Recent reviews by The Trousers

Labyrinth Of The Demon King is a really interesting blend of concepts and the result is an excellent Survival Horror, First-Person Melee dungeon crawl with upgrade mechanics and light puzzles. Inspirations stemming from Silent Hill/Resident Evil, King's Field and even Condemned: Criminal Origins; it carries these torches delightfully even if it's occasionally easy.

I received this game for free to look at it early in its 1.0 version and made a more full VIDEO review for your perusal:
https://youtu.be/oVe7aPAlfn0?si=kIJW9KUhtS3cukwY

Put simply, I completely adore Growing My Grandpa! It's incredible use of tessellation, 3d renders, music and immaculate writing put it easily as my favorite game I've played this year, in 2024.

It's a game about a girl, Adrienne, in definite need of love and escape by means of growing her grandpa back into her life. It features feeding, taking care of and teaching a grandpa of your own, and following the thread of Adrienne's life, background and her grandpa's research. All written really effectively with its faux research documents feeling like genuine articles of non-existent beings while tying it to real-world religion. There's a humor to it all, with notions of finding old bananas and cashews in old cabinets and trash piles to feed your grandpa, but still maintaining its dark atmosphere really effectively.

It's short, roughly 2 hours, and easy to attain both endings, but it's a real treat for every sense. It hit every single aspect of its presentation *PERFECTLY* with me.

Check it out! And if you want a more thorough review, I made one, without as many spoilers as I could:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy2CZwEM0FE

Persona 5 Royal is a revision to Persona 5 that grants some refinements to where Persona 5 fell short a la Persona 4 Golden compared to Persona 4.

Persona 5 Royal (P5R going forward) is an exceptional turn-based JRPG focused around a group of rebellious high school students in Tokyo who call themselves the "Phantom Thieves". They find themselves in possession of the power of Persona, to summon a being made manifest by their willingness to rebel against those who abuse their power. They "take the hearts" of those abusers to make them confess their sins against society, by finding their alternate version of their domain and taking their Treasure.

It has a heavy focus on the aesthetic of rebellion and thieving, which the team behind P5R EXCELLED. Every aspect of this game's presentation is nigh-immaculate from its UI, character design, and music. It provides a spectacularly soothing or suave mood. It's easy to get caught up staring at the visual candy staring at it while Shoji Meguro provides easily my favorite soundtrack in a video game with Lyn Inaizumi providing some incredible vocals. Just standing inside the cafe Leblanc on a rainy evening just feels so good. The presentation is EASILY the strongest point of P5 and P5R.

The story follows the Phantom Thieves (of Hearts) slowly growing in number as they target different abusive "adult" (they keep referring to any of the targets as no-good "adults", which sounds immature, but I'm not sure what the actual translation would be) and garnering the attention of the world. All of this while also uncovering what the "Metaverse" is and why any of this Persona and Palace stuff works as it does. Why people are both having changes of hearts or breaking down and dying. It all seems related. It's interesting to say the least, and it can be compelling. And throw in the later Persona staple of spending time with your team and other outcasts. Their stories can range from being interesting to being only kind of. It also has some faults by having some weird moments where it feels like something is very obvious and isn't picked up on by the cast, or the ways some stories are handled should maybe have some harsher punishments to some bad characters. It's a little up and down. But the overall core story in interesting, still. Along with Royal's new additions of redesigning Akechi's Confidant, adding in a whole new dungeon with a really solid story on top of the game. It's good stuff, albeit flawed in some ways, but I really enjoy it.

Gameplay is familiar to SMT or Persona players, which is primarily finding a weakness and exploiting it by getting extra turns, while also protecting yours. It's a lot more streamlined than those, in the sense that you get a lot more opportunities to knock down enemies and perform follow up attacks and All Out Attacks (knock every enemy down and get a chance to deal HUGE damage). Those who played previous Persona games might be a little surprised with the way that you attain Personas in this game, which is more akin to SMT games, where you have to talk to the enemies upon knocking them all down. Utilize their personality to try to goad them into joining your Persona roster. It can be a little annoying at times where certain responses can seem like the appropriate response but get the Persona pissed and attack or run away and also takes up time. But, I prefer it a lot more to the weird roulette card system from before or choosing a set of cards. The other side of the gameplay is your day-to-day talking with friends and gaining levels to your social stats (so you can talk to more people or further your relationships). The rewards are better than they used to be in Persona games. Where in the past, the team would get benefits in the fight and everyone else would just buff the EXP you'd get when you fuse Personas into different Personas of the relating Arcana. P5R gives each Social Link a set of abilities they offer to assist in your thieving or anything else. It can range from allowing you to swap party members mid-fight, making it easier to talk to Personas, or even allowing you to modify your guns to deal status effects. Most of them are really useful, with some minor losers for those buffs (sorry, Ohya, but the threat meter has never been that big of an issue). It's really rewarding on top of getting some interesting story for these characters.

There's a lot to talk about with this game. It hit people incredibly hard back when it first released. It was honestly hard to avoid someone mentioning it. Which, hey, apologies to y'all for the community for Persona, they can be pretty annoying. I'm lucky to avoid it, but still, it sounds rough out there.

One important thing that could affect someone negatively, there is a few scenes that can be homophobic in its approach. They appear quite a few hours in, around the time of the third palace and another time during summer. So, be mindful of those, before hopping in. I'd recommend looking more into the context of those scenes more, if you're concerned.

All that said, I really adore Persona 5 Royal. The aesthetics are perfect, to me. I've never fallen so deeply in love with a UI. Like seeing the trailer for the game and seeing its UI was literally what got me to try Persona 4, initially. It's really good. And if you want to try out Persona 5 Strikers, that is a really solid follow up game that feels like a perfected version of what those Musou games have been doing. It's great!

Last thought: Unlike P3P, you play as male as your only option. You can romance only the girls. You can only pretend to date the boys, via your mind.

A very impressive and unique to the incredibly popular Persona 5. Initially seeing that it was being developed by Omega Force kinda put me on guard as I've never been a big fan of the Warriors series of games, but I was still curious. Turns out that this is probably my favorite of their games. Gameplay is a surprising blend of those Warrior games (fight huge swathes of enemies who might throw in a few hits here and there) and Persona's weakness/resistance system. You have your basic combos that develop as you play each of the characters and you can bust out their Persona to do attacks that enemies are susceptible to, to knock 'em down and do an ALL OUT ATTACK that does huge damage to every enemy around. Each character has their own combo strings and variants that they learn as you play as them, so each one feels unique to each other, so try each one and they might fit your play style better than another, aside from worrying about weaknesses.

Presentation is great, aside from some minor jagged edge problems that you can fix if you look up how (I've forgotten how exactly, it's been a while, but it also made everything else a tad funky). The stylization of characters and the world is still spot on to Persona 5 (no surprise), runs mostly well and of course the music is still S-tier at worst. You'll definitely have new favorites after playing through this.

The story and new characters are also pretty solid! I love both Sophie and Zenkichi, they're colorful additions that don't feel out of place with the core cast at all. They're well fleshed-out on top of the main P5 cast getting some more time that they hadn't before and also allowed for some more interactions among each of them. Only issue is that some of the villains of each new zone you get to explore aren't as fleshed out. One being familiar with a teammate and you don't really get much more than "I thought you were good before, but now this happened and you're bad." to "Ah, sorry about the sudden bad. We cool now?" and then you leave. I mean you learn more than that, obviously, but it doesn't hit as strongly as some other characters developments. And those who played any spinoffs or the Royal version: it's focused on Persona 5. Old character portraits are used as opposed to the refreshed ones in Royal, Sumi doesn't exist in this timeline and neither does all the Royal specific changes to the story. Gonna miss Sumi, she was great and hope they push her in likely spinoffs, along with Zenkichi and Sophie but we'll see as unlikely as it is.

All in all, absolutely loved this game so much so I 100% it. A bit easier to do than core Persona 5, and on par with Persona 5 Royal. If you've played Persona 5 and loved it, absolutely hop onto this game. If you've played Persona 5 Royal and loved that, you'll be a bit saddened or confused, if that's the only version you played. Either way, it's excellent!

(PS, IF YOU'RE STRUGGLING: RYUJI IS A POWERHOUSE, UTILIZE PLAYING AS HIM.)

My 2018 Game of the Year has received its long awaited Post-Game DLC that I've been waiting for since I finished CrossCode.

And to put it mildly, I couldn't have been happier returning to this content and this tying up of loose-ends. It really was well-worth the wait!

To sum up, without spoilers, the added dungeon and puzzles were really well-made and definitely refined what made the base-game's puzzles so good. You have to be quick to solve them in some instances, but there's room for error, unlike base CrossCode's more dastardly puzzles.

The wrapping up of CrossCode's loose ends really warms my heart in a way that I didn't know it could. Hugs are still the best in videogames and after 3 years away from this game, I'm surprised in how much I missed the cast and missed their interactions. I love every single one of them. The unanswered questions go pretty much 90% answered, satisfactorily, with the 10% still leaving you a hint of mystique but potentially enough to fill in the gaps in your head. There's definitely a light paving of the path forward for Lea and gang, if Radical Fish Games were ever to pursue a sequel or anything, but I'm more than happy seeing this team make anything at all, they really showed their talent and understanding with this game and its content updates over the years.

I highly recommend A New Home if you've completed CrossCode and enjoyed it. You get to see Lea hug everyone so it is worth it, man.

Persona 4 and then Persona 4 Golden hit me in a spot I never thought anything could. I first played this with my brother from beginning to end and enjoyed deciding which activity we'd spend our day and night on, whether that'd be hanging out with a character to bolster our Social Link with them and learn their story and journey of self discovery, invest time in increasing our social stats to further our grades in school or to get that job that's been eluding us, or to just spend time saving someone in a dungeon. There's a wealth of care spent in making the world feel lived-in and rewarding to explore, even if there really isn't all that new in the town of Inaba on the daily, but definitely monthly.

The music of Persona games are often lauded and for good reason. Admittedly, the first time delving into a Persona game (specifically Persona 4, with us) I thought the music goofy until I realized, "Oh this is actually really catchy and GOOD." The music's vibrant and cheerful putting you in the mindset that the game's lessons and mood want to impart into you. Listening to Heartbeat, Heartbreak or Your Affection still affects me nostalgically. It's a stellar soundtrack!

Gameplay in terms of the dungeons comes infrequently, unless on second playthrough, usually you'd spend a solid chunk of a few hours just delving deeper and deeper into a dungeon, but only once or twice a month. Your Social Links come into play in a couple ways, with your party they improve their capabilities with either new spells or new support traits that will keep your character alive. And generally Social Links will improve your ability to create and summon stronger and better Personas, your key fighting functionality.

Much like Pokemon, you have countless options for Personas, but unlike Pokemon, you keep feeding them into each other to make ones more capable of handling harder foes in the dungeons further in. Each one with their own set of strengths and weaknesses, usually focused on the elemental weakness system that SMT has had. In Persona 4, for example, hitting an enemy who is weak to Zio-type spells with Zio spells will knock it down and give you another action. Keeping this up and knocking all foes down gives you an opportunity to do a higher damage attack. Of course, enemies can do the same back to you. It can be satisfying and infuriating at times, getting knocked and stunlocked with heavy damage to death, and if your protagonist dies (in difficulties above Easy), it's game over and back to the last load spot.

Story-wise it's a nice time trying to parse how these murders occurred, people being strung up on telephone poles is... not a common thing, so keeping up with each new party member and learning what they know and assembling an Investigation Team to move things forward is really well done. You can also romance a good chunk of the girls in the game, that you have Social Links with, if that's something you're into. Kiss them, I don't know. I don't care. No gay options, unless you find the Yosuke romance mod, if he's your cup of tea. Your character is male, and there's no other option unlike Persona 3 Portable.

There is both Japanese and English options for your vocals, so if you want to dodge a translated dub. BUT, the english dub is actually VERY, VERY well done, personally. Quality voice acting if you want to go that route. Either way, you'll be rewarded! Except if you choose Japanese vocals because Teddie's voice is TERRIBLE! Good luck!

I have not personally encountered any bugs that others have, but keep those in mind, I don't know if they've been fixed, yet!

TLDR game I wholeheartedly recommend if you're interested in a long JRPG with a focus on living in a rural town and making friends while investigating a series of murders. Also you can kiss a girl.

Currently, a very fun co-op third-person roguelike with no end goal besides BIG POINTS. (Planned endboss eventually)

This is one of those nice roguelikes where finding an item is 99% of the time a great thing. It might not be the exact item you want from a chest, but it will benefit you in some way! Gameplay mainly consists of killing enemies that endlessly spawn (initially slow) in the zone, finding chests to upgrade yourself, level up, and then find the teleporter to proceed to the next stage to spawn a boss (or bosses) and move do the loop again but with more difficulty. Gear comes at you fast and at different tiers. Generally all benefit you in significant ways whether it is an Attack Speed boost or a Tesla Coil which shoots intermittent chain lightning from you at every enemy around you.

Unlocks are primarily gained from doing in-game achievements. This includes new gear that will spawn from chests and whole character classes. It's a fun way to challenge yourself, while sometimes being a little frustrating when you don't get the best rolls to even proceed with unlocking a class.

It's a fun game to throw an hour or two at every once in a while and hope for a truly incredible run with a good combination of gear.

A beautiful return to a Castlevania: Symphony of the Night style.

It feels so much like SOTN that the same jump-attack-land-cancel-attack is still there. A definitive best-of SOTN and Order of Ecclesia. Giant recommendations to those who love their Castlevania fix!

First 8 hours in and I'm thoroughly impressed and humbled.

I consider myself a longtime fan of the Souls series and know my way around them to a pretty alright degree, for context.

With each game From Software puts out it always feels like they're honing their combat mechanics just a bit more. It isn't always immediately noticeable until you take a step back and play a previous game in their lineup. Sekiro is different in this regard. You can feel the roots of where they left off with Bloodborne/Dark Souls 3 but it's branched off significantly what with adding stealth, jumping and a lack of a stamina system, in the sense of worrying about how many rolls/attacks/actions you can perform before tuckering out just plain not existing.

What Sekiro asks you to do to kill enemies feels vastly different than anything I, personally, can point to. There's an aggression and a focus on reaction and reading your opponent's movements to accurately parry and strike when they are open.

You're primarily trying to wear down their Posture (for all intents and purposes, this is the stamina gauge) so you can push in with a Deathblow which either kills them outright or puts them in phase 2/3 of their health bar. But! You're also damaging their vitality which slows Posture recovery the more damage has been dealt to Vitality. Where this puts minibosses/bosses is a focus on dealing damage at the front of their health and then focusing back on hurting their Posture with accurately timed parries and striking when they, themselves, cannot parry. It's an interesting ebb and flow to the combat that is highly rewarding when you deplete their Posture and Deathblow.

It's also incredibly difficult. This is a key thing you have to keep in mind before entering this game. Normally you would hear about the Soulsborne games as these insurmountable games only to find that, while they are difficult, they just ask you to focus a bit more on what's happening and you can beat the odds. Sekiro asks the absolute limit (at least of me) to beat the odds. Learning to not turtle up. Learning to not hang back until you can hit a couple of times. You have to move in and get countless hits in while watching for enemy swings so you can deflect and keep pushing their Posture to the limit while maintaining your own. It's a difficult balance that I often find myself getting completely stumbling and dying relentlessly from. It's fast. Frustratingly Difficult to keep up fast, a lot of the time and it feels so GOOD when you can keep up with Sekiro and pull through on the other side. It's the Bloodborne "just barely made it" philosphy cranked up to the limit.

And throwing in the very versatile Prosthetic Arm adds an interesting variety to what you can do to keep a leg up. You get multiple upgrades that you can change on the fly (up to 3 to swap between, but you can slot them in in the PAUSE menu) that give you either ranged attacks, Damage over time effects, guard breaking, etc. using a resource that quickly replenishes through killing/finding items in the environment.

Will update more on Sekiro as I go forward, but I currently can't stop thinking about it when I'm not playing it. It's a potential Game of the Year 2019 contender in an already incredible lineup thus far and this early in the year.

Bought on a whim since I thought it looked pretty charming and fun! What I got was exactly that and more. The characters and general design are endearing to a point where I found myself heavily invested in everyone whether I hated their guts due to them being a well-constructed bad dude or hoping for nothing but success for the heroes. Everyone has their flaws as people and it consistently makes each character feel realistic for the setting and situation they're set to. Music being great is a huge plus!

The gameplay being a very metroidvania style but the upgrades are unique to this game. You acquire 4 different crafting parts that you assemble different modifiers to upgrade your character. They act as buffs (speed, wrench power, free damage negation, increased water breathing, etc) until you take damage and they can be regenerated as long as you do some puzzle solving or damage enemies. It's neat as each upgrade is applied to basically first, second and third hits you take... kinda sets you to strategize which buffs you want on the last hit so you can keep running faster or dodging for longer.

I highly recommend this game if you're looking for a nifty Metroidvania that does things a little differently! I'm definitely looking forward to whatever is done next by Joakim Sandberg!!