Minoria is excellent, but it's also very limited. It's beautiful, the action is solid for the most part, and there are plenty of intriguing ideas running behind it. The game's problem is that it deserved a bigger vision than the modest execution, and while that is a much more preferable problem than the other way around (too much ambition for too little means), it still means that Minoria will be forgotten well before it deserves to be.
Going into this "standalone expansion," it was always going to be the case that it wasn't going to address the issues of Coteries of New York. There just wasn't enough time to rethink the approach to the game so quickly. Instead, it was always going to be an extension of everything that game did, both good and bad.
This "Re-Reckoning" doesn't do anything more than test the waters for a potential future for the franchise, but I do think it deserves one. It has been a real pleasure to have the opportunity to re-experience this game.
When you start really pulling at what Quantum Suicide offers, it works as a metanarrative discussion around all of these games, and as a result, the game offers layer after layer of some truly fascinating narrative and structure that I'm going to be thinking about for quite some time to come.
Coming to Captain Tsubasa as a fan of football, but knowing nothing of the anime and manga, I had no idea what to expect from this game, but I was more than impressed.
There's a good number of levels and the challenge is stiff enough that you'll be plugging at it for quite some time.
It's a major time commitment, sure, but Pathfinder: Kingmaker has the kind of narrative arc and development that perfectly captures the essence of playing a tabletop RPG, only in digital form.
For fans of the old Heroes of Might & Magic titles or Total War, Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars does a lot that is highly laudable; it offers a great concept, nails the aesthetics, and offers quality tactical and strategic action.
What reason is there to purchase Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Remastered Edition? That's really the problem here. There isn't one.
Pitched at a delightfully low price for what's on offer, Nexomon is, potentially, the start of an excellent franchise.
Buried Stars could have been a 5/5 game, easily. Unfortunately, the narrative thought behind the game really relied on me having a personal interest in the characters and their plight, and thanks to the inelegant and overly literal localisation, it became impossible to see them as anything but constructs and narrative tools.
Giraffe and Annika is the first outing for Atelier Mimina, and as a statement of intent, it shows us a developer that we should be paying attention to.
This new entry with Project Cars has given the series an identity crisis, and where the developers could have taken their existing learning and delivered the previous Project Cars vision to an all-new degree, instead we've got the team effectively starting from scratch again.
It relishes in being brazen to the point that it knows it's going to draw some eye rolls. It also knows that many of its fans will enjoy both the brazenness and the eye rolls from the puritans - it's edgy like that. But, really, it's great. It's an excellent blend of "kart" racer and jetski playground, and it is built with a level of precision and eye for detail that I think will surprise and impress many
An excellent simulation of an excellent sport.
The writing in Through the Darkest of Times is evocative, powerful and poignant. Too often it's undermined by the game also having systems that contain the same kind of resource juggling and time management that we see in anime dating sims.
I wish I could delve more deeply into the themes in this review, because there's a lot to talk about with this particular dark mystery and I'm looking forward to discussing it at greater length with people down the track, but just be aware going in that there are layers of nuance to this game that it will never get the credit it deserves for.
These are the good vintage fighting games, in other words, and you'll probably find yourself coming back to them more often than you'd think because they're just that playable and charming in their highly-refined and precise simplicity.
It's neither the perfect dungeon crawler nor the most stand-out visual novel, however, the blend of the two, coupled with the strong anime license leveraged with the greatest of competencies, still make this one a very solid time-filler.
This is a really enjoyable strategy game, and has so much room to grow that it's genuinely exciting. Adding additional factions and campaigns will add to the longevity of Fantasy General II, but even as it is right now, this is a near-perfect blend of tight, varied tactical action, gorgeous fantasy aesthetics and plenty of depth. It has been great to welcome a beloved classic back.