Recent reviews by Rhinehart

I never really get into Pokémon. I tried a few games, only bothered to beat one of them. I even dropped this game after playing it for about twenty minutes. Then they added the multiplayer beta, and I could play it with the friend I bought it for a while ago. And since I came back and gave it another chance, I've been thoroughly and utterly obsessed. Immediately sunk another 69 (nice) hours into it, am doing lots of post-game stuff, haven't even bought the DLC yet (or finished the ending). I don't even like Pokémon and this game took over my life. 10/10, will lose myself again after I buy the DLC tomorrow.

I played this one before I played the Momodora games, and I loved it. Didn't know this was the same dev team that made those games. At the time of my review, it seems there are some recent mostly negative reviews, but they all seem to be from salty people who couldn't git gud or didn't wanna bother, so feel free to disregard them.

As someone whose favorite souls-like is Salt and Sanctuary, and I do play a ton of metroidvanias, souls-like and otherwise, I had fun with this game every step of the way. Just because it's short doesn't mean it's bad, and it's reasonably priced for its duration and the experience. You might struggle with it if you don't do souls-likes, but as with most souls-likes, it's worth the struggle if you have the patience. If you don't, stop crying in the review section.

When Star Ocean: The Last Hope dropped on Steam, I was all like "Oh no, please don't do that." I assumed it was to gauge interest in the series on Steam, but they dropped the worst game in the series, and I thought it'd sell poorly and give people the wrong idea. But then they made Star Ocean: The Divine Force and launched it on Steam at the same time they released it on consoles. I only played through SO5 and 6 once each, though.

But now we have it. The great JRPG classic that is Star Ocean The Second Story, now remade with major quality of life changes, new features and new content. As soon as I saw the trailer in a Nintendo Direct a while back, I preordered the game for my Switch as soon as I could. I played the original on my PlayStation for countless hours and launched my streaming career off the back of Star Ocean 'Til the End of Time for PS2, which was my second favorite in the series. My favorite has returned.

Star Ocean seamlessly blends space-age sci-fi with high fantasy using underdeveloped planets, and takes Star Trek's prime directive as the most important law for spacefarers lost and stranded on underdeveloped planets to blend in as to not interfere with the planet's course of history. But not everybody complies with that law, and in the case of Star Ocean The Second Story, what seems to be a very bizarre meteor crashes into the continent of Ell and turns people and animals into monsters. Ultimately, our heroes must undergo a journey to investigate what the people of Expel have dubbed "The Sorcery Globe," to see if its influence on the world can be undone.

The story's gonna seem pretty unremarkable for some people, and it very well might be, but the gameplay was revolutionary for its time. It started item creation and specialty skills before many other games tried. Each character has their talents randomly generated on creation or acquisition, and those talents lend to the success rates/effectiveness of various item creation or specialty skills. Alchemy, music, smithing, engineering, and SO much more. The game allows for a lot of versatility and player expression, especially with all the new stuff they added to the remake.

And as if that wasn't enough, they recently updated the game to add ten new raid bosses, a bunch of new equipment and upgrades and they did it for free. It wasn't even DLC. They didn't have to do that. I can't believe they did something like that in this day and age where most publishers (-coughAtluscough-) carve content out of their games to resell it to you as DLC, EVEN IN REMAKES. This game was a complete product on release, ran perfectly smoothly, has next to no loading times, and they just give away additional content in a free update? WHO DOES THAT?!

10 year anniversary sale. Still in early access. Well, at least it's on sale.

They knew this soundtrack was good enough to put in a flac format, and I thank them so much for that.

I pet a bunny and it squeaked. Game of the year 2018.

Found this when I was looking for a new Metroidvania to play, 'cuz it's easily one of my favorite genres, and was genuinely surprised by this title. It's every bit as fun as it looks, has lots to do, and its unique approach to NG+ and its multiple endings immediately made me jump right back into it. The visuals, the art style, the animation, and the soundtrack are all so good. The music has a real nostalgic feel to it, and I bought the soundtrack right after I finished the game. The only way this game could be better is if it had multiplayer. Part o' me was a little disappointed I didn't get to play this with my bunny/game obsessed friend who'd previously played Rabi Ribi (which I missed, but clearly I have to play that too), but watching her play it and figure out all the endings was fun, too.

I missed the SNES version of the game back in the day, but I got to play it when Final Fantasy Chronicles came out on PlayStation, and I bought that. I played the heck outta that game, and it's really good, but I can't give this port a positive review because it crashes 9 times outta 10 when I'm in the menus. Save my game? Crash. Change equipment? Crash. Navigating the menu? Crash. I'm done playing this until there's another update that fixes this, 'cuz I can't accept this port in its current state.

I can't review this game, I'm too busy playing it.

Imagine dropping frames in a game with quicktime events in its combat.