Buy Trials of Mana from nzgameshop.com (affiliate link) The original Seiken Densetsu 3 (now known officially in the West as Trials of Mana) is one of my favourite Super Famicom games. When murky corners of the internet introduced me to fan-translations in the early 2000s, a found a whole new …
Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl should, on paper, be a clear winner. Take a hack-and-slash RPG with randomised dungeons, throw in a dash of monster collecting, and set it all in an offbeat, humorous world where the towns and dungeons are based on snacks. That should be a recipe for …
Let’s get something out of the way real quick: Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX for PlayStation 4 is almost identical to the PlayStation 3 versions. There’s no new or different content, and the games haven’t been “re-remastered” in any way. Really, the only difference is that the PS4 …
It can be hard to know where to begin with a franchise as storied as Ys, but the PS4 release of Ys Origin makes a great starting point. There have been plenty of Ys games released in the series’ 30-year history, but you could be forgiven for having never played …
Toukiden 2 makes a strong case for changing the term “Monster Hunter clone” to “Toukiden clone”, setting a new bar for the Hunting RPG genre. I propose that from here on out, “Monster Hunter clones” be referred to as “Toukiden clones”. True enough, the original Toukiden drew heavily on Monster …
Comedy must be the most difficult thing to write. A weak adventure story can be salvaged to some extent by exciting action sequences and likeable characters, for example. Sometimes, an intricate plot can save a thriller from being cold and clinical to a fault. But comedy? When the jokes don’t …
Dex is a game I wanted to like, and for the first hour or two, I really did like it. It’s a cyberpunk action RPG reminiscent of Deus Ex and Shadowrun, but that plays out as a sidescroller with some gorgeous 2D artwork. The combination of action RPG staples, light …
Playing a preview build of Tanzia reminded me of days long gone, spent whiling away the hours in vanilla World of Warcraft. Indeed – and I say this as a compliment – Tanzia is like a single-player take on the humble beginnings of Blizzard’s powerhouse MMO. It’s an action RPG …
When The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing first came out a few years ago, it was a bit of a surprise. A robust, if technically flawed, action RPG with an interesting plot and some thoroughly entertaining writing, it went a long way to clearing some of the stink from a …
With the indie scene’s obsession with “retro-inspired” games, we’re seeing a lot of throwbacks to the 8-bit era. Some, like Shovel Knight, commit fully to the idea; for others, it’s a vague reference to a pixelated art style. But one things remains constant: “retro” and “8-bit” seem to be almost …
