Come for the beautiful dioramas, stay for the fun and challenging boss fights. Fantasian Neo Dimension is definitely a game I was left hoping for a bit more out of its story and characters, and it's not without some frustrations and less-than-stellar design choices here and there, but when things click the game makes for some of the most fun I've had playing a JRPG in years. It's a tough game that requires you to pay attention and be willing to change up your game plan if it doesn't work, and it can feel like trial and error in spots, but it's immensely satisfying to progress through and conquer its greatest challenges. While Fantasian Neo Dimension is an experience rooted in nostalgia to some extent, it does more than enough on its own to stand out in a crowded pool of retro-inspired JRPGs coming out these days.
The Mario & Luigi series began to grow stale over time, so I’m happy to say that Mario & Luigi: Brothership is a welcome refresher in several gameplay areas. When it’s fun, it’s very fun, and there are a lot of neat ideas and sections that make this game get generally better as you get more into it. The Plugs and some of the overworld abilities make those sections some of the most fun I’ve seen from the M&L series to date. It also made the leap from handheld to console quite well, with some really nice aesthetics and animations to its visual components. In some ways, Brothership feels like two steps forward and one step back for the series. While not quite the worst game in the series pacing-wise, Brothership still has its share of slow sections that drag on a fair bit more than I would have liked. This ultimately holds it back from being as tight and consistently great as it could have been. I also appreciate that the game’s attempts with its story are a touch more earnest rather than just being fully comedic, and the game still has its charm, but I found its narrative a touch too basic and lacking in interesting developments despite the amount of its runtime taken up by cutscenes. Ultimately though, there’s a lot to like with Brothership. If you want a generally upbeat and at times wacky RPG with a neat and skill-rewarding combat system and don’t mind something a bit simple on the story, it’s a pretty fun game.
Astro Bot is a game with an incredible amount of love put into it. It’s not quite at the level of a game that makes a PlayStation 5 worth owning all by itself, and it’s not especially long, but it’s the kind of game that any console would gladly feature in its library as a key title. It’s a game with a fair amount of nostalgia behind it, both in terms of its wide array of cameos and it being a collectathon, but it stands on its own as a triumphant adventure of fun and charm in its own right. My playthrough had me smiling at so many points and served as a great reminder of all the hours of joy that I’ve had with PlayStation games over the years.
Given how long the series has been going, I had higher hopes for SINce Memories: Off the Starry Sky than I felt was able to deliver on for the series’s English-language debut. It hits a few of the right notes but doesn’t quite put them together enough to truly strike a chord. It’s well-presented, but presentation alone doesn’t carry it, and the script errors don’t do it any favors either. The cast of characters have their moments, but they’re scattered between lengthy sections of ultimately both predictable and often forgettable story routes that at times feel like inorganic drama was put in for the sake of it. The end result is a fairly cookie-cutter and by-the-books romance visual novel that doesn’t truly shine in any particular area.
NanoApostle is the epitome of a “pretty good” game. Combat is fun, presentation is well handled, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome. This is one of those games where it does almost everything it sets out to do well but doesn’t quite reach particularly highs at any point either. It sticks to doing what works but rarely gets aggressive with its ambition or does something to truly go off the rails, falling into few pitfalls but also not being as creative as I would hope for a boss rush game. Nonetheless, I had a fun time playing it from start to finish and can definitely give it a recommendation for people interested in a short but relatively dense little action game.
If you’re a fan of the Mana series, I’m confident that you will most likely enjoy Visions of Mana quite a lot. There’s a lot here that feels in line with what the series has to offer, while offering some absolutely gorgeous locales accompanied by a great soundtrack. If you’re like me and you’ve wanted more out of the Mana series in the past, I don’t quite think this game elevates the bar all too much. Still, it’s a gorgeous game that’s still decently fun enough to play much of the time. While I would have liked to see it do more with its potential in terms of combat and story, I still found it a satisfactory adventure. If you’ve never played a game in the Mana series and you want to get into it, this is a fine place to start.
Everlasting Flowers - Where there is a will, there is a way is a tepid story with high-quality presentation. It has its moments here and there of solid storytelling and some relatable character moments, but there’s not much to take away from it either. The visual novel medium is one of the more stagnant in the greater landscape of gaming and I appreciate Sprite’s attempts to make a shorter and more cinematic story that breaks somewhat from the typical mold of presentation but it ultimately doesn’t quite have the substance to match its style.
Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch wasn’t entirely what I expected going into it, but I came away satisfied. While it takes a while to hit its stride and has some odd parts here and there that don’t always click, I think it does a good job of handling several of its core themes and delivering emotional payoff. What matters most to me in a story is if there is something that I was able to get attached to and resonate with, and I absolutely found that here. The story is largely well-paced with a cast of characters I grew to care about, and it features several scenes I found to be surprisingly emotionally gripping. It might not be the most original story, but what it lacks in novelty, it largely makes up for how well-executed much of it is once the ball gets rolling. If a small-town story with personal struggle and bits of magic, fantasy, folklore, romance, growing up, and occasional silliness sounds like something you might even at all enjoy, I can definitely recommend this tale.
Hana's Campus Life feels like a visual novel that wants to reach the highs of some of the medium’s greats but doesn’t really have the space to do so. It’s far too short to do everything it wants to, leading to a story that is dense with events but lacking in emotionally resonant scenes or characters to earn any satisfaction from reading it. While it doesn’t have extremely low lows, there’s a lack of striking moments, and even some of the parts I did like have an asterisk attached. The experience of trying to get all the endings was bogged down by some programming issues and requiring certain choices that sometimes didn’t make all that much sense.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak made for a rather enjoyable playthrough that was hard carried by its main party and how fun combat was. I also like that it trims some of the fat that had begun building with the bloated previous arc. This is one of the best put-together Trails games in a long time, complete with some solid cutscene choreography and a near-seamless feeling of play in between combat and cutscenes.
I’ve long considered Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door to be a benchmark title for how to do a sequel well. TTYD built on a lot of the ideas that the first Paper Mario established in new and creative ways while staying true to what made the first game work. So I am excited to say that Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on Switch lives up to the Gamecube’s TTYD in many ways, setting a benchmark of its own for how to make a very faithful remake while also playing up the game’s strengths. I’m hopeful that this game finds success alongside the Super Mario RPG remake and sends a message to Nintendo that there is still a place in the world of gaming for a true RPG experience starring the beloved plumber. If you own the original game, I would describe the two versions as generally comparable in overall quality. This remake adds even more personality and a few neat bonuses to an otherwise splendid game, but some performance issues hold it back from me giving it a perfect grade. If you want a more radically different remake, you won’t find it here, but what you will get is a lovingly made video game with many of the original version’s best attributes shining brighter than ever before. If you’ve never played The Thousand-Year Door in any form and you own a Switch, you owe it to yourself to play this gem of an RPG.
Aoi Tori tries to do a lot, but it doesn’t do much particularly well. Plot elements clash and leave the story feeling disjointed. Two of the four routes are just not good overall, and even the two better ones have significant pitfalls. It has a small cast of characters it focuses on, but outside of Mary I seldom found myself actually caring for or about most of them.
Touhou Mystia’s Izakaya is a rather low-maintenance game, yet surprisingly addicting at times. A strong presentation, lighthearted tone, and relaxing gameplay loop made it an enjoyable experience. It does drag just a bit in places, and I think Dichroic Purpilion could have implemented a few more tricky mechanics to deal with in order to spice things up, but I think what we ended up with was still solidly fun. What keeps Mystia’s Izakaya from reaching even higher heights isn’t so much in its mistakes, but rather that it doesn’t do a lot that truly goes above and beyond. I still liked a lot of what I ended up playing plenty though! This Nintendo Switch version of the game comes with all six packs of DLC, resulting in a large cast and a lot of additional content that is pretty seamlessly integrated into the game, giving you plenty of options during and after your main playthrough. While the game’s systems are limited in overall scope, there’s no shortage of things to do. It might not be to everyone’s tastes, but there’s still plenty of enjoyment to be had.
Berserk Boy is a generally fun little retro-style indie action-platformer. The game is especially rewarding to play quickly due to how well-made its lightning power is. Alas, it peaks somewhat early and has its cracks. Several ideas after the first few sets of levels don’t build much upon the game’s solid foundation, which felt more like a missed opportunity. The game is presented well but doesn’t do a lot to truly stand out among its retro-style indie action-platformer peers in either novelty or consistency. Still, the fun mechanics it does have coupled with its solid soundtrack and visuals enabled me to get past some of its weaker aspects and enjoy my playthrough plenty enough.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III is difficult to recommend for Trails newcomers, though there are in-game resources to help bridge that gap. If you liked Cold Steel I and II, then there’s a very solid chance you’ll enjoy III, though plenty of scenes or lines probably still go over your head if that’s all you’ve seen. With that said, Cold Steel III is incomplete by itself. Despite its excesses, its narrative builds slowly into something that isn’t fully resolved until the next game, and it has shortcomings of its own. I still find Cold Steel III to be the best game of the four narratively overall, but it’s also held back by significant pitfalls in combat. Nonetheless, I still got a decent amount of enjoyment out of the game thanks to the better aspects of the story and the core fundamentals of the Trails battle system. It’s a high-maintenance game to get the most out of, with rough edges, but I still found it enjoyable more often than not.
If the main continuous story is the primary reason you want to play The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV, then I’m afraid it doesn’t live up to its own hype. I get the sense Falcom bit off more than they could chew with this arc, dragging far too many plot threads into this already big game and not finishing many of them in a fulfilling way. Much of the story’s tension is manufactured by one incredibly frustrating plot device that did substantially more harm than good to the narrative. Despite this, I enjoyed this game a surprising amount for everything else it has to offer. Plenty of great scenes and character moments can be found outside of the main story. A lot of the bonding events and optional events in this game are genuinely, surprisingly good. While not my favorite game in the entire Trails series in terms of systems, it is still the Cold Steel title I most enjoyed in terms of gameplay sections. Several combat aspects were tweaked enough from III for me to feel like I was genuinely engaging with its systems. This game is noticeably imperfect and unlikely to be enjoyed by someone who isn’t already a fan of the series, but there’s enough to enjoy if you’re willing to spend the time to do so. The lows are among the lowest in the series, but the highs are high enough to salvage a decently enjoyable JRPG for me.
Tevi’s greatest strength is in how much fun the game is to play with its actual mechanics. At its best, it’s an absolute masterclass in 2D action game design. Combat and movement flow together seamlessly to produce a fun and acrobatic gameplay experience that stands with the best of ‘em, regardless of whether we’re talking 2D or 3D, indie or AAA. The developers and publisher poured a lot of love and care into Tevi’s design and production. Unfortunately, it’s bogged down by a weak narrative that felt like more was put into its style than making something of genuine substance, resulting in some jagged and stunted edges. The incompleteness of its latter half led me to feel at least a touch of regret over what could have been. Still, the areas in which Tevi makes good on its potential are more than worth your playtime if you’re looking for enjoyable action-heavy 2D games, Metroidvanias, or even bullet hells.