LOVE 3

Good game. Good sequel to Love and Kuso. Not as good as Love or Kuso, but CONTAINS Love AND Kuso.

A very cool plateformer with way more different mechanics than I anticipated which adds a lot of diversity to it ! Also hello Mokuzai Studio Games' discord server :]

Holy cow, THIS SOUNDTRACK IS AMAZING! Purposefully, I'm only writing this review after being half an hour into this game, completing about only 70% of the LOVE 3 levels before getting a game over. This is because having a first-time experience with a LOVE game is such a rare thing! Any person who plays these games knows that a lot of the charm, and the bulk of the time spent, is in "optimizing" your runs, whether it's minimizing checkpoints/time spent/deaths per run. Inevitably, both for me and most other players, this is how it's going to go once your first run through all the levels is done. But the thing I think is so amazing about this game series, which I want to review in particular, is the unique and immersive aesthetic you likely won't see in any other game. It's its own kind of artistic masterpiece! The black backgrounds, minimalist abstract pixel representations of your character and environment, the wondrous and mystical music.... it's like playing any of the games in this series transports you to having an adventure in an alternate dimension. It's a simple platformer with a retro Atari style on the surface, but a dream-like, oddly-nostalgic expedition through a different world, underneath. It also helps that even though the artstyle is abstract, it isn't arbitrary: each level has its own color, its own music, gameplay obstacles, decorations, and general theme that puts these elements all together, so that you can piece together a different artistic vision for every single level. This is the kind of thing you might start to forget once you beat all the levels and get into "optimization" mode and replay everything over and over, but I truly think the aesthetic is a valuable, rare, and unique strength this whole series pulls off wonderfully, this game being no exception. And as for LOVE 3, I've always thought the music in these games was great, but this is just another level of spectacular; every single level I've played had something newly creative and engaging that it would be a tragic waste to ignore. When you've listened to a lot of videogame music and start getting impatient with uninspired, cliche, boring tunes that don't seem to have much thought put into it, even just *one* new creative or attention-grabbing track you discover can feel so refreshing. I had that feeling with every single level I encountered, and I'll probably be feeling it more once I go back and complete the rest of the levels. I started this series back with LOVE 1 because the music that played in the trailer was so beautiful and mesmerizing to listen to, and LOVE 3 has gone above my expectations in continuing that legacy. .....As for gameplay, I don't want to make this review too long so you can probably find better detailed breakdowns in other reviews, but there is one thing I would like to say. YOU CAN PLAY THE LEVELS OF ALL THE OTHER GAMES IN THIS GAME SO THIS IS THE ULTIMATE GAME IN THIS SERIES FOR SURE!! It's not just LOVE 1 and LOVE 2, it's the remastered LOVE 1 levels plus the original, extra side levels, combinations of LOVE 1+2 and LOVE 1+2+3 in extended level gauntlets, and you can select them all from the menu right when you open the game. For that alone, even if you're not a LOVE 1 or 2 fan already, I think LOVE 3 is definitely worth it if you're interested in this series. Other things I'd like to say are, I really respect that LOVE 3 has experimented a bit with new gameplay mechanics: there are speed boosters that shoot you really fast through the air, a water section where you can have infinite jumps, and a flying device that lets you navigate through the air with momentum-based physics. I was already satisfied with the simpler mechanics in the first two games, but this game manages to add mechanics that are exciting and have a ton of movement potential, while still being intuitive and tightly designed. And as always, for anyone new to the series, LOVE 3 (like the first two games) is a precision-platformer that gets a lot of the little details right: death animations and restarting from checkpoints happens REALLY QUICK WHICH IS REALLY SATISFYING FOR THIS TYPE OF GAME, the difficulty level is the right balance of challenging but not too obnoxious (and you can set your own checkpoints anyway so you have some control over that), speedrunners get a precise timer off to the side, there are achievements that reward you for different challenges and also some secrets to find so high replay value for the levels overall, etc. And one thing I like is the level of polish in death effects: animations and sound effects can differ between different deaths, so the process of dying doesn't feel too repetitive. I think it's good game design that there are loud sounds that play when you die because it hammers in a sense of punishment when you fail a task, which you might not otherwise get in a game where you can recover from deaths really easily. One final note I'd like to make is that the developers seem to be really nice people. I'm not any kind of speedrunner or community member or anything, but one time I stepped into the discord to praise the game and the music, I made some comment about how one of the previous game's level music sounded similar to gymnopedie or something. Both the game dev and the person who made the music were there! They were responsive and seemed like generally good dudes: receptive to feedback from the community, appreciative, and open to having a chill conversation. On top of my opinion of the quality of these games, that's something to add that makes me want to show support for this series. To me, this game means two things: 1. you don't need to show someone an art-based game or story-based game to prove that games are a legitimate form of art, and 2. relatively unassuming indie projects can have just as much merit, value, creativity, and polish as some of the best mainstream top-studio-production games out there. tl;dr - For anyone who loves precision-platformers and retro games, LOVE 3 is worth it in so many ways!