Recent reviews by Switchell #RIPLittleBigPlanet

0/10 You can't romance Waterboy

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I like this game more than Mario Kart World. And by a lot.

I'm not a fan of sokoban games, and despite growing up with the Gameboy, I find it hard going back to grayscale pixel art games; I can completely look past both of those with how beautiful this game is. This is one of the best games from 2023 and I'm upset I didn't hear of it sooner.

My only tip: Don't ever assume you understand the rules of this game. You are wrong.
And thank you, Mr. Eyepatch Wolf for recommending this game.

Close enough. Welcome back LittleBigPlanet Karting.

Quick edit: I wrote this review before I beat the game. Just beat it, but my overall opinion hasn't changed.

I haven't yet beaten the game, but I'm getting really close to the end. This is the type of game where I wish Steam had a stars-based rating system instead of thumbs up or thumbs down. I'd give it 4/5 because this game is not GOTY-worthy, but it is still good and I recommend it. But this does not come even close to the highs of other JRPGs like Chrono Trigger, Xenoblade, or even Persona.

This game just feels like they threw every single JRPG into a blender, and made the single most unoriginal JRPG Atlus has ever made. If you've played multiple JRPGs, this game's story is probably going to be extremely predictable to you. There's one plot twist in particular that happened around the halfway point that I saw coming since the first hour of the game. Thankfully the character writing hard-carries the story despite how predictable it is.

For the most part, the game feels well-balanced but with one really bad exception: Faker is absolutely busted, and when combined with the retry function, absolutely breaks the game. Being able to gain extra turns almost for free, even if there's only like a 20% chance is stupid when you can just keep starting each encounter over-and-over until that 20% chance succeeds. I like the idea of gaining extra turns, but the execution here is terrible. The game just straight up encourages you to unfairly exploit its mechanics. There are multiple ways to fix this, with IMO the best one just having set random seeds per-battle, so if you retry a low-success skill that failed, it always fails if you use it the same time you previously did.

I'm complaining a lot in this review, but that's because all the positives are outlined by other people's reviews here, and I don't have anything new to say on that front. UI is gorgeous. Despite its issues, combat is snappy. Soundtrack is amazing. Yeah I don't have anything new to really add there, but the praise is mostly all true. Again, it's all overdone and predictable, but it is still very well-crafted.

A few more points that are very mild spoilers:
1. Batlin is the best character in the game and I'm angry he never joins your party.
2. Catherina is the best character in the game and I'm angry she never joins your party.
3. Funny Valentine Louis did nothing wrong (probably, idk I haven't beaten the game *just* yet, but like 20ish days away from beating it). Also Louis is the best character in the game and I'm angry he never joins your party.

Words can't describe the pure catharsis of picking up two robots, slamming them into each other head-first, then chucking yourself forward towards the next enemy while dragging the bodies of the first two robots on the ground with you. I can't see a game like this existing outside of VR, and I hope to see more games like this from the devs in the future.

I mean it's okay, but is this game worth paying the extra money it costs on top of all you have to pay for a VR headset? Get this game on sale. The house is very nice though, so still recommend even if not at full price.

Not gonna lie, the level design sucks for this level. Shame given base game Shadow Generations had the best level design the series has ever seen IMO.

I honestly don't even really like Marvel but this game is peak. Imagine Overwatch if it were good basically.

- Starts game as investigator and spawns with player A
- I immediately tell A that I'm secretly L (I'm not)
- Get assigned a joint task with player G by the real L
- Go to complete it with G
- Tell G "Hey so I'm not actually L, but I told A that I'm L"
- Proceeds to immediately die right as I finish that sentence, with G hearing my final words
- A just accidentally outed himself by killing me

The easy comparison here is Among Us, but if you've ever played Untrusted (RIP), I almost want to say that's the closer comparison. But it does a great job of standing on its own and feels like much more than just an Among Us clone.