DM: Japanese Drift Master does something a lot of indie developers do well, and that invokes nostalgia for the classic games, movies, and yes, manga that inspired it, but it also does something else, and that’s build a racing game that is strong in its own right. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the story, where it draws you in with a familiar plot but then hooks you with the characters and narrative that is right here and right now. The world of Guntama Prefecture is big, bold, and most importantly, beautiful, with every street becoming a new adventure you just raced the right tunes to give it style
I didn’t walk into Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 hoping to feel the way I did walking out. Hell, I had checked my expectations at the door the second they showed that new gameplay demo right after The Chinese Room took over. Here we are, though, with me trying to find the bright side, and I am struggling to do so. I think the absolute worst part is looking back and knowing what made Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines a special RPG ahead of its time.
It’s not like the intention was to come into Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree and hate it. These are the type of games I love, with Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade being one I praised earlier this year, despite the flaws that it had. Here, though, there are bafflingly bad choices that play pivotal roles in the game, and it is really hard to get past that. Combat, especially the constant switching between blades, creates massive pacing issues in fights, not to mention making the company frustrating rather than fun.
Wander Stars is a great piece of nostalgia that does what anything attempting to evoke those feelings should do. The experience feels like something I remember from years ago, using the art of Akira Toriyama and a vibe familiar to fans, and feeling like I grew up with it, to create an experience that doesn’t feel like it is just a rehash.
Frostpunk 2 is, for the most part, the same great experience that was released on PC last year. A city-building management sim based around the worst possible choices that, in a normal society, we might frown on, but in one where you are one day away from death, it might just be the best choice. Do you bury your dead or burn them for fuel? Do you train the children to be part of the workforce, or allow them to just be kids, even when your workforce is dwindling and the resources are too?
Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar lives up to its title; it’s absolutely the grandest game the series has ever produced and a perfect love song to everything great about the series, and that drew people into the franchise. At its heart, it’s fun, keeping a grind that can easily become repetitive without feeling bland or boring. The wind and the jumping offer the player so much versatility in how they traverse the town, with invisible walls feeling few and far between.
Herdling’s most lasting question, at least for me, is just what the meaning of your travels are. Since the game doesn’t give you answers, in fact, it features no dialogue, the open-endedness of it leaves a lot of room for interpretation. The journey starts off, and before you know it, you are attached to these Calicorns. Guiding them isn’t just a task you took on; it is a responsibility that you feel attached to through the clever use of subtle nods to individuality in a group of like creatures.
The King Is Watching is easy to pick up and start playing, with a short tutorial that is easy to understand to get you started. From there, though, you realize there is a depth of strategy that you will pick up each and every run as you start to manage every tile with efficiency under your watchful gaze. You will unlock and discover more tiles that diversify your playstyle and continue to offer you more to experience as you go toe to toe with more powerful enemies that seek to destroy your kingdom.
Wild Hearts S makes the mistake, I feel, of copying the Monster Hunter formula too closely. There are times where the loop overlaps so clearly that it might make somebody who is often on the beaten path, having just beaten Wilds, for instance to ask themselves, Why am I just not grinding gear in that. The level design here is great, with Karakura being encouraged due to the verticality of exploration, but it’s still a big open map with big monsters you are out there to hunt.
The Wandering Village has its issues, most games do, but even these issues I outlined never felt off-putting to me. There is an engaging experience here that you don’t get to see very often. Wandering the land on the back of your Onbu, feeling like you stepped into a Miyazaki classic.
Issues with the AI aside, I had a blast playing this game, and there was never a moment I felt the problems that could mire the experience weren’t outweighed by the whole unique experience I had engrossed myself in. Earning bizarre bike parts to mix and match my frame for the best performance, then winning that race I was struggling on
Walking away after beating My Friendly Neighborhood was a victory in its own right. That Five Nights at Freddy’s game I most recently played held my attention for an hour at most, and bored me throughout, which I’m sure will upset a few people out there. My Friendly Neighborhood, for its part, makes me willing to at least try some other games in the subgenre, even if I still don’t ‘get’ it.
BlazBlue: Entropy Effect manages to somehow convert the fighting franchise to a 2D sidescrolling platformer without losing the charm at its core. The characters, and there are plenty to choose from, all feel like the characters should if they were facing off against each other, with some minor amount of change to make them function in their new surroundings. Within that is a fun roguelike that keeps your earning abilities and upgrades run after run, and gives you the flexibility to take those builds even further, though at the risk of simply breaking your character when the next run starts.
Ruffy and the Riverside might have had too many puzzles, as it constantly barraged me with them, but it didn’t have bad puzzles. The world that was offered was one that I loved exploring and getting lost in. Even when I was running around in a circle, the likelihood of my stumbling onto something that would distract and delight was very high.
There are elements that didn’t work for me as well as I was hoping, and others I spent hours debating if I didn’t like them or just felt weird that they were changed. But, here is the thing, at no point is this experience not an improvement over everything that came before. This is the best Rune Factory has ever been and a game that can stand against the best of the genre, not just its own series.
Exploration could have stood to have a little more in the way of discovery, but that doesn’t change the fact that these barren areas are well designed and enjoyable. The constant stream of additional tasks to complete, both the personal ones for the crew and the ones added as you run across strange planetary anomalies, constantly diversifies what is asked of you and keeps the experience fresh.
Nova Hearts, being a visual novel, romance, and dating sim, is where the game fully hits its stride. I love the artwork, and the zen soundtrack, both are a necessity in an experience where I am mostly going to be wading through tons of dialog. The characters are great, the main character is honestly very relatable, and when the game goes full-on magical girl, I am into it. It just needed more. All of these ideas, even the combat, feel like the game understands it needs to stand out in a crowd, but it never fully realizes that goal.
t its absolute worst, this is a game from 2002, and it plays accordingly. I was never a fan of fixed camera angles in action games, but at the time, I didn’t know any better. Sluggish character controls were the norm. It doesn’t feel as great as a modern game, but Onimusha also feels good against its peers, which helps when returning to it.
Maybe, based on my own struggles recently, but Date Everything was positioned at the right place and the right time to affect me profusely. I like to think, though, that it’s just that flipping good. A cast of one hundred characters that all beg you to interact with them and see their narratives straight through to the end, and reflect on the lesson held within long after you have moved on to the next character.
Cyberpunk 2077 on the Nintendo Switch 2 is, for lack of a better way of putting it, not the strongest place to play the game. This version of the game is really for people like me, who buy it everywhere because we have no self-control, or most likely, Nintendo fans that have long since had the Nintendo Switch as their primary console.