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All in all, I’m still very much a fan of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE after beating Encore. It’s basically the same game, just with a bit of extra content thrown in and some minor quality of life improvements such as the Quick Session option and faster load times. While I was ultimately unimpressed with the EX Story, I still appreciate being able to play one of my favorite Wii U exclusives on my Switch portably. If you’re a fan of Japanese culture and love crazy RPGs full of heart, you owe it to yourself to play Encore. Now I just have to cross my fingers and pray we get a true sequel that improves on this already fantastic experience.
Virgo Versus the Zodiac is an adorably charming rampage across the galaxy. A memorable main heroine worth making that emotional investment in, an impressive transformation of traditional game mechanics into the unique, and an aesthetic style all its own, Virgo Versus the Zodiac delivers an unforgettable experience. A single playthrough will take about 20 hours and provide plenty of reasons to replay well beyond. A hidden gem, this star yet shines dazzlingly bright.
All and all, Jupiter & Mars brings with it a very good message and an eco friendly agenda, but forgets to bring a game worthy of that message with it. It even has videos in the game advertising nautical wildlife preserves and their association with this, so it’s pretty clearly meant to bring with it a message. The intent of the message, however, is a very positive one. It almost feels a little like a movie game, except this one has no movie. Whether that’s good enough reason to drop some money on this $25 PS Store title, I’ll leave up to you. I do believe some of the proceeds made from the sales goes to the nature organizations it’s associated with, so you can take comfort in the fact you also donated to charity. Sounds like a win win to me.
I definitely recommend getting Tokyo Dark -Remembrance- on either Switch or the PS4 when it comes out later in 2020, or even the original version on Steam. The game is about $19.99 right now, which is a little bit steep, but I think you’ll enjoy it if you love either of the genres it’s a part of. I had a blast with the game, and managed to get about 6 hours out of the whole thing. Pick this up if you need a nice little horror/mystery game to go through
Bug Fables starts out as a totally fine homage to Paper Mario, but as you play the game you realize that the game has a lot to offer. If you really want something in that sort of ballpark, this game is definitely worth your time. If you don’t like Paper Mario specifically, then its a bit harder to recommend. It’s currently $20 on Steam, and beating it will likely take around 30-35 hours, and if you’re a completionist, it can easily get over 40 hours. I think it’s a little too long for its own good, but still worthwhile.
Overall, Ghost Parade reminds me a lot of games I played on the SNES and PS2. As a kid, I would’ve loved this game, having great nostalgia in adulthood. Yet here I am as an adult, unable to look past the very flaws I could’ve overlooked as a kid. As such, the game feels like it was made with love, but pulled down by inexperience. Having played this game for five hours, it feels the game falls just short for the $39.99 price tag. Instead, I would say wait for a sale to come along. I hope the developers who made this game makes another title. Experience is experience after all, and I am sure if they can overcome their flaws,they can craft a fantastic game in the future.
Overall, Heroland is a fun little game. After a while it starts to become a bit grindy, though. You need engaging gameplay when things get grindy, and I feel like this game falls a bit short in that area. The tours feel more bland when you are just replaying them, and they take a bit too long due to the relatively slow pacing. The story dialogue only happens the first time you do a tour, which makes subsequent runs a bit faster. There are lots of hero characters to unlock and level up. The game also has tons of treasure items to collect (plushies, weapon replicas, and furniture for your room). So there is definitely plenty here to keep you busy for a long while. Heroland is available on the Nintendo Switch eShop for $39.99. You can also find it on PC (Steam) or on the PlayStation 4 store. Can you uncover Heroland‘s dark past, or will you be forced to work here for eternity?
Stay Cool, Kobayashi-san! A River City Ransom Story is a fun, if not frustrating at times, spin-off of the Kunio-kun games. However, as a game designed to be played through several times, often completing vague objectives to get certain endings or rankings, it quickly lost its charm for me. If you’re confident the gameplay loop won’t get old, the $13.99 asking price will probably seem like a good deal. Otherwise, I’d look elsewhere to get your fix of high schoolers beating up other high schoolers and/or time travelers.
In the end, Super Crush KO isn’t quite an indie classic, but it also has some shining points. Though the plot is almost non-existent, the characters are cute. The combat is amazing when it isn’t slowed down by some awkward design, and it can flow very well. And the art is tremendously engaging. While I do feel $14.99 is a bit pricey for a game I beat in a little over two hours, I still am glad I got to cover it. Vertex Pop has the bones of an amazing game here, and I’m hopeful their next title reaches its full potential. If you like cute and colorful games and don’t mind something short and sweet, then I’d check out Super Crush KO.
Honestly, for only $9.99 you get a great experience with Cthulhu Saves Christmas. It’s a very solid RPG with lots of laughs and good mechanics. Though I do miss some features from the first game, it overall does a good job of streamlining things for the better. More than anything, I just wanted reasons to keep playing in this universe. Any sort of unlockables, optional dungeons or hidden bosses would have been very welcome. Though my time with the game wasn’t exactly short, I kept finding myself wishing this was a 30-40 hour game. And while the ending was a bit of a disappointment, I still find myself hoping we get another entry to make this a trilogy. All in all, I’m happy with the latest from Zeboyd Games, and hope we don’t have to wait very long for Cthulhu’s next adventure.
I have to say overall I had a great time with GENSOU Skydrift. The racing was fast, fluid and just a lot of fun. The graphics and artwork are outstanding. The game runs at a solid framerate no matter if the Switch is docked or in handheld mode. I polished off the campaign mode in just a few hours, but I spent about 4 or 5 more playing around on all the tracks with friends and CPU racers. The $23.99 price tag might seem a little steep, but this is a quality racing game. If you’re a Touhou fan I think you will find a lot to love here, and if you’re a racing fan looking for a solid title this might just be your cup of tea as well.
While I didn’t touch on everything found in VenusBlood Frontier International I feel this is a pretty good overview of how the game flows. While this combat sounds complicated it’s really not once you start playing and is actually highly addictive. I haven’t had this much fun with an SRPG in many years. The story here is top notch and I loved all of the characters found here. This is one of the few times I can say a game truly met my expectations, and I sincerely hope Ninetails will bring more of these titles to the West. For the $40 you’re getting 100+ hours of solid gameplay and story in a game that has some of the best music and artwork I’ve seen in a long time. This is a must own for visual novel fans and SRPG players alike.
Devil’s Hunt is a game that knows the look of a high-quality video game, but stumbles on most other fronts. It has the skeleton of the game in place, but struggles to flesh things out beyond that. Clocking in at about six hours, it’s a mostly functional package that takes a grandiose story as its base and delivers something less bombastic. Hopefully Desmond can get his act together should another installment come to fruition.
Much as I wanted to love Woven, I left the experience quite disappointed. There was promise here, but for whatever reason it wasn’t met. If you don’t mind clumsy physics and very complex and vague puzzles, you might enjoy what’s here. Even then, it’s a hard pill to swallow at $19.99. Though you can beat the game in less than 5 hours, it took me around 9 due to getting lost repeatedly. So at least you’ll get some bang for your buck. This is one of those games I recommend you pick up on a sale. Hopefully Alterego Games has more ideas they can breathe life into in the future, cause I’d honestly like to see them succeed. In the meantime, I’ll lament this tale of an elephant and his firefly buddy.
And that’s my biggest problem with this game: how tedious it is. You go through level after level and stage after stage, doing the same things over and over again. It doesn’t even feel rewarding towards the end, just a relief that the level is over. I really hate saying that, because this game had a lot of promise and is very pretty looking, especially for someone like me who loves that art style. I just wish there were a little more depth to the game, because as it is right now it’s very boring to sit through a lot of the time. I didn’t even mention the story that much because it’s very simple and takes a backseat to a lot of the game. For a simple pick-up-and-play game, I suppose it’s fine and serves the purpose of an arcade game well enough. But I don’t think it’s all that worth it, especially at the $24.99 price range where it sits right now. All in all I got about five hours out of the game, but I really wouldn’t recommend it unless you really love this kind of thing, or you need something simple and fun to play with friends.
Evaluating this game is pretty tricky. I certainly had fun with what I played. As far as being a versus mode of a much larger game, its a neat little novelty that some folks might play around with for a couple hours. As its own game? Hard to recommend, unless you maybe have a friend group of passionate Shovel Knight fans. Though in that case, I’d assume they would have Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove already, and thus this is just a free update. It’s $10 on its own, which certainly is a fair price. However, I’d say Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove at $40 is a better deal. With that you get Shovel Knight and three additional full campaigns, as well as Showdown. At that price, you’re basically getting Showdown as a free bonus.
Other than some alternate difficulty modes and a funny versus mode where the two characters can duke it out, there really isn’t much reason to keep coming back to Haunted: Halloween ’86. It’s a game that isn’t really bad, but also not a particularly remarkable one. Once you get over the fact that this is a new NES game, you’ll start to see this game’s flaws more and more and realize that there are other exciting indie platformers out there. That said, Haunted Halloween is worth checking out if you are looking for more NES games to play. The game won’t take you too long as a playthrough will take about an hour or much less if you get good enough at the game to speedrun it. The digital version isn’t terribly expensive at $9.99 and can be fun for a little while if you are feeling nostalgic and find yourself craving a Halloween themed retro game. If you are interested in a physical NES cartridge with the game, check out Retrotainment Games’ site.
Other than my quibbles about the plot and Joustus, I have no huge complaints about King of Cards. The closest I can get is that some of the final stages were truly difficult and frustrating, most especially one that has you constantly warping back and forth. This is a very well made game, and had it not released after Specter of Torment, easily would have been my favorite Shovel Knight game. As it is, I got 5 and a half hours out of it for a mere $9.99, and only saw 34% of what the game had to offer. I skipped a whole 13 stages and probably some truly epic optional bosses. You won’t lack for replay value either, with many difficult achievements that are a hallmark of the series. As a fan, I did very much enjoy my time with King of Cards, even if the ending was a bit disheartening. I’m glad I got to play each part of the Shovel Knight saga, and cannot wait to see what surprises are in store for Yacht Club Games in the future.
Out of the few visual novels I’ve played, I don’t think London Detective Mysteria was my favorite or the best. Nonetheless, I still had fun during the 25 hours or so that I spent with it. It has plenty of story content for you to enjoy for $29.99 and an overarching mystery which, as I said earlier, you won’t see a legitimate conclusion to unless you make your way through all of the possible endings. If you enjoy otome games and have a true appreciation for visual novels, then I think you’ll love London Detective Mysteria. This is one visual novel that’s worth picking up and enjoying for yourself.
All and all I had a great time with Pokémon Sword. The game runs very well docked or in handheld mode, online features work great aside from the slowdown and the gameplay is quite addictive. I loved all of the characters and some of the theme music is the best I’ve heard in a long time. I felt like the game was easy enough for a casual player to get into, while it still had plenty of depth for veteran players to explore. This is exactly the balance you want in a game like this. I played this for around 55 hours for this review and finished the main story and bit of post game content. I feel like this game is well worth $60 price tag. There is plenty of content and I feel like old and new players will find a lot to love here.