Tag Archives: Nights of Azure

Waifu Wednesday: Arnice

With Arnice back in the spotlight in our Warriors All-Stars playthrough, it’s only fair that we give her a bit of love and appreciation for Waifu Wednesday, isn’t it?

Arnice is, if you’re unfamiliar, the protagonist of the excellent Nights of Azure, which was the subject of a Cover Game feature here on MoeGamer back in 2017. It’s a fantastic action RPG with a compelling story, a delightfully operatic tone and some amazing music.

And Arnice is a big part of what makes the game so appealing; she’s a fine protagonist, and fits right in to Warriors All-Stars, too. So let’s take a closer look.

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The MoeGamer 2019 Awards: Ten Years, Ten Games

The MoeGamer Awards are a series of “alternative” awards I’ve devised in collaboration with the community to celebrate the sorts of things that never get celebrated in end-of-year roundups! Find out more here — and feel free to leave a suggestion on that post if you have any good ideas!

It is, as we’ve already said, the end of a decade. And, as you know, this makes it an ideal time to look back over the last ten years and figure out what experiences were the “best”.

Once again, like the awards for the last decade of visual novels, I’m not interested in the games that were the most critically acclaimed, the ones that sold the most or indeed the ones that are most commonly agreed to be “games of the year” for their respective year of release.

Instead, I’m going to pick out one game for each year of (English language) release that I found personally significant for one reason or another. I’d love to hear your own feelings on this, too, so feel free to share in the comments!

And the winners are…

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Seven Arbitrarily Chosen Things You’re Missing Out On If You’ve Been Operating Under the Mistaken Belief that JRPGs are “Dead”

It seems that every time we get a new Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy or Persona release, we have the same old “we’re having a JRPG renaissance!” discussion.

Well, dear reader, with my coverage of Death End Re;Quest on the horizon at the time of writing and plenty more RPGs in our shared futures, I’m here to remind you that RPGs have been alive and well ever since what people think of as their “golden age” — the SNES and PS1 eras. This will not be a shock to some of you reading this, of course, but I’m sure there are quite a few people out there who have passed up some wonderful experiences for one reason or another.

So with that in mind, I thought I’d do a list of seven arbitrarily chosen things that you might have missed out on if you’ve been operating under the grossly mistaken assumption that the role-playing game genre has somehow been “dead” despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. Here we go!

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The One-Liner Challenge

Time for a Community tag post! This one looked like a particularly fun one, and after the lovely Irina from I Drink and Watch Anime specifically requested me to do one about games, who was I to refuse?

The original tag came from The Awkward Book Blogger and was based around, as you might expect, books — but it has since expanded to encompass anime and now, thanks to my contribution, games as well.

So let’s jump right in. After the jump. Jumpy jumpy jump.

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Waifu Wednesday: Lilysse

It may not have escaped your notice that I haven’t done any Blue Reflection-themed Waifu Wednesdays this month.

This is entirely deliberate; since the game as a whole is based around the interactions between the female characters, I’ll be talking about most if not all of the major characters when we come to explore its narrative, themes and characterisation in their entirety. So please look forward to that!

In the meantime, however, Gust definitely produces wonderful waifus, so let’s look back at a MoeGamer classic and main heroine of a Cover Game from last year.

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The MoeGamer Awards: Most Eclectic Soundtrack

The MoeGamer Awards are a series of made-up prizes that give me an excuse to celebrate games, concepts and communities I’ve particularly appreciated over the course of 2017. Find out more and suggest some categories here!

Music is a massively important part of the modern gaming experience. As technology has improved, particularly in the storage department, we’ve seen a notable shift away from game systems synthesising music in real time using built-in sound chips — a process that often produced a distinctive and instantly recognisable sound unique to each platform — and towards more traditionally recorded music.

While this does diminish each modern platform’s individuality in terms of the distinctive timbres of their games’ soundtracks, it does leave composers free to let their imaginations run wild and express themselves — and for us as listeners to focus on the compositions themselves rather than admire how the musicians got around technical limitations. Today’s award celebrates a delightfully eclectic and enjoyable soundtrack that blends a variety of styles together into one coherent whole; the kind of soundtrack that simply wouldn’t have been possible back in the eras of chiptunes or synthesised MIDI music.

And the winner is…

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