Recent reviews by Leamare

a fun game full of chill and nice people, would play it for an hour or two

I still haven't finished the game, but I can already say it brings me joy.
First of all, it's just fun to play. It's far from being the best, there are a lot of annoying moments, but every time I'm playing Frontiers, I just can't stop, I want to play more and more, which for me is a great sign.
Second, I love it having a more "serious" tone and proper writing and character work. I missed this ever since the series shifted to a more "lighthearted" tone and dumbed down most characters.
Third, it looks great, it feels great, the music (as always) is great.

But probably the most important part to me: open zones with different challenges and exploration, as well as speed stages and more serious tone make it more similar to... Sonic Adventure 1, at least to me.
The game feels kind of empty at times with all these big and empty spaces. Random junk in the air on some gorgeous islands looks out of place. Cyberspace stages all look the same (basically reusing assets from Generations and having only four types of them basically). But I can see potential. I can see this playstyle being upgraded and eventually going back to something more similar to Sonic Adventure (and given who's working on Sonic games these days, I can see it happening.

Sonic Frontiers is a great Sonic game (probably the best in like ten years? not counting Mania) and a good game overall.
It has its flaws, but it's genuine fun, 9/10, might be one of the best Sonic games?

Not sure why I bought it back in the day, something about the visuals was compelling to me. And it was the style of it that made me play it to the end (though, I bought it about 4 years ago and played it just now).
Generally it's a fun and challenging action platformer. Dynamic difficulty really helps to always get challenging situations, increasing power level bit by bit. Combat feels fluid, like a nice and balanced dance with the great pace.

One thing I didn't really notice is the procedural generation. It felt like the locations didn't really change from one time to another.
Two lacking sides of the game: story (it's better to imagine there is no story at all, let's put it this way) and repetitiveness, the latter being the bigger one. The game with a huge emphasis on replayability gets exponentially more boring the more you play it. Every monster looks generic, every location looks the same. Challenge is keeping up with you as you get better with the game, but it feels synthetic, it's just not real. And the main playthrough lasts like 4 hours.

It's already 6 years old as I'm writing this, so it's probably not a big deal for anybody. But if you're looking for a nice game to kill a couple of hours while getting some action and challenge - this one is fine. It would work great as a portable game (on a Steam Deck, for example).
I'm not sure it's worth its price, but if you'll get it 50% cheaper, it's decent.

I alsolutely loved Super Hexagon because of its simplicity mixed with clean look and challenge. The only issue was, well, number of levels. Open Hexagon fixed it, introducing Workshop support with a flexible level editor.
It doesn't feel as polished as the original quite yet, but it sure is close. One thing I'm missing is SH's announcer (an actual human voice) and point/line/triangle/etc milestones. Getting to 60 seconds to hear this "HEXAGON", see the level go wild and unlock a new one was a goal I was looking forward to. But while OH lacks this, it has many things to offer instead.

It's a very good mod based around a very good idea. If you're into Portal mods and/or puzzles - you ABSOLUTELY should try it out.

However, I'd like to point out one thing. As much as I LOVE cool Portal mods with cool mechanics, and this time travel mechanic is very cool in concept, every map is very well made and so on...
...I can't say I had much fun playing it.

It's kind of... short? But the biggest problem for me were the puzzles. They were not hard - in fact, all of them are pretty easy - but majority of them rely on reaction way too much. It never feels that good in Portal, because it's pretty easy to fail reaction based puzzles and as a punishment you have to do everything all over again. Some people love it, but most don't.

It's a very good mod, but I had more frustration than enjoyment while playing it.

One of the best (if not the best) JRPGs out there.

I had some experience with SMT series before - old SMT games, SMT 4, Devil Survivor, and I tried to play Persona 3 and 4 a while ago. The only things that stopped me from finishing the games were technical difficulties. So when I saw P4G release on PC, I started playing it as soon as I could.

My main problem with JRPGs - any of them - is the games of the genre being so slow and everlasting. You may find yourself grinding and getting into random encounters again and again, and this experience starts to become annoying pretty quickly. And then I either drop the game, or leave it "on hold" for a long period of time.

Persona 4 is different. First of all, it doesn't feel as slow, grindy and annoying, and Imanaged to grind the hell out of it, even though I hate it in other JRPGs - which is kind of funny, because the game doesn't really require you to do it.

But even that is not the main thing why Persona 4 is different. What changes the whole is experience is the way the game presents the story to a player. You get a big cast of characters, believable and alive, and you spend just as much time doing your daily activities as you spend in dungeons. And while dungeons experience was "ok" to me, daily routine is what hooked me up - talking with classmates, spending time with them, joining clubs, forging strong bonds with friends, even writing tests at school. Planning my every day, talking with people to understand them better and become closer with them - this is what made the game special to me, and this is what allows the game to make you believe in every character and genuinely love them.

10 out of 10, cried at the end.

BA is ME
BA TA

If you're into hardcore metroidvania games - you definitely should check out Luna Nights. It doesn't matter if you didn't play any of Touhou games or if you're not a weeb.

All the visuals are awesome. I spent a whole lot of time just watching at animations of the characters. Art style suits the game perfectly. It gave me some kind of Cave Story vibe, but it definitely looks way more polished.

There's not much to say about "plot", but it doesn't really matter. The biggest "problem" I had with this game is its difficulty. It's, well, not a problem, but it's just way too hardcore for me and to get through you either need EXTRA GOOD at the game or you need to grind up levels and gems to get additional boosts to HP/MP/TP gauges. However, once you find the Conviction blade (The Holy Sword or whatever its called), the game becomes MUCH EASIER. You basically don't need to use daggers anymore PLUS Conviction blade can attack while the time is stopped.

And another thing you need to keep in mind - the game is rather short. It is not unexpected, however, and the gameplay time will be "stretched" by the difficulty.

It is a very freaking good game. If you wasn't sure if you should buy it or not - of course you should!
However, I would like to share my thoughts on it here to explain why it is worth your time.

It's pretty common to call all Sonic games ♥♥♥♥. And while it's obvious it's not actually true, we haven't seen some standout games for a while now. The transition to 3D was hard and old 3D Sonic games are harder to play while modern boost games feel a bit too easy. It wasn't the case for the "classic" 2D games. And it's easy to forget that we didn't really get any mainline classic 2D Sonic games for a while now.

Like, sure, there were DS/3DS ports for mainline games, there were Advance and Rush games - they don't really count as "classic". And Sonic 4 was an abomination. The last time we got a good 2D Sonic game was "Sonic 3&Knuckles" and it was one of the best games in general. It doesn't mean there weren't any good Sonic games after that (like both Adventure games, Heroes, Generations), but S3&K was on the other level.

And here comes Sonic Mania. While Sega/Sonic Team struggles from some kind of identity crisis, a group of fans hired by them managed to make a new classic game. It doesn't try to mimick classic games, it actually feels like them, plays like them and it even looks like a long forgotten Sonic game for Sega Saturn.

The game doesn't have a lot of original zones. At least it may look like it at first. However, it doesn't mean there's no original content. The music is completely new, every zone has two acts, one of which is a mix of original acts while the second one is a completely new experience with new gimmicks and layouts. There are incredible original zones (Studiopolis, Mirage Saloon, Titanic Monarch).

Visually the game is awesome. All sprites look incredible, it's a pure joy to just look at all these animations. Everything feels alive. Color scheme works great (nothing makes your eyes bleed, there's no colorful mess and everything looks just in a right spot).

The game has a lot of similarities with S3&K and while people tend to say that S3&K is still better and some things like transitions and story are better in the 3&K game (and I agree), I think Mania is better game overall. The levels feel much more polished, there are no annoying things like the flying battery lifts in the original version. 3&K is also much harder to find and play these days (since there are no official remakes/re-releases and people won't look for things like Sonic 3 AIR). So if I would try to get somebody into Sonic franchise, I would start with this game. It feels like the best way to show why people actually love these games.

ah, and the best part is - if you want more of this game, you get Encore mode. Playing as Mighty and Ray is extremely fun even in Mania mode, but Encore mode makes it even more fun (despite being just a second run through the same levels 80% of the time). The best thing about it - if you finished the game at this point, you are much more skilled player now and it will be much easier to play. And all Sonic games reward skill with this precious feeling of speed, blasting through the level with your flawless execution.

Cute little game with outstanding audio and visuals. It's short yet it is most likely to leave a mark in your memory.
There's not that much to say. It's a game you should just play and see for yourself.