You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/moero-crystal-h.1514/

When it comes to the genre I affectionately refer to as ‘weeb games,’ no two names go together better than Compile Heart and Idea Factory. I see these two names and expectations begin to form. Expectations of anime ladies in unforeseen and frankly obscene situations with simple to follow yet mockingly amusing dialogue. Nowhere has this formula thrived more than in the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, but it’s not to say it doesn’t work elsewhere. A sequel to Moero Chronicle Hyper, which itself released on the Switch last year, Moero Crystal H brings us an entirely new adventure to play, poke, and rub.

My favourite part of any game like this is trying to explain the plot to other people. Sure, you can play it for yourself, and you’ll have a blast, but when you’re forced to think about what you saw and retell it, you gain a whole new appreciation for the subject matter. So let’s jump right in. Our protagonist, Zenox, is as most protagonists are within the genre: just an ordinary guy. He’s travelled out from the countryside to the big city to try to find his missing father; this remains the main plot point for the grand total of a few minutes. On getting to the city, he wanders into a shrine to ask for directions, and it’s here things start to take a turn, as a mysterious otter-like creature shrouded in shadow steals… Wait for it… The Bra of Darkness. You learn this is one of two items to be kept together, lest calamity befall the land, the other item being the Panties of Light. Taking the Panties of Light with them, Zenox, along with Luanna, a guardian of the shrine, and Otton, a pantie enthusiast some may remember from the previous Moero title, our crew set out to recover the Bra of Darkness before it’s too late. Magnificent. It’s a simple setup that’s so brilliantly bizarre I couldn’t help but be hooked from the offset. There’s so much that leaves you scratching your head with little more justification than “it is what it is.”

To support such a strange story, there’s a huge cast of characters eager to help save the world. Outside of our core trio, there are 80 monster girls to rub and recruit, each with their own set of traits and talents. Do you want a party of tsunderes? A party of small breasted or large chested women? Sure, you can do that. What’s more, these traits go beyond the physical, offering bonuses and synergies for your party. If you pick your party for more than just their looks, there’s real potential for a technical and genuinely interesting gameplay experience. Of course, you also have the freedom to go the other direction entirely. A somewhat mix myself, I went with a party full of fire element characters in an attempt to get bonuses in-battle for using the same types of attack. The characters are so varied in their design, element, traits, and skills, that each of the 80 available offer something fresh, and feel worthwhile going out of your way to recruit.

So let’s talk about how you recruit these women to your party. To say you attack their clothes until a pink otter sprays money on their near-naked bodies, before you poke and rub them on a strict time limit, that would be juvenile. You see, it’s all about context. These fine ladies are under the influence of the Bra of Darkness, which is also called the Dark Bra. The Dark Bra, as you might imagine, draws out the darkness in them, this manifesting in unique ways for each character. You attack the clothes of the women to break them, exposing skin, and exciting Otton, the otter that’s wearing the Panties of Light, and it’s about here I lose the train of logic. After Otton’s excitement, you poke the darkness out of them like some anime exorcism, and scrub their body clean, so that it may be blessed by the holy ways of the Panties of Light. Something like that. Once beaten, the panties are placed on them, you get a bit of an exchange, usually relating to how disgusting the experience was, but how grateful they are not to be influenced by the darkness, so they come along for the adventure. It’s wild.

The core gameplay takes place in a first person dungeon crawling environment, much like the previous Moero game. From the perspective of a seasoned dungeon crawler such as myself, I can say it’s fine. It’s a genre that’s hard to get wrong. The movement from tile to tile feels fluid, with an option to move faster, and all the usual quality of life control options are present. You can move forwards, backwards, turn, strafe, and even automatically route and move to any place you’ve already been. Looking at the larger design, each dungeon features a few floors with one or two optional monster girls and bits of plot progression, followed by a floor with a boss, and then a bit extra on top. That bit extra usually extends to an additional floor to be explored, as well as a portal to what the game calls the “100 Millionth” floor of the dungeon. This is where the game’s real challenges can be found, featuring what I would call chapter by chapter superbosses. Even the floor’s standard enemy encounters are pumped up to a degree I felt it necessary to tone down my difficulty setting from hard to the easiest available while I closed the level gap. It’s a completely optional challenge, giving completionists a few additional satisfying accomplishments, without bogging down those who just want to enjoy watching the plot unfold. While there are a few smaller details to specific dungeons I’m not particularly fond of, like the mazes in chapter three that disabled the map while you were in them, overall I really enjoyed the dungeoneering. It’s fairly by the books, and that’s not necessarily bad in a game like this that throws so much at you on the side.

Many of Moero Crystal’s extra features revolve around the game’s huge cast, getting them to interact with each other, and interacting with them yourself, in a number of interesting ways. Visiting the inn will give you access to each of your team’s individual rooms. It’s here the majority of these extras lurk. As you grow closer to each character, you gain access to events, small bits of dialogue and character building between them and Zenox. Outside of getting to know them, this also grants you access to the more useful feature of being able to switch out a character’s bra and panties, the bra altering the learnable skills, and the panties having a direct impact on stats. Next, we have Doki-doki Shooter, a very short vertically scrolling shooter where you, quite unsurprisingly, blast away the clothes of your chosen lady. Like much of the clothing removal in this game, there’s a good reason for it! This time, your aim is to reveal crystals that let you enter a girl’s “deep reaches,” these serving as short one floor dungeons that provide one of three bonuses. While they are quick to complete, I can’t imagine going through the process three times for each of the 80 girls; for just your main team of five however, it may be a little more feasible.

Our final feature is a simple one, letting you perform a “loving scratch,” a minigame that’s essentially the same as what you do to initially bring a character back from the dark side. It’s barely worth mentioning, outside of the fact the game has a 100 scratch challenge available on beating the main story. A bizarre test of endurance, I’m sure somebody will be happy to see it included.

Really Moero Crystal H isn’t a game you should need to read a review to play. It’s something far more primal than that. It’s the kind of title you see, and instinctively know whether you’ll have a blast, or whether it’s just a bit too far for your tastes. I definitely enjoyed my time with the game, and I can see a good chunk of people getting a kick out of the bizarre plot and dialogue, not to mention the collectable nature of the anime ladies. If you’re into this kind of thing, it’s one worth picking up, but if you’re not, don’t go out expecting to be surprised. It’s a game you can judge by its cover, for better or worse.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/aokana-four-rhythms-across-the-blue.1485/

Originally releasing for PC in Japan just under six years ago, Aokana: Four Rhythms Across the Blue is an adult visual novel depicting the story of Masaya Hinata and his cohort of ladyfriends as they learn, love, and long for the sky. When you put it like that, I really could be talking about any visual novel, but Aokana is one I found myself enjoying to an unexpected degree, and there’s a good bit as to why that might be.

As many of these games often are, Aokana is set in an alternate Japan. Really, there’s only one thing of note that’s different, this being the discovery of particles with spectacular anti-gravity properties, and the subsequent development of anti-gravity shoes. With cool new technology comes cool new sports, and at the centre of this game, we have Flying Circus, commonly abbreviated to FC. FC is simple: you have two players high in the sky. They score points by flying to each of the four buoys positioned in a square, or by touching the other player’s back. It’s easy to grasp, and that’s a good part of what makes it so great for a story like this. You get the fundamentals from the outset, so when they start adding tricks and explaining techniques, the sense of depth to the game grows without the game itself seeming convoluted. These tricks and techniques range from flying higher so you can descend at speed, to more out there ideas like an “air kick turn”. It’s fun to follow, and it’s fun to see how characters react as matches play out as part of the story, them often as surprised as you to see how things unfold.

Aokana features a great number of faces and unique characters, each presented with a set of genuinely stunning art. The visuals and presentation as a whole are something to appreciate. For a game conveying a sport so centralised on 3D movement, it manages to wonderfully convey motion and excitement. I can’t deny a part of me is sad that the sport of Flying Circus couldn’t have been playable, but given the limitations of a visual novel, I have to give credit where due. Moving the characters across the screen, shaking the camera—small things that add up to a grander picture. It leaves you wanting more in the best way.

As mentioned before, the plot follows Masaya Hinata, but calling the heroines his “cohort of ladyfriends” is underselling them more than a little. The long and short of the story is that Hinata ends up teaching a new arrival at his school, Asuka Kurashina, how to fly with Grav-Shoes, and after a short series of events, she falls in love with flying as a whole and FC. Along with Hinata’s friend Misaki Tobisawa, and her tagalong Mashiro Arisaka, she joins the FC club with hopes to fly beyond anything she had imagined. The conflict here lies in Hinata’s past. As a rising star of FC in his childhood, his dreams were swiftly shattered by a bitter loss, pulling him from the sport he once loved. This debate of whether to return to the sport serves as a roadblock from the start of the story, and soon has you invested in his development as bit by bit, he finds passion. Is it for FC, or for the girl who dragged him back to it?

Hinata’s character is one I really like, which is somewhat rare for me in a male-protagonist visual novel. Too often you find the game bogged down in lechery and fanservice, because let’s face it, too often it’s what the target audience want. It’s not to say there’s no offhand remarks or panty shots thrown in, because of course there are, but the source of these generally stem from one character, and rarely take over a scene. Hinata isn’t a blank canvas to project yourself onto, nor is he just a tool to keep things moving forwards or keep the audience engaged with a flash. He’s a meaningful character, and one I enjoyed thoroughly.

The members of the FC team each come with their own quirks that collide and combine well. There’s inappropriate humour mixed with naive belief, blind adoration mixed with provocation and teasing, and then of course your innocent spirit clashing with unexpected circumstance. Characters start with traits that make them stand out and allow you to define them as individuals, but as the plot goes on, you find these warping and developing in just as satisfying a way as our male lead. You see the cast grow together meaningfully, captivating you and drawing you into both their victories and defeats.

One particular point of interest with the plot is its multiple endings. Though a staple of visual novels, Aokana does mix things up a little in how it presents them. In every branching visual novel I can think of, you have a fairly standard formula. You have a paralogue, maybe an introductory chapter, then you get siphoned off into a character-specific storyline. This system works. It focuses the plot and development on one character in particular, and oftentimes it’s one you’ve gone out of your way to choose, so you’re actually interested in seeing them grow. Aokana does things differently. Instead of having entirely branching storylines, the bulk of the game is what I’d describe as a neutral path. It’s only in the latter third of the game your decisions throughout the story really come into play and you get placed on a route towards a certain ending. It’s interesting. On one hand, it means there’s less content to consume with the variance only really being present at the end, but on the other, it solidifies the idea that each character is important. Each have room to grow and develop, and favouring one doesn’t deprive you of another. Compare this to a game like Collar X Malice. Yes, there’s more content, and the split paths allow the game to tell only parts of the larger story in each route, but from a character development standpoint, it’s jarring to go from being romantically involved with a character to them staring at you stone-faced again. Both approaches have their merits, but I’m glad Aokana went this way.

Now, there is one point I brought up in passing at the start of the review, and one a certain group may be interested in discussing: this is an adult visual novel. Or at least it was. Unsurprising to nobody, the Switch version of the game has the 18+ content cut, but I’ll counter that by saying that I don’t think it detracts from the quality of the game as a whole. This isn’t a game that feels lacking in the absence of these scenes, and if it means a wider audience can enjoy it, I’m all for it in its current state. If it does happen to be a dealbreaker for you, you can still grab the game on Steam and download the 18+ patch.

The port itself is as you’d expect as a whole. The UI feels great to navigate, there’s a decent number of options to play with, and there’s even limited touch support. On the surface, it really is ideal, and it likely would be were it not for a very minor but very irritating flaw. For reasons unknown to me, the Switch port seems to have a phantom input issue. When you press A to advance the text, occasionally it will advance through multiple text boxes. It’s frustrating, even if there’s a button dedicated to going back to the previous text box, alongside the usual dialogue history. While it didn’t ruin the experience for me, it stands as something holding the game back from its full potential, and something I hope can be fixed.

Once again, PQube are doing God’s work in bringing great visual novel adventures to the mass market the Switch so naturally offers. Aokana is ultimately an incredibly charming and enjoyable title I find myself able to recommend to any fan of visual novels, or those who just want a relatively grounded (if you’ll pardon the pun) tale full of likeable characters and satisfying development. It is a joy.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/drown-tactile-earphones.1458/

Drown, like many of the companies I’ve come to experience through reviewing hardware, were until recently a complete unknown to me. Based in Scotland, their “game-changing tactile earphones” just began shipping to the public after an Indiegogo campaign last year, and we’ve been fortunate enough to be sent a pair to check out. Amidst a wall of PR buzzwords and clutter on their site, I can’t deny my initial skepticism. Though I couldn’t place it specifically, something felt off. After a month of extensive use, however, I can say I’m glad I didn’t let early impressions cloud my better judgement.

There’s a few specific elements that go into making these earphones special, but from the perspective of perhaps not an expert in this field, I’ll simplify them to two points: the acoustic seal, and some mild bone conduction. I’d say it sounds fancier than it is in reality, but it’s interesting all the same. The acoustic seals, of which three different sizes are included, fit effortlessly atop each earbud, and are designed to, in turn, fit effortlessly in your ears. These weirdly shaped buds take some getting used to, especially when it comes to putting them in your ear quickly. Where your normal buds are a simple case of pushing them in and off you go, Drown’s design require more of a twist and lock motion, supported by a short mouldable cable to wrap behind your ear. They stay in well. I shook my head to the point of dizziness to real shift in position. On top of this, when there’s no audio playing, or the audio isn’t particularly loud, you can hear your surroundings with surprising clarity. Though likely just a side effect of them not being pushed into my ears like stoppers, it’s something I haven’t had in earphones before, and it’s certainly nice.

In essence, the seal and vibrations from the bone conduction are there to mimic how your ear detects sound naturally. In mimicking this, the aim of the earphones is to relay game audio back to you with a degree of accuracy somewhat comparable to real life; the most bizarre thing for me is just how well they work. Now, I’ll preface this by saying to get the most out of the Drown, you want to be playing a game designed with 3D audio in mind. On hand, I had two: Minecraft, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Minecraft has always been a game I can pick up and play for a few days excessively, then put down for a few months. Over the years, I’ve spent several hundreds of hours crafting, building, blowing things up. The whole Minecraft experience. I’ve had the game for years, and yet it’s never felt so new to me. With these earphones, I’m hearing details for the first time. I’m feeling the impact of an explosion and find myself able to pinpoint its location. I’m hearing sheep, cows, mobs, all before I have a chance to see them. I’ve never felt more horrified as an Enderman screamed down my ears, a certain dread of feeling it approach and knowing there was little I could do about it with my current gear. There was a magic and sense of immersion to it all I’ve never experienced before, and this extended into Counter-Strike also.

I’m not really the kind of person able to play first person shooters effectively, so for CS:GO, I decided to try something a bit different. With the assistance of a friend, I set up a game against bots. The catch is that I had no control of the player character, and I had no way of looking at the screen. I was blind, and my goal was to pinpoint the bots as they moved and shot. One by one, I could locate and call out their movements, their actions. I could hear bullets flying around me and I could hear footsteps in the distance. Not just in front, not just to the side; I’d point and I’d be right, time after time.

After a full night of closing my eyes and pointing in both games, I couldn’t help but be impressed. Though I did struggle to pick up on sounds originating directly above me, the other results were staggering–enough for my friend to buy a pair on the spot. But that’s where a large issue with this kind of product will constantly lie; it’s in these tests, the hands-on and trying them for yourself, that really sell them. It’s not something so easily put into words, and unless you’re happy to throw down £155 to try for yourself, it’s perhaps something I’ll struggle to convince you on. Though somewhat supported by a 30-day trial period where you can return them free of charge for a full refund, you still have to put down the money in the first place.

Having used these extensively for just about a month now, I’ve had ample time to find the kinks and quirks that come with long-term use. The worst of these early on came from using the earphones for extended periods of time. Where the seal grips the ear, I felt a noticeable pain for 10 to 15 minutes after wearing the earphones. It’s worth noting the earphones are light, even with the detachable microphone accounted for, and I felt no discomfort when wearing them. This was only something I felt after the first 9+ hour session I had with them, and it’s not something I’ve felt since. Because of this, I might give a general reminder to take breaks in your media consumption or gaming sessions, but really that’s common sense.

Outside of gaming, I’ve been using the Drowns in a more general setting, generally music and films. While they don’t quite stand out in the same way as playing games designed for such technology, they performed admirably for a good majority of the time. With music, live performances and musicals were the standouts for me. Depending on how they were originally recorded, you can get a real sense of stage presence and positioning, letting you experience the music instead of just listening to it. That said, this presence in one album only goes onto highlight the very lack of itself in a different one, resulting in something that ends up being quite hit and miss. Going from the Jekyll and Hyde 1997 Broadway cast recording to the Les Miserables 25th Anniversary Concert, I was shocked to find the more modern recording sound so flat in comparison. Of course, there’s only so much you can attribute to the earphones themselves, but to get the most out of them, you might find yourself reorganising your library and making playlists for a sense of consistency in listening.

Films are a similar story, with a few additional quirks of their own. The earphones are fine most of the time, but do struggle slightly in scenes where a lot of people are being loud at the same time. In the rowdy office scenes of The Wolf of Wall Street, audio would almost crackle in my ear, this appearing to stem more from the vibrations than the speakers themselves. It’s a small quirk, and one that can be solved in large by turning the audio significantly down for these scenes, but again it’s not ideal. Having said that, these are really the only faults I could pick with them. It’s difficult to overstate just how impressed I’ve found myself the more I use them.

To touch on the microphone, I decided it’d be simpler to record a brief clip using it than try to describe the quality in detail. I’ll include the tech specs below, but really I’m quite impressed with the little thing. It’s incredibly convenient to plug in and detach as needed, and the incredibly streamlined design means it doesn’t get in the way when in use; I struggle to notice it most of the time. The material used for the mic’s cable is mouldable to have it positioned just how you like it, and feels high quality and well-put together. It’s nothing extraordinary in my eyes, but in ticking the box to make this an ideal gaming headset, it does everything you’d want admirably. The earphones also come with three buttons attached to the cable of the left earbud with your standard volume control and play/pause button. 

All in all, Drown’s tactile earphones have served me phenomenally in the time I’ve had them, and they’re a pair of earphones I can only see getting better as more and more games are released with continually ambitious audio design. Whether you can justify putting the money down without first trying them is an issue for you to decide yourself, but I really cannot recommend them enough. 

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/story-of-seasons-friends-of-mineral-town.1446/

Throughout my childhood, nothing quite went together like farming and Harvest Moon. I couldn’t think about one without the other, and while other prominent titles may have released since, the name still holds fond memories for myself and many others. It’s necessary before continuing to say that Story of Seasons is the Harvest Moon you came to love as a child; or perhaps it’s more apt to say Harvest Moon is Story of Seasons.

The long and short of it is that Natsume published the Bokujo Monogatari games in the west as Harvest Moon, and when Marvelous decided to stop licencing the series to Natsume, Natsume maintained the rights to the Harvest Moon name. It’s bizarre, but it helps explain to some degree why the sequel to what many would consider the pinnacle of the franchise, Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, is now releasing under the banner of Story of Seasons. With that out of the way, does it still hold up more than 15 years later?

Starting the game for the first time, you’re presented with a few options: the first to pick a character design and skin colour, and the second a difficulty setting, alongside your usual name and birthday. The customisation on offer does little to rival that of Stardew Valley, but is enough to feel like you have a say in your character’s appearance and form a satisfying connection from the get-go. It’s worth noting here that same-sex marriage is possible in this game, so you’re really free to live your best farming life without having to compromise on your character to get the love interest of your dreams. Likely the most interesting addition here is the choice of a simple or normal difficulty. The difference is somewhat minimal, and regardless of your choice, your opportunities aren’t limited as you play. With simple mode offering a gentler start, as well as items selling for a bit more and the locals being a little friendlier, you still get the full Mineral Town experience. The wonderful thing about simple mode is that it’s what other games may try to sell you as an extra; ultimately, it’s a time saver. You get a bit more money, people like you a bit faster, it’s here not for people who want a dumbed-down experience, but for those who simply don’t want to commit so much of their time to the farm. Perhaps the only down side is that you can’t readily switch between these modes. It’s a commitment you need to make from the start, but a wonderful addition overall.

When it comes to plot, the setup is simple. You visited Mineral Town in your youth to spend a summer on your grandfather’s farm. 20 years later and your grandfather since passing, the farm is somewhat in ruins, and it’s your job to pick up the pieces…assuming you want to anyway. One of my favourite parts of any game, you can get the credits to roll within minutes of starting by just saying you don’t want to do it. The mayor of Mineral Town accepts it without pressuring you, and sets you on the next train back to the city. It’s a silly inclusion, but one I always find myself appreciating far more than the alternative of endlessly looping dialogue boxes. Once you finally accept your farming fate, you’re let loose and the game can really begin. What you make of it is entirely up to you.

Your first year in Mineral Town is one of plentiful choice. How you grow as a farmer, and in turn, how your farm grows as a result, will vary significantly from person to person, and playthrough to playthrough. At the core of the game, you have two components: farming and animal tending. Farming is as simple as it ever was. You till the ground with your hoe, you spread your seeds, and you water them each day until they’re fully grown. You then sell the crops, buy more seeds, and there’s your money-making cycle. While this will be familiar territory for many, a welcome change here is the fact you can walk over your crops once planted. In the original game, once partially-grown, crops would become impassable tiles, making it incredibly difficult to reap a full yield without upgraded tools. With this change, you can both make more money early on, and navigate your field easier.

Animal tending is something that generally comes a little after farming. Once you have a bit of cash, you can head into town to buy yourself one of a brilliant array of creatures. While your usual cows, sheep, and chickens all feature here, there’s also a few more unusual picks. Though alpacas are a favourite of mine, the spotlight really must be shined on the flavoured cows, available as strawberry, coffee, or fruit. Aside from looking adorable with their own unique colouring and tail design, they also, you guessed it, produce specially-flavoured milk. Where else would strawberry milk come from if not a strawberry cow? Though significantly more work than crops, animals come with their own perks. Looking past the genuine affection and sense of attachment you gain for these creatures, each comes with their own sustainable byproduct, varying from animal to animal. Cows give milk, sheep give wool, you get the idea. As the animals come to like you more, their produce becomes more valuable, resulting in more money for you and a sense of satisfaction that you got them to that point.

Perhaps a minor criticism of mine in this department, but one that detracted from the experience all the same–bought animals can never fully love you. Now this sounds silly, and to me, it really is, but the animals you buy from PoPoultry or Yodel Ranch have a hard cap on their affection. Limiting you to five hearts out of a possible ten, it makes your initial animals feel like little more than a means to an end. At five hearts maximum, their produce is also limited in quality. The only way to increase this cap is to breed your animals. Breeding two five heart animals gives you offspring with a cap of six hearts, this continuing all the way to ten hearts. It’s tedious. It rewards those who play patiently and systematically, and it’s both a blessing and a curse. It’s something you really have to aim for, and whether the investment of time and effort is worthwhile to you is something I really can’t predict.

For those wanting to participate fully in events, however, it may just be essential. Littered across your farming calendar are a series of fun events. Ranging from seasonal festivals, to cooking competitions, to animal shows, horse races, and everything in between, Mineral Town does its best to keeps its residents entertained. My favourite of these has to be the Spring and Autumn derbies. In these, you get to watch and bet on horses for some serious profit if you happen to play your cards right. You’ll find there’s something interesting happening almost every week, breaking up your regular farming life in fun and interesting ways.

Of course, the farm isn’t the only point of focus; the game’s called Friends of Mineral Town after all, and making these friends is somewhat of a mixed bag for me. This remake is remarkably faithful to the original design. You become friends with people by talking to them daily, and you raise affection by giving people gifts. After so long, you trigger events with these people, getting to know them a little more and getting them to know you a little more. It’s a simple system to grasp and an enjoyable system to partake in, but it leads me to my biggest issue with the game as a whole: the monotony.

The game is repetitive. There’s no beating around the bush with this. You start out fresh, you start out exploring, you start out starry-eyed and curious to the world, but this has its limits. Once the people have been talked to, the fields cleared, the animals safely where they belong, you find yourself falling into a cycle. Water crops, feed animals, talk to animals, get produce from animals, talk to love interest, give gift to love interest, sleep, repeat. The fine folks of Mineral Town remind me of Majora’s Mask’s Clock Town residents. They’re on a schedule, destined to repeat the same events, spout the same lines. I want to learn more about these characters, I want to bond with them, I want to care about them, but there’s only so many times I can read the same thing before coming to the conclusion it simply isn’t worth it. Mineral Town as a whole lacks the variety of life and activity to stand tall as an unguided experience. In some respects, I’d say this remake is too faithful to its predecessor; the genre has moved on, but this game is by design stuck 15 years in the past.

Similarities aside, what has changed is just as interesting. You have a new art style, which brings with it new character portraits, a better inventory system, and one of the best UIs I’ve seen in a game to date. The last point I genuinely cannot overstate, it’s fantastic. Everything is on-screen and accessible without being in the way. It presents your inventory and tools to you in such a way where you find yourself going entire play sessions without feeling the need to actually pause. There’s also a few extra marriage candidates, a few extra events, and, as a blessing to many, same-sex marriage.

All in all, this is Mineral Town. It’s the Mineral Town you always loved, with many of the same quirks, for better or worse. While I found myself utterly charmed in coming home to the farm, it’s not a game I could sit and play for hours on end. To me, it’s a game to be picked up and played a little at a time, and in its own way, that’s fine. Mineral Town is back, and one day at a time, I’ll be living my best farming life.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/railway-empire.1423/

A lifelong fan of trains and tycoon games, I’ve not exactly hidden my excitement for this game’s Switch release. Though never indulging in its previous outings for PC and the other major consoles, something about a Switch version caught my eye. I could be anywhere, with anyone, connecting station to station with the railroad of my dreams. A magnificent thought now turned reality, I’ve spent time playing and building, and I could not be happier for it.

At its core, Railway Empire has everything you might expect of a Transport Tycoon-style game. You build stations and connect cities with both industries dotted around the map and other cities. In doing so, you establish supply chains, encouraging growth to each city you pass through as you assess and cater to their needs. Though a simple premise, I found this fundamental simplicity a driving factor in my desire to improve. Supporting this, you have a list of tasks for each map to guide your progress, this varying slightly with each of the game’s different modes.

Starting with what I would describe as the natural starting point for any player, we have the campaign. Though acting as a fantastic tutorial for both the basic and advanced aspects of the game, it also exists to take you on a journey through various eras of major railroad construction. Each chapter featuring short animations to set the scene, it took me back to the history books of my school days, rekindling a nostalgic flame as I not only witnessed history, but soon partook in it. These narrated introductions set the stage wonderfully, allowing you to better understand the context behind your tasks, and the larger objective at hand.

Supported by a voiced assistant as you work through your tasks, I found this mode a wonderful experience through and through. Though you could argue these chapters lack replayability in the fixed nature of their setting and design, I found a great sense of joy and excitement in revisiting them down the line. Attempting to better my score by completing tasks more efficiently, there was always a smug satisfaction as my adviser lagged behind. Small moments like these reinforce the idea of growth and knowledge you accumulate simply by playing.

Scenario maps are much like the campaign, almost to the extent I would call them low-budget alternatives. In reality, they serve to be more than this. Though lacking the lavish cutscenes I came to love in the campaign, they provide replayability and reuse for the maps you’ve already played, beaten, and perfected; not to mention the additional maps introduced in this mode. You still have the same task-driven gameplay and the same sense of creative freedom, but you see them applied in different ways.

An initial criticism of mine was that there were no way to experience these maps with a randomised task list, as to push growth in a different direction each time you played, and keep an otherwise-samey experience fresh. Naturally, as I continued to explore what the game had to offer, this criticism was laid to rest, and my prayers were answered.

Free mode—it’s everything I wanted and more. With such a wealth of customisation options available, it’s here I imagine many will spend the majority of their time. Starting simply by selecting a time period, influencing the trains and research options available to you, you can customise everything from the money you start with, to the number of opponents on the map, even to the obscure like the cost of building tracks or tunnels. Even playing without rivals, these options have the potential to push you to new and varied styles of play with each slight variation. If tracks are expensive, you find yourself starting in a city close to others and establishing short but profitable routes to kickstart your company. If tunnels are expensive, you put your attention to flat lands over the potential temptation of mountainous travel. There’s so much to do and so much to come back to, despite the perceived-negative of non-random maps.

Ultimately, this familiarity can come to fuel your creativity as you become more and more comfortable with the presented bounds and limitations. In understanding each map, you gain the knowledge and insight to adapt and grow regardless of how the game is set up. Assisting in the development of this familiarity is the game’s final mode.

Sandbox mode is the kind of setting I always wanted without necessarily thinking about the consequences. Here, you’re free to build the empire of your dreams, free of financial burden. While it can be fun to build interesting and elaborate systems, this mode in and of itself lacks its own sense of longevity. Because there is little in the way of satisfying progression, it can at first appear little more than a minor addition—an extra not so deserving of your time as its competition. While this stands true to a certain extent, the sheer utility of this mode should not be overlooked.

Sure, you can put down several million dollar’s worth of tracks to connect stations at each corner of the map, but you find these thoughts get old fast. Where this mode truly shines is in research. If I connect station A to station B via industries X, Y, and Z, do the additional stops increase revenue in a way as to be prioritised, or added in later with more direct routes already established? While the game is happy to tell you how much your tracks will cost before you place them, allowing you to more thoroughly plan your routes to save cash, questions like this are much harder to gauge at a glance. For those wishing to push themselves to complete the most difficult objectives and overcome the strongest of rivals, such a tool to refine designs and test ideas is priceless. How this mode is utilised, or whether it is utilised at all, will vary greatly from player to player. Its inclusion however can be nothing but a positive thing in my mind.

Though largely secondary to the gameplay itself, I’m sure many would be eager to see how a two year-old game on both PC and the Switch’s current-gen competitors fares on Nintendo’s hybrid delight. It’s easy to say the game is nothing extraordinary in neither graphics nor music, but that in itself I struggle to call a negative. Put simply, the game is fine. While there are clear visual shortcomings when comparing this port to its predecessors, nothing stands out as poor to the point of detracting from the overall experience. The music, while I may describe it as forgettable, serves its role well. It omits the silence, blending well with the game’s larger presentation so as not to stand out.

It’s all just fine, and when you’ve got stellar gameplay to back it up, as well as the inherent positives of the Switch itself, I can safely say it’s a port worth picking up. That said, it isn’t without a fault or two of its own.

After the initial release in 2018, the game received regular updates, as well as additional maps and scenarios in the form of paid DLC. The value of this content is difficult to debate, giving players a reason to revisit the game even long after launch. With eight DLC packs now available, totalling just over £70 on Steam, the Switch version sits with an uncomfortable debate: should the DLC be included? To me, there are two reasonable options. First, you could release a complete package with all the content produced to date. This is the option I imagine many would favour, providing a definitive edition for the new release, and giving buyers a genuine sense of value for money. On the other hand, you could release just the base game at a discounted price to entice an otherwise-uncertain buyer, with the DLC remaining an optional extra. The Switch port opts for a blend of these ideas, bundling the base game, with the Mexico, Great Lakes, and Crossing the Andes additional content. This leaves the Great Britain and Ireland, Germany, and France maps unavailable to those unwilling to pay extra. It’s frustrating to me, especially when the maps still appear in-game with a lock on them. While it may be a minor criticism in a sea of otherwise-positive thoughts, it goes a long way in souring my lasting impressions, especially as I’m unable to see how this content is priced on the Switch until the game launches.

All in all, Railway Empire is a game for any avid fan of trains and tycoon games. Though perhaps not the prettiest release, it excels in delivering the brilliant core experience of its predecessors to a wide and portable market. Though I wish this version simply included all of the available DLC, I find it a minor grievance for what has been perhaps my greatest joy during this time of isolation.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/ticwatch-pro-2020.1418/

As your average consumer of fancy things, smart watches have always been a plaything just out of reach. Often priced slightly too high with features I’d never think of using, they were an obscurity I could never justify exploring. Roll on to 2020 and thanks to a review sample provided by TicWatch, that’s about to change.

An evolution of their earlier TicWatch Pro, not much has changed in the way of design. You still have the generous dual layered 1.39 inch display, mounted to a bulky yet comfortable body. You still have the two chunky buttons protruding from the right side of the face, and you still have the delightful hybrid leather strap. It looks great because, well, it is great. It even has the same hardware inside, sporting the Snapdragon Wear 2100 chipset and 4 GB of internal storage. If you’ve read our review of the original TicWatch Pro, you may be questioning exactly what’s new? What did they add to justify the extra 2020 moniker, and would it be worth upgrading were you to own the original? An extra 512 megabytes of RAM; that’s your lot! How much does that change? Well, let’s find out.

Out of the box, setup is simple. With Wear OS being Google’s own implementation of a smart watch OS, it’s as simple as setting up a new Android phone. The menus feel responsive and you’re good to go before you know it. I paired it with my Android 9 phone and have had no issues with connectivity or compatibility. My wrist buzzes promptly whenever I get a notification and displays it as I’d expect a smart watch to. On top of that, you have the usual features of a mid to high end smart watch. You’ve got your general fitness tracking, including onboard GPS and 4 GB of internal storage. These features allow you to go for a run without your phone and still have your music, and still have your session tracked. Given the current lockdown situation, my step count has been pitifully low, but it seems to be doing a good job of keeping track all the same. Of the watches I’ve had, the wrist strap stands out as being incredibly comfortable and premium-feeling. The hybrid leather is a combination of genuine Italian leather on the outward facing side, and silicone on the side facing your wrist. This gives you the benefits of both; style and substance. I’ve found it incredibly comfortable to wear over extended periods. I had no issues wearing it all day. No skin irritation, no noticeable weight on my wrist, just an occasional buzz and beep as it notifies me of the day’s exciting events.

Where the watch tries to stand out is in its dual-screen niche. The screen you expect to get is a lush 400×400 AMOLED display. It’s vibrant, colourful, and easy to read information from even in daylight. The additional screen, a thin layer mounted on top, is comparable to your standard digital watch of yonder years. With no backlighting to support it, it presents you with the most basic of information you’d want from your watch and tracks your fitness essentials, all for a fraction of the battery life. By default, the watch keeps this display on while it is not actively in use, with the main display coming on as you wake it up. If you’re not a fan of this, you can of course keep the AMOLED display on constantly by tweaking the settings, but expect the battery life to take a significant hit. With regular use using the watch’s default configuration, you can expect it to keep going for a few days. Where things really start to look impressive is the essential mode. Completely disabling the AMOLED display, the TicWatch Pro 2020 can keep going for up to 30 days, while still tracking your fitness and, of course, telling you the time. You miss out on your music, Google Pay, and many of the other benefits of a modern smart watch, but if you want to disconnect from the world for a while without putting down your watch, it’s a decent option. You can always just disable essential mode if you need to go pay for something on your travels. 

When it comes to customisation, you have a few options in making the watch your own. Thanks to the use of Wear OS as its operating system, you have an astounding wealth of watch faces to pick from using apps like Facer. On the video game side of things, you can expect everything from the Pokétch of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, to the spy watch of Goldeneye, to even the distinctly obscure face of Termina’s clock tower. Everything is accounted for, and I still find myself jumping from face to face. 

With the features and aesthetic discussed, the part I left for last is perhaps the single most burning question of all: how does it run? With the previous model struggling to perform smoothly with 512 MB of RAM behind it, can doubling that number really make all that much of a difference? The short answer is yes. In my few weeks with this watch, I’ve come across no issues, and I really mean that⁠—none. No stutters, no missed taps, no slowdowns or crashes. From day one to now, it’s run flawlessly. It’s genuinely difficult for me to believe the previous iteration of this watch struggled as it did when so little has changed, but it just goes to show how much having that gigabyte of RAM matters for the modern smart watch. 

All in all, the TicWatch Pro 2020 is a great smart watch, and a necessary, if only minor, improvement over its predecessor. To people looking for a smart watch to dive into the world of fancy peripherals, I can do nothing but recommend it. For owners of the original TicWatch Pro however, the line begins to blur. While the difference in performance is noteworthy, there isn’t much else separating the two models. If you find yourself wanting the upgrade, don’t let me stop you, but don’t go expecting something entirely new; the TicWatch Pro 2020 is everything you loved, now with the performance to back it up.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/trials-of-mana.1394/

The Mana trilogy is something I’ve always wanted to get lost in. With Secret of Mana touted as a timeless classic, both its predecessor and sequel would surely share this title. I went into Trials of Mana with little knowledge of the series prior, and I did so with a great sense of anticipation to what I hoped to be a RPG reminiscent of that golden era; I didn’t quite get what I wanted.

Trials of Mana starts out strong. Allowing you to choose your party is something I’ve appreciated since playing the original Final Fantasy. It gives your adventure an incredibly personal touch, and can transform an otherwise-linear experience into something special and unique. Here, you get a choice of your main character, as well as two allies to accompany you on your journey. This decision does little to alter the main story, but provides you with differing dialogue as the story progresses, as well as a few different endings dependant on your protagonist.

Before jumping into the bulk of the story, you have a motivation-establishing prologue chapter for your chosen protagonist. A fan of thieves, I went with Hawkeye. He’s a part of the noble Nevarl Thieves, and until recently, was having a great time of it. Everything changed when their leader Flamekhan declares himself a king with no kingdom, and sets out plans to invade the neighbouring country of Laurent. As Hawkeye confronts him about this, alongside his childhood friend and son of Flamekhan, Eagle, it’s revealed Flamekhan is being controlled by the evil Isabella. Controlling Eagle, Isabella forces the two of them to face off, this battle actually acting as a tutorial. In the end, Isabella kills Eagle, with Hawkeye taking the blame. Isabella then goes onto place a cursed artefact on Flamekhan’s daughter, and Hawkeye’s love interest, Jessica. Intent on saving his friends and freeing Jessica of her curse, Hawkeye sets out to meet the Priest of Light for help.

Usually I wouldn’t feel it necessary to go into such detail on explaining aspects of the plot, but this prologue stood out to me. It didn’t necessarily last long, but it did a fantastic job of establishing characters and motivations before seeing you on your way to get stuck into the game. As you meet your allies down the line, you’re given the choice to play their prologue chapters too, and I can say that each of the three I played were delightfully crafted. They set the game off on such a high note, it makes what is to follow such a disappointment by comparison.

From here, I can only say the writing got lazier and lazier. The game relies too much on unexplained detours and convenient events to both pad out the story and keep it progressing. The Minor Mallet was a notable case of this. To enter the city of Laurent, you first need the assistance of a sage. To meet with the sage, you must shrink yourselves, and to shrink yourselves, you must track down an incredibly rare item–one that eludes even the merchants of the famous Night Market. That is, until a random NPC appears with it for sale, who handily gives it you for free with no real reason nor rhyme. It’s bizarre. To put in these detours to the plot, you expect some kind of challenge, some kind of detail, or payoff for your time. Instead, you find yourself left with a kind of meaningless backtracking that serves only to burn players out before reaching the events that truly invest you in the world. The story does have its interesting moments, but the journey to them is excruciating.

Of its strong points, I find myself time and time again coming back to the world itself and the established lore. They’re both brilliantly interesting, but it only goes to shine a light on what Trials of Mana is by contrast–an extra. Having not played Secret of Mana myself, I struggle to say whether the series as a whole is simply unsuited to my taste, or whether its final entry is a lazy addendum to milk fans dry in a time before post-release DLC, but it’s difficult to recommend all the same.

Of the other major aspects of the game, combat is something I find myself incredibly conflicted on. Featuring what feels to be fairly traditional action RPG gameplay, combat as a whole is a polished and satisfying experience. Movement is fluid and attacks are clearly and fairly choreographed to allow you time to react. Skills can be used either by consuming MP, or by charging a meter after stringing together power attacks on an enemy. At its core, there’s a lot to enjoy. What I found, however, is that it becomes tiresome–not by fault of the system in itself, but by my AI companions.

With how fair the game feels, and how well it marks out its attacks, it is frustrating beyond words to see my teammates get hit time and time again by things so easily dodged. There’s a necessary balance to be maintained in the design of non-player-controlled allies. If you make them exceptionally strong, they deprive the player of the satisfaction that comes from a challenging fight, but contrary to this, making them too weak or simple-minded, you’re left with a fight less challenging, and more frustrating. You’re left micromanaging your AI companions, as though they’re children with metal forks constantly drifting towards a power outlet.

As a whole, Trials of Mana comes across as a multiplayer experience forced into the confines of a single player game. Were this a cooperative adventure, I feel I’d be singing its praises here. Instead of having to constantly swap between characters to perform simple dodges and manage health, I’d be able to focus on myself. I’d be able to focus on the bosses, I’d be able to coordinate and laugh as somebody else took damage instead of lamenting it. The whole thing isn’t a system without merit, but to avoid frustration you have to decide between casting aside your allies as they die, or grinding out levels to the point of their HP being enough to power through. It’s not ideal for me, but to some that may yet sound appealing.

There are a few other areas of interest. Item seeds turned out to be a refreshing take on random loot; you find seeds out and about, and can grow them into items at inns. The more you grow, the better items you can get as the magic pot levels up. It’s small, sure, but when the item pool is all generally quite useful, you never really feel cheated by the randomness. As well as this, there’s a great deal of customisation on offer, somewhat of an expectation for many RPG fans. Through allocating skill points in various stats, as well as talking to NPCs, you can acquire abilities that can be distributed between party members as you desire. It’s a neat system that promotes skill allocation for a party, instead of looking at each character individually. You also have weapons and armour, but I felt a little let down in this department.

Where in many an RPG you’d have a wide array of weapons and armours of all shapes and sizes, with a variety of costs associated with them, Trials of Mana doesn’t seem to give you much choice. As you advance through each area and visit the weapon and armour sellers, you’re usually greeted with a single item for each character. It’s boring, and for a game shouting about its own customisation, I’d have expected more. It’s not even as though these items accumulate in the shops as you go on to at least pretend you have choice; you have a single item you either will or won’t buy. It just doesn’t sit well with me.

Despite its shortcomings elsewhere, one aspect of the game I struggle to find fault in is its soundtrack. It’s frankly delightful. Featuring a fantastic re-imagining of the original scores, it fills the game with the same sense of excitement and wonder I had hoped for going in. Like many a remake before it, you also have the choice of the original soundtrack, giving you a chance to compare, or even switch to it if you happen to prefer it. Both options are equally enjoyable, with the background music being one of few consistent positives as I played. 

I really wanted to like Trials of Mana, and for the first hour or two, I really did. The story was captivating, as were its characters, but from there it seemed to snowball into a mass of frustration. If you’re a fan of the previous two games, maybe there’s something in this for you. As a continuation to the saga, maybe it warrants playing. For those looking in for the first time as I was however, there are better RPGs out there, go play them instead. 

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/disaster-report-4-summer-memories.1362/

Disaster Report is a series previously unknown to me, and for good reason. The first two games launching in Europe as SOS: The Final Escape and Raw Danger, with the third not even making it out of Japan, Disaster Report 4 is the only game with the series title to make it to Europe. A tale of struggle and hardship, of grounded reality and difficult decisions. A treacherous environment to explore and progress through while avoiding its many dangers. I went into Disaster Report 4 expecting these things, and while I didn’t quite get what I expected, I can say with an unparalleled degree of certainty that I was not left disappointed.

Starting out in Disaster Report 4 is a standard affair. You make your character, answer a few questions, and off you trot to what is about to be the worst day of your life. The character creation process is simple and offers you opportunity ample to make your character truly unique; add to this the myriad of costumes you’ll find on your journey and you’ll be riding out the earthquake in style. Past character creation, the game doesn’t take long to establish its tone. Picture the scene: you’re on a bus. Suddenly, one phone rings. Then another. Every phone on the bus is making its respective jingle. You look down, and there it is, “Emergency Earthquake Information.” How do you react?

Do you:
a) Follow the rules and hold onto something
b) Confusedly copy what everybody else is doing
c) Decide to act calm despite feeling embarrassed
d) Act unfazed and don’t believe the report
e) Start humming to show you’re not scared

Welcome to Disaster Report.

At its core, the game can be broken down into four key components. You have wandering time, cutscene time, decision time, and fallout time. There’s not much to each component–you could say that much for the game as a whole–but they weave together to form a perfectly satisfying and ever-interesting cycle. It’s self-explanatory really. You start each section by wandering around and surveying your immediate surroundings. There’s something of a checklist here that’ll eventually force you into the next part of the cycle. Are there any obvious means of progression? As you move towards your obvious means of progression, a building or something similar will collapse, blocking you in. It taunts you for thinking you could simply move forwards. With that out of the way, you’ll either wander into the one building that still has its door open, or find one of the many NPCs in their hour of need; it’s cutscene time.

Cutscenes are a joy. Having seen some high-end PC footage, it’s interesting to know the game at its best could look like a high-end PS3 game. Don’t expect this on the Switch. Scale back those expectations to the early PS2 era with a sprinkling of Dreamcast magic, and you can just about envision the Disaster Report 4 for Nintendo Switch experience. It’s all such low quality; I know I should hate it. I know I should. But I don’t. I want to be perfectly clear, this isn’t the kind of thing I expect every person reading this to fall in love with. I don’t expect a fraction of those reading to share my opinion, and that’s perfectly okay. By any rational scale, the entire game, never mind the cutscenes, would be cast aside as low quality and poorly performing. There’s something to it however. There’s something magical I can only describe as Disaster Report, and if you get it, you really get it. It’s in the cutscenes. You’ll have a genuinely heart-rending scene, an early example being a man sat in the park staring at his lunch on the ground. Talking to him, you find he lost his job several weeks prior, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell his family, and so every day set out to work all the same, every day sitting in that park. It’s emotive and well-written, and the content cuts through the poor presentation of the Switch port. The magic comes from the juxtaposition of the responses.

Decision time. Listening to the man, there are a number of responses. Condolences, well wishes; positivity, negativity, disinterest, it’s all there. Of course, you can also express interest in him romantically. This is Disaster Report after all. It’s amazing really. The writers, with due credit to the localisation team, so perfectly capture every feasible and unfeasible response to a given scenario. You have a spectrum of emotion to play with as you see fit. You want to hit on every suffering person that crosses your path? Sure. You want to con people into paying 100 thousand yen for a “miracle bandage?” Sure. This is your disaster, your stage. Rock it.

What’s the comeback for these decisions? Generally, you feel a little worse as a human being. Doing bad things gives you “Immoral Points,” and doing good things gives you “Moral Points.” Though they don’t really have an impact on the gameplay, it’s fun to keep track of how low your character can sink, but I also found the distribution of these somewhat skewed towards morality. When presented with an option to be immoral where it benefits me, I would take it, and get maybe one Immoral Point. Whether stealing from a shop or selling my miracle bandages, there were only a few accumulated points. Contrast this to situations where I can’t gain anything, but I can actively mess with one person by helping another, I find myself stumbling into rewards of ten points. If these decisions have no impact on the game, I don’t understand why they couldn’t be a simple counter of good decisions vs bad decisions. As they are now, they feel like several layers of useless statistic. On top of these points, your decisions do have a knock-on effect. The power truly is yours to see who lives and who dies, which really hammers home the reality of powerlessness in the face of disaster when it is occasionally beyond your reach to save a person. The game saunters between comedy and calamity in a way I’ve simply never seen. It’s magnificent.

Though I’ve touched on this, I do feel it necessary to reiterate: this is a choppy port. If you have a PS4, or a suitably powerful gaming computer, look to them to experience the game without blurred visuals and a framerate more disastrous than the earthquake itself. It’s not to say you can’t enjoy the Switch release, but you really have to be a particular kind of person to work through these faults. I am this particular kind of person, but you may not be. There’s a free demo available, so test your mettle.

Disaster Report 4 isn’t your average game, not by any stretch of the imagination. It’s bizarre, it’s brilliant, but above all, it isn’t for everybody. If nothing else, I’m glad I’ve had this opportunity to experience it, and write about it so more people can just know it exists. With a fifth game teased, I can only wait in anticipation for what the future holds.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/a-fold-apart.1356/

Rarely does a game captivate me the way A Fold Apart did. From so much as watching its launch trailer, I was drawn in. Between its luscious visuals and bold blue and orange colour scheme, there was something more to be uncovered; there was a narrative to be explored, to be experienced. I dived in unknowing of quite what to expect.

Opening with a cutscene of unity and togetherness, the scene is set for a close and very much in love couple. Told through several pieces of paper sliding across the screen, all seems well until, as these stories often go, it isn’t. The relationship between our unnamed couple, who I’ll refer to as Orange and Blue from here, is put to the test as Blue accepts a job forcing them to relocate in a distant city. Separate but connected in these modern times, the two smile and struggle as they attempt to make a long distance relationship work for them.

Really it’s quite a simple setup, and it’s a story that’s been told a thousand times across a thousand formats. A Fold Apart presents what I would call a basic narrative in an incredibly novel way. On paper, if you’ll pardon the pun, you have exactly what I’ve described: a couple coping and not coping with the ins and outs of being in a long distance relationship. It’s in the portrayal of this where it truly comes into its own. It’s raw, beautifully so. The gameplay can be divided into two categories: conversation and thought. The first of these is where you’ll see Orange and Blue talking to one another via text messages. You’ll occasionally get to pick a reply, and the conversations are a joy to witness. Both characters feel human; in their interactions, their quips, and in their sudden shifts in mood. During these conversations, one message in particular will stand out. One will hit home in a way the sender never intended, and it’s here the receiver will fall into thought.

The message bursts out of its neat enclosure and falls from the screen, a few choice words highlighted. Their world appearing to crumble around them, they walk through their emotions, breaking down the message, its impact–their internal monologue. The world shifts and slides as you move from one scrap of paper to the next, the dialogue revealing itself around you. To break up this monologue, you’re presented with a series of puzzles.

Though largely easy to grasp, the puzzles remain satisfying to solve. The game takes a simple idea in folding paper, and takes it far enough for each new problem to feel like a unique challenge, but not so far as to shift the focus from the evolving narrative. The puzzles seem secondary, replaceable even. It’s not to say they fail as puzzles, or are even dissatisfying; frankly they’re not. Closer to the truth is that in their nature, slow and methodical, you’re given time to catch up. You have the time to brood in each thought, to analyse and overthink it as each character does. The puzzles are, in essence, a brilliantly engineered roadblock. A pace setter to give each message the time it needs to sink in.

Empathy plays a significant part in how you experience the game. The ability to connect with the characters and ultimately walk their path alongside them is what made A Fold Apart special to me, and it’s the reason I’m still left thinking about it. It is a great game if you’re willing to give it a chance, and though only lasting around three hours, puts across what it tries to in a brilliantly memorable way. 

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/kiwi-switch-lite-cases.1369/

The Switch Lite is a console I adore. Presenting all the home console-level goodness of a flagship Switch in a bitesized package still bewilders me to a certain degree, but it is by no means perfect. Lacking the iconic clamshell design of its portable predecessors, it’s notably unprotected against the elements, and it’s here KIWI step up to the table with not one, but four unique designs. How do they fare in keeping the console safe, and how do they fare against Nintendo’s premium Flip Cover case? Let’s dive in and find out!

With four cases to review, I’ll start with the simplest design and move to the more extravagant ones as we go on. This most basic silicone case surrounds both the face and back of the console really quite cleanly. There’s no frills, no bells, and no whistles here; holes are cut out for the screen and buttons on the front, and for the various buttons, ports, and fans around the rim of the system. It can still breathe nicely, and my system didn’t seem to run any hotter for being wrapped in this case. The cutouts are clean and give you easy access to everything you’d need, with the notable exception of the Micro SD slot. I’m incredibly fond of the overall feel of the case, providing a reasonable grip, and the case itself does great in protecting the system from scratches. The only real criticism I’d pull against it is that the power and volume buttons aren’t cut out as the rest are. Instead, KIWI opted for a mushy overlaid design. It’s not to say they aren’t placed well, but I don’t like how they feel to press at all. It’s something you’ll either love or you won’t. This one is available in turqoise and grey for just £8.99, so it’s hard to complain. If that isn’t for you though, there’s plenty more to look at.

A slight variation on the first design, the yellow case sports an anti-slip moniker, largely describing the raised dots on the back of the case. As well as this, the front of the system is far more exposed, this case opting to avoid button cutouts by just leaving the full front of the system open. The case still stays on fine and is notably easier to slide into place, but does offer less protection against scratches in the long run. A more subtle difference, this case does, in fact, have a cut-out hole for the volume and power buttons. With the anti-slip bumps feeling nice to hold, and the only major issue I had with the first case fixed, this would be my case of choice for those on the tightest of budgets. Coming in at the same £8.99, and available in colours to match all three launch units, it’ll get the job done.

On the more premium end of KIWI’s offerings, and by premium I mean a grand increase in price of £2, we have your more fanciful designs. Sticking with our silicone brothers above, the grey cover here aims to deliver on ergonomics. Featuring two firm bulges on the back much resembling the feel of a classic controller, there’s more to grip, making the console as a whole a little easier to play for extended periods. From the front, we have the same coverings as our first case, complete with the overlaid rubber buttons on the power and volume I’m not overly fond of. One notable difference however comes in the form of an extra cutout for the Micro SD slot. It’s not something I take out often, so I don’t feel it too much an issue to leave it covered, but for those snapping screenshots who don’t want to upload them to a social network, this could be a deal breaker. It feels nice to hold and all in all for £10.99 I again struggle to complain.

Last on the list is where things really get exotic. This is the Goliath. Taking the bumpy back of the second case, blending it with the grips of the third, replacing the silicone with TPU plastic, and adding space to store two cartridges, it ticks a lot of boxes. If you have that extra £2, it really is an extraordinary case for £10.99. It feels sturdy. Where the others provide grip and protection against scratches, I feel I could drop my Switch in this and it would be safe. Full disclosure here, I didn’t drop my Switch, because I don’t enjoy dancing with death, but it provides a certain peace of mind all the same. Looking at the negatives, the Micro SD slot is once again off-limits, this perhaps more of an issue here with the rigid nature of the case making it slightly more difficult to remove. In a similar vein, though you can store two cartridges in the back, you’ll be pressed to find a convenient way to get them out of the case. It feels like a bit of an oversight, but given the budget price and overall quality of the product, I think I can let it slide.

Of course, when looking at Switch Lite cases, it’s hard to avoid comparing to Nintendo’s own offerings, the Flip Cover case in particular. Housing the console perfectly, as well as providing a textured grip and the clamshell design of yesteryear, it is fantastic, and for those with no real ceiling on budget, it’s hard to recommend anything else. Having said that, it’s three times more expensive than even KIWI’s most expensive case, and depending on your needs, that is money you simply may not have to spend.

All in all, KIWI have put forward a brilliant range of cases, sporting a budget price without a budget feel. Though you would need to purchase a screen protector separately for total peace of mind, I do recommend you keep them in mind should you be needing a case in the near future. For what they cost, you really can’t go wrong.