Games I Played in 2020: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is a childhood favourite game of mine. Both the original, the sequel, and Super (not Gates) has all affected me very deeply, but the original has always been something that changed the way I interact with videogames in a lot of ways. It was one of the first games I've experienced with a story, one that I voraciously looked through guides through so I could 100% it, one that made me actually notice videogame music as a thing, and one that resonated with me so deeply it made me cry intermittently for the week after I beat it back in 6th grade. 

Because of that, I had a lot of hope for it, and I was very excited to experience an updated version of a game that I enjoyed so much as a child. But at the same time, I was apprehensive and worried, considering The Pokemon Company's track record at the time, and my general apathy towards the franchise. Sword and Shield was a pretty major disappointment, and most of their major works have been phone and gatcha games.  

I'm happy to say that Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX warranted no such worry (thanks Spike Chunsoft!) and it's a completely updated experience that somehow manages to keep a lot of the core spirit of the original game alive, while at the same time, changing enough that it's worth experiencing all over again. 

Games I Played in 2020: Snack World The Dungeon Crawl Gold

Snack World The Dungeon Crawl: Gold is a game developed by Level 5 (Professor Layton, Fantasy Life, Yo-kai Watch, etc), originally released as a 3DS game in Japan that never got localized, called Snack World: Trejurers. The Dungeon Crawl Gold is the localized version of Trejurer's enhanced Switch port. Aside from the game, it has a manga series, and a CGI anime available on Netflix but I have no particular interest in looking at those from my experiences with this game.

Let me say from the beginning that I wanted to like this game, I really did. From trailers, a lot of it looked like a fun, multi-player experience in a quirky RPG world, something that could echo the experiences of playing Fantasy Life with my friends who all got it for the same reason. Unfortunately it just falls flat on So. Many. Different Levels that I have a hard time figuring out how to list everything I found this game fails at. 

Games I Played in 2020: Digimon Story Lost Evolution

Digimon Story Lost Evolution is the third series of the Digimon Story series of games, released after Digimon World DS and Digimon World Dawn/Dusk (Yes, despite the subtitle of 'Digimon World', they're both 'Digimon Story' games and are called such in Japan), released on the Nintendo DS in July of 2010.  In a lot of ways it's a perfect missing link between the DS Digimon Story games and Cyber Sleuth/Hacker's Memory, including a lot of changes and improvements that would continue into CS but keeping a lot of the gameplay quirks of the DS games that CS lacks.  Due to it's title as a Digimon Story game, I will be comparing aspects of it to Dawn/Dusk and Cyber Sleuth in particular, to compare and contrast aspects of them to help give a better idea to other Digimon fans who might be wondering what it was like.

Since this game never got a proper localization and is completely in Japanese, I'm writing this review less as a plea to get people to play it, and more as a general, 'how I felt about the game/what to look forward to when the english patch comes out' for other Digimon fans. I don't think this game will appeal much to people who don't know about the franchise to begin with/have some history with it, and is a lot less beginner friendly than Cyber Sleuth/Hacker's Memory. That, plus some incredibly frustrating gameplay design makes it a hard game to recommend unless you're already a Digimon fan. Then, I think, the pros of this game will vastly outnumber the cons. Because of this, I won't explain too much about Digimon lore since I assume you probably already know the basics if you're reading this.

Game List

This is just my current list of games I started/am in the middle of playing/want to play for future reference and how far I am in them.

Games I Played in 2020: Yo-Kai Watch 2 (Bony Spirits)

In the spirit of getting into other monster collecting games after Sword and Shield and Pokemon in general disappointed me (so.... so very much), I figured I should try out Yokai Watch after hearing good things about it from my friends. The concept is one that already appeals to me, being someone who really likes Shin Megami Tensei and media tackling the occult/folklore, and honestly with how much fun I had with it, I regret not getting into this series much earlier.

Games I Played in 2020: Work x Work (aka Heroland)

Work x Work (localized as Heroland) is a game about... work. Available on the Switch, PC, PS4, (and apparently IOS eventually???) it's helmed by some really great names, with Nobuyuki Inoue (director of Mother 3) as scenario writer, Takahiro Yamane (one of the directors of Fantasy Life) as the director, Nobuhiro Imagawa (art director of Mother 3) handling the art direction here, and Tsukasa Masuko (who did a lot of the early SMT soundtracks) handling the OST. Also produced by Takuya Yamanaka, who was the director/producer of The Caligula Effect (+Overdose) so I will be inherently really biased about this game due to Caligula being one of my fave games ever.