Monster Menu: The Scavenger’s Cookbook could have been something special. The premise is really quite clever, but unfortunately, it ends up relying too heavily on the roguelike foundations for that premise to really take flight. Survival is meant to be the core of the thing, and in theory, it reaches some pretty grim places. It starts off with an adventurer,…
There is a problem when you make something subversive: how do you back it up with a sequel? If the sequel is too familiar and follows in the footsteps of its predecessor, it is no longer subversive by definition. It has lost its creative identity. This is unfortunately the case…
NISA’s efforts to preserve niche JRPGs of yesteryear has been admirable in…
This one has been a long time coming, but NISA has finally…
Nippon Ichi is at its best when it is at its most inscrutable and inaccessible. The more heavily a NIS game’s humour leans into a surrealistic anime-style over-the-top tone (whether for comic effect or otherwise), and the more numbers the game can throw at players, the more they tend to…
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We’re just about to dig into the second NIS Classics volume, but NISA has announced the release date for the third volume in the series. Prinny Presents NIS Classics Volume 3: La Pucelle: Ragnarok and Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure is a mouthful of a title, but it launches on August…
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Back in 2007, Nippon Ichi and Vanillaware collaborated on a game called GrimGrimoire. It was actually the very first game that the Vanillaware created under its current label, and it represented so much of what we have come to love about the company; its eye for incredible 2D art and…
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Before I sat down to play The Cruel King And The Great Hero, I thought it was going to be in the same vein as The Liar Princess And The Blind Prince, a previously-published NISA title with a very similar aesthetic. That would have been enough for me. The Liar…
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New Game+ Expo happened recently, and as usual, the Japanese publishers were there in force to make their announcements. NISA has always been one of the most proactive, and it has a bevvy of interesting new titles on the way. Prinny Presents NIS Classics Volume 3 As with the previous…
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