Josh Tolentino's Reviews
Neptunia Sisters VS Sisters feels like a return to form for the Hyperdimension Neptunia franchise, though undermined by boring level design.
Front Mission 1st: Remake is a faithful and pretty recreation of a game that hasn't aged very gracefully. It's worth playing all the same.
River City Girls 2 expands on the solid foundations of the previous game to deliver a broad, rollicking feast of an brawler-RPG.
Fans of Utawarerumono should still consider giving the game a shot, as the strength of its story and characterization makes the trip worthwhile. Everyone else, though, would be better served by playing the previous games first before they take the plunge.
Rise up as Beyond the Grave, an undead super soldier bent on destroying the nefarious Raven Clan. Take your revenge by shooting your way through Southeast Asia's toughest crime dens. PS5 version reviewed.
Take to the stage with the Stratford-Upon-Avon High Drama Society to put on plays and cross dimensions saving the world of Shakespeare's canon from chaotic incursions.
All the same, despite iffy monetization choices and the general feeling that the game might not last long enough to become a permanent part of your rotation, Dragon Ball: The Breakers is a frantic and fast-paced interpretation of a genre otherwise saturated in horror movie tropes.
Explore the mean streets of Skopp City as Ann Flores, a lone-wolf combat specialist on a mission to find her missing brother. Sample the cyberpunk city life in 2D/3D exploration segments and fight off threats in an agile side-scrolling combat areas. Switch version reviewed.
Just as the “Yurukill” in the title Yurukill: The Calumniation Games is a portmanteau of the Japanese “Yurusu” (to pardon or forgive) and the English “Kill,” the game itself is a combo of two seemingly incompatible genres. It is a puzzle-solving adventure and a flashy scrolling shooter. The result works far better than one might think at first.
So it goes with Metal Max Xeno Reborn, where yesteryear’s vehicles of war and destruction are the future-present’s platforms of hope. One could also say the same for the game itself, salvaged over the course of years and redeveloped into something quite different — and much better – than before.
Trek to Yomi, however, is one game very well captured by its trailers. They ask the prospective player, “Do you want to journey through a beautifully realized action-game homage to the chambara samurai films of the 1950s and 60s?” And if your answer to that question after viewing one of the many trailers out now is “Yes” …well, there you go.
Despite quibbles, though, Relayer is a solid entry into the canon of mecha-based strategy titles. Kadokawa Games developed an original, endearing sci-fi RPG with a strong character focus. It may be held back by its rougher edges, but anyone with a love of sci-fi anime should give it a look.
Whether you do or don’t recognize these callbacks, though, Eastward feels like a game charting its own course. Rather than the bucolic paradises of Studio Ghibli movies or the sword-swinging fantasy fare of Dragon Quest, the dominant aesthetic of the game is a sort of cutesy calamity. The apocalypse it depicts through gorgeous pixel-art graphics is vibrant, warm, and almost hospitable.
I thought I had seen everything Axiom Verge 2 when I could jump to my maximum height while underwater, thus becoming able to reach all manner of places I couldn’t before. Then I learned to climb the walls, and the world expanded greatly. The game got even bigger when I gained the ability to turn my hand into a tiny spider drone, opening up still more possibilities. And then came the Breach.
Glitch Pitch's Idol Manager is an engrossing industry angle on the Japanese idol scene, but stumbles a bit in the spotlight.
Either of these two games, weighing in at several dozen hours each, would be worth the price of admission alone, but to see Saviors of Sapphire Wings and Stranger of Sword City Revisited packaged together raises the value proposition considerably.
Uppers may be a wish come true for some longtime Vita or Senran Kagura holdouts, but outside of that odd legacy, it can’t really compete with its contemporaries.
A Total War Saga: Troy plays it safe in some slightly disappointing ways, but brings enough new to the table that I would appreciate seeing its ideas make their way over to the next mainline Total War game.
Ultimately, remaking old games can be tough, but at a base level, the goal is pretty simple: To bring the best bits of an old game to life in a way that a new audience can appreciate. Trials of Mana accomplishes this goal handily.
Ultimately, though, what stings the most about seeing My Hero One's Justice 2 is how much hasn't changed since the first game. It's still very much a reasonably well-made and pretty anime arena fighter, but it's nothing more than that. Even the considerably messier One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows at least had the ambition to try to capture the source material's spirit through its main single-player mode. My Hero Academia fans looking for exactly that will be satisfied, but once again it seems Bandai Namco have opted to coast rather than adopt U.A.'s "Plus Ultra" philosophy.