I know I’m late with writing this review. Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, otherwise known as “the remaster of Final Fantasy Tactics” was released while I was away in Japan, and it’s been enormously difficult to catch up, given that I’ve needed to prioritise the new games, also releasing like a broken dam right now. However, that’s a me…
The HD-2D remake of Dragon Quest III went down really well with players and critics, so it was perhaps inevitable that Square Enix would give the same treatment to the first two titles in the trilogy. Wisely packing them together (much as the port of Dragon Quest 1 and 2…
Game Freak can’t do anything without pissing off a good chunk of…
In all the ways that really matter, Persona 3 Reload on the…
The “roguelike” has become a term applied to so many different games that it’s functionally lost all meaning. Indies, in particular, have embraced it with the same vigour that big AAA developers have embraced unsustainably expensive open worlds. In that context, it’s actually refreshing to play a traditional, classical roguelike…
Read More
If the promise of JRPG-style hijinks across a painstakingly-recreated Shibuya sounds good to you, then you’ll want to pay close attention to Reynatis, the latest FuRyu special that NISA will publish out west. FuRyu continues to be the Japanese studio for creative ideas. If The Caligula Effect and Monark struck…
Read More
There is a moment in the original Final Fantasy VII where, after hours of scrapping around an ugly, horrible city, the party breaks out into the wider world, and it’s one of the defining moments of the game. Suddenly, an adventure that seemed narrow in scope became huge and expansive:…
Read More
They don’t really make that many games like Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs The Thrilling Steamy Maze Kiwami any more. Anime fan service games complete with bath scenes, destructible clothing and school uniform costumes are few and far between (in part because of the spectre of consoles and/or Steam…
Read More
The Atelier franchise has long been one that suits the gatcha “free-to-play” genre. Thanks to the over-20 games that have been developed across two decades, there are an almost unlimited number of characters to draw on, and the core alchemy system that sits at the centre of Atelier lends itself…
Read More
Granblue Fantasy turns ten this year – yes, time really does fly – and it is one of the all-time most successful mobile games. It has soared to over 25 million downloads in its home country alone – and that means about one in five Japanese people have played this…
Read More
Persona 3 occupies an interesting role within the broader Persona series. Unlike Personas 4 and 5, there is less of an emphasis on the “J-Pop” bubbly quality that significantly lightened the mood of those two titles (however serious the underlying message of each was). Unlike Persona 1 and 2, Persona…
Read More
Every time it seems like the extended Yakuza franchise might be pushing its luck just a little too far, the development team at Ryu ga Gotoku find some way of reminding us all why it’s such a fine series. Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth shouldn’t have worked. Pulling Kazuma Kiryu…
Read More
Most of the time, Kemco is the publisher that churns out cheap and tacky JRPGs that make RPG Maker projects look professional. And it does them at a shockingly fast rate. And then, every once in a while, it discovers something that is genuinely interesting. Raging Loop is a hell…
Read More
Softstar is Taiwan’s answer to Square Enix, and Sword and Fairy and Xuan-Yuan Sword are like Taiwan’s Final Fantasy. Both properties are huge in their native language, but have struggled to get much of a foothold outside of Chinese-speaking territories. Publisher, eastasiasoft, is trying to establish them worldwide, however, and…
Read More