Striking an almost perfect balance between RPG and construction game, Dragon Quest: Builders manages to hold fast to the best parts of the series whose name it bears while creating a guided, structured format for the Minecraft concept. The end result works brilliantly, with top-notch visuals, music, and writing that help drive home the appeal. There's room for improvement here... but not much.
While Etrian Odyssey 5 may not be well-suited for genre novices or people who shy away from the combat side of RPGs, you'd be hard-pressed to find a stronger example of this particular slice of the genre. It offers enormous customization; fresh challenges both inside and out of combat; a setting rich with things to do besides simply fight; and best of all, that addictive mapping feature. Here's a game destined to appeal to the lizard brain of Type-A personalities, to people who love to line up details and see everything slowly take shape. With each line you draw on the in-game map, you bring a tiny bit more order to chaos and transform the unknown into the familiar. Etrian Odyssey 5 isn't simply the best game in its own franchise, it's easily the richest and most satisfying dungeon crawler to appear in the past decade.
Iconoclasts' combination of clever Metroid-inspired design and lush art offers more than enough incentive to stick with it, even when the ambitious plot doesn't always connect. This is a strange, complex game that – refreshingly – doesn't play quite like any other work in the genre. Iconoclasts offers a welcome reminder that they don't all have to play the same way.
With Chronology, Atlus has finally made good on the promise inherent in the original Historia. Then, the company threw in several hours of new material for good measure. The fact that Chronology's bonus additions divide out into one about story and one about combat reinforces the remake team's understanding of the game's underlying duality.
It's been a long time coming, and by and large Final Fantasy Type 0 is worth the wait. Despite some dated visuals and mechanics better suited for a last-generation portable system, and despite being greatly overshadowed by the Final Fantasy XV demo it ships with, Type 0 deserves the attention and respect of Final Fantasy fans. While last year's Bravely Default garnered praise for being a reprise of old-school Final Fantasy, Type 0 proves you can be progressive rather than regressive and still capture the series' spirit (whatever that means for you) quite neatly.
While not without its questionable qualities — expect to pay $120 to get something approaching an optimal play experience — Skylanders: Trap Team continues the series' tradition of catering to kids by treating them with respect. And the new trapping gimmick more than justifies itself through the flexibility it offers... not to mention the amusing and diverse role it gives the game's villains.
While it stumbles over its own ambition far more than it should, Ori and the Blind Forest bursts with both detail and passion. At times it's less a game you play than one you force your way through despite your better judgment, but the parts where it all works together make it worth the pain. And wow, does it look good.
The fundamental premise of NES Remix 2 remains sound, but the shift in focus to more complex source material crimps its style somewhat. Thankfully, the bonus modes go a long way toward restoring some of the shine to its star. It's not quite as essential a play as its predecessor, but it offers an amusing, self-referential distraction nevertheless.
Playing The Last Guardian reminds me a lot of playing Half-Life games: The actual moment-to-moment of working my way through the game involves an enormous amount of frustration and annoyance... but when I look back at it, all I see are the happy memories of the experience. That's due in large part to the incredible design of Trico, and also to the spectacular emotive ending. Make no mistake, though, you will want to tear your hair out throughout your journey with Trico... but patient players will find the payoff justifies the suffering.
Disney Infinity suffers from some very short-term flaws (that interface, ugh!) and long-term challenges (the price of the game adds up quickly). If you're willing to grapple with those issues, however, you'll find an excellent, expansive, and remarkably well-crafted action game brimming with variety. Dabbling in nearly every genre imaginable in addition to its baseline sandbox mode, Infinity 3.0 has appeal for players both young and old—that is, whether you grew up with Luke Skywalker or just cut your teeth on Anakin and Ahsoka.
The resulting creation is the best Skylanders game to date, and a strong competitor to all those upstarts. Even the new Skylander characters, who initially seem a bit over-designed, grow on you after a few hours of play. If you're going to invest a ridiculous amount of cash into games that link up with collectible figurines, you could do a lot worse than Superchargers.
Despite being built on the skeleton of previous Far Cry games — its map is literally an overlay of Far Cry 4's! — Primal manages to stand apart from other open-world sandbox action games through the sheer novelty of its primitive setting. Although the emphasis on bow hunting and woolly mammoths can give a bit of a Skyrim vibe, that quickly fades as you gain full mastery over the protagonist's ability to summon a variety of deadly beasts into combat. The writing fails to make its primitive heroes anything more than one-note lunks, but the primordial nature of the game world complements the action and ultimately makes up for the underwhelming story.
I love the fact that Gravity Rush exists. How rare is it these days to see a major publisher produce something so wholly original, so defiantly non-commercial? The game has its shortcomings, it's true, but they're the sort of things that sequels are made to iron out. While I'd prefer this remaster have taken a crack at shoring up the game's weaknesses, the technical improvements it brings more than justify its existence. If you've never played Gravity Rush, you need to play this remake... and if you have played it, this version offers an improved enough experience to justify a second visit to Hekseville.
Record Breaker improves on the original version of Devil Survivor 2 in every respect. Anyone who passed it over the first time around, in the dying days of the DS, absolutely needs to give it a look. Veteran players should give it a thought, too, despite its premium price — the new material is substantial, and you can jump immediately into the Triangulum chapter. In all, this is a hefty and well-crafted RPG, and it puts a great spin on the time-tested rules of MegaTen.
Even if you tend not to care much about Kirby games – understandably, given how toothless they can be – Triple Deluxe merits attention. Smart level design and a remarkable level of detail make this portable platformer one of Kirby's greatest adventures to date.
The latest of Nintendo's experiments to create games with appeal beyond the usual clichés of the medium, Tomodachi Life may actually be the most humanistic creation the company has ever put together. While it could (somewhat notoriously) stand to be more inclusive, its focus on the concrete personalities and tangible interactions of tiny digital people make it one of the most addictive and fascinating life sims ever made.
No, Yoshi's New Island may not be the game we fans of the original want, but it's definitely the game its creators set out to make. And a lot of fun, too. It's hard to be cynical about that.
A Link Between Worlds takes some much-needed strides to shake things up. But it does so within a pair of worlds most fans know maybe a little too well, and you know what they say about familiarity. This is a good first step in Nintendo's journey to revitalize Zelda, but the next leg of the trip needs to be considerably bolder.
With this game, a cult favorite comes into its own. Shantae has always been a passion project for WayForward, but this is the first time the series feels like it properly realizes the developer's ambition for it. A fun, funny, and pleasant substantial Metroid-alike boasting phenomenal old-school visuals and a refreshing sense of optimism, it's both an eShop standout and a great (though by no means final) conclusion to a slow-burning trilogy of games.
SEGA 3D Classics Collection a great effort in the annals of archiving game history, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum, and anyone who's already dropped $40-50 on the bulk of the games on this cart may not be so keen to spend another $30 on three titles of wildly varying quality. Still, Maze Walker may not be much fun, but it's never looked this nice. Of course, if you haven't already picked up these games individually, there's no question — this is a must-have compilation.