It’s a very good time to be a fan of dungeon crawlers. The last few years alone have given us Mary Skelter: Nightmares, Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, Hyakki Castle, among many others, each of which delivered a classic dungeon romp while also tinkering around the edges of the …
NIS America
God Wars: The Complete Legend is finally here! It’s not an overly challenging game (unless you’re playing on the higher difficulties) and it does a good job of introducing its various mechanics and systems. That said, there are a lot of very useful things that are easy to overlook. Here …
God Wars: Future Past was one of the best (and most criminally underrated) games of last year. A straightforward tactical RPG on the surface, it eschewed the genre’s current fascination with needless complexity in favour of something simple yet deep. The ebb and flow of combat, coupled with the oddly …
Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana was one of my favourite games of last year. It combined the series’ usual frantic combat with a wonderful system of exploration, through which you slowly mapped out an uncharted island alongside a growing crew of rescued castaways. That game loop, coupled with a captivating …
In its opening moments, The Lost Child doesn’t pull any punches. While investigating a series of bizarre subway suicides wrapped in supernatural rumours, occult reporter Hayato Ibuki suddenly finds himself pushed onto the tracks by an invisible force. He’s saved at the last second by a stranger shouting about how …
Capitalism is cruel and unforgiving. It follows, then, that a game that, oddly enough, exists as both a parody and a celebration of capitalism should also be cruel and unforgiving. For better or worse, that’s exactly what Penny-Punching Princess is. At first glance, this looks like a fairly typical 2D …
The Longest Five Minutes looks like your typical JRPG, only it starts at the final boss. Our party has travelled the world, fought a great many monsters, made friends, helped people, and now they’re finally ready to take on the Demon King. And then, just as the battle starts, …
For whatever reason, I thought (or assumed?) that Tokyo Tattoo Girls was an RPG of some sort. I’ve spoken to a few other people who thought the same, so I know it’s not just me missing something glaringly obvious from the game’s trailers and marketing. “Choose your companion character to …
There’s been a lot of attention on substandard localisation work for Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, to the point that NIS America president Takuro Yamashita apologised for it and promised sweeping improvements. All that criticism was well-founded, but it also drowned out another really important detail: Ys VIII is a …
Since its release, Danganronpa V3 has been a controversial game for a bunch of reasons. A lot of fans are unhappy with the big twist ending. The localisation quality has come under fire. It’s a new direction for the Danganronpa series—at the very least, it’s a fresh start, with no …