It would be easy to dismiss the Style Boutique franchise as Nintendo’s attempt to reach out to the rarely tapped young girl demographic; to assume that it’s a cynical series designed more to be accessible and casual because, after all, girls don’t play real games, now do they? If there…
Read MoreIt’s always a good idea to play the worst games in your favourite genres. That way you can appreciate the good ones. Chronus Arc is one of the worst JRPGs I’ve ever played. In theory it wants to be a glorious throwback to the SNES JRPG tradition, but in practice…
Read MoreImage & Form’s SteamWorld franchise has been steadily growing into a quality indie IP. From humble beginnings as a simple, but effective tower defense title in SteamWorld: Tower Defense on the DSiWare downloadable platform, to SteamWorld Dig, which was a breakaway success across almost every platform out there, we now…
Read MoreLevel-5 has, for the longest time now, been hesitant to localise its Yo-Kai Watch franchise into western markets. One presumes that the underlying reason for that hesitancy is due to the intense cultural relevance the Yo-Kai games have to Japan, and the assumption that a great deal of the underlying…
Read MoreAtlus’ various Shin Megami Tensei spinoff series’ have always been good at using various JRPG traditions to frame social or political commentary. The two Digital Devil Saga games offered some deep insights into the role of religion in society, while Persona 4 was, in part, a deconstruction of the nostalgia…
Read MoreI am a huge fan of the Dragon Ball universe. I was first introduced to it via a children’s breakfast show in Australia called Cheez TV. Through the show, I was able to watch Pokémon, Earthworm Jim and Dragon Ball Z on a daily basis, it almost became a religion.…
Read MoreThe mere title of The Legend of Legacy implies grandeur. “Legend” refers to stories told generation after generation, while “legacy” represents the generations themselves. Needless to say, I came into this game expecting great things. The Legend of Legacy is a JRPG developed by Furyu, with a North American release…
Read MoreEver since it was first unveiled, Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer has been castigated by a vocal crowd and endured the label “placeholder spin-off”. Frankly, the paranoia that led to this reputation is justified. After all, boiling Animal Crossing, a sandbox game with an obscene degree of freedom, down to…
Read MoreEtrian Mystery Dungeon is an appalling Etrian Odyssey game. We will get into why that is the case in a moment. And, more importantly, why that doesn’t actually matter, but to be straight up it needs to be said that this game offers very little of what people actually love…
Read MoreWhen I think of Natsume, pocket racing games do not immediately spring to mind. Not when it’s got the Harvest Moon franchise going strong. That being said, Gotcha Racing does a fine job of creating a simple racing title that performs well on the tracks, but also provides an interesting…
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