Review by Clark A. Detractors of dungeon crawlers often claim these games are all too similar, but perhaps that’s also why the titles under that umbrella are so endearing. From traditional mystery dungeon games like Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja to more classical Wizardry clones in the vein of…
Read MoreReview by Britta S. So who is Adam? I wondered as I started up the game. Likely the hero? No, quite wrong – Adam is no person but the name of an idyllic village tucked away in a forever classic corner of retro JRPG fantasyland. In a way, this name…
Read MoreNews by Matt S. Lost Dimension won’t appear on any “great games on the PlayStation 3/ PlayStation Vita” lists, and that’s a pity, because it really does belong there. A tactical RPG with some seriously intense storytelling themes, Lost Dimension was a mindscrew of a game in the vein of…
Read MoreGame Theory by Matt S. NieR: Automata is a very dense game, and it covers off a great many themes, ranging from gender and identity politics, to the impact of religion, the meaning of existence, and the structure of video games themselves. One of its absolute key themes, however, and…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Thanks to NISA, the Touhou Genso franchise out of Japan is starting to get some real traction in the west. These games range across a wide variety of genres now, but what remains consistent to them is their slavish loyalty to what inspires them, and while…
Read MoreRetro reflections by Davis A. With NieR: Automata now in the open and receiving critical acclaim (you did it Yoko Taro, you finally did it!); I thought to myself, what better time to write about what makes Taro’s games so special, and specifically my favorite (for now) of them all,…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. In a delightfully odd way, Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey is simultaneously the biggest step forward for the series, and, after the Dusk trilogy took the Atelier series down some more serious thematic roads, also its biggest step back towards tradition. Having been…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. The opening line of dialogue in NieR: Automata could have been pulled directly from Nietzsche or Kierkegaard, if those men were militant androids about to go to war with an army of genocidal robots. Related reading: On why NieR: Automata’s predecessor was the best game of…
Read MoreReview by Pierre-Yves L. Digimon World: Next Order is a tale of balance. Brought into the Digiworld with no way back, the self-named protagonist will need to find their way back to the human world with the help of the Digiworld residents that they now find themselves allied with. Under…
Read MoreGame Theory by Matt S. Final Fantasy isn’t a game that people generally cite as an example of philosophical depth. Indeed, most people don’t see it as much of anything; it’s rarely considered a “great” Final Fantasy game, and very rarely played except by the purists and franchise historians. And…
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