Recent reviews by Kohr-Ah

Oozing with style and energy, Nitro Express made me relive that old Saturday morning cartoon feel. These aesthetics are absolutely amazing: The characters bounce with personality, the sounds of gunfire hits just right and the music'll ramp up as you bring the bosses to their mechanical knees.

Style aside, the mechanics can take a moment to get used to. No, you can't reload while tossing a grenade or rolling past gunfire, which is easy to forget when bots on wheels blaze towards you at maximum speed. The camera is questionable too, particularly in smaller rooms. It's pretty solid despite these issues.

The story is criminally short, and while the extra missions mix it up a bit, I'm left wanting.
It may be a small package, but for what it is, it serves some serious bang.

An external launcher to play would be a gripe on its own, but the game is literally unplayable.
Even with a community mod and trying common solutions discussed online, I couldn't get it to work.

How unfortunate.

It has the aesthetics and writing of a typical Saturday morning cartoon. Dodgeball Academia follows a generally lighthearted story of a world taking a sport way too seriously, with its players having superpowers and scientists researching new ways to have fun with it.

As an RPG, its story is short but flavourful, full of vibrant characters and cheesy jokes. The actual dodgeball combat is satisfying when you smash your opponents and frustrating when you get stunlocked. The battles tend to mix it up across the adventure, ensuring it doesn't get too monotonous. Sadly there's not much to do when you reach the end.

As a dodgeball game, it feels a little lackluster: The playable roster is disappointingly small (especially when compared to what's encounterable in the story) and the lack of AI in your partners is a letdown. While I can see why it was done like that, I would've loved to see the sheer chaos of two full teams going full gangbusters on each other.

All in all it's more interested in being a charming rpg focused around dodgeball instead of a fleshed out dodgeball game that happens to have a story, if that makes sense.

This game compilation captures the wonder of grabbing a preowned console with a whole bunch of games coming with it. All wiped clean of saves, of course.

The size of each game is wide across the spectrum. Some can be annihilated within the hour, whereas others will test you with several hours of solid challenge. For the most part, the games have been consistently innovative, intuitive and avoided the easy way out of being just another reskinned clone of any preexisting games of the past.

Actually, I honestly feel this collection could be used as a study case for excellent design in video games: It's such small things like the player character subtly aligning themselves to the grid as they walk, or the power gauge slowing down if the player takes long enough to golf, but they always add to the user experience and make each game feel polished. Most of them, at least.

As of writing I've beaten and gotten the "cherry" for at least half of the 50 games available, and have yet to play the rest. Many I've enjoyed, some I'm simply glad to be done with. Either way, I'm going to savour each game as I go.

The long and short of it: It's a tactics sandbox where you collect mech suits and pilots, put them in squads and participate in battles as extras assisting heroes against overwhelming odds. Very fun mechanics but battles sometimes drag on.

Mechanics and mission variety is awesome, but missions can easily take hours to complete due to the sheer number of enemies that it throws your way. There's ways to cut down the grind, but abusing the strats will suck the fun out of the battles altogether. Also there's a dispatch/idle mode where you send squads off on missions to get exp/items in return, which is an awesome means of grinding without grinding.

I'd never really delved into any of the actual stories of Gundam before, so this was my entry point (To which a mate of mine lamented that it's "All AC garbage and not UC"). For those new to the Gundam series, it's not a bad starting point. Yes, you'll be initially overwhelmed by the random options of suits and vehicles you could purchase for your team, but as you dip into each series you'll start piecing together who belongs where and start picking out your own favourites. I honestly appreciate it bypassing any fourth-wall gushing or attempts to explain why your forces show up.

The only thing I lament is the lack of a skirmish mode where you could pit your troops against each other, or missions with randomised enemy squads. It could do with more short missions too.

I cannot understate how amazing the aesthetics are. The atmosphere and writing is top-notch, with the lively village feeling peaceful with its dozens of nuanced characters drawing me in only to later be hit with the "oh right, this is a HORROR game" when the otherwordly shenanigans start to begin.

I'll concede that the menus can be a bit unwieldy sometimes, but for the most part this is a gem that I feel slipped through the cracks.

Another "Haha let's annoy the narrator" cliche. Except it happens even you're not even trying to go down that road.
It looked like it'd be just silly takes on common thought experiments with absurd things happening. And it actually is.
But then every time (every. time.) you get the narrator complaining about what just happened. Yes, I just saw that. No, the quip didn't land with me.

The art and audio is charming while the random silliness can be amusing. But the other half of the game is the narrator, and regretfully, I would probably enjoy it more if they remained silent, let alone were skippable.

If the princess really lives here, slaying her is probably doing her a favour.

Some games are like trees, with a few branches that lead to different endings. Slay the Princess is more like a shrub: quicker to reach an end, but there's so many different ways it can go. The voice acting is excellent and the stylised art is delightfully visceral. Absolutely worth your time.

tl;dr: it's a great game with fun combat and huge amount of content (from weapons to enemies to secrets). An update earlier in the year made the difficulty adjustable, so now it's far more accessible to those of us who aren't die-hard fighters.

For a good, long while this was one of those "I want to enjoy this, but I can't," games. Rolling around slapping enemies with cool weapons and tense boss fights that rarely give you a second to breathe? Good stuff. But the dev's intended design for the game loop made it extremely unforgiving and time consuming. I get it: Fight, die, get better, fight die, get better. Typical stuff.

What ruined it for me was the design also included a "just don't get hit, lol" mentality, as the damage you take is huge and if you get caught in a bad place for just a moment, that's it, run's over. Say goodbye to the last half-hour of your life. This was at its worst when you'd get your butt handed to you within literal seconds of facing against a new boss.

The devs are awesome because they accepted these complaints and made it accessible for those of us who don't have the time or dedication for it. Extra lives, damage settings and a whole bunch of other things let me adapt the game loop to my own comfort, letting me actually enjoy the game and eventually see all the best stuff for myself.

Good stuff, worth it.

"It's a game where you're a producer for a streamer that's likely mentally ill."
"To be fair? For that industry, that's practically a requirement."

Chuckles aside, that was a hell of a ride hidden behind the pastel-vomit graphics and 8bit sound effects. There are warnings ingame as well as in some of the reviews here about there being some real dark topics. I have to agree that players should have their minds in a healthier place before getting their dose. A very sobering experience with a LOT of gut punches just waiting around the corner.

Still, a good game that'll only take a few arvos to 100%