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Dragon Quest VII Reimagined is a game I feel is only a few small changes away from being the best of its ilk. Its dedication to being accessible means that newcomers will likely have a great time with it, but that’s at the cost of overbearing quality of life and mechanical changes. Its adventure and explorative elements are left wanting due to the across-the-board simplification of puzzles and Reimagined’s overeagerness to tell the player exactly what to do. In some places, it feels as though it’s a remake that’s embarrassed of its own legacy when it really shouldn’t be. It’s a stark contrast to the Erdrick trilogy remakes, which wholeheartedly embraced and expanded upon the things that defined them. On the other hand, this is an ambitious remake in other places. Most notably, the artistic facelift leaves it as perhaps the best-looking Dragon Quest game to date thanks to its diorama style and excellent use of color and lighting to convey mood. This is especially important in that the story is still Dragon Quest VII, one of the very best in the entire genre. Here in Reimagined, it’s been elevated thanks to new additions to the story that are emotionally considerate of its legacy while also being surprising for returning players. Thanks to voice acting and more expressive cutscenes, it’s also the most fun version of Dragon Quest VII’s story to simply watch unfold. Tying all of this together is the familiar yet strong core gameplay of Dragon Quest, and you have a great, if undoubtedly imperfect iteration of one of the series’ more hard-to-breach titles.
Sadly and not so shockingly, Ebola Village isn’t going to be the title that dethrones any of the kings of horror. And looking at it, did any of us really think it would be? There are flashes of good in the game, but for the most part, it just feels like a painfully phoned-in Resident Evil Village clone with a poor excuse for a story and some unintentionally shocking and funny things going on in the rather short run time. I knew I was in for a ride when the game gave me an option to watch a movie. I assumed it was the intro, so I chose to watch it, and the game just opened up my browser and started playing a bizarre live-action short film based on the game, which was oddly hosted on a Resident Evil fan channel on Youtube rather than implemented in the game itself. Whatever strange puzzle-coded apartment you live in, I wouldn’t recommend you leave to venture out to Ebola Village, not even to save your family. Instead, save your money and pick up literally any other bigger-name horror game, and you’ll have a better and more cohesive time. Now, excuse me while I go get hepatitis and try to immunize myself from this series.
While full of comedy and amusing situations which are enjoyable in their own right, Ren'ai 0 Kilometer has some moments where we get a real insight into the characters and their relationships. It’s an interesting look at the bond between sisters, the forms that familial love can take, and the odd bit of drama to spice things up. The visual novel itself is quite dated in some ways, and the modern release of it by kawaiinium certainly has some issues that I would’ve liked to see ironed out. Despite this, it’s still worth experiencing.
More so than any of the slow burns this series has to offer, The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon feels like an endpoint that they unfortunately had to build an entire JRPG to get to. The road to get there is forgettable, and the ending left me with a somewhat bitter taste that made it not feel as worth it as I’d hoped, even as a series fan. So much of this game consists of recycled ideas and stories that were either done substantially better in previous games or that have been done so often that they’ve become stale. While Trails games have their commonalities, they usually mix things up enough between games such that they’ve yet to feel this outright repetitive. Even during the slow parts, rarely have I been so downright bored as I was playing this game at several spots, especially before Act 3. It’s not completely devoid of highlights, but they don’t quite make up for its deficiencies when it comes to the experience of playing this game. Horizon just doesn’t have a whole lot I found as fun or enjoyable as I’d hoped, even when compared to the more outwardly flawed entries of the series. Combat is less enjoyable and the cast of characters largely felt like they were going through the motions. The story has a lot of shakeups once it gets going, but increased scope does not mean an increasing worth of investment. It seldom offered much that truly stuck with me for good reason. I’ve been patient with this series, but my patience only goes so far when it drags its feet just to arrive at the conclusion it does.
Fragile Feelings is a somewhat different take on the common yuri setting of a girls’ school, focusing on a young assistant teacher and school nurse. Despite failing to immediately grab my attention and a slow feeling through much of the visual novel, the relationships between the characters and writing kept me interested enough to want to find out more until it started to become more and more interesting. While I have some minor gripes, by the end I felt like it was certainly worth reading through Fragile Feelings.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie ties a neat ribbon on the much-prolonged and at times rough arcs of Zero/Azure and Cold Steel. It has plenty of issues of its own, including a relatively weak main plot, gradually declining soundtrack quality, and combat that reeks of excess by this point through feature creep. However, it uses everything the series has built up thus far to make for an experience that is dense with fun things to do. There’s a lot here I was hoping to see more of with the previous Cold Steel games, so better late than never on that front. Trails into Reverie is a hard sell if you aren’t already a fan of the series and haven’t played a good amount thus far (even the much more turbulent Cold Steel IV), which hurts it more than many games in the series. But it does quite well to make sure that the people who have kept up thus far feel sufficiently rewarded. It’s not the highest mark of this series by any stretch, but I found it to have still been probably the highest one Trails has had since Azure.
FOCUS on YOU is a short experience, but a very pleasant one. It’s very easy to recommend, especially to fans of titles like dating simulators and romance visual novels, except for one big point: it’s significantly overpriced for just over an hour of a very limited experience, even if just how niche this is justifies it to an extent. Still, Yua is adorable, and it’s a great showcase of what can be done with romance games in VR.
If Terminator 2D: No Fate’s prime objective was to release into the world a game worthy of the legendary Terminator 2: Judgement Day in the style of the games out at the time the film was popular, then the mission was an absolute success. Terminator 2D: No Fate joins Terminator Resistance as games worthy of the first two films in the franchise. While it’s lacking a little too much Arnie and may not have the runtime some would want, I couldn’t have been happier with the title. Despite having finished it at least half a dozen times now, I still find myself being sent back in time and trying to stop Skynet over and over again
LOVEPICAL-POPPY! doesn’t miss a beat with its comedy, and it’s a fun time whenever spending time with any of the heroines or the other members of the dorm. There are plenty of romantic moments as you get into the heroines’ routes, and the gameplay systems are used well to see their inner thoughts as they fall in love. The routes and heroines all feel distinct, and while I’d consider some better than others, each has something that I enjoyed about it.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond feels like a representation of where the franchise is in a way, stuck with one foot in the past and one in the present, without a clear direction of where it wants to go. It certainly has some great moments, is enjoyable overall, and is worthy of the franchise name, but several aspects of the game come off shallow. Waiting eight years since the initial announcement hasn't helped establish this title as the definitive next step for Samus either. While not a complete misstep, it isn’t the strongest action-adventure game or what I personally have come to expect from the same series that put out titles like Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime Remastered. It’s nice to have Samus back, but if there’s a follow-up, next time I’d like a little more Metroid in my Prime.
Kirby Air Riders is like a box full of charming toys. There’s a lot to poke your nose into and prod away at, but it’s not long before I realize there just isn’t much to its many offerings. While its sense of polish and variety is impressive, this has come at the devastating cost of focus. You get lots of ideas and gameplay quirks that are individually fun for a while, but seldom do they come together to form something especially satisfying or cohesive. In its attempts to have lots of things that might please everyone, it winds up not doing any one thing all that exceptionally. As a racing game, it’s mechanically shallow and tracks offer little in terms of skill or engagement, often focused on looking nice rather than providing the player with fun challenges that are interesting to revisit. City Trial fares somewhat better, but having only one map whose changes generally aren’t that impactful means it has to fall back on randomness to do anything interesting. Sure, there are things like Roadtrip or Top Ride that are kind of fun in their own right, but again, these are just a collection of distractions rather than anything substantive on their own. I suppose that’s fitting as the final form of an old GameCube that suffered from many of the same issues, but it’s a shame that time didn’t do this format as many favors as I was hoping. I think fans of the original game will like, if not love this, so in that sense I can’t call the game a failure despite my many misgivings with it. It wanted to be a bigger version of Kirby Air Ride, and for better and for worse, it wound up being precisely that.
A Maiden's Serenade explores Takumi's relationships with five very different heroines and grows together with them. It has plenty of amusing moments and a particularly fun friendship dynamic, but it also explores jealousy, family issues, and the difficulty of understanding each other. Some parts were a little lacking, but overall, it was a good read focused more on relationships than anything else.
In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Sandfall Interactive made something amazing. You can feel how much love and care went into every aspect of the game, and the result is an RPG that’s exciting to play and tells one of the most powerful stories in gaming, backed by incredible music and visuals. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a generational masterpiece and my new all-time favorite RPG.
Dirtbag Mahjong is a relatively casual little single-player Mahjong game with a fun little twist, starring an irreverent sitcom-esque basement full of largely sapphic/LGBTQ+ goofs. The story mode is hit and miss in its humor and gameplay, but I enjoyed enough of it for what it was. It’s a relatively casual little game best enjoyed at your own pace, where it can be decently fun.
The enormity of Octopath Traveler 0 is something that must be seen to be believed. Official developer comments about the game’s playtime being around 100 hours weren't made with exaggeration, and even with that, I never felt like so much as a minute of my time was wasted. The stories it tells are grand and sweeping, and all fit snugly into a greater work that feels sort of like a playable epic. Octopath’s core gameplay in exploration, combat, team-building and mid battle strategy have also evolved considerably. The eight-character system and high number of party members means that just about everyone is going to approach it differently, and that's before getting into the open world and exploratory elements, which have also been noticeably improved. What ties this all together is the high quality of its writing. It's probably my favorite video game narrative since Dragon Quest VII (which still sits as my favorite in general), combining lots of interesting themes and talking points with a flair for the theatrical. It's over the top in ways that feel deliberate and serve to heighten the emotions felt by the characters, who themselves are very compelling. While I would never say story is the sole reason you should play Octopath Traveler 0, it is the greatest factor in why all of its systems synergize so well. From top to bottom, I loved this game to pieces. It's to a point that, after a while, I began to ask “How in the world are they supposed to top this?”
Last Command is a master class in taking an idea to its creative limit. The game’s concept of “Snake meets bullet hell” is simple yet surprisingly novel, and it constantly demonstrates new ways to incorporate additional twists on its ideas. It has its share of limitations in narrative areas and an unfortunately weak translation, but it makes up for that with some brilliant, inventive combat and boss design, which is where you’ll be spending most of your playthrough. The game became one of my favorites of 2022 from the sheer number of times it managed to do something that impressed me and left me awestruck in spite of its seemingly humble exterior.
R-Type Delta: HD Boosted to me feels like a game laser-focused toward existing fans of the R-Type franchise who may have missed out on it when it first came out. While certainly enjoyable, it isn’t the title I would say would most appeal to newcomers; rather, the value comes from wanting the next challenge in an incredibly challenging series. With a slightly done-up lick of paint, a new soundtrack, and the chance to play this title on newer systems, R-Type Delta: HD Boosted is going to be one for the Shmup masochists to sink their teeth into and for fans of retro to gush over while repeatedly hitting the walls of the stages. It’s good to know going in that this game will kick your teeth in and that progress is going to take time; once you do, you’ll find yourself with a rewarding and infuriating retro shmup that finally has its chance to shine outside of its original PlayStation prison.
Galaxy Princess Zorana is a worthy successor to Long Live the Queen and a great game in its own right. The combination of stat management, tons of potential paths to explore, and secrets to find even after I was crowned kept me playing it for hours. Just be aware, the path to the throne is not a simple one, but through trial and error, you’ll soon hear those important words; All hail Zorana, Empress-Elect of the Celestial Empire.
Purely off the charm of its setting, commitment to its motif, and a relatively fun combat system at its core, I can almost recommend Kingdoms of the Dump. Unfortunately, it just feels incredibly unpolished and undercooked. It’s littered (no pun intended) with incomplete sections, massive swaths of graphical issues, major design problems, and many bugs of the bad variety. The farther in I got, the less polished the game felt, such that by the final act I began to doubt if even the non-buggy parts were properly playtested. The story and characters also just don’t elevate the game past these issues. I had a share of fun despite navigating around these issues. There are plenty of cool ideas here. This game is an obvious love letter to the great JRPGs of old. Sadly, the handwriting of that love letter is very messy in a few too many places.
Whether you're new to Zelda, new to Warriors, or a veteran of both, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is a joy to play. With surprisingly deep combat for a Warriors game and an incredible amount to unlock, it'll keep you playing for hours on end.