Earthion

• Genre: Shmup
• Spoiler Free Review: Yes.
• Time Played: 2-3 Hours
• Too Short/Long: It's fine. Standard shmup length, especially considering it was made to play on Genesis.
• Did I cry: No.
• Soundtrack: Great high-octane classic 16-bit ost.
• Why I played: After playing Geppy-X, which I loved don't get me wrong, I wanted to play a shmup that actually felt good to play.
• Jank: None encountered, it's pretty polished.
• Difficulty: Pretty much just right, took me a few tries to get through a run. I only realized after that it has a "continue with all your upgrades" feature. Whoops.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm very pleased. Some games made to run on old hardware show obvious signs of restrictions in design. You can't even tell with Earthion.
• Recommend to others: I definitely would recommend it to a shmup fan.
  

Earthion is a fantastic example of how to make a game that can run on old hardware without it feeling like they limited themselves. I've played plenty of games like this, but it always felt like it could have been a better game if they didn't self-impose that restriction. Earthion really shows how good you could make a Sega Genesis game with modern design knowledge/skill.

It feels fast paced, the music is great, the controls are tight, the gimmick is interesting. I don't know what else you could want out of a shmup, really.

70s-style Robot Anime Geppy-X

• Genre: Shmup
• Spoiler Free Review: Yes.
• Time Played: ~13 hours
• Too Short/Long: No complaints either way.
• Did I cry: No.
• Soundtrack: Amazing, absolutely amazing.
• Why I played: A shmup with 90's mecha anime art(even if it attempts to be 70's style), how could I not?
• Jank: It's definitely a bit janky in how it handles. I play a lot of shmups, and sure, maybe one from the 90's may not be as refined as modern shmups... is something you could almost say if some of the best shmups to this day weren't also released in the 90s. Granted, if it were one of the best, it would be much more well know.
• Difficulty: It's damn hard. I attribute a good portion to the jank. Unclear hitboxes for any of the mechs you pilot, and for the shots hitting you. I played the repeated pause game to be sure of it, but things absolutely contact when they shouldn't. It even says in the manual how Geppy's chest is the only part you will take damage from getting hit. Absolutely not true... or maybe it is and all the shots just have wider margins than their visuals. Not only that, but a lot of the patterns provide inconsistent openings. After playing through the entire campaign several times, I did learn some placement for cheesing certain attacks, but I'm not sure if that's by design and if so, I still don't like it.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm very pleased at the overall package. Even if it's unfairly difficult and a mediocre shmup, the whole experience is very enjoyable.
• Recommend to others: I would probably only recommend it to those with a strong interest in the Super Robot genre, specifically that of the 70s-style Robot Anime. Who also at least kind of like shmups.
  

Geppy-X plays almost like a bonus shmup mini-game that is added to another game of a different genre. You know the kind(maybe you don't, I don't know your life), it's thrown as a bonus mode, mini-game, boss fight, etc. and feels a little loose, a little unfair, a little chaotic and unbalanced. Well, at least those ones are better than the alternative - which are the too-boring ultra basic, ultra easy shmup mini-games.

Thankfully, it still manages to standout due to it's overall package. Filled with a story line presented like a 70s super robot anime, openings, endings, commercials and all. It's fantastic and super fun. It made it worth me fully replaying and enduring it multiple times just to get little differences in the cutscenes with different characters.

It helps that despite the 70's inspiration, it was very very clearly made in the 90s. The character designs, even many of the mecha designs, are clearly 90s designs with very 90s artwork. I'd say they better nail the 70s-style design with the side-mecha, but to be fair, the titular Geppy-X while drawing obvious inspiration, is a little more original than it's almost carbon-copy secondary mecha.

There is a really solid amount of content in the game, especially for a 90s shmup. Not only does it have multiple, kinda-animated to more-fully animated between each mission, it has a good amount of stage bonuses and little easter-eggs and different cutscenes for finishing off each boss in a specific way, and a bunch of unlockable modes. That's what really sells the game. The gameplay itself could be a lot more polished, but otherwise you can't really ask for more in a shmup.

Look Outside

• Genre: Horror RPG
• Spoiler Free Review: A little. This is arguably one of those games it might be best to experience without having too much information. If you're already planning to play but haven't yet. It's best not to read too far in here.
• Time Played: 35 Hours
• Too Short/Long: Felt pretty good to me. I did the vast majority in a single run, but if I was playing a bit more linear, I could have knocked it out in half the time easy, and it's probably the way it was more designed to be played.
• Did I cry: Nah.
• Soundtrack: It's mostly pretty good, a little repetitive at time, but it has some bangers.
• Why I played: Alice insisted I play it, I kind of jokingly said I would play it after Adventures of Elliot with little intention of finishing Elliot any time soon, or playing something else and then saying "Yeah, and it will still be AFTER Elliot, even if I play 5 more games next", but I wasn't really feeling anything I've been wanting to get into so I just jumped right in.
• Jank: It's one of those games where you can easily click through dialog boxes and you may have to repeatedly read dialog, but that's partially on me for being impatient.
• Difficulty: Early on it's more about survival and using each resource carefully, but later on it's a bit easier - at least playing the way I did, so maybe combat isn't meant to be so easy. But the real difficult lies in the times where you need figure out how to proceed properly. It's a little difficult of a game overall, but nothing crazy.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm very please with this. I'm not sure I expected all too much, and at first I just along for the ride, but eventually it clicked and I was very interested to see how things would turn out... at every turn.
• Recommend to others: I definitely would. I think a lot of people would get even more out of it than me. Especially people who don't feel the need to do every little thing and go full-completionist as they play through a game. People who are interested in the game enough to give it a couple playthroughs. There is definitely enough variation in how things turn out to have a couple, if not a few more or less wholly unique playthroughs if you're not trying to do everything. I also especially would recommend it to anyone who likes eldritch/cosmic horror.
  

The first thing I would do upon starting the game is Look Outside. I would find myself at many points in the game wanting to Look Outside. Maybe this is the time there will be an answer when I Look Outside. In a game where you awaken to a mystery of something beyond your comprehension, it's hard to talk about the greater theme of the game without being spoilery, but I feel like I can at least discuss some things I liked/didn't like, etc.

Look Outside has some really fun and clever writing. There are a lot of unique characters to interact with, and even when brief, they can often feel like characters more fleshed out than those that appear in many other pieces of media. It helps their design often strongly leans into their archetype in a unique way. Or perhaps something about them has changed so drastically, just hearing them tell their experience makes them feel more alive than so many others. There is a surprising amount of character dialog - and so much of it is entirely optional, or even missable. Another reason I think the game might serves multiple playthroughs better - as long as you're not trying to mimic your prior playthough, that is. I'm not planning to immediately restart it, but I can even see how I would approach things differently a second time just to experience things differently and likely get a lot of dialog I didn't previously. 

The Adventures of Elliott: The Millennium Tales

• Genre: Action RPG
• Spoiler Free Review: Kind of spoiler free up until where I say I'm going to do big spoilers but still round-about spoilers throughout, just trying not to be specific.
• Time Played: 30 Hours
• Too Short/Long: It's not excessively long game, but the pacing/progression don't do it any favors. It feels way longer than it is because it seems like it's going to wrap up at multiple points and doesn't really offer anything new for a long time.
• Did I cry: It did manage to squeeze a tear or two out of me despite how my recount may sound.
• Soundtrack: It wasn't bad, but overall just a little too general cheery adventure music for me. When they "went hard" it felt forced and not exactly in line with the rest of the tracks. Individually there are no bad tracks, but it didn't have an identity of it's own - it was clearly just taking from what inspired it.
• Why I played: The visuals and the gameplay are both huge draws for me. I love the "H2-2D" look and I also really like Ys games, which this takes most of it's inspiration from.
• Jank: There were a few times I had to restart the game because the ability to use Faie just completely bugged out. Often during the worst possible times, such as doing this challenge gauntlet - which I still managed without the help of Faie mind you, despite some of her later abilities being kind of overpowered.
• Difficulty: Very low. I thought I saw something about there being special scene if you die at certain points and so there were times I purposefully died to see if anything special would happen, but it never did. Other than that I never died - I used potions to prevent death - it's not like I didn't take damage, but at least early on in the game I had the 99 combo going for so long I decided to just take it easier and play a bit more quickly/recklessly, which would actually lose my health, but nothing a potion didn't solve.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm not exactly disappointed with the game as a whole, just exhausted. I guess what I'm most disappointed about is the poor writing and lack of consistency when it comes to continuity and paradox.
• Recommend to others: I probably wouldn't recommend it over what it draws inspiration from. Ys, Mana games, Zelda games a bit, and then the many games that were also inspired them, such as one of my absolute favorites; CrossCode. I just couldn't help but feel like this was less good than so many other games in so many other ways - visuals aside, because those are still very fun, and it does have higher production values in other aspects too, but it just comes up short on how fun or interesting it is.

Overall I did enjoy it, but I was left exhausted of it by time I was done. I think that's the first misstep - the pacing/world design. On it's own, there is nothing wrong with the world - arguably even a decent - if not extremely generic world. You got your woods, desert, snowfield and volcano, and town all of which are so uninspired the ice land is literally called "White Area", and to the west of that? "West Area", though it's kind of funny having both Nothern West Area and Southern West Area, and Neverwither is a clever name for a forest place.

Regardless, across a millennium, nothing really changes for these environments. Not for the most part. Some bridges move, some ladders move and that's about 90% of it. Fallen trees that block your path somehow remain for a thousand years in some cases, or perhaps a tree falls in the same exact place after a window of it opening. Key locations have a couple switch ups, but for the most part you're exploring the same exact map 4 different times. Every dungeon has a collectable in every time too, it could be a useful life piece, or it could be an item that you already collected via the random gacha system the game has, but don't worry if you collect one you already have then they'll compensate you by offering exactly 1 of the item you need 5 of to perform a gacha draw. Wowie kabowie. You're telling me after I find 5 useless chests along an hour of treasure hunting I can do a SINGLE gacha pull which will likely award me... a duplicate item which will award me exactly 1 of the gacha currency.