Inti Creates

Yohane the Parhelion: BLAZE in the DEEPBLUE could have gone deeper

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I’ve just finished playing through Yohane the Parhelion: BLAZE in the DEEPBLUE, the latest title from the wonderful Inti Creates, and it’s an interesting one for sure.

Yohane the Parhelion: BLAZE in the DEEPBLUE is an open-structure 2D side-scrolling platform game that unfolds in a fantasy universe that is a spinoff to Love Live Sunshine. While the characters that appear in the Yohane the Parhelion universe are based on their Love Live Sunshine counterparts, they’re regarded as distinct and separate characters in their own right. One possible interpretation of the whole thing is that it’s a chuunibyou delusion on the part of the eponymous Yohane, aka Love Live Sunshine character Yoshiko Tsushima.

To be honest, it doesn’t really matter all that much, because plot is not this game’s strong suit. In fact, there are a lot of elements to this game where I feel like it could have gone into quite a bit more depth, but I nonetheless enjoyed my time with the game and would recommend it to fans of this sort of thing. So let’s take a closer look, shall we?

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One-Shots

Goodbye, Meg

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It’s time for a personal post today. Normally I would reserve this for my personal blog I’m Not Doctor Who, but since the last time I regrettably had to do this it was here on MoeGamer, it’s only fair to the departed that this time it’s here, too.

Today we lost our beloved Meg, our cat who joined our family back in 2016. She was just 12 years old, but sadly she was suffering with what looked like fairly severe liver cancer and had to leave us before what we all thought “her time” should be.

Much like when we lost her playmate Ruby — who we suspect may have been her daughter, though we have no real confirmation of this — I wanted to leave a permanent record of the mark Meg made on our family and lives, and celebrate how much she was loved.

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Racers

Is Burnout Paradise still good?

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It’s fair to say that Burnout Paradise was, on its original release, simultaneously very well received and rather controversial.

Few would deny that it is a quality game, and one packed with things to do both offline and online, but for some it also represented an early example of how open worlds were starting to make unwanted intrusions into all manner of different games.

That was in 2008. Ten years later, in 2018, Burnout Paradise Remastered was released on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. And six years after that, I picked up a Switch copy for a tenner. Seems like a prime opportunity to see how well this game has stood the test of time, non? Read on, and let’s see.

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Granblue Fantasy: Relink

Another look at Granblue Fantasy: Relink after finishing its main scenario

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I rolled credits on Granblue Fantasy: Relink after about 20 hours of play. That might sound short for an RPG — and it is, by modern standards — but reaching the end of that main story is also potentially far from the end of your time with the game.

We’ll explore that side of things in more detail another day (mostly because I haven’t really delved into the “endgame” as yet) so today we’re taking a look at the gameplay experience while you’re playing through the main scenario.

Without wishing to spoil things too much, I had a great deal of fun playing through Granblue Fantasy: Relink. So let’s take a closer look at exactly why this game works so well.

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Ace Attorney, Capcom

How Ace Attorney does so much with so little

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We live in an age where, at the upper end of the market, video game budgets are spiralling out of control in a relentless pursuit of movie-like photorealism.

And yet, a series of games that first appeared just under 25 years ago (at the time of writing) has pretty consistently been doing such a great job of telling its stories with minimal tech that its publisher, Capcom, still regards it as one of its most valuable intellectual properties.

I am, of course, talking about the Ace Attorney series, and I thought it might be fun to look at some aspects of how these games present their stories to the audience — something that has remained fairly constant over its complete run, despite spanning several hardware generations. So let’s do just that!

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One-Shots

Helldivers II and the Battle Pass delusion

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A few years back, you may recall that the gaming world was seemingly united against the scourge of microtransactions in full-price games.

The most prominent event that demonstrated this was the case of Star Wars Battlefront II, where an EA representative managed to score the most-downvoted Reddit comment of all time for his bollocks about “a sense of pride and accomplishment” while defending the lootboxes that were part of the $80 game’s predatory monetisation system.

Fast forward to 2024, and we have an article on a high-profile gaming site actually praising a game for not being quite as bad as other games that do similar things. Is it time to wave the white flag? Hell no it isn’t.

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Capcom, PS1

One Piece Mansion: the puzzle of stress management

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One Piece Mansion is not a Capcom game I had any familiarity with whatsoever prior to receiving a surprise copy of it from a YouTube viewer a little while back.

I’ve spent a bit of time with it this evening, and there’s definitely some appeal there. It’s an exceedingly peculiar game, to be sure — and I’m all for exceedingly peculiar games at the best of times.

Thankfully One Piece Mansion backs its exceeding peculiarity up with some solid gameplay and original ideas, making it a worthwhile addition to your PlayStation library. Let’s take a closer look!

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Granblue Fantasy: Relink

A first look at Granblue Fantasy: Relink

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I’ve been looking forward to Granblue Fantasy: Relink for a while, despite its seemingly troubled development cycle.

Ever since I spent some time playing the original mobile version of Granblue Fantasy, I’ve been hungry for the setting and characters to be adapted into a full-scale, not-free-to-play, not-mobile game. Because of all the mobile games I’ve spent some time with over the years, Granblue Fantasy is still one of the best in terms of the effort that has gone into its presentation and setting.

Ultimately, though, it was still a mobile game, and as such its appeal to me waned as the grind — or the temptation to spend money — ramped up. So does Granblue Fantasy: Relink provide what I wanted from a “proper game” adaptation of the franchise? Let’s take a closer look, based on a few hours of play.

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Final Fantasy VII Remake

Final Fantasy VII Remake Episode INTERmission: short and mostly sweet

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After clearing my Hard mode playthrough of Final Fantasy VII Remake, I was keen to try out “the Yuffie DLC”, also known as Episode INTERmission.

After my initial annoyance that Square Enix didn’t bother to include the damn DLC on the disc for the “Intergrade” PS5 version of Final Fantasy VII Remake — “Project Ten Dollar” is alive and well — I settled down to enjoy this additional episode, with absolutely no idea what to expect.

The entire thing took about 10 hours or so to play. You can extend that a fair bit if you do a Hard mode run through it and are a bit more fastidious about clearing up side activities, but the whole thing felt like it was a good length — and it left things on a nice teaser for Rebirth. So let’s take a closer look.

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Final Fantasy VII Remake

Reflections on Final Fantasy VII Remake Hard mode – a solid New Game Plus implementation

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“Back in the day,” as those of us of a certain age tend to say, it wasn’t unusual to replay a favourite game to see everything it had to offer.

Sometimes you’d play the game again immediately after finishing it; at others, you’d leave it a while and then come back to it fresh. Sometimes the game had additional things to discover when you played it through after clearing it once; at others, it was just a case of enjoying a story again, like re-reading a book or watching a film multiple times.

These days, meanwhile, there are so many games available that it’s relatively rare that I take the time to replay something I’ve already beaten to my satisfaction. But I made an exception for Final Fantasy VII Remake, so let’s take a look at that.

Continue reading Reflections on Final Fantasy VII Remake Hard mode – a solid New Game Plus implementation →

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