Softstar is Taiwan’s answer to Square Enix, and Sword and Fairy and Xuan-Yuan Sword are like Taiwan’s Final Fantasy. Both properties are huge in their native language, but have struggled to get much of a foothold outside of Chinese-speaking territories. Publisher, eastasiasoft, is trying to establish them worldwide, however, and…
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It has been seven years since the last proper Dragon Quest Monsters title (Joker 3, back on the 3DS), and that one wasn’t released in English. It has been 12 years since the last Dragon Quest Monsters game was released in English (Joker 2, on the DS). It was worth…
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Every so often I do that nonsense Political Compass test. It is nonsense and a generally poor way of reflecting your actual position on topics, but it’s fun to watch where the dot on the matrix moves around over time. And it’s fun to compare your results to how other…
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SteamWorld has been kicking around for 13 years now, when the humble little SteamWorld Tower Defense landed on the Nintendo DSi via DSiWare. It has become a surprisingly robust if generally unheralded IP since then, dipping into genres as broad as RPG, XCOM clone and Mr Driller-like. SteamWorld Build is…
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I’m not entirely sure what the point of Pinball M is. It’s Zen Studios quality pinball through-and-through, and yet it is a distinct app and download, rather than a DLC drop onto the existing Pinball FX platform. I can only assume that the goal here was to include content that…
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While I wasn’t a big fan of the port of Gothic to the Nintendo Switch, I do remain a big fan of the developer, Piranha Bytes, and more generally the “Eurojank” RPGs that Piranha Bytes has been such a cornerstone of. The Switch port of Gothic II has been a…
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Surfing is a messy sport, and not just because you’ll get sand in places where the sun doesn’t shine. Where most sports are defined by the nice, neat rules that humans set down and agree to compete together under, the defining characteristic of surfing is that it’s a battle with…
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Persona 5 Tactica takes far too long to get to the point. However, once it gets there it shows itself to be a far more brilliant addition to the overall Persona 5 collection than many will give it credit for. At first, it seems like it’ll be irreverent fan service,…
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My Time at Sandrock is a very entertaining game that should never have been released on the Nintendo Switch. Or, I should say, the problems with the game better be exclusive to the Switch and a consequence of the hardware and not, simply, poor development, because otherwise the game should…
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The last Train Sim World I played was the original, and I thought it was a magnificent experience. Train Sim World 4 doesn’t feel much different from my memory of that game (admittedly four years ago now), but it didn’t need to play or look differently in the first place.…
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