Ulik’s Journal

First tried playing it on PC a long time ago, but it didn't click. (Maybe I went up to the second boss, but I don't think I beat it.) Gave it another try after watching quite a few speedruns, watching a roommate beat Bloodborne and Sekiro, and playing a few soulslike myself. The second time was pretty great.

I used a pyromancer, and the melee/magic balance made it pretty fun. I liked the first half of the game much more than the second. (Lost Izalith and New Londo Ruins felt pretty meh.) The difficulty was not that bad with some patience and the online wikis. As I played the PS3 version, the servers were working, but mostly empty; that is, I played it mostly offline.

Overall, it was good to give it another chance. I'll probably try Bloodborne or Elden Rings in the future. (Even if I play them 11 years late.)

Inscryption is very good. Unfortunately, it's also very hard to talk about without spoilers. It might feel hard at the beginning, but it is stacked in favor of the player. Go in blind.

A modern version of the Top Gear games (also similar to Outrun). I do have some childhood memories of Top Gear 2000, but this was way more fun than the older games because of quality of life improvements. It has splitscreen co-op, it was good to play with my sister. (Bonus: just one player needs to win to get the points to advance; it feels more cooperative than competitive in general.) It has loads of side modes and some DLC campaigns, but I was satisfied with the main one. Bonus: it's made by a Brazilian company, and has quite a few references to Brazilian car culture; see an example here.

Played on the Game Cube on 2021. Was a pretty good 3D Zelda game. Only the stealth section was a little bit too annoying. Also, the sailing was a bit slow, but I've heard that it got faster on the HD remakes.

It's a wonderful game. Bought it on release, I don't remember anymore why. Replayed in 2025 and had a very good time (and this time I got to the end). Would recommend to anyone who is interested strategy games (it plays like Pikmin and Overlord). The story is also lovely, and quite satirical. Quite a few of undertones I couldn't understand when I was a high-schooler. That should be expected from a game made by some of the people who made Moon. (I only learned about this recently, after having played both.) It's gameplay is quite more standard than Moon's though, probably more accessible. The mechanics in general are not that varied, but the settings change frequently enough for it to stay fresh. The bosses in general are also wonderful, each with their own mechanics. No one feels like the other.

Lots of memories about these. I used to play Zero 4 and Zero 3 when I was a kid. I was also very bad at these games. At that time, I really wanted to play ZX, but never was able to. It was pretty good to play the whole series.

This collection would be my recommendation for anyone who wants to play these games. The killer feature is the new accessibility features. You can turn on checkpoints throughout the games and turn on a casual model. The checkpoints help with the tricky parts; the original life system is quite bad, and even worse in Zero 1. I didn't use the casual mode, but it should be helpful to check the story without suffering the difficulty. (The story from Zero 1 to Zero 4 is pretty nice.)

For me, the main part of this collection is the Zero games. The first one is quite rough-edged, but they get better. While building on the Mega Man X series, previous knowledge is not necessary. Everything you need to know is explained in game. With the checkpoints, the game has a nice balance of platforming and boss fighting. In general, I enjoyed these way more than I did when I was a kid.

On the other hand, the ZX are extremely okay. The maps are confusing, they focus more on the buster than on the saber, and the story is not bad, I guess. Maybe a remake/sequel combo to polish it up and close up the story would be a good game. Play these once to see the potential and then go back to the Zero games to have fun.

At last, I'd recommend not using the Switch joycon's analog sticks. Way to much action to risk breaking them.

Played Moon on my Switch. Pretty quirky game, the writing and character design is just great. Unfortunately it is a little too slow for my head to handle. A few qualities of life would have made it perfect (at least fast-forwarding would be pretty useful for experimenting). It is quite an experience, if you are in the right mindset. I've heard that it inspired Undertale.

I decided to buy my switch when this was announced a few years ago. It fulfilled my quite high expectations. It’s a quite solid dungeon crawler with an okay story. While it’s story is a little bit sparse, it’s main beats hit hard. One could say it is a more modern take on SMT3. You travel through a post-apocalyptic Tokyo, can befriend demons (maybe a not good choice for the english translation), and things happen.

The demons are based on creatures/gods of many real world religions. While they include many from christian mythology, most are from other religions (the shinto god which names the shrine near my home was in SMT4). The main character can befriend and fuse them. You actually need to convince/bribe demons to have new partners, so it’s not just a random throw, and each one has a different approach. Also the main character has a nice hair.

The battle system is the same since SMT3, each party member gets a turn, and gets one more for hitting an effective move; while the same holds for you enemies. My build choice was a mix of physical attack, with some support moves; I got my demons to have magics and other support skills. I still need to play the New Game+ to get the ending I actually wanted.

Very solid small JRPG for the GBA. The combat is very fun, and the story is serviceable. It also has a short extra dungeon after the main story; no story in it, but it's a fun extra hour or two.

Its main mechanic is weapon crafting, with five type of weapons. The different weapons give also a lot of freedom on how to approach combat (I mostly used lances and drills). A weak point is the amount of grinding necessary to have multiple weapons at the same time. I only had two weapons with elemental effects by the end of the game, as the necessary items are very uncommon (and the penultimate boss stole my third one and didn't give it back). First played this some 20 years ago, but I'm glad I played it again; this time to the end. I'll probably play the sequences in the future, after some time, to keep things fresh. I might also give a chance to the main Summon Night series.

This is the worst videogame translation I've seen in a long time. The combat is fun, but there are so many badly translated cutscenes that the games feels like a slog. May be better if you are fluent in Mandarin. (Spoilers from TV Tropes make it look like a good story.)

I'd heard these games have a lot of text, so I wasn't expecting much. It does have a lot of text. Sometimes I spent one or two hours just reading text. But the story is well paced (maybe slow, depending on one's taste), and develops the characters throughly. One of the best stories in the RPGs I've played before, and I'm looking for the next games.

On the gameplay, it's a fine strategy RPG (think of Final Fantasy Tatics). The part that I thought the best was that it has many character, and all which are actually used in the games. In the first two you have a limited choice most of the time, but on the third there are 16 characters when everyone is unlocked. There are good opportunities to use all of them. The difficulty is also balanced, with easier and harder options. Also, the experience rate is really good for low level characters, and so it is easy to try other party configurations.

Bonus: I played the PS3 versions, which are ports of PSP games and have lovely names:

• 英雄伝説 空の軌跡FC：改 HD EDITION,
• 英雄伝説 空の軌跡SC：改 HD EDITION, and
• 英雄伝説 空の軌跡 the 3rd：改 HD EDITION.

Because: the Trails series is a subseries of the Legend of Heroes Series (which is a spinoff of the Dragon Slayer series. Read more here); it has three chapters: First Chapter, Second Chapter, and the 3rd; and it is an improved (改) HD edition. Also note that each Chapter is also divided into chapters again.

The second arc of the best RPG series you are not going to play. Wonderful story, but very slow burning: you need to play the Sky sub-series, or the story will make little sense. Zero has one of the best character developments I've ever seen (building up on SC and 3rd).

The gameplay builds up on the previous games, but the cast here is quite smaller. This is a nice change of pace after the enormous cast of 3rd.

Overall score: 10/10, wouldn't recommend.

Undertale is probably the most emotional games I’ve ever played. If you like story games (with a few action(?)/RPG elements), just play it. Better enjoyed spoiler-free.

Nice little metroidvania with pinball mechanics. Has some nice challenges but plenty of checkpoints; very relaxing overall. Using pinball for exploration was very fun. The game is long enough to get a good fell of the controls, but not too long to get boring.