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…
When you read the title for this feature, which song do you think about? What memories are evoked by that song? How would you feel if you were asked to listen to it again? And, to hazard a guess, was that song from the late 90s or the early 00s?…
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Monster Menu: The Scavenger’s Cookbook could have been something special. The premise is really quite clever, but unfortunately, it ends up relying too heavily on the roguelike foundations for that premise to really take flight. Survival is meant to be the core of the thing, and in theory, it reaches…
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I am surprised that Koei Tecmo and Gust decided to remake Atelier Marie. It is the original Atelier title, so there’s historical value in it, of course, but following the success of the Ryza series, which brought a new legion of fans to the series, I would have bet for…
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I have lost track of how many Mercenaries games there have been at this point. Developer, Rideon, certainly churns them out, and the series has evolved into a comfort food experience. They look vaguely like Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Ogre, and play like a vaguely decent homage to those…
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Dokapon Kingdom: Connect is a clever little attempt to take the board game format, and apply it to an RPG. Just go in with the expectation that it’s the latter that only looks like the former, and you’ll be well placed to have a good time of it. Related reading:…
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I just want to start this review by saying that I love Tiara, the blue-haired secondary protagonist from the Fairy Fencer series (it’s a series now that there are two games). Like, I really, really, love Tiara. As far as anime female design goes, she’s my third favourite character ever,…
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Mugen Souls is a game that is all about larger-than-life excess. The action is over the top. The narrative and characters are ridiculous and, despite being chibi in visual design, larger-than-life in personality. This is not a game interested in subtlety or nuance. It’s brash and in your face from…
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Trinity Trigger set out to capture nostalgia for 90s JRPGs. That is precisely what the game delivers. Were it not for the fact that the game looks modern, I myself would have thought I was playing a long-lost classic from the era. It is an action JRPG, where you control…
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Have you ever felt like a game was made for you? Something that so perfectly matches your favourite aesthetics, gameplay style, narrative and theme that it’s like the developers pulled it directly from your inner core? Labyrinth of Zengetsu is that game for me. Related reading: For another example of…
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I really wonder if there will ever be a time when I don’t leap at a re-release, remaster or remake of any of the first six Final Fantasy games. I already have all of these pixel remasters on my PC, and yet here I am playing them again on the…
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