The original Etrian Odyssey, released in 2007, was something of a lifeline for the dungeon crawler genre. At least as far as consoles were concerned. After the NES and SNES enjoyed robust support from the genre, things dropped away significantly, and while there were still PC titles produced, it seemed that the once mighty approach to RPGs, frontlined by the…
Taiwanese publisher/developer, Softstar, is best known for being a rising global force with its RPGs. Sword & Fairy and Xuan-Yuan Sword are rapidly gaining prestige worldwide (and with good reason, too). There’s more to the “Square Enix of Taiwan”, though. Softstar is also the company behind the Richman series of…
Read MoreIt feels almost ironic that Bayonetta, one of the most grandiose action properties in gaming (if not the series that takes the crown), would somehow end up being exclusive to the Nintendo Switch. This is a series where the action, creatures, humour, narratives and setpieces are so fundamentally big on…
Read MoreFragment’s Note+ has some decent art, and a surprisingly good localisation for a project of relatively modest scale. I’m used to having to deal with translations that are barely better than a Google machine translation and this game is not that. Unfortunately, I’ve run out of good things to say…
Read MoreIt took a little over 15 years to get Kamiwaza localised in the west, and while this is an incredible niche title, it’s well worth trying. To this day it comes across as overly ambitious to what developer, Acquire, perhaps had the resources to deliver, but this game and its…
Read MoreIf you enjoyed the very famous Steins;Gate, or the much loved Robotics;Notes, then chances are you’ll like Chaos;Head Noah. It’s certainly a more extreme experience than those two, but this was the very first entry in the “Science Adventure” series, and it offers excellent, intense storytelling similar to its later…
Read MoreIt’s difficult to write within the fantasy genre in 2022. On the one hand, it’s painfully easy to write something so self-serious and overwrought that it comes across as a desperate and doomed effort to channel Tolkien. Writing fantasy that people will take seriously is monumentally difficult because fantasy by…
Read MoreRabbits are the best pets. They’re fluffy and funny and it’s only when you have them as pets that you realise they’ve got big personalities that fill the home with their energy. We don’t get anywhere near enough games that make rabbits the focus, and many of those that do…
Read MoreIt’s really disappointing that Square Enix would dump the third Voice of Cards release in the middle of such a jam-packed schedule. Even from Square itself. The company has released DioField Chronicle, NieR Automata on Switch, and Valkyrie Elysium in the span of just a few weeks and it has…
Read MoreWhite Day: A Labyrinth Named School has proven to be quite the enduring horror property. Remakes and remasters of this thing have been appearing on consoles, phones and PCs since its original release way back in 2001. And now it’s on Nintendo Switch. Perhaps the best platform for it of…
Read MorePenko Park is simultaneously one of the most original games you’ll ever play, and also something so shamelessly derivative that it’s hard not to wish it could have been more ambitious. Thankfully, the creative bits are the ones that matter to the overall quality of the game. Related reading: We…
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