One of the best things about eFootball Kick-Off is that it has a global championship mode, structured just like a FIFA World Cup, with all the players and nations you could hope for, without it being a World Cup. You can buy this and enjoy all the thrills of The Beautiful Game of football without contributing to the second most…
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is what happens when the Octopath Traveler team decides they’re going to tackle Zelda next. It’s an incredibly brave project. Zelda doesn’t really need a “spiritual sequel,” with Nintendo very much committed to its continuation. And it’s Nintendo’s single biggest property. To actively…
Idea Factory and its otome factory, Otomate, is at its best when…
I don’t have too much to say about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth…
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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If Lone Ruin had been released three years ago, it would have been noteworthy. If it had been released a decade ago, it would have been celebrated. The game itself is an excellent example of taut, intense mechanics, a well-designed (and challenging) difficulty curve, and moody aesthetics. Unfortunately, it’s a…
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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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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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Toy Soldiers has been kicking around for over a decade now, and gaming has changed a lot in that time. Back when it was first released on Xbox 360, Xbox Live (and console downloadable games) was a relatively new concept, and the tower defence genre was riding high. It was…
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I’ve been looking forward to my chance to play The Outbound Ghost, an RPG by an indie developer about helping ghosts pass on – and maybe even solving a mystery! The Paper Mario inspiration is strong and obvious (and reminds me that I must play the latest in the series,…
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I have reached the point where I cannot stomach the Marvel cross-media franchise’s approach to storytelling, at all. Sadly, Midnight Suns is full of it. The relentlessly juvenile and quip-based humour that Americans seem to think passes for dry, droll and/or sarcastic humour pervades every single one of these things…
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One of the things that made the truly memorable pixel-era JRPGs like Final Fantasy IV-VI, Chrono Trigger, Secret Of Mana and Dragon Quest IV-VI so special was that they backed the classic turn-based JRPG action that people loved with narratives that were genuinely intelligent and had serious things to say.…
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I’m obsessed with the paranormal. The older I get, the more interested I am in it. It started as a mortality thing, but has expanded past that into sheer curiousity. I’ll read what I can, watch what I can, listen to what I can. I’m very open to what others…
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Knights of Honor II: Sovereign fills a really useful niche that has been largely overlooked over the years. On the one hand, you’ve got the highly accessible 4X strategy titles, like Civilization or Romance of the Three Kingdoms. These titles streamline a lot of the strategy in order to be…
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