This take on classic turn-based RPGs struggles to give its fresh ideas room to breathe.
Dragon Quest Heroes 2 never finds it stride — but at least it has warfans
Spirit of Sanada breathes some new life into a series showing its age
The true misery of Valkyria Revolution is how much of the series' roots show through, and how much Revolution itself doesn't know what to do with them.
Rakuen's unique setting and sweet sensibilities make up for its technical shortcomings.
Hey! Pikmin did exactly what it needed to do, without extending itself any further. It gave me a series of interesting places, a series of clever puzzles, a series of cute vignettes and soft storybook scenery. The worst thing to say about Hey! Pikmin is, simultaneously, a recommendation — it's perfectly pleasant, well-rounded, and didn't leave me dying for more.
Yakuza Kiwami makes it clear just how far the series has come, and just how far it still has to go. It's keenly designed to bring newly minted Yakuza fans more firmly into the fold by providing all the contemporary comforts they might expect, while also giving longtime fans more to chew on than a shot-for-shot remake ever would have. It's a patchwork, for better and for worse, and as much as I enjoyed my time with it, there's no denying that some of those patches are looking more tired than others.
A lot of different things can happen in Divinity: Original Sin 2; it's an RPG that is overwhelmingly about planning ahead yet still being completely taken by surprise.
Don't let Fire Emblem Warriors get lost among the many Switch releases
If you had asked me just two weeks ago to name the biggest storytelling sin a game could commit, I would have told you it was making players ask questions without giving them a reason to care about the answers. Ask me today and I'll tell you something different. Lost Sphear buried me under convoluted logic and explanations, lore and jargon, only to cast it aside with a shrug whenever the details were inconvenient to the action. It answered my questions, but in ways so fundamentally disconnected and absurd that I regretted even caring in the first place.