Nick Mangiaracina's Reviews
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.
Though not without issues, I think Silent Hope is a good game at its core and is hopefully a jumping off point for more games like this from Marvelous in the future.
Goodbye Volcano High tells the tale of eight high school students living out what's possibly the end of their existence and determining what is important to them as they face the end.
The pillars holding up Eternights; Narrative, Combat, and Characters, have lots of cracks and didn’t take long to start crumbling. As impressive as it is that this game was made with such a small team, I can’t recommend this game.
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood broke me by the end, I was in tears, and I’d encourage you to let it break you too.
LISA: Definitive Edition takes all the good and bad of the original game, improves on it, and makes it more accessible for a new generation of people to experience.
Darkest Dungeon 2 brilliant, stunning, and an absolute blast to play, an exceptional evolution from the first game.
Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key offers so much and is really the ultimate game in the Ryza series. It just wasn’t for me.
Tchia ended up becoming a frustrating and boring mess of a game.
There’s a fine balance struck in The Last Spell between Tactical RPG and roguelike. I think Ishtar Games did an excellent job adapting the genre to a roguelike. Initially hesitant at first, The Last Spell won me over with its fast paced battles, hero customization, and light town-management gameplay.
Interconnected stories between games are always going to be fun to me. Anyone who enjoyed Backbone will most assuredly love the world being explored in Tails. I hope they continue this trend because Eggnut has created a very interesting world to explore.
I can’t think of a game in the genre I’d recommend more right now than Fashion Police Squad.
Rollerdrome offers an incredibly rewarding experience that keeps you coming back for more.
Deck Nine manages to take Life is Strange’s classic signatures of indie music, small-town mysteries, and teenage angst and elevate it from the original creation. What could have been a bumbling soft-reboot of Life is Strange, Life is Strange: True Colors turned into the best game in the series so far.
If you’re willing to let your guard down, open up your heart, and accept Button City as it is, you will get a very wholesome experience with lots of laughs and some very charming art.
Minute of Islands is an incredibly stunning game with a timely narrative, minimal gameplay, and small platforming puzzles.
Very few games get as much right with their formula as Death’s Door does.