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Post by Nachtkern on Apr 23, 2022 13:34:24 GMT 1
Hi! Nightcore here! I like to play DS/3DS games, and I have a whole bunch of them! I also like to talk about them! I made it my New Years Resolution of this year to beat 50 games, before realizing that would mean beating a different game every week LMAO. So although I won't be doing that (as much as I like playing games, I also like to do other things, like eat and sleep), I figure I may as well keep a little log of the games I do end up playing. About the reviews:- Reviews will be mostly spoiler-free, unless it's really hard to review them without spoilers, in which case there will be a warning at the top of the post, and spoilers will be placed in a spoiler box.
- The reviews are meant to be short and sweet - the less time I spend writing these, the more time I have for playing other games.
- Games are scored in Difficulty, Genre, and Personal Enjoyment.
- Difficulty: how difficult the game was, and whether that was fun or frustrating.
- Genre: there's better and worse games within every genre, so how the game measures up against other games like it.
- Personal Enjoyment: how much I liked it overall!
- Reviews will include notes on how to obtain the game if you are interested in playing it, too!
Posted reviews: If you liked my reviews, let me know! n__n You can recommend me games, or request games for me to play/review in this thread, too! I mostly play sim games (like farm sims, life sims, pet sims, shop management), kids games, and mystery games, and my favorite kind of games are dress-up games and fishing games - so expect to see those in this thread!
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Post by Nachtkern on Apr 23, 2022 14:51:27 GMT 1
Gabrielle's Ghostly Groove 3DSystem: 3DS // Year: 2011 // Genre: Rhythm GameFAQs: gamefaqs.gamespot.com/3ds/997557-gabrielles-ghostly-groove-3dGabrielle's Ghostly Groove 3D is a sweet, but short little rhythm game for the 3DS. The story is about a little girl who accidentally sneezes herself right out of her body, and must dance about it with her new monster friends in monster town until she can find a way to turn back. Difficulty: 2/5 This game is easy! Gameplay involves typical 3DS rhythm game mechanics, like tapping and sliding the stylus to the beat, but nothing more complex than that. The scoring is also very forgiving; it's possible to miss an entire sequence of cues in some levels, and still get the highest possible ranking for it. After completing the main story, all songs have an additional two difficulty levels that can be unlocked, but they are just as forgiving. This seems pretty appropriate to the intended audience of the game (little girls). My only real complaint is that I wish the game was a little longer - it took maybe 5 hours at absolute most to beat both the main story and all challenge levels, which is pretty short for a full title - I'm also notoriously bad at rhythm games, and a really slow player, so that should speak for the difficulty. Genre: 4/5 Despite being a little easy and a little short, the game is a pretty solid rhythm game, and holds up well against other (children's) rhythm games. The actual gameplay is good, the music is catchy, the story is cute and funny, the Halloween aesthetic works well for it, and it has cute additional features, like a dress-up mechanic, several collectibles and unlockables, and a tarot-reading minigame. Personal Enjoyment: 4/5 I liked the game a lot, and had fun collecting all the collectibles. It doesn't have much replay value for me, but I still find myself occasionally booting up the game to have my fortune read. --- Gabrielle's Ghostly Groove 3D was available in the e-shop for $20. It's not a super rare game, but like many other 3DS/DS games, its price has inflated a lot in the last couple of years, meaning its secondhand cartridge price is nearing that of a new 3DS game at around $40 on ebay. Some smaller, independent webshops may still sell the game for around $10 - $15 on cartridge, when in stock. I personally would not spend much more than that on it, either, given how short the game is! I'd personally recommend obtaining it through less-legitimate means, unless you are rushing to throw your last $20 at it to buy it in the e-shop before that closes.
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Post by Nachtkern on Apr 23, 2022 15:47:48 GMT 1
Mamegoma Happy! Sweets Farm / まめゴマ はっぴー！スイーツファームSystem: 3DS // Year: 2013 // Genre: Farm Sim GameFAQs: gamefaqs.gamespot.com/3ds/711180-mamegoma-happy-sweets-farmMamegoma Happy! Sweets Farm is, like the title implies, a farm simulation game in which you grow and gather ingredients with which to make sweets. The game is in Japanese, and in it you play as a seal who is tasked with making and sharing sweets with other seals in order to collect smile hearts to progress the game. The story is about helping an angel seal who has lost her powers, with restoring peace to the Sweets Kingdom after a mischieveous demon seal has caused trouble (such as somehow deleting the bridges to various areas). Difficulty: 1/5 The gameplay is extremely intuitive and easy. Without any understanding of Japanese, the game's most challenging part is navigating the character creation menu at the start, after which everything else is downhill. The only thing you really do in the game is collect items in the overworld, use those to craft snacks, and then deliver those to other seals as indicated on your bottom screen - meaning literally all gameplay is fetchquests, with repetitive grinding for the correct materials between. It isn't very exciting! The game isn't very long, but still took me a good few hours to beat because of grinding for a last few ingredients and collectibles. Genre: 1.5/5 The game is very cute, but doesn't really have much else going for it besides that. It features a limited, but pretty cute dress-up mechanic for your seal, and what I gather is a pretty cute and age-appropriate (very young children) goofy story with goofy characters, and other than that is just repetitive gameplay involving sending your extremely slow seal back and forth across the map. As far as farm sims go, it's weak, and as far as fetch-quest type games go, it's a little boring. There's no significant postgame after beating the story either, other than just offloading more sweets onto seals without further reward. Personal Enjoyment: 2.5/5 Despite all that, and obviously not being the target audience for this game, I enjoyed it quite a bit, and did go out of my way to 100% the game! Mamegoma is That Seal From The Seal Gif, so finally playing a Mamegoma game was a fascinating experience, and I'm looking forward to trying out the others - though those seem to be breeding simulators instead. --- Mamegoma Happy! Sweets Farm is in Japanese, and can only be played on a Japanese 3DS system, or one that has been modified to have region lock removed. Additionally, it was delisted from the nintendo e-shop in 2019, probably due to expired licensing. The game is not extremely expensive on cartridge, and can be found on ebay in the $15 - $20 range (including shipping fees from Japan). I think personally, if you are going to spend the money anyway, you may want to consider picking up a different Mamegoma game instead; its other titles are mostly sold in the same range, including DS titles (which are not region locked), and although they are a different genre, from what I've seen, they seem to do that genre better than this one.
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Post by Nachtkern on Apr 27, 2022 9:32:44 GMT 1
Kingdom's Item Shop
System: 3DS // Year: 2016 // Genre: Management Sim GameFAQs: gamefaqs.gamespot.com/3ds/844387-kingdoms-item-shopKingdom's Item Shop is a compact and very decent shop management simulation, with some very minimal RPG elements. You play as a new shopkeep, and gradually grow your shop by sending adventurers out into dungeons to collect ingredients, for you to sell, or use in crafting better items. The gameplay is semi-finite; there's nothing left to achieve past a certain point, and nothing left to do but sell more items, meaning it doesn't have much play value after beating it. Difficulty: 1.5/5 This game is very easy. It's not really detrimental to what it is; shop management sims tend to not be very difficult unless they have actual dungeon-crawling in them (this doesn't, really), and the game also just wasn't long enough for me to get bored with it. There is a crafting mechanic in the game, which first gives you hints for the recipes for you to figure out, which was a fun little challenge. There are also requests for you to fulfill, again, giving you hints to figure out what item is wanted. Genre: 3.5/5 For a shop management sim, and for its price, it's a surprisingly solid game, although not very long. The RPG element is very minimal, and really only involves you collecting the ingredients and (somewhat optionally) instructing your adventurers to attack or defend, but is enough to keep you busy between the spans of waiting for your stock to sell. The crafting working with hints rather than just unlocking the full recipes at a set point is fun, too, and another thing to keep you busy in an otherwise very repetitive genre. The storytelling is again, pretty minimal, but surprisingly funny; the requests made by townsfolk not only each have little storylines, they also reference each other. Personal Enjoyment: 3/5 I had fun playing it! Although I keep calling it solid, my favorite part was actually the occasional typo - the English translation is perfectly fine and coherent English, but I think the menus and achievements didn't have an automatic spellcheck on, so dungeons are called "dongeons" right on the main menu. Shop management sims are a bit hit-and-miss for me; I'm not very good at video games, so the sweet spot between "totally boring" and "frustratingly difficult" is easy to miss. But this one was just fine! Not special, but good enough. --- Kingdom's Item Shop is, as far as I know, an e-shop exclusive title, meaning that its legitimate availability will expire with the 3DS e-shop in March 2023. It's $5 in the e-shop, which is a fair price for what it is. But! If the game seems fun to you, consider checking out World Tree Marché: Gourmet Story (Switch), by the same developers. It costs $12 in the e-shop, and is also a management sim. I haven't played that (yet), but I expect it to be of similar quality with a bit more storyline and length, so it should be worth the price.
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Post by Nachtkern on Apr 27, 2022 22:04:32 GMT 1
Elebits: The Adventures of Kai and ZeroSystem: DS // Year: 2009 // Genre: Adventure GameFAQs: gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ds/948792-elebits-the-adventures-of-kai-and-zeroIt's been a while since I've played this, but I felt I should break up this thread with a good review for once. Elebits follows the story of a little boy named Kai, who was swept away to a strange world, and must now find his way home by solving puzzles with the help of magical monster friends. The gameplay is mostly exploration and puzzle-solving (the monsters have different powers, that you need to use to solve different environmental puzzles), and has no combat, save for its boss battles (which are similarly puzzle-like). Difficulty: 2.5/5 Elebits has a good level of difficulty to it. Puzzles are not too easy, but (mostly) intuitive, and not frustrating. Boss battles may take a couple of tries to get right. While there are parts that rely on timing and reflexes, the gameplay really has more emphasis on problem-solving, meaning it shouldn't be too hard to play for most people, without being boring. There are a lot of secrets to discover across the maps, and the game has a good length, so it should be able to keep both people who are good at video games and people who are bad at video games entertained for a while. Genre: 4/5 This is one of those really typical DS-era games, so most of the gameplay happens on the bottom screen, and involves the stylus. There's a lot of adventure games out there that really try to utilize the specific gimmicks of the DS, with various levels of quality... but this one is really good, and does it well. The controls and gameplay are intuitive and fun, the story and characters are cute, and the art style is really pretty. It doesn't have a super special or deeply moving story to it, and it doesn't stand out against other games by being totally different and unique, but it doesn't need any of those things because it's a solid and fun title. Personal Enjoyment: 4.5/5 Probably obvious at this point, but I really liked it! It's exactly the type of game I like to play when I'm not playing games made for target audience 5-year-old girls, and one of the very few titles I've actually played through completely more than once. If I didn't have so many other games on my to-play list at all times, I'd probably go and play it again right now. --- Elebits, tragically, was hit really hard by inflation in recent years, and copies on ebay are currently sold in the $50 to $80 range. It's a really good DS title! But not worth $80, none of which is going to the developers anyway. Unless you are a fanatic collector of DS games, or get super lucky and see a copy in a more reasonable range, you probably shouldn't, and play it through other means. The game was released as " Eledees: The Adventures of Kai and Zero" in the EU, so when searching for copies, it's worth checking both titles.
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Post by Nachtkern on Apr 30, 2022 14:51:32 GMT 1
Brilliant Hamsters!
System: 3DS // Year: 2013 // Genre: Pet Sim GameFAQs: gamefaqs.gamespot.com/3ds/715379-brilliant-hamstersWhile we'reat it, I might as well tell you about the WORST DS/3DS game I've ever played. It's Brilliant Hamsters! for the 3DS, in which you take care of several hamsters, collect cosmetic items to dress up your hamsters and change your cage, while occasionally receiving (somewhat dubious) tips on real-life hamster care. It's in premise, a fairly standard and straightforward pet sim, if it weren't for the very specific flaws of this game. Difficulty: 0.5/5 Brilliant Hamsters! has only very limited gameplay; you can feed the hamsters, pet them, and clean their cage, all of which earns you points, which can in turn be exchanged for dress-up items and new cages/hamsters. This is the main gameplay there is, so naturally... not really difficult. The most challenging part is figuring out what to feed some of the hamsters; they each have preferences and favorites, but also become overweight really quickly from certain foods. There are some AR minigames, but they are similarly easy, and frankly not that interesting. Genre: 0.5/5 Although the game would have benefited from slightly more content to keep a player busy, many pet sims tend to be a little lacking in gameplay and content, so this is by far not its worst flaw! However, it is the thing that makes its other flaw that much worse. Like many pet sims, Brilliant Hamsters operates in real-time; so after feeding your hamster, or cleaning its cage, there is a set amount of real time that must pass before you can do that again. Most pet sims refer to the DS/3DS clock to check how much time has passed; some can be cheated into thinking a day has passed by changing the date on your system. Brilliant Hamsters! on the other hand, for some fucking reason, refers to in-game time passage. This means that if you fed your hamsters, saved and exited the game, and opened it up the next real-time day, your hamsters would still have been recently-fed. If you cleaned the cage, and closed your system to put it in sleep mode, and then opened it an hour later, it would be as though no time had passed in-game. Now recall, the only gameplay features being feeding, petting, and cleaning - for the majority of the experience, petting your hamsters is the only thing you can do. 100%ing this game took me roughly 36:30 hrs, the majority of which spent having the game open, idling, like some kind of aquarium screensaver, until 15 minutes had passed and I could feed my hamsters again. Personal Enjoyment: 0/5 I hated this game, but I paid real-life money for it, so I wanted to see it through to the end. --- I played this game so you will never have to! But Brilliant Hamsters! in English is an e-shop exclusive title, where it costs $10. This also means that (thankfully) the legal availability of this game will expire with the e-shop in March 2023. In Japanese, the game is both available in e-shop and on cartridge, though I have no idea how much either costs, and these can only be played with a Japanese 3DS system, or one that has had region-lock removed. The Japanese title is "Oshare Hamster to Kurasou: Issho ni Odekake".
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Post by Nachtkern on May 2, 2022 14:11:06 GMT 1
Pokémon XSystem: 3DS // Year: 2013 // Genre: Monster Trainer GameFAQs: gamefaqs.gamespot.com/3ds/696959-pokemon-xI beat Pokémon X! Yesterday! I played Y back in the day, and finally got around to revisiting it by doing a fairy type-only run on X. For those new to Pokémon; they are monster trainer RPGs. In it you play as a young kid who catches monsters, and uses these in turn-based combat to progress through the story and eventually challenge the champion of the game. Pokémon games are released in pairs, which are the same game, with slightly different Pokémon (like the box legendary), and often minimal changes to the story. The differences between X and Y's story are only a few lines of text, though they (comically) make the difference between "cartoon ecoterrorist" and "attempted child murder". Difficulty: 2.5/5 Pokémon X has a bit of challenge to it, but isn't a difficult game, both within its genre, compared to other Pokémon games, and in general. I hear X/Y gets criticized for being too easy as far as Pokémon titles go - but I think part of it is that people who grew up with gen 1 or 2 of Pokémon fail to consider that they are no longer 8, which makes many things much, much easier. That said, X/Y is easier than some of the Pokémon games preceding it, and the Pokémon core series is very easy overall compared to many other monster trainer games. Many of the challenges in the game are optional to the story or completion of the game as well, such as collecting all Pokémon, shiny hunting, or taking on endless battle challenges. For people who like more challenge, there is pvp competitive, and self-imposed challenge runs, like nuzlockes. Genre: 4/5 Revisiting it after a couple of years, I can pretty confidently say that X is one of the best entries in the Pokémon core series. It's the first Pokémon game to offer dress-up and player customization (including skin color - though a fairly limited palette) (also my condolences to boy players - the girl character gets twice as many dress-up items), and has gorgeous environments. There is no location in Sword/Shield that holds up against the big, beautiful, and extremely confusing Lumiose City, despite graphic limitations of the 3DS. It also has the best multiplayer of any Pokémon title; X/Y has functional voice chat, and custom status messages that can be used to text with players in your friend list, something no Pokémon game has seen since, probably to avoid players using bad words in there. And, although I'm sure there was much more they wanted to do with X/Y, it is the last core title that isn't obviously incomplete. Sun/Moon required a follow-up title just to add story and postgame they couldn't the first time around, and Sword/Shield had a rushed, confusing story, followed by paid DLC to add any sort of postgame at all. Personal Enjoyment: 4/5 Obviously, I enjoy the Pokémon games overall or I wouldn't have so many opinions on them, but I have a special fondness for X/Y. I played Y first when I was going through a rough patch as a teenager, and some younger kid from Autralia named Daniel found me through online play and traded me all of eevee's evolutions because "they seemed like I would like them" and just because he thought I was really cool and I was so taken aback by that display of kindness it made me cry. Also, I really like dress-up games. --- Pokémon games don't really fall much in price after their release, and then gradually climb in price past their new price, so if you're looking to buy Pokémon X legitimately, you should expect to pay around retail price ($40) for it, possibly more if you live in a place with high shipping fees. The game is still in pretty high circulation, so you can afford to keep an eye out for a bit and hope to get lucky with a cheaper copy, and you could opt for a cartridge-only copy (ie one without a box), since these are usually a bit cheaper than complete copies. Again, keep in mind that the 3DS is normally region-locked, so you should be sure to get a copy that matches the region of your system. There is also still a brief window left during which you can buy Pokémon X legitimately from the e-shop, but as recent Pokémon games suffer more and more from crunch and Nintendo's otherwise scummy behavior, I don't think they deserve your money.
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Post by Nachtkern on May 6, 2022 14:34:06 GMT 1
New Style Boutique / Style Savvy: TrendsettersSystem: 3DS // Year: 2012 // Genre: Management Sim / Dress-Up GameFAQs: gamefaqs.gamespot.com/3ds/680013-style-savvy-trendsettersNew Style Boutique (EU) is the second game in the New Style Boutique series, known as Style Savvy in NA (and Girls Mode in JP). The first game in the series was for the DS, and this game is as far as I know, a direct remake of that one, with better graphics and more items, but otherwise about the same in premise. In it, you manage a clothing store, where you sell clothing to customers by dressing them up in items and full outfits. The objective of the game is to become a top stylist, by accumulating clothing that you can then use in fashion contests. The game has online functionality, and allows you to browse and buy outfits made by other players. The game contains both clothing for women and men, but you can only play as a female character, and also the men's fashion is the ugliest thing in the world. Also for some reason they censored out the mens' yukata in the English releases of this game (but not the womens'). Difficulty: 2/5 While the game isn't difficult in terms of gameplay (dressing up characters is pretty straightforward, and the interface is organized well), it can be sort of finnicky. A good portion of customers won't actually tell you what sort of clothing style they want, and make you take a guess - usually you can tell by the clothes they are wearing, but this requires you to develop a memory for what brand each of the 10k or so items in this game belongs to - not to mention that they don't always wear their preferred styles, and that some look very similar to each other. Also, customers get fussy if you try to sell them the same item twice, or in a different color - while that logistically makes sense, the items they'll accept per category is finite (based on their preferred style), and after serving the same customer a couple of times, you'll likely have sold them every variation of shoe they'll accept, forcing you to offer them doubles, recolors, or turn them away, which makes for poor lategame. Genre: 3.5/5 Genuinely, New Style Boutique is one of my favorite dress-up games, and I've spent hours playing it, even after beating the story! The dress-up mechanic works well, and there's a massive amount of different dress-up items, even compared to many other dress-up games. They come in very diverse styles, and most items have a couple color variations, giving you a good bit of freedom to play with it. In contrast to how great that is, some other parts of the game are underwhelming in comparison. There are only so many different hairstyle options, and next to none are textured - there aren't even really curls in the game ("curly" styles are closer to wavy and sometimes straight hair), and the only textured option is a (somewhat difficult to obtain) afro. In a game in which dress-up and character customization is a main feature, a lack of hair options is hard to forgive in the first place, and a lack of textured hair is obviously an offense of its own. There are like three pages of lips you can pick for your character, but no braids. Personal Enjoyment: 4/5 I love this game, and I'm slowly working my way to collecting every single clothing item there is, which will take me a couple more years. All its gameplay quirks aside, it has enough to keep me occupied even after beating the game, and the different aesthetics of the items are a nice change from many other dress-up games, which tend to lean towards only a specific fashion style. A lot of things in this game are improved upon greatly in the titles following it, but even as is, it's a great game, and the only thing I dislike about it is that it has men. The men's fashion in this game is atrocious. Nightmarish. It's like someone described what makes men's clothes different from women's clothes to someone who has only ever seen women's clothes in their life, who then went on to design the thousands of men's clothing items in this game. Men keep walking into my frilly little pink lolita fashion boutique and asking for "cool" shirts. Like, what are you doing here? --- New Style Boutique (EU) and Style Savvy: Trendsetters (NA) are both still plentiful in circulation, and New Style Boutique even had a Nintendo Selects re-release, meaning you should be able to find a physical copy for under $15 - 20 or so without any difficulties. You may even still see sealed, unsold copies on the shelves of some video game stores! They just made that many of them! It's well worth that price if you enjoy the dress-up genre, too. If the game sounds appealing to you, but you're only looking for one game to play, you could consider getting one of its sequel titles instead - each following title comes with more items, more varied gameplay, and improves on the flaws and mechanic hiccups of previous titles. As always, the 3DS is region locked, so be careful that you purchase the title that matches your 3DS's region, unless you have a region lock-free system.
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Post by Nachtkern on May 14, 2022 14:34:12 GMT 1
Disney Magical World 2
System: 3DS // Year: 2016 // Genre: Life Sim GameFAQs: gamefaqs.gamespot.com/3ds/170146-disney-magical-world-2Disney Magical World 2 is a 3DS game that recently received a port to the Switch, and is (intuitively so) the sequel to Disney Magical World, released two years earlier and largely similar, but with a bit less content. Broadly speaking, the game is a life sim, but its gameplay spans not only the typical dress-up, farming, fishing, crafting, and something of a story mode, it also has different rhythm minigames, a load of collectibles, combat, and a bunch of... other stuff. Difficulty: 2/5 The intended audience for this game is little girls who want to look like Elsa from Frozen, making the game not only Disney's very specific brand of family friendly, but also mostly really easy, because a 5 year old should be able to play it. I say mostly here because some parts of the game are a little janky, convoluted, or just tedious, and some of the combat/rhythm games experience a really steep difficulty curve towards the end for some reason. A lot of time is involved in 100%ing the game and requires using a guide unless you plan to play it every day of your life, but in its defense, maybe a 5-year-old wouldn't worry about any of that. Genre: 2.5/5 Honestly, it's a pretty solid game. Despite how varied the gameplay is, most of it works surprisingly well (even including the combat), and there's plenty to keep a player busy and lots of things to collect and goals to chase after to give you a sense of progression even as you clock in more hours and finish its (pretty long) main storyline. There's a lot of different dress-up items and furniture pieces to collect, and dress-up items aren't gender-locked, meaning that even if you play as a boy character, you'll still be able to access everything. This is necessary, too, since... the majority of items follow one of two styles, which is Disney princesses, and The Mouse. Anything that isn't a princess dress is probably a Mickey Mouse-eared headband. There may be a lot of items, but all of them geared towards looking like a Disneyland tourist. As much as I normally enjoy dress-up and collecting items in life sims, this is probably one of my least favorite games in terms of dress-up. I'd have put it at a 4/5 or so if it hadn't been a Disney game, I think. Personal Enjoyment: 3/5 Putting aside that obviously I cannot fucking stand the mouse, I enjoyed the game quite a bit, in particular because there is so much to do in it! Life sims are one of my favorite genres to play, and it does pretty well for one, though it also means that I've played many, much better life sims than this one. --- Disney Magical World 2 seems to have been hit pretty hard by 3DS game inflation since the last time I checked, so copies currently go for around $30 - 40, and you may have to settle for a boxless version on the lower end of that estimate. You could also consider playing the Switch port, which has enhanced graphics and some minor quality of life improvements, but is otherwise the exact same game. Personally I think giving Disney any of your money is a moral crime much worse than piracy could ever be though, so take that as you will. As always, the 3DS is region-locked, so make sure your copy matches your system's region. The Switch on the other hand is region-lock free, so the port can be played on any Switch system regardless of region.
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Post by Nachtkern on May 15, 2022 18:42:11 GMT 1
Fairune
System: 3DS // Year: 2014 // Genre: RPG GameFAQs: gamefaqs.gamespot.com/3ds/854392-fairuneFairune is a short, and minimalistic puzzle RPG for the 3DS, developed by SKIPMORE. It was released on the 3DS as an e-shop exclusive title. Difficulty: 2/5 Fairune is a pretty easy game - nearly all combat consists of simply walking into enemies, so most of the challenge lies in solving the puzzles that allow you to progress through the world and make your way to the boss. The puzzles aren't very complicated either, and mostly consist of intuitive fetch quests and discovering hidden paths, but they're challenging enough to be fun, in my opinion. The game has a few achievements, including for speedrunning it and for beating the game without dying, which add a bit of extra challenge in replays, but are still not all that difficult. Genre: 2/5 There are quite literally thousands of minimalistic puzzle RPGs out there in the world, and Fairune isn't really special in any way compared to the rest of them, not to mention, a very short game. One of the achievements is for beating the game under an hour, to give you an idea of the overal length of it. That said, it doesn't actually have any glaring flaws either; the graphics and music are nice, the story is fine, the puzzles and secrets are good and fun to figure out, and while it may be a little short, it was fairly priced at $3 in the e-shop. Personal Enjoyment: 3/5 While I'm probably not really doing much to sell the game here, I liked it quite a bit, and I've probably replayed it maybe 5 or so times as of writing this review! I won't be reviewing it as this thread is only for 3DS titles, but I actually also own the Fairune Collection for the Switch, which also includes its sequel, Fairune 2; and two Fairune spin-off titles - which is probably the ideal version to get if you wish there was a little bit more to Fairune. --- Fairune is an e-shop exclusive title, meaning its legitimate availability for the 3DS will expire with the e-shop in March next year. It costs only $3, which is a pretty fair price for what it is. Its sequel, Fairune 2, is also an e-shop exclusive and costs $7. Both games have a free demo available, and an earlier version of Fairune is still available for iOS for free, though the Android version seems to be down. If you're interested in playing the games however, I'd recommend just getting the Fairune Collection, which is available for Switch, PC (Steam), or PS4. The Switch version costs $10, which is a pretty good price for all four games in the bundle.
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Post by Nachtkern on May 23, 2022 23:24:18 GMT 1
Bratz Ponyz
System: DS // Year: 2007 // Genre: Walking Simulator GameFAQs: gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ds/937303-bratz-ponyzBratz Ponyz is a Bratz franchise DS game in which you play as a horse, tasked with collecting items and completing minigames for points. It's also not a very good game. I'm sure most of you wouldn't have the highest expectations of a game called Bratz Ponyz for the DS, tagline "The ponyz with a passion for fashion! TM", given the 8-year-old girls this game was made for probably aren't on this forum... but even 8-year-old girls may agree Bratz Ponyz just isn't up to standard. Difficulty: 2/5 Being a minigames game for little girls, the games aren't too difficult per se - but some of them are very finnicky, to the point there were some that me (nor my housemate) were ever able to get full points on, like the tracing minigame. A lot of its minigames involve the microphone, too, and some parts of the game are a bit unintuitive and lack explanation. So overall, a child could easily play and beat this game, but most people, including adult gamers, probably couldn't 100% it because some minigames are a little broken. Genre: 1/5 There's many games for little girls, and most of them aren't very exciting, or challenging, or good, but most of them aren't as janky or unintuitive. What makes me score it so low isn't just that, though - every minigame-centric game is bound to have a couple of games that don't work as well as others, especially DS-era games, and whether the game is 100%able is no indicator of whether the game is good otherwise. Bratz Ponyz for the DS is just really boring, though! Gameplay consists of playing four minigames, then doing a fetch-quest to collect some items, then playing the same four minigames again... and you do this 16 times in a row. The fetch-quests take super long because your character walks really, really slowly, and has to travel to a different island and back four times in a row, and travel between islands puts you in another minigame (generous), in which there's nothing left to do after beating it the first time, and also I only found out halfway through the game you can skip that minigame* because that isn't indicated anywhere. All that, to be able to play the same four minigames over and over, all of which different levels of janky. Personal Enjoyment: 1/5 I didn't like it very much, and I won't be going back to try and 100% the game now that I've beaten it - not just because it's a bit broken, but also because I just didn't like it enough to want to play it any more than I have. Not all parts of the game were bad; the graphics were charming, and you can decorate your pony from the menu (only visible from the menu), which was pretty cute, too - the good parts of the game just don't really compensate for the rest of it. --- You can find Bratz Ponyz for the DS for around $5 or less, but I don't think the game is worth even that. It's not worth it unless you're getting paid to play it, and even then, I don't think I would. But if this review wasn't totally off-putting, or you think Bratz Ponyz sounds like a game for you, you could consider getting its sequel, Bratz Ponyz 2, instead! It's pretty similar: it has uglier graphics (imo), but is a lot less janky, has a better variety of minigames, and more explanation overall. You, or an 8-year-old girl, would probably get more enjoyment out of that game, and it's priced in the same range secondhand. * you can skip the travel minigames by pressing Y
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Post by Nachtkern on Jun 4, 2022 21:46:03 GMT 1
Bratz Ponyz 2System: DS // Year: 2008 // Genre: Minigames GameFAQs: gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ds/945593-bratz-ponyz-2Bratz Ponyz 2 is, like its predecessor, a Bratz franchise game in which you play as a horse tasked with playing minigames and collecting items. Most of the things that were poor in Bratz Ponyz have been improved on in this title, bumping it up to average instead of terrible! It's also the final Bratz title I own (for DS/3DS), so this is the last of that. For now! Difficulty: 1/5 This game is very easy. The minigames are intuitive and have enough explanation, and are easily completed. There's a better variety, they are less janky than in the prequel, and it has fewer microphone-blowing minigames. To unlock the minigames, you must look for items on the overworld (which can be used to decorate your horse on the menu), but the game has a map with indicators to make it easy to find these items. There's not exactly any challenge in this game, but given the genre and intended age audience, that's probably fine. Genre: 2.5/5 The game is just about okay, and not much else. There are much, much better games for little girls, with better story and better dress-up and more enjoyable minigames, but even though Bratz Ponyz 2 doesn't have very much going for it, there's also not really anything wrong with it. The minigames aren't challenging, but they're still fun to play. The dress-up element is... very ugly - the horses in this game have bright clashing color schemes, which doesn't help any of the overly saturated accessories look good on them, but it's not that important since you can only see it on the menu screen anyway. I really don't have much else to say about it. Personal Enjoyment: 1.5/5 I didn't hate it, but I also didn't really enjoy it all that much. Possibly, not being the intended audience for this game has something to do with that, but I also have a slightly higher standard for little girls' games. Either way, it was better than Bratz Ponyz, and I might see about playing some other Bratz games, since I am pretty curious how they compare! There are no other Bratz Ponyz titles, so that leaves the regular (human) Bratz titles and their "Kidz" and "Super Babyz" titles (intimidating) - which seem to follow a very different formula from Ponyz. --- Bratz Ponyz 2 can be found secondhand for under $5, and isn't usually sold for more than $10, making it relatively affordable. Personally, I wouldn't pay more than $5 for it though, since there are better games to play in the $10 range. It isn't a very rare game, making it easy to find in secondhand game stores or online marketplaces.
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Post by Nachtkern on Jun 17, 2022 17:05:41 GMT 1
Tamagotchi Connection Corner ShopSystem: DS // Year: 2006 // Genre: Minigames GameFAQs: gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ds/928761-tamagotchi-connection-corner-shopTamagotchi Connection Corner Shop is a DS game in which you play various minigames in the different stores/facilities that you unlock through playing, featuring characters from the Tamagotchi franchise. Despite being a Tamagotchi title, there isn't really much in terms of pet care in this game, although you can unlock some decorations and outfits for your selected character that you can see in a different menu. Difficulty: 1.5/5 This game is mostly very easy. The minigames seem to be aimed at young children, and don't require a lot of skill, but some of the minigame explanations are a bit poor, and while they're all perfectly doable, some of the minigames are steeply more difficult or finnicky than others, like the rhythm minigame or the cake decorating minigame. Genre: 2.5/5 The game gets repetitive pretty quickly, and there isn't a lot of gameplay overall, which is a common problem with minigame-games, I think. That said, it really isn't bad either - it's just kind of perfectly average compared to other games like it. It has a pretty unique charm to it, with fun sound-design, colorful graphics, and the quirky and cute Tamagotchi character designs. The minigames themselves are fun, but don't have a lot of variety to them. Personal Enjoyment: 2/5 It was just fine! I didn't enjoy it that much, but enough to keep me engaged throughout unlocking all of the facilities in the game. I've played the other Tamagotchi Connection Corner Shop games, too, which have (just a bit) more gameplay outside of the minigames, so I liked them better. Even if the gameplay wasn't all that exciting, the minigames, and especially their sound design, were nice to tune out with and keep my hands busy. --- The Tamagotchi Connection Corner Shop games are all not particularly rare or popular, so you should probably be able to find copies in the $5 range secondhand for any of the titles. If you're thinking of picking it up, I'd suggest Corner Shop 2 or Corner Shop 3 over this one - again, it's not bad or anything, and price definitely isn't a factor, the other titles are just a bit better and allow you to interact with your partner Tamagotchi more.
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Post by Nachtkern on Aug 3, 2022 1:30:12 GMT 1
Not a review today, but with the Nintendo 3DS e-shop phasing into the final stages of its closing, I've been going through it and deciding which games to buy (see: my other thread about that). I've mainly been looking at e-shop exclusives that will no longer be (legally) available once the store is down, but also, with the price of 3DS games having gone up a lot during the pandemic, games which are no longer viable to buy physically. In the end, I'm picking up quite a few games (huge L to my Backloggery for this year), which I'll eventually get around to playing and reviewing, likely well in the future. By that time, these games will be (legally) unobtainable. I feel this might be a good time to talk about piracy, and both the forum's and my own relationship to it. The forum's relationship to piracy is pretty straightforward - it wouldn't look good for my forum if you were using it to do anything illegal, or used it to encourage others to do anything illegal. Besides putting the forum at risk, sharing what illegal behavior you engage in can theoretically also put you at risk. This doesn't really have anything to do with the morality attached to those illegal acts; for example, property damage is illegal, even if your landlord absolutely deserves it. You shouldn't use the nightforum to crowdsource constructing a stink bomb the building will never quite recover from, because this is incriminating for you, and potentially troubling for me. In the same manner, whether or not I personally condone piracy, I can't let you discuss it freely on the forum. As for my personal feelings on the matter though, I don't really care, at all. I think that if you like someone's work, the best way to support them is to purchase their work, but you don't have to, and no one - not even indie developers - are entitled to your purchase. No force in the world can make you buy a game you don't want to buy, regardless of how good the game is, how much you would enjoy it, or how much its developers could use the support. A pirated game is not lost revenue to its creators - your money was never theirs in the first place, since you chose not to purchase their game, the same as deciding not to buy it in any other circumstance is. I do think it's fair that if you really like a game, to support its developers of course - but it's your own decision to make, outside of if you pirate games or not. Which brings me to a next point, and related to the closing of the e-shop; there are many, many games, where purchasing them legally supports its developers in absolutely no way at all. DS games are out of production, and have been for a good while - the only way to purchase them now is secondhand, which earns the developers of those games nothing. They make no more money whether you obtain the games legally, or through illegal means. Once the 3DS e-shop closes, every single digital-only game on it will never be legally obtainable again outside of ports - something most games won't receive. Out of the games on it still, many were developed years ago, by game studios that have since dissolved, quit, or gone bankrupt. I'm not really sure where the money goes in those cases, but I don't think those purchases still do much to support its original developers, either way. Once the e-shop closes, the only way to actually support the developers of the games you enjoy, will be to look for newer work that they're publishing on newer systems (which: I really encourage you do). Next year, obtaining legal copies of any DS/3DS game will contribute to nothing but the slowly growing scarcity on the secondhand market. Personally, first and foremost, I just enjoy owning physical copies of games. Digital "ownership" can be taken from you or withheld - although Nintendo has promised that you will be able to redownload games you have purchased digitally, even after the store has gone down, we have nothing but their word for it. If Nintendo ever decided they no longer want to host servers for that either, they can pull it. If Nintendo, somehow, went bankrupt, or ceased to exist, or anything like that, I would lose access to those games too. If something happens to my Nintendo ID, whether on their end or mine, I would lose access to those games. Digital ownership is always circumstantial and dependant on the lifespan of services offered, while my sticker-less copy of Bunnyz for the DS is mine and will work until the cartridge physically expires. No circumstance can take it from me other than the deterioration rate of plastic. Second, I enjoy supporting game developers by buying their product, so I'm fine purchasing games digitally every once in a while anyway. If a game is reviewed in this thread, you should assume I own it legally, and probably on cartridge. (In part, you should assume this because it'd be none of your business if I didn't.) This is a pretty long explanation, but all of that is to say that, although I can't and won't encourage piracy, I don't care if you do, and it really makes no difference wrt the games I review in this thread, specifically. For those who are interested, I'll do my best to find other ways you can support developers of some of the games discussed here, for example through ports, or their newer works. |
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