The Blood of Dawnwalker is the latest proof that Polish RPGs should now be seen as a genre in their own right, like JRPGs are. There’s a distinct approach to the genre that comes out of studios like CD Projekt Red, Questline, Reality Pump and now Rebel Wolves, that have…
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Elden Ring is an incredible game, and I already have a very in-depth review covering why I consider it to be a genuine masterpiece within the “games-as-art” canon. I’m not going to re-litigate that in reviewing the Switch 2 release of Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition. Everything that applied to that…
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Star Wars Zero Company is an excellent tactics game in the XCOM vein (it’s been a while since we had a high-profile entry in this particular subgenre!). It’s an awful Star Wars game, but I’ll forgive it because the tactics really is that good. That it is such a good…
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Homer’s The Odyssey has gained extreme popularity following the release of the film this year, and it is responsible for the word “odyssey.” However, the term has become synonymous with any epic trek. Neko is the Japanese word for cat. Thus, Neko Odyssey is a journey of cats—in this case,…
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I have wanted to get back into Final Fantasy XIV for quite some time. I am a massive fan of everything it offers, from the art direction to the scope of the world and adventures that are held within it. I love the way that it handles narrative within the…
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Was Defender of the Crown the first “4X” strategy game to come from Western developers? I know it’s not a proper 4X, as several of the “Xes” are severely undercooked or nonexistent, and Japan’s Nobunaga’s Ambition beat it to market by several years, but when you look at it, you…
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There was a time when visual novels were a rare thing in the West, particularly on consoles. Steins;Gate, from 2009, was one of the pioneers in changing that. Brought to the West on PS3 and Vita, it turned heads by proving to a wide and mainstream audience that it was…
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The Touhou Project continues to be one of the most interesting experiments in the video game industry. It’s been going since 1997, and that means it’s on the cusp of 30 years. In that time it’s had more than a game released every year… and that’s just the “main” titles,…
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We finally have the version of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 that Monolith Software intended. The original release on the Nintendo Switch was an exceptional game with some truly ambitious scope, but that came at the expense of frame rates, and even I, a person who doesn’t usually care for frame rates,…
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Blue Reflection has been a difficult series for Koei Tecmo to manage thanks to its enormously niche premise. Four products in, it’s also difficult to suggest that bad missteps were not made along the way. The original Blue Reflection got itself released and then un-released in parts of the world…
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