-Akiba’s Beat is a good game worth remembering. It’s no masterpiece and I can see why someone would drop it in the first couple of chapters, but it’s got really fun gameplay (especially in Hard Mode), some awesome music, a phenomenal dub cast (and probably sub too) and a set of characters I’ve grown to adore that just keeps pulling me back to playing it. It’s also got a lot of narm charm appeal in places, it’s just a game I can’t help but love. I do see how people on the pre-release train would’ve been disappointed, but I went in knowing some didn’t like it so I had low expectations and ended up pleasantly surprised!
-Final Fantasy XV is an amazing game. It’s a little unpolished in places, but it’s probably the game I’ve been the most emotionally invested in, the only games that match it are Trails of Cold Steel and Lost Dimension. The soundtrack is phenomenal, the sub voice cast is perfect, the world is brilliant and though the cast is small, I’ve grown to love every single character. It’s hard to explain just how many emotions FFXV made me feel, but I think as someone who wasn’t around for the pre-release and went in with no clue about what to expect, it very quickly became an all-time favourite.
-Pokemon X and Y weren’t bad games. The story was definitely shallower than the previous and future entries, and as someone who played a Wonderlocke (so boosted EXP was a thing) it was super easy, but I can’t deny that I had a ton of fun playing it, and it’s also got one of my favourite soundtracks in the entire series. By extension, I’d like to say I didn’t mind Diantha being champion, though that may slightly be in part due to the anime.
-Professor Layton and the Lost Future is one of the weaker games in the Layton series. I can’t deny I love the soundtrack, and Yuri Lowenthal’s acting in it is brilliant, but the climax just felt off to me? Most of the game is very thoroughly thought out and you’ve got lots of separate mysteries all tying together into one thing, but then we just go “big mech destroy thing” out of nowhere and it feels like way too much of an escalation. Later entries do go bigger but they were on a larger scale to begin with, while Lost Future has a massive case of disproportionate retribution. Even more major of an unpopular opinion related to this: I found Claire rather boring and the fact that she’s the motivator of three different major characters despite having little characterisation was kind of ehh to me.
-Spectre’s Call is worst Layton game tho, it’s got some great elements (like the Black Ravens) but the whole mystery was solved. By a dinosaur seal. A freakin dinosaur seal. It’s not even like it was essential, we already had one explanation for the Spectre and everything else the freakin dinosaur seal did could’ve been done by the Black Ravens - hell, they even help at the end, they could’ve done it themselves!
-haven’t seen many opinions on Lost Dimension but in general they tend to be split, so I’ll just say I think that other than The End’s motivations and the unexplained ending, Lost Dimension is amazing for the budget it had behind it. They managed to develop the entire cast to the point where I love them all in such a short time, and the paranoia of one of them being a traitor got to me in a way that was both horrific and almost thrilling, in a weird way. The gameplay is also borderline addicting, the music is brilliant, and the final boss fight is actually one of my favourites ever (it’s the same for both routes, but I’d like to say I prefer the Normal End one because it was hyped up better imo). The best bit about the game has gotta be the lore files though, the way they set up the story slowly as you play is really fun to watch unfold. (I’m running out words for “really damn good”).
-Persona 4’s story and social links are written phenomenally, but the game falls short at the forced fanservice. I could remove nearly every fanservice-based scene from the game and I’d lose nothing, but instead it’s just A-mashing through cliché scenes that only serve to take up time I could use increasing social links. There are even options to deny some of them, but they don’t work! I haven’t played many fanservice-y games so I don’t know if it’s the worst out there (probably isn’t tbh) but it just bothered me a lot, especially since the fanservice directly goes against some of P4’s morals at times.
-since the fandom seems to think it, I might as well say it - Trails of Cold Steel did NOT ruin the Trails series, if anything it’s the best entry yet. Trails in the Sky from what I’ve played, is an amazing set of games, but Cold Steel has just so many good things about it that would break the character limit if I listed them all. There’s a reason Cold Steel and its sequel are at the top of my favourite games of all time list.
-time to finally reach this one. Localisation wars are pointless. I’ve played games translated by XSEED, NISA, Atlus USA, Idea Factory International, a couple of independent localisers and soon I’m getting a game from Aksys, and all I can say is that they’ve all done great jobs on the games I’ve played from them. When a translator does makes a mistake they do try to learn from it and often successfully, and every localisation team has its good and bad moments. Why does everyone need to argue about it, just be glad it’s releasing in English?
-one last opinion to round it out to ten. A game doesn’t need to be good for you to enjoy it. I mentioned it in my first opinion with Akiba’s Beat, but I’m going to state it clearly here. It doesn’t matter if a game has some inconsistent story, or lacklustre graphics, or a mediocre ending, as long as you enjoyed the experience then it doesn’t matter if it’s a little shoddy in places! I don’t like seeing people being rude to others just because they like a game that isn’t a 10/10 masterpiece.