There's nothing unpleasant about Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story. It's easy to pick up and play for short bursts, and as a simulator, its simplicity makes for a nice change of pace. It's also charming and actually does offer an intriguing world and narrative. In just about every area, the game could also have been much more than it is, but everyone needs inoffensive time wasters too, and Valthirian Arc scratches that itch nicely.
Best of all, while none of these four tables are my favourites from Williams, the subtitle of the DLC is "Volume 1." There's clearly more to come. And, I mean, Williams is the manufacturer behind Tales of the Arabian Nights. The greatest pinball table ever made. Bring Volume 2 on!
There's reason for existing fans to play the game again, because it has an all-new chapter to work through, and there's certainly a reason for people who haven't previously played it to give it a go, because to this day, nothing else has quite managed to offer what The World Ends With You offers.
With all the lavish features of other SNK arcade ports to Nintendo Switch, Zupapa is one of the more distinctive and enjoyable that we've seen from this retro series for some time. It's one of SNK's lesser known classics, perhaps, but it's so bright, charming, and oddball that it's one you won't quickly forget.
It's good. It's really, really good. The combat alone demonstrates that while everyone who plays Yakuza games remembers everything but the combat, even that "forgotten" element in the formula, when brought to the fore, is still very deserving of a player's time.
It's hard to argue against the notion that Armello might just be the best Australian game ever produced. Highly refined, beautiful to play, deep and intelligent, it's as endlessly replayable as the very best board games, and deserves to be respected as such.
Sitting squarely on the "fun for the whole family," end of Nintendo's spectrum, Super Mario Party is a joy. It's colourful, cheerful, and good-spirited, and backs that up with excellent board and minigame design. After a few iterations that were too experimental for their own good, Mario Party is back in form, and that has made me really happy.
Disgaea 1 is the one least likely to overwhelm people who aren't deeply familiar with tactics JRPGs and complex JRPG systems. For this reason, this remaster is the perfect entry point for the curious, and anyone interested in the history and heritage of Nippon Ichi's premier franchise will get a kick out of it too.
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain has clearly been a success for Tin Man Games, and perhaps the neatest thing about it is that the modular nature of the game allows Tin Man Games to build on it from here.
Senran Kagura Reflexions has actually done a lot of damage to the series.
Nippon Ichi continues to be one of the more experimental developers within traditional JRPG genres. Disgaea has always offered a fundamentally different approach to tactics JRPGs, and the two Witch and the Hundred Knight titles did interesting things with the action JRPG. Being different means they're not for everyone, but Labyrinth of Refrain is perhaps the developer's most mature, nuanced, and interesting effort yet.
Still, the developer deserves props for doing something genuinely interesting in a staid genre. Shadows: Awakening is familiar enough, but it has some enjoyably unique mechanics that help to elevate it, and a world to explore that's genuinely captivating. It would be great to see the developer get a chance to do more with this franchise.
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It's quite impressive that SEGA has been able to take something so revered as Valkyria Chronicles, and do it justice with the fourth title in the series.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 is for people that enjoy a well-written fantasy story, and one that they feel like they have a role in making. The open-ended approach gives players a lot of agency in weaving their own stories, and this is backed up through the character development and combat systems, which at all times reward creativity, and punish those that are not really paying attention. Divinity: Original Sin 2 is very much a love letter to the RPGs of yesteryear, and it's a proof of how enjoyable those games can still be.
Hyakki Castle puts up a welcome challenge and offers players something rooted in a very authentic Japanese (Shinto) spirituality. It's an artifact of the country and comes from the same place that the likes of Okami, Nioh and God Wars does. It's truly amazing that the Nintendo Switch has had three of those four released on it in the span of just a couple of weeks.
That being said, Realpolitiks is a really delightful game to have for on-the-go play, on a console that I would never have guessed would end up with something like this on it.
Spider-Man was never not going to deliver on its promise, and as much as I enjoyed my time with it, I still hold out hope that at some point the industry will start to question whether empty, superficial fun really is the peak of what its biggest projects can offer.
Punch Line is a effective as a satire and parody. It's obviously only going to appeal to people that are that immersed in Japanese culture that their sense of hyperbole comes across as amusing and surreal, rather than just silly, but then this is very much an insider's parody of a type of anime that only the most dedicated (and therefore, likely aware) fans of anime in the first place. For that niche Punch Line is pitch-perfect.