Okay so technically I finished Picross S7 like a month ago but that doesn't really count for the purposes of this list and I think we both know it.
- Persona 4 Golden
I love Persona 4, warts and all. Parts of it have aged like ass, most notably literally anything involving Kanji and Naoto, but I still find it compelling as hell and Nanako is still the best and most convincing child character in a game to this day. Prior to this, I had P4G on the Vita but never played it past like, Kanji's dungeon so I figured I would actually power through to the end this time and see what's new. And it's good!
The big one is Marie, and while her poetry can be uh, a little much, she's no more over the top than any of the main party members and her dungeon is honestly the best of any in the game. It's just Persona Q, and while that game sucked for a variety of reasons, the gimmick works much better when it isn't stapled to a pure dungeon crawler like the EO engine. Also, I don't know if it's because I was dating Rise or she's just always like that but she spent almost the entire time being catty as fuck toward Marie and it was hilarious.
The rest of the Golden additions are just more Persona 4. For every adorable scene between Kanji and Naoto, there's one where the horny dipshits try to peek on the girls in the hot springs. I personally think the new scenes largely skewed to the positive side, but it felt like Rise got a lot of screentime in them and I happen to like her a lot, so of course I would say that. Also, the new music for winter is really good! Marie's dungeon is one of the better themes and the field music is fine, if not an instant certified banger like Heartbeat, Heartbreak or Your Affection is.
The real takeaway, though? Now I really want to play P5 Royal and it literally just went off sale. 🙃
- Ocarina of Time: Master Quest
I'd like to have a stronger opinion of the game than "well that sure exists" but uh... I'm not sure I can. Most of its dungeons ideas are thoroughly whatever and at best recreate all the problems of the original (looking at you Shadow Temple) and at worst just strip out half the dungeon's puzzles, rendering huge chunks of it completely pointless or optional (Fire, Water, Ice Cavern).
Every so often something genuinely clever slips through, and it's a reminder of how much better this could have been had it not been gutted when they decided to make Majora's Mask instead. Most of the child dungeons are actually pretty good, and Spirit has some genuinely interesting ideas, even if you would never see them unless you went out of your way to go see all the optional rooms. The game as a whole is just completely hamstrung by the idea being that they could only change actors and not any geometry, although that understandably starts trending toward "remake" territory rather than "romhack".
It's fine. It's interesting to play once, and you can mix them in randos in place of regular dungeons which is an alright way to experience it, but MQ as a whole is just thoroughly whatever and isn't really worth your time.
- Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line
It's Final Fantasy, it's a rhythm game, it's more (a LOT more, 402 songs in the base version iirc) of everything you know and love from the original and Curtain Call. I don't remember if the series quests are new to this game or they were in CC, but either way they're a good addition - the music for any given title is lined up roughly in the order you encounter them, so it's like doing a little speedrun of the game as you play the songs. Plus, a bunch of the spinoffs have been given enough songs to have their own little category and it will never not make me smile when Square acknowledges things like Mystic Quest.
The real value of the game is in how it weaponizes nostalgia, though. If not for the fact that Square still somehow hasn't released the pixel remasters on Switch, I 100% would have gone and bought FF4 after I finished playing through its songs, and I'm honestly surprised I didn't do the same for 8 Remastered. I'm not at all surprised that a few weeks after release, they dropped a big sale on the eShop that includes a bunch of the modern ports, because I mean...about the only better marketing you can get is getting in Smash Bros, and that's already run its course this generation.
Anyway, if you like rhythm games then it's a no brainer. I dunno if the deluxe upgrade is worth it, it mostly has a bunch of closing themes and vocal tracks, but the season pass is good for ten packs of 6-7 songs a piece and that's double what the DX version offers for only slightly more cost.