Nick Mangiaracina's Reviews
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood broke me by the end, I was in tears, and I’d encourage you to let it break you too.
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.
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.
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.
Games should exist and designers should always make games but Gordian Quest offers nothing new and does nothing exceptionally well.
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.
A surprisingly fun and competent genre-bend from Pixpil that's a must play for fans of Eastward.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.