Noisy Pixel
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Meg’s Monster is a charming, adorable, and heartfelt adventure that provides an excellent indie RPG experience. The relationship between the main duo is the driving force, with the art and music complementing the tone. However, it lacks evolution by revealing its entire hand in the first few hours, delivering a weak second half.
Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries Of Honjo is a gripping and horrific adventure that branches outside of what genre fans would expect. It plays with your intuition and tests your deduction skills as you piece together each puzzle. Unfortunately, the narrative intermission brings gameplay to a crawl, but you'll want to stick through until the end to experience everything this twisted adventure offers.
Digimon World Next Order feels and plays fantastically on the Nintendo Switch. But unfortunately, it relies on you being familiar with its established gameplay mechanics, which can be daunting for newcomers. Despite the newly added Beginner Mode and Dash features, I feel like this iteration of the digital world is targeted toward longtime fans or new ones who have a lot of time to learn its many nuances. Still, the portability of the Switch makes this perfect for western gamers raising Digimon on the go.
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is unlike any other action game. Its unique battle system encourages high-level character customization to make the action approachable no matter your history with the genre. It's terrifyingly brilliant as it tests your understanding of enemy attacks through a rhythm-based deflect feature making each encounter as enjoyable as it is difficult, especially in its online modes. Although messy enemy placement and cheesy maneuvers can slow the pacing, the Three Kingdoms story has never looked better.
Kirby’s Dreamland Deluxe was already a charming title back on the Wii, but this updated release allows old fans a chance to return to Dreamland to discover updated features and new players an opportunity to play a standout entry in this series. This release presents many improvements and additional content creating a memorable experience for all who play, even if it isn’t as genre-defining as Forgotten Land.
Mundfish has managed to capture the thrill of over-the-top action taking full advantage of Atomic Heart’s 1950s setting and insane narrative. Every moment of gameplay is packed with tense combat against haywire animatronics. Still, all the heavy metal shredding in the world isn’t enough to save the experience from its extremely poor user interface design and lack of basic accessibility features.
Wild Hearts has so much to offer. From the striking monster designs, distinct weapon variety, and engaging combat, hunters will have a new favorite game to join up with friends and take down enormous foes. Outside of some dips in pacing in the later hours and a few repetitive encounters, there is little holding this game back from becoming a new name in the genre.
Tales of Symphonia is a brilliant action JRPG that set a precedent for the genre. Even all these years later, its engrossing storytelling, vast array of side activities, character interaction, and layers of combative options all coalesce to make it a must-experience adventure. Yet, as a remaster, this specific release fails to hit the mark, ultimately providing a lackluster and disappointing resurgence that could have been so much more.
Wanted: Dead is a commendable effort from this team and a sign of much better things to come. It is unapologetic in what it wants to be, and so despite all of its quirks and faults, it offers a charming and memorable action game experience that is backed by a captivating presentation. Come for the brutally effective combat but stay for the utterly surreal game world filled with fun distractions and addictive carnage. With this debut title, 110 Industries takes us back to a time when a standout vibe made up for a lack of polish.
Theatrhythm Final Bar Line is a terrific rhythm experience that, even after over 30 hours in, I can’t get enough of. Its almost overwhelming number of playable songs, waves of unlockables, addictive progression, and endless methods of replayability coalesce to provide a game that all Final Fantasy fans, new or not, will fall in love with. Heck, even if you’ve never played Final Fantasy, Final Bar Line is worth picking up. It’s that good.
This puts Blanc in a precarious position. While length is not a determining factor for enjoyment, it can become a primary focus if there isn’t much else to offer. I went around the snowscape with a partner, searching for our families. Outside of the gorgeous aesthetics, both visually and sonically, no substantive content sparked any significant emotion. There weren’t a lot of facets done poorly, but they weren’t executed wonderfully either. And while there were some endearing and silly moments, I came out of the experience feeling like I went through an underwhelming roller coaster at a theme park.
The Crimson Flower that Divides: Lunar Coupling is an interesting otome game that I would praise for its more mature plot, but it shows signs of having aged considerably from its original 2012 release. The issue with story branches happening inside other routes made the experience confusing due to the lack of a flowchart. Further, when it came to specific love interests, the chapter names made navigating the routes a chore. A bit more quality assurance would have also gone a long way to remedy some of the typos.
Labyrinth of Galleria The Moon Society is an addictive dungeon-crawling RPG that fans of the genre will undoubtedly sink dozens upon dozens of hours into. Its involved yet approachable gameplay systems, meaningful sense of consequence, and cathartic breakthroughs of progress make it a joy to spend time learning. Even amidst some area design choices I perceived as stumbles, unnecessarily drawn-out tutorials, and bland environments, this was a journey I’m glad I stuck out to its end.
I had an excellent experience with The Symbiant, but my biggest gripe has got to be just how relatively short it is to go through it all. Nonetheless, I laughed a lot at the interactions with Brahve and Danya, perhaps even more than I should. The adult patch is not for the faint-hearted, but if you’re willing to be “brave” (pun intended), then maybe this short experience is just what you need.
Season: A Letter to the Future is a rush of emotions. You’ll feel happy, lonely, or even scared at any given time. It plays on the player’s curiosity and rewards those who take the time to explore. If you don’t have that time available, I’m afraid the experience will fall short. It’s a game that makes unremarkable situations remarkable through themes of memories and how we could lose everything in an instant.
All of this makes 8-Bit Adventures 2 shine as a quality game regardless if it doesn’t present any groundbreaking systems in the genre. This game is a love letter to retro adventures that we’re intimately familiar with by now. Rather than push it to be something that seeks to change the experience, it celebrates it. If you’re looking for something that seeks to innovate, you’re likely to find something better elsewhere. But if you want an entertaining, lighthearted, and endearing experience, this is the game for you.
ATONE: Heart of the Elder Tree is a title that has the definition of “jack-of-all-trades, master of none.” It does a lot of things, but it doesn’t stick the landing most of the time. The story is very short, and while the soundtracks are good, I wasn’t a huge fan of the rhythm portions, especially because of their severe disconnection to the main tale.
Through the lens of magical realism, A Space for the Unbound takes a whimsical yet mature look at what happens when a community is under unexplainable distress. It shows you the effect one small action or one person can have. Factor in a beautiful art style, excellent storytelling, and a gorgeous soundtrack, and there’s no denying the superb quality of the content.
If you’re new to roguelikes, Lone Ruin’s brevity and simplicity might make it worth a look; if the price is right for you, that is. Unfortunately, its issues with variety and a lackluster arsenal of spells, items, and upgrades hamper the experience. Nevertheless, it tried its best to strike that balance of elements, and I think it’s a commendable effort from a small dev team. To me, though, this doesn’t excel or evolve the roguelike formula in any unique or engaging way and, overall, comes across as a bit hollow and unremarkable.
Sailing Era is a beautiful game where the developers put a lot of thought into its presentation and historical enactment. Still, unfortunately, this title is constantly held back due to its frustrating gameplay loop, combined with a highly awkward machine translation. Unless you have a walkthrough on hand or have an immense amount of patience to fight your way through sheer trial and error, by the twelfth time you reset your save, you probably would’ve wanted to set aside time and play something else at that point.