Arctic Eggs

• Genre: Cooking Simulation
• Spoiler Free Review: Yes.
• Time Played: 2.3 Hours
• Too Short/Long: It's fine for what it is I guess. There is a sandbox mode where you can make any combo of items presented in the game, so you can squeeze just about all you can out of it.
• Did I cry: No.
• Soundtrack: Actually surprising good. Nothing too crazy, but it's a vibe.
• Why I played: A friend really liked it and said it was probably her favorite game she played all year.
• Jank: Not really enough to be janky, pretty much everything it does it seems to be with intent. 
• Difficulty: A little tricky, but nothing too crazy.
• Pleased/Disappointed: It was nice, but I'm just disappointed there wasn't much more to it.
• Recommend to others: Not really, not that it's bad. There just isn't much to offer unless you really like games with cooking mechanics.

I thought Arctic Eggs was going to be a lot more than it was. I thought there was going to be this depth that you peel back as you go through. I thought it was going to be a surreal experience that would leave me thinking. But nah, you just cook some eggs and other miscellaneous things with some obstacles or challenges in your way while you do so. It's set in a weird setting to flavor it, but in the end, you're just cooking some fried egg, both sides, as usual.

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream

• Genre: Life-Sim
• Spoiler Free Review: Sorta? I don't know what is considered spoilers in a game like this, but there are some major event screenshots included.
• Partners: Alice most of all - since she provided me with items and a dozen of the Miis I used. I also had some other friends make Miis of their tabletop characters for me to use, and of course some Miis of my friends I have previously acquired from them.
• Time Played: 90 Hours
• Too Short/Long: It's solid and it's definitely one of those games you can play pretty much as much as what you want. I think I actually rolled credits closer to about 60 hours. I may still play a bit here and there.
• Did I cry: Nah.
• Soundtrack: It has some cute sounds but nothing I'm gonna jam out to outside the game. Like Pokemon
• Why I played: Alice was really excited for it, and we had a little adventure trying to get it. It was actually pretty ridiculous, and we had to go to like 4 different place - one multiple times. I ended up playing the demo and thinking it was pretty cute and picked up another copy so we could "play together" and share some of the stuff we made.
• Jank: It's mostly pretty jank free. I'd say the most jank lies in the fact that certain controls change menu to menu, resulting in my often "miss-clicking" so to speak. Press the wrong button and doing the wrong thing.
• Difficulty: There is zero difficulty to this game. It's something you play, but isn't designed to create any kind of challenge.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm pretty pleased. I wasn't originally interested in it at all, and ended up playing quite a bit, and will likely play some more. I ended up playing Pokopia over 125 hours before hanging it up for now, so I might play this a bit more, though I'm not sure Tomodachi Life will keep my interest quite as long - I'm pretty much just seeing the same things over and over at this point, and any remaining interest would be just creating new Miis - which I do have a lot of fun with to be fair, or doing some serious customization to my island.
• Recommend to others: I definitely would recommend this if it's your type of game, or you find it easy to be amused by your own jokes so to speak. A lot of the game is giving them prompts to use in interactions, so it's like you're co-creating the joke because you're making them say the thing you told them to. There are a lot of fun and lolrandom interactions, and if that sounds like something you'd enjoy you should definitely go for it.
  

Unfortunately I've summarized most of the main points of the game above in some way or another. Tomodachi Life mostly has you making miis, customizing your island, and making them interact. It's basically a digital dollhouse for those who have lost the wonder of banging a couple figures together while having a two-way conversation with themselves.

Pokémon Pokopia

• Genre: Life-Sim Sandbox game?
• Spoiler Free Review: Allusions to potential spoilers, gameplay, unlocks, etc.
• Time Played: ~50 Hours
• Too Short/Long: This is probably one of those games that can greatly vary depending on what you want to do. I didn't B-line the main story, I "casually" enjoyed my progress as I made it and did activities as they were made available to me while engaging with the whole breadth of the game. So for me, it felt just right.
• Did I cry: I got just a little watery eyed at one point.
• Soundtrack: It's fine. It's cute. It's just a little more repetitive than I'd prefer, and considering they have dozens of existing Pokémon tracks in the form of collectable CDs and various ways to play them, you think one would be as a radio for you, the player, but no, they only come through in the lower quality output of the in-game music playing items. There are some neat reprises of classic Pokémon melodies though.
• Why I played: I honestly only snagged it out of FOMO. It looked like something people were talking about and already really liking prior to actual release, and I saw just enough things that made me want to give it a try. I thought going in to it, it was going to be New Horizons 2.0 and I would kind of regret getting it just because it was something everyone else was playing.
• Jank: Surprisingly jank-light. Not free. There are some controls that could be a little bit more refined. I can't count the times I removed or broke something I didn't want to, or placed something incorrectly. There are supposedly some issues with Pokémon "despawning", which I may have experienced a couple times but was resolvable, but apparently certain situations it's not. Just some other general funkiness. It's to be expected with a game of this type. The more room for error the more error there will be, and there is a surprisingly large amount of stuff in this game and it's just impressive how it handles it.
• Difficulty: It's hard to say this is "difficult" in any capacity, so this will be rated more on tedium. Is it tedious? Not really. Sometimes, but not that much. I could see some quality of life improvements that give you more storage/remote /universal access, but that's about it. There are several different "main areas" in the game, and pretty much the only time the game needs to load is going between them, and sometimes, I have items I need in a storage in one of those different areas, so I have to visit an area just to grab the item and return back to where I am playing. That's a little tedious.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm extremely pleased. I had way more fun with this game than I expected I would. I may even continue playing it a bit even though I finished the story. This might be one of those games some people say "only truly starts when you finish the story", which I can understand why even if I don't agree, depending on what you're looking for getting into it.
• Recommend to others: I definitely would highly recommend it to anyone who likes any combination of Pokémon, Animal Crossing, Minecraft(or Minecraft contemporaries like Terraria or Dragon Quest Builders). In fact, I'm a bit disappointed I didn't see more people I know jumping into this game immediately. I think timing is a factor, but I've expressed my disappointment with New Horizons, and this is just the complete opposite experience for me, and yet there was a time where practically anyone I knew with a Switch was playing Animal Crossing. It helps it came out right at the start of the pandemic in 2020, but like I said - timing.

I just don't know where to begin with Pokémon Pokopia as it exceeded my expectations at almost every turn. It was such a joy to play. I'm not much of a "sandbox" style game player. I enjoyed Breath of the Wild more than Tears of the Kingdom. I played Animal Crossing until I rolled credits. I played Terraria until I rolled credits. I played Starbound until I rolled credits. I never cared for Minecraft, at all.

Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma

• Genre: Farm-sim Action RPG
• Spoiler Free Review: Pretty much, other than the screenshots.
• Time Played: 60 Hours
• Too Short/Long: Actually maybe too short? I felt like I was left off wanting more.
• Soundtrack: It's okay, it fits the setting and such, and it has some unique effects an queues, but nothing I'm in a hurry to listen to on it's own.
• Why I played: I've always tried getting into the Rune Factory games, generally I like their style, and some of them have pretty fun game play. It's the gameplay loop that always had me fall off. Guardians of Azuma just looked so good I had to give it another shot.
• Did I cry: Almost, but not quite.
• Jank: It's pretty solid. There might be a couple very tiny issues where you climb something/don't climb something correctly, but it's mostly pretty tight.
• Difficulty: I think the difficulty is highly dependent on how well you balance what you do and how efficiently you do it. If you focus too much on progressing through the story, it'll make it harder. If you focus too much on just farming and pursuing relationships, it'll make things take longer.
• Recommend to others: I definitely would recommend this to others. At least for me, it's a great balance of farming/management and action rpg. The story is okay, but the dialog is very fun and the characters are great, and there are a lot of ways to approach how to play the game and I think that's why a lot of people will enjoy it.

Upon finishing Guardians of Azuma, I read some review of it which seemed... a little unfair. Now maybe from the perspective of long time fans of the Rune Factory series, there may not be enough of this or that, but I really liked Guardians of Azuma. Maybe it's something superficial and the better visuals or more Japanese inspired designs drew me in, but I think that it's a little more what I like, and maybe a little less what the typical cozy farm sim enjoyer likes.

There is a clear story when you start off Guardians of Azuma. You're engaged in a battle to stop the destruction of the world, and you are tasked with restoring it. You start off modestly in a small village inhabited by the goddess of Spring and eventually venture to towns for each season. Each town has some npcs, "development areas" where you do your farming/building/customizing, and outside the town each has it's own pseudo-open area, followed by a dungeon. Some of the development areas are rather small, making it a bit tricky to manage what you can work with, while some give you plenty of room for customization. Some are large enough to basically make a whole town within them.

But by far and large the biggest sections of the game are those where the action occurs. I find that a lot of these farm-sim/action rpgs usually have much smaller dungeon areas, or at least less focus and not quite as many large areas. There are many areas that cannot be fully explored in a single cycle. Thankfully there are shrines/save points that allow you to pick right up where you left off, should you need to return to town and rest. One thing that bugs me is having to always start from the beginning of an area, and this game thankfully respects your time to be pretty generous with those shrines which also act as fast travel/teleport locations.