Risk of Rain was a game that was recommended to me ages ago, and as someone who prefers physical games, I was happy to see that it came as a two-pack game for Switch along with its sequel. It turns out that only the sequel is on the game card and the first game is downloadable, but I guess that's better than both of them being digital.

Anyway, the person who recommended the game to me told me it was a roguelike, which I'm not really into, but he also told me that the game's sequel translates everything from the original game's 2D world into a 3D one, which I found intriguing. Since that conversation I've gone on to play a number of roguelikes, such as The Binding of Isaac, and although it's still not my favorite genre I can still enjoy them overall.

Risk of Rain turns out to be basically a run and gun game with mild platforming elements. The first you can't help but avoiding is how tiny all the sprites are. This is only initially off-putting, since even a few minutes in it becomes clear why the camera is so zoomed out: because once the enemies start to pile in and the bullets start to fly, the screen gets insanely full and bigger sprites would have just killed the frame rate. The game's levels don't feel completely random as I think sections must get stitched together, but chests and shops are probably randomly placed and a good item could completely make your run. I also enjoyed the unique game mechanic where the difficulty increases as time passes.

The first character you get is a typical gunner, and although it took a little time, I was able to see the credits with him with a little luck and without too much pain. There aren't a ton of unique enemies, but there's a good variety in the ones that are there. Similarly, there aren't a huge number of locales, but the awesome music help make them feel distinct. I enjoyed dipping in and trying the other characters I had unlocked, but although their mechanics varied, in general the strategy of distancing yourself from your enemies while mowing them down remained essentially the same. It may very well be that when I come back to this game and get a chance to experiment with the other characters that the game may rise on my master list of games I've played. I'm especially looking forward to getting to revisit the local co-op mode, which I've tried a bit of, and I can already see how some characters will have more viability as a partner than when going it alone.

I found Risk of Rain to be a solid title, and I was really looking forward to seeing how its mechanics would translate to its sequel. More on that soon...

I've been playing Splatoon 2 since it released in July 2017, just six months after the Switch's launch, but I've held off on blogging about it because I wanted to finish the single-player mode. I was more motivated to sit down and give it a go with the then-eminent release of its successor, Splatoon 3 (which just came out yesterday), and so here are my thoughts on the game some five years late, haha.

I had loved the first Splatoon game on Wii U for its bold, fresh aesthetic and its pretty much perfect gameplay, and in its essentials the core gameplay of Splatoon 2 isn't a drastic departure. You're still spraying ink, switching from kid to squid forms, and engaging in a multiplayer battle modes across a variety of stages. Splatoon 2 ups the number of weapons, specials, and maps, and adds in a new "Clam Blitz" mode, but by a huge margin the most worthwhile addition for me was the PvE Salmon Run mode that the game introduced. In this mode you battle waves of enemies including sub-bosses in an attempt to survive and collect as many Salmonid eggs as you can, and the mode also forces you to use weapons that you might otherwise have ignored. I spent a huge number of hours having fun with friends in this mode during the early days of Switch, and even years later it's still as much fun as ever. All of your Splatoon skills from the other modes carry over to this one, and the mode is a solid challenge but still manageable, and things can get hilariously chaotic, and somehow it never gets old.

The versus multiplayer modes are for the most part the same as they were in the first game and so just as good, but I had the same feelings about the single player campaign as I'd had about that mode in the first game, namely that I found it to be a bore and a chore. Even though I tried to force myself to finish a couple of stages at a time, it just got so boring that I had to give up even when I had the finish line in sight. I've dipped my toe into the Octo Expansion DLC, and that does seem a bit better, but I just wish the single player mode was more fun.

I was really close to pre-ordering Splatoon 3, but after watching all of the pre-promotional videos for it and taking part in the demo event, it wasn't hard to resist the fear of missing out. The game doesn't seem to have any essential new modes for me, and if I ever get the urge to play any PvP I can always hop back into Splatoon 2. I'm sure I'll get Splatoon 3 at some point, but it seems really odd to me that they've put out two entries in the series on Switch rather than wait to bring something more substantially new on its successor. I'm sure millions of people will be enjoying the new iteration, but for my part I just have too many other games to play.

As a Fire Emblem super fan, the Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem crossover was always going to be a day one purchase for me. I'd actually played a fair bit of the game, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE released on Wii U in Japan in 2015 and elsewhere a little later, but I recently sat down and finished the rest of the chapter I was on (Chapter 3) and have decided to put the game on indefinite hold for now.

The most recent SMT game I had played was Shin Megami Tensei III, but Tokyo Mirage Sessions has more in common with the Persona series, a SMT spin-off series. Like in the Persona series, in TMS you have a group of high school students in contemporary Japan drawn into a mysterious battle involving demons, but TMS trades in the mythological Persona for "Performa", characters drawn from two entries in the Fire Emblem series (the first game and Fire Emblem Awakening, released on 3DS). One of my complaints about the SMT games is that I'm not a big fan of the dark, gothic aesthetic, and TMS replaces the usual doom and gloom for a bright candy-colored world full of aspiring pop idols and actresses. The stories and side stories all focus on the individual stories within the talent agency, and for me this unique setup was one of the most entertaining parts of the game. Although it's nice to see the Fire Emblem characters in this new scenario, they don't really do much other than provide the game's weapon and skill progressions. NintendoLife described the game as being about "85% Shin Megami Tensei, 15% Fire Emblem", and that seems pretty accurate to me.

One of the things that I didn't care much for with the Persona series was the repetitive routines after every school day, but in TMS things are more self-contained and you can dip into the sidequests however much or little you want. The battle system is a variation of the usual "Press Turn" system of the SMT games whereby attacks get chained together automatically if you attack with a type advantage and your current team members have learned the appropriate linking skills. Dungeons have a decent amount of variety but get a bit repetitive, but new characters are introduced at a good pace.

As a fan of Japanese media, I enjoyed the anime cutscenes and J-pop music and anime music videos, and I didn't mind that the game features only Japanese voice acting with English subtitles. The game wasn't quite what I (or anyone) was expecting or hoping for with a Fire Emblem crossover, but it was a fun surprise and the setting was something different and unique for both series and JRPGs in general. Overall I enjoyed my time with Tokyo Mirage Sessions, and I can see myself coming back to it at some point. I'm glad more people got a chance to play it via its release on Switch, although I'm not sure many people would be clamoring for a sequel.

It's been just under a year and a half since I last wrote about a Monster Hunter game, and that was Monster Hunter Generations, the first Monster Hunter game on Switch. That blog entry was right before Monster Hunter Rise came out, and even though my past experience with the series had taught me not to expect a lot of differences between the two, I gave into the promise of some online multiplayer with friends and ended up getting Monster Hunter Rise not long after anyway.

Monster Hunter Rise has a number of differences, some bigger than others, and pretty much all of them are for the better. I'm getting a little bored with feudal Japanese settings in video games, but here it does make the game's setting feel a little unique from the rest of the series that I've played. There are these cute little poems that get recited when you're introduced to each monster complete with old film-like footage of the monster in action, which is a fun little touch.

In terms of less cosmetic differences, by far the biggest changes are the wirebug and the Palamutes. The wirebug is this sort of grappling hook that lets you spring into the air, and it really makes the game more dynamic and allows environments to have much more verticality, which is a lot of fun. Palamutes help with this and they also help you travel around the map much more quickly than ever before, which minimizes the dead time when wounded monsters run away and you have to chase after them. The wirebug also gets incorporated into the fighting themselves, both by providing special moves that you can select from (they're all unique to each weapon), and it also enables you to ride monsters and have them fight other monsters or you can also ram them into walls which is fun. Both of these additions are great, and to a relatively casual Monster Hunter player like myself feel like a really nice step forward for the series.

Going along with speeding up the flow of a hunt, the game also hugely speeds up the process for gathering materials. You used to have to sit through an animation whenever you wanted to mine ore or gather plants that would take a few seconds, but boy did those seconds add up. In Rise gathering is pretty much instantaneous, and you can be hurtling along with your Palamute and still pick up items as you go without having to pause at all. I felt some mixed emotions about this and about the simplification of some other mechanics (you no longer have to use cooling or warming drinks in extreme environments and you no longer have to use a paintball to mark monsters on your map when they flee). While these updates definitely streamline the gameplay, they do feel like they're on the border between "quality of life improvements" and dumbing the game down. I'm not sure how purists feel about these types of changes, but even though I was a little unsure about them, for the most part I didn't miss them.

The game also introduces a new tower defense mode where you set up artillery and then fight waves of monsters which I found pretty boring, but thankfully you don't have to do that many of them. As usual the game really shines with the multiplayer, and I had a lot of fun playing online with friends. My weapon of choice this time around was the gunlance, and it hasn't been too hard learning its ins and outs.

Even though I've been playing the series for a while, the faster action of this entry bumps it up over the others I've played and finally an entry in the series makes it to my "Greatest games of all time" list. Despite that distinction, even though I had fun with Rise, I don't feel the need to pour hundreds of hours into the game, although I'm happy to continue playing it occasionally with friends (although they're all way higher ranks than I, which probably limits their enjoyment). Similarly, I'm not really interested in the paid DLC that just came out, but I'll probably end up getting it at some point when its price drops.