Nonetheless, RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 is a delight on Nintendo Switch. It's the ideal pick-up-and-play game for those commutes, it's also the kind of game that you can play while also doing something else, like watching a movie or TV show. And it's the kind of game that, if you want it to, can occupy hour upon hour of your time. The Nintendo Switch is steadily building up a library of excellent simulators, but even among them, RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 might be the most playable, blissfully entertaining of them all.
Hades is an end-to-end delight, from one of the most vividly creative studios going around. Supergiant Games has taken a genre that is overused to the point of exhaustion, and found a way to make it interesting all over again. It's a game that plays on the primal, viseral sensations of movement and rhythm, but it delivers it with such precision that it is nothing short of hypnotic.
Port Royale 4 is the sum of easy-to-understand systems, making it entirely accessible, but it's not necessarily easy, and that's an important distinction. You'll still be challenged by what seems to be an endless stream of competing demands on your time and resources, while lacking the resources to do anything about them.
Nevaeh is easy-playing stuff. It takes familiar, comfortable genre conventions and splices them together in a way that is imminently playable. With such a strong, compelling art style it would have been nice to see the developers push the artistry a little further, either to subvert or confirm the fairytale themes in a compelling way, but you're not going to regret your time playing this one. Not by a long shot.
I am disappointed that the history is such a light brush that it’s barely present and I walked out of Grand Conqueror Rome with little better understanding on where to begin learning about ancient Rome than I had going in, but for most people that won’t be an issue. What they will get is more than enough tactical strategy action to last them for many months to come.
Fight Crab is very much my kind of game as someone who considers a trip to a Salvador Dali exhibition to be a good time. I realise that I'm in a very limited niche in that regard, but this is a horn I've trumpeted more than a few times in the past: if we're going to be on board with this games as art routine, recognising that subversive experiences like Fight Crab have value is step #1.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with homages. Vampire’s Fall is a little on the nose with its love of Diablo at times, but there’s a lot of merit to Diablo, and a turn-based open world RPG with that aesthetic and tone is certainly worth paying attention to. It’s just unfortunate that the developers were unable to elevate this beyond being a shallow grind, with more misfired attempts at humour than a narrative that’s actually worth following. Vampire’s Fall is lengthy and content-rich, but it will be quickly forgotten.
Crystal H does what it sets out to so well - be an outrageously perverse work of extended sex humour - that if you can enjoy that, on those terms, you're not going to find something more amusing on a console, likely ever. There's something almost noble about that purity of vision.
What I can say, however, is that this game stands proudly with the likes of NieR Automata, Persona 4 and Danganronpa as something truly intelligent and meaningful. Without ever losing sight of its need to entertain players, 13 Sentinels intellectually engages with and challenges them, respecting their ability and willingness to engage with the game on that level.
All three of the games have historical worth, remain highly playable today, and are ported competently enough that they work. You're not going to suddenly find Bowser unbeatable because bugs have trashed what was once a great game. However, this is Nintendo's most valuable property and mascot, and it's amazing that the company didn't do more with this package than they have here.
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.