Recently purchased, played & beaten

[The Hand That Fisted Everyone]

Unicorn Overlord: 9/10

The switch has had a BUNCH of great tactical RPGS with dumbass names and this is right up there with the greatest and dumbest of em all. The story is anime bullshit I can't remember the details. You play a blue haired jagoff who leads his friends and grows an army against some evil prick and his army of mind controlled dummies. The party members have relationship meters with each other, and if you max out the meters you get some interesting insight into the story, or at the very least some comedic relief and light palette cleaner cut-scenes. I'm a sucker for shit like this, but you could ignore the bonding altogether and still enjoy the game unlike FE3H maybe.

Gameplay is about building squads with your party members and fighting enemy squads. If you halfway pay attention to the story you can figure out which characters work well together in squads. Squad formations are grid-like, which is important because some enemies can attack through your squad members. So like if I had a soldier in front of my mage and an enemy spearman engages, he could attack into soldier and mage at the same time. Eventually you get to a point where almost every slot is filled with a character, and then you focus less on formation and more on balance with roles in the squads. I really enjoyed the combat at first but I grew to find it tedious towards the end because of the number of squads I had. On higher difficulties I bet the squad management would be more engaging but I played on normal and really only needed like three or four squads the whole campaign. The game does a good job of scaling the difficulty I think until like the last region or so where I was whompin these suckers with ease.

My main gripe is that you can marry the giant barbarian lady but there really isn't much to it outside of "ha i love you let's fight". Was a bit of a letdown seeing as how I liked most of the relationship building and giant barbarian lady was maybe a bit more involved to get in your party than most other squad members, but thank you devs for making fan service that i can appreciate. Great buy for like $40, and it ain't too hard to find a copy for that price.

[The Hand That Fisted Everyone]

Super Mario RPG on the switch. Remastered I guess? 8/10

Baby's first rpg showing why it's the gold standard on introducing people to turn-based rpgs. If you've played other Mario RPGs then I don't know that you'll be as wowed with this game versus people who played the original growing up, BUT this is a really slick and thoughtful presentation of a classic game.The story is nice and lightweight, with one of my favorite openings to an rpg. Young me thought walking right into Bowser's Castle, beating up his minions and finally confronting Bowser on chandeliers in the high reaches of his castle was fuckin' sick and that sequence still is pretty fuckin' sick today.  I really like how the writing pretty much gets you in and get you out over the course of exploring the Mushroom Kingdom. Most of the time you're going to a village, talking to a mole or a Toad, and finding out you're the solution to whatever problem is going on. Not a complex story, but a fun adventure to unwind with at the end of the day. The music here is top notch, and letting us switch between the original and modern soundtracks is a nice feature. The battles are still really engaging with the action commands added to traditional turn-based fights, and the new super moves depending on who is in your party were a cool addition. The devs also added a new postgame but it's whatever. The post-game story is more shallow than the main game which is kind of missed opportunity, oh well. I know some people griped about the length being too short, BUT if you score this for 25-$30 it aint a bad price for what you're getting imo.

[The Hand That Fisted Everyone]

Super Mario Wonder - 4/10

This game was really overhyped. I think the power ups are lame. The talking plants are dumb idea, but good for a laugh when they fall off the screen. I liked the wonder gimmick, and that gimmick took the levels into some out there places for a Mario game, but there were only a few times it really wow'd me. But, I'm also not the target demographic for this game so if you want a light game to play with your kid or partner go for it.

[Samus Aran]

Super Mario RPG on the switch. Remastered I guess? 8/10

Baby's first rpg showing why it's the gold standard on introducing people to turn-based rpgs. If you've played other Mario RPGs then I don't know that you'll be as wowed with this game versus people who played the original growing up, BUT this is a really slick and thoughtful presentation of a classic game.The story is nice and lightweight, with one of my favorite openings to an rpg. Young me thought walking right into Bowser's Castle, beating up his minions and finally confronting Bowser on chandeliers in the high reaches of his castle was fuckin' sick and that sequence still is pretty fuckin' sick today.  I really like how the writing pretty much gets you in and get you out over the course of exploring the Mushroom Kingdom. Most of the time you're going to a village, talking to a mole or a Toad, and finding out you're the solution to whatever problem is going on. Not a complex story, but a fun adventure to unwind with at the end of the day. The music here is top notch, and letting us switch between the original and modern soundtracks is a nice feature. The battles are still really engaging with the action commands added to traditional turn-based fights, and the new super moves depending on who is in your party were a cool addition. The devs also added a new postgame but it's whatever. The post-game story is more shallow than the main game which is kind of missed opportunity, oh well. I know some people griped about the length being too short, BUT if you score this for 25-$30 it aint a bad price for what you're getting imo.

ya i still gotta finish the smrpg remake but ive liked what ive played of it plenty so far, its mostly a very thoughtful and well-made recreation

my only real gripe so far is that the new spell animations/sounds are pretty lame? i think some were changed so much because of flashing colors and lights (probably why "static e!" is now "static chock" and is just some lightning on screen instead of your whole screen flashing with garbled static), but regardless of the reason, i think they went way too far in changing them and its really unfortunate because those really cool spells were a huge part of the audiovisual identity of the game on snes imo. it sucks to see moves like flame wall and static shock be so....unimpressive now

but!! other than that its been real cool so far, im at marrymore atm

[The Hand That Fisted Everyone]

but!! other than that its been real cool so far, im at marrymore atm

get on it kaz you aint got but like 5 more hours left! i'll be real i didn't notice those changes to the spells but that static move did look cool on the snes.

Paper Mario TTYD Switch - 8/10

What can I say about TTYD that hasn't already been said? I played this on the gamecube and did the same thing i did with every rpg as a kid: Dropped it right before the final boss. This time I was determined to beat it. It had been ten years or so since the last play through, so the game was practically new to me (gently used?) The story is more detailed than SMRPG and livelier than the first PM. Rogueport remains an awesome hubworld, and the people saying that the npc's peaked with this game are Absolutely Correct. Every character feels chocked full of personality. Longwinded and genteel pirate? Old silent beanheaded bartender? Pianta Mafia? Penguin Detective? All fellows who are cool and rule. TTYD still fun as hell after all these years. The audience for the fight is still my favorite gimmick all these paper mario games add to the battles. And they throw shit at you! Sometimes its money too! I always beat those guys up; who throws a coin? Love the party members too. I think I used Koops the most, either him or Goombella. Cap'n Boberry still the coolest party member, pirate widow bob-omb? Nintendo story designers were firing on all cylinders with that guy.

HOWEVER IT IS NOT A MASTERPIECE. Some of the story drags in places. Penguin detective is cool but his train world kind of bored me. pikmin world earlier in the game was an even bigger slog. Moon level was really cool [spoiler]until the damn robot came back to life at the end of the game. Why?? That was such a nice moment when the robot died. Say what you will about Origami King but at least it had the balls to keep that sacrificed bob-omb dead. [/spoiler]

$60 is worth it for this game imo.

[The Hand That Fisted Everyone]

Pokemon Sword - 6/10

The open world parts of this game are butt-ugly but i do like a lot of the mon's they added + I'll always think its cool seeing the pokemon walk around in 3d. Story is whatever, Team Rocket are soccer hooligans, the legendary is a sword dog. Your rival is the younger brother of the champ who dreams of being a champ himself. And then you come along and just shit on him the whole way to the elite four and then shit on his dumbass brother too. What a couple of chumps. There's an apple pie dragon! I didn't use him. Starter was the water guy, Sad Frog. Sad frog eventual grows up to shoot whatever made him sad. Parents, do you still think pokemon is harmless? Didn't bother with the dlc. Get it for $20 used while you still can.