Graphically, this game looks very polished and good. In Docked Mode, I never saw many jagged edges on models outside of rendered stills in cutscenes. While you do see various jaggies in handheld mode, it still looks extremely polished.

Performance is wonderful as well. All 3 games run flawlessly during combat. The only time I saw frames drop were in a couple cutscenes and the pre-battle screen in Ultimate Ninja Storm 3.

Battery Life

This section could’ve been very extensive. Since the three games use up battery a little different from one another, I’ll give you my summary ranges for each one. If you wish to see all the hard numbers, check out my Switch Battery Life Chart.

Ultimate Ninja Storm: 3.75 – 4 hours
Ultimate Ninja Storm 2: 3 – 5 hours
Ultimate NInja Storm 3: 3 – 4 hours

While there isn’t a huge difference between games, it’s worth noting that you can squeeze 5 hours out of the 2nd game and about 4 hours out of each of the other games. It’s also worth noting that it doesn’t matter if you buy them separately or together. Those battery charges remain the same.

Game Title: Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition
Developer: Koei Tecmo, Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Retail |Digital Download
Battery Life: 2.5 – 3.5 hours
Download: 12.9 GB

Zelda was the first big franchise for Nintendo to bring the Switch into success. It was also the first Nintendo IP to start crossing over with Omega Force’s Musou/Warriors franchise. The Wii U held Hyrule Warriors, also known as Zelda Musou, as a pretty unique exclusive until the Nintendo 3DS got its own version, albeit with some pretty significant issues regarding performance and frame-rate.

For handheld gamers, the Nintendo Switch seemed like it would be the perfect blend of the two previous versions: More power and more stable performance, better graphics, and having the full experience on the go.

Now that it’s out, how does it stack up in terms of its coined title of being the “Definitive” edition? Let’s find out. This is my review of Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

Hyrule Warriors takes place in a Hyrule that is considered to be outside of the ‘canon’ triple-timeline Zelda timeline (although it’s not impossible to find a timeline placement for it if you disregard the DLC’s story additions).

As Princess Zelda and her guard, Impa, are scouting Hylian Knights, Hyrule Castle is attacked and the Princess disappears. Impa then brings one of the Hylian Recruits with her to search for the Princess and put a stop to their kingdom’s attackers, unknowingly getting thrown into a conflict that transcends not one, but 2 of the timelines of the Zelda universe.

For a storyline, Hyrule Warriors does a pretty good job of showcasing its story. It offers lots of chapters balanced between the backgrounds of several major games of the series, the new characters involved in the Hyrule Warriors world, and the growth of many of the characters across its many threats and conflicts. It has a bit more of a JRPG feel than Zelda normally does, but it pulls it off well-enough that Campaign Mode is worth playing for more than just the gameplay.

Gameplay

Hyrule Warriors is a musou action game with RPG elements thrown into the mix. While the majority of your game will be running around large environments, hacking and slashing through hundreds of enemies in minutes, and taking over bases, the game does have a leveling system and crafting system that bring a more RPG-like feel to the overall spectrum the game offers.

As far as content goes, this is a big question for whether Nintendo fans want this game or not. This is Hyrule Warriors’ 3rd release in 4 years. So, what do you get in Definitive Edition you can’t get in previous versions of the game?

– Base Game + All Legends DLC
– Breath of the Wild Costumes for Link and Princess Zelda

As far as exclusive content goes, the only new thing that DE brings to the table are the Breath of the Wild costumes for Link and Zelda. Everything else included is available in the original release and the 3DS version, be it in the base package or via Downloadable Content from the eShops.

Now, outside of comparable content, what all is there to do in this game? Like Legends, it comes with 3 Main Game Modes: Legends Mode, Free Mode, and Adventure Mode. Legends Mode is Story Mode, where the Main Story and the Side Stories can be played out and enjoyed. Free Mode has the same stages as Legends Mode, but with the ability to play through each of them with any character, rather than who is there according to the game’s plot.

Adventure Mode, though, is a little different. In Adventure Mode, you are placed on a huge grid based on the Overworld Maps of one of the many titles of the Zelda series. Your goal is to move from grid to grid, fighting in battles and beating challenges to unlock adjacent grids to explore that map until you find all of the major “bosses” and can save Hyrule from Ganon.

Being grid-based and having maps with special rules and conditions makes this a much more in-depth mode than any of the others. Instead of the long 20+-minute Musou Conquest fights from Legends and Free Modes, you have a variety of different kinds of things you can do, mixing things up and lowering the amount of repetition involved in playing the game.

The My Fairy feature also returns from Hyrule Warriors Legends. Any Fairies you recruit in Adventure Mode can be freely customized, from their looks to abilities that will help you with Adventure Modes’ many challenges.

But remember, all of this content was available in the previous versions. There’s a lot to go through, but none of it is necessarily “new” to veterans of Hyrule Warriors on the Wii U and 3DS.

Actual gameplay, though, is what musou fans want to hear about. Every Musou Cross-Over handles its gameplay differently. Hyrule Warriors takes the typical “Conquest” gameplay system of Dynasty Warriors and adds Zelda quirks to it. Each battle has objectives that are typical of Musou game, like taking over bases, but there are a million other things going on that remove you from the constant-conquest-mindset of your typical musou fare.

One aspect of gameplay is very much like Musou, and that’s how you fight. While each character uses their own weapon type that can be customized and upgraded, combos are stringed together like any Musou game, with a Light Attack and Heavy Attack. That’s something that’s the same across pretty much all Musou games, despite the flashy difference between Link’s acrobatic slashing and Fi’s dancing sword transformations.

You also have uniqueness with Zelda elements being thrown in. You collect Artifact Items, much like Dungeon Items from older Zelda titles, that are used for getting past hazards, opening hidden paths, and weakening bosses. You also have convenience features, like using statues to teleport around the battlefield to handle objectives in a pretty easy manner when compared to games like Dynasty Warriors.

But, does it get repetitive? Musou is known for repetition and whether or not it gets repetitive, I view as a matter of time and what you do. The Story Mode is set up so that you’re rarely using the same character for more than a couple missions in a row, so you’re constantly changing battle styles and mission styles. Unless you are replaying the Story Levels to find collectibles, the game never starts to really feel repetitive until you’re grinding it out in Adventure Mode with your favoriute character for dozens of missions.

But that’s also due to the time involved. As far as content goes, Hyrule Warriors’ Main Story Branch covers 18 missions and that goes up to 32 if you add the Side Stories and DLC Story Campaigns. That brings all Story Content to an average completion time of about 11-12 hours total.

While Adventure Mode does rack in time quickly, if you’re looking for story, you’ve only got about 12 hours of it for a fully-priced $60 game. Whether that price is worth it depends on how much you like the game and get into replaying Story Mode and diving into Adventure Mode.

Controls

Controls are pretty easy to get past. The game does offer 2 schemes. One caters to proper Musou/Warriors games and the other for previous Zelda titles, though that scheme is based on Pre-BOTW Zelda, so it doesn’t really control like the newest Open-World Zelda Adventure.

You move around with the Left Analog Stick and the camera is controlled with the Right Analog Stick. The four triggers are used for Guarding, Locking-Onto Bosses, and using Artifacts. The D-Pad/Arrow Buttons are used for changing playable characters, and pretty much everything else is the face buttons.

With the Zelda Scheme in mind, A is used for dodging and the rest for attacks. B is used for light attacks, Y for heavy attacks, and X for Special/Ultimate Attacks.

Presentation

Presentation is where things have definitely gotten better from the 3DS version. Graphically, the game looks quite beautiful. Although the reused cinematic story scenes from the original version do look kinda grainy, the in-game graphics engine looks flawless in docked mode, and near-flawless in handheld mode.

Stability and Performance have also improved, but still struggle to a certain degree. In Docked Mode, you get 60 fps with occasional drops down to 30, which isn’t problematic. In handheld mode, the default fps is 30 with occasional dips into the mid to high-20s.

For those familiar with both previous versions, Handheld Mode plays like the Wii U version does. There are occasional drops under 30, but they are very small and nowhere near as low as the 3DS version got. A definite improvement, but not perfect.

Battery Life

Here’s another thing to talk about. How long will this game last in Handheld Mode? The fan screams during gameplay, so it definitely takes a toll on the Switch’s CPU. Here are my times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 21 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-FI – 2 hours, 26 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 30 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 37 minutes

Not a whole lot. This is actually a little less time than Breath of the Wild gets. Not all that surprising, considering the upgrade since the Wii U version, but still. You won’t get that much Battery Life out of it.