The game is delightfully odd and will absolutely make you laugh at least a handful of times. Unfortunately, the overwhelming lack of care put into some stuff that modern developers really shouldn't be getting wrong is noticable.

Saturday Morning RPG is enjoyable. It's a clean, cheap, pleasant RPG for people who either grew up in the 80s, or have developed an appreciation for what passed as entertainment back then. Either way, the heavy reliance on nostalgia does wear thin and lose its comedic appeal, and from there you're only left with a workable, but very limited, turn based combat system, and not much more.

And so, at the end of nearly 5,500 words of review, everything that I’ve written leaves me in a conundrum. On the one hand, just with The Last Of Us 2, I found the moment-to-moment gameplay of Ghost of Tsushima to be excellent and massively entertaining, if a little derivative at this point in time – the open world genre as a whole does need some new ideas. Tsushima doesn’t do anything that will surprise you if you’ve played any of Sony’s other first party games in recent years, but it does it all in a way that’s as refined and sharp as a samurai’s blade, and that is fundamentally enjoyable. I can’t stress that enough – this game is fundamentally enjoyable. However, as much as I had issues with The Last Of Us 2’s narrative, it was an American story told by Americans, and it had a thematic and tonal resonance as such. It was consistent and uncompromised. Ghost of Tsushima by contrast is a wild misfire with every narrative element it attempts, and it boils down to this: Sucker Punch decided to do a historical epic inspired by Kurosawa… and produced something that fails as both history and as a pastiche of Kurosawa. There are going to be a lot of people that love this game, but I don’t think that should be overlooked, nor dismissed as irrelevant to the quality of this both as artwork and entertainment product.

Adventures of Pip is a solid platformer with a clever little gameplay mechanic, but ultimately doesn't do all that much with it. That being said, away from the mechanics, it was also good to see one of these retro-themed platformers do something more with the art style than simply have it as window-dressing. Adventures of Pip actually turns pixels into part of the gameplay, and that's neat.

It’s hard to develop your own voice until you understand how other artists find theirs. While I ultimately find Dark Deity to be uninspired and certainly won’t be replaying it every year or so, as I do Fire Emblem, I also hope that this developer produces another tactics JRPG. I would buy that in a heartbeat, because I am quite certain that with a bit more experience as a team of artists, not only will this developer find its own voice, but it will start to build on everything that made those GBA Fire Emblem titles great. That – the promise of some kind of “Fire Emblem Plus” – is some exciting promise indeed.

It's unfortunate that the action is too pacy for the Switch controls and there wasn't more attention paid to strategic depth, balance, and how the games various systems would interact with one another, because Golem Gates had all the potential to be something truly amazing.

While Metro Exodus doesn’t do anything wrong as a blockbuster shooter, where the original titles were original and refreshing, Exodus is yet another in a ever-deepening pile, and the Metro franchise deserved better than to be exhausting.

This isn’t an exceptionally long game and doesn’t feature branching pathways or character selection like other Neo Geo games do, but it has deceptively simple mechanics that will have you playing over and over in an attempt to beat entire levels on one life. Players willing to look past the poor spritework and short runtime will find a fun arcade gallery shooter which otherwise might have been lost to history.

It’s a game about what could have been, both from the protagonist’s perspective and also from the player’s point of view. The Crow’s Eye shone when it came to dealing with suspense and psychological distress. I only wish that it’d played more to its strengths in the end.

The biggest issue is not that the development set their sights incredibly high, but simply that this kind of game is a mammoth project, and there is simply no way that a limited budget can pull off something of the standard of, say, Skyrim. Risen 3 is a raw, entertaining experience that lacks polish but offers substance.

Ultimately, I’m probably expecting a bit much for a three-hour visual novel, based on a pen-and-paper tabletop game, to engage with a subject on a meaningful and nuanced level. The developers have succeeded in doing the Werewolf: The Apocalypse property justice, and the game’s presentation is distinct, interesting, and often brilliant. However, there are so many high quality visual novels that do have the thematic depth and quality, and are written in such a way that they don’t come across as condescending. Heck, there’s another werewolf story that does all of the above on the Nintendo Switch in Raging Loop, but does it better, so there's a direct alternative available. That being said, I’d love for this developer to get another shot at the Werewolf: The Apocalypse property, and for them to handle the writing with that little bit more maturity that would elevate it and make it something special.

What you won't get is much personality or balance. The game undersells its "real people from history" basis; indeed, some of them I didn't even recognise at first. Their fighting styles are only vaguely reminscient of their real-world personalities, too, which is disappointing (aside from the special attacks, that are spot on). More critically, there are some characters with spammy attacks that make the game far too easy, and other characters that are next to useless. Given that the game already has a small roster, this doesn't do much to help its long term value.

In the end the problem with the Fairune Collection comes from the fact the series is a short lived one and yet it still took its time to find its stride. The most recent game, Fairune 2, should have been the foundation and the first title, but as it is, it's the only one that feels complete, with the rest of this collection being more akin to proof of concepts or tech demos.

Her Love in the Force is fine. If you're comfortable with the themes, then there's a lot of raw content to work through, and if you do find the boys appealing then you'll get to spend a lot of time with them. On the other hand, there's nothing inspiring about what Her Love in the Force offers, it's not a particularly attractive game on the eye, and the narrative really struggles to make these men interesting enough to want to romance. You know an otome game is in trouble when you don't have a favourite boy, and perhaps Her Love in the Force should have been left back in 2014.

I’d like to see another Fight of Gods, with improved development competence, but is still happy to be an absurd, irreverent bit of fun. We need those games too, else what would we have to play by the time we got to the second bottle of wine?

What Tiny Metal, as a clone of Advance Wars, does unfortunately abstract things too far, to the point where there’s no real strategic depth left.

MazM: The Phantom of the Opera is what I would like to see more of in video games; it's a genuine effort to engage with a more meaningful side of art. It's less pop culture, easy content as it is an adaptation of a masterpiece of the gothic literature genre. The developer succeeded in capturing the aesthetics and generally representing the story, but there have been some big compromises made to hammer this nail into place, and the gamey elements and technical proficiency are just not there. Not for the Switch version, at any rate. As a Phantom of the Opera fan, I do highly recommend like-minded fans check this out, as it is a curiosity, but if you're going into this looking for a game... you'd be better off picking up a copy of the film adaptation of the musical.

Over and over again some truly baffling decisions let it down, and while the scenarios justify the asking price in themselves, for any of us that prefer the sandbox mode of the simulations that we play, Townsmen is a complete misfire.

Still, if you are that much into fanservice art, you'll get some panty shots and big, bouncy boobs to admire, and that might just be enough for you to overlook the issues this game has with plot and characterisation. That's not me being sarcastic - there is something there for people who enjoy digital pin-up art in video game form. It's just not enough to elevate the entire game in comparison to its peers.

The Monty Mole Collection isn’t extremely expensive, and that’s perhaps its saving grace, because examining its fare won’t set you back a lot. But in the shadow of far superior collections that genuinely pay homage to why retro gaming is so important to not only be preserved but played, this is definitely second-rate. Monty may or may not be innocent, but he deserved better than this.

This won't be a game that will appeal to everyone and I have the feeling that it may well scare off (yep, pun intended) a fair few people with production values that are below standard, even by indie standards.

Mark McMorris Infinite Air is not going to appeal to more casual snowboarding fans, and unfortunately I would include myself in that category. If you are looking for a game that you can pick up easily and pull off some crazy looking tricks, you might want to look elsewhere. However, with properly aligned expectations and a willingness to sink some time into learning the game's mechanics, you can get a lot out of this one.

King Arthur: Knight’s Tale is a high-quality tactical RPG, mechanically, but that’s overshadowed by an dismal narrative, setting and characterisation. At no point does anything in this game suggest that the developers had the slightest interest in doing the Arthurian legends justice (or even respect). This is the end result of the entire industry being motivated around content rather than artistic integrity. King Arthur: Knight’s Tale sure has a lot of best-practice dark fantasy, as the developers chase after all the financial success that other dark fantasy content products have received. If only anyone who worked at the development studio actually picked up Le Morte d’Arthur and learned something about what they were “adapting” to video game form first. They may have realised what a mistake they were making with this game then.

There’s one area where Hunter’s Legacy does really shine, though, and that’s in its presentation. The environments and enemies are all pretty simple and straightforward, but the sprite art gives everything a sense of life and vibrancy. Instead of taking the severely well-trodden path of “retro” pixel graphics, Hunter’s Legacy simply takes the beauty of 2D game art and runs with it. It’s admittedly rough around the edges; it’s an indie game that doesn’t have the pristine finish of better-funded 2D games, but that just adds to its charm, in my view.

The Deathtrap Dungeon Trilogy is still fun, in the sense that gamebooks are good fun, and the development team haven't broken anything in the fundamentals. But this is also a deeply uninspired effort, and the Nintendo Switch has such good, innovative adaptations of gamebooks already that it's hard to see where the appeal of this package is. The really hardcore traditionalists would rather read a proper adaptation of the books. More casual fans would have wanted more done with them. The presentation is pedestrian, and the gameplay basic. It's genuinely difficult to imagine who would get much value out of this package.

I don’t have strong feelings for Eternal Radiance. It’s got no egregious flaws, and boasts a lengthy quest and a combat loop sure to keep players satisfied. As a bare-bones, back-to-basics look at the action-JRPG, it’s fine. It’s just that on the Switch there are so many available games that take a more interesting look at the JRPG formula, whether it has to do with narrative or gameplay or visual aesthetic, and that makes Eternal Radiance seem woefully bland by comparison. Reading the situation generously, it does feel like the game’s simplicity comes down to the developer’s affection of JRPG tropes, rather than a lack of creativity or ambition. But it's still a quality that holds the overall experience back. The finished product is fine, and quite nice to look at, but it is something that makes me want to play something else instead.

It saddens me to say that League of Evil is just a simple platformer game and not much more. On a platform which doesn’t have a port of Super Meat Boy, League of Evil fills its niche serviceably – but it’s not a glowing example of its genre and it’s not something I can recommend easily unless you absolutely must have a platformer on your system. And even then you've got Shantae and Shovel Knight sitting there waiting to be played instead.

There’s still a case to be made for Hyperide VR – especially its potential to become something worth more of your time. It has some tense, entertaining moments that may catch you off guard. It may leave you wanting more, for better or worse, due to some mechanics that are interesting but not fully realised. And it’s cheap. But it’s by no means a classic.