TMDvidya

Home of the Highest Quality Video Game Reviews

This site is the repository for my video game reviews. Welcome.

Full video game reviews: (newest first)

• Master Detective Archives: Rain Code - Recommended - The Danganronpa guy makes a detective story this time, laying off the meta nonsense, and absolutely NAILS it.
• Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane - Recommended - An OEL VN borrowing from the Ace Attorney franchise that is actually surprisingly good.
• Grim Guardians: Demon Purge - Recommended - Inti Creates makes another Castlevania game with the perfect IP for it: Galgun!
• Pizza Tower - Recommended^{(Game of the Year)} - Somehow both the best Wario Land game and the best Sonic game
• Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls - Recommended - Danganronpa takes a side trip to make an RE4 game with a truly terribly dumb story even by DR standards
• Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate - Recommended^{(Game of the Year)} - The OG Japanese style roguelike dungeon crawler that all others copied continues.
• Intravenous - Recommended - Top down Splinter Cell but with a bit more murder (optional... mostly) against drug dealers.
• Ninja Gaiden 3 Razor's Edge - Recommended - Without Cookieface, Team Ninja needs a second try to make a game almost as good as a normal NG game.
• Pac Man 256 - Recommended - Pac Man meets an endless runner mobile game, but wait, it is ACTUALLY GOOD!
• Akiba's Trip 1: Hellbound and Debriefed - Recommended - Acquire's original action RPG about ripping clothes off in Akihabara gets a remake and a translation.
• Sisters Royale - Recommended - Alfasystem returns to making shmups with a new Castle Shikigami game in all but name
• Mayhem Brawler - Recommended - A comic book style beat-em-up that manages to be one of the best indie beat-em-ups in recent memory outside of the greats like Fight n Rage.
• Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires - Recommended(Conditionally) - Koei attempts to redeem DW9... or at least milk some more cash out of it, but by being less ambitious they actually make something a bit better this time.
• Dead Estate - Recommended - Roguelite shooter with a witch with big tiddies coming to you straight out of Newgrounds. Not the best but still good fun.
• Luminous Avenger iX 2 - Not Recommended - Inti Creates continues to fumble around with the Gunvolt formula in an almost shameful manner.
• Fight Knight - Recommended(Conditionally) - A spirited and lovingly crafted dungeon puzzler married to Punchout on crack.
• TMNT Shredder's Revenge - Not Recommended - The turtles are back in a beat-em-up that is only slightly better than your hazy memories of mashing buttons as a kid.
• Final Vendetta - Recommended - SNK tier sprites attached to an indie beat-em-up good enough to earn them.
• The House of the Dead Remake - Recommended - The OG lightgun game gets the most loving remaster possible.
• Conquest of Elysium 5 - Recommended - A 4X game with roguelike random craziness that manages to be both coffee break and beer and pretzels but with little strategy.
• Vengeful Guardian Moonrider - Recommended - Retro homage to Shinobi meets Mega Man X that does right by both.
• Samurai Warriors: Spirit of Sanada - Recommended - Samurai Warriors 4 gets a Sanada focused sendoff to be both a great musou and a great musou story.
• Castlevania Advance Collection - Recommended - Handheld metroidvania classics.
• Lost Dimension - Recommended - Japanese SRPG heavy on skill trees and action and light on story and downtime.
• ZeroRanger - Recommended - Indie shmup light on the colors and heavy on the action.
• Assault Spy - Recommended^{(Game of the Year)} - Japanese indie dev comes out of nowhere with a total masterpiece to remind Platinum and Capcom what stylish action truly SHOULD be.
• Metallic Child - Not Recommended - Cute and funny robot action roguelite brought to you by Korean indie devs.
• Actraiser Renaissance - Recommended(Conditionally) - The original god-sim mixed with action platformer returns blending a THIRD genre into this hotpot.
• Oneechanbara Origin - Recommended - Hack and slash zombie slayer reaching for the character action stars
• Spark the Electric Jester - Recommended - Sonic fangame designer makes his own commercial game, 2D Sonic meets Kirby
• Spark the Electric Jester 3 - Recommended - Same Sonic fangame designer makes the best 3D Boost Sonic game in years
• Kamiwaza - Way of the Thief - Recommended(Conditionally) - Way of the Samurai devs make an action burglary stealth mishmash
• Cyber Shadow - Recommended - Classic NES style Ninja Gaiden with graphics to match
• Melty Blood Type Lumina - Not Recommended - A mistake
• Battle Brothers - Recommended - Strategy RPG about losing men and rebuilding from scratch constantly with Sid Meier's Pirates/Mount and Blade sandbox play in its DNA
• Bladestorm: The Hundred Years War - Not Recommended - Musou devs trying their hand at movie style medieval war combat
• Cogmind - Not Recommended - Classic style roguelike about a robot attaching parts to himself
• Touhou Genso Wanderer Reloaded - Not Recommended - Touhou meets Mystery Dungeon
• Shattered Pixel Dungeon - Recommended - Classic style roguelike distilled to be playable on phones
• Jupiter Hell - Not Recommended - Classic style roguelike DoomRL follow-up, lots of guns, more demons
• River City Saga: Three Kingdoms - Recommended - Kunio and the gang beat each other up again only this time it is set in Romance of the Three Kingdoms China.
• Samurai Bringer - Recommended - Bizarre mix of action roguelite, Warriors Orochi endless mode type play, and God Hand style moveset building
• Gunvolt 3 - Recommended - Inti Creates makes another score attack Mega Man-alike only this one is about zipping from enemy to enemy and never touching the ground.
• Super Bullet Break - Not Recommended - Deckbuilding roguelike heavy on cute anime girls and light on gameplay
• Warriors All Stars - Recommended - Musou crosses over with a half dozen different Koei-Tecmo IPs to battle furries

Quick takes, short one line impressions, and other thoughts too short to be put into a review.

• Roguelites: TMDvidya's official opinion is that roguelites (That is to say, action roguelike themed games.) are almost all garbage. They are arcade games that exchange good level design for random level design. The only acceptable exceptions are as follows: 20XX, 30XX, One Step from Eden.
• Ninja Gaiden Sigma 1: NGS1 is close enough to NGB that if it is the only NG1 version you have, you'll be fine. It still holds up today as an unmatched exemplar of the genre. The thrill you get from just fighting a half dozen mook ninjas in one room has not been duplicated since and is a unique joy that only NGB/NGS1 can give you.
• Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2: NGS2 is good but only because NG2 was good, and if you did not know any better it could pass as a top ten action game you have ever played. However, it hobbles along, surgery scars throbbing and infected from being hacked apart by a dev team that was not smart enough to make the changes they tried for this version and ended up butchering one of the most original and insane action games ever made. Seldom do you have a game where it is both good and a crime. You may want to seek mods if you are stuck with this version.
• Gungrave GORE: Gungrave GORE is a modern PS2 era shooter calling right back to that era where you could try basically any combo of mechanics in a genre and see what works, so we have a shooter that is not at all about shooting accurately. The game bursts with love, in mechanical design, in art, in music, but NOT in encounter design so you have 9 hours of the same fight repeated endlessly. Needed to be half the length or needed to revisit ways to make the shooting less boring. (2022-12-5 update: The latest patch does improve the gameplay quite a bit by adding auto-fire as an awkward toggle and speeding up your movement, but that will only make things play better for a session or two before the slog sets back in.)
• Gal Gun 2: Literally the only reason I do not have a Galgun 2 review for you guys is that the game is so glacially slow and boring that I have not been able to get any date encounters unlocked so I can get a picture of the girls of my choice stepping on (you) which is, of course, a complete requirement for providing a review. But the important takeaway for you lot is that GG2's pacing is utterly dreadful and almost intolerable; which is impressive, managing to make a game where schoolgirls try to kiss, propose, molest, and violate you into something boring.
• Spelunker HD and Spelunker Party: The rebirth of Spelunker is as surprising as it is cruel. But neither game devolves to kaizo bullshit, shockingly. You die a lot, but the game design remains fairly slow paced and almost relaxing. It knows what you cannot do and does not make much sport of it. You can always stop and catch your breath and things that kill you do not jump out and surprise you usually. As a result most of your deaths are your muscle memory forgetting what sort of game you are playing. Party is a remake of the F2P Spelunker World with all the F2P stuff sanded off. It is awkward, especially in the vestiges of the F2P loot system, but the smaller more focused levels does help make the game more charming. What is not charming is the truly insulting amount of replay you would have to do to collect all the items. The Switch/PS4 remake of Spelunker HD adds an "Endless Cave NEO" mode where you play a randomly generated endless cave but I cannot imagine anyone engaging in this mode for longer than 5 minutes and the complete absolute lack of even a single person playing that mode seriously bolsters my point.
• Natsuki Chronicles: Natsuki Chronicles is a horizontal shmup that exists to give a backstory to a side character from Ginga Force but the story is not only terrible, the story mode itself is a terrible way to play even and especially for newbies because so many of the levels require specific weapon sets that are given to you in arcade mode but you must equip from story mode, so good luck guessing what you need for each level, or even that the weapon you need EXISTS. Only the rocking soundtrack really justifies this.
• AI: The Somnium Files: Localized "lolicon" to "pedo."
• Puyo Puyo Tetris 2: Not only does this have denuvo for no reason but the degenerate freak localizating it thinks "Urusai... URUSAI!" translates to "Your mouth. It's spewing nonsense. Shut it."
• ED-0 Zombie Uprising: Still in early access, so no review yet. ED-0 Zombie Uprising is utterly confusing. I have no idea what is being attempted here and I'm not sure the devs do either. It's an action roguelite but the action is mostly weak and the game focuses more on attacking less and stacking items more, which makes it feel like a Mystery Dungeon roguelike dungeon crawl cast as a real time 3D action game. All your good attacks are special moves you equip in the dungeon that are on 5 or so second cooldowns so you spam those at zombies and run away and hope the zombies don't run as fast. It is strangely experimental and compelling despite all that just because it is designed by such insane retards. And the plot hook is great: What if the black ships were ZOMBIES?