Nick Mangiaracina's Reviews
Overall, I have to say I’m pretty disappointed with Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Party Dash. The game is quite good looking and has a lot of fanfare for fans of the Uma Musume series but provides an extremely hollow experience full of basic UX missteps and a complete lack of depth. Golshi’s Grand Adventure 2 isn’t enough to save this game and the price tag for what’s being provided is absolutely absurd.
While not my favorite Shin Megami Tensei game, I cannot recommend Shin Megami Tensei V enough. And with the Canon of Vengeance included, it’s a must for any RPG fan.
Cat Quest III offers a decent amount of gameplay for the price, a colorful, consistent, and fully realized art style, and a game that can be completed 100% with a friend.
Thank Goodness You’re Here! is an incredible experience in both humor and execution. This is what a game looks like when it’s firing on all cylinders, it’s a tour de force of art, music, platforming, and puzzle solving.
A thought-provoking experience that had me questioning the reality Karra was living in throughout most of the game, Nobody Wants to Die is a must for mystery, adventure, and noir fans.
Being free-to-play, it’d be hard for me to tell you not to give The First Descendant a try. Even after forty hours, I’m still looking forward to spending more time in Ingris and unlocking more Descendants.
Until Then isn’t the best narrative adventure game I’ve played but it’s definitely one I’ll remember for a long time. Don’t sleep on Until Then, it’s a worthwhile experience.
Still, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door’s remaster is an exceptional game, remaster, and tribute to a revered entry in a popular series. Sleeping on this entry, as an RPG fan, would be a big mistake.
As for Read Only Memories: Neurodiver, it’s a very tight, focused experience that’s a lot of fun and has a great style and flair for its setting, and I loved it. I just wish there was more to it.
While I can’t recommend Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer, the game is simply too novel a concept to not talk about and at the very least, deserves your attention. What you choose to do with this knowledge now is up to you.
Dread Delusion fills a specific niche that hasn’t been touched in decades. While I wouldn’t recommend this game to just anyone, Dread Delusion sets a high bar for adventure RPGs and utilizes its art style to perfectly capture the era of gaming it draws inspiration from.
Offering an incredibly fun story, lovely characters that will stick with you, a timeless art style, and a vast open world that will suck in hours of your time. Sand Land made its mark on my year and you should make room for it to make a mark on yours.
To say I’m surprised by how much I’ve been enjoying Hundred Heroes is an understatement. Truly, I cannot wait to not only finish this game. I’m also really hoping the passing of the great Yoshitaka Murayama doesn’t slow Rabbit & Bear Studios down because I would really love to see more RPGs in this vein.
A stunning visual feast for the eyes that managed to create a fun and challenging set of gameplay rules that carried me through to the end in a few days.
It wasn’t a gripping experience, I wasn’t enthralled playing Open Roads, but it succeeded in what it attempted narratively and gave me a pretty satisfying conclusion and truly, that’s all I could ask for. Open Roads may not be an exciting experience for all but it was for me and I’m pretty satisfied with it.
Hot off of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, I was hoping for something a little more narratively deep but even with the story’s simplicity, I really enjoyed my time. More importantly, there’s a new strategy RPG on the market, and one that’s approachable enough to bring in new fans to the genre to hopefully bolster it. Unicorn Overlord does so much right, I feel grateful for having experienced it.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden surprised me with its combat and gameplay but kept me interested throughout with its compelling narrative of love, loss, and sacrifice.
A surprisingly fun and competent genre-bend from Pixpil that's a must play for fans of Eastward.
With fun turn-based combat, enough strategy development and random elements outside of combat, and a decent primary objective, Dicefolk refines an existing genre to make something both unique and recognizable. Dicefolk isn’t just for genre fans, it’s a very enjoyable game all around, especially if you dig turn-based combat.
Games should exist and designers should always make games but Gordian Quest offers nothing new and does nothing exceptionally well.