I remain very impressed with any developer that takes a swing at a Soulslike. In fact, post-Elden Ring, I’m possibly even more impressed by the gonads it takes to try and develop one. This is a genre that is so overwhelmingly dominated by one company’s creative vision, and any other effort is going to be immediately compared to it. I…
I remain very impressed with any developer that takes a swing at a Soulslike. In fact, post-Elden Ring, I’m possibly even more impressed by the gonads it takes to try and develop one. This is a genre that is so overwhelmingly dominated by one company’s creative vision, and any other…
Read MoreMy personal experience with prolific (VERY prolific) Japanese developer, Tamsoft, is mostly with its work with the action-based Hyperdimension brawlers, Senran Kagura, and the highly fanservicey stuff like Onechanbara and School Girl/Zombie Hunter. For the most part, these have been like pared-down Dynasty Warriors/Musou games. I wish Bleach Rebirth of…
Read MoreThere was a brief period of time where the tower defence genre was a big deal and just about everyone was trying to get on board with it, right through to the biggest publishers. It’s easy to understand why – the games are relatively easy to develop, and it’s relatively…
Read MoreXenoblade Chronicles X was arguably the most ambitious game to land on the Nintendo Wii U (you could argue that Breath of the Wild was, but then most people see that as a Switch game and forget that there was a Wii U version as well… and all this is…
Read MoreHorror is such a difficult genre for artists to work with. People think it’s easy because they have memories of more-comedy-than-scary slashers and B-grade films, bad acting and all. There’s also the perception that it’s not a particularly subtle genre, and therefore must be quite easy to work with. But…
Read MoreBack in 2019, Koei Tecmo hit it big with Atelier Ryza, and the long-running series went from being one of the most beloved niche properties to being something that suddenly had upward mobility in sales and prominence. Not quite in the leagues of Final Fantasy, Tales, Dragon Quest or Persona,…
Read MoreI can only speak for myself, but burnout is absolutely horrible. I’m the type of person who can cause it to happen to me because of the pressure I put on myself. I have always felt the need to be perfect. It has nothing to do with the outside world…
Read MoreSuikoden might not have quite the same profile as Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, but this is a beloved cult JRPG franchise, stretching back to the original PlayStation. And I really do mean beloved. Many who have played it list Suikoden 2, in particular, list it as one of the…
Read MoreI guess, given the success of Azur Lane, Girls und Panzer, KanColle and whatever else, it would be inevitable that at some point someone saw warplanes and thought “yeah, you sexy thing, what if you were an anime girl?” And so we have Kamikaze Lassplanes, a visual novel/SHMUP combination by…
Read MoreThe games we play when we’re young absolutely do shape our appreciation of gaming when we’re older. If you had asked me when I was about 14 what the best game in the world was, the answer would have been easy. Bubble Bobble, and obviously that’s still scientifically true, but…
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