2D walking simulators seem to be a whole new genre of their own, are more interesting, and tend to be better than fully 3D ones. Games like Limbo, Little Nightmares, and Inside are perfect examples of this. There is some light platforming, some puzzle solving thrown in, and maybe a little bit of stealth. While none of those had stories that blew me away, they did make up for it in atmosphere and character. Shady Part of Me sadly doesn’t accomplish any of those things. The only thing going for it is the dual-character puzzles, and that’s about it. There really isn’t even a story to speak of. Yourself, your shadow, and some disembodied voice narrate the entire game with cryptic dialogue that really is either open for translation to the player or is entirely meaningless.
This game reminds me a lot of Limbo and Lost in Shadow. You play as a little girl in a white dress who is afraid of light, and her shadow (always on the wall) is afraid of darkness. You switch between both to help each other advance. Puzzles involve pushing boxes and pulling switches, and in later levels, your shadow can defy gravity and even take over puppet bodies. Most of the puzzles have that “Aha!” moment, which can be satisfying, but there were a few that really stumped me and took a lot of time just fiddling around until something changed. Most puzzles have you manipulating objects in front of lights to make new shadows, move them, or make them grow or shrink. The real girl can’t jump, but your shadow can. This means there is light platforming in the shadow, but nothing complicated.
I did find the aspect of two characters to be a bit tedious. Some areas just have you running to the right to stop in the circle to advance to the next area. You then have to switch to the other character and run that full length again. It’s not a major problem, but it happens too frequently. I also found the rewind feature to be really handy. This prevents constant deaths and restarts. You can rewind as long as you want, so I have to applaud the developers for making this a frustrating mess. A lot of times your shadow will die or you will get caught in light, and it stops the game, but rewinding allows you to see the error you made and correct it. If you fully died every time and went back to a checkpoint, this game would be unbearably frustrating.
Overall, the visuals are great. The sketchbook look and early 20th-century aesthetics are fun, but they’re also nothing memorable. We’ve seen this kind of art style before in other games. That’s the biggest takeaway from Shady Part of Me. It does what it does fine. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn’t leave a lasting impression like the above mentioned games. Limbo was gruesome and had a memorable atmosphere. Little Nightmares’ ghoulish monsters stood out, and Inside’s dystopian world put you on edge. You will spend around five hours in this game and mostly forget about it the next day.
One of the scariest things to me is being alone on a planet. I’ve had a recent fascination with this, especially after reading The Martian by Andy Weir. It’s a different form of psychological horror. The human mind is a vast pit of emotions and an endless imagination. The fear of the unknown and the human mind running rampant combined is a scary combination that very few media tackle. The Invincible is one such story, and it’s done well.
First and foremost, this is a walking simulator, but with a bit more freedom. There’s really no gameplay, but you can interact with objects and control a vehicle a couple of times, but that’s about it. It does what walking simulators are supposed to do well, and that’s provide good characters with great writing and a story that keeps you hooked. The Invincible starts out slow and may come off as a typical space adventure with pretty colors and nothing more, but the story just gets darker and darker as you move along. The length is a couple of hours longer than a typical game of its kind, and it helps. There is more character development, more explanation of what is going on, and more of this planet, Regis III.
It’s a desert planet similar to Mars, but with an ocean. You play as Yansa, one of a small crew of scientists scouting out a possible Earth-like planet. You learn about two warring factions known as the Alliance and the Commonwealth. The space race to find a planet of paradise is very apparent. I don’t want to talk too much about the story, as I can easily spoil something. I will just say the story keeps going when you think it ends and gets darker and deeper, and the theories behind what is going on are very fascinating. There seem to be some choices you can make in the game, but I’m not sure if they impact the ending or not. Most of the dialogue is between Yansa and another crew member on her ship, the Dragonfly. The story has so many ups and downs, emotion-wise, as your fight for survival takes a back seat to a larger plot point, and the excellent voice acting helps suck you into this void.
You spend most of the game climbing ledges, dropping down ledges, and examining objects. There are a few large open maps, but you have a linear path you need to follow thanks to the well-designed map system. The interactions are always changing, and the pace is great after the first opening sequence, and things pick up. There is always something new happening, and I love that about this game. You aren’t just walking in a straight line in a borefest like Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, and it’s not a jump-scare-induced horror roller coaster like Layers of Fear. The terror of survival, death, and being alone is omnipresent in The Invincible. Just seeing a robot can make you feel less alone. The atmosphere is so well done in this game.
I usually start complaining about a lack of gameplay or that the story is so short that there’s no time for anything interesting to happen, but The Invincible does what walking simulators haven’t really done in a long time: make you want to walk through something and keep going. Between the 50’s art deco-style designs of the ships and equipment, the immersive first-person view, and the excellent voice acting, there’s so much to take in. Sure, the visuals aren’t impressive on a technical scale. There is also no ultrawide screen support, which is a real bummer, but it’s not enough to knock this game down. The Invincible makes you think and talk about the story to your friends because you want to theorize, and it entices you to think about life on other planets, which might make you go read a book or watch a movie like Apollo 13 or The Martian to continue experiencing this fear of being alone on a planet. Walking simulators aren’t this good very often. Enjoy it while it lasts.
8Bitdo has been killing it over the last five to seven years. They have become a premium AA accessory manufacturer for retro and modern consoles. 8Bitdo has released their first attempt at a keyboard with a retro-themed 70% keyboard with NES and Famicom aesthetics. They also have an 80’s PC vibe with similar layout and styling to that era.
Looks wise, 8Bitdo nailed this keyboard. While I can’t speak for the Famicom version as I do not own it, the NES version looks fantastic. While I’m not a huge fan of the giant A and B buttons, the novelty is appreciated. The keyboard has a sloped angle like the keyboards of the 80’s, with a beige tone and red print on the keys. The fully red escape key and the knobs at the top left are great as well; however, the volume is an infintely turning knob, and the position ends up being irrelevant. This being a TKL keyboard, it will fit on most desks and isn’t super bulky. The bulbous power LED is also a nice touch. This feels and looks like the part for an 80’s keyboard.
The biggest draw to this keyboard is the hotswappable switches. It comes with Kail White V2 switches, but I added Kail Heavy Pro Box Navy switches. I also did a tape mod with five layers of tape, and this keyboard sounds and feels great. I’m glad this keyboard does come with premium switches, and you can add whatever ones you want. 8Bitdo’s versatility and customization are excellent choices. There are four screws located behind the rubber feet on the bottom, and using a plastic pry tool, you can just pop the clips around the panel in the back, and off it goes. It’s an easy keyboard to modify and change around.
It doesn’t just stop with being an 80’s mock keyboard. 8Bitdo’s usual macro buttons are available via their very early and limited keyboard software suite. You can update the firmware and edit your macros with this. It’s still really early, and with its popularity and the number of keyboards, I’m sure 8Bitdo can create a more robust piece of software. There also isn’t any RGB on this keyboard, but that’s probably a good thing given the era it’s trying to recreate, but maybe a white backlight would have been nice. The battery claims it can last up to 200 hours on a single charge. The USB 2.4Ghz dongle snaps into the back so it doesn’t get lost, but there is also a Bluetooth option. This keyboard can work on virtually any modern device.
Overall, 8Bitdo did a great job with their first keyboard outing, and the swappable switches are a plus for longevity and customizability that a lot of non-custom keyboard manufacturers aren’t allowing. The 80’s style rocks, the form factor is great, and it feels good to use. I wish the software was a bit better and the dials felt better to use, and I feel the large buttons are a silly gimmick that just increases the cost. Despite this, it’s a fantastic keyboard.
When a studio says they take inspiration from adventure games like Life is Strange, I pay attention. We follow a maid during the late 1950s, working in a hotel for a crass boss. You are basically a snoop and end up getting involved in a mystery of a love triangle, and you take it upon yourself to get co-workers involved, and the entire thing spirals out of control. Is this game a lesson on minding your own business or doing what you think is right?
You play as Ms. Roy. You start out by getting to know your co-workers, learning the game’s mechanics, and starting your amateur sleuthing. There’s not much to the game’s mechanics. You can interact with dozens upon dozens of objects, mostly letters you end up reading, and either throw them away or just inspect them. You spend your time between three floors. The fifth floor, the basement, and the lobby You eventually pick a male or female co-worker to help you dig into other people’s business, but you also have a job to do. You need to clean and tidy up each room, and all of your actions have consequences towards the end of the game. I don’t want to say what can or can’t cause these, as it can really spoil the ending, but just know that picking things up and keeping them is something the game tells you to think about the most.
Inspecting items doesn’t really matter as you’re putting them back down, but scouring all the drawers, every item, no matter how simple it seems, might give you a clue to figure out what’s happening in the love circle you want to so desperately be a part of. Sometimes you need to go to the basement and get items you don’t have, and there are a few puzzles thrown in. These aren’t difficult either. matching up pieces of paper, deciphering a code, or just finding a few clues here and there. You can hear Roy’s inner dialogue to help give you hints, and you can read everything you picked up in your inventory.
Outside of interacting with objects and solving the occasional puzzle, there isn’t anything else to do. There’s no exploring, character interactions are scripted, and there are only three characters in the entire game. This is a very short game with a runtime of about 3 hours. I do have to give credit to the developers for creating such a tense mystery at that time and actually giving the characters some depth. It’s not long enough to really give an entire backstory like other adventure games, but they cut out the nonsense and get to the meat of what they want to do and the story they want to tell. The writing is well done, and the voice acting is pretty excellent too. Your choices also really do matter, but the physical interactions with objects make you realize what you could have done differently as the final moments of the story pass.
The visuals aren’t anything impressive, but the game looks period-correct, and it’s not ugly. The lip syncing is off, but the characters look good, and they have a unique look and a lot of character in their personalities. Sadly, my biggest complaint is that I wanted to know more about these characters. The game focuses solely on this mystery, but just enough personality in the characters pokes through that this could have been a much longer game. I wanted to know more about Ms. Roy and who she is as a person. That’s what made Life is Strange so great. It focused a lot on the characters, who they are as people, and their lives. There’s a lot of potential here for something greater, but the end product of an interesting and gripping mystery is done well enough. This makes for a fun evening with choices that really matter, but that’s about it.
A lot of games tell the lives of soldiers during WWII, but not many talk about civilian life. Specifically, the lives of the Japanese and Russian civilians who were dragged into the war against their will, and many didn’t support what their governments were doing. Torn Away tells the life of a Russian child whose village was destroyed and all residents were dragged into labor camps by the Nazis. Our protagonist, Ansya, wound up in a women’s labor camp with her mother, and you follow her as she escapes and deals with loss after loss, trying to make it to more relatives in another village.
The game starts inside a house, and you learn to interact with objects, complete small and simple mini-games, and gather various objects. Ansya likes to talk to her dolls, and she ends up having her inner dialogue narrated by her mitten, Comrade Mitten, through the journey. As most know, children like talking to dolls and objects that they get attached to. Sometimes this can be a coping or comfort measure, especially after severe trauma. The game changes the pace constantly, going from side-scrolling platforming sections to first-person walking sections and sections in which you are finding objects in small houses. It changes up the gameplay quite a bit, and the game never gets dull. The original Russian voice acting is great, and the overall tone nails the atmosphere of dread during the war.
A lot of the sadness is portrayed by the visuals. A beautiful style of water colors and washed-out lines. It’s almost like a child’s blurry memory. There are a lot of foreground and background objects similar to other side scrollers like Limboor Inside. This can give a sense of scale for a small child in a big adult world as well. Every area was different and felt unique, and there was always a sense of foreboding danger. The second Ansya felt safe, something would happen, and she would be on the run again. The story never gets gut-wrenchingly sad or depressing, as the story isn’t long enough to portray this. There was a lot of focus on gameplay, unlike most walking simulators, so the story isn’t the sole focus here.
Gameplay-wise, the platforming is the worst part of the game. The animations and speed are slow and sluggish, and I constantly died trying to hop over objects. There’s no momentum, and Ansya just kind of hops like you’re picking her up and setting her down. There are occasions where you can solve a really simple puzzle, like dragging boxes around to climb up onto a ledge or gathering objects to create something in a certain order, but nothing that will strain your brain cells. There are stealth sections thrown in where you have to avoid spotlights and flashlights by running between boxes. It’s nothing challenging, but the constant change in pace helps keep your interest in an otherwise bloated genre of boring walking simulators.
With that said, Torn Away is a fun evening time killer, and the story is just sad enough to keep you hooked, but there is nothing memorable here in the end. This isn’t something like Valiant Hearts that will sear its story and traumatic events into your brain. What’s here is better than most walking simulators, as it offers some great gameplay and an entertainingly sad story with great visuals.
The Cold War was a rough time, and you really feel it in the South of the Circle. You play Peter, a British scientist struggling between love, his career, and being stranded in the Antarctic during one of the most strenuous times with Russia. Peter is a climatologist and ends up meeting a Scottish woman, Clara, who is protesting the war. He ends up torn between her companionship, his career, and the present times of him stranded at a remote research station trying to find rescue.
I don’t want to spoil the story because that’s all that South of the Circle has going for it and is the only reason to keep playing. There is almost zero gameplay outside of pressing buttons for dialogue choices. These come in the form of emotion bubbles that range from neutral, scared, sad, happy, and so on. I don’t quite know if this effects the overall story path, as my choices almost seemed to not matter. As Peter is talking to people, a bouncing red ball means a scared response. A blue ball hanging low means a sad response. A sun icon will make Peter respond joyfully, etc. These come up pretty frequently, so you’re always pressing something. Occasionally, you can move Peter around and interact with the rare object here and there, but that’s all there is to it. There are no puzzles or anything like that.
You follow this linear path of Peter trying to find people at this station while seeing flashbacks. You start in the middle, and as you move forward in the story, the flashbacks start from the beginning. It’s very entertaining, and I was interested in the story until the end thanks to the well-written dialogue and fantastic voice work. The visuals are striking in the sense that they almost look rotoscoped. There is motion capture for this minimalistic style of art, and it’s quite captivating.
The entire game is a linearly scripted adventure and lasts less than four hours. It’s a bit longer than most super-short story-driven walking simulators, and the excellent writing will keep you hooked. All of the characters have depth, and you actually have feelings for certain characters, despite some having only a short time on screen. Scenes can get intense and emotional, and you can feel the dread that Peter is facing in his struggle for survival. It’s just so well done, and it’s sad there isn’t more gameplay attached to it. It’s one of the better walking simulator stories I’ve finished in recent years.
Overall, South of the Circle provides an entertaining, well-acted, and well-written story and script, but the lack of gameplay makes you question whether this is just enough here to be an excuse for a game. The art is fantastic, and the motion capture is enticing. I wish the dialogue choices were a little more obvious about what they did or if they changed anything at all.
Walking simulators can be really great or really terrible. There is usually no in-between, but somehow Kona manages to accomplish this unremarkable achievement. You follow Carl Faulbert, a private investigator, who arrives in a remote other Canadian town to discover something is lurking around and killing its residents. The plot itself is mostly uninteresting, and details are really only explained in found notes. There is a narrator who explains things throughout, but he mostly just asks questions and never answers anything for us.
The game starts out fairly simple, and it’s an illusion of how the rest of the game is. You walk around in first-person view, interact with objects, and drive your truck. You can pull out your map in the truck to figure out where to go. You have an inventory system and can pick up objects to store, such as duck tape, hardware, flares, matches, etc., but most of these items are useless, and you don’t ever use half of the consumables. The game isn’t open-world, but there is a giant area to explore. You can wander off the beaten path or main road to find campfires to light, objects to pick up, documents to read, and various other things, but this is purely for achievements only. Wandering around the town is a chore due to the slow walking speed and short sprint speed. You have heat, sanity, and health; however, the heat meter helps drag the game down further. Yes, this is a remote area in the cold, but needing to find a specific object to obtain a jacket from a person you may never find without a walkthrough is pretty annoying. Once you get the jacket, your heat meter never becomes an issue. There are wolves spread out in the wilderness off the main road, and these can harm you. Hit them with a hammer or hatchet, or shoot them with a gun, and they’re gone. There’s an option to throw steaks at them if you want to hunt for achievements too.
The game always feels clunky in some way. Having to constantly pull out your map to check your surroundings gets tiresome, and never knowing exactly where to go will make people quit early on as well. You just wander into each house marked on the map and hopefully figure out how to make your way north until you reach the end of the game, which isn’t satisfying and doesn’t make me excited for a sequel. You can only save at campfires, and if you don’t have matches, a firestarter, or a log, you can’t save. Your inventory space is limited, so you must drag your items around in the back of your truck, and then if you need something, it’s a hike back.
You have a camera and can take photos, but again, this is mostly for achievements. Achievement hunters would love this game, but outside of that, the gameplay is mostly repetitive or pointless. The visuals are great and hold up well even today, but you are mostly seeing just white and log cabins. There isn’t anything artistic or unique about this game, which makes it a very boring game to look at. The narrator does a good job, but what’s the point if he doesn’t help progress the story? I only kept pushing forward to see if the story got more interesting or had a really awesome ending that made all of the mind-numbing walking worthwhile.
Overall, Kona has its place for a certain crowd. I love walking simulators, but many often waste my time with forgettable stories, boring settings, or mind-numbing gameplay. Kona has more gameplay than any other walking simulator has a right to, but if you cut all of it out and only let the player drive down the main road, that effort put into all the extra exploration stuff could have been put into a better story. As it stands, Kona doesn’t do any one thing particularly well.
1518 is the year of Pentiment’s main plot. You play Andreas Maler. An art apprentice works for the church at Kiersau Abbey near Tassing. This is solely an adventure game with no spoken dialogue, so there is a lot of early plot development, and it’s very slow to start. I put the game down several times due to how long it took for the game to actually start getting interesting. There really aren’t any gameplay mechanics to learn, so you mostly just follow the objective marker on your map and talk to people. There is a rare puzzle thrown in, but it isn’t challenging at all. This is a choice-based adventure game, so your dialogue choices can decide who lives or dies in this game.
There is a lot of history to learn, not just about the town of Tassing and the Holy Roman Empire in general, but also about the characters. There are a lot of characters, and thankfully, the writers did a good job portraying their personalities throughout. Towards the end of the game, everyone feels like familiar old friends, and you can feel and watch these people grow and change over time. While there are a lot of characters, the game does eventually start moving at a steady pace. There are no RPG elements, but you do get to choose specialties and subjects you are experienced in, such as languages, trades, and visited areas. This can help unlock dialogue boxes that have icons next to them. The conversations feel very organic, and you can’t tell whether there are big choices or not, which is kind of nice. It feels more realistic in the sense that when the consequences come up, you have no idea how it happened, but in a good way. There isn’t a way to predict a major plot twist this way, and it can add to replayability.
While the dialogue is well written and the characters are mostly interesting, the game feels very dry and dull at times. There is a lot of proper real history, and to help learn more about this without a ton of nauseating exposition by the characters, certain terms are underlined in red, and you can press the back button, and a little snippet will explain what that means. This makes all of this optional and helps keep the story moving along, which was a great choice. The game is still very dry, and I feel a lot of people will put this down due to the real history and less fantasy. Having no spoken dialogue might also put a lot of people off. There are a lot of ambient sound effects and some pretty good music here and there, though.
Once I got past the first act, I was glued to my Steam deck. The plot was quickening, and this murder mystery story was becoming more and more enticing. Sadly, the third act starts out dry again and takes a while to pick up, but when it does, it’s very engaging. There also aren’t any side objectives, stories, or anything like that. The main plot takes over 10 hours on its own due to just how much dialogue there is.
The visuals are wonderful and one of the best parts of the game. The paper-cut-out art style is beautiful and fits the setting very well. There are a lot of colors, and you get to see every season and various forms of art within the game, as well as architecture. It’s a very engrossing game visually, and it never gets boring to look at. With that said, this is still a text adventure with visuals to help it along. There isn’t any gameplay, side objectives, or mini-games, and the game takes too long to pick up and get interesting to keep the casual curious gamer interested. Investing 10+ hours into this game might also seem daunting for those who don’t enjoy reading books or like history. I love both, and it’s fine for the type of people it is trying to reach.
With retro gaming becoming as huge as it is—bigger than ever!—the Analogue Pocket has found itself to have received the status of a unicorn over the last 3–4 years. The Pocket was first announced in late 2019 as a first wave of pre-orders. I personally missed out and was ready to wait for wave two—and then COVID hit. All throughout the pandemic, the Pocket was released in very limited batches, but only for those who pre-ordered during the first wave. Open pre-orders eventually came, but shipments would take over 6 months. Analogue has just finally caught up over the last few months, and hopefully they will be in stock in their store soon. With that said, the Glow in the Dark Pocket was their first limited edition version, and I somehow magically got one. I’ve sat in line for special edition releases of other types of electronics before and have never had any luck. You click the add to cart button, and usually you are put in a virtual line. This time I was greeted with a complete purchase page, and I jumped for joy.
Now that you know how hard it is to find this thing, you can imagine how excited I was to finally get one in my hands. These things have been scalped online for years for 3–4 times the price. The Glow in the Dark Pocket sits on Mercari and eBay for $500–$800 as of the time of this writing. The dock goes for as much as the pocket is new. It’s insane and completely unfair. I did order a dock and Game Gear adapter, as those are readily in stock on Analogue’s site as of this writing, but I also pre-ordered the other three adapters for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, TurboGrafx-16, and Atari Lynx.
Unboxing
The box itself is rather heavy. It’s a premium package with a nice little QR card inside a tiny little envelope that gives access to the quick start guide. I would have loved to see a physical manual, but these take up a lot of room, and things change over time. You don’t want to ship devices with outdated manuals, but I digress. The pocket itself has a screen film and a film over the back of the unit itself. When I picked it up, I was surprised at how heavy it was. This is what I’m assuming, with the battery taking up most of the bulk. The plastic shell is really thick, and the overall feeling is very minimalistic. This isn’t a flashy system with different colored buttons, weird laser cutouts, RGB buttons, or anything silly like that. This is a very serious-looking device, but it’s sleek and sharp, similar to Sony’s design DNA from the PSP. There’s a power and volume buttons on the left, a microSD slot on the right, a GameBoy link cable, USB-C, and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the bottom. The rear has a ridged texture, the cartridge slot, the Analogue logo, and shoulder buttons, and that’s your setup.
I’m happy to see the pocket has stereo speakers. That is useful for GBA games that have stereo output options. The front gives you unlabeled face buttons, a D-pad, a FPGA logo, and three little buttons at the bottom acting as Start Select and the Analogue or Home button. The 3.5″ LCD screen is vivid and colorful, but it has a high resolution of 1600×1440. So you’re gaming in 1440p on a handheld. Pretty cool. The FPGA does a fantastic job of upscaling everything.
Software and OS
When turning on the device for the first time, you are greeted with a tutorial on how to navigate the OS and what each button does. This is a really cool thing, and more consoles need to do this! Remember, this has no wifi or Bluetooth chip inside of it, so it’s not spending all of its time getting you to sign up for some service like current-generation consoles do. Once you drop into the OS, it’s just a simple black-and-white list. You can play the cartridge currently inserted or play an open FPGA core (more on this later). view the library, Memories (save states and screenshots) go into Tools for developers and tweak settings for each built-in core. There are also settings inside to dump the memory cache to the SD card and various other advanced things, most likely for troubleshooting. The OS is very basic and simple, but it doesn’t need to be anything else. Sadly, there is no custom OS right now for a more advanced user interface, even if you do want one.
Playing Games
This is why you have one, right? Let’s start with the original GameBoy games. Each core has a filter you can use, and this is important to get the feeling of the game right. Instead of a million useless ones, Analogue gives you three for each core. Their own analog filter removes scanlines, grids, and smoothing. You just get raw pixels, and this is how we play older games on the Switch or any other device running emulators. It looks sharp and utilizes the hardware of the pocket. There are also original modes that add scanlines (which don’t look half bad but darken the screen a lot) or add the original grid back. There are also color filters for the GameBoy Light, Pocket, green, and red from the Virtual Boy. GameBoy Color is the same without the color filters but adds a different scanline option. These filters only work on original cartridges and not emulated games, so keep that in mind. Systems also have options for different display ratios, which is nice. GBA games will have borders, but you get used to them. The sound is amazing, and some cores have different audio options to tune everything to your liking.
When it comes to actually playing games, they feel great. The pocket is nice to hold in the hands; the button mapping can be customized and moved around; but the Dpad isn’t perfect. It’s not the best when it comes to rolling your thumb around. It’s a bit stiff, but it gets the job done. The face buttons feel nice, with two convexed and two concaved, similar to the SNES controller, but the three small buttons at the bottom are tiny and hard to press with bigger fingers. While the buttons aren’t 100% perfect, they are fine for 8 and 16-bit games. We’re not playing competitive shooters here.
Customization
Just recently, the open part of the FPGA was released, and emulated cores are now available. Any 8- and 16-bit system can be run to your heart’s desire now, but you lose access to those fancy screen filters and resolution settings as a result. They also play perfectly, though. I played through SNES, Genesis, NES, GameBoy Color, and GameBoy, and they all ran perfectly fine. Some Genesis games that need six buttons use the shoulder buttons, so it’s a bit awkward, but you can play these on the dock with a controller, so that can help eliminate that problem. Getting some emulators working like the Neo Geo is a royal pain because you need specific ROMs and BIOS files to get anything to run. But once you do, it’s worth it. I wish the OS itself was more customizable, such as having a wallpaper or varied themes. Startup images would be fun too. Maybe one day the OS will open up, or someone will hack it and give us that option.
Overall, the Analogue Pocket is a retro handheld gamer’s dream. You can play any games you currently own or emulate them on the microSD card. While it took years for the FPGAs to become open source, they are finally here, and if you have been holding out, this is the time to get one. This thing is great for those who love both worlds. Physical cart-owning purists and those who don’t own a single cart and just want to emulate. While we will never see physical adapters for certain systems, you can still rock both worlds and have all of your 8 and 16-bit favorites on the go. The battery life is great, the buttons feel good minus the Dpad, and it has all the modern trimmings for a reasonable price.
Well, here we are again. Nearly 40 years later, we are, surprisingly, only at number sixteen. Of course, there have been spin-offs, remakes, and remasters all strewn throughout the timeline. The games have gotten bigger, more epic, and more cinematic, and they have started to abandon the traditional JRPG formula they helped create. This is probably the most action-oriented mainstay game to date, with cinematic quick-time events and mega boss fights.
First and foremost, this is not an open-world game like Final Fantasy XV was. There are large open areas, but this is a very linear-driven game. The main focus is on the main quests, and then there are side quests that we will talk about later. The game slowly introduces the combat system and the way the mechanics work over the course of the first fourth of the game. My favorite part, and the biggest draw to this game, is the sprawling story that is heavily inspired by Game of Thrones. There are various kingdoms at war with each other over the mothercrystals that supply magic to the people. These kingdoms are governed by interesting characters, and there is even in-house fighting and scrapping, just like in Game of Thrones. Plenty of betrayal, deceit, and various ways of hurting another person Each kingdom has an Eikon (or Aeon), and these are the famous ones we all know, such as Ifrit, Bahamut, Phoenix, and Shiva. Each Eikon is used during battles and war, but there’s a blight coming that’s sweeping the land, and the kingdoms are warring over land that hasn’t been plagued. I don’t want to go into anymore detail as it might spoil the story, but there is a useful Time Lore feature that can be used during cut scenes to read about what is going on. Despite how deep the story is, it’s not confusing or hard to follow at all thanks to this Time Lore feature.
There isn’t much to explore in this game. You can run around the open fields, collecting sparkling orbs that contain healing items or stuff used to forge equipment. There are occasional treasure chests with pendants and other items, but looting and forging take a backseat in this game. Enemies are found on the field and can be engaged in real time. This makes the game feel faster-paced and reduces the need to slog through hours of turn-based grinding. In towns, you can take on sidequests that are green marks and can fast travel to any area that’s been unlocked or a travel crystal has been discovered. Later on in the game (probably way too late), you can unlock a Chocobo to ride, as some areas can be pretty vast and you will visit many multiple times. There are a few dozen areas to explore, but sadly, there’s nothing but pretty sights in most of them. There is no substance to the exploration. You mainly just use the enemies to grind a bit until you outpace the enemies, and then the area is literally useless to you. Thankfully, many of these areas are never visited again after the first time, unless a side-quest takes you there.
Combat is obviously one of the biggest draws to the game, but it’s more flash than substance. There is only a single melee attack button, a magick button, and a dodge button. The game focuses a lot on dodging and parrying, as enemies and bosses are fast-paced and can spam insanely powerful moves. You have to master being defensive, or you will die a lot in this game. Sadly, most of the combat is focused on using your abilities and quelling cooldowns. Each Eikon you unlock gives you abilities. Shiva gives you ice abilities, Titan, Earth, and so on. You gain ability points and can unlock new abilities and upgrade some through a skill tree, but I felt this was mostly useless. By the end of the game, you have already unlocked most of them; however, abilities need to be switched out according to the enemy types. You have offensive and defensive abilities. There is also a single fully upgraded mega ability per Eikon, and these are a must-have during the final chapters. They take a long time to cool down, but they inflict mega damage and can really give you an edge in battle. I sadly hated that I only used my standard melee attack when abilities were cooling down, and then there is the rage meter, which is also used in between. It’s similar to an MMO, where you just queue up attacks based on damage and availability. There’s almost no skill involved outside of defense.
This makes combat boring after so long. Sure, it looks cool, and there are a lot of well-done animations and effects, but when you get to the large Eikon battles, they just look cool. Some even take place in space on a cosmic level, but those are even simpler with just basic melee combos and the occasional ability. If the game didn’t look as slick as it does, the combat would be mostly inexcusable for how simplistic and formulaic it is. I never quite hated it, as you do have to stay on your toes, but I never really felt powerful enough, no matter how leveled up I was. I wish I could have devastating combos and not have to rely so heavily on my abilities or rage meter. Bosses’ health meters will slowly chip away and can seem to take forever to defeat. Thankfully, the game is forgiving and will start you over at checkpoints with recovered health items. At least on easier and normal difficulties.
You can buy new gear, but it’s very simple and rudimentary. You get a sword, a bracer, and a third piece of armor, and that’s it. You can use the forge to enhance them with materials or just buy new ones. You end up with so much Gil because there’s nothing worth buying. The only expensive items are things like songs for the jukebox at your hideaway. That’s it. You also don’t get to play as any other characters, so you’re just stuck with Clive. There isn’t a full party to outfit here. I always had the best gear because there wasn’t anything else to focus on. It almost seems pointless.
There’s nothing else to do outside of all of that, except maybe bounty hunts. These are just optional mini-bosses. Mini-bosses are enemies with yellow stagger bars that take much longer to defeat. They pop up often and can bog down the flow of the game. They also repeat very frequently and damage sponges. I’m not a fan of these mini-bosses. However, the rewards for doing these bounty hunts and side quests are points you can use to get material packages, which is pointless as you end up with plenty of Gil to buy whatever you want. The sidequests themselves are boring fetch quests that you would see in an MMO. Hunt these enemies, talk to this person, deliver this item, etc. I gave up about two-thirds through the game on these.
The game does look absolutely fantastic. Every area is oozing with color, atmosphere, and excellent effects. The characters look good, and the English voice acting is top-notch for once. We are a long way from Tidus’ infamous cringy laugh from Final Fantasy X. I really enjoyed the story and the darker tone of this game. It’s a gory, brutal, and harsh world that’s a stark contrast from other light-hearted JRPGs from Square Enix with the typical whining, spiky blonde-haired boy saves the world scenario. It was a breath of fresh air, and I wish the gameplay and exploration didn’t take a back seat. This is more of an action game than an RPG.
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