Lost Judgment is a great game plagued by lots of little mistakes that sadly are too much to ignore. While it’s not as strong as the first installment, it’s worth playing to see how Yagami’s story comes to an end.
While it was a noble effort to port the game to consoles, the transition is rough around the edges and makes for an uncomfortable playing experience.
While I appreciate Too Kyo Games’ experimenting with gameplay in a visual novel, the execution leaves a lot to be desired, and it drags down an otherwise interesting premise.
Despite not everything going off without a hitch, and some systems sure to appeal more to certain kinds of gamers, Chicory’s emotional core is so strong, so impactful that it eclipses all other shortcomings and just leaves the player with an overwhelming feeling of pathos.
Despite some interesting ideas, Biomutant commits the cardinal sin of media — it’s boring, and that ultimately seals its fate. The game has a gorgeous world and adorable character designs, yet it’s soulless and falls far short of its ambitions.
Emily is Away <3 is a great addition to this series and its fusing of nostalgia and teen angst is both masterful and emotionally exhausting.
There is absolutely good game hidden within it and damn does it have a lot of heart, but at this time the game misses it’s mark on the technical side, which makes it tough to fully recommend.
Pioneers of Olive Town is a good game, but it is hard to recommend when Stardew Valley continues to dominate the farming sim genre.
Reinventing a series can be a difficult task, one which the first installment did with great success. However, Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy is a great example of fixing something that was never broken to begin with.
Ikenfell is a difficult game to adjudicate on. In terms of its storytelling and visual presentation, it is an enriching experience that always had me eager to know what was going to happen next. From a gameplay standpoint, it’s a dull slog that just feels like it needed more of a punch and a lot less padding.
This story is beautiful, thoughtful, and even uncomfortable at times, and the two endings are very different but equally important. A Summer’s End is easily one of the best visual novels I have played in a long time and its story is going to follow me easily for the rest of my life.
Overall, I loved my time with Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and while there are imperfections in the game, they are equally a part of its charm.
Best Friend Forever has fantastic humour and charm in its writing and presentation without a doubt. Honestly, my main bulk of fun came from the dog-training simulator because I needed Titan the Maltese to be the best of the best. I found the dating sim elements lacking, and while I do think that they belong in the game, fleshing them out more would have created a home-run.
Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town is such a calming experience from it’s very sweet and earthy tunes to its simple routine.
The problem with Pong Quest on a whole is that for a crossover, it doesn’t lean heavily enough into RPGs to be interesting for RPGamers, and by the other side of it, you can only play so much Pong before it gets stale.
Wide Ocean Big Jacket is for those who love curling up with a good book, or love seeing sweet summer romances blossom. It’s a funny, light-hearted experience that will take very little of your time and offer something that is sweet and reminiscent of summer.
Ryza herself may be among the best heroines in the Atelier series. She is chock full of determination and humour; she is sensitive and has empathy, offering players a heroine who is multifaceted in a way that the previous entries lacked.
It’s fantastic to have a couch co-op game that takes all of the classic elements of beat-’em-ups and gives them an upgrade that feels modern and fresh.
What Nelke presents is an embarrassing attempt to shoehorn battle sections in that bore the player to tears.
While Odyssey is not the perfect package, it offers so much to newcomers and veterans of the series and was the reboot Origins should have been.