7 days ago
0

Review: Goblin Stone

Every so often, we get a new crop of stories going with the basic conceit of taking familiar fantasy tropes and flipping the context on them. You know exactly the sort, the ones that clearly were paying attention and noted that if you read it in the abstract, stories about killing mass number of orcs
4 weeks ago
0

Review: Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth

So here we are, back to dealing with the Planet all over again. Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth is a game that has a complicated history to deal with and a complicated set of fan desires to assuage. It’s not a stretch to say that the first game in the remake series was well-received, but it’s
1 month ago
0

The Complicated History of Final Fantasy VII

So later this month, we’re getting the second part of the Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy. And boy howdy, is that going to be complicated for a whole lot of people, because I feel like Final Fantasy VII Remake was already complicated and divisive for a certain portion of the audience. Which is interesting to
1 month ago
0

Preview: Until Then

Sometimes being a video game reviewer is pretty fun. I mean, no matter what the situation is, it’s a job; you are primarily judged by the quality of your work and your dedication to your craft. But sometimes you’re playing new games well before other people get to, and sometimes those games are just really
2 months ago
0

Review: Granblue Fantasy: Relink

I mentioned in the intro to my previous review for Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising that when you see the title “Granblue Fantasy” attached to something, you are seeing a game based upon what is a long-running mobile title that has stretched the concept of a browser game based on JRPG combat about as far as
2 months ago
0

Review: Hidden Through Time 2: Myths & Magic

Some of the games I review on this site are like nesting dolls, and each time you think you have a handle on what the game is, you find yourself diving down another layer deeper. Other games are exactly what they appear to be. I mentioned this during a recent review, but I think this
2 months ago
0

Review: Reigns: Three Kingdoms

On some level, Reigns is a concept that you are either on board with or not. It’s a pretty simple game in concept, at least; you are presented with an ongoing slew of decisions, and for each one you either swipe left or swipe right. There’s more to it than that, but it’s at once
3 months ago
0

Review: Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising

Granblue Fantasy is a mobile browser-based gacha JRPG that has probably already provoked some reactions in you just by placing those words adjacent to one another. What is slightly more surprising, however, is that this is a game that has been running since 2014 with a dedicated fanbase and a design ethos that has even
4 months ago
0

Review: KarmaZoo

As I’ve spent the past several years as a reviewer, I’ve increasingly grown to think of games as broadly belonging to one of two categories. The first category are games that basically wear their hearts on their sleeves. Within the first half-hour you have seen most of the game’s core loop and ideas, and you
4 months ago
0

Review: Yohane the Parhelion: BLAZE in the DEEPBLUE

There is a recurring theme for me in taking reviews for games that are spinoffs of series I know nothing about. Yohane the Parhelion: BLAZE in the DEEPBLUE, aside from having the probably most overwritten title I will see all year in my review queue (it has very little time left in the year to
4 months ago
0

Review: Astral Ascent

So, hey, that game Hades is pretty good, huh? Like, everyone liked it. Don’t pretend you don’t know that’s why we have a nice big rush of games that are cashing in on the whole roguelike thing. You know it, I know it, a variety of stray cats know it. And most of them are…
4 months ago
1

Review: Roboquest

Sometimes my reviews require a fair number of caveats. That’s just good practice, in my mind. It’s a good thing to make it clear if you are predisposed to not particularly like a game or predisposed to like it, that sets out a baseline. If I say that I wasn’t really inclined to like something
5 months ago
0

Review: Gordian Quest

There was a time – and I remember it quite well – when not every single type of game got stapled to an RPG. I don’t even feel like it was all that long ago. It’s not as if no one loved RPGs or anything, but it was a reality that it was something of
6 months ago
0

Review: Assassin’s Creed: Mirage

So here’s what is going to be a kind of odd confession: I was biased against Assassin’s Creed: Mirage basically from the moment it was announced. And to explain that, we’re going to have to take a step back. If you’ve been reading my reviews here for a while you know that I do not
6 months ago
0

Review: RoboDunk

When you first start RoboDunk, it asks you if dunk is the meaning of life. This sort of faux-serious absurdity is, I won’t lie, kind of the sort of thing I live for. Lamentably, as much fun as that question might be, you can expect the game to basically leave it there. It does not
6 months ago
0

Review: Gunbrella

Christopher Hastings created the character of Dr. McNinja when he just chose that as a forum user name on the Something Awful forums, and then he did art of the character stating that he was available for anyone who needed the services of a doctor or a ninja. Later, he had to give the character
7 months ago
0

Review: Affogato

As a reviewer, I tend to pick out games that I want to review based on one of three criteria. The first are games where either I had been following early development or just saw the trailer and thought that the game looked like a lot of fun. The second are games that are somehow
8 months ago
0

Review: Arcadian Atlas

If you’ve been reading my reviews for the past several years, you have probably been able to figure out certain things about me, and one of those things is that I am still pining for a sequel to Final Fantasy Tactics. The two that we technically got were both worse in terms of writing, mechanics,
8 months ago
0

Review: Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes – Definitive Edition

Not for the first time, I find myself taking on the full version of a title that I have already previewed. Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes – Definitive Edition already let me dip a toe into what the game had to offer, and I rather liked what it had on display. So I immediately
8 months ago
0

Preview: Alterium Shift

So there’s an interesting thing that happens for me a lot as a game reviewer: I am handed a game that I do not personally like very much while I also recognize that it’s not doing anything wrong. A recurring theme in several of my reviews is that you have to evaluate games based on