Recent reviews by Pickleton

While probably my favorite in the series, and a great game, I will say that this game (and RF4) was built with a DS screen size in mind, rather than a full screened monitor or heaven forbid a big screen TV.
They probably should've done a full remake for the Switch/PC release, where they made the maps/screens bigger.

That said, if you're playing this on a Steam Deck, or through Remote Play on another device, then boy is this game amazing.

This game shouldn't cost money.
This should be a minigame within a game that costs money.
An extremely easy sh'mup that on my first playthrough beat all stages in 15 minutes taking less than 5 hits (I know because I got a chievo for it).
Hit this again on my backlog of chievo hunting and managed to get all the rest of them in 2 more passes for a grand total of about 45 minutes played for 100% completion.

The only reason I can really think of to get this game over almost literally any other sh'mup is if you're a big fan of 100% Orange Juice and want to get the QP Dangerous character in 100% OJ.

Other than that, it's cute but mehhhhhhh.
I'm currently going through it on my "backlog busting", but I have to say that even compared to games that required a larger time sink, this has been an absolute slog.

The game feels more "zoomed in" than most sh'mups I've played in that the character and bullets are just so large.
And I don't mean that to say that the hitbox is too big and I need "git gud" because I keep getting hit, more that it just feels like enemy attack patterns suffer for it because there isn't much room between where the bullets spawn and the sides/bottom of the screen.
It makes the game field feel really small and kind of repetitive for it.
For example, most sh'mups you can get these neat patterns where a shot goes out that bursts into another cloud of shots, or reflect off the walls, whereas in this game enemies just kinda drift onto the screen and then sneeze out a spray of bullets over and over until they die.
The bosses do have more interesting patterns, but some of those I'm almost positive can just RNG you by having something spawn directly on top of you randomly without warning with instant collision damage before it even does the animation of the thing landing (no shadow, nothing).

The different shot formations you can do are neat, though. I will give it that.
It's a lot more varied than "Marisa A" and "Reimu B" or whatever, with cool things like having your assistants follow you, and then you plop them in a spot as a fixed spreadshot or onto a wall as big gun turret.
And the bosses are pretty cool.

If there was a "neutral" on recommendation, I'd put that, but between "positive" or "negative", I lean closer to "negative" if ever so slightly.
The mechanics are all there for a great sh'mup, but outside of stage bosses, the gameplay is kind of bland, imho.
It's not a "bad" game, just not something I would recommend.


Also one thing I have to note because it keeps surprising me as I play through the game (you'd think I'd be used to it already by now), but the stage results screen has the same music that Muse Dash does for theirs. I'm guessing it's from some royalty-free source, but it's just kind of funny because I hear the music start and think I'm going to hear Racer Rin give a victory voice line.

It feels a lot more modern than the other Shantae games, but it definitely doesn't feel as good as most of the other ones.
Not a "bad" game by any stretch, just that it seems like they tried to make the game "silly" and "funny" to the point where the gameplay itself feels a bit neglected.

If you loved the game then, you'll love it now.
If you're unfamiliar with the game, it's an SRPG that leans really hard into the "RPG" side of the equation, if that makes sense.
Broken to heck but some people love that side of it.
Gameplay aside, story is incredible, especially for when it was made.

Personal scores (outta ten):
Music - 7
Gameplay - 4
Story - 8
Overall - For its time? 9. In 2025? Probably a 6 or so. They added difficulty levels and a speedup button to try to help with the tedium, but it doesn't help the fact that FFT feels so slow to play. And unlike Tactics Ogre (it's predecessor), the remaster's QoL don't include some of the things that I think really helped get people into PSP and Reborn, mainly the auto-battle.

I'd still highly recommend playing this game in some incarnation if only to experience the story.

Lewd scenes aside, this is a pretty solid grinding game at its core, not unlike something from the Disgaea franchise. If you like the Neptunia games or Disgaea, this is definitely worth a check out, though not exactly something I'd introduce to somebody who isn't down for self-referential and self-deprecating anime otaku culture humor.

It was pretty good. Not normally a fan of the 3D animated feel (almost feels like a PS1 or PS2 game at times), but I do like a good Metroidvania and this was a good Metroidvania.

It's basically just a tamagochi that you can dress up with costume pieces you get from in-game gacha.
Game uses more system resources than one would expect.
My first thought was "omg crypto miner" but it's actually legit. Probably just need to turn down the settings, but I swear it uses more system resources than some newish games.

All-in-all, it's just a cute little AFK game.

Been a huge RPG fan for a long time, and these games are right in my strike zone.
Of the 3 that have been released so far on Steam, EO3 is likely the most popular.
The mechanics can be a bit overwhelming if you haven't been with the series for a bit, but at its core it's a straight dungeon crawler.
This game does introduce subclassing after you finish the second area, so don't make the mistake I did and spend several hours agonizing over re-theorycrafting my party part-way through the game.

For what this game has, it was pretty fun.
However, it will never be finished.
If somehow the game is finished at a later date and I get a notification of such, I will likely revise this review.
I had such high hopes from the artwork and the first stage (that's how long ago I bought into it), but it's literally been on "making small adjustments to stage 3" for several years now.