I hadn't played the analogue board game of Root before this digital adaptation, but I'm going to buy a copy for the Christmas party circuit now. While it's not too complex, there's plenty of depth to Root's systems, and the careful balancing between them, despite their very different play styles and objectives, makes for a strategically chaotic, but massively entertaining experience. This is a masterful bit of game design, recreated with love for the play anywhere Nintendo Switch experience.
These gripes aside – and I realise that I’ve griped a lot in this review – Pokémon Pearl remains an excellent game, and the remake is of a very high quality. I’ve been able to reunite with Piplup, relive a very fondly-remembered adventure, and while there have been some tweaks that I’ve been less than amused by, on balance the developers have retained the qualities that made that game such a fondly remembered one.
Football Manager 2022 Touch is a wholly inadequate release, given it costs the same amount as last year's edition while also being last year's edition... and yet I won't be able to drag myself away from it for many months ahead.
After so many great and forward-thinking RPGs and JRPGs in the past few months, it has been genuinely nice to play something that gets back to the basics, as Mercenaries Rebirth does. Don’t go in expecting a great game, because it isn’t that, and if it’s like the previous four, you’re going to largely forget about it altogether by the time the hypothetical Mercenaries VI rolls around in a year. But I do firmly believe there’s a place for these kinds of games, as they're a low pressure, undemanding and brightly entertaining celebration of a genre that we all love.
SMT V is perhaps a little too smart for its own good, and might alienate some people in the process, but it’s also refreshing to have developers create something that actually dares to have that level of confidence in their audience. This is a game that makes few concessions and compromises, but it is rewarding in kind and has a kind of elevated gravitas that marks it out as a rare and special thing indeed.
There will be essays written on Disco Elysium. This is one of those games that will be studied in universities as Citizen Kane is studied in film and D. H. Lawrence's work is all-but unavoidable if you study literature. It's not necessarily the most outright entertaining thing the medium has ever produced, but it's an important work that explores the boundaries and potential of video games, while also having the nuance and layers it needs to challenge players to think beyond the joy they get from pressing buttons. Even if you have to play the Switch port, as inferior as it is, you should make sure that you play Disco Elysium on something.
That aside, Asmodee continues to demonstrate why it is the best digital board game developer going around. Gloomhaven itself is a little insular compared to the likes of Game of Thrones, Arkham Horror, Ticket to Ride, Pathfinder and Lord of the Rings, so I suspect it will appeal to a narrower band of players than some of Asmodee's other adaptations, but the faithful quality of that adaptation and the stellar production values make it an easy sell to existing Gloomhaven fans, and the ideal way to those that were intimidated by the size (and cost) of the box when they've seen it in their local game store to give it a go in the first place.
There’s not much else I can say about Blue Reflection: Second Light. I often say that the original Blue Reflection is the most beautiful game. I say that because while it obviously didn’t compare to the AAA-blockbusters in terms of the money that has been thrown at it, the art direction was so pitch-perfect and downright beautiful that the technical limitations were irrelevant. Second Light clearly had a bigger budget and made the most of that to present a more refined and confident take on the Blue Reflection vision. The story is a vibrant, the JRPG action is classical and engaging, and the aesthetics are pristine. Getting something this wholesome and pure is a rare treat in an industry obsessed with hard and serious storytelling and adult themes, and I strongly suspect that, just like the original Blue Reflection, I’m not going to be able to get Second Light out of my mind for years to come.
So, while Voice of Cards could be refined as a game, the vision is impeccable, and while the game's not as outrageous or subversive as NieR and its sequel, it still represents Yoko Taro's unique qualities as a game designer and narrative writer: he is forever experimenting and pushing boundaries. Voice of Cards is almost subtle in this, but the way that it aims to work collaboratively with players to share a story, rather than tell it, is a delightful departure from the norm for the JRPG. I don't think anyone expected him to follow up NieR with a "card game," but Yoko Taro has hit onto something very special here.
As interesting and tactical as that combat system is, I couldn't get past the fact that Disciples: Liberation was asking 80 (or more) hours of a person's time with so little payoff. I just found the whole thing too relentlessly miserable to connect with. It's possible to create a dark setting and still have moments of warmth, beauty and joy. Tolkien understood that. Perhaps those that have been inspired by him should be more diligent students.
I haven’t played a visual novel that goes about its thing with quite so much glee in quite a long time. Comedy’s always hard to get right, especially when there’s an underlying subversive quality to it, but Cupid Parasite never falters. It tells a great story in there among the humour and backs it up with an impeccable style and verve. This is one of Otomate’s finest.
There's no doubt that Mario Party Superstars was a hasty project, pulled together to capitalise on the party season and keep the run-rate ticking over for Nintendo with a new release. It's hard not to look at a selection of boards that accounts for just a quarter of what was present in the first three Mario Party titles and not think that this is less a "superstars" package but rather a rather cynical sampler. Still, what is there is excellent quality, and if you've got Christmas parties and family events on the horizon then you will likely get a lot of value out of this game. Just don't spill beer on your controller. They don't make 'em as tough as they were back on the N64.
Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water is so deeply Japanese that you’ll come away from it learning a bit about the wonderful horror storytelling tradition that the culture has. While some might find themselves at odds with a game that is so steadfastly traditional about how a horror game should play (especially on the back of the very modern Resident Evil: Village this year), if you go in with an open mind, understanding the cultural context that has lead to the game turning out this way, then you’re going to find it to be a really remarkable and enlightening bit of art. It’s not unlike going to an art gallery for a yurei exhibition, really.
The Nintendo Switch has been blessed with a number of good single-player card games at this point. Whether it's Shadowverse, Lord of the Rings, or The Witcher spinoff, Thronebreaker, players have plenty of deep, rich, highly strategic card games to choose between. Cards of the Dead, meanwhile, is about as engaging as Solitaire. Sure, I've played a game or two of Solitaire in my time when I'm that utterly bored, but that was when I was on a work computer and relying on pre-installed games, or on a boat with nothing but a pack of cards. If you've got Cards of the Dead on your Switch, you've also got a thousand alternatives for single-player games, and most of them are more worthwhile than this.
Dungeon Encounters is deceptive engaging. What seems at first to be a no-frills dungeon crawler, sliced back to its very minimum eventually reveals itself to be quite the clever little project. It provides the very basic foundation needed for a JRPG, and then gets out of the way, letting the player write their own story and fill in the metaphoric (and literal) blanks in their own way. That makes it an oddly cathartic experience.
Working with a clearly limited budget, Tamsoft has focused on delivering a tight action-combat system, while also relying on the fan service of both Senran Kagura and Hyperdimension Neptunia to see it through. It’s a good couple of hours of genuine fun, with the requisite bath scenes, humour and familiar characters to meet and fight. You can’t help but think that both properties could have grown to become more than this, but taking as it is, it’s still entertaining nonsense, with a heavy emphasis on the “entertaining”. I play enough serious games that require deep analysis, this kind of thing is my ideal break time between them.
In flicking back through my notes on House of Ashes, I find that I have been more negative on it in this review than I remember feeling from my time playing it. It is a highly enjoyable experience and hard to put down. It might not be as spooky as I’d like from a horror game, and it might not play the way I think it should given the type of horror the developers were aiming for, but ultimately, holding the lives of a bunch of delinquent characters in my hands and deliberately letting them fall to their proverbial (or perhaps literal) deaths will never fail to be a (ghoulishly) good time.
When we think about this Halloween season and all the horror games that celebrate it, we rarely think about a dungeon crawler. After all, the 'crawler doesn't feature visceral action or jump scares. It's all too turn-based for that. But, of course, horror can be much more than jump scares and visceral action, and Undernauts demonstrates that beautifully. Strong atmosphere, challenging combat and Experience Inc.'s mastery of the genre combine to create something that is nearly impossible to put down.
I don't have much else to say about Lyrica that I didn't in my review of the first game. The differences between the two of them are so slight, besides the obviously different tracklists, that they are two sides of the same coin. In fact, the physical edition is a bundle of the two of them together, and that only reinforces that perception that Lyrica and its sequel are, really, one product split artificially into two. Given that this particular coin is made out of solid gold, though, I'm not complaining.
There is no doubt that The Caligula Effect 2 is a niche within a niche, and the fact that the second game so closely follows the first just confirms that the developers are comfortable with that. While it might not click with everyone, it's worth trying, because if you do like your games a bit thoughtful and arty, then this is going to be one of the highlights of the year.