Having not played the original Code Vein, I have no idea whether Code Vein II is effective in building on it, or whether the two games are related at all. What I do know is that Code Vein II is an excellent soulslike. One that starts quite slowly, but has an odd way of getting its hooks deep into you.…
It’s incredible that Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergarde plays so well on the Nintendo Switch 2. Much like how having The Witcher 3 playable in a handheld format with the Switch felt like some kind of wizardry, this has the same effect, with the one difference being that it felt…
I’d never heard of Rammy’s Great Adventure until its remake landed on…
Octopath Traveler 0 isn’t really Octopath Traveler. It’s good. It’s even excellent,…
There has been a deluge of Harvest Moon and Rune Factory-likes in recent years. Square Enix, bringing the resources of a large publisher to bear, has made the best of them. Harvestella is the new benchmark for the genre, combining breathtaking aesthetics, superb characterisation, and – the first time I’ve…
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It might be a remake of a remake, but Tactics Ogre Reborn is one of the greatest games of its genre. It effectively established the genre, many years ago, and has barely lost anything in the years since. I have to hope that Square Enix has prepared this release to…
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NOTE: THIS RECORDING STARTS ABOUT 5 MINUTES AFTER THE BROADCAST: You’ll hear me trying to figure out something at the very start. I had the most horrible sound feedback at the start of the broadcast last night, so this video had been edited to remove that bit. The rest of…
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This upcoming November is a big month for gaming in 2022 in all genres and walks of life, but, if you haven’t yet been spoiled enough for options, we present to you Kowloon Highschool Chronicle! Kowloon Highschool Chronicle has always been an interesting case of early 2000s Japanese gaming lore,…
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Star Ocean is such a wonderful series, bringing together very classical fantasy JRPG action with science fiction space drama. After a SIX year wait, we finally have a new one, and Star Ocean: The Divine Force is a real return to form for the series. In addition to the full,…
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Star Ocean acts as something akin to the “b-tier” for Square Enix. Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest are, of course, the big guns, but this series is not insignificant. It’s been around for 25 years now, and The Divine Force is the sixth of the main series entries. I’ll tell…
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The embargo for our Tactics Ogre Reborn hands-on preview lifted late on Friday night, so we didn’t have time to do an article for it here (we were off celebrating our IT Journo Lizzies Award win). However, this game is absolutely amazing, and Tactics Ogre is FINALLY back! One of…
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News about Marvelous’ next upcoming project, Loop8: Summer of Gods has been gaining momentum in both Western and European news circles for a few weeks now after an announcement was made last month that would indeed be getting this promising-looking game on our shores. Now we have a specific date.…
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It’s difficult to write within the fantasy genre in 2022. On the one hand, it’s painfully easy to write something so self-serious and overwrought that it comes across as a desperate and doomed effort to channel Tolkien. Writing fantasy that people will take seriously is monumentally difficult because fantasy by…
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Valkyrie Elysium isn’t for everyone. The game has a specific tone and structure that has ensured that it will only ever appeal to a small, niche demographic. And yet it shares structural, thematic and aesthetic similarities with, in one way or another, the likes of Chaos Legion, NieR (original, not…
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