Tag Archives: Vita

Waifu Wednesday: Haruka

Out of all the members of Senran Kagura’s core cast, Haruka initially seems like the one who has it most together — or, perhaps more accurately, is most at peace with the person she is.

Combining a sense of genuinely warm, sisterly affection for her friends and comrades with an overtly sexual interest in both sadism and masochism, Haruka is, in many ways, one of the most “grown up” cast members.

That’s not to say she had an easy life, mind you. Far from it.

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New Game Plus: Ghosts Don’t Have Feet – Atelier Rorona DX #8

It’s time for our weekly visit to the kingdom of Arland, as our New Game Plus runthrough of Atelier Rorona DX on Nintendo Switch continues!

We’re well into the game’s second year now, and all sorts of interesting things are happening. Rorona is still devastatingly overpowered, however; can no-one provide her with a decent fight? She’s the Lu Bu of the Atelier world at this point.

Hit the jump to see how today’s crafting, gathering and Puni-splattering went.

Continue reading New Game Plus: Ghosts Don’t Have Feet – Atelier Rorona DX #8

New Game Plus: Cabbage Girl – Atelier Rorona DX #6

“It’ll be a short episode,” he says, then proceeding to play for an hour and a half. I was having fun, though!

Yes, this week’s episode of New Game Plus runs a little longer than intended, but, well, there were important things to do. Very important things. Like the cabbage competition in the annual festival!

Hit the jump to see just why everyone is calling Rorona “Cabbage Girl”…

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Atelier Totori: Arland’s Middle Child

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Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland, the second installment in Atelier’s Arland trilogy, is in that unenviable position that all “middle children” end up in — perhaps more so than most.

Originally offering considerable improvements over Atelier Rorona’s first incarnation — particularly in the graphical and mechanical departments — Gust’s tendency to put out “Plus” versions for its Atelier games means that Totori has ended up, in some respects, now being the most dated of the Arland trilogy even once it, in turn, got its own “Plus” and “DX” rereleases, the most recent of which is on PlayStation 4, Switch and PC.

This isn’t to say Totori is a bad game, mind you — far from it. Just… don’t take anything for granted! Let’s have a closer look.

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Xenon Valkyrie+: 16-Bit Procedural Platforming

You might think the “roguelike” subgenre is oversaturated (it is). You might think the term “roguelike” is widely misused (it is). But that’s not to say there aren’t still good examples of games with roguelike elements being released.

One such example is Xenon Valkyrie+, a game originally developed by Spanish coder Daniel Fernandez Chavez (aka “Diabolical Mind”) and enhanced for its PlayStation 4 and Vita release by solo French developer Fabrice Breton of Cowcat Games. If that pairing sounds familiar, you may recall we looked at their previous collaboration Riddled Corpses EX a while back.

Riddled Corpses EX impressed me a great deal, so when Limited Run Games offered a physical release of Xenon Valkyrie+ a few months ago, I thought I’d jump on it and see what else this dream team could come up with.

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Reflections on PlayStation Vita

At the time of writing, Sony has just announced that production of the PlayStation Vita will be ending in 2019, with no plans for a successor.

This follows news from earlier this year that we’re counting down the days until the last Western physical Vita release, with many of the last releases coming in limited form from boutique publishers such as Limited Run Games and Special Reserve.

With all that in mind, I think it’s about time we looked back over this remarkable and vastly underappreciated system’s life… and celebrated the things it did really, really well.

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Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God – A Mysterious and Fragrant Dungeon

Japan’s most commonly seen take on the popular roguelike RPG subgenre — typically referred to as “Mystery Dungeon” games after the Chunsoft series that cemented the formula — is a little different from how we tackle our dungeon-delving here in the West.

Mystery Dungeon-style games have been developed by a wide variety of companies over the years, and the formula is straightforward and versatile enough that it’s been applied to all manner of franchises ranging from Pokemon to Etrian Odyssey as well as a number of original creations.

Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God from Compile Heart and Idea Factory takes Compile’s venerable Madou Monogatari series — that which ultimately begat the much more well known Puyo Puyo puzzle empire — and reimagines it for the Mystery Dungeon age. The result is an accessible and enjoyable game that is a great introduction to this style of RPG.

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Shmup Essentials: Riddled Corpses EX

You know sometimes you just see a game and think “I’m going to enjoy this?” That was very much me and Riddled Corpses EX.

There was something about the game’s excellent use of convincing 16-bit style pixel art and the suggestion that it would incorporate two of my favourite shmup subgenres — bullet hell and twin-stick — that made me pretty sure I was going to have a good time with it. And I most certainly did.

If you’re yet to check out this enjoyable blastathon, either in its original PC incarnation on Steam or its all-new “EX” version on PlayStation 4/Vita cross-buy and Xbox One, then grab yourself a sturdy controller, strap yourself in and get ready to perforate some cadavers.

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The MoeGamer Awards: The Second Chance Award

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!

Today’s award is pretty simple: it reflects a game I gave a second chance to, and ended up being extremely glad that I did.

It’s often worth revisiting things that you bounced off some time ago, as you may well find that changes in your outlook and tolerance for certain things may change over time. Of course, in this digital age, there’s also the possibility that games might be patched and improved over time, too — and, as in the case of today’s game, there may also be superior ports down the road to improve the overall experience, too.

And the winner is…

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Waifu Wednesday: Ist

Dungeon Travelers 2 is one of the best dungeon-crawlers of all time — I’d even go so far as to say it’s one of my favourite RPGs I’ve ever played.

A significant part of the reason for why I regard it so fondly is its large cast of memorable female characters, each of whom offer something unique both in mechanical terms and in how they contribute to the overall “party dynamic” with their characterisation.

It’s hard to pick a favourite from such a consistently loveable cast, but somewhere near the top of the list for me is Ist.

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