Recent reviews by XenoBits

Balatro has very quickly become one of my favorite games ever. From its clean art direction to the mesmerizing soundtrack to the addictive gameplay, Balatro is a masterclass in innovation and creativity. I struggle to explain in words how good it feels to play Balatro. It's a game with near infinite replayability and with even more content on the horizon I can't wait to see what LocalThunk has in store for us.

I often forget to eat when I play this game.

Final Fantasy IV is the the first game in the series that truly shows what Final Fantasy is capable of. To put it simply, Great story, interesting characters, and we FINALLY have the ATB. The scope of this game surpasses even FFIII, which was ambitious in it own right and that's mainly due to the much higher power of the Super Nintendo. Cecil is the first main character that I feel like we can connect with as well, and seeing how he and his party members are changed by the journey is interesting.

This port seems to remove several annoyances from the original like the fact you could lose equipment on party members that left your party. However, the postgame is still painstakingly slow in that you have to grind insane amounts for certain items for the 100%.

I would still highly recommend this game and it's a worthy addition to the Final Fantasy series.

FFIII is probably the best of the Final Fantasy NES games. It takes the foundation that FFI provided and the innovations from FFII to create a game that was very ambitious in scope for the time. The concept of "Jobs" is introduced for the first time and allows for an insane amount of replayability. While I am not a fan of them reverting MP to a level based system rather than a point based system, I think the battle system overall was been improved by a variety of new action commands. The story was also very nice and, while basic, put a smile on my face. FFIII is certainly the best NES Final Fantasy and I would recommend it highly.

This is a very cautious recommendation. I'd say only play if you're an Final Fantasy fan who is interested. Everyone else steer clear. I haven't played the original game, but I can say that the Pixel Remaster probably makes the experience much more bearable. FF2 has a reputation as the "worst" Final Fantasy and I could see why people say that. It's definitely the most cryptic and grindy one that I've played. I would HIGHLY recommend using a spoiler free guide to play so you don't pull your hair out. (Also make sure to do the English text fix.)

Anyway, the story is serviceable, but definitely better than FF1. I surprisingly found the battles in this game to be fun for about the first half of the game, but after I gamed the system I just steamrolled everything sadly. I think I heard somewhere that some bosses are weaker? Dungeons are the worst part of this game. Way too long, too many encounters, and too many dead ends. I hesitate to call the Pixel Remaster bad, but I wouldn't say it's good either.

Very solid port. I know that the PSP version is probably better, but honestly this version is nice too. The new soundtrack is very nice and the gameplay has aged well with the help of some quality of life changes. My only complaints are that I had to patch the text to look nice and that the menus have a little lag. Overall, just a nice little game.

I got this game during the Steam Summer Sale and I was excited. I really liked playing SC previously and I wanted to see what the new one was all about. Unfortunately, the Online Mode is completely devoid of life. There are about 3 people floating around on Ranked and that's it. You can't even find a Casual Room either. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be playing much XCVI since there's no one to play with.

Very solid roguelike. There's a lot of content in this game for a pretty low pricetag. You're able to customize your builds and characters a lot and it feels like there's a really good sense of progression. Postgame content is pretty great too! Only issue is sometimes I have a tough time finding rooms open in multiplayer.

Great follow up to the previous game. There was a much needed difficulty spike as these games tend to be easier as you go. Much more customization on how you want to play and what factors you can influence on the field.

A great spin on the visual novel genre. You can tell that a lot of love went into this game.