It feels like I’ve been asking for a new Ogre Battle title for decades (probably because I have been). No, not Tactics Ogre, though those are also very fine. I do mean Ogre Battle, the JRPG/Real Time Strategy series of just two titles that I was obsessed with back on the SNES and Nintendo 64. Where most classics get some…
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…
Every time it seems like the extended Yakuza franchise might be pushing…
Persona 5 Tactica takes far too long to get to the point.…
Samba de Amigo is a game of pure joy and high-octane energy (with some acid surely thrown in when it was being developed). It comes across as an even more explosive explosion of colour and humour than Bandai Namco’s excellent Taiko the Drum series. In the party context that this…
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Persona 5 has become a full-on franchise in its own right, having already had a spin-off rhythm game and a Musou-like action sequel. And now there’s a tactics JRPG coming. It looks so, so good, and Atlus in Japan has just released a new trailer to remind us of that…
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So in a game titled “Company of Heroes 3” you get to play as the Germans (the, uh, World War 2 Germans) in one of the game’s campaigns. That is… certainly a brave decision. If the story was in any way effective, this would have been an enormously controversial game.…
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Like a Dragon: Ishin is a spinoff of the Yakuza series, but it is also so much more than that, as we explore in this video. Yakuza films and samurai films have a long history in Japanese cinema, and they’re actually more closely related than many might think (thematically, at…
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There are three things I look forward to in a Yakuza game: Exceptional writing and storytelling, a vibrant and interesting open world (rare, given how dull and bloated most open worlds are), and an authentic setting that makes me homesick for Japan. Like A Dragon: Ishin! might not have “Yakuza”…
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Squash meets block-breaking puzzles in C-Smash VRS, described as a complete reimagining of Sega’s iconic title. Prepare to be sore in the best of ways after playing this full-body experience at the end of space and time. VR isn’t normally something I’m interested in, but this actually sounds pretty fun…
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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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If you like blood and violence and samurais and remakes, Like a Dragon: Ishin! may be for you. It’s a Yakuza game at heart, despite the differing name. It’s a bit confusing as there was a 2020 game called Yakuza: Like a Dragon, but this is completely separate (and unfortunately…
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It has been getting progressively more difficult to talk about the Football Manager Touch releases on the Switch. I love the series a great deal and will inevitably spend dozens of hours with each year’s iteration trying to carefully manage the weakest team that I can find in the 6th…
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I love Sega. I grew up a Sega kid and I am still a Sega fan to this day. When Sega released the Genesis Mini back in 2019, I bought it on day one because it had a solid list of titles and I also liked collecting miniature consoles. I…
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