End of March Update!

Celeste is a puzzle platformer where you play as a girl named Madeline who is trying to get to the top of the Celeste mountain. The platforming is difficult but it slowly introduces you to new abilities and areas that make the learning curve very satisfying. I love the pixel art and the relaxing soundtrack. There is also a deeper message in the story about facing your inner demons. 

The game has a lot of extra content, like collectibles and extra levels. I admittedly did not go for many of the strawberries or tapes. I do plan on going back soon to play the extra levels. Overall, the game was fun! It is difficult but not unfair. There were a couple chapters I struggled with, but overall, i really enjoyed this game! I definitely recommend Celeste. 

Steam Deck Compatibility: Celeste is Steam Deck verified, and it worked perfectly! I had zero issues while playing. 

Higurashi When They Cry Hou: Rei features three bonus stories. One story takes place after the main game and the other two are set in unknown timelines. Playing this game is not necessary to understand the full story of Higurashi. It's just extra bonus content. Out of the three stories, only one is worth reading, in my opinion. 

Saikoroshi-hen: The first story is by far the best and longest one. Rika is hit by a car while riding her bicycle with her friends. When she wakes up, she is suddenly in the schoolyard and her friends are acting differently towards her. Many other strange events happen and Rika is once again solving a mystery. This story isn't perfect but it fits in with the Higurashi universe. It lets Rika shine as the main character and it has that balance of comedy with a large dose of drama and dread.

Hirukowashi: The second story is a slice-of-life comedy. While treasure hunting, Rena finds a strange object. It turns out to be a magical artifact that makes her fall in love with whoever is holding the other artifact. There is no real drama or high stakes in this story. It's purely a comedy. It could have been a fun premise but there are too many questionable things here that make it boring and uncomfortable. For example: The super long mahjong game that took up half the story. or the fact that Rena falls in love with grown adults and they never discourage it. Overall, this is the second best story of the three but I still would not recommend it. The third one is just horrendously bad. 

Batsukoishi: Here we have it. The worst story of the bunch. I don't even know if you can call this a story and not just some creeps fantasy.

After Keiichi keeps losing at the club games, he goes home and fantasizes about what would happen if he won the games. What punishments he would give each club member. This whole story is about underage kids dressing in perverted ways while a lot of sexual jokes are made about them. I understand that Keiichi is a teenager, but there is nothing more to this story than the reader reading a risky story about underage kids. This is the shortest story on the list, but it even being part of this series (along with other similar parts in the stories) reduces this incredibly compelling mystery VN series by so much. 

Overall, I do not recommend this game. It doesn't add to the main story. Only one of these short stories was worth it, and its not going to be a big deal if you don't read it. The bad heavily outweighs the good here and I hope the next game (which I'm guessing are also bonus stories?) is much better. 

Steam Deck Compatibility:  The steam deck status is "unknown," but like most visual novels, it runs perfectly fine on the steam deck. 

Slay the Princess is a visual novel with multiple choices. You start out in the woods, on the way to a cabin. You are there to slay the princess. The story features multiple endings, but each ending is a new beginning. I can't say anything about the story without spoilers, but it was an interesting VN that sets itself apart from many others.

The handrawn art style really works for this game. It's also fully voice-acted, with multiple voices being used throughout. The voice acting is a lot of fun and it really adds to the atmosphere. The genre is a mystery horror. It's not super scary but there are definitely horror elements.
I got most of the endings. By the end it didn't emotionally hit me like it did others. I enjoyed it but I wasn't engrossed in it.. I gave it a higher rating than I initially thought, because the voice acting, the art, and the endings really wrap this up into a very unique experience.

If this looks like your type of visual novel, then I would recommend it. 

Steam Deck Compatibility: This game is Steam deck verified and it worked great. No issues. 

Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament is a visual novel by Woodsy Studio. It is a sequel to Echoes of the Fey: The Fox's Trail. I really enjoyed The Fox's Trail. The fantasy elements were fun, there was a lot of lore, and I enjoy a good detective story. The Last Sacrament continues where the first one leaves off, expanding on the lore and the characters. You play again as Sofya, who is taking on two cases this time. Sofya's childhood friend Katerina (who is also the emperor's daughter) is seeking her help and protection. Meanwhile, Sofya is also being blackmailed by Katerina’s rival Nikola, into stealing something powerful. 

First, I enjoyed the story. There is a lot more going on and more characters are introduced. I did like the first game better but this is a fine chapter in the story. There are multiple characters to romance again and there is a lot more lore you can read about. I liked Sofya and Heremon's friendship/relationship better in the first game.  It feels like there are so many different directions this game went that they couldn't focus on perfecting all of the storylines. I also got an ending that I didn't like. It left some loose ends.  I'll have to replay to get the full experience and see if that changes my mind! 

This sequel also introduces a minigame called RiftRealms. It's a dnd inspired dungeon crawling game. It's a really neat idea but its very very clunky and way too easy. Even if you handicap yourself, it's almost impossible to lose riftrealms. I appreciate the effort they put into it, but I just didn't like it. It was slow and clunky and it connected to the main story so playing it multiple times is unavoidable. 

Overall, I'd still recommend The Last Sacrament, even if I like the first game better. It adds to the story and introduces some neat characters. It expands on the lore and is ambitious with its storylines. I'm interested to see what Sofya and Heremon do next. 

Steam Deck Compatibility: The game has an "unknown" status on the steam deck, but it worked fine with no problems!

It's Spyro the dragon. If I were rating this purely on the Spyro games alone, it's a ten. Spyro is nostalgia to the max. I love that dragon 😂

It might just be nostalgia bias, but there is a certain charm in the originals that felt removed from the remake. I can replay the originals all day but the remake was missing that special something that made me love Spyro games in the first place. I can't really pinpoint what my problem with it was, because overall they did a good job. 

The graphics look good. The character redesigns are cute. Hard to get used to, but cute. The voice acting was great and I could tell a good amount of effort was put into this remake.

It wasn't perfect. It did have some bugs and the camera angles were abysmal at times. The camera angles made the boss fights and racing segments more difficult. The original games also had this problem but not near this extent. 

Overall, I'd recommend this trilogy! If I were to rate my favorites in order, it would be Spyro 3, then Spyro 1, then 2.

I remember playing Spyro 3 the most as a kid. The minigames are so much fun. At least most of them. That firefly mushroom stomping game is evil. I remember loving the skateboarding minigames as a kid. The story feels more dire and Bianca was a great addition as a supporting villain. Most of your favorite characters from Spyro 2 are back, with some new characters and levels added. 

The first game is my second favorite. That nostalgia just hits hard when you see those dragon statues again. No minigames, just good platforming. Seeing all the different dragons was a lot of fun and the levels went from easy to very challenging. Some levels were much more challenging than I remembered. Especially the tree top level. 

I spent the least amount of time on Spyro 2.  I skipped most of the minigames and did enough to get to the final boss. No offense to people who love Spyro 2, but this game just felt like the awkward middle child of the series. I didn't like the talisman or the fact that you had to kill a certain number of enemies to use the powerups. Everything felt very calculated. For someone like me who does not go for 100%, I felt forced into doing a lot of minigames that I didn't want to. It felt more like a chore. I also didn't like how you got the abilities and the backtracking involved with them. It's still not a bad game, though! It introduced gameplay elements that are used in the third game, like swimming. It also introduced some fan favorites, like Moneybags and, of course, Hunter the Cheetah. Also it has the best final boss battle out of the three imo. I really enjoyed that Ripto fight. 

Overall, I recommend this trilogy. I'm not someone who goes for achievements or collects everything. If you are trying to get 100% you'll probably get more out of the game than I did. 

Steam Deck Compatibility: This game is Steam deck verified. It worked fine. I don't think I had any issues while playing. 

Retro City Rampage is an open-world, retro-style shooter. It's pretty much an 8-bit version of GTA. It has retro aesthetics and a 70s and 80s vibe with lots of older pop culture references. I want to start out by saying that this isn't a bad game at all. The gameplay is solid. There are a lot of fun references cooked into the plot. The aesthetic is fun and they definitely nail the atmosphere they are going for with the graphics and sound design. There is just more that I dislike.

I didn't like most of the missions. A majority of them are you driving from point A to point B back to point A again. The game is incredibly easy and the police don't add any challenges, making it very boring. There are some missions that increase the difficulty a lot because you die in ridiculous ways. There isn't much of a story. The story is a vessel to throw as many pop culture references as humanly possible into the game. 

I do think an 8-bit GTA game full of 80s pop culture references is the best way to describe this. Not terrible, but the opposite of games I enjoy playing. 

Steam Deck Compatibility: This game is Steam deck verified and it worked great! Zero issues. 

Songbird Symphony was quite a surprise! I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. Songbird Symphony is a musical side-scroller metroidvania. You play as a little orphaned bird named birb (of course), who decides to leave home to find where he belongs.

The songs are wonderful. They are cute and creative and there are a lot of them! The pixel art is beautiful to look at. The character designs are frickin adorable. The characters ooze charm and the game has a lot of good messages, especially if you want to play with a young child.

This is a rhythm game so you battle and interact with other characters by using music. You get more music notes as you continue the game. The rhythm segments are difficult. It starts off easy but can get a little too difficult over time. I wish I could have kept up with it but unfortunately I fell behind on a lot of the rhthym parts.

They find creative ways to do the rhthym segments, like mixing up the notes or making them disappear so you can't see whats coming next. To counter the difficulty, the game makes it impossible to fail. If you fail the rhythm segments, you still get to continue on. There is no game over screen and you don't have to repeat any part of the game. You also can't die in the game either. The scoring for the rhthym parts is forgiving. I got an average B score even though I did terrible. You are able to replay the songs and try to get a higher score if you want.

There were a couple things that could be improved in the game. The difficulty spike is one of them. There was also an area that was confusing to navigate. The end of the game had a lot of puzzles for no reason. It felt like they wanted to pad out the time.

Overall, I highly recommend this game! Maybe on sale since it's a short game.

Steam Deck Compatibility: This game is Steam deck verified and it worked perfectly fine. This has been a good batch of games for the steam deck. Usually I run into some issues but not this time.

Sonic Mania is a remake… a remaster… a reimagining? I'm not sure. It has a lot of levels and elements of the old Sonic games but they've added so many new things as well. It's great. The graphics look crisp. You can choose which character you want to play. There are different modes. The old levels are there. It's full of nostalgia. They added new levels. They added in Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine segments. What else can I say. 

If you enjoy the old side-scroller Sonic games, this is a no-brainer. I was never good at the old Sonic games but I loved playing them. i was better at the 3D Sonic games, like Sonic Adventures 2. I died a lot… a LOT. in this game. I think I got crushed by every block in existence. Also, the last level was terrible. It was such a bad idea to force the player to use all those orbs. 

Overall, this was great. I'm bad at it but that's just me. If you love the old Sonic games, then you probably already own this. If not, then I recommend it. 

Steam Deck Compatibility: It's verified and it works as intended.