Preview by Matt S. Due out in the west in around a month, Akiba’s Beat is a sequel to the delightfully oddball Akiba’s Trip (though it plays nothing like it), and comes to us from the very talented, and often underrated, development house, Acquire. Related reading: Matt’s “review” of Persona…
Read MoreNews by Matt S. Just a few weeks after the announcement that it would be bringing the hugely underrated Lost Dimension to PC, UK localisation and publisher outfit, Ghostlight, has announced that it is also working on a port of Compile Heart’s first PlayStation 4 JRPG, Omega Quintet. Related reading:…
Read MorePreview by Ginny W. A game that advertises itself as being a mix of other established titles always makes me a little bit wary. I think that there’s a very fine line between a studio being inspired by a popular game versus reproducing a core idea from a popular game…
Read MoreArticle by Matt S. Persona 4 was a game that means more to me than I can really put into words. It was an utter masterpiece of storytelling, and a game that I continue to get more out of, the more I sit down and play it. It affected me…
Read MoreRetro reflections by Matt S For Australians, it wasn’t always easy being a fan of JRPGs. In fact, it was almost impossible, without resorting to doing certain dodgy things with emulators and the like. So many JRPGs were never released in Australia. So many more of them, if they were…
Read MoreReview by Clark A. Detractors of dungeon crawlers often claim these games are all too similar, but perhaps that’s also why the titles under that umbrella are so endearing. From traditional mystery dungeon games like Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja to more classical Wizardry clones in the vein of…
Read MoreReview by Britta S. So who is Adam? I wondered as I started up the game. Likely the hero? No, quite wrong – Adam is no person but the name of an idyllic village tucked away in a forever classic corner of retro JRPG fantasyland. In a way, this name…
Read MoreNews by Matt S. Lost Dimension won’t appear on any “great games on the PlayStation 3/ PlayStation Vita” lists, and that’s a pity, because it really does belong there. A tactical RPG with some seriously intense storytelling themes, Lost Dimension was a mindscrew of a game in the vein of…
Read MoreGame Theory by Matt S. NieR: Automata is a very dense game, and it covers off a great many themes, ranging from gender and identity politics, to the impact of religion, the meaning of existence, and the structure of video games themselves. One of its absolute key themes, however, and…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Thanks to NISA, the Touhou Genso franchise out of Japan is starting to get some real traction in the west. These games range across a wide variety of genres now, but what remains consistent to them is their slavish loyalty to what inspires them, and while…
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