Recent reviews by Kynor

Very nice experience, very little gameplay. Tales of the Black Forest is a relatively short suspense adventure game. Despite the horror tag, I don't feel like there's much horror in it. The translation style can feel wonky at times, but it's perfectly understandable and the story is pretty well-written, so it didn't bother me much. The game involves a mix of Japanese mythology and real happenings from recent history, which make the experience very interesting.

Unpolished but fun arcade racer with licensed cars. Runs well on low-end machines without looking ugly.
Includes car customization (although not for all cars), a unique garage upgrade and management system, and nice physics once you get to the fast cars.

Despite its positives, Gear.Club 2 features bland track designs (at least in the main mode), tacked-in "rally" races that have nothing to do with actual rally or even rally cross, and a clunky livery editor that doesn't offer as much versatility as it could.

What really got my attention, however, was the Endurance side content (originally DLC, but included by default in the Steam version), which is practically a whole side career taking place in mostly fictional racing circuits, which are more fun and interesting than the game's usual street tracks. It features tire and fuel management, and the physics feel different and somehow better than the main career mode.

Getting 100% on Gear.Club 2 must take very long, since there's a lot of side content and optional races, but if you want more excuses to race, that's actually positive.

Raiden, but freaky.

Angel at Dusk is a power fantasy shmup. That's not to say it's bad, but most of it was made with beginners in mind, and it won't appease most of the hardcore shoot 'em up fans.

The game offers three distinct Arcade campaigns, all with unique levels and bosses, and the Chronicle mode, which is a long mode progression and customizable abilities. Chronicle mode is, of course, not made for veterans, and this might be a problem because it needs to be cleared in order to unlock the third Arcade campaign. I personally did not have an issue with this, as the later levels of Chronicle mode offer a good challenge, and figuring out the best weapons and stage routes is useful for playing Arcade later on.

The Arcade modes themselves each have three difficulties, the last of which I found to be the most fun (even though I'm quite bad at shmups). The game is very forgiving when it comes to survival play, and allows many misses before you get a game over. This causes score play to be the most fun, and Angel at Dusk does a great job introducing score even to beginners. The score system is simple, you get more points the closer you are to the enemy as you kill it. What makes it especially rewarding is that score doubles as experience points, which upgrades your ship, making it visibly larger and its shots more powerful. Upon getting hit, your score/exp received gets a 10% penalty for a while, so you're still encouraged to play clean, especially if you're trying to climb the online leaderboards. There's also many unlockable ships, each with its own score rate (to keep the most powerful ones less competitive when it comes to scoring).

Another thing Angel at Dusk does exceptionally well is the presentation. It's filled with beautiful thematic art, from the title screen, to the angel designs, and to the HUD itself. The visual and audio feedback makes destroying pieces of large enemies and collecting items extra rewarding. Charged shots feel powerful and push back enemy bullets, allowing you to fight back the densest of enemy barrages. The screen shake, meaty sounds, animated sprites, and chunks of enemies exploding contribute to form an extremely satisfying experience. Despite that, I changed the bullets to "e-sports mode" to make them more visible, since the game offers such accessibility options.

The game's lore is very interesting to read, which is unexpected for this type of game, but you'll need to read it in your log collection, because it goes by very fast during gameplay.

Angel at Dusk is worth playing simply for the art and experience themselves, but there is a lot to love here. If you are a beginner, this can be your chance to learn to enjoy a new genre. If you're a veteran, this can be a relaxing break from the demanding arcade difficulty and a subversive, refreshing take on shmups made by someone who loves them and understands them like you do (in contrast to the likes of Cygni).

Fun shmup by the developers of Castle of Shikigami. Very accessible to beginners and quite generous with resources, depending on how willing you are to score. The scoring system, mostly based on grazing, is very fun to engage in and causes different characters, who have very unconventional and distinct moves, to be rewarded for wildly different playstyles.

That all being said, I don't see myself playing it for much longer because it doesn't feel as exciting as I've come to expect from shmups, especially of the bullet hell variety. The slow scrolling, goofy music and cute artstyle don't exactly build a lot of the tension and thrill of other bullet hells. Overall I'd say it's a good and well done game, but it's not very exciting.

Free and fun roguelike 2D shooter with a cute art style. The game is pretty hard but it feels generally fair. Although the weapons are very distinct and interesting (and somethimes very bad), learning the enemies and especially the boss patterns is your main way of getting better runs. Worth a try if you want a challenge.

Nice Mario-styled platformer with a copy mechanic similar to Kirby's.
Visually, the levels look quite underwhelming, but the gameplay and level design are very enjoyable. Difficulty feels right and it's rarely frustrating. Finding ways to collect every star in each level keeps even the easiest ones interesting, and it's fun to explore stages to find different endings, which lead to different stages in the map.
There is a much harder version of the game called Tobari 2: Nightmare. It's sold separately and it's only for kaizo enjoyers, so if you're into extremely hard and precise platformers, maybe try that version instead.

Amazing shmup for beginners such as myself. Normal mode is accessible but still challenging, but there are much harder modes for experienced players. Level design is heavily inspired by earlier Cave games and feels very satisfying and well made. There are multiple selectable special weapons, which fit drastically different playstyles and heavily affect scoring routes. Scoring rewards the player with extends, forcing the player to engage in the scoring mechanics, which are a lot of fun. Visuals and music are great. I have nothing to complain about, Blue Revolver is a really well made shmup that any type of player can enjoy.

"We have Ridge Racer at home", but home is in Scotland.

The game consists only of time trials, but it looks and plays great. Definitely deserves more attention.

Classic tactical RPG that holds up pretty well to this day. As someone that doesn't usually have the patience to play any older tactical games, the gameplay in Disgaea feels pretty fast. Building a team feels satisfying due to the many ways of increasing stats and how much unit customization there is (although not nearly as much as in the later NIS games). That's not to say the game is balanced, some classes are objectively inferior to others, and there is one post-game class that is simply better than every other in the game (including the main characters).

The story is better than I expected, it's fun and lighthearted, but has some very good and even emotional points. Part of that may be due to my expectations for it being relatively low, knowing it is a satirical game. I didn't expect actual character development and likeable characters among the humour and tropes.

There is some post-game content and very strong superbosses, but getting to them involves a lot of grinding, and figuring out faster ways to grind and power up your units. If you don't enjoy that, you might not engage with this part of the game. Either way, finishing the story can take about 40 hours, so there's still plenty of content in the main progression.

From the few tactical NIS games I have played, they have a very distinct and pleasant feel to them that I can't really put into words, but for that reason, I do recommend giving them a try.