Lost Odyssey: Making decent progress in this, even if I keep falling asleep (quite literally) while playing the game.
Died once to Living Ice, only reset since that worm way back on disc 1. MT OHKO if you don't watch your GC... or just buff your MDef, which I did second time and he wasn't too bad.
Kid Icarus: Uprising - I beat this! Great game overall. Managed to keep the gameplay fresh and fun throughout. It's not a perfect game... in particular, only having one button is a bit limiting for the gameplay. It somewhat manages by tying the different types of attacks to how you happen to be moving at the time, and what you're locked onto (which you choose with the stylus), but it still means the game lacks, say, a jump button, and choosing special abilities in a heated fight is a bit awkward. Enemy design is pretty good, boss design is a little hit and miss... which is to say, I've been spoiled by Devil May Cry and it's not on that tier. Quite a few bosses just feel like they could have used more damage/durability since their core design is fun. Fortunately the bosses who "should" be good generally are, with one notable exception, especially later in the game.
Controls are other possible point of contention, it is a bit difficult to find a comfortable way to hold the 3DS for the game, but I adjusted to it well enough. I tended to switch back and forth between supporting the 3DS in my right hand between my fourth and fifth fingers (same hand that holds the stylus), or resting the 3DS on my knee. The former has the advantage of allowing you to sit in any position, the latter has the advantage of letting you hold the stylus in a way that doesn't obstruct the lower screen in any way (mostly useful if you want to see silly facial expressions, the gameplay survives fine). Neither's perfect but there you go.
The way the game handles difficulty is interesting. You can basically set it wherever you want on a scale from 0 to 9 (2 is the default, 0 is piss easy, is mega-hard) but each time you die it drops by 1, or halfway to 2, whichever is less (unless you restart the whole level), capping at the default 2. Once you get a sense of your own abilities and the difficulty scale you can put the slider to a pretty good place and it's good fun. I eventually settled on starting most levels around 6, though I usually died once or twice so it would be loewr by the time I finished. In Chapter 22 it dropped all the way to 2.2 because that chapter (a) has a lot of flying, which I tend to find a bit more difficult relatively due to less genre experience, and (b) has an unusually difficult boss. The final chapter was kinda disappoiting gameplaywise; you get a new "form" essentially (which you have to learn) and the fight is pretty easy.
The writing is of course a joy. Can't say enough good things about just throwing the dialog straight into the battle sequences, definitely helps the gameflow. Wouldn't work for every story, but since most of the dialog in the game comes not from Pit (though he gets his fair share, certainly), it works. I guess if you're bad at multitasking you might want to try to avoid combat if you really want to pay attention to the dialog, but I didn't have trouble finding a happy medium personally between paying attention to gameplay and to plot. Beyond that, as I've mentioned previously, the game does a great job of making most characters memorable, even relatively minor ones. Certainly the show-stealers are Palutena (Pit's patron deity and a pile of aloof snark and trolling), Hades (Satan, if he were played by Tim Curry), Viridi (prickly nature goddess who mocks Pit at every turn), and Pyrrhon (over-the-top ham in the tradition of Flay)... and the first three are probably the most important characters (along with Pit), which is nice!
The game does try to serious plot at points and... sometimes even does a decent job of it! I was pretty impressed that in chapters 18-22, the game made me
care about
the loss of first Palutena, then Pit. On the other hand, I'm a bit less impressed by
the game making a push lategame to make Hades into a supervillain after he'd cooperated with you against more evil opponents, while pretty much letting Viridi the mass murderer off the hook entirely. The game does some pretty fun playing around with the moral relativism of the various deities' outlooks, I thought, although it doesn't ultimately follow through on this (unless you take a very dark view of the last three chapters' plot, I suppose!).
Music's good! Plenty of nice callbacks to the NES music, which probably only I care about, but as a standalone there's a lot to like there. Boss musics are rockin', some of the stage music is really good too, and I liked how the music synced up nicely with the on-rails shooter sections. Visuals are fine, less impressive certainly, but that's just the nature of comparing handhelds to non-handhelds. The visuals are certainly fine for what they are, and the artstyle for characters is certainly sharp. I didn't use the 3D much sadly because I only like 3DS 3D when I can hold the system very steady, and the game's control scheme makes that a bit harder. It's a shame because when I did use the 3D it suits the shooter sections very well, and does actually help with one section of the final boss fight nicely.
So yeah, very pleased with this game. 9/10, obviously not perfect but it does so much right. Not sure whether I rate it above Devil May Cry or not, but probably above every other 3D action game I've played. Just does a lot of things right, and a game I highly recommend anyone whose tastes go beyond RPGs and who owns a 3DS to check out.
Game took me about 12 hours to beat, but I'm nowhere near done with it. Replaying stages on higher intensities, and doing the achievement-esque "treasure hunts" still to come.
