iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Future updates will hopefully remedy that issue. But seeing as it doesn’t even *become* an issue until 40+ hours into a playthrough… it’s still pretty great.

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My biggest qualm is that progression pacing gets worse as you go along. I started to have an abundance of money with really nothing to spend it on or any reason to min-max to get more.

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Don’t think I ever gave my final thoughts on Fields of Mistria, so posting it now. It does so much right for the genre. Great characters with expansive dialogue. Well thought-out design across most fronts. Constantly something to do. One significant issue aside, it’s great. 8.5 out of 10

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I’d give it like a 7.5 out of 10, btw.

Ryan @jumpmanryan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Finished Shantae: Risky’s Revenge! It’s just okay. Shantae controls much floatier in this one and I don’t think it works as well. Level design is nothing special and Hypno Baron’s area sucks. The Shantae charm isn’t fully developed yet either. Just a ‘totally fine’ Metroidvania. 6 out of 10.

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Platinum trophy #77 goes to ONCE UPON A KATAMARI It’s a Katamari game! Fun, zany, and colorful. Classic controls are still very hard to get used to. Environment design + wonky controls got irritating at times. And the audio kept giving me headaches lmao. Overall just good, simple fun. 7 out of 10

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Once Upon A Katamari 2025

ALT: Once Upon A Katamari 2025

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Ryan @jumpmanryan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Combat could be a bit clunky at times and maybe one or two labyrinths overstayed their welcome. But really not anything major to complain about. Pretty stellar all-around.

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Ryan @jumpmanryan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Finished Silent Hill 2 (2024) and absolutely fell in love with it. I’d never played a game in the series before. I was expecting something akin to Resident Evil, but it was so much more serious, eerie & dreadful. I loved the psychological terror. Story was awesome. A really great game. 9 out of 10

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ALT:

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Ryan @jumpmanryan.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Enjoyed Metroid Fusion quite a bit! The computer assistant yapped a bit too much. And I felt like halfway through the game, missile expansion upgrades because redundant and near worthless. But movement felt good, exploration was fun, and there were some great boss fights. 8 out of 10.

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Metroid Fusion Samus & SA-X Encounter

ALT: Metroid Fusion Samus & SA-X Encounter

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Ryan @jumpmanryan.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Started up Metroid Fusion! All the Metroid hype since the Direct got me in the mood for it. Enjoying it early on!

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The Blood of Dawnwalker *feels* like a first rough draft for a franchise. And that’s okay. There’s so much promise for future games in the series, as long as they iron out the many rough edges.

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The scenario & character writing is still really good. I like Coen as a protagonist a lot. But fatigue with its combat & open world design set in a lot faster than I’d hoped. Still having an overall good time as someone who prioritizes story & characters. But feeling a bit let down as I get deeper.

There’s a dramatic lack of enemy variety, which makes the combat feel even more repetitive alongside trivial. The open world design is really dated. Lots of enemy camps, menial tasks like repairing a shrine, a bunch of upgrade circles, etc. When you’re doing tasks outside of quests, it’s bland.

Ryan @jumpmanryan.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I’ve softened a good bit on The Blood of Dawnwalker now that I’m nearing its endgame. Once you get past the initial learning curve, combat feels trivial regardless of what difficulty mode you play on. Abilities quickly become so overpowered. 🧵

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Really enjoying The Blood of Dawnwalker so far! Feels a lot like The Witcher 3, but a bit more modernized and a cooler world and aesthetic (imo). It’s a bit janky and I think the open world design is detrimental at times. But it’s very good.

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Ryan @jumpmanryan.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Big Walk ✅ Fantastic implementation of proximity chat ✅ Intuitive puzzle design ✅ One of the greatest ending sequences in video game history ✅ Even getting lost is fun ✅ There’s a certain magic feeling to its simplicity ❌ Some post-game puzzles are battles of attrition rather than fun 9.5 / 10

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Ryan @jumpmanryan.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

If all of Mega Man, Final Fantasy, and Persona actually have new entries released in 2027, it could be one of the greatest years in gaming for me. Only Donkey Kong would be missing out of my top franchises.

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Ryan @jumpmanryan.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

New Mega Man: Dual Override trailer & gameplay has me downloading Mega Man 11 again.

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Ryan @jumpmanryan.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Excited to get the 39-card set!

I’m in Spring of Year 2 rn. I think maybe once I can do main quest progression again, it’ll get back to being busy. I’ve had a great time, overall, regardless tho.

I think I’ve just kinda done all stuff outside of main quests now. My house is as upgraded as available, I have every breed of animal (working on breeding for rarities), I have an optimal crop set up, etc. I’m unable to get married because of main quest progression, but I’m ready for it.

Metal Gear Solid is clearly a revolutionary game, while maybe not standing as tall outside of its novelty for the time. But it’s still worth playing. 7 / 10

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Still, the plethora of items and ways to approach situations allows for so many different ways to progress. I didn’t love the core gameplay feel, but I always felt compelled to keep going for the next dialogue or cutscene. It also weirdly, near completely abandons stealth in its last half or third.

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There’s a lot of weirdly paced backtracking, the aiming system sucks, boss fights are iffy, movement can feel finicky all-around… there are just a lot of glaring problems when the gameplay is under the spotlight. A lot of the time, it felt like good gameplay was neglected for the sake of being cool.

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It’s unfortunate that I didn’t find the game to actually be that fun to play. The controls are rough and the onboarding for the controls is atrocious as well. Sneaking around doesn’t feel good either, as you can’t even crouch or slow walk.

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Metal Gear Solid also provides a lot of player creativity. A format of gameplay choice that allows players to use their imagination to overcome obstacles. And the fourth-wall breaking, while maybe a bit corny, had to be insane back in the day.

Metal Gear Solid There are so many cool and unique ideas in this game. And considering it released in 1998, it’s truly awe-inspiring. The voice work and cinematography, in particular are astonishing for the time. Along with its mature, thoughtful narrative. 🧵

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Ryan @jumpmanryan.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I’m deep into Fields of Mistria now, but my progress is stalled by needing 8 hearts with fuck ass Eiland. Probably gonna take an in-game month to get him there and there aren’t any other big tasks for me to work on. 😭

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It’s such a bummer, man. Horizon is probably my all-time favorite PlayStation IP. Who knows how long we’ll be waiting for Horizon 3 atp. :/

Ryan @jumpmanryan.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

So much wasted time and money. I get that chasing live-service is important, but they’re tainting the Horizon IP *and* delaying the third game of the trilogy with this. Just move on and give us Horizon 3.

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Ryan @jumpmanryan.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

No, it’s not even possible. Puzzles require at least 2 players.

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Ryan @jumpmanryan.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Big Walk is fantastic, btw. I’m still playing through it, but it might be one of the absolute great indie games. Has a certain unique magic feeling to it that you only get from a handful of games.

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Ryan @jumpmanryan.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

I didn’t mess around with custom plays or anything like that. So my experience to beat NFL Blitz 2000 really was just playing a full season. Again, it’s a decent time, but became repetitive pretty quick, especially as you can cheese the opponent easily.

Ryan @jumpmanryan.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

The passing controls are terrible. It’s hard to figure out who you’re about to throw the ball to and it’s cumbersome. Running the ball and defense worked well, though. I took the Colts in season mode, which was maybe a mistake because their stats were rough, but we pulled it off regardless.

Ryan @jumpmanryan.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

NFL Blitz 2000 Arcadey fun, but a bit lacking in overall content & depth. There’s a quick play, tournament, and season mode. I finished a full season and won the Super Bowl. All I got for it was a congratulations screen, which is fine. 🧵

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Heavensward and Nine Sols in tandem is so peak, man. Hope you enjoy!

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To “beat” the game, I obtained all secret fighters and then finished a single-player playthrough with all of them. It got repetitive as the fight matchups don’t even really switch up much across characters. But I had a good time, nonetheless.

Maybe the one thing in this entry of the series that I miss in the others would be the ‘hit the target’ and ‘jump on all platforms’ challenges. I liked that each of those stages were tailored for each unique fighter. And the target stages had you utilize their full move set.

This is the first Smash game, so it’s relatively barebones when compared to every other entry. There’s really just the Classic single-player mode and then multiplayer. You can unlock four other fighters, but other than that it works best as a pure party game.

Super Smash Bros. A fantastic start to the greatest fighting game series out there. The blend of platforming and technical fighting gameplay works phenomenally. And the addition of items adds a lot of welcome chaos to the mix. 🧵

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Idk, overall it felt grindy and tedious more than it ever did fun. The create-a-wrestler is great, I guess. But outside of that I was disappointed. I’m not sure if the rest of the wrestling games on N64 play similarly, but I hope not.

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The matches themselves all play out the same, generally. It threw a few variation matches at me, like tag team, triple threat, lumberjack, etc. But the core mechanics didn’t change much throughout. Any match that had multiple wrestlers sucked. The lock-on system didn’t work well enough.

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The wrestling controls were not what I expected. It’s essentially a fighting game like Street Fighter, where you have to input button combos to use your moves. I never felt like I truly got good at doing this. My timing is probably off (skill issue), but it was frustrating pretty often.

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WWF Attitude The first wrestling game I’ve played for this. I didn’t like it much. The career mode doesn’t have much to it. Your placed into random matches against the next wrestler higher than you on the power rankings. And you continue doing this until you’ve reach the top spot in 3 leagues. 🧵