General random thoughts you have on any video games in general

Every Castlevania game has amazing artwork, even the oldest ones.
 
For some reason, I feel like I like having the option to be evil in rpgs, but then I always end up playing the standard goody two-shoes dork in shining armor each time. I thinks it's something about just the idea that I could do otherwise seems cool.
 
While Mario is my favorite game franchise of all time, my favorite non-Mario games are Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Splatoon 3, and Sonic Mania. 👍🏻
 
Man, updates that change negatively change how a game feels are the worst. Pokémon Unite changed its shop interface to remove the flavor idea of there being multiple storefronts. This slightly streamlines the menus, since each store had to be opened to reach its menu interface, at the cost reducing the feeling of Aeos Island being a place you can move around. Which sucks because I really do think Pokémon Unite's greatest strength is taking a hodgepodge of mechanics and constructing a wacky, oddball, but sincere interpretation of Pokémon out of them. Removing the lore weakens the sincerity. Without the storefronts players spend less time around the original characters. And instead of having three environments to go between, there's a single clinical "showroom" so the player can't pretend to window shop. Its harder to pretend (some might say "roleplay") that Pokémon Unite follows Pokémon Journey set up when the world is having its nuances revoked like this.
 
I don't know if Switch Sports will receive anymore DLC sports, but with the small chance that it does, I would like to see Baseball from the original Wii Sports and Power Cruising from Resort.
 
Looking at maps of levels which have a foreground plane and a background plane gets trippy. Here's a link to one such map: Sonic Retro's map of Sonic Coaster Rails from Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 2. (Technically this is a bad example, since Sonic Coaster Rails has a foreground, midground, and background plane, but the background plane is only used for the very last part of the level.)
 
I think Undertale's battle system is better than Deltarune's. I feel like it's more unique, and Deltarune is just borrowing Undertale's. The only 2 things I think they added to the battle system was TP, and Spells. Still a great game though.
 
For some Solaris forsaken reason, Sonic Mania Encore Mode (basically New Game +) makes the dreaded Chemical Plant Mega Mack climb harder than it is in the original Sonic Mania. There are fewer moving blocks than in the original, and their movement are more esoteric than they are in the original. The player is more likely to flub this climb and drown or get smashed into a wall by the blocks. The climb is one of the callbacks in Mania that I think should have been scrapped. The climb was too much in Sonic 2 and its still too much in Mania, mostly because its the second zone in both games. Why make it worse?

The thing about Encore Mode is that the layout changes aren't universally to make things more difficult. Some areas actually get easier in their Encore Mode counterparts. Most notably, a rising and falling hallway in Titanic Monarch Act 1 loses its spikes in Encore Mode. Those spikes are notorious for being a crushing hazard to the impatient, thanks to an especially low ceiling. (And if there's any case for keeping an aggravating hazard, its in the game's final zone.) The one reason to make the Chemical Plant Mega Mack climb harder is if Encore Mode is supposed to be a hard mode, which it isn't.
 
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I think Cuphead's animations are just kind of funny. I don't know why, they just are.
 
What's trippier than level maps of levels with two planes? Level maps of levels where the route forward rotates around and terrain makes use of three dimensional components. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to parse Sonic Retro's map of Sonic Generations Sky Sanctuary Act 1. Also, I think the springs and item monitors are oversized on the map compared to their appearance in the actual game.
 
I am not liking Disney Illusion Island. Like, its an okay Metroidvania, but the environments are often super empty (in part because enemy mechanics have been downplayed such that Mickey & Friends don't have attacks) and for some reason they didn't give the player a dash to make going through these empty environments faster. (Likely because multiplayer logistics are easier to manage, especially when players have different skill levels, if everyone moves at the same speed and the only modifiers is the game making players in the back go faster so they don't get left behind.) I wouldn't make this post otherwise, but I met a character named Dash Dolphin, who I fully expected to give me a dash skill. Nope, he gave me a full game scavenger hunt, which I will have to complete without a dash. Why Dlala Studios? Why?
 
I played Disney Illusion Island when it was free on NSO for a game trial late last year, and I felt much the same. The game certainly has good presentation (art, music, etc), but the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. Some thoughts I wrote down at the time:

a quick little bonus, this was available as a switch game trial for a few days through NSO. i would say it's worth about what i paid for it, and if i didnt have the time limit i may not have actually seen it through to the end

the structure has the illusion of a metroidvania, but the design isnt really anything like that at all. although its an interconnected world, everything is pretty much linear paths from one point to the next, with a bit of backtracking until you reach the next teleport, which usually spits you out at the spot you need to go. blockages are mostly arbitrary, like the doors that stop you from continuing before you get 3 keys, but usually just end up making you go down the only other available path and do a loop where you pick them up and get spat out back near the door. there are ability unlocks, but most places you come across that are blocked the first time around only lead to optional collectibles because, again, the world design is essentially linear.

this leaves you with just the gameplay to be the sav