8-Colors Star Guardians

• Genre: RPG
• Time Played: ~5 Hours
• Too Short/Long: Fine for what it is, but I wouldn't have minded a bit more content.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm pretty pleased, it was a cute game.
• Why I played: 2023 was the year of Kamen Rider for me. So far it's looking like 2024 is starting off as the year of Rangers/Sentai.
• Recommend to others: Sure, it's not an expensive game, and it's cute. If you like Power Rangers or tokusatsu stuff in general, it's worth playing through.

Star Guardians is a cute little game that I believe was originally a game jam game? "Chapter 1" I believe is the game jam content more or less and "Chapter 2" which is heavily expanded upon refers to the prior at a tutorial. I believe that's appropriate. The bulk of the content is in "Chapter 2" but there are also arcade modes and other challenges to mess with once you unlock everything. 

It's pretty much just a turn-based battle game where every battle has a gimmick or trick to it. You don't really level up, but you do gain new skills to use in battle and expand your team. There is some cute/funny dialog between the Guardians between battles and even special dialogs for when/if you lose that will hint or outright tell you how to win. It might be worth losing each one once just because some of them go off into a tangent and since the writing is entertaining enough, might as well get what you can.

I wouldn't have minded a bit more too it overall. I liked the team, I like the archetypical and parody writing. Nothing deep, but fun. There are a few stand out segments that are kind of their own thing, and I wouldn't have minded more of that to extend the game, and maybe they could have expanded on some of the other chance interactions, but it was fun for what it was.

Firewatch

• Genre: Adventure
• Time Played: ~5 Hours
• Too Short/Long: A little on the shorter end. I wouldn't have minded them filling in some of the gaps in the map and giving you a few more reasons to explore.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Pretty neutral. It's been recommended to me many times. It didn't meet expectations, but I didn't really disappoint me either.
• Why I played: Like I said, it was recommended to me a bunch. I definitely remember it trending a bit and seeing various articles about it. I wrote it off initially but decided to play it on a friends recommendation. This year I plan to play at least a handful of games specifically recommended to me.
• Recommend to others: Not really. It's fine. I wouldn't recommend against it, if you're interested, but I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it.

Firewatch is a game where you play as a man who is coping. It's mostly what some people call a "walking simulator". I don't really love the term because it implies there is very little to do other than to press forward, so I put it under the blanket of "PC Adventure" games, which are generally just narratives with interactions, maybe some dialog choices, maybe some puzzles, and that's what this has. You interact with the environment, you make a lot of dialog choices, and there are even some "puzzles" in the form of, what to do/where to go next.

It's fine. It's not particularly engaging, they could have offered me more reasons to explore around. I almost always learned that trying to stray off the beaten path was not worth it. There were maybe one or two easter eggs in "environmental" story telling off the beaten path, but really it wasn't worth just doing exactly what the game told me at all times. The characters aren't particularly likable. I understand they're supposed to maybe be flawed and human, but, both the main two characters partake in unreasonable emotional whiplash which really detracts from liking them or their relationship.

It does a good job at building intrigue and I felt like any moment "oh this game could turn around and make me love it" but it just kinda never followed through for me. I kept waiting and waiting for it to do the thing and it just kinda ended. I though it was going somewhere bigger, but it wasn't, it's exactly what it looks like and nothing more.

Sea of Stars

• Genre: RPG
• Time Played: 40 Hours
• Too Short/Long: Just about right, maybe drags in certain sections.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Very pleased. It was better than I expected and I was pretty excited for it.
• Why I played: I love the related material and the biggest inspiration; The Messenger, and Chrono Trigger respectively.
• Recommend to others: I definitely would, and especially to anyone who enjoyed the above mentioned games. Or to anyone who likes other throwback rpgs, like Chained Echoes.

Sea of Stars was pretty great. There is a lot I could talk about, but also a lot that I feel like is spoiler territory. It's kind of one of those games that is always revealing new stuff. The combat is fun, it's like a mix of Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG(especially remake). There are timed button presses when you do pretty much anything, and you can swap character in and out, though I don't recall the original Super Mario RPG did that, so maybe I should liken it to Final Fantasy X in that regard, even if it's far from the only RPG with that mechanic, it's one of the more popular.

The Chrono Trigger inspiration for combat comes in the form of the combo abilities and how combat is initiated and characters are placed etc. The Chrono Trigger inspiration doesn't stop there because it's really in so much of the game.