When it comes to the Atelier series, combat and synthesis are core gameplay elements. Upcoming Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land (first announced during August 2024’s Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase) is no different, but both elements have been revamped to give the JRPG a new, fresh feel. Today, Gust and Koei Tecmo shared updated gameplay details…
It’s easy to wonder why Square Enix would go to such great effort to remake one of the oldest Dragon Quest titles. After all, the HD-2D engine they’ve applied to Dragon Quest III would have made the SNES trilogy positively sparkle, and those titles are far more renowned for their…
For the first time the now-iconic Yakuza series is on a Nintendo…
Starting a game in the middle of a story arc often means…
In recent years (thanks largely to the success of the Ryza trilogy), Gust and Koei Tecmo’s Atelier series has grown from being a very niche and micro-budget JRPG property to become something that, while not exactly mainstream, holds itself well in the market and can find an audience beyond genre…
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The Rhapsody games are some of the best RPGs out there… yet the second and third games in the series never launched in the west. In January, Rhapsody: Marl Kingdom Chronicles was announced; it puts Rhapsody II: Ballad of the Little Princess and Rhapsody III: Memories of Marl Kingdom together…
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Persona 5 has become a full-on franchise in its own right, having already had a spin-off rhythm game and a Musou-like action sequel. And now there’s a tactics JRPG coming. It looks so, so good, and Atlus in Japan has just released a new trailer to remind us of that…
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I feel for the people who are saying Final Fantasy XVI isn’t “their Final Fantasy.” I’m an arena FPS fan. I know what it’s like to watch something you love fall out of favour and either disappear entirely (Unreal, Tribes) or watch it try to contort itself into something else…
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With Final Fantasy XVI still very fresh in mind, the podcast crew sat down to talk about it. There is a lot to talk about with regard to this game, but perhaps the most interesting theme it has running through it is how well it handles war as a subject.…
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Loop8: Summer Of Gods is too easy to overlook. I know, I put it to a side myself while I was playing much larger and high-profile games (such as Final Fantasy XVI). I do feel like I did this game a disservice, however, as it is different and has the…
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Final Fantasy XVI is a spectacular blockbuster that is also so much more than a simple “AAA-game”. Where most blockbusters aim to manipulate the player’s emotions but have little ambition beyond that, Final Fantasy XVI dares to challenge players with a narrative of depth and poignancy. It is the rarest…
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Once, many years ago, I read an argument that the enduring popularity of Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons in its homeland in Japan has to do with a very real desire for a “sea change” or “tree change” among Japanese urban populations. If this is true (and I believe there is…
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Just yesterday I reviewed Demon Sword Incubus. This is a truly terrible “erotic” game that needed to remove the one “quality” it had going for it so it could have a console release. The Nintendo Switch port of Sakura Dungeon has also been released this past week, and while it…
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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…
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