Death Come True is, ultimately, a story of romanticism set against a pragmatic realism.
Having not played the original Brigandine, I don't know if this new one does justice to the legacy of the original. I do know that original is well-respected (and quite rare, therefore expensive), but I'm comfortable saying this: developer Matrix Software has done something special with Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia, and this effort deserves to have a legacy all of its own. The Switch is by no means short on great tactics experiences, but Brigandine might just be the best of all of them.
There's plenty of merit to Demon's Rise as the developers have delivered a game that is nicely balanced and blends a rich tapestry of gameplay elements together in a surprisingly nuanced manner. Purely on the basis of how this game is presented you just would not expect that going in. The total lack of effort in the writing kills it, though. How am I meant to enjoy a fantasy game if there is nothing to draw me into the fantasy?
It's got all the right ideas in there, but it's so timid in exploring any of them that it comes across as altogether too safe to be good horror. Reframing it as a creepy adventure game would have helped, but there too, there are the likes of Tokyo Dark that show just how far things can be pushed, and The Coma 2 would struggle in that framing too.
You buy either of these collections and you'll be coming back to them for years to come.
Building on Mimimi Games' success with Shadow Tactics, Desperados III is mature, confident gameplay design, and while it might not look like an AAA-blockbuster, it certainly has the level of refinement and quality that is a rare thing indeed. It could have been a little more in places, but it's a solid, intelligent depiction of a beloved part of America's narrative heritage and aesthetic, with some excellent and creative tactical puzzles to sort through along the way.
The lack of creative innovation from one Kairosoft title to another becomes exhausting if you play more than a few of them, and Magazine Mogul is an incredibly shallow experience. It's a pick-up-and-play delight, and it has an appealing theme, but where Game Dev Story is so well regarded because it established Kairosoft, Magazine Mogul is really starting to wear out the welcome. It's frustrating because all Kairosoft would need to do is throw caution to the wind and make just one serious simulation game with this set of production values and the company would completely reinvent itself for the better, I feel. The focus on unrelentingly casual experiences is nothing more than a game of rapidly diminishing returns for the company, and I just can't see even the most hardened Kairosoft fan caring about these new releases any longer.
Persona 4 Golden is genuine, bona fide work of art, and one of those games that show the potential for the video game format to offer more than cheap thrills. It's one of those games that you get the feeling will be remembered as a masterpiece well into the future too. With most AAA blockbusters falling out of the public discourse just a few months after release because they offer nothing but passive entertainment, it's games like Persona 4 that we continue to discuss. Even in comparison to its own sequel, it seems to have the combination of characters, narrative, and ideas that help it to continue to be worthy of thought. We'll still be talking about Persona 4 fifty years from now, and hopefully, it remains as accessible as this new PC release has allowed it to become.
It makes me wonder why we’re even bothering with a “next generation” at all.
Shantae and the Seven Sirens is a delight.
Warborn has its own merits. It's a sharper and more dynamic tactics strategy game, and what initially seems like limitations with a small number of units and game modes proves to be this game's great strength by allowing it to deliver the kind of balance that even the best tactics games struggle with.
The action is great - it's shallow, but that's not a criticism when it's this smooth and enjoyable - but I just can't get past the lack of context.
Pinball Lockdown costs pennies, and you get five tables for a price lower than a single Pinball FX3 table, but you also get what you pay for.
One of the issues that people have with some of the more recent Mario RPG titles is that they've become gimmicky and rather shallow as a consequence. Bug Fables is nowhere near as refined as Nintendo's efforts, but they also represent a back-to-basics approach to the mechanics and structure of these games. For many people that will be appealing, and Bug Fables is indeed an appealing effort by a small team. It would be great to see the team come back with something a little more refined with a second outing.
That is your "reward" for "playing" the perfect game, and if you don't find some deep philosophical implications in that - enough to make you miserable to the point that you just give up completely - then you're not thinking hard enough. On the plus side, that's the point where you'll realise you'll never play the cruelty that is Snakes & Ladders again.
Putting aside the presence of Ludo - which will forever be the worst board game ever made - 51 Worldwide Games is a pristine package of some of the most valuable cultural properties we have, and it is truly masterful at explaining even the most complex of them to a completely new audience. This is a rare opportunity to learn something about artefacts as wide-ranging as Chess, Mahjong, Hanafuda, and Mancala. That's not something you should miss out on.
I'm actually disappointed that I didn't like Golf With Your Friends more. I enjoy party games, I enjoy minigolf, and I do think that the fundamentals of good minigolf are in there. However, it's worth remembering that right back at the start with the Nintendo Switch Zen Studios released Infinite Minigolf - a minigolf game with character avatars, personality AND the ability to create and share courses, giving it much greater value as a single-player experience. It doesn't have the ability to provide the kind of wildly entertaining large party experience of Golf With Your Friends, though, so I guess the question then becomes which of the two scenarios will more likely describe how you're playing games most of the time?
It's a little disappointing that the developers didn't take this opportunity to tackle some of the superfluous stuff that is at odds with the better elements, and I've yet to be won over by the new narrative arc and whether it does anything to actually build on what was already a perfectly dense work. However, the core of the game is that powerful that the main reason to buy into this - that visual re-working - is more than enough to be worthwhile in itself.
With the release of Prelude to the Fallen, the core part of the franchise is now all fully (and formally) available in English, and that's a wonderful thing. I do hope that there's more to come in the future, as the unique aesthetics, thematic background, and design elements of the series make it both interesting and evocative, and after playing these games, they do kind of stick with you as something beautiful and memorable.
This game is a creatively broken, anti-intellectual insult.