The heavy reliance on nostalgia does wear thin and lose its comedic appeal, and from there you're only left with a workable, but very limited, turn based combat system, and not much more.
In contrast to its beautifully elegant and minimalist cousin, Proteus, which I referred to at the start, Rememoried is hauntingly beautiful and has a far greater depth of emotional substance. But it is begging us, as players, a little to hard to embrace it and recognise its genius.
Drive on Moscow might just be the most niche title on the PlayStation 4. But the historical accuracy and the way that the game has taken one of the most important military campaigns through World War 2, and turned it into something so fascinating, makes it very, very worthwhile.
Megadimension Neptunia VIIR is an odd duck, being sold heavily on the VR features, even though they are so overtly tacked-on, but whatever the development story behind that, Compile Heart has gone back and substantially improved the gameplay engine, to the point that this is genuinely one of the better JRPGs out there.
Mutant Football League is a cheap and poorly executed arcade sports game.
Go into it in the right spirit, though, and with absolutely no words it tells one of the most powerful stories you'll find on the Switch.
While it's not a game that's going to turn too many heads or win awards, anyone who likes their really cerebral experiences will love spending hours trying to eke the most out of the favourite football team.
You may well find Gal*Gun 2 to be offensive and intolerable. But that's all the more reason to experience it and discuss it, and because it's backed by a really good light gun experience that is bigger and (on balance) better than its predecessor, this game is one of the most playable and interesting transgressive franchises the Japanese industry has ever produced.
Part of the reason that it is so replayable is that it's easy to tackle a different combat style and level-up path (they're different enough that you'll get a different experience in playing them). Part of the reason is that it's just a joy to wade into a horde of satyrs and get with the slaying, even when you've got the precise moment they'll attack burned into muscle memory.
I enjoyed the combat system enough that I was able to push past the nonsense. I finished it, which is more than I can say about a lot of other games that try to be funny and land on the wrong side of my funny bone. On that basis I've got to say that Regalia does work as a homage to the genre and something to play on a lazy weekend. Sadly, that's hardly an inspiring way to describe a game, and that is Regalia in a nutshell. Anything but inspiring.
Even if you don't care about the poor storytelling and juvenile understanding of the noir genre, Metropolis is still a supremely bland and uninteresting match-3 game; one that doesn't integrate the gameplay and narrative together in a particularly interesting way and yet somehow also wants people to play it four times to experience all the endings.
The only reason that you'd want to play this is to see your apartment slowly but steadily grow bigger, but aside from the momentary thrill of finally convincing a powerful type of monster to take up residency, this game shows all its trick and limited appeals within the first half hour of play. [Matt Sainsbury separately reviewed the Switch (2 stars) and 3DS (3 stars) versions. Their scores have been averaged.]
The Charming Empire does a great job of introducing players to the Taishō period; a period that we rarely learn much about in the west. As a period piece it does a decent enough job, but there are so many gorgeous visual novels out there now that the pedestrian presentation really hurts the romance and storytelling of it all.
It's a relaxing, joyful, clever and witty little game that really makes the most of its oddball concept. Most importantly of all, it's memorable. You're not going to forget your time with Detective Pikachu in a hurry, and those memories are going to be all very positive.
I love the art. I love the combat. I found the sharp challenge and simple, clean mechanics to all be very enjoyable. But I just couldn't get past how shallow it really was in the end, and how the game failed to live up to the tantalising promises made in its lede.
Go into this game with an open mind, and allow the game's pleasant charm, sweet characters and storytelling, and light, graceful approach to JRPG action to wash over you, and you may just find yourself as in love with the utterly refreshing and pure experience that Atelier Lydie & Suelle has to offer you.
It's by no means memorable, but WorldNeverland is enjoyable enough as a life sim. The grindy nature of the game's systems seem to be a consequence of its mobile roots, but if you play this as intended, for short bursts of a time, that grind won't wear you down. Do that, and you'll probably find yourself playing this on high rotation for longer than you might expect to on initial impressions.
Nippon Ichi has clearly dedicated the bulk of the development resources this time around to providing a cleaner and more comprehensible system to draw players in further and minimise frustration. On that level, The Witch and the Hundred Knight 2 is a success. I just wish the storytellers on the team were able to really cut loose and pull hard at the strings that, currently, they're only tugging lightly at.
Castle of Heart simply has nothing of substance to offer. It's a ridiculously difficult game without the reward.
We're two (main) games in now, and on the strength and consistency of these two I think it's safe to say that Ni No Kuni has every chance to become a major JRPG franchise that will last into the very long term.