Tag Archives: RPG

Chapters of the Chosen, Delving Into..., Dragon Quest

Delving Into Dragon Quest: Chapters of the Chosen – #2

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Dragon Quest is a great example of what I like to think of as a “comfy game”. That is, the kind of game you can pick up and play, and immediately feel like you’re welcome in its world.

There are certain series that do this very well. Gust’s Atelier games — particularly from the PS3 era onwards — are especially well-known for it, and my journey through Chapters of the Chosen on Nintendo DS is making me feel like Dragon Quest as a whole is very likely to be the same way.

As controversial as it might be to say these days, I feel a big part of the pleasant atmosphere the later English versions succeed in creating is down to the efforts of the localisation team and how they made some significant changes to how the original scripts were presented. So let’s take a look at that aspect today.

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Girls' Frontline, Mobage

Girls’ Frontline: A Closer Look

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Last week, we took a first look at the latest moe anthropomorphism mobile game, Girls’ Frontline (or “Gun Ladies”, as my wife calls it).

Since then, the game has officially launched out of open beta and got well underway, so I figured it was worth taking a closer look. With that in mind, I’ve been playing it a whole bunch over the course of the last week or so.

Short version: it’s really fun, it has interesting mechanics and great art and it is fair and generous. Sounds like a winning formula to me!

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Essentials, PSP

PSP Essentials: Dungeon Explorer

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I enjoy beating games, particularly when they have a good story and especially when they have a dramatic finale.

But sometimes it’s nice to have a game on hand that you can just dip in and out of pretty much indefinitely. Arcade-style games fill this niche pretty nicely, but it’s also cool when you find something with a bit more in the way of “persistence” — something that you can continue playing over time and continue to discover new things about.

Recently, I fired up Dungeon Explorer by Hudson for the PSP, a spiritual successor (and, technically, prequel) to the company’s 1989 PC Engine/Turbografx classic of the same name. And… I think I’m going to be playing this game for a long time.

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Blue Reflection, Cover Games

Blue Reflection: Everyday Life with Magical Girls

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Blue Reflection is an unusual game in terms of its overall tone and how it “feels” to play, and a big part of this is due to its mechanics and structure.

If you had to pigeon-hole it into a specific mechanical genre, most people would describe it as a “JRPG”. But in many ways this isn’t a particularly accurate description, since although it features a number of common elements of the genre, it draws just as many influences from other types of game such as adventures and visual novels.

Whatever you want to call it, it’s certainly a pretty intriguing game from a mechanical and structural perspective. So that’s what we’ll be focusing on today.

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One-Shots

Re;Lord 1: It’s All a Matter of Perspective

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It’s always a pleasure when a game comes along out of nowhere and gives you a delightful surprise by being “good” in some way.

Re;Lord 1 ~The witch of Herfort and stuffed animals ~ (just Re;Lord hereafter for the sake of everyone’s sanity), a game developed by Escu:de and recently released in both all-ages and 18+ English versions by Sekai Project and Denpasoft, is the most recent example of this happening to me.

Not only is it an interesting, unusual and enjoyable game from a mechanical perspective, but it’s also pretty fascinating to contemplate from a narrative perspective, too. And it has some lovely art! So let’s take a closer look.

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Cover Games, Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Xenoblade Chronicles 2: A Titanic World

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While the Xeno series has, from its outset, always been about imaginative takes on worldbuilding, the Xenoblade subseries in particular has placed a strong emphasis on this.

Indeed, as we’ve already explored, the very reason the first Xenoblade Chronicles exists at all is because series creator Tetsuya Takahashi thought it would be cool to have a game set atop the bodies of two gigantic, frozen gods. The concept was subsequently fleshed out into the divide between the Bionis and the Mechonis, and the rest is history.

Xenoblade Chronicles X subsequently provided a somewhat different take on worldbuilding, providing us with a huge, seamless and geographically diverse planet to explore at our own pace. But Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is closer in concept to the first in the series, albeit with a few twists of its own.

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One-Shots

Can Post-Launch Support Go Too Far?

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The hot news today has been the announcement of the Final Fantasy XV: Royal Edition, which not only features the base game and all of the Season Pass content, but also adds a number of additional elements to the mix that some may argue should have been in the game in the first place.

This is not, however, where the ongoing saga of Final Fantasy XV ends. Square Enix is planning a second round of premium downloadable content for the game, including standalone “Episodes” themed around antagonist Ardyn and fan favourite Aranea — and who knows what else?

There’s no denying that despite its immensely troubled development history, Final Fantasy XV has had more post-launch support than any big-budget triple-A game in recent memory — and by this point is starting to approach MMO levels of updates and patches. But is this actually a good thing?

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