Backed up by modern technology, Lost Sphear offers a thoroughly engaging take on the classic RPG formula.
For all the things it does right, The Alliance Alive generally feels like a game that wasn’t quite ready to get pulled out of the oven, but was released anyway.
The repetitive gameplay cycle, taken to its extreme by asking the player to clear the game a total of five times before the true ending is even unlocked, won’t win everybody over.
Smoke and Sacrifice is certainly different from any other game I’ve ever played, but whether this worked out in its favor is questionable.
Instead of cashing in on its unique premise, the game’s one-note execution, paper-thin story, and frustrating difficulty drive its fun quotient into the red.
Sure, it’s not the first game to eschew fantasy and science fiction trappings or feature a historically-accurate setting, but not many have yet done so to such a satisfying end result, not to mention going the open-world route and still succeeding, for the most part, brilliantly.
With a great cast of characters expertly brought to life, a gorgeous visual style, and a seemingly never-ending supply of varied story beats to experience, it is easily worth any JRPGamer’s time, and sets the new watermark for the series moving forward.
Cosmic Star Heroine is far more than a simple send-up of some of the genre’s most beloved classics.
If Kadokawa Games was hoping to kindle interest in future Metal Max titles in western audiences, Metal Max Xeno is not the game to get that particular job done.
Labyrinth of Refrain will not disappoint those looking for a thorough first-person dungeon grind.
The game may not manage to surpass what has come before, but, if nothing else, it does manage to hold its own and provide series fans with another fun chapter in the series.
The grindy battle system with little enemy and environmental variety is also nothing to write home about. Cthulhu Tactics sounds like an intriguing mix of its two titular elements, but fails to deliver on the promise of either.
But the game, though having a clean and perfectly adequate presentation, doesn’t do very much to put its best foot forward to wow the player presentation-wise, and the finger-numbing clicky gameplay might be just a bit too underwhelming for some to ride this train all the way to its final stop.
At times spooky, at times brutal or corny, on the whole this rabbit hole is one that casual and hardcore fans alike should feel comfortable diving into.
There’s just an overall lack of polish to the combat system, storytelling, and flow of gameplay that belies any goodwill I might have carried into this experience.
To the average gamer, the game’s repetitive nature in the face of its overall lack of multiplayer alternatives will spell anathema.
Fell Seal is a game that is easy to recommend simply because it does everything well.
Although its story isn’t always flawlessly compelling, it manages to be an overall fairly enjoyable experience that doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Originally conceived as DLC for the game’s Switch port, the franchise’s catalog of celebrated musical compositions and Nintendo’s unusual interest in lending its crown jewel to an indie developer quickly turned Cadence of Hyrule into a standalone entry that somehow manages to combine the best of both worlds.
The game is a triumph in world-building and character-driven storytelling, and its combat system is versatile enough to support it through its mammoth eighty-plus-hour runtime.