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…
My 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…
There was a brief period of time where the tower defence genre…
Xenoblade Chronicles X was arguably the most ambitious game to land on…
Everybody’s family has their own black sheep – at least one person that just doesn’t fit in with the others. I’ve always felt like the black sheep of my own family, though sometimes I think it’s all in my head (I’m the shy, awkward, weird one). Regardless, playing Who Pressed…
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It’s worth remembering that we very nearly lost Rune Factory. The developer of the series, Neverland, went bankrupt, and 2012’s Rune Factory 4 on the 3DS seemed to be the end of it. Thankfully Marvelous stepped in, hired many of the original team to keep them together, and formed an…
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On the one hand, there’s a lot to admire about Ghostwire: Tokyo. There’s a clever concept in there, and the Noh theatre influences seem to run more deeply than just the masks that you see on the antagonists and the game’s key art. It goes without saying at this point…
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Picture the scene, if you will. Socrates approaches the Lyceum, deep in thought. His disciples gather around him, and he poses this question: What’s a Greek Urn? The answer is, of course, about five drachmas an hour, and that’s a very old joke. Probably not quite as old as Socrates…
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Conan Chop Chop wants to sit somewhere between Gauntlet and Hades. It wants to be an action roguelike with a moreish loot system, but also being orientated heavily towards bringing four friends together for some button-mashing chaos. Unfortunately, it’s much too inconsistent to reach the heights of either genre-defining great,…
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With its title, Triangle Strategy takes being “on the nose” to a whole other level. While that is a weakness because it is difficult not to roll the eyes at it on first impressions alone, the ideas and concept behind it are sound and make more sense the further you…
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Sometimes a game comes along and just wants to be a bright, happy bit of fan service, and to criticise it for that, and not being something that it’s not, seems a bit silly. As a bright and happy bit of fan service, Chocobo GP is wholesome, charming, cheerful and…
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Babylon’s Fall is a game that has been designed to be exclusively a “live service” multiplayer game. And so, to do something different with this review, Matt R (of Shindig and regular on DDNet fame) and I buddied up to cruise through a chunk of the game, and now, to…
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Hundred Days is one of those wish fulfilment simulators that I am so glad exists. I love vineyards. I love touring them, tasting their boutique wines, and then staying for an à la carte meal at the vineyard’s inevitably pretentious-but-tasty restaurant. The food is always perfectly matched to the wine,…
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I was a little hesitant to stream Duel Princess on the DDNet YouTube channel. The developer/publisher, qureate, is known for visual novels that have enough heavy fan service to get coverage of the games demonetised on YouTube. Nonetheless, the promise of fan service and Battle Cats-like light strategy was appealing…
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