I don’t really understand why Idea Factory continues to experiment with action combat systems. Action combat systems are far more resource intensive to get right, and for a company producing JRPGs on a very small budget, it seems counterintuitive. Recent Neptunia titles, including Neptunia Virtual Stars and Cyberdimension Neptunia, have…
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I have reviewed Persona 4 Golden twice at this point. The last time I did – the PC release – I wrote 2,000 words about it. I’ve also penned several essays about the game’s themes, and enthused about it to just about everyone that will listen for the past decade.…
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Mystery. Romance. Monsters. These are common elements of JRPGs. And they are all part of Path of the Midnight Sun, a new indie entry to the genre that has just released. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to preview the game last month. Even in my brief (two…
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One Piece Odyssey is a particularly impressive game for one reason in particular: You don’t need to be a fan of One Piece to enjoy it. So often anime tie-in games consolidate the main anime plotline to an extreme degree, just so the developers can squish some form of it…
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Given how big the Fire Emblem series has become, it’s amazing to think that it has now been four years since the previous “proper” Fire Emblem (Three Houses) was released. That’s been the largest gap between releases in quite some time. I’m not complaining – I would rather the team…
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2022 will be remembered as one of the finest years for the JRPG genre of all time. Not only did we get new (and excellent) JRPGs to play at an almost staggering rate, but we also enjoyed an incredible range of remasters that made several classics accessible again for the…
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One of the things that made the truly memorable pixel-era JRPGs like Final Fantasy IV-VI, Chrono Trigger, Secret Of Mana and Dragon Quest IV-VI so special was that they backed the classic turn-based JRPG action that people loved with narratives that were genuinely intelligent and had serious things to say.…
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Last week, I covered news that the JRPG-inspired Path of the Midnight Sun will be launching in January. I was pretty excited about it. It has a strong concept: taking care outside of battles helps within battles. It’s like an entire game based on self-care! Well, I’ve now had the…
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Dragon Quest Treasures is a very chill, very laid-back game. It doesn’t ask too much of the player, but gives them a wonderful, vibrant world to explore, filled with sparkly treasure to loot. It would never work as a numbered Dragon Quest – it’s too limited for that – but…
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Parenting is never easy in real life, and the same can often be said of video games. Sure, sometimes the kids just raise themselves – but other times, the player needs to take on an active role in their child’s (or children’s) life. I’m relatively new to games about raising…
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