Solatoro is one of those games that I vividly remember seeing in gaming magazines back when I was a kid. I remember being intrigued by the artstyle, the cute anthro characters, and the story blurb, it was striking enough that the game stuck in my mind all the way through to today.
I'm happy then to report that the space this game has occupied in my memory since then was pretty much warranted!

The thing that ended up surprising me most about this game was honestly the gameplay. I only recalled this being called an RPG in those magazines, so in my mind I'd constructed something similar to the usual turn based JRPG. Turns out, I was very much wrong! This game's an RPG as far as having levels and stats, sure, but it's much closer to an action RPG. Combat and puzzles are focused around dodging enemy attacks, getting close, picking them up and then repeatedly throwing them to the ground to deal damage, and other than that there's not much going on. You get a couple special abilities later in the game that slightly switch things up, but in general it'll still be the same loop of dodge, pickup, smash. For a few bosses and enemies you have to actually catch their projectiles mid-air and throw them back, as well. In all, this results in a kind of repetitive and simple combat system, but it's gets fun enough with decent enemy variety, and it's not like the game drags on long enough for it to get boring.
I did enjoy quite a bit the method of switching up your combat stats though. Instead of just gaining certain points at certain levels, you have a puzzle grid you have to slot pieces in, with different sized pieces giving different stats and different amounts. This resulted in a pretty fun conundrum of how to optimize your character to what you want to do, while being limited by how many spaces you have free in the grid.

The story in turn was pretty great! Nothing outstanding, I think, and some of the twists I did see coming, but it was all still engaging regardless!
The highlight of the story were the characters, probably. No one gets insane amounts of depth, no, but they're all fun to read, enough so that I was pretty attatched by the end of the game! The vibes of the cast is just... comfortable.

The highlight of the game, though, is most definitely its artstyle. Somehow, in the tiny little underpowered screens of the DS, this world comes alive. All the NPCs have cute little animations, the backgrounds are gorgeous, and there's even times the game shows an animated foreground to the scene. It all comes together to make the game's floating islands feel filled with life and detail. It's genuinely amazing what they managed to do here.
There're even pretty illustrations as collectibles to find!
And to help with how everything feels well thought out in this world, you even get some little lore documents to paint in the background of the world even more!

It all helps this game really feel like an amazing labor of love, even if it doesn't do anything amazing gameplay-wise. In fact, it even reminded me of Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii, a big coincidence since both released in 2010. Both even stretch the capabilities of the underpowered consoles they released in!
In the end the best thing I can say about this game is that I'm absolutely sure I would've been obsessed with this game if I played it around the time it came out, and, honestly, that's just one of the best things I can say about a game period.

Echoes was the only 3DS Fire Emblem I'd yet to play, so I definitely already had a pretty set idea in mind on what to expect, and that I'd likely enjoy the game.

Turns out, I really did enjoy the game but was still very much surprised by the game!
I knew that Echoes was different from the other FEs, of course, I'd heard about the two routes, the big maps, the dungeons... But knowing about these changes doesn't truly compare to actually playing with the changes.

I think the biggest change in game feel, for me, was the difference in the way supports work. Fateswakening are both extremely support focused games, both in writing since so many characters get to support so many other characters, but also in gameplay since the pair up mechanics are so important in those games. Echoes comparatively really pulls back from supports. There are very few of them, most characters getting just one or two conversations, and the bonuses, while nice, aren't even displayed in-combat. I thought at first it'd feel like a detriment to the game but it actually made it feel more like a polished and intentional story in comparison to fateswakening or even the switch Fire Emblems.
The characters felt more focused because of it, and much less... "spread too thin" I suppose. And sure it made most characters less memorable in the narrative/character side, but!! The fact that the game is split into two routes and that you're deploying everyone in a Alm or Celica's army in their maps, that means that everyone still gets to contribute and become memorable by gameplay.
That I think turned out to be one of this game's biggest strengths. No one really ends up benched. If they're recruited, they're on the map, and the item system helps even underleveled and underused units help out.
In my case at least I tried using everyone in combat, and mostly succeeded, but towards the endgame a few units that were underperforming became great repositioning helpers! Not really a fantastic fate, sure, but it's better that than to just never be used and only remembered in their joining chapter when I replay the game (sorry Gregor from awakening, who knows what you're capable of).

The change in items too really changed the vibes of this game, especially the way I approached combat, and it interestingly helped specific units stand out even more. Instead of everyone getting an array of weapon options at all times, each unit gets only one item to work with, so they become more entwined with their weapon's identity. So for examble, my Lukas became my go to horse killer because he handled the Ridersbane for most of the game!
It also gave value to the healers, since units couldn't hold healing items as well as a weapon.
Magic also works differently, as a unit's magic is completely separate from their items, and instead cost HP to use. I... like this system in theory. It gives a more immediate cost to stronger spells instead of them just having less uses. My biggest complaint here is that... the game barely lets you suffer from this. Early on you get a couple of rings that recover 5HP a turn to the wearer, and eventually you're showered in them. This offsets essentially any magic cost, and your units become mostly "OK, which is the strongest and most accurate spell".
It's not really a big deal but I wish the game were stingier with these items.

Then there are the maps, and... yeah, I get why people complain about them. They're mostly pretty bland and samey, big open areas dotted with trees OR fortresses with one or two 1 tile wide entrances, forcing you to funnel your units.
None of them really felt bad to play, really, but none of them were that memorable, that's for sure. The dungeons too, they were neat but nothing special. It did give me some ideas for a etrian odyssey style game with fire emblem like combat though, which could be fun.

Another thing I want to touch on is the story. It's good! Great even, and the voice acting (especially Ian Sinclair as Berkut) was stellar throughout. It felt definitely more serious than Fateswakening's plots, and the lack of antic-y supports helped that aspect. I was also pretty interested in the class conflict of nobles x commoners that was loosely set up at the beggining of the game... but felt really let down by the end in that front.
(SPOILERS)
Alm's a prince. Wowie. Who could've guessed. This cheapens the talk of "everyone is needed for this war" that happens early on, and kind of even gives the villains a bit of rope. Sure, maybe Alm only beat Berkut cause he's also nobility.
It's a nitpick I know, but it did annoy me, just as Celica's silly sacrifice pre act 5. I guess it really is a big meme that girls get mind controlled in this series, but man... she could've had more faith in everyone else. They even gave her a brother in the remake and she's still "Hm wait I trust the evil purple man".
(END SPOILERS)
I still liked the story quite a bit though, even if I already knew most of the biggest beats.

Lastly, the presentation. Not much to say here, it's immaculate. The art's amazing, the soundtrack's great (though both Fates and Awakening beat it in that regard, fight me) and the animated cutscenes gorgeous. The only downside I felt wasn't even fault of the game itself, and more of a... pre-inheritance from the switch games I guess. Cause I could feel the starts of something that I really dislike in the switch games, which is several cutscenes being mostly characters standing and talking with their portraits up, and the few animated ones being... clunky to say the least. The animation here was good, don't get me wrong, nothing nearly as bad as 3 houses, but there were begginnings of characters talking in a box about things going on. Thankfully though that was mostly mitigated by gorgeous CGs that honestly should make a return.

In all, I really enjoyed this one a lot! Fire Emblem's just fun, and this was better than the games that came after it. Sure there were a couple frustrations, but it also gave me Atlas, so that's gotta count for something.

The 3DS's own 3D Mario game, and, honestly, it's quite good!
I'd never played this one before, only hearing what people said about it being easy but fine, and yeah that's pretty much it.
I will say though it's also a pretty enjoyable time.

I'm not usually one for Mario's standard games, preferring usually Odyssey and Galaxy style adventures, so I wasn't exactly going into this game expecting to complete it, but turns out Mario's fun.
The levels are fun, their themes are... uninteresting, sure, but they're quick enough that it doesn't really matter.
And yeah, the whole game's pretty decently easy, but it becomes a decent challenge to go for all of the star coins. Not difficult, exactly, but requires a lot more involvement from the player than to just reach the end goal of all levels.

And speaking of levels, there are quite a few here! I'd heard about the "twist" of having 8 special worlds, but I honestly didn't expect it to be quite so fun to go through (essentially) the same levels again.
To be fair, it's not all these special levels that are recycled from the base game, it's just most of them. But even the ones that are usually have an interesting twist to them, be it the shadow marios chasing you down or a pretty tight time limit.
(...I'll be honest here, I did get a bit tired of those at the end there. My thumb hurt from keeping Y pressed so that Mario actually moved quickly)
Funnily enough the remixes ended up giving these levels more personality than in the base game. Paradoxically, they felt more unique than the base versions by just getting a bit more spice thrown in.
It's just a bit of a shame that you have to actually hold yourself back from getting more tanuki power ups to actually experience most of the challenge. That hover really trivializes things, and it's not like the game keeps these power ups from you. Hell, there's a level who'se whole purpose is essentially "grind 1-ups and restock tanuki leaves here".

I'm not gonna say this game is a masterpiece, or close to an odyssey or a galaxy, but I think it perfectly captures the feel of a "pocket version" of Mario's 3D games. Levels were fast and simple, but still great to experience.
If you're like me and never played this game before, I genuinely reccommend it as a game to play in the bathroom, or when you just want to unwind for a couple minutes at a time. It makes for a great palatte cleanser, or just a way to decompress for a bit.
Yes, even when you're trying over and over and failing to get that one star coin. That's part of the experience.

A cute little kirby fighting game!

And honestly, little is the keyword here. It originated as a side mode in Kirby Triple Deluxe, and it shows.
There are two modes, single player and multiplayer, and both are similarly simple. In multiplayer you fight against (or with) a friend choosing from a few kirby copy abilities, and in a few of the pretty and decently varied (but all still simple) arenas of the game.
Single player, on the other hand, has you selecting one of the abilities and a difficulty, then you fight through a series of single and team fights against the AI, including a couple bosses in the middle.

It's all good and fun enough, but man, is it... lacking. There's not enough of anything, it feels like. Items, movesets, bosses, modes, they're all smaller and fewer than I'd like them to be.
It's a fun distraction! Playing a couple games with friends is pretty fun!
But there's not much to do besides that, and even then you have better options for multiplayer fun on the 3ds.

I suppose that for the original price of less than $5 though, it's more than enough.

Plus, you get cute little alt costumes for each copy ability after clearing single player with them! That's something at least.

I was really pleasantly surprised by this game! I'd heard about etrian odyssey here and there, I knew it was a dungeon crawling game, and honestly the genre did not appeal to me at all.
Not that I'd played many of them before! But I knew that story wasn't the focus, when story's usually what I get the most out of rpg, and I knew there was usually grinding in these games, when grinding for the sake of itself isn't my favorite thing.

Well I'm happy to report that while yes there was grinding and the story wasn't the strongest, I still enjoyed this game a lot!
The story, in fact, I ended up quite enjoying! Not cause there's any great memorable characters or great fantastic moments, but precisely cause it was so down low, or light. It left the game with a flavor of open endedness in the actions and agency of the player that I really liked! And as the characters in the player's party are... not really characters at all, this leaves them more up to the imagination of the player to color in. I can easily see a story like this being a decent enough tabletop rpg campaign, with a centralized npc hub that everyone gets to know, a loose but engaging plot pushing things forward and the player party finding their own fun in the middle.

And the grinding, for its part, wasn't the most annoying or the longest. I only really had to grind for the final boss, but by then the game has given you several tools to get a massive chunk of EXP in certain battles, and it didn't depend on a random encounter like in many other rpgs!! (Metal slime I love you but your appearance rate is too low)
The gameplay itself was pretty fun and engaging too! The cicle of fighting and exploring the dungeons, gaining levels and unlocking shortcuts, until you're either too weak or full on items, only to go back to town and do it again, it was all fun. The balance of damage and buffs/debuffs felt pretty fair too, and the fact that saves were limited to few places meant the consequences of loosing were pretty significant, if not too annoying.

The presentation too was pretty great on this one! I'd seen screenshots and videos of etrian odyssey before, of course, so I knew the backgrounds would be very pretty and the character art fantastic. And... yeah! The backgrounds were etremely pretty and the character art fantastic!! I was slightly dissappointed in the lack of variety for the player characters, with only 4 options and 2 bodies per class, but they were still nice to look at.
Really the only fault I can give this game on the presentation is not even a fault of the game itself: The soundtrack, which was pretty good, felt like a plea for help at times. The way the 3ds soundchip was compressing those songs was... unfortunate.

This game was probably the longest I've played for this series yet, but it didn't even feel that long, which is surprising! Just as surprising as how much I enjoyed playing it, honestly. I don't know if I'll play the other games in the series after this one, but I'm now definitely more inclined to than before.

I don't know why I always expect... less, from Kirby games. I think they're gonna be fun, sure, but oh they're gonna be easy, a bit mindless to get through. Just a little distraction. But time and time again the Kirby team shows me they know how to make a FANTASTIC game. The enviroments, the progression, the extras, the music... They always make games that're filled to the absolute brim with fun stuff and somehow still don't overstay their time. While I think Forgotten Land's still my favorite of the series Robobot left me with a very similar feeling of contentedness when I was done.

Really, Robobot was such an enjoyable experience. The level themes were fun and varied, most of them with actually fun secrets to find... and that's actually something I really appreciated from this game, that the secrets, while not always obvious, were all completeable without much hassle in a first playthrough of a level.
The mech gimmick too was pretty well thought out! It feels pretty significantly different to control from kirby, being decidedly heavier, and the lack of float option let's them integrate some fun verticality to the mech's puzzles too.
I will say though, the mech copy abilities did feel a bit underwhelming in their lack of flexibility, especially when compared to kirby's regular copy abilities. I think that's why I ended up enthusiastically wanting to use just two of them, ice mech and mic mech. Outside the mech though, Kirby was still lovely to control as usual!

Then there's the story! And oh boy what uh... poignant themes of corporate greed colonialism and industrialization huh. Those really remain evergreen. And while sure it's not like Kirby's gonna solve capitalism I enjoyed it. The surrounding story with Start Dream and Haltmann wanting to bring back his daughter was also kind of harrowing, especially at the end when she ends up leading to his pretty gruesome death (imo. Nothing's show on screen of course but he essentially gets overriden by the Star Dream which is uh. Rough to think about).
And the ending sequence with the fight against Star Dream was amazing! I love a good shmup so that was right up my alley, and it made me realize how... interestingly Kirby uses it's traditionally "girly" or "good" visuals for its enemies. There's always an intentional cuteness even for the big bads, and often a heart motif. Sure that wasn't the case especially in the Dark Matter games, but with Sectonia, Star Dream, Void Termina and even Elfilis there's an interesting twist on beauty and hearts and flowers in the big bad that brings a flavor to these games that I really love.

Another thing that I've been loving about Kirby more with each game I play is the difficulty. The base game's not difficult, but it manages to not be boring at all even with the lack of actual challenge. But then you beat the base mode and the extras come in, each giving you a tougher challenge than the last, creating a curve that gets steep enough for a Real Gamer Challenge but never steep enough to be too frustrating.
I always think "Oh no the True Arena's gonna be too tough, I shouldn't bother" and then end up clearing it and feeling mighty accomplished by the end.

Really I think the best endorsement I can give this game is that it was fun enough for me to bother to go back and grind it's stickers for 100%. Kirby's really never failed to show me a good time.

Why yes of course this 3DS game lookback will include DS games, why do you ask?

So! It was really fun finally visitting these games, as HGSS are the only DS pokemon games I'd never played. Kanto and Johto were both veeery pretty regions and, even though gens 1 and 2 are possibly my least favorite gens pre-gen 6, playing around with mostly those old mons was still quite an experience.

In general though, I think... these games really feel "old". Not in the sense that they feel like other games in the DS, but that they feel as if pokemon was still getting its bearings. I think this is probably because, well, these games are remakes. It makes sense that they feel a bit... "classic".
Now, I never played the original gen 2 games, or even the gen 1 games, so I can definitely be wrong here. But the level balancing doesn't feel as good as other games, and sooo many of the enemy strategies revolve around annoying stuff like evasion, confusion, sleep...
That all still gives these games a great vibe though. It helps that the region themselves feel old and traditional, especially with the main plot part with the kimono girls and the bell towers.

I will say though... The level scaling was bad. And I'd heard it was bad, I was expecting it, but oh boy. It's SO bad. The worst offender (pre elite-4 at least) is Clair's gym. She's level 37-41, and yet. And yet.
All the wild pokemon around her gym are 15-20 levels below that, making reaching decent levels for her fight a slog.
And it's not just Clair either!! The elite 4 are pretty similarly levelled for their surroundings, and Red too expects you to grind at least 10 levels to have a decent fighting chance. It's easily the worst part of the game.

Other than that, though, it's a pretty fun game!! It was a pretty special experience to me too, not gonna lie, cause it also resulted in getting to, for the first time, experience the mystery gift events!! As a kid my wifi was the wrong type for my ds to properly connect, and I remember being so bummed out about that...
So, replaying these gen 4 games I discovered that there are you can just change the dns your DS connects to and people have set it up that you can basically receive all the mystery gifts ever released, and even some that weren't (cough cough azure flute Arceus).
That resulted in honestly a great afternoon with a close friend rediscovering all these events, and led to me experiencing Sinjoh ruins which was pretty great!! In all a really good time, even if frustrating.

Oh!! And since I got a physical copy I got to experience the pokewalker too! Such a sweet little addition, does so little but in such a fun and interesting way to compliment the rest of the experience. And the whole theme of getting to take a walk with your pokemon in the game where they walk outside their balls?!?! Love it!!
Man I hope pokemon games gets effort put into them again.

This game. What can I even say of this game.

It's not bad per se. It's a decent-ish rhythm game, I suppose, with decent music and varied enough minigames. You'll get your fair share of tapping and swiping and pressing buttons with each of the game's mechanics. Plus, sometimes you're even blocked from progressing by a music themed lock, which were micro-bites of fun puzzles.
The worst I can say of these, the uh... "rhythm game" part of this game, is that the inputs feel like they get eaten sometimes, so you start getting misses by no apparent fault of your own. Some of the rhythm games, the ones where they play a sequence and expect you to play that sequence back, have an issue of signaling when the player should start their inputs.
That could just be me being bad though.
Everything surrounding that fine enough rhythm game though? Wow.
The first thing that I really noticed about this game was that it wants soooo badly to be Professor Layton.
Genuinely, it's incredible how this game wants to feel just like layton, with the quirky npc art, toony and pleasant backgrounds, and, most importantly (to this game, at least) animated cutscenes.
I admire the confidence implied by the amount of these cutscenes though. The first layton game had what, 2 or 3 short animated sequences? While Rhythm Thief comes out of the gate with 2 or 3 of them each chapter, at least. Either they had immense (and misplaced) confidence in their grandiose storytelling or they thought that having animated cutscenes was what brought success.
And while these cutscenes are all finely animated, they're supported by (at least in english) baffling voice acting.

There are three issues with the voice acting in this game. The first two are more run of the mill, first is some of the written dialogue is different than what's said. This happens, sure, but the amount of times this occurs in this game is.... weird. It's always just one or two words that are different too, which makes it even odder.
The second run of the mill issue is the mixing. It doesn't happen thaaat much, but there were a few phrases there, especially in the middle of the rhythm games, which were almost inaudible.
And lastly, and most hilariously.... are the accents. You see, this game takes place in Paris, France, so of course, many of the voiced characters have (in the english VO at least) terrible terrible french accents! Which honestly was a delight!
No, really, it was so entertaining hearing the weird pronunciations of everything! And disclaimer, I'm not a native english speaker AND I don't know if the voice actors used have or not those accents. But they were just goofy enough to be fun.
Want to know what else is goofy though? The fact that around half the main cast, who are all still parisians, do NOT have french accents! In fact, Marie, the girl love interest, has a british accent! And if memory serves well, she's not even the only one!
This results in just the most delightful inconsistent voice acting accent management, cause clearly they wanted french, but they just didn't commit! Even though, I shit you not, even the dog has a french accent.
Yeah, the dog goes "Woeuf".
It's doubly hilarious when the dog's VO often sounds like an odd impression of a guy falling on his stomach.

And then there's the story. Oh boy.
This game's story is nonsense.
You see, the basic blurb for this game reads "Raphael has a secret life as a heroic thief who is famous among Parisians for stealing famous works of art only to return it days later. Feel the beat and conquer the rhythmic riddles in pursuit of the hidden truth about the city and his father's disappearance.". From that you may assume that most of the story is that mystery of Raphael's father and a couple fun art heists. Of course, you'd be wrong.
Most of this game is actually about running around getting some "relics" from french royalty(?) that will actually cause the gardens of babylon(????) to rise from the depths of Paris.
Oh, and napoleon's back. Except he's not, as he reveals with his last words as he leaps to his death. Except that Napoleon really is back, as we see in the post credits scene.
The same post credits scene where we see Raphael's father actually really is working for the bad guys, except he's not cause he wishes good luck to his son?!??
It's just a mess in general, with so many ideas. There's an obvious twist villain that actually shoots Raphael (don't worry people are shot left and right and nothing happens). There's a bait and switch girl dressed who only their father calls by their full name, and I'll tell you I did not expect a trans-ish character from this game.
It's so much and so little at the same time, it's impressive. It's kind of down to earth for the first three quarters of the story, and then it becomes castle in the sky for some reason. Which, given this game wants to be Layton, yeah makes a lot of sense.

In general the only thing I can really say about this game is that it's frustrating but largely innofensive, bonkers and... I guess it's camp?
And, to quote Raphael as he watched the gardens of babylon crash back into paris after being rescued via paragliding and discovering that his love interest's mother that said wasn't her mother was actually her mother...
"Cool.", and fade to black.