Recent reviews by Solar

Difficult, painstakingly tedious, and at times downright infuriating, Chip's Challenge lures unsuspecting players in with easy to grasp mechanics, simple enemies and items, and charming retro visuals. That being said, only the most masochistic of players will manage to stick around for the especially evil later levels: dying at a later part of the level and having to redo everything over and over again will be something you'll need to get used to.

I want to highlight especially levels 133 Blobdance, 89 Block Buster, and 87 Cityblock, in descending 'suffering experienced' order. At least half of my playtime was concentrated in just these 3 levels - whereas other levels can be completed in a matter of minutes. Blobdance and Cityblock tried my patience like nothing else, though I would discover Block Buster to be significantly easier with pause buffering.

Despite how (131) Totally Unfair some of the levels may be, Chip's Challenge still offers swaths of genuinely engaging and fun puzzles within its 150 levels. Take, say, 122 Totally Fair. You're tasked with acquiring 5 chips to get to the ending, 3 of which are right in front of your spawnpoint. However, trying to get the last two results in you getting stuck in a trap, and unable to move further. You'll have to brave venturing into the monster's territory to first survive, and then find a way to manipulate the chomper into standing on the unlock switch for you. Solving that would draw out a sense of satisfaction out of anybody. But even better, is when you get to revisit the concept again in 131 Totally Unfair, and then you notice all the extra things put in place for you to redo the solution in an even more clever manner.

Similarly, many of the later levels, like 120 Alphabet Soup, 134 Pain, and 123 The Prisoner had me pleasantly surprised with their fair levels of difficulty, despite seeming virtually unapproachable at first. Being able to work through these puzzles from my childhood on the steam port of this game was a ton of fun, and well worth experiencing for honing one's puzzle-solving skills.

PS. Hint for the final level: Block flicking is doable on the steam version, whereas it wasn't present in the original MS version. Block flicking is where you walk straight along besides a block, and just before you leave the tile, press the directional key as if you were to move into the block whilst still holding down the key to go straight. This makes this level so much more reasonable not having to die each time you check a block.

I bought this game without knowing much of it other than recommendations, so I'll try to summarize it and its strengths and weaknesses.

Persona 4 Golden is a JRPG, wrapped in a visual novel. Expect slow, grindy pacing, with focus on character development and social interactions. The combat is very responsive, and the dungeons were exciting, especially with end of combat "shuffle time" mechanic, which added not-insignificant bonuses to every hallway fight. This kept me engaged through ~2-4 hour dungeons of slowly walking around, looking for the next enemy, treasure chest or stairs.

Speaking of slow, however, there's a lot of downtime in this game. Note JRPGs and Visual Novels are both known for being slow paced, and P4G does not particularly exempt itself from this. Untoggleable combat animations, a 10 second unskippable cutscene for every all-out attack (finishing move you will see very often), slow walking speed and 5 second loading screens make the dungeons have more downtime than I'd like. The visual novel side of the game is no better. Those 5 second loading screens show up way too often in your day - after and before every cutscene, after and before every day period (morning, lunchtime, daytime, after school, evening), whenever you move into a new area, whenever you do any action that consumes time. In addition, levelling up your social skills gives you an initial 10 second slow cutscene - as well as for your final level, and every level up in between ~5 seconds as well. A lot of this downtime adds up! I'd wager 1/4 of my playtime is spent waiting to press continue. I would play P4G while having something else to distract me when I have to wait.

As far as the visual novel side of things, it's done well. The dialogue is interesting, funny, and frequently emotional. Some are done better than others, but Ryotaro's social link really stood out for me, while some like Naoto's don't follow from the individual events to social connections.

The story is interesting. On one hand, it has your generic JRPG stereotype - high school kids band together, eventually saving the world through the (literal) power of friendship. The game is quite aware of this though, even mentioning it at a certain point. P4G sells itself in its quirkiness - it manages to really tell stories of internal conflict and display it in colourful, flamboyant ways.

The artstyle is something you'll quickly notice to be really good. Even the simple black and red wavy lines make me feel anxious and inquisitive, and you'll see them ingame represented as the entrance to the dungeons! Once you enter a dungeon, though, the atmosphere changes completely. The visuals make themselves known to the player very quickly, immediately expressing the intentions and feelings behind the dungeon's creators. The enemies are somewhat cute, but the bosses are seriously stunning. Each one communicates so much through their artwork, it's hard to put into words.

The music in the game is catchy to the point of being annoying. It never feels out of place, rather, it immerses you into the environment and setting, so much so that when it suddenly disappeared, I found myself appreciating the music even more. Usually, I'm not a big fan of the creepy/scary BGM, but in P4G it's my favourite track out of all of them, which I think attests to its greatness.

The art, themes and humour are all subjective, however - as an Asian male I imagine I'm in the target demographic. Your mileage may vary.

At the end of the day, it's really easy to launch P4G for a quick session, before you see 12 hours go by and it's time to wake up. The experience is immersive, enjoyable and exciting, as it dangles the next story thread in front of you, but out of reach. I had a ton of fun! I hope you do too... thanks for reading :)

Reminiscent of Harvest Moon and Rune Factory, but a nice balance between farming, socialing and story.