Symphony of the Night

Played through all of Symphony of the Night in a couple of days!  It was a fun game; nothing was really too bad about it (aside from perhaps the infamous voice acting), though on the flipside i wouldn't say anything was particularly outstanding about it either.  Just an overall good package.  It's really cool seeing an RPG-styled twist on the classic Metroid formula -- one that ended up defining an entire genre together with Super Metroid.  Exploring different areas, encountering new enemies, searching for secrets, it was all pretty enjoyable.  Some balance issues, particularly with the equipment / some of the more overpowered items, for sure, and a few secrets / item descriptions that are a little =too= obscure/cryptic, but even aside from all that everything was more or less fine.  I guess the other thing that's a bit odd is the entire second half of the game being locked behind a "bad end" in which you need to explore and solve a bit of a riddle in order to progress through.  A bit curious since the bad end also gives you the same credits sequence.

Overall I'm pretty glad that I played through it, but at the same time I can see how there's room for improvement and how other games have tried to take the same formula and clean it up a little bit in their own style (looking at Hollow Knight as an example).

Oh, I made it to Master rank in Pokemon Unite as well, so woo.

Now I'm onto starting to play Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom.  I'm not sure whether I'll play through on Hard or Very Hard difficulty (Normal is probably too easy), so I'll start on Very Hard and see how I fare through the first couple of missions.  I'm enjoying it so far!