For people who enjoyed the vibes of Monster Hunter, but found the challenging, highly technical action combat to be overwhelming, Capcom came up with the Monster Hunter Stories series. The first two were enjoyable, but with Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection, Capcom has landed on something really special indeed. It also feels like Capcom’s response to criticism that has…
The game that got me looking at Odencat was Fishing Paradiso, which was an absolute pleasure to review many, many moons ago. Now, the Japanese developer has announced that its acclaimed 2023 RPG Meg’s Monster will launch on smartphones this May, with pre-registration available on both the App Store and…
Another Eden Begins is a time-travelling turn-based JRPG whose development is being…
Dragon Quest VII did need a reimagining. I don’t say this as…
Little Witch Nobeta has been a significant (and perhaps mildly surprising) hit since first releasing on PC last year. For a game developed by a tiny team, having a “Very Positive” rating on Steam, off more than 8,300 players, is a significant achievement. Soon, courtesy of Idea Factory International, the…
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Octopath Traveler broke some impressive ground back in 2018. As the first effort with the all-new HD-2D visual engine, it presented us with a new vision of what sprite-based games could look like. It backed that up with a wonderful fusion of the kind of turn-based gameplay that had been…
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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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Magical rings are such a well-trodden fantasy trope that they’re now at the point of clichéd symbolism that would score you an “F” grade in your creative writing course. With rings being the focus of Fire Emblem Engage, and Engage itself being a loving homage to everything that came before…
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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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Starting in 1977, the legendary rock musician David Bowie produced the Berlin Trilogy of albums. In a surprising move, he chose the avant-garde, ambient artist Brian Eno as a songwriting partner. One of Eno’s biggest contributions to the albums was his “oblique strategies” – a deck of cards with different…
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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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This one has been a long time coming, but NISA has finally given the world a release date for Ys IX: Monstrum Nox. It will land on May 9 in North America, May 12 in Europe, and will have all DLC baked into it. You have, of course, been able…
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Bushiroad (the company behind the likes of Cardfight!! Vanguard) has established a console games label, Bushiroad Games, and overnight announced a bunch of games. These are largely early in development, but there’s a lot here to get excited for – if nothing else, Bushiroad Games seems committed to supporting the…
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