I wasn't really feeling the romance elements in Charade Maniacs, though that may have been because I was trying to figure out the meta-story anyway. It's a solid read that I'll probably rip through again in a few months when they actually SLOW DOWN with these games.
The two localizers of Otomate adventures are teaming up to test my speed-reading skills this month; another Aksys one (that mixes in rhythm game elements?) will be out by the time this review is live and Idea Factory International is dropping one at the end of the month. Maybe that's why Winter's Wish didn't exactly break the strings of my heart.
Between Pokemon Scarlet / Violet and this, I really hope I don't have any games in the future that could be great but that I have to start docking for egregious issues. A bad ending to a story isn't as bad as game-spanning tech issues, but the end result ends up being the same; a game worth recommending, but with some major caveats. Especially when the story is 95% of the reason to play the game.
It was interesting to read through Episodio 1926 to see what happened to the characters and how they would deal with the fascist threat that was only growing in Italy. The text issues (especially in necessary scenes for best endings) were a bit annoying, and if you're not going for 100% completion it's possible to run the story through as a long weekend read.
I can see why Amnesia: Memories ended up as a breakout hit for the developer, even if I had to bite my tongue for most of an evening working my way through a route. It contained a lot more of the little quality of life items I took for granted in their later works, and if you're curious about romance games, this is a fine starting point.
When you're going back-to-back-to-back with one genre of game, they can start to run together. I'm glad Dairoku: Agents of Sakuratani avoided the urge to lock portions of the game behind completion, and hope this happens more in the future-though hopefully the next romance game I play will have a little more sunlight in it.
And honestly, what Runner has done now is made me look forward to the Switch port of Runner 2 coming next year, because I prefer its art style and it has checkpoints. Even if they are optional. Runner's still my favorite of the original BIT.TRIP series but if you pick up Runner you get a big discount on the other ones so it may be better to explore those instead.
As the year of romance concludes for Aksys and Otomate, it goes out on another solid effort. Café Enchanté doesn't break a lot of new ground in its genre, but it's a well-told romantic story and would be a great way to wile away an upcoming long weekend.
I've usually been able to play through otome games around holidays, and the batch this year have been great ways to lose entire days. If you're ultra-paranoid about typos Piofiore is an offer you'll have to refuse - but if you can push past that, it will be an emotional roller coaster.
It won't take long to play through Flipon if you just want to say you beat a game in 2020, and the core gameplay is addictive enough that I'll probably keep the game on my Switch in the same way I kept Puzzle League Express on my 3DS. There's some technical troubles, and I'm still trying to get used to the chain timing, but someday I'll manage to clear that 200,000 point in five minutes wall Flipon threw at me.
A lot of the world-building in tabletop game universes comes from a DM, and the Draw Distance visual novels aim to create almost a one-on-one story. They've done well in the first couple of attempts this year, so if you're looking for an entry point into Vampire: The Masquerade, Shadows of New York is worth staking out.
There's a solid game in Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus, even if it's not an environment I don't want to spend any more time in. If you're in the mood for a little sci-fi strategy and are cool with a game featuring heavy doses of faux-religion, then be sure to enlist in the Mechanicus army.
If you're OK with dealing with text issues—or will speed through too fast to notice—then Collar X Malice is going to hook you. The themes may be disturbing to some, and the M rating the ESRB gave it is definitely deserved, but it left me thinking for a long time after I hit the title screen for the last time. Sometimes, that's just what I need.
Pillars of Eternity's reputation for quality is well deserved. It's definitely worth checking out, whether on other platforms or when the Switch version is fixed up. For now, the version on Nintendo's latest is an interesting curiosity with some pretty heavy issues. And it's not the first time I've seen that phrase used in relation to an Obsidian-developed game published by another company.
Superbeat XONiC is stepping into a growing genre on the Switch, but its musical variety and ability to play on the TV will help it stand out even if it did cause me to look up if the Wii U's Pro Controller can work on Switch. The included soundtrack in the physical copies is a steal on its own, but this is a solid game even if you're eShopping it.
I wish I would have gotten an opportunity to meet more of the Has-Been Heroes, like the anthropologist who became a luchador, and someday I will get there. Most roguelikes cause me to give up in frustration, but Has-Been Heroes is fun enough that I want to keep playing and someday have "teh urn".
It’s hard to deny that Gurumin has some technical problems, but there’s a lot of charm under the surface. It’s fun to rebuild the town piece by piece and see more of the map unlock as the prince’s evil mist dissipates. Here’s hoping we can drill into some more Falcom games on the 3DS soon.
My personal frustration with Clustertruck shouldn't take away from the game. Landfall and tinyBuild made a good game, even if there were times that I thought they'd owe me either a Switch or a TV. And I had plenty of occasions in which I nailed a tricky series of jumps or managed to overcome a tough level and felt amazing. The run eventually comes, and if you can tolerate not knowing when that is, Clustertruck could be for you.
) I don't think the backlog will ever let me see every suitor's ending in Jack Jeanne, but the ones I did reach were worth the extreme amounts of effort I had to put in. And it's nice that we have a proof of concept for "replicating physical performance in a rhythm game" like I asked for last month. Still, hopefully there's a nice long break before the next rhythm novel because I definitely need one.
With the focus on game preservation that we've seen in recent years, I never imagined that the Etrian Odyssey series would be preserved anywhere close to its original form. The fact that they thought it worth bringing to Switch is amazing, and though it didn't come over entirely clean, it's still worth bringing back Fight, Heal, and the rest of the crew for one more dungeon dive.