El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron HD Remaster (Switch eShop) Review

Title: El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron HD Remaster
Platform: Nintendo Switch eShop
Developer: UTV Ignition Tokyo (original)/Aqualead (Switch version)
Publisher: Crim (NA)
Release Date: April 28th, 2024 (NA)
File Size: 5GB

Review copy provided by Crim

This game has a bit of an interesting history. This was created by Sawaki Takeyasu, a veteran from Capcom’s Clover studio, the same studio that many key people from went on to form Platinum Games. Sawaki apparently took other Clover folks with him, and went to work at Ignition Entertainment (later renamed UTV Ignition) at their Tokyo studio. Nintendo fans may remember Ignition as the publisher that localized key games like Marvelous’ Muramasa: The Demon Blade and Arc Rise Fantasia for Wii, but also had created their own IPs like Mercury Meltdown by the late Archer Maclean. They most commonly published more niche stuff, like say, Tornado on DS plus a few Taito and SNK games here and there. There’s more to it so I’ll go into more detail below.

Neptunia: Sisters VS Sisters (Switch) Review

Title: Neptunia: Sisters VS Sisters
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Developer: Compile Heart
Publisher: Idea Factory International (NA)
Release Date: January 24th, 2024 (NA)
File Size: 6.1GB

Review copy provided by Idea Factory International

Well it took long enough, but we not only got another Neptunia game on Switch, but at long last, one that was made internally at Compile Heart themselves (Super Neptunia RPG was by Artisan Studio in Canada and Megadimension Neptunia VII was ported by Ghostlight in EU). And from what I’ve seen, this is not like the prior mere down-ports from PS4 that Compile Heart have done before. There’s exclusive content and even modifications to some of the core game itself to better suit running on Switch. Yeah, actual effort! So how does this game fare? Let’s find out!