Category Archives: Articles

All the non-Cover Game articles and features in one place.

Waifu Wednesday: Risu the Angel

Japanese games have a number of different ways of handling narratives from a first-person perspective.

The typical “visual novel” approach allows the player to ride along inside the protagonist’s head, being privy to their innermost thoughts as well as the things they say out loud. But in other instances where this approach has not been used for stylistic purposes — and particularly where a silent or quasi-silent protagonist takes the lead — a companion character is often employed to either speak “for” the protagonist, or to complement them in some way.

Gal*Gun Double Peace featured the delightful Ekoro, who beautifully complemented protagonist Houdai’s bafflement at the situation in which he found himself through dry wit and a touch of sarcasm. And Gal*Gun 2, which features the player themselves as the participant quasi-silent protagonist, has Risu; equally delightful, but in a rather different way.

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Puzzler Essentials: Puzzle Labyrinth

I have a strange relationship with the Nintendo 3DS. I often find myself thinking of it as one of my least favourite gaming systems for numerous reasons… but every so often I’m reminded about the things that make it unique.

Sure, there’s the first-party Nintendo stuff that provides obvious uniqueness, but another aspect of the 3DS that is not discussed nearly as much as it deserves is the amount of interesting, creative and downright weird download-only games buried in the eShop.

Many of these games are published by a company called Circle Entertainment, and they run the gamut from retro-inspired arcade titles to highly creative puzzles and adventures. The subject of today’s piece very much falls into the latter category.

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I Finally Beat Persona 5

Most of the time, gaming is a fairly solitary activity for me, but on occasion, there are games that my wife enjoys watching me play enough to drag her away from Final Fantasy XIV for an hour or two at a time.

Last year’s Persona 5 was one of those games, and thus rather than focusing on it as I do with the Cover Games for each month, “we’ve” been playing it rather casually over the course of the last year or so. The other night, we finally reached the end.

What better reason to reflect on a game that, according to some, represented a great renaissance for a Japanese games industry that had supposedly been “kind of bad” for years?

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What’s in the Box: Megadimension Neptunia VIIR

If you were wondering, it’s pronounced “vee-two-arr”.

Yes indeed, a (kind of) new Neptunia game is here, which of course means I’ve picked up its limited edition, because I like both Neptunia and Idea Factory International’s approach to limited editions.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to cover VIIR here on MoeGamer as yet; the original Megadimension Neptunia V-II was one of the first Cover Games here and thus we’ve already explored certain aspects of it in great detail. While I mull over whether or not VIIR’s new bits — namely its virtual reality component and its completely overhauled mechanics — are worth another month of in-depth exploration at some point down the road, here’s a look inside the box of that limited edition.

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Waifu Wednesday: Chiru Kondo

You know sometimes you see a character and immediately know you’re going to be into them? Yeah, that was me and Chiru, one of the two new main heroines from Gal*Gun 2.

My immediately positive reaction to her was before I even knew what sort of person she was through playing the game, though I had my suspicions. There was just something about her that was striking and pleasing to me… and I was delighted to discover once actually getting to know her that she was exactly my kind of girl.

So it is, then, that she is the subject of this week’s Waifu Wednesday!

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Switch Essentials: Super Mario Odyssey

A common criticism raised by people who have arbitrarily decided for one reason or another that they are “anti-Nintendo” is that the company relies too much on rehashing old ideas, particularly when it comes to its “big” franchises.

This is, of course, nonsense, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the company’s flagship Super Mario series. The portly plumber’s past few adventures have included a simple but enjoyable mobile game that eschews gacha nonsense in favour of accessible mechanics, a full-on construction kit with online functionality, a vast but highly accessible, level-based 3D platform adventure with the option to play in cooperative multiplayer and a challenging 2D platform adventure later expanded with an even more difficult set of levels. And this is to say nothing of how the series has continually reinvented itself over the years.

Super Mario Odyssey for Nintendo Switch continues Mario’s proud tradition of starring in an enormously varied series of games that cater to the tastes of both casual and hardcore gamers alike. And it’s one of his best games to date.

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Requiem for a Dead Game: After Burner Climax

Oh, Digital Age. You bring such convenience to our lives, but no-one told us there would be a cost!

After our lengthy Sega discussion on the pilot episode of The MoeGamer Podcast, I was in the mood to boot up After Burner Climax on PS3. Thankfully, this has sat proudly on my PS3’s hard drive ever since I bought it back on its original release back in 2010… because you can’t buy it online any more!

Yes, After Burner Climax was one of the earliest casualties of the age in which we live, getting delisted from both the Xbox 360 Marketplace and the PS3’s PlayStation Store in 2014. So join me as we pour one out for an arcade classic for which you really had to be there…

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Waifu Wednesday: Kurona

We’re about to kick off a month of Gal*Gun 2 funtimes… so what better time to celebrate one HELL of a girl?

Kurona is the antagonist in both Gal*Gun Double Peace and Gal*Gun 2, and a favourite waifu of Matt Papa from developer Inti Creates. It’s not hard to figure out why people find her so appealing… but it’s also interesting to note that she undergoes some fun development between the events of Double Peace and its sequel.

Without further ado, then, let’s say HELL-o to this red-headed wild child. DEATH.

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Switch Essentials: SkyPeace

One of the core attractions of a handheld games system is the fact that you can take it anywhere.

While it’s awesome to be able to play deep experiences like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on the go, an important aspect of a successful handheld’s library is a selection of simple “pick up and play” games that can while away a few minutes rather than a few hours. If you’re out and about, you don’t necessarily want to get stuck into a sprawling RPG, after all, so it’s good to have something on hand to fire up when you just want to play something.

This corner of the market has been dominated by smartphones and tablets for the past few years. But the Switch is showing it has plenty of solid offerings in this department, too — and best of all, many of these titles don’t have exploitative free-to-play mechanics attached.

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What’s In the Box: Shantae 1/2 Genie Hero Ultimate Day One Edition

Having missed out on the Limited Run releases of the last two Shantae games, I was damned if I was going to miss out on this one, particularly as it looked like actually rather a nice edition.

And what do you know? It is! It was also no more expensive than buying a “normal” game, which is always nice, particularly as the only thing it’s lacking when compared to something like the Gal*Gun 2 or Cyberdimension Neptunia limited edition is a “big extra” like a plushie or something. I can live without that… although I won’t lie, a plush Shantae to cuddle is fairly appealing in its own right…

Uh, anyway. Here’s what you get in that mouthful of qualifiers for this (presumably) limited edition of Shantae: 1/2 Genie Hero’s “everything in one box” rerelease, which will be part of June’s Cover Game celebrations here on MoeGamer.

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