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Endless Ocean Luminous promises a deep dive into a sea which ends up being shallow.
Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes is designed to bring players a modern take on a classic JRPG experience. Get ready to lead 100+ playable characters through a war-torn world only you can save. Switch version reviewed. Review copy provided by company for testing purposes. On a PC, I imagine Eiyuden Chronicle might generally be fine, but on the Switch it is a mess.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League isn't horrible, but it's bland and uninteresting and that may be worse. The real insult here is that Rocksteady Games had all the tools to do something great and innovative and just made a by-the-book live-service game instead.
A Perfect Day is a beautiful, but dull, visual novel and puzzle game hybrid that quickly wears out its welcome.
Like My Time at Portia, the My Time at Sandrock Switch version doesn't feel quite ready at launch and hampers a promising game.
Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed has not aged well, but if you can put up with the game's issues, you can lose yourself in its absurdity
Players who enjoyed Scarlet Curiosity might find something to love here. However, the challenge isn't there to recommend it for fans of Touhou's difficulty and it's so under-designed as an action RPG that I can't recommend it to fans of the genre either.
Record of Agarest War could have been an interesting generational RPG, but the fanservice and bloated mechanics water down the experience. Switch version reviewed.
The Crimson Flower That Divides: Lunar Coupling is a game that puts its characters through hell and features a localization fraught with issues, but its heroine is absolutely wonderful.
There was clearly a vision for Sports Story, but overextending to include too many sports and a buggy launch means you should wait to play it.
However with Seven Pirates H, the latest adventure, it feels lacking compared to the other entries. There is the same level of fanservice people familiar with the series would expect. (I’d say in some ways, it feels pushes the envelope more than past games.) However, there doesn’t seem to be as much content and gameplay as other installments.
If you need a farming-and-fighting fix, Rune Factory 5 is an option. It just isn’t the best one out there. It’s living in the shadow of its far superior siblings. Even if patches fix all of the technical issues, it would still feel uneven.
There is just a lot to do in The Good Life, which means that players can potentially sink upwards of forty-plus hours taking pictures or running mundane, everyday tasks. And while I like life simulators, I don’t like them when they can barely run at over 3 FPS.
Not every game needs to be remade. That’s fine! Some games are fine as-is. Especially if the ensuing revisitation doesn’t do all that much new. Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World feels like a project that happened because Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap inspired not one, but two good games in the 2010s. So now Asha is back and, while the game is fine, it doesn’t have the same level of improvements and investment.
Root Film takes players on a lovely tour of the Shimane Prefecture, giving them a glimpse of historical places, customs, and characters as they work to solve grisly mysteries. Unfortunately, the journey is the only compelling thing about this weak visual novel, as its story is somehow told too quickly and the game is filled with things that waste the player’s time. It’s far too drawn-out, yet somehow too short at the same time.
After spending time with Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia, I can see where WayForward tried. It attempted to create a world for players to inhabit, one alive with both Bakugan brawls and more common activities. It tries to offer customization options, both for our avatar and the characters in the party. It even attempts a competitive scene with online matches. I’d imagine fans of the anime adaptation or toys in general might be really pleased with this direction, especially if they’re on the younger side.
So yes, Zoids Wild: Blast Unleashed isn’t setting any records or making innovative strides into the fighting game hall of fame. We’ll never see it any sort of formal competition. But even so, there’s heart to it. It tries to stay true to the the source and does offer some degree of variation to it. It is just made for a very small, narrow audience.
Honestly, DanMachi deserves better. It is a story where all of the elements you would need are built into it, but somehow the game missed all of that.
I think the problem is that Best Friend Forever is trying to do several things at once and isn’t really doing any of them well.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition is a gimmick game without the gimmick.