Recent reviews by Esytha

I have only been playing this game for a short time, and I can already tell I'm going to become addicted. This scratches the Recettear shop management sim itch for me - and it also has gorgeous pixel art! The rhythm game elements are an added plus, too.

My favorite part of the game, so far, is strategizing to figure out how to best serve your rare customers what they want. I recommend looking at a guide if you're having trouble figuring out tags or if you want some clarification on the more hidden mechanics.

All in all, I highly recommend Mystia's Izakaya (even if you haven't watched/played any other Touhou media)!

it's peam

After reading some of the other reviews for this game, I have to say I feel like the "coziness" and "simplicity" of this game is more of a detriment for me than it is a strength of the game. I didn't really feel gripped. The combat and platforming didn't feel all too good and meaningful - floaty is a great way to describe it. I don't think it'll necessarily get any better with time, either. Upgrades are lackluster, and boss fights/challenge rooms were especially disappointingly easy. Cute, but not for me!

I really only wanted to write a review for Cassette Beasts after finishing the game and getting the full experience. I have a lot to say about its pros, cons, and why I still think it's worth playing despite having struggled to even start it. So, let's get into it.


Cassette Beasts has a lot to offer for a unique monster-catcher that I find different from Pokemon and other games that try to be like it, primarily in its creative typing system. At first, I found types like Plastic, Glass, Astral, and Glitter to be wacky for the sake of being wacky. It was admittedly kind of a turn-off. However, I think they do a lot to make the monster design really inspired by the types they want to portray. You come to love your Plastic and Astral monsters a lot, and embrace that system more as you find out more interactions as the game goes on. It's especially fun to realize what types work best in fusions.

The monster designs are also all-around excellent in general, as are the Archangels. The sheer amount of split evolutions gives you a great motivation to catch multiples of a monster. And unlike in Pokemon, where I'd have a star team I'd carry with me to the end, I was constantly swapping out monsters just to see what they'd turn into. It kept the game super fresh and exciting. Having your level tied to your character rather than your monster was also a huge plus! Gone are the days of swapping party members just to grind; simply peel a great sticker off of a monster you've leveled, slap it on a monster that needs a boost, and go to town while you level it up.

The music for fusions is great, the ending fight feels awesome, the map of New Wirral is fun to explore, and the game's traversal mechanics are especially interesting (who needs double jump when you can magnetize yourself to a pylon?). So... what's there not to like?


Outside of the beast designs, I think Cassette Beast's art is... lackluster. It's not bad, it's just *fine*. Mediocre. My issue isn't with the quality of the animations or the love put into the character portraits, I just think all of the characters look really uninspired. You tire of the pastel palettes pretty quickly. Kayleigh and Eugene especially are forgettable in both their quests and design. You have such limited options for character creation, I bought myself the Fashionista DLC just to walk around with a sprite I *vaguely* liked that didn't resemble me in any way. Don't expect to unlock any cool new outfit options either: what you start with is what you get. Fusions get pretty ugly too, since I think a lot of them are just parts mishmashed together without a lot of additional polish. You'll be looking forward to slapping two cool monsters together, only for the resulting fusion to be the equivalent of a bulky stick figure with a weird head.

It's also abundantly clear there were some parts of the game that received more love than others, especially later on. Where some quests and partners (EUGENE) are so un-fleshed out that you actively dread having to go out of your way to do them, other partner quests have their own attached areas (Merideth) or even unique monsters associated with them (Felix). Small pockets of the world map leave you wanting more than just a ranger fight (Ham and New London come to mind), while others overstay their welcome (Autumn Hill). There desperately needs to be an update for older parts of the game to match newer ones, and I imagine this is a symptom of putting out content as the game developed on Itch.Io.

There's a couple of other misc. problems I had that I'm sure other people have spoken for already: some types are absolutely unbalanced (looking at you, Astral) or have next to no meaningful interactions with other types, sorting through the sticker menu or the fusion gallery is abysmal, and there's no way to take monsters off of partners without swapping partners (this is especially a headache if you just want to put a partner to the side with a junk monster or if you left a great monster on a partner you don't care about). The ending of Cassette Beasts was also really underwhelming. I won't spoil it, but it disappointed me greatly that the ending to the journey went the way it did.


I think Cassette Beasts has a lot of merit and charm that warrants playing it, even if it also has its problems. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. It's the best non-Pokemon monster tamer I've tried, and it has both great bones and great polish. It's just also really hard to overlook its annoyances at times. I hope they fix a lot of the issues I had with it in the next possible installment, and I also hope a lot more people play this game and mod it to be even better than it is. My friends had a lot of fun watching it and commenting on the evolutions, too. It's a fun game to stream, even funner as a game to play to relax. Here's to whatever Bytten Studio does next!

Also Sunny so should've been a partner. We were robbed.

There's a lot you could say about Webfishing: the fact that it revives a fallen genre, its cute art style (and off-white colors being easy on the eyes), the community, the variety of the fish you can catch... but ultimately, it's just a really good, fun gameplay loop. You catch fish, you make money, you upgrade your bait and rod, and then you catch better fish, all while chatting with pals. It's easy to hop on and connect with people in a fun space without all the unnecessary bells and whistles (and price tag) many other multiplayer games nowadays front with. Genuinely one-of-a-kind.

Slay the Princess is a narrative masterpiece that deserves all of the praise it gets. Many hours in, you'll still find yourself having new feelings about the Princess, seeing scenes you've never looked at before, and deriving new meaning from the messages it ultimately wants to send. The Pristine Cut especially adds enough new content to warrant a replay for every person who's already explored Slay The Princess's original routes, particularly in giving much love to princesses that were otherwise content-low.

I can't recommend this game enough for anyone who loves a game with a good narrative, and it's wonderful to stream for friends who are either doing something else and want to parallel play, or who enjoy helping you make the occasional tough decision. There is so much complexity, so much work put into the hand-drawn art, and so much to find for the avid completionist.

I also don't think I understood the title screen at first. How could this game possibly be a love story? It really only clicked for me on the second playthrough, and now I firmly believe it. This game oozes with love in all of its routes. You just have to trust it.

I feel like this Ace Attorney installment got some poor advertisement when it made it to the states. When I saw a lot of the trailers for it in Nintendo Directs and the like, it seemed like a juvenile series introduction for new fans. The new mechanics looked gimmicky at best and childish at worst. Playing the game for myself, however, they're actually really surprisingly fun. Sure, they ooze with cheese, but when has this series ever not been cheesy? If anything, the jury and Herlock Sholmes deductions add an extra fresh spin on the usual trial or investigation proceedings.

This is to say nothing of the story and characters. Herlock and Ryunosuke are full to bursting in personality in their dialogue and physical actions, the cases are informed by the innovations and limitations of the times, and each new character design retains its signature Ace Attorney series charm. It's also great to play and stream for friends! They love seeing the antics and putting their heads together with me to figure out where the trial might end up going next.

In conclusion, I highly recommend this as an installment for newcomers and veterans alike. Don't be dissuaded by the marketing! See for yourself how good it is.

this is kinda like cookie run

In Stars and Time was a game I had to obsessively finish - I could not, for the life of me, put it down. I was charmed by the initial demo, which spotlighted the game's combat system and charming art style. I wasn't even really intending to buy it at full price until I saw how fantastic and beautiful the fanart was, and I figured "There has to be something special about this game."

And special it was.

The experience of playing through this game has you mirroring a lot of the emotions held within it: the feelings of isolation, depression, and madness. Beyond that, using time loops as a mechanism to tell the story is ingenious, especially when you start to play more for efficiency than for experience. I chalk a lot of this up to the writer being incredibly experienced, but also due to the characters of ISAT being around for a long time. Their dialogue feels real, and I find myself feeling seen playing this game in a way that no one else has seen me. Not even my therapists, friends, or family understand me truly as well as I have felt this game has in multiple ways.

This game is going to become a comforting new favorite of mine. I cannot begin to express the joy and relief I felt at reaching its ending. It felt almost like a personal journey just for me, like it reached out and touched me in just the right way. I can only hope other people who need this game find the same relief I did watching Siffrin and their friends. Please play it. Know that everything is going to be okay.

Listen, you hear everybody all the time on social media going "PLAY GHOST TRICK DON'T LOOK INTO ANYTHING ABOUT IT JUST PLAY IT RIGHT NOW" and I was like, "is Ghost Trick REALLY THAT GOOD?"

Yeah. It's that good. Play Ghost Trick right now. Don't look into anything about it. Just play it. Right now. It's an incredible piece of story with really fun and innovative gameplay! It's like nothing you've ever experienced before, guaranteed. Play it even if the gameplay doesn't interest you at first, play it even if you're a skeptic. Stop reading this review and GO!