Matt S. is the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of DDNet. He's been writing about games for over 20 years, including a book, but is perhaps best-known for being the high priest of the Church of Hatsune Miku.
If I were to create a laundry list of what I look for in a JRPG, the simple reality is that the Ys series doesn’t tend to check many of those boxes. They’re not known for in-depth narratives, iconic characters (aside from the series protagonist, Adol, who has a very “blank template” look to him), or particularly thoughtful, nuanced combat.…
To get this out of the way up-front: We need to be wary about art (games, films, books, whatever else) that depict apocalyptic scenarios where some form of invader from without swarms the world and you’re in control of the last nation standing, holding back the horde. It’s an incredibly…
Hello everyone, and Happy Holidays! What a year it has been, too.…
It’s that time of year again! We’re counting down the days to…
Last year at TGS, one of the games that I enjoyed playing the most was a Mario Party-style Demon Slayer board game. I thought there was about a 50/50 chance that it would get a western release and, luckily, it is. Now we have a new trailer for Demon Slayer:…
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Death Mark deserves better recognition than it gets. The first two games in the series (Death Mark itself, and then Spirit Hunter: Ng) are both incredible horror visual novels, through which Experience Inc. has given us some of the finest art and suspense narratives that we’ve seen. And yet to…
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Well, Konosuba: Love for These Clothes of Desire certainly has its eye-opening moments. This is a game that likes to get downright dirty in places, and embraces (with gusto) every possible sexualisation trope you can imagine in anime. It has a ball doing so, and as long as isekai-style narratives…
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They don’t really make that many games like Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs The Thrilling Steamy Maze Kiwami any more. Anime fan service games complete with bath scenes, destructible clothing and school uniform costumes are few and far between (in part because of the spectre of consoles and/or Steam…
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Stargate: Timekeepers is not a great attempt at bringing Stargate to video games. I say this with all due respect to the developer and publisher in Slitherine, and in isolation, divorced from its license, Timekeepers is good fun. It’s just a very strange project and I’m not sure who it’s…
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In the first episode of 2024, we start by looking at all the upcoming game releases for February 2024. This year has been off to an incredible start, and the momentum continues this month. Big time. Enhancing Gaming with Accessibility From Final Fantasy to Sony games, we investigate the strides…
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The Atelier franchise has long been one that suits the gatcha “free-to-play” genre. Thanks to the over-20 games that have been developed across two decades, there are an almost unlimited number of characters to draw on, and the core alchemy system that sits at the centre of Atelier lends itself…
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Originally released back in 2017 on PlayStation 4, Tokyo Xanadu eX+ was a JRPG that was unfairly overlooked… including by me. Looking back at my review, I scored it 3.5/5, but in hindsight I was probably unfair to it, as the game has stuck with me much more than that.…
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Every so often a project is announced that just sounds incredible. Shallah is one such game. In development by JP Games (the new studio headed by Hajime Tabata, the director of Final Fantasy XV, Final Fantasy Type-0, and The Third Birthday), Shallah promises to be a “cutting-edge RPG for adults”…
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Granblue Fantasy turns ten this year – yes, time really does fly – and it is one of the all-time most successful mobile games. It has soared to over 25 million downloads in its home country alone – and that means about one in five Japanese people have played this…
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