Review by Matt S. I previously reviewed Talisman when it released on PlayStation 4, and so I’m going to re-publish much of that review below, as it comes from the same developer, and is functionally the same game on Nintendo Switch. There’s even the massively expansive (and expensive) approach to…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. SeaBed is a rather precious thing; it might look amateurish in its aesthetics, and even by visual novel standards it lacks interactivity, but it’s also a remarkable bit of storytelling, and one that defies expectations at every turn and refuses to take the low road. It…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. I’ve said this more times than should be necessary, but I’ll need to say it here again: developers, if you’re looking to localise a visual novel into another language, then for the love of all things holy, find a quality localisation outfit to do it. There…
Read MoreReview by Harvard L. Few things in life are as innately satisfying as seeing a synergistic strategy come together in a card game. The sensation of planning towards a big payoff, or slowly amassing resources which compound in effectiveness once combined with smart decision making, is a potent one indeed.…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. If I were to ask everyone reading this to raise their hands if they are thoroughly sick of the roguelike genre being appropriated by indie developers to replace the joy of finely crafted levels in favour of randomised “endless” content, I would imagine that most people…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Two Point Hospital comes across as more a nostalgic in-joke than an attempt at a proper simulation, and while I loved the old Theme Hospital as much as the next person, what made that game so memorable was that it also offered a tight, engaging, challenging…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. You can’t really fault the developer (Chara-Ani), or publisher, NISA, for trying. On the back of Fire Emblem becoming one of Nintendo’s most important properties, it’s not surprising on any level that someone would want to dust off Langrisser (originally Warsong in the west). It was,…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. For a time the tower defence genre was a giant. It was when there was still space for premium-priced phone games, and people latched on to the simple – but challenging – strategy of tower defence as an the ideal time killer to make the daily…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. Almost every visual novel aims to present players with a fantasy – it may well be located in a real world location (Stein’s;Gate’s Akihabara, Root Letter’s Shimane prefecture), but the stories that they share are complete flights of fancy. Wanderlust: Travel Stories is a little different;…
Read MoreReview by Matt S. The swan song for the incredibly talented Japanese developer, Neverland, Rune Factory 4 was one of the finest titles released on the Nintendo 3DS. A beautifully elegant little game, Rune Factory 4 perfectly blended action JRPG dungeon crawling with everything that we love about the pastoral…
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