2026 September Media Post

 
I was busy playing Tales Of Berseria the night this was supposed to release, whoops. I've also run outta steam for these monthly posts. I think there'll be change in the blog from this point, I won't be talking about nearly every game I play anymore, I'll still provably do an end of year tier-list though.

 

Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure


The gameplay felt good enough for me to finish the game, but it's pretty basic and a lot of things feel annoyingly slow. The game has incentives to replay it but I probably won't bother. I would consider this a pretty cute game, if it weren't for the pedophile character, I don't know why that was in there. It's a mostly cute game though, the cutscenes are very charming.
 
 
 

Bayonetta 3


I played and enjoyed the first two Bayonetta games, but this game is when the series finally happened to click for me. I adore the demon summoning mechanic (which I'm too much of a coward to use the actual name of), it's like playing a puppet character in a fighting game. I was surprised by how often I was able to get gold and platinum Combo medals throughout my playthrough, I don't know if that's from the years of experience playing fighting games since I played Bayonetta 2, or if this game was just way more lenient on that sorta stuff. I sure was trying to get them, it felt cool juggling different weapons and swapping back and forth between Bayonetta and a demon.
 

I wasn't really a fan of any of the gameplay outside of the combat, but the other stuff wasn't terribly intrusive for me. Bayonetta was my favorite character to play as simply because she's the only one with selectable weapons and demons, but Viola was pretty carried by having one of the coolest songs ever as her battle theme. I'm aware the story of this game is pretty big issue for some people, but I barely remember the previous games, so I didn't feel much towards it. The action during the cutscenes was cool though.
 
 

Shantae & Asha Dream Fantasia

 
I played through the first half of this game years ago, before I had even played Monster World IV, and this game actually lowered my opinion of Monster World IV. This game is so much bigger than Monster World IV, although it feels unfair to compare the 2 games. Getting back to Dream Fantasia though, replaying the first half and finishing the game, my initial adoration of this game has dwindled. I still quite enjoyed it, but there's a notable few small issues that added up.
 
Something(s) about the entire game's engine feels off, I'm not very keen on this sort of stuff so I don't know if it's because of the game running at 30fps or if it's even the game's fault but, it felt like there was some substantial input delay. Double-tapping down to drop through platforms felt really strict, and Shantae having to wait for her standing/crouching transition animations to finish before she's allowed to attack felt clunky relative to other characters. Text scrolled annoyingly slow in general. The most definite issue was music/environment-noise frequently not ending when I left areas, audio would start overlapping and sometimes lag the game really hard.
 
I had to frequently reboot the game to fix this sorta stuff.

One other issue I could see people having with this game is that the overarching design of it is noticably more inline with Monster World IV than the Shantae series, and Shantae herself is weirdly one of the weakest playable characters. I don't mind the linear level design though, I typically even prefer that in games despite me being on an adventure-game kick recently. Some of the few puzzles that were present left me feeling annoyed. One more issue, the writing feels self indulgent in a way I quite respect, but it doesn't really line up with how I like the characters to be.
 
Like I said earlier, the game is very big. There's just so much packed into it, it was exciting to sink my teeth into every screen and taste the passion. The level design was also very solid. This game sets itself as a sequel to Monster World IV, and I think it succeeds at being a satisfying follow-up.
 
 

It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia


I only watched a bit of this series (Season 1 and a bit of Season 2), but it's about what I've expected so far. Episodes can be quite funny, there's a very good self awareness to the writing so the main characters being terrible people isn't just upsetting, but things can be upsetting regardless of how well crafted the writing around it is. I'm interested in watching more, but I don't feel like bothering right now, it's a long series.


Potential Man

 
Steam
 
Half of my enjoyment for this game comes from the marketing, I'd recommend checking out the trailers and drawings on one of the dev's YouTube channels. The experience of a game being more than just the game itself is cool and all, but the game itself didn't really stick the landing for me. I've never read/watched Jujetsu Kaisen, so I couldn't tell ya if any references to that went over my head (I know that series is what inspired the original Potential Man meme).

Spoiler:


Jenny The Witch

 
I'm pretty sure this is meant to be a hack-and-slash, but I played it like it was primarily a shooter. I had fun so I don't that was much of an issue. I don't vibe with the game's aesthetics, and the story didn't compel me at all. The platforming was heavier than I like, but otherwise the game felt very snappy, just being in the midst of battle felt very good.
 
 

Mina The Hollower

 
I was quite surprised by how well this game was able to hook me. I sure like Zelda games when I'm not having to do Zelda style puzzles I guess. There aren't that many progression based puzzles in this game, but I thought the few were kinda mean.
 
The game's level up systems were also something I especially disliked. Dying twice can lose you all of your Bones (which are used to level up), which leads into this vicious cycle in which if you aren't skilled enough you just don't get XP unless you completely drop story progression and just go grinding. The level-up system also causes annoying friction with the game's open world structure, the difficulty scaling is really bad unless you play the areas in the specific 1,2,3,4,5,6 order. On my first playthrough I ended up using one of the in-game cheats to make it so I always kept my Bones after death, and then on my second playthrough I just used an automatic level-up cheat (warning with that setting though, there's 1 late game boss in the central town area where the game sets your stats way lower than they probably should be). Unfortunately the game disabled my ability to get achievements due to the cheats which feels a little bad, but ultimately I'm glad I got to even use them, they made my experience more fun.
 
As I said last paragraph, I played through this game twice. I did so because I just had so much fun. There's a lot of combat and platforming, and they work great in this game. Platforming in general isn't something I see much in top-down games, platforming usually isn't much better than fine in top-down games, but this game had a lot of refinement into making the platforming feel good and interesting.
 
I didn't enjoy the story or characters much at all, which felt particularly more like a shame in this case because the world struck me as creative. There's one scene in the dining hall (I think the place was called) late into the game which was pretty funny at least.
 
 

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