Was Defender of the Crown the first “4X” strategy game to come from Western developers? I know it’s not a proper 4X, as several of the “Xes” are severely undercooked or nonexistent, and Japan’s Nobunaga’s Ambition beat it to market by several years, but when you look at it, you can easily see where the likes of Europa Universalis and…
The Touhou Project continues to be one of the most interesting experiments in the video game industry. It’s been going since 1997, and that means it’s on the cusp of 30 years. In that time it’s had more than a game released every year… and that’s just the “main” titles,…
The origins of the Rhythm Heaven series are noble. One of the…
Idea Factory and its otome factory, Otomate, is at its best when…
Idea Factory and Otomate have brought us some incredible flights of fantasy over the years. There are the historical dramas, allowing us to hang out with and romance the Shinsengumi or Beinke. Then there’s the bright and bubbly Cupid Parasite, where you play as Cupid herself, or the almost brutally…
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I’m starting to get a little peeved at Nintendo for not remaking Fire Emblem (as in the first Fire Emblem to be released in the West; the one with Lyn). Not only is there a game there that would desperately benefit from modern production values (Lyn and her lovely dress…
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My only experience of Tomb Raider (before the reboot) was a demo of the first game. I’m about to show my age here, but remember gaming magazines that had demo discs you could load up and play? One of those had a snip of Tomb Raider 1 to play. I…
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Reigns has become a substantial little platform that the developers, Nerial, and publisher, Devolver Digital, never thought would extend as far as it has. Yet it has, and now it seems like there’s no end to what the developers can do next, now that they’re tapping into everything from popular…
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Unfortunately, because I was away last week, I didn’t get a chance to review Another Code: Recollection in time for the embargo lifting. It’s unfortunate not because I missed out on the initial rush of clicks when being one of the first to review a game of a decent profile.…
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The preservation of video games is a subject that’s near and dear to my heart. Not just in some kind of dusty academic sense, either. I’m a keen retro gamer, and I truly do think that there’s huge benefits for all audiences to take in the breadth of gaming history.…
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Some licensed games aim to introduce people to the property, and in doing so help to expand the overall number of fans the thing has. Koei Tecmo has been particularly successful at that over the years, applying the Warriors (Musou) formula to several emerging IP. Arslan: The Warriors of Legend,…
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One – also known as Kagayaku Kisetsu e – is one of the legends of the visual novel genre. Originally released way back in 1998, it was one of the early projects by a developer called Tactics, which is notable because many of the creative team moved on from that…
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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…
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Terra Nil is a story of hope that we sorely need right now. Despite an almost endless stream of warnings over the last few decades, humanity continues to treat climate change’s real and growing threat with blase indifference. The Paris Accord in 2015 was meant to be a turning point,…
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