Nick Mangiaracina's Reviews
Orangeblood feels like a great game mired by small technical issues and has a short road to being an easy recommendation. With the developers still working on and releasing updates for the game regularly, Orangeblood could be a great pick-up for the turn-based JRPG gamer that’s looking for something off the beaten path.
Whether or not you’ve partied with corpses before, Dead Patient gives you a good taste of what’s to come in this new entry of the Corpse Party overarching plot. Even as just a single episode, it’s quite good.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Once I found myself hitting my stride in Cozy Grove, it became a before-bed ritual.
Pikmin 3 Deluxe is not just a great entry to jump in on, but also try out if you’ve ever been curious about the franchise.
Masquerading as simply an adventure game set with Scandinavian folklore in mind, Röki offers so much more and I urge you to give it a shot if this type of game is your bag.
Atelier Ryza is the best place for new fans of the series to jump in and a relaxing entry for older fans. Not the easiest game to get a handle on but once it clicks, you won’t want to put it down.
A surprisingly fun and competent genre-bend from Pixpil that's a must play for fans of Eastward.
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.
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.
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.
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood broke me by the end, I was in tears, and I’d encourage you to let it break you too.