Our hero, for want of a better word, Houdai is just your average forgettable student. He’s never been particularly successful in the romance department, but that all start to change when an angel accidentally hits him with a supercharged shot from her love gun. Until sunset Houdai is irresistable, and is faced with the entire school throwing themselves at him.

This isn’t your standard nerd’s fantasy though, because there’s a catch to all this power. He has this supernatural attractiveness because the angel’s shot made it so all his opportunities to find love are happening in one day. If he doesn’t find someone to spend his life with before sunset he never will, so decides to spend his day trying to woo his childhood friends Maya and Shinobu.

Going about his daily business isn’t easy with girls throwing themselves at him, but fortunately his apologetic new angel ally knows has to stop these young women in their tracks. With the power of the (ahem) pheromone shot, you can put them into a state of euphoria and continue your quest for love.

The gameplay Gal Gun Double Peace is essentially that of a rail shooter, but instead of zombies or criminals you’re shooting schoolgirls and making them “euphoric”. I won’t pretend it isn’t more than a little concerning, and it only gets worse when you start using some of your special abilities.

I’d say that the Doki Doki Field is probably the most disturbing part of Gal Gun Double Peace, and that’s saying something. By building up your heart meter you can lock onto up to three girls and activate the Field. These lucky ladies then all lie in provocative positions while you touch or rub parts of their body. There are different areas you can focus on to earn more bonus points, and once you finish your fondling the girls will emit an AoE explosion taking out multiple enemies.

It’s important to mention that all of this is happening in a school setting, to girls that I’d have to assume are of school age. Each stage is a different area of the school, with fun locations like the swimming pool and changing rooms all represented here. Popping up from a hole in the floor of the changing room at perfect underskirt height was a personal low point in my life.

Throughout all this, there is actually quite a lot going on in the gameplay. For example there’s a zoom function to help you find hidden items in each stage, which also allows you to fire your pheromones through walls. Unfortunately this function also allows you to see through clothes, and if you buy a specific upgrade from the school store find out the measurements of each girl.

The shop has plenty of other lovely items too, such as cameras that allow you to see the girls from different (and let’s face it lewder) angles in Doki Doki mode. If you’d rather not unlock bonus filth, there are power ups and items that alter your personality stats that you can spend your hard earned coins on.

Your personality stats and the choices you make in cutscenes will lead to the ending you get, and there are plenty to try for. Playing through a single run only takes a couple of hours, so if (for some reason) you’re having a good time there’s a lot of replayability.

The saving grace of Gal Gun Double Peace is how many costumes there are to choose from for the girls. Now I know what you’re thinking – but as well as all the maid and swimwear options you could ever want, there are also some funny outfits in the selection. I played through the majority of the game with all the schoolgirls dressed in creepy bunny and bear costumes, and other than a few cutscenes and sexual noises it felt like I was playing a weird horror game.

Another thing I need to commend Gal Gun on is how well it runs. Despite the content of the visuals, the graphics are actually really impressive. Most third party Switch games don’t look half as good as this, and I didn’t notice any framerate issues either.

Gal Gun Double Peace is a game that really isn’t worth playing unless you have very specific tastes. The rail shooter gameplay feels uninspired without a lightgun or pointer controls, and the content is borderline disgusting. It’s hard to deny the quality of the Switch port, but don’t say I didn’t warn you about all the half naked children.

The post Gal Gun Double Peace review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Shiren and his ferret companion have just finished up confronting gods in a previous adventure, when they arrive at Inori Village. There they find a young girl called Oyu with a terminal illness, and learn that her love interest Jirokichi is on his way to the dangerous Tower of Fortune to change her fate. If he can make his way through the towers of past, present and future he’ll be able to gather the Dice of Fate and save Oyu, so Shiren rushes off to help him with this and headlong into adventure.

Making your way through these towers is easier said than done, with each of them packed hundreds of enemies ready to ruin Shiren’s day. Movement is grid based, with every step you take also allowing the various monsters to do the same. Taking down an enemy is as simple as approaching them and hitting the attack button until they perish, but with each swing of your Katana you’ll give them the opportunity to bash you right back.

Moving and attacking may be simple, but all of the other systems in Shiren the Wanderer are anything but. To stand even a small chance of surviving a run, you’ll need to learn about Scrolls, Curses, Pots and how you can utilise them to survive an overwhelming situation. There’s a lot of information to take in, but fortunately you immediately have access to the Beginner’s House and its vast selection of tutorials to get you up to speed. Understanding the selection of random items you’ll find in the towers doesn’t happen overnight, but with every tidbit of knowledge you gather you’ll improve your chances of success going forward.

Your improvement as a player is key, because every time you die you’ll lose everything other than items and money you’ve squirreled away in the home area. Resetting to level 1 and losing your carefully gathered inventory may sound like a recipe for despair, but there’s always more loot to find and experience to earn. Each area is completely beatable with the items you find along the way, but if you’re lamenting your loss too much to cope you can also ask for help when you collapse and wait for another player to come and rescue you. You’ll need to stop playing until this happens though, and I didn’t have the patience to stop playing the game for that long.

When the systems of Shiren the Wanderer all eventually click with you, nothing else can quite compare. Entering a room full of enemies and knowing that you’ll survive if you open up a laughing pot to make them hysterical, or escaping near death by swapping places with an enemy blocking the way with the wave of a staff makes you feel like a genius. Using the tools you gather against foes creatively is extremely satisfying, and the sooner you learn that it’s better to survive with an empty inventory than to die with a bag full of rare scrolls, the better.

For a port of a DS game Shiren the Wanderer looks rather beautiful on Switch, mainly thanks to its timeless sprite work. Enemies and allies alike are expertly designed and full of charm. The soundtrack (with new songs for the Switch version) is a delight too, which is lucky as you’ll be listening to it for a long time as on your journey of failure and personal growth.

If you played Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate on Vita already, you’ll be happy to hear that there are a handful of extra dungeons to endure if the campaign isn’t punishing enough. One of these limits the strength of physical attacks, one allows you to set turn limits, and another gives you less experience if you take too long to eliminate an enemy. For those seeking challenge these optional extras certainly provide it, but they were too much for me to handle.

As much as I adored my time adventuring with Shiren, it takes a long time to get going. I spent well over an hour working through the tutorials at the Beginner’s House, and it wasn’t a particularly thrilling introduction. The tutorials aren’t mandatory, but it would be infinitely harder to learn the game’s mechanics if you skip them. In the end it was worth ploughing through them all at once, but prepare yourself for a slow start.

Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate is an exquisite Roguelike, which only becomes more enjoyable as you delve into its deep systems. Once you’ve mastered its excessive tutorials, you’ll be treated to an RPG adventure which rewards careful planning and learning from your mistakes.

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Odd is definitely the operative word when talking about the Oddworld series. Packed full of capitalism, dark humour and genocide, the games have shifted in genre and changed their main character multiple times across the four titles. Despite having regular releases over multiple generations, there hasn’t been a new Oddworld game since Stranger’s Wrath in 2005. With a new title coming to PS5 next year, there’s no better time to replay the first game in the series in the form of Oddworld New ‘n’ Tasty on the Switch.

The updated version of the PS1 classic Abe’s Oddysee sees you playing as Abe. Abe’s life (similarly to many of his Mudokon brethren) is a life of slavery, toiling away in a food processing plant that is secretly planning to make his species into the next tasty product. When Abe discovers the fate of the Mudokon, he takes it upon himself to use his unique powers to escape the factory and save as many of his colleagues as possible along the way.

Abe controls in the rigid style of some of the oldest platformers (the 1989 Apple II Prince of Persia for example). He can jump from standing or running, or hop upwards, and every time you input one of these maneuvers the outcome will be identical. Once you jump you have no control over your trajectory, so you’d better be certain you’ll make it to the other side of a pit, or over a landmine. It takes some getting used to this style of movement, but once you do it’s strangely satisfying to use such a limited set of jumps to make it past a tricky section.

Abe has plenty of other tricks up his sleeve to get past the security personnel standing in his path. One of the most unique of these is his ability to possess an enemy by chanting. Taking over a gun-toting guard and walking them into a whirling blade of death is consistently satisfying, and an incredibly effective way of dispatching your oppressors. As strong as this ability sounds, the amount of time required to dominate the mind of an enemy is significant, so you’ll need to find a safe place to chant. There are even some areas that prevent you from chanting at all, with a hefty dose of electricity awaiting you if you try.

The varied environments of Oddworld New ‘n’ Tasty are packed full of traps just waiting to end Abe’s fragile life. Trap doors, proximity mines, motion sensors and more litter the lands, and you’ll need to find way to avoid their danger at all costs. Almost every one of these hazards can be turned on your foes too, with hilarious results. Getting the attention of a guard, only to pull a lever and watch them tumble to their doom is just so pleasing.

Getting rid of these baddies is important, but not as important as rescuing your friends from their capitalist captors. Using Oddworld’s Gamespeak system to communicate was incredibly innovative in 1997, and it’s still pretty charming today. Each direction of the D-pad corresponds to a different phrase you use to talk to your fellow captors. You can say “Hello” to get somebody’s attention, get them to follow you or wait, or just let out a delightful fart to lighten the mood. Once you guide a Mudokon to a circle of birds, you can chant to create a portal for them to escape through, saving them from becoming tinned produce.

No two sections of New ‘n’ Tasty feature the same challenges. Some areas require you to throw grenades to set off traps from afar and blow up enemies, others are full of steam that you’ll need to hide behind. Sometimes you’ll be tasked with riding a wild animal to progress through a desert, other times you’ll need to memorise a string of Gamespeak commands to input a password. The sheer variety is seriously impressive and means that the game feels fresh through it’s 10 hour runtime.

It’s worth mentioning that much like its original release, Oddworld New ‘n’ Tasty is a really tough game. The remake added a few extra checkpoints so death doesn’t feel quite so devastating, but even in the opening hours you’ll die a lot. The precision needed to get past an obstacle course of blades and explosives may be off putting for some. Even the puzzles are tough to navigate, and you’ll often be plopped into a room of traps with only your wits (and plenty of respawns) to help you escape.

As much as I love the original Oddworld, the Switch port of the game is one of the worst versions technically. The framerate suffers on the Switch, and in a couple of the busier visual sections, it really takes a hit. One of these sections is the opening 10 minutes of the game, which is the most unfortunate first impression. When this happens, the camera feels juddery as it follows Abe (especially when running) and the end result left my head hurting. The vast majority of the game is much more playable, but it’s such a shame that areas have this issue.

Oddworld New ‘n’ Tasty is the perfect way to experience the start of the Oddworld series, but the Switch port is not the version I’d recommend from a technical standpoint. It still feels satisfying when you manage to maneuver Abe through a hallway of deathtraps, all while saving a friend or two, but the framerate issues make this a tough port to stomach.

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Beginning with the first Code: Realize game, Aksys has been bringing more and more otome games to Nintendo Switch. The newest is one of my favourites in the genre, Collar X Malice. Collar X Malice originally released only on PS Vita in 2017 and unlike the other otome games from Aksys Games on Switch, it was never ported elsewhere. Collar X Malice on Nintendo Switch brings the thriller detective experience that happens to be an otome visual novel to a hybrid system offering TV and handheld play options.

Otome games are usually pure visual novels but Collar X Malice shakes things up. It blends in bullet segments with QTEs, investigation sections, and more to make things feel fresh for those who have played otome games in the past. This also helps people unfamiliar with otome games ease into the niche by offering more than just reading. It also has multiple endings that have their own requirements and you are looking at about 30 hours to see everything here. Having already played it on PS Vita, it has been excellent to revisit one of the best otome games on PS Vita now given life on another system.

In Collar X Malice, you play as Ichika Hoshino, a young police officer in Shinjuku that is currently quarantined thanks to a terrorist organisation. After a few events in the beginning, a new murder is set to occur each day and this is where you come into the picture. Hoshino wakes up with a collar around her neck after being drugged during an investigation and this collar can kill her. The otome portion of the game involves various potential bachelors with their own character development through branching paths. The survival and mystery aspect of the story definitely elevated the experience here.

Visually, it looks great for the most part docked. There are some instances when art is zoomed in where it looks blurry but the remainder of the experience looks and runs great docked. Handheld is excellent as expected all the way. It is good to see the art originally designed for PS Vita shine on higher resolution displays.

In terms of controls, Collar X Malice offers full touch and button controls when playing in handheld mode and full button controls when playing docked. Otomate continues to show how visual novel ports to Nintendo Switch should be done. Barring the hybrid nature of the console, there isn’t anything extra for returning players here. It does support the Nintendo Switch cloud save backup option if you own multiple Switch consoles and has an excellent icon for those who care about that.

Overall, Collar X Malice on Nintendo Switch is the best way to experience this game. If you’ve already played it, there’s isn’t much for you barring the fact that this is now playable docked and handheld with touch and button controls. Players who already enjoyed this on PS Vita are better off waiting for Collar X Malice Unlimited that is out in a few months on Nintendo Switch. For everyone else, this is a great way to get into otome games with its gorgeous art and excellent music. I love it when developers try to push the envelope to keep things fresh after multiple releases in the same genre. I’m even more excited to play Collar X Malice Unlimited that gets its first English release this year on Nintendo Switch.

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Unlike the Nurse Love games, Yumeutsutsu Re:Master’s tale is set in a game studio in Japan. You play as AI Otori who moves to a city to work in Eureka Software alongside her sister Kokoro. Eureka Software sees AI not only move to a city after living in the countryside, but also get thrown into game development with no real prior experience. Through Eureka Software, AI learns the ins and outs of game development, crunch time, missing deadlines, and more as the company tries to release a new version of a popular doujin game. This happens through interactions with various employees and people they are involved with at the company.

In terms of story routes and the actual game flow, Yumeutsutsu Re:Master doesn’t have a ton of endings, but it makes up for the number in the sheer quality and length of the routes. There are three main characters that have their own good and bad endings before you are able to attempt the true ending in the game. These routes are very long and I spent about 70 hours to get everything I wanted from the story. Just like other Kogado Studio stories, expect a slow burn initially. The difference here is that the pacing felt a bit more erratic. If you’ve watched the Shirobako anime, this feels like a visual novel version in premise but a game studio instead of an anime studio.

Yumeutsutsu Re:Master’s true ending is brilliant and half of the character endings were amazing. The only route I didn’t like is Nana’s story because it ended too abruptly. Marie’s (the artist) story was very well done and Saki (nocturnal writer) was a bit too long. The one thing to keep in mind is this game had different writers tackle the individual character routes so some characters felt different in others’ routes. I love how the story can get meta because you are playing or reading a visual novel about a studio working on a remaster of a visual novel.

The actual story for the common route is slow moving, but it has a lot of interesting references to games and game development. Franchises like Dragon Quest are indirectly referenced with a name change and some locations in the game even have ads for Nurse Love games. I also appreciate the Fist of The North Star reference thrown in and one very popular movie that I won’t spoil that showed up towards the end of the game.

Barring the main story, Yumeutsutsu Re:Master has the usual gallery for CG images and videos, voice players, music players, and multiple save support. The Switch version currently has a bug where you can’t save more when there are less than around 20 save slots left. You can fix this by overwriting older saves. The lack of a glossary is disappointing because the localisation assumes players will know certain terms from Japanese culture. I knew most of them, but many people will likely feel lost.

Since this is on Switch, it has full touchscreen support and button control support. It also supports cloud save backup through Nintendo Switch Online and I played a lot of it while switching across docked, handheld, and the Nintendo Switch Lite.

Visually, the character art and environments are gorgeous. The one area this falters is the colours used for the text boxes. I’m not a fan of how those look and adjusted them to be mostly transparent from the in-game settings. The character portraits also look a bit blurry when played docked. This isn’t an issue handheld or on the PS4 version (going by the demo I played). If you play handheld, there are no issues here.

Voice acting in Yumeutsutsu Re:Master is amazing. Every main character sounds amazing across their routes. It is only some of the side characters that sound a bit off. The music is full of some tense and upbeat songs and piano melodies that never get old. I’m not tired of the main work song even 70 hours later.

As of now, the Switch version has a few issues. The opening video and some of the credits videos are only in Japanese. This is a weird bug because the trailer Degica released of the opening has the full English (text) opening. The other issue is the localisation has a few errors. These aren’t bad like some other Switch visual novels, but I noticed a handful in my time with some being pretty jarring. I’m hoping a patch can fix the video issue and the save issues.

Overall, I liked Yumeutsutsu Re:Master’s story a lot more than Nurse Love Addiction despite its pacing issues. As a complete package, the save, video, and few localisation issues hold it back. If you don’t mind a few of those, Yumeutsutsu Re:Master is easily worth your time if you enjoy long visual novels. Just be prepared to use a guide because it is a bit difficult to figure out how to get some of the endings. I didn’t expect Yumeutsutsu Re:Master to be this long, but I do not regret putting in 70 hours after seeing the story play out and have already gotten into the sequel Yumeutsutsu Re:After which I will be playing for a while now.

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Code: Realize – Guardian of Rebirth was the first big otome game to get a lot of visual novel fans into the genre when it debuted on PS Vita a long time ago before it was brought to PS4 and more recently Nintendo Switch. I was glad that Aksys Games localised the first fandisc for it on PS Vita as well. Code: Realize – Future Blessings arrived on PS Vita and PS4 as well and has finally arrived on Nintendo Switch.

A fandisc for an otome visual novel is usually a collection of stories that provides an alternate take or one that gives more context to various characters through more story content or expanded endings. Code: Realize – Future Blessings is exactly that for Code: Realize – Guardian of Rebirth. If you recently experienced and enjoyed Code: Realize – Guardian of Rebirth on Nintendo Switch or played it on PS Vita back in the day and want more from the characters and world, this is the perfect visual novel for you.

When it comes to story, I definitely wouldn’t recommend this unless you already played and enjoyed the original Code: Realize – Guardian of Rebirth considering it set after the events of Code: Realize – Guardian of Rebirth. If you did, you will find a lot to love here with Cardia interacting with new and familiar faces with some interesting twists. I absolutely adore the steampunk art style in the Code: Realize games that extends to the UI as well. Considering a visual novel is all about reading, it is always good when developers go the extra mile and invest into making the whole experience feel and look great.

On starting a new game, you are given the option to play stories taking place after the events of Guardian of Rebirth in the form of After Story – Whtie Rose where you can select a route and jump right in. The next option lets you experience a story hinted at in the original through Another Story – Lupin’s Gang. There is also an Extra Story Herlock Sholmes that has a story told from his perspective with one from Finis’ perspective. Some of these are linear routes.

In terms of an overall package, it is a bit disappointing that PS4 had both this and the original Guardian of Rebirth in a single low priced package while Switch gets them separately like PS Vita. In terms of actual content, this release offers nothing over the PS Vita original. On PS4, this game was packaged alongside Code: Realize – Guardian of Rebirth. If you already played it on either platform before, you won’t find anything extra here. If you haven’t, the Switch release is the best way to experience this now albeit at a higher price than PS4 for the hybrid playable nature of the console. While some visual novels or adventure games sometimes struggle on Switch with visuals, Future Blessings ran great across the board for me.

When it comes to Switch specific features, Code: Realize – Future Blessings has full touchscreen support which is always a welcome addition for visual novels on the platform. It scales well docked and handheld with the option to play using traditional controllers as well. The Nintendo Switch version of this game is easily the best version of the lovely fandisc right now since it offers the unique options only the Switch can bring to the table in terms of playing on the go or at home. Code: Realize – Future Blessings also supports the Nintendo Switch Online cloud save backup if you own a Switch Lite and a regular Switch and play on both. I regularly transferred my save across both systems over the last week while reading it again.

Overall, Code: Realize – Future Blessings on Nintendo Switch is as excellent as it was on PlayStation systems before but it offers the ability to play on the go and at home on the same system seamlessly. Having full touch support is always a great feature as well for any visual novel. Over the last week, I’ve been deep into playing Code: Realize – Future Blessings and Yumeutsutsu Re:Master on Nintendo Switch and appreciate the form factor even more with no wasting time trying to sync saves or being forced into TV or handheld mode like I was with many visual novels on PS4 and PS Vita. If you skipped out on this on PS4 or PS Vita, now is the best time to get back to Cardia and more in Code: Realize – Future Blessings. It is definitely looking like the Switch is soon going to be the home of otome games with the likes of Collar x Malice and more coming to the system in the future in the West.

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A lesser-known Games Workshop title, it was one that kept me and my dad up way past my bedtime, despite it being genuinely pretty complex. A few years ago the digital version was released on PC, Vita, PS4, and mobile, along with the 4th Edition ruleset, and now the same version has come to the Nintendo Switch.

The first thing I remember most about the board game was the vast selection of hand-painted character cards. A multitude of heroes, villains and monsters were yours for the choosing, each with slightly different stats and styles. The second thing I remember is the punishing difficulty.

Ostensibly, Talisman is about rolling a dice and moving around a board in whichever direction. The outer board is essentially the wilderness, comprised of forests and meadows, with a settlement of some kind in each corner. Each time you land on an outer square you draw an Adventure Card, which may present you with an item or event, or a fight. Combat is so fast it’s almost pointless, as you and your opponent (AI or player) simply roll the dice, add the value to your Strength or Craft value (which both do the same but apply to either warrior or magic classes). The final score determines who wins. If it’s a player; they lose one of their three lives and deal with the consequences (being robbed, for example, and losing all of their gold).

The inner board is where it’s at, though. By the time you reach this area you should have survived enough trials that you’re a tougher prospect for lurking enemies, and you’ll be in a better position to seize the Crown of Command, the McGuffin that allows you to pretty much dominate every other player or creature on the board until all that’s left is you atop a pile of bodies.

Unfortunately, the Digital Edition retains the difficulty and complexity of the original game and does very little to explain its systems properly to you. This, coupled with the speed at which the game moves, does nothing but disorient you, and unless you’re here for the nostalgia like me, I wonder why you’d stay at all.

The artwork is still pretty enough, but the vast majority of characters are locked behind paywalls and you need to buy the expansions to make them available. To me, this is the biggest crime of all, when a £17 game has over £80 worth of additional content. Sure, it’s optional, but the game simply doesn’t make you want to spend money and so it feels a little cheeky.

Ironically, my biggest issue with Talisman is that it’s so similar to the source, and the source isn’t far shy of 40 years old. Times have changed a lot and, despite the many expansions and revisions the board game has seen, it’s still an overly complex and sometimes genuinely unfair experience. Fans of the original game may find the Digital Edition enjoyable, but the fact that so many characters are locked behind microtransactions, and the overall experience often amounts to a high-speed gankfest, I find it hard to recommend Talisman to anyone but the hardcore fanbase.

The post Talisman Digital Edition review appeared first on GodisaGeek.com.

Code: Realize – Guardian of Rebirth is a game that introduced many console visual novel fans to the otome genre. If you’ve never played an otome game before, the genre is targeted at a female audience. Structurally, this visual novel sub-genre usually involves you playing as a woman who has multiple potential paths with romantic interests in the game. The way the paths unfold and how the story progresses to multiple endings is always interesting in a good otome visual novel. In the last few years, the PS Vita has been home to the best localised otome releases and it is good to see the first of many great otome releases finally hit the Switch in the form of Code: Realize – Guardian of Rebirth.

Code: Realize – Guardian of Rebirth (stylised as Code Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~) has you playing as Cardia, a young woman carrying a poison within her body. She can’t touch anything and is shunned by the world and called a monster, and so she sets off to find her father and discover the truth of her body. The story takes place in a steampunk setting with gorgeous artwork and excellent music. It involves various historic figures like Van Helsing, Lupin, and more. There are multiple paths Cardia can take in this story offering vastly different perspectives and endings. If you’ve never played this before and are a fan of otome games, this is definitely worth getting as it remains one of the best of the otome genre.

In terms of content, this release offers nothing over the PS Vita original. On PS4, this game was packaged alongside Code: Realize ~Future Blessings~ which is a fandisc (expansion to the original story). If you already played it on either platform before, you won’t find anything extra here. If you haven’t, the Switch release is the best way to experience this now albeit at a higher price than PS4 for the hybrid playable nature of the console. While some visual novels or adventure games sometimes struggle on Switch for whatever reason, Guardian of Rebirth ran great across the board for me.

When it comes to Switch specific features, Code: Realize – Guardian of Rebirth has full touchscreen support. You can also play using traditional button controls as well and the game scales up well on the big screen when docked. The Nintendo Switch version of Code: Realize – Guardian of Rebirth is the definitive version of Otomate’s classic visual novel for me since it lets you play on the go (and has touchscreen support) and at home when docked on a TV. It also supports the Nintendo Switch Online cloud save backup if you own a Switch Lite and a regular Switch and play on both.

Guardian of Rebirth is the best otome game available on Nintendo Switch right now. While Nintendo’s hybrid console has been slowly becoming a fantastic place to experience visual novels, it is great to see Aksys Games bring the top tier otome games starting with a great introduction to the genre in the form of Code: Realize – Guardian of Rebirth. I can’t wait to play Collar x Malice and more from Aksys Games again when more otome releases from them start hitting Nintendo Switch in the near future.

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Nurse Love Addiction on PS Vita was one of the big surprises for me back in 2017 when I reviewed it. It was one of the rare visual novels that managed to hold my attention across the multiple routes and various endings with excellent art, a lovely piano score, and superlative voice acting. The story was full of loads of twists with some slightly gruesome endings. I’ve been playing it and Nurse Love Syndrome over the last few weeks on Nintendo Switch.

You play as Asuka Osachi who is a budding nurse at the Teito Nursing School with her sister Nao. The story is full of a few anime tropes, slice of life moments, and loads of character development for not just Asuka but also the colourful cast. Unlike some visual novels that have a plethora of different characters, Nurse Love Addictions focuses on the good and bad routes for four specific characters. Each of the endings are unique and don’t waste your time.

Nurse Love Addiction on Nintendo Switch gets a lot right but it also is held back by a few annoying problems that are very visible when docked. In terms of content, this release has everything the original game had on PS Vita and PC. If you’ve already played it to completion on either of those platforms, you aren’t missing anything here but for new players, the Switch version is a good way to experience a great story. It also makes good use of the Switch input options letting you control the whole visual novel only with the touchscreen or a combination of button and touch controls, or just buttons.

The issues with the port are evident when played docked. Character portraits aren’t scaled correctly and are a bit blurry compared to the rest of the game. Some of the pre-rendered videos are also lower quality. This is obvious even with the publisher and developer logos when you boot up the game being low resolution. These issues are much less pronounced when playing handheld. If you only play visual novels handheld, this port is likely going to have no issues for you.

Overall, Nurse Love Addiction is a fine addition to the growing library of quality visual novels on Nintendo Switch. While it is disappointing that the developers will not be addressing the port issues as confirmed to me, if you play handheld, this is absolutely worth your time. It has been great revisiting Asuka’s stories years after experiencing them for the first time.

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Switch Re:port covers the Nintendo Switch port/version of a game newly released on the platform. Steins;Gate 0 originally came out in 2016 on PS4 and PS Vita, and was scored 9.5/10 PS Vita.

I’ve written about Steins;Gate a few times already over the years and it remains one of my favourite media franchises of all time. The original anime, visual novel, and remake visual novel are all well worth playing or watching. When PQube Games announced a localisation of Steins;Gate 0, I was a bit skeptical. Steins;Gate had the best endings and was great overall so I didn’t really see the need of an alternate take. Overall, Steins;Gate 0 is a great visual novel and something I didn’t know I wanted until I got to experience it on PS4 and PS Vita.

In Japan, Steins;Gate 0, Steins;Gate: My Darling’s Embrace, and Steins;Gate Linear Bounded Phenogram were released in a single package but there’s been no announcement of the third game in that list for Switch in the West yet. Spike Chunsoft America surprise released both Steins;Gate 0 and Steins;Gate: My Darling’s Embrace on Nintendo Switch a few weeks ago. While I’m still playing through the latter, I’ve already played Steins;Gate 0 on both PS4 and PS Vita and it has been great seeing 5pb bring a proper visual novel in the Steins;Gate universe to Switch after Elite.

I will assume you have already played Steins;Gate, Elite, or watched the anime at least before considering getting Steins;Gate 0. You absolutely should not play this as your first taste of the universe. If you haven’t played Steins;Gate, there’s no real excuse with it being available on almost every platform including iOS now in some form or another. Content wise, Steins;Gate 0 is exactly the same on Switch as it is on other platforms. Read my review of the PS Vita release here.

On Switch, in terms of visuals, Steins;Gate 0 looks good both docked and handheld. I did notice some slight delay in menu transitions on Switch that aren’t there on PS4. Screenshots are blocked during cutscenes on Switch but video capture is supported alongside screenshots elsewhere. The biggest disappointment of this port is the lack of any touchscreen support. I thought Elite not having touchscreen support on Switch would be a one off but it looks like 5pb isn’t interested in allowing the Switch ports to reach their full potential. Visual novels on devices with a touchscreen should always have touch support to progress dialogue as a bare minimum. One other oddity is in the help menu on Switch that only has a controller layout while the PS4 help menu has story information, controller layout, tips for the game, and character profiles

Steins;Gate 0 on Nintendo Switch is finally a modern portable release of the visual novel I can recommend to fans of the original Steins;Gate. While I hoped for touchscreen support, this gets the rest right. If you played the original Steins;Gate on any system or watched the anime, get Steins;Gate 0 on Nintendo Switch. Having now played it on PS4, PS Vita, and PC, it is definitely best on Switch with the ability to play on the go or at home on the big screen. It isn’t a perfect conversion, but the advantages of it on Switch definitely outweigh the menu issues and the lack of touchscreen support. However, if you’ve already played it, there’s nothing here to warrant another purchase.

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Spirit Hunter: Death Mark is a fantastic horror game, and it is my top horror games of all time with the original Corpse Party. It nailed the atmosphere, art, music, and story. My expectations were pretty high for NG but I was a little afraid of it being a follow up that might tread on the same ground as the first game. Thankfully, I was wrong and Spirit Hunter: NG not only is a fantastic follow up to Death Mark but it managed to impress me even more with the gameplay additions and story pacing.

You’re probably wondering whether you need to play Spirit Hunter: Death Mark before Spirit Hunter: NG or whether you can play Spirit Hunter: NG directly. You will notice a few easter eggs in Spirit Hunter: NG if you’ve played Spirit Hunter: Death Mark but both games are very much standalone so don’t worry about starting here or there.

Unlike Spirit Hunter: Death Mark (or Death Mark as it was called until now), Spirit Hunter: NG is all about exposing horror from everyday life and locations. You play as Akira Kijima who was adopted by his aunt after his mother passed away. A few strange events see Akira end up taking care of Ami Kijima who is basically his little sister now. She has disappeared after a certain incident and Akira’s story involves various horrors concerning legends of the past and more supernatural elements. There are multiple endings in Spirit Hunter: NG but thankfully replaying older segments is super quick thanks to a very fast skip option.

The gameplay is still a combination of visual novel-like story segments, choices, reaction moments, investigations, critical choices, and grid based movement. Spirit Hunter: NG adds a new mechanic where Akira can touch the bloody portion of certain objects to understand a situation better or learn more about what happened in the past. He can also react to other character dialogue through an attitude system that can increase character bonds. The critical decisions that can result in a game over will get your adrenaline pumping but you can just retry if you fail. This kind of dampens the immediacy of some decisions. Spirit Hunter: NG also lets you pick a jump scare level and either tone down or up the scare factor, which is an interesting option.

I adore Spirit Hunter: Death Mark’s designs. The original box art revealed for the Japanese release is still one of my favorite pieces of box art this generation. Fumiya Sumio’s character designs and depiction of horror are superb. I was glad to see him return for Spirit Hunter: NG. The depiction of horror in ordinary places and locations is something I can’t imagine anyone else managing to do as well as Fumiya Sumio. The interface has gotten a nice upgrade here compared to Spirit Hunter: Death Mark. Overall, this release feels more polished.

Voice acting is very minimal sadly. Budget constraints are probably an issue but hopefully the next entry can have full voice acting because these games deserve it. The soundtrack is an eerie mix of upbeat music heard in the bar in town and a lot of atmospheric and more ethereal tunes that play in the more tense situations. You can listen to the music and check out the various CG images in a gallery in the main menu.

Having tried Spirit Hunter: NG on both PS4 Pro and Nintendo Switch, both options are great to experience this game but I am disappointed that the Nintendo Switch version features no touchscreen support to progress dialogue. I can understand it not being implemented in Spirit Hunter: Death Mark as it was the company’s first Switch release but not having it here is disappointing. The game looks great across the board and is a must play regardless of platform if you want a horror game that isn’t afraid to try out new things.

While it is too soon for me to say if Spirit Hunter: NG will be in my top horror games this generation, it most certainly is one of my favourite games this year and definitely my favourite horror game in 2019. I already loved Experience Inc.’s dungeon crawlers and I think they absolutely can nail horror experiences after not one but two fantastic experiences in a row. If you enjoy visual novels and are looking for a horror experience that isn’t just brainless jump scares, this is something you need to play.

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Without getting into spoilers, Trails of Cold Steel II picks up right after the events of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel. Unlike the original that focused more on the school aspect, everything is bigger and grander here with airships and more. Most of the characters you love are here and it is great to hear more voice acting. Pacing is still the same as the original release, but the addition of turbo mode helps a lot. At this point with both games released on multiple systems, it is best to count Trails of Cold Steel I and II as two parts of the same super long game.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II on PS4 has all the improvements of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel on PS4. This includes drastically better performance and visuals compared to the PS3 and PS Vita versions. I’ve only played a bit on PS3 and mostly stuck to PS Vita for both Cold Steel releases and the difference in performance and visuals is massive.

In terms of core story content, this is the same game available on PS3, PS Vita, and even PC. The PS4 version has a lot of the important features that were in the PC release like turbo mode that speeds things up (more so in battles) which is one of the best additions to a remaster ever. After using turbo outside battles for even a few minutes, it feels hard to go back. You can toggle this at anytime as well. In combat, it is a game changer. The whole experience just feels a lot better thanks to this. The combat system is still a great blend between the Materia system in Final Fantasy VII and Grandia’s nice aspects.

It isn’t a Falcom review without heavy praise for the music. Trails of Cold Steel II has amazing music that you will never tire of listening to. In terms of audio, the big draw for a lot of fans with this PS4 release is the addition of not only dual audio (the PS3 and PS Vita releases only have English voice acting), but the addition to the massive extra voiced content that was added for the English voice track on PC. XSEED really went all out with this release and I’m glad to see Trails of Cold Steel II finally see a definitive release with all content for a low asking price.

While the visual issues with Trails of Cold Steel II are similar to those in the original with things still feeling designed for handhelds, this release has a performance issue. The frame rate on PS4 Pro tanks in some situations. It doesn’t look like this will be patched either which is disappointing. Unlike the first game, Trails of Cold Steel II has a mostly stable frame rate of 60fps but it isn’t perfect thanks to those drops.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II on PS4 is the best value proposition for this game on any platform. It is a massive improvement over the PS3 and PS Vita version and it even includes some unexpected things like dual audio. XSEED Games definitely went the extra mile for this release not only in terms of game content, but also for the physical release. It is disappointing that the performance issues will not be fixed, but this is still the best way to play the game on console. With Trails of Cold Steel III out this September, now is the best time to jump into the series with both previous entries being available on PS4 at a low asking price. Trails of Cold Steel I and Trails of Cold Steel II are essentials for any JRPG fan.

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As with most visual novel or adventure games, a PC only release meant it is super low priority for me because I find it very hard to play these kinds of games on non portable devices. When Limited Run Games / Mighty Rabbit Studios announced they would be publishing a complete release with upgraded visuals, and more for PS4 and PS Vita, I knew it was finally time to see why everyone kept recommending I play this game. Ever since the end of May this year, I’ve been making progress and playing every day on both PS4 and PS Vita and the end result is very interesting on both platforms.

The House in Fata Morgana: Dreams of the Revenants Edition includes the main game, A Requiem for Innocence which is a companion game, and something never before released in English. Reincarnation is a voiced episode that is the only portion of this release featuring voice acting and one that is localised for the first time. This release also includes Short Stories that is yet another portion never before available in the West. All of this together makes this the most complete and definitive release of The House in Fata Morgana. It also features a music player and art gallery.

The House in Fata Morgana has a very interesting way of presenting the story to you. It begins with you waking up in a broken down mansion with a woman standing in front of you. You can’t remember your name or basically anything. The woman introduces herself as the maid of the mansion and asks you to come along to recollect your own memories by seeing what has happened in the mansion over generations. I absolutely don’t want to spoil the story but I will say it never seems to falter with delivery and has your attention almost all the way. Novectacle makes sure you spend hours getting attached to characters before making you regret doing it, but not in the same way the Danganronpa games deal with things. Everything feels more grounded and real here even though this is a story spanning different periods.

There is one moment about 75% into it where I feel like it struggled to maintain the rock solid pacing and felt tedious. This didn’t last long and the highs after this low were beyond worth it. The story is full of betrayal, love, conspiracy, death, grotesque imagery, and more. The House in Fata Morgana itself has multiple endings and some decisions require you to think quickly because you only get a few seconds to decide. Thankfully it also has tons of save slots so make sure you use them. The way everything comes together for the true end is magnificent.

Novectacle has patched in a very nifty feature on PS4 (there has been no patch on PS Vita yet) that lets you rewind. Most visual novels include skipping text that you have read or all text until you reach a choice. The House in Fata Morgana: Dreams of the Revenants Edition lets you rewind back to choices or even before. This is great for when you select a wrong choice and want to get back without having to reload a save you may or may not have had. Auto save is also implemented at every choice and this causes the game to take a few seconds before a choice is displayed to you. It is a bit annoying because you can always tell a choice is up next when the game freezes for a few seconds with no text box to be followed by the choice box.

There are loads of ways of bringing older visual novels to newer hardware. If a series is popular enough to get an anime, the Steins;Gate Elite approach is an option and that worked out really well. The new Yu-no remake that is seeing a console release later this year has completely redone art that hasn’t pleased everyone. For The House in Fata Morgana: Dreams of the Revenants Edition, the CG art has been adapted for widescreen and much higher resolution displays. The original game was made for 800 x 600 displays while this one has PS4 Pro support and even looks great on PS Vita. I love that the Vita version can be played with the touchscreen which is my favourite way of playing any visual novel. A few of the CGs have been cropped for widescreen, but having spent over 60 hours in the collection, I have no complaints about the art at all. I adore the very unique art style Moyataro has for the main game. Novectacle manages to even make the text boxes look absolutely gorgeous with subtle artwork changing per character.

Before getting into the music, only Reincarnation is voiced while the rest of the release doesn’t have any voice acting. The lack of voice acting is more than made up by the superlative atmosphere and music thanks to the audio design. The soundtrack features vocals but it has a very otherworldly feel to it reminding me of NieR: Automata‘s score. The tone the soundtrack has varies just like the story and it includes a generous serving of happy upbeat music with loads of atmospheric and relaxing songs. A few hours into the game, you will be very tempted to just play the music on your streaming platform of choice, but the soundtrack is too powerful in game to lose any impact by listening to the songs outside the game before experiencing them in-game.

I’ve praised this collection a lot so far but barring the pacing issues in one portion of the latter half of the game, the biggest real downside to this release is the long load times for choices when the game is doing an auto save. If you do own a PS Vita, you will be glad to know that this release is cross buy letting you buy it once and get both versions, but the caveat is that there is no cross save. This ensured I just stuck with PS4 for a majority of my playthrough since I wasn’t interested in fast forwarding when I switched from console to portable.

The House in Fata Morgana: Dreams of the Revenants Edition is worth it not only for new players, but also fans of the original game on PC because it has enough content to justify getting the new edition. Players who have already played the base game, but only want the new content can use a nifty back door feature to unlock everything as well. The House in Fata Morgana is a story I won’t be forgetting for a long time. I’ve not stopped listening to the soundtrack ever since I finished the true ending and only want more visual novel fans to experience this. I’m very glad I refused to watch any trailers before playing this and went into it without knowing anything about it. It is a haunting and magical experience.

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If you’ve never played a Fate/EXTELLA entry, you can start with this, but you will be even more lost with the story than usual. LINK is the direct sequel to The Umbral Star on the same platforms that saw the original release. In fact, XSEED Games outdid themselves with not only a multi-platform release, but one even including the PS Vita when most publishers just skip it in the West. After doing a PS4 and PS Vita only release for The Umbral Star before other ports, LINK arrives on PS4, PS Vita, Switch, and PC and tells the tale of Charlemagne who is new to Fate.

Barring the story mode that has its own branching paths allowing you to experience different storylines with a true ending as well, LINK features an online mode which is something I didn’t really expect, and an Extra Battle mode that unlocks as you complete more of the story. While The Umbral Star’s story had portions where you had to sit through loads of visual novel-like segments, the pacing in LINK is much better and you don’t really get bored. You can always just press the touchpad on the controller to skip the story to get right into the battles as well.

Gameplay changes here take Fate/EXTELLA LINK from being a fan service focused hack-and-slash to a game I can safely recommend to any warriors style game fan. Having skills mapped to the face buttons with their own cooldowns is great, but the Noble Phantasm build up is what makes this combat shine. You activate Moon Drive after your meter is filled and then start filling up the Noble Phantasm meter through drops while in Moon Drive mode; this is much better than the system in The Umbral Star. Having so many new entrants to LINK like Astolfo and Scathach to complement the large roster of the previous game is also welcome. A lot of games like this lock a ton of content behind DLC, but I’m very impressed by just how much the base game includes from the get go.

The Umbral Star suffered visually because it probably was an up port from the PS Vita version. This was a boon for the Vita release then because it played very nice and looked fine. For LINK, the developers have clearly targeted a more powerful system. LINK looks and runs beautifully on PS4 Pro. Animations are slick and the game feels much quicker overall. I was initially hoping to play this on the Switch since I enjoy Warriors style games on portables, but just seeing this on TV running so well made me stick with the PS4 version. The last Warriors game I played on PS4 was Dynasty Warriors 9 and we all know how that turned out.

Voice acting is still in Japanese only, but the music and audio design is very nice. This is one of the rare cases where I’d recommend getting the higher priced edition if you care about owning music from the game because it is very good both inside and outside the game.

Despite the story being skipable if you aren’t too invested in the Fate universe or skipped the previous entry, I was hoping it would be a bit longer since I did play through The Umbral Star and this is a follow up. Fans who played The Umbral Star a ton might be disappointed with some assets and reuse that make this feel like a 1.5 release more than a proper sequel when it absolutely is for gameplay and content.

Fate/EXTELLA LINK in a lot of ways is what I was hoping Fate/EXTELLA: The Umbral Star would be. This is a fantastic example of a developer taking feedback and improving on the core for a concept to deliver a game that isn’t just a great game for Fate fans but one that’s a must play for Warriors games fans. While I wish the story was better than what it is, it is great to see a Warriors game of this quality on non Nintendo platforms as well. Fate/EXTELLA LINK is a worthy addition to your library if you enjoy this style of gameplay and have wanted something outside the usual Koei Tecmo releases.

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The one question I get asked with almost every Nihon Falcom game review is can someone start with this game? Yes, you absolutely can start with The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel on PS4. In fact, you might want to do it since Cold Steel II will arrive in a few months on PS4 and Cold Steel III is due this Fall. While most people know Falcom for the superlative Ys franchise, there’s a ton to love with Trails of Cold Steel and Trails in the Sky. Hopefully Falcom or another developer licenses the Sky games to port them to current consoles in the future.

Trails of Cold Steel is set in the Erebonian Empire and is a very long game that has a story that isn’t just concluded in the follow up, but one that lasts 4 full games. Social classes are still prevalent with tension brewing across the land. Class VII is where you come into the picture as Rean Schwarzer who is the protagonist. He is complemented by colourful classmates who have their own unique personalities and traits. Trails of Cold Steel is one of the rare games where talking to every NPC is worth your time. The localisation is beyond superb. The amount of care put into even the smallest details is shocking.

In terms of core story content, this is the same game available on PS3, PS Vita, and even PC. The PS4 version has a lot of the important features that were in the PC release like turbo mode that speeds things up (more so in battles) which is one of the best additions to a remaster ever. After using turbo outside battles for even a a few minutes, it feels hard to go back. You can toggle this at anytime as well. In combat, it is a game changer. The initial prologue battles last under a minute now. The combat system is still a great blend between the Matera system in Final Fantasy VII and Grandia’s nice aspects.

You probably know how much I love Falcom Sound Team JDK’s music by now. I still consider them some of the best and most versatile composers out there. Trails of Cold Steel has a superb soundtrack and I never grew tired of listening to it. The big draw for a lot of fans is the addition of not only dual audio (the PS3 and PS Vita releases only have English voice acting), but the addition to the massive extra voiced content that was added for the English voice track on PC. XSEED really went all out with this release and I’m glad to see Trails of Cold Steel finally see a definitive release.

The only real flaw in this release is that since this was originally designed for PS3 and PS Vita, it looks quite dated in many areas even when running at 4K. Every other issue I had with the PS Vita version has been addressed here. One nifty addition is the ability to transfer your PS Vita or PS3 save to the PS4 version and pick right up. The one downside to this is you can’t transfer it back to either old version of the game. The cross save is a one way sync and while it isn’t ideal, it is another welcome addition.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel on PS4 is the best value proposition for this game on any platform. It is a massive improvement over the PS3 and PS Vita version and it even includes some unexpected things like dual audio. When I picture what I’d want for a remaster or port of a game I love, XSEED delivered in spades with this release. It even has a SteelBook with the physical release. I can’t wait to replay Trails of Cold Steel II when it releases on PS4 before Trails of Cold Steel III sees a release in the West later this year. I will never hesitate to go back to a game with these fantastic characters.

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Persona 3 is a very special game. It introduced the Persona franchise to a ton of new people on the PS2 and saw an enhanced release there before getting a brilliant PSP release with new content. Since the game has been the oldest of the lot, this rhythm game has done a ton of great stuff for Persona 3 fans.

The core dancing gameplay here is nearly the same as it was in Persona 4: Dancing All Night with one addition. Notes fly out from the middle of the screen towards the targets on each side, and your aim is to input the current note type button combinations with correct timing. Double notes are new to both P3D and P5D and they feel pretty pointless because you can already have two single notes after each other that feel the same for the most part. Hold notes, fever time, and all the other mechanics in Persona 4: Dancing All Night make a return. While that game had a story mode that was hit or miss for fans, things are very different here. In addition to having less songs in the base game, there isn’t a traditional story mode.

That has been replaced by a Social mode that has visual novel sections split up into various chapters per character. You unlock them by fulfilling various conditions through gameplay like clearing a set number of songs or using different costumes. If you want to see everything, get ready to play all the songs on multiple difficulties. I had a blast with the social section here because I can’t get over how good the Persona 3 cast looks with these high resolution character models. The problem with the story mode is how grindy it gets to view all the events. You need to replay songs on different difficulties and since I did the mall on Hard at first, I had to play many on lower difficulties to unlock more Social events. As you unlock more Social events per character, you get to explore their rooms and the last three levels for each character contain hidden object minigames that reward you with more cosmetics.

Persona 3’s soundtrack is very unique. While most JRPGs went for a grand orchestral score, Shoji Meguro et al blended various genres well and Lotus Juice’s rap is timeless. Persona 3 has had an arrangement album, multiple movie releases, 3 sets of game soundtracks, and this has led to a great selection of music (albeit a short list compared to P4D) that represents the Persona 3 brand very well. The great thing about Persona 3 is all the standard game music works well here. Mass Destruction is a classic and Atlus even included music from Persona Q, here which gives it another advantage over P5D’s tracklist.

Visually, this release will only make it harder for everyone to go on without a Persona 3 remaster or remake. The cast has been brought to this generation very well. The UI for P3D uses a lot of the signature Persona 3 blue well and, while I’m disappointed with the amount of content in this release, this definitely feels like a true release in the Persona 3 family of games (yes, it feels weird saying that but here we are). Make sure to spend time in the character viewer giving Junpei the dumbest outfits. The one visual flaw that affects gameplay is the blue scratch note rings that should’ve been another colour since normal notes are blue here, and it’s annoying when two different notes are the same colour.

Given how many times fans have been able to buy a physical copy of Persona 3 or a game with Persona 3 characters, it would’ve been great to have one for the Vita release of Dancing in Moonlight, but Atlus decided to go digital only here. Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight is certainly the better of both dancing games seeing a release on Vita and PS4 for sure. The upgraded visuals and character models for the Persona 3 cast are great and the song selection is almost perfect. I wish it had more songs in the base game,though, and will definitely pick up a few DLC songs.

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Persona 5 is by far the most successful title for Atlus worldwide and it also happens to the their newest flagship release. This has advantages and disadvantages for both fans and for the dancing game. On the plus side, the game is still fresh in people’s minds and a whole new audience discovered Atlus through Persona 5. The problem lies in how little time the game has had to receive remixes and arrangements compared to other Persona games.

The core dancing gameplay here is nearly the same as it was in Persona 4: Dancing All Night, but with one addition. Notes fly out from the middle of the screen towards the targets on each side, and your aim is to input the current node type button combinations with correct timing. Double notes are new to both P3D and P5D and they feel pretty pointless because you can already have two single notes after each other that feel the same for the most part. Hold notes, fever time, and all the other mechanics in Persona 4: Dancing All Night make a return.

While that game had a story mode that was hit or miss for fans, things are very different here. In addition to having less songs in the base game, there isn’t a traditional story mode. That has been replaced by a Social mode that has visual novel sections split up into various chapters per character. You unlock them by fulfilling various conditions through gameplay like clearing a set number of songs or using different costumes. If you want to see everything, get ready to play all the songs on multiple difficulties. The actual interactions aren’t great even though they are fully voiced very well by the original cast.

Persona 5’s soundtrack is amazing. It has memorable battle music, great dungeon music, and is worth owning for any fans of the game. A lot of the songs haven’t transitioned to the rhythm game well, though, and feel out of place. The new remixes exclusive to this game are very good but they don’t make up for the small list of songs in the game overall. Persona 4 and Persona 3 have been out for many years more and have received various albums with remixes and arrangements so they kind of have an unfair advantage. I was hoping Atlus would wait for enough material before doing a Persona 5 rhythm game instead of releasing Dancing in Starlight in its current state. The opening song is probably the best track here.

You probably already know how amazing the UI and menus are in Persona 5. They have translated well to the rhythm gameplay and game in general. It felt great seeing the Persona 5 environments and cast on the Vita and it made me hope we get a portable release of the game in the future. Atlus has done a great job with the visuals on Vita and in the outfits for characters in the game. There is a bit of slowdown in some songs when there’s a lot happening on-screen. I tested this on two different Vitas. The main menu has a few transitions that could be snappier as well. While Persona 4 Dancing All Night was built for the Vita, P5D and even P3D feel like they are pushing the ageing handheld a bit too much.

Overall, Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight is definitely the weaker of the two games. It has had less time on the market and hasn’t really received enough arrangements or remixes that complement the base game music. While it’s mostly great on its own, I’m not a fan of many of the songs in a rhythm game setting. Hopefully the DLC that’s about to see a steady flow soon fixes this issue but the base game should’ve had all the DLC from the get go given the asking price compared to how much content P4D had. The lack of a physical release stings as well since there are multiple games seeing physical releases on Vita into early next year.

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In what will feel familiar to many there has been an invasion by an alien menace called the Meroptians, and as one of humanity’s best pilots you must set out to eradicate the threat. You’ll fly from left to right through a series of levels blowing ships and creatures out of the sky, collecting power-ups and blasting things to smithereens – so far, so very shoot ‘em uppy. What’s different here is that there’s a rogue-like element whereby once you’ve lost all your lives you can either retire and keep your score intact, or you can forfeit your score and continue; a lifesaver for those who would rather finish the game than chase a big number. The action follows a non-linear path through the campaign by way of a series of forking paths not unlike the way Lylat Wars was structured. Some levels have one part, some have several, and each part is punctuated by a boss fight.

Defeating the boss at the end of a level grants a new weapon type for you to experiment with, although be warned that if you don’t continue after death you lose access to those weapons as well. Aside from basic bullets you can get lasers, diagonal bullets, bombs and, my personal favourite, the Scorts. The Scorts are little additional ships that fly alongside you and fire off their own lasers as you fire yours, although they don’t take any damage which makes them incredibly handy. If you move your ship back or forward the Scorts swing between the front and back of the vessel, and if you time it right they can be used to absorb bullets closing in on you as well as to concentrate fire on a smaller target.

The levels aren’t exactly lookers, but you won’t really notice that when you’re zipping around trying not to get hit. There’s also more going on than just things scuttling around and bullets flying all over the place; levels are full of other hazards like falling debris, asteroids, and plants that grow out of the walls. You can never really be sure what you’re going up against until you take on each level for the first time, so you’ll most likely play through a couple of times before you start aiming for the higher scores and those multiple endings.

There’s not really a lot wrong with Super Hydorah. It’s a perfectly competent shooter and it lands all the basics, plus it’s pretty damn cheap. The thing is it doesn’t do much that sets it apart. You won’t find anything to match the thrill of Bug Princess or Ikaruga, but this is meant as a throwback to the 80s and in that regard it does its job well. There’s a great sci-fi soundtrack from Gryzor87, a nifty little CRT effect, two player co-op (with Player 2 able to join a continued game) and a co-op mini game to boot, making Super Hydorah a rather decent package. Its no-frills approach means it’s easy to pick up and play even if it doesn’t add anything to the genre, but if you’re after a quick shoot ‘em up fix then Locomalito have you covered.

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All alone on an unfamiliar planet, your little astronaut is injured and limping, forced to look for shelter. This allows the game to communicate both the sense of loneliness and the beauty of your surroundings. It also has a stunning day/night cycle that looks superb as you traverse the barren landscape.

After collapsing, you wake up inside a cave, fully replenished and ready to go again. Exiting the cave, you’re greeted with a lush and verdant world filled with all kinds of flora and fauna; the world isn’t quite as barren as you’re led to believe. As you run, jump and climb your way across this beautiful landscape, taking in the sights and sounds of such a colourful place, you’ll begin to wonder what exactly this game is about.

That’s when the robots arrive.

Remember how I mentioned that background action earlier? It’s fantastic to see the robots’ ships landing and how it disturbs the animals that roam the wilds. The game has a real Avatar look to it (the James Cameron kind, not the bald kid with the arrow on his head), with such vibrant colours in its plant life and the way its alien wildlife is designed; this is brought home all the more when an outside force comes down to wreck the joint.

This outside force doesn’t care for you, either. This is where the Inside inspiration comes into play, as you’re forced to run and hide from the robot menace. It doesn’t come with the sickening brutality of Inside or Limbo, but Planet Alpha does hit you just as hard as its robots gun you down or the giant, War of the Worlds-like walking machines obliterate you. No, literally your little character is obliterated by their laser cannons. It’s not just the machines that will kill you either, as some of the wildlife sees you as a threat and will come after you. They’re also not fond of the invaders, so you can use this to your advantage sometimes, drawing the robots to their demise while you escape in the confusion.

That kind of logic is what drives a lot of Planet Alpha’s puzzles. Most are simply a case of pushing a block the right way so you can use it as a stepping stone to a higher ledge, but some will test you a little more. That day and night cycle I mentioned earlier? For some reason, at certain points you can control it, essentially rotating the planet at high speed using the left and right triggers depending on the direction you want. Sometimes this is to rotate something in the room you’re in, whereas other times require certain plants to be active for you to progress; something you will have to figure out at speed sometimes too.

And that is where Planet Alpha falls down. There are times where you will need superhuman reflexes to avoid death. This would be fine if it only happened once or twice, but it happens an awful lot in the 4-5 hours you’ll spend in the game. It cheapens the experience somewhat, when death feels totally beyond your control and you’re forced to replay that section again. It’s almost like the game wants you to fail, in order to go back and do it again armed with this knowledge of the future. If that’s the case, it’s a horrible gameplay mechanic; I suspect that’s it’s more a case of some sloppy design, however.

Most of the game is good fun, with fluid platforming that actually reminded me of the old classics Flashback and Another World, but in the second half of the game, the level design becomes more and more awkward and deaths feels more and more cheap as a result. It also recycles the same idea several times during that time, and that idea is the worst in the entire game. It just served to frustrate and bore me, and I’d roll my eyes and groan every time I knew I was about to go through another of those awful recycled sections. It almost ruined the experience.

But stick with Planet Alpha, because it’s more than that. The second half definitely lets it down at times, but when it gets things right, it’s an incredibly atmospheric and cinematic experience. Sure, it’s probably an hour or two longer than necessary, and it could definitely have done without those recycled bits (I’m being deliberately vague on those, to avoid spoiling anything); but it has some truly ingenious moments and a subtle story that will have you thinking about it for a while afterwards.

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That sounds really negative right off the bat, especially as I loved Rainbow Moon so much I played it twice, but the truth is I was struggling with difficulty and having to grind for XP and Skill Stones within the first two hours, which just seemed like bad pacing to me.

The plot follows Damion and his friend Layne, monster slayers-in-training, who end up magically bound to the apprentice mage, Ashly, when they tumble from their realm in the sky to the world below. Initially setting out with only their freedom as motivation, the three eventually become friends and find themselves responsible for the fate of the world.

As a means to ferry you from one encounter to another, it’s passable, but while the story seems more involved than Rainbow Moon’s (having more than one protagonist helps), it’s not particularly new. The writing is an uneven hodge-podge of out-of-place slang, grandiose posturing and uncomfortable flirting, and there’s an awful lot of dialogue to read. So much so that I reached a point around four hours in and began to abuse the “Skip Dialogue” option so much that I may have missed a few story beats. There are so many moments where the dialogue is laboured and awkward in service of an unfunny joke, or worse, padding, that it becomes incredibly tiring after a while.

Luckily, it’s not all talking, and exploring the world will take up the bulk of your time. It’s mostly open, bar locked gates that can be opened with the relevant key or item, and enemies litter the landscape waiting to jump you if you get to close (unless you get them first, of course). Combat is a large part of Rainbow Skies, and it’s somewhat hit and miss at times.

As with Rainbow Moon, you’ll move your characters around a grid-based arena, attempting to flank your enemy, or move within range of a melee or special attack. The main issue is that the damage numbers don’t seem to change much regardless of which attack you choose. Taking pains to manoeuvre yourself to use a special ability is often pointless, as a simple thwack with your base weapon is often just as powerful. Meanwhile, bastard-hard difficulty spikes abound, with enemies often dealing in excess of double your damage. S curatives are hard to come by in the early game and you won’t have much space to carry them, such difficulty spikes (should you survive them) often necessitate a long slog back to the nearest healer to pay for regeneration.

Ironically, toward the mid-game the difficulty skews the other way when you learn how to tame enemies to fight for you. Once this happens you’ll barely want to use your protagonists, because the tamed enemies are way, way more powerful. It’s irritating and imbalanced, and an issue you can only really overcome if you’re happy to grind the hell out of everything to level up your characters.

Progression is handled well, though, as you’ll level up in the traditional way by earning XP, but can only increase your stats with Skill Stones, little artefacts that drop from enemies during and after battles. These are used to boost HP, Strength, Luck, etc, while special books allow you to learn new moves and attacks. Armour is all changeable, and actually alters your appearance with each piece equipped, which might seem a bit “so what? It’s 2018”, but is a big deal for an Eastern RPG because they don’t usually focus on the cosmetic.

Given how much I enjoyed Rainbow Moon I was expecting to love the sequel, but instead found the experience to be decidedly okay. It’s pretty enough, but the irritating sound effects and uneven pacing and difficulty mar the adventure. It is saved somewhat by the progression system, the wealth of gear and weapons, and the fact that it’s still just as lovably compelling to explore this world, but it’s far too reliant on the grind and that Skip Dialogue option to be more than a distraction best enjoyed in small chunks.

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Cosmic Star Heroine is a turn based RPG that has visible encounters like in Chrono Trigger with an influence from the golden age of JRPGs. The story is great and it has you following Alyssa who wants to save the day with a group of very interesting characters. It’s paced well and there’s no real padding here in this adventure that is shorter than your usual JRPG from that era. I’m a big fan of modern takes on the classic JRPG formula that actually manage being as good as the memory of older games is. You have certain games that try to be like old school JRPGs but failing to actually be interesting enough to play all the way through like Lost Sphear or some that nail a few aspects but fall flat on others like I am Setsuna. Cosmic Star Heroine is a modern JRPG that has the best of old school and new school.

Combat is sublime, and there’s an interesting blend of various mechanics here. The characters you encounter not only play differently but are also interesting enough. If you’ve played Chrono Trigger, this plays out like that for combat. Enemies are visible in the field and running into one will initiate combat. I haven’t played a turn based game with combat I enjoyed this much since Persona 5. The way you stack and then unleash massive skills never gets old. There is no MP here and you only have a fixed number of times you can use certain skills before having to defend and recharge them. You gain Style as you fight and have skills that unleash massive damage through consuming all your Style. I cannot stress how great the combat is and how modern it feels despite being a tried and tested turn based combat experience. Exploring is also rapid and it never feels held back by 90s game design that some JRPGs suffered.

Visually, this is a slick looking game. I think this is my favourite retro aesthetic since Shovel Knight by far. The animated cutscenes from the SEGA CD era and the lovely character art make me wish this game had a proper art book I could buy. The polish seen in the art and animation extends to the user interface as well. It looks gorgeous on both a big screen TV and the Vita screen. I’ve been replaying it on PS4 and on Vita to see how it holds up across displays and there are no complaints when it comes to the visuals from me. The only area this slightly suffers is in load times. I had no trouble with actual in game performance but the load times being long are to be expected at this point given the Unity engine on the hardware.

While I’ve praised the visuals and gameplay, the standout element is easily the music. When people talk about the golden age of indie soundtracks with Braid, Super Meat Boy and the like, the modern golden age for indies includes Cosmic Star Heroine and VA-11 HALL-A alongside Shovel Knight. I think Cosmic Star Heroine has the most catchy battle theme since Persona 4 Golden’s Time to Make History. I never tire from listening to it and the soundtrack is top notch all the way until the end. This is easily HyperDuck SoundWorks’ best soundtrack ever and one of my favourite modern gaming soundtracks.

I know this port just releasing is a labor of love from Zeboyd Games but I wish it had a bit more. A lot of my complaints could be addressed in a future (potential) Switch port. Having played Chrono Trigger on iOS a few years ago, I love the touch screen implementation. I was hoping I could use the touchscreen here to progress dialog or tap enemies. The lack of cross-save is also a tad disappointing.

If you’re a fan of 16-bit JRPGs, this is a no brainer. Don’t bother with some of the big publishers that try and sell you games like this: this release is all you need. Cosmic Star Heroine is a fantastic JRPG with a kickass soundtrack and a sublime combat system. It is also one of the rare JRPGs that doesn’t waste your time thanks to great pacing. I can’t wait to buy the physical release whenever it happens.

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The reason for this remake of Secret of Mana is a little bit odd though. It’s a game that’s twenty-five years old and yet, before this remake it’s seen releases on Wii, Wii U, 3DS, iOS, Android and PC so it’s not like people who want to play it don’t already have an avenue, and despite its status as a classic game it’s faults are well documented, so why when remaking the whole game haven’t they been fixed?

Let’s get the basics out of the way, the aesthetic isn’t as bad as we initially feared. The character models for the protagonists are chunky, bright and well in keeping with the charm of the original; the NPCs and enemies, however, look considerably more basic. It’s a feeling that’s heightened when watching the cutscenes where in one of few changes to the game the camera makes use of the 3D environments and character models and takes up different angles, giving us a few close up glimpses. This serves to highlight how low poly the NPCs are and makes the voice acting seem more ridiculous because the mouths don’t move.

That’s right, there’s voice acting here and it’s…serviceable. At times it’s laughably bad, especially, once again in terms of the NPCs you encounter. Dialogue from incidental characters is delivered in a rote-like fashion and then there’s the shopkeepers who deliver their lines with all the enthusiasm of someone subjected to one of Arnold Rimmer’s slideshows all while dancing like they’re on MDMA. But, there are also the moments it’s really good, like when Randi, Popoi and Primm are having a discussion during a stay at an inn and it really feels natural, relaxed and like they’re enjoying this brief respite from their quest.

Aside from those changes the game is very much as it was before; the structure, story, combat and UI layout is practically identical to what went before, but this adherence to the subject matter really does work against it. We take a lot of modern game design for granted these days, things like knowing what status changes will take place before you buy a new piece of armour for instance, or what an item like a medicinal herb or royal jam will do upon use. How about how many of an item you already hold before you buy it? This is all information withheld from you when making purchases at shops. Then there’s the really small icon that sits on top of a piece of equipment when someone is using it, unless you look closely you may miss it and wind up selling it like I did early on and I wound up wasting 500GP.

So, despite the freshened look it’s been given, the game is still completely archaic in terms of how it’s all put together, which in a way should give purists a little bit of pleasure; but in regard to what games are like now it just doesn’t feel right. If you’re going to remake a game you might as well actually make a few improvements to things while you go along, as well as what I’ve already mentioned Square Enix could have attempted to improve your ally AI as well. Granted, the idea is that you would adventure with friends, but when they’re not available the AI is in play and, frankly they’re not very good, always standing in the path of enemy attacks and as a result quick to die or constantly getting stuck on scenery because of their terrible pathfinding routines. Thankfully they reappear by your side should you transition to the next screen though.

Just another thing about the new look though, as I said earlier, it isn’t that bad. Models are solid looking and there’s a good use of colour, the thing is it all still looks really basic, almost like an upscaled PS2 game. Then there’s the camera that feels a little bit too close to the action, I’d have really liked it if I could see more of the surrounding area on screen at once. I guess my camera issue is mitigated somewhat by the (admittedly lovely) 16bit mini-map in the top corner, but that’s not something I’m going to be looking at often in the middle of combat and then that really makes me wish the game had a proper overworld map with objective markers because it can be difficult to remember where places you’ve visited, or your current quest location is.

This all puts Secret of Mana in a very odd place in terms of who it’s aimed at; it’s not retro enough to please the enthusiasts and it’s too mechanically regressive to please newcomers. I mean, if you loved the original it’s pretty much the same game, just without the 16bit aesthetic, and if you can look past that then you’ll find the game you think of so affectionately. As for everyone else though, you’ll need to struggle through without many of the comforts you’re used to in games released these days. At the end of the day though, this has been treated with much more respect than another recently released old Squaresoft title, and for that the development team should feel good about themselves, it’s just a shame this isn’t quite as good as it could have been.

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Set in the 80s, this is another pastiche of the times when VHS and tape cassettes were en-vogue. Before you start yawning, the developers never lean into it any more than the fact it’s set in that period, and the collectibles are jokey piss-takes based on popular figures or products during the time.

You play as five youths, all with distinct skills and personalities that are somehow an unlikely group of friends. I don’t want to spoil too much, but after finding a corpse in the woods, the gang’s world is turned upside down thanks to finding the “Duat”, a mystical object that lets the holder see into the other world and chat to (and fight) ghostly apparitions of people who’ve gone before them.

This is all done via a tap of the R2 button (PS4), and while initially it seems a mechanic to let you learn about people, it quickly becomes a puzzle solving solution, because things in the ghost realm don’t appear in the real world, and thus allows for some excellent riddles that need solving. Eventually this progresses further, allowing you to control a ghost version of one of your gang while also still controlling the living, meaning you can go step on a ghost-floor-switch to enable the alive people to progress further.

At any time you can switch between characters at the tap of a button, and each of them have unique abilities. Chris swings a baseball bat and can climb (he’s the Mr. Average of the group), while Matt can shoot a plasma gun and hover for a short time over gaps. Biggy can move large objects and has a bigger health pool (and is general stronger) while Charlie can phase-blink-dash across gaps or to evade people, while swinging her whip. Kevin, Chris’ younger brother, can fart, blow up a balloon, or pull a greenie out of his nose. Yeah.

Combined, these elements make for some truly wonderful puzzle solving outside of the combat. You might be stumped for a while before realising that “Oh yeah, Matt can hover, right?” meaning you can get around objects in the top-down 2D world that let you carry on moving forward. Aside from one puzzle that everyone will get stumped on (solution: second row down, far left) they are intuitive and make you feel clever, which is an example of the very best kind of puzzle.

The combat feels great, and is kept fresh by the way the party system works. Initially you’ll be able to select all five characters, but as the game progresses this is switched up due to story beats which make things more difficult and force you to think differently. You can use health packs, bombs, and a kind of stun grenade (which you will definitely need later on) to give you the edge, and bar a few very late boss battles, it’s never too taxing.

On that note, here’s hoping a checkpoint is patched into the final release. As someone who doesn’t mind tricky battles, I’ve no problem trying something a few times, but three battles on the trot with no checkpoint and no health pickups is a bit much. It’s a blot on an otherwise exemplary example of an engaging, well designed game.

Other than that, there’s very little to complain about. The dialogue is well written and feels appropriate for the gang. The puzzles are fun, the combat is enjoyable, and it feels the right length. This is a game that doesn’t use its retro inspired nature as a selling point, it just feels right, and with nods to so many things we love (a few boss battles are straight up homages to Ghostbusters), it’s hard not to love Crossing Souls.

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You play as Flash Back (Apt name) in this tale of flashbacks and more that harkens back to the NES era with a lot of things that reminded me of both Dragon Quest and Earthbound but not in the best ways at all times. What opens up with the final boss fight results in a retelling of various scenes from before as you recall what happened to lead up to this moment. The Demon King and your party are facing off, but you can’t remember who is with you and why you’re there. The story is split up into various memory fragments that are at different times in the past. These have you playing through dungeons, levelling up, doing basic side quests, and more. What’s interesting is how grinding and equipment and things don’t really matter. Each memory is separate and anything you do in one doesn’t carry over to the other when it comes to things like money and equipment. I love how this game breaks down old school turn based JRPGs to the basics but also has its own humour going that holds things together.

Gameplay involves exploring a basic overworld map, moving from town to town depending on the situation, completing quests, and a lot of combat. Combat is turn based and it would fit right at home on the NES. In fact a lot of the design here feels like it was taken straight from that era. This results in some annoyances as well. In some cases movement between locations feels sluggish with too many random encounters and there are also some quirks about how interactions take place with NPCs here. I know a lot has been done to feel like an old school game but I was hoping that the influences would still have some conveniences of modern RPGs or modern games in general. The dungeons are quite nice and one of them early on even has you fighting against barrels of wine. This reminded me of that Asterix and Obelix scene where Obelix gets drunk for some reason. There are some decisions you get to make and there are multiple endings, but I was hoping for a more branching path outcome given the structure and premise of the game.

Visually there’s a combination of NES era sprite work and some more modern looking pixel art. I’m not a fan of some of the mismatch where your playable characters feel like NES era sprites while the actual Demon King looks a lot more detailed. Thankfully the actual memories you experience and dungeons all look very nice and have a certain charm that extends to the localization. There’s some decent humour here but nothing mindblowing. The big problem I have with the visuals is the interface. Playing this on the Switch in handheld mode already has some of the UI elements feeling a bit larger than they should be. This was a Vita game at first but having the same UI proportions when playing on a big TV through docked mode on the Switch results in everything being too big for its own good.

Conceptually there’s a lot to love here, but still a lot of it is forgettable. If this had a bit more effort put into it story wise and if it didn’t rely solely on one gimmick, The Longest Five Minutes would be an easy recommendation for any RPG fans. In its current state the asking price is a bit too much for an adventure that will likely not remain with you for long. If you do decide to get this, play it on a handheld. The visuals and design suit a portable play style a lot more than a big screen experience.

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If you’ve no clue why the name is beyond insane, well this is the ultimate version of a fighter that existed on PS3 and PC that was already an enhanced release of an arcade release in Japan. You’re probably wondering why anyone would release a fighting game this close to Dragon Ball FighterZ and even Dissidia Final Fantasy NT. I was shocked at the release date for this as well but after playing it, there’s definitely a niche for this kind of anime fighter. When I mentioned getting into the stuff Arc System Works is involved with, despite owning every single BlazBlue game and playing through the story modes, I haven’t actually had fun playing it as a fighter. Guilty Gear has been my go to game but BlazBlue just never clicked with me.

UNIST (the acronym for this game) hooked me in real good once I started spending time training and getting into the various systems at play here. In fact it feels like a nice middle ground between the Street Fighters and the anime fighters available today. In fact, despite its somewhat flashy (at least in animations) visuals during the crazier moments, it is relatively simple to get into. Meter management plays a big part of your learning here. There’s a GRD system here that can be molded into various things like a damage boost or you can use it to get out of sticky situations, but it isn’t something you can rely on to comeback or easily turn the tide of the current match. The tutorial while not as nice as the Revelator one that basically is the gold standard, does a great job. It is very detailed and teaches you everything from the absolute basics to Chain Shifts and mastering the GRD system. In addition to this, there’s a combo challenge mode and the usual modes you’d expect like survival mode and score and time attack modes.

Instead of just having a traditional arcade mode with 10 battles and a light story, there’s a whole visual novel like story mode called Chronicles that is split up by characters. Each character segment has its own chapters and I didn’t expect this to be interesting let alone long. It is meaty enough to satisfy me for what I look for in anime fighter story modes, but visually it is it sadly inconsistent. Spending time with any in game mode usually rewards you with currency you can use to unlock cosmetics for use online or different colours for characters. There’s also a gallery that has various promo videos, openings, and static art for the game and characters.

I’m a big fan of nice sprite work in fighters and I love the stuff on display here. The characters themselves are quite different from each other, but the animations and arenas are very slick. The environments are forgettable, but I expected that going into a game with what definitely has a lower budget than other Arc titles. The only real complaint I have with visuals is how the portraits themselves in the story mode visual novel sections and the portraits on near the health gauges look low resolution. In a lot of ways this feels like a barebones port of a PS3 game when it comes to visuals at least. The main menu is also very poorly thought out. You just have a list of everything together with no segregation.

Voice acting here is all in Japanese. Given how bigger titles like BlazBlue Central Fiction didn’t get a dub, I’m not surprised by the lack of one here. Raito’s soundtrack is really great. Even background music during stages is good but the highlight is the character battle themes and the opening music for sure. The problem here lies in the localization. There are some situations with broken sentence fragments and what feels like a direct translation without any thought to how things fit in context to the scene.

If you’ve been playing and sticking to fighting game franchises like Street Fighter only, this might be a great way to dip your toes into the anime fighting world mechanically at least. The biggest thing working against it right now is the release date as far as I’m concerned. The few games I managed to play online during the review period were mostly lag free. There was one that was a slow motion teleportation fest but the rest were ok. Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st] is a mechanically sound fighter and it may be my favourite Arc System Works fighter outside the Guilty Gear Xrd series. Hopefully this being on PS4 along with cross play across PS3 and worldwide servers will see it getting a decent community online.

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I learned a new word too, during the course of reviewing this game. An iconoclast is somebody who opposes/attacks religious icons and images, believing them to be superstitious or followed in error. I’ve no doubt that Joakim Sandberg had this in mind when creating the story for Iconoclasts, given that the entire game is based around a totalitarian, religious government calling itself One Concern. This regime wants the monopoly on Ivory fuel, a resource that can be used to power almost anything it seems, and so One Concern decrees that only its own, licensed mechanics can handle any repairs or modifications of the world’s Ivory power sources.

You play as Robin, the daughter of a mechanic, who has secretly taken up her father’s wrench to help repair anything and everything for the local Settlement 17. Unfortunately, this has resulted in “Penance” destroying various homes in the region and killing those who have gone against the word of One Concern. And so, Agents Black and White arrive at Robin’s house to question her on this whole mechanic business. This is precisely where the wonderful characters come into play, as Agent Black especially is dripping with an understated charisma, while Agent White constantly vexes her by bellowing accusations at Robin during the scene. I found myself reminded of Final Fantasy VII’s characters and tone, such is the high quality of Iconoclasts’ writing.

In my experience, it’s quite rare to see a game like this with such a heavy focus on story and characters, but Iconoclasts handles its masterfully without skimping on the gameplay. In fact, I would say that its gameplay is among the best in the genre. There is such variety in every facet of the game’s mechanics, requiring thought and strategy to combine with muscle memory in order to progress through its ten hour campaign. Enemies require different tactics, with some being impervious to simple shooting, so you might need to slam down onto their head with Robin’s boots, or find a way to attack them from behind, or sometimes even use the environment against them.

Where Iconoclasts really shines is in its boss fights. One or two are easy enough, needing only a few dodges and a barrage of blasts from Robin’s stun gun, but most of them have specific strategies required to defeat them. A number of them had me really thinking how to get around their defenses, but the game often hints at their weaknesses. Sometimes it’s another character shouting something that gets the lightbulb shining over your head, whereas with others it employs that age old tactic of introducing a new mechanic in the run up to the boss fight. Whether you remember that, however, depends on you. Their designs are magnificent too, from the smallest battles to the largest, such as the large robot that tosses your platform up into the air while firing grenades at you, or the…actually no, I won’t give away anything else. That would spoil the surprise. Rest assured that every single one is different; hell, even seven or eight hours into the game, totally new mechanics were thrown into the mix, helping to keep things fresh. Each fight is a spectacle, some reminiscent of the action-packed insanity of Treasure’s classic Gunstar Heroes, much to my excitement.

It’s not just about the action and explosions, of course. Exploration is at the heart of any Metroidvania and Iconoclasts is no different. Each area offers its own unique challenges, whether it be the puzzles or the story beats contained within. Some of the puzzles are quite fiendish, but like the bosses they often use newly-introduced abilities to best them. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of “so that’s how you do it” when you discover the way to progress.

I loved exploring the world in Iconoclasts, as every new area offered an insight into the rich lore of the game world. I also loved those tantalising glimpses of future abilities, with areas just out of reach or unique items that you can’t interact with yet – a real staple of the genre. Unlike many other games though, you’re rarely stuck in one area for long. The level design is intelligent enough that you’re always shown the way forward, even if you’ve forgotten it, and a quick glimpse at the map or a chat with a nearby character will usually remind you of your destination. With that in mind, I am amazed that the game continued to just keep going, yet still left me wanting more after the credits rolled at around ten hours. Its pacing is perfect.

It’s easy to see why it took seven years to make, as the level of detail is astonishing. The pixel art is vibrant and evocative, with each area feeling part of one big, crazy-ass world. Every character looked unique, with the main characters especially memorable in their design and animation. From Agent Black constantly worrying at the bridge of her nose to ease her headaches and Mina’s temper constantly getting the best of her, to Robin herself, a silent protagonist (aside from one or two moments when you’re asked to make a dialogue choice in the story) with the expressiveness of a Pixar character, everything in Iconoclasts looks and sounds like it belongs.

It’s not without its flaws, as there are one or two frustrating difficulty spikes later on. A new enemy is introduced in one of the final areas, with no apparent way to defeat them, and when they accompanied more agile, powerful enemy types it got real difficult, real fast. That said, I only died a handful of times during my playthrough, the level of challenge was balanced well enough for the most part.

The story itself belied the visual style and tone, during the first few hours. It felt quite lighthearted and comical early on, only for something quite horrific to be shown, catching me off guard. While not exactly a fault with the game’s design, it nevertheless conflicts with the beginning of the game, though it did signal a shift in tone that remained for the rest of the story. Perhaps this is more a signal of how easy it is to miss age ratings on digital games (Iconoclasts is a PEGI 12, just for reference) than anything else.

With its fantastic cast of varied and unique characters, coupled with a constantly evolving storyline that offers so much entertainment and a surprising amount of emotion and heart, Iconoclasts is a game that simply must be played. Even if you’re more about the gameplay than plot, Konjak has you covered thanks to some stunning level design and those cracking boss fights. It will take your hand and pull you along for an exciting adventure, and you won’t want it to let go.

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If you’ve played Cyber Sleuth, there’s a lot to love here and some annoyances in terms of reused assets, but this is a competent turn based RPG that is a blast to play. The first change you notice is the lack of a female protagonist option. You are forced to play as a male protagonist who you can name, but your identity has been stolen. This leads you to a hacker group called Hudie who are trying to make sure the world of EDEN is safe. As expected, you get acquainted with Hudie and your tale begins. The story isn’t mind blowing but it is nice and gets you quite attached to the world and characters. One thing to note is you do not have to have played the original Cyber Sleuth but you probably should (on Vita) because it is great. One area I was not happy with is the pacing through story heavy moments and some quests that break immersion.

There’s a lot to do outside of the story as well thanks to various collectibles, Digimon to capture, and more. Once you slowly get a team of competent Digimon, you go through lovely looking dungeons and then breed and raise your Digimon. I’m a big fan of the in-game UI even though it looks a bit large on the TV as opposed to a handheld – which it was clearly originally designed for. Exploring the locations feels like playing an old school PS2 game with fixed camera and loads of invisible walls. In fact even though this game was released on both PS4 and Vita at the same time in Japan, the PS4 version still feels like a port of the Vita release with higher resolution and framerate.

Speaking of the visuals, the only real complaint I have is with many assets looking blurry. This is bizarrely inconsistent because other parts of the game look nice and sharp. Items on display in stores across locations look really poor but characters look nice and the style factor here is definitely more prevalent than in the previous game. Character intros almost remind me of Persona 5. It runs at 60fps on PS4 for the most part, but there some slight stuttering during movement in some rooms. As with Cyber Sleuth, if you have the option to play it on the Vita, I’d recommend doing that because both games were clearly made for that and then ported to PS4.

Voice acting is in Japanese only once again with no English dub option. The voice acting is good but I was hoping this release would see them offer an English dub option. Music is fantastic as expected but the only downside is how little new music is there. The original soundtrack is excellent but Masafumi Takada could’ve done so much more for this.

Hacker’s Memory could have been so much more. Bandai Namco Entertainment got Digimon into gamers minds with the lovely Cyber Sleuth and when everyone wanted a sequel we got something slightly lacking. The reused elements turn me off somewhat because I know the team can do much better. If you haven’t played both of these games, they are fine JRPGs and a joy to play through. I’m happy to see them put out quality turn-based-RPGs in a time when everyone is scrambling to release a hack and slash snoozefest.

Hacker’s Memory is a good JRPG but I wish it did more. If you ever wanted to see Persona and Pokemon work together, this is like that but with something unique blended in. I’m impressed at how well it makes so many things work together for a game that is lower budget than many anime releases in recent times. I often see people complaining that the good JRPGs are only on handhelds. This is literally what people have been wanting for a long time. You should get it even if you don’t care about Digimon because it is that good.

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If you’ve played games like Corpse Party or To The Moon, you will feel at home here when it comes to the controls at least. Little Red Lie has two distinct tales going on together. The first is about Sarah and her family. The second is about Arthur who is seemingly in a much better position. The narratives here are great for many reasons. Will O’Neill manages to tell stories masterfully and they are great in their own right but what makes them stick with you beyond the game is how certain aspects always hit home. Regardless of your current position in life, Little Red Lie will have things you have either done yourself or considered doing be it in lying to yourself or others for the gain of something. Both stories will have bits that resonate with you or people you know.

I’ve always enjoyed old school RPG maker like games. There’s a combination of two different aesthetics here. The first is the RPG maker like characters and environments. The second is lovely art that is basically this game’s cutscenes. The art looks gorgeous on iPhone in full screen and the environments are very well done. One little thing I noticed is how the music and the intro cards for the engine and tools used to make Little Red Lie sync up. Speaking of the music, it is very nice and appropriate here but nothing I would listen to outside the game.

Having played this on iPad, iPhone, and Vita, it is interesting seeing how this has been adapted to various platforms. On iPhone, you can experience this in portrait mode using your thumb to control everything. I love it when adventure or visual novel games do this. The Dragon Quest ports also allow for portrait play and it is appreciated because it makes playing these games much easier while travelling. The unfortunate thing about the iOS port is the iPad version doesn’t support landscape and there is no iCloud saving. It is rather uncomfortable to play on iPad in its current state. If you want to go iOS, play this on the iPhone.

For fans of visual novels, there are some things you likely will not enjoy here in terms of saving and controls. The Vita version has no touch support which is disappointing because you know how much I love using the touch screen to advance dialogue instead of pressing X over and over again. When it comes to the interface, it is pretty barebones for a visual novel like game. There are no options to control text speed or skip dialogue. Early on, the autosaves felt too few and far inbetween causing me to have to replay some sections. Every portable game needs to have save anywhere. Other than that, there isn’t much fault with Little Red Lie.

WIll O’Neill’s Little Red Lie is something everyone should play. It may be a bit too much mentally for some, but this is the kind of stuff more games should get into with their narratives. Actual Sunlight was already fantastic narratively but Little Red Lie is not just a worthy follow up but a magnificent piece of interactive fiction in its own right. I’m glad this one is available on multiple platforms so I can now safely tell almost everyone I know to get and play this as soon as possible. If you aren’t put off by old school visuals and have been looking for something more from game stories than the usual fare, this is exactly what you’ve been waiting for.

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While a cursory glance online will point you to Chaos;Child being a sequel to Chaos;Head that released in 2008, you don’t need to play or have played that to enjoy this. Chaos;Child’s release across the world has been interesting. It began as an Xbox One exclusive in Japan before eventually getting ported to PlayStation and mobile platforms. The English release is limited to PlayStation 4 and Vita. This review will focus on the Vita version even though I did spend time on the PS4 version as well.

Both Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0 are brilliant stories with excellent characters. Chaos;Child follows the same path, but has a bit more of horror and fan service. After a strong opening where you experience death when you least expect it, you learn about the characters and how they are all part of a larger narrative. Set in Shibuya, years after an earthquake, you play as Takuru who is in a high school newspaper club. Shibuya has settled years after the earthquake and murders start taking place. As expected, the murders are all connected and this is where the story begins.

While many visual novels offer a branching path depending on the choices you make and put you into different ending paths, Chaos;Child handles things a bit differently. There’s a delusion trigger mechanic that will change your ending based on whether you react positively or negatively in the delusion trigger moments. The first playthrough will force you into a common ending. Once this is done, you have the option of getting into an individual character ending. Once all the character endings are done, you get to play for the true ending route. This ensures everyone experiences everything the game has to offer but may turn off many. While I somehow managed putting in 50+ hours into Steins;Gate to get the platinum trophy before reviewing it, Chaos;Child is much longer. Basically it takes a lot more time and effort to get the true ending here compared to Steins;Gate.

This past year has seen some really interesting takes on visual novel art and animation. Collar x Malice is definitely my favourite looking back at the year’s releases. Chaos;Child has a lot of great background and CGI art along with some really nice character designs. I’m not a fan of some of the character portraits though. They feel oddly out of place. The interface and font choices are all very well done and just great overall. Chaos;Child actually looks good on both the PS4 and the Vita and never feels like an upscaled handheld game on the big screen.

Kanaka Itō’s vocals in the opening immediately made me smile and it does feel great to play another visual novel with her doing the opening. The rest of the soundtrack is very nice and fits with the themes and narrative here. Takeshi Abo returns as a composer and his amazing music makes its presence felt right from the title screen that has a lovely but sinister melody. Voice acting is almost consistently great overall.

The big issue here outside of the length for the true ending is in the localization. While some of the issues have been fixed in patches, I wish PQube and 5pb. spent a bit more time on QA when it comes to the text and localization in general. I’m glad that they localize these releases on consoles in the West but these games deserve better. If you’re a fan of Steins;Gate, this is an easy recommendation. If you aren’t, get that and this. Chaos;Child is a brilliant visual novel with a memorable story and characters.

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You play as Jill (Don’t call her Julianne) who works as a bartender at VA-11 Hall-A. The story is nonlinear and instead of being decided by dialogue options, it changes depending on the drinks you make for patrons at the bar. There are regular clients with their own personalities and the people who work at the bar themselves who slowly grow on you. Jill’s interactions with clients changes as well over time and I can’t imagine a situation where you don’t end up loving at least a few of the characters here. I don’t want to go into details to avoid spoilers but there’s a lot of heart, mystery, and just plain fun here. The delivery of the story also isn’t what you’d expect and is told through anecdotes from various people in the bar giving you background and also just learning about the clients and visitors as they ask for drinks. Highlights from the cast are most definitely Art Von Delay, Alma, and Streaming-chan.

Mixing drinks and serving a particular drink to people is basically the main gameplay here. When someone orders a drink, you either make it yourself using the various ingredients and then blending or mixing or look at your in game guide for the recipe, or some suggestions based on flavour or type. Some drinks have an optional Karmotrine ingredient. This is the alcohol component and using more will get the customer more drunk. In my first playthrough I did my best to get everyone drunk. It did not end well. Each day ends with you being paid and spending some time at home or in story segments. There are multiple endings and you can get a bad ending quite easily if you spend foolishly when you gain access to buying stuff for your apartment.

The Vita port supports both touchscreen and button controls. The implementation of button controls here is fantastic. The port has exceeded my expectations in that regard, but the touch controls are a bit of a let down. The core drink making is handled brilliantly with touch, but you can’t actually progress dialogue with it. The drinks menu has some elements that work with touch but others are too small to be tapped so it feels a bit inconsistent. Having played a lot of visual novels on the system, there are some text and dialogue features I’ve grown accustomed to like having a text skip option or a proper backlog with dialogue. While this isn’t a pure visual novel, it would have been great having those in the port. The only other issue with the port is how some screen transitions between days take a few seconds longer than they should.

Music and visuals are what got my attention when the initial teaser was released and this is one of my favourite games on both fronts ever. I absolutely love the character designs and the subtle animations at play both in characters and in the bar environment. The title screen itself is worth having a big poster of framed in your room. The great thing about this releasing before the end of the year is I can put Michael Kelly’s brilliant soundtrack on the best soundtracks of the year list. Songs like A.Rene and Every Day is Night have been in my regular rotation while working since the PC version launched. It fits the aesthetic perfectly and there hasn’t been a combination of visuals and music that has appealed to me this much in a very long time. The in game jukebox you set before each day allows you to experiment as well. Try finding a favourite and setting only that song for the full day for a nice surprise.

VA-11 HALL-A is a very special game. Sukeban Games have something great here and I hope more people get to experience it. Wolfgame has done a great job with the port. The 10 plus hours you spend here will be more memorable than most things you play in 2017 for sure.

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Demon Gaze II is set in the city of Asteria. The background CGI images are lush and pleasing to look at. You play as someone who has lost all their memories but back in contact with two of your childhood friends. You were all orphans taken into Stella’s Palace and have formed a Revolutionist Party. The story involves a radio station broadcast program, finding the truth to why someone vanished, and more. While the story isn’t groundbreaking, it serves as a nice palette cleanser in between sessions of dungeon crawling. The main NPCs are mostly well written and I enjoyed the banter here and there in between story sequences.

Dungeons are obviously a big part of the experience (I promise I will stop) and these exist in the Restricted Zones of the city. Your aim with dungeons is to take over demon circles through the use of gems and defeating enemies that spawn in. This will allow you to get some good gear depending on the gems used and get closer to reaching the boss of the area. Once you control all the circles in one area, the portal to the demon’s realm. This is where you have to solve some basic puzzles (these get more involved as the story progresses) and eventually fight the boss. More and more demons will join your party and your cause as you defeat them with more than 15 playable characters overall.

Since this is a DRPG, combat is turn based and there have been a lot of quality of life enhancements to the experience in combat and in dungeons. Your star gauge on the top left of the screen lets you know how much you can use your demons in their demonized or stat boosted form. It fills up the more you fight. You can speed up each encounter, auto move through areas you’ve visited already, and a lot more making this feel more polished than many of the other recent games of the sub genre. The one gameplay mechanic I didn’t much care for is the maintenance mode. I’m no stranger to “rubbing” mini games after playing Moe Chronicle through an import on Vita already but it doesn’t feel well thought out here. You can date your demons as well to learn a bit more about them but it feels like a pointless addition to a formula that already worked well.

I was initially skeptical about how this would look on the PS4 since many games that were Vita only and then ported to PS4 haven’t looked too hot. Ultra Despair Girls in particular looks quite bad on the big screen. Kadokawa has done a brilliant job here with characters and dungeon designs on the big screen. There is only one single UI aspect that is low resolution and it is the small circle in dialogue boxes that shows the character face. The rest looks crisp and it doesn’t feel like a port outside of some UI elements being a bit too big. The big complaint I have with the visuals lies in the text though. The text boxes for dialogue are huge on the TV and yet the text content is squished to the left or middle. The font choice isn’t terrible like Bad Apple Wars but it should’ve been better. In some cases one bit of dialogue had the text left aligned but the next sentence was center aligned. This shows a lack of polish and I even had a few instances where some text was just cut off or incomplete in the menu. Another annoyance is in the inconsistent enemy design. Some of them look great but others completely out of place.

While many games have dual audio, Demon Gaze II has both dual text and dual audio options. You can mix and match between English and Japanese text and audio. Both voice acting languages are an option because they both are done well. The original game had a lovely vocaloid soundtrack and the one here feels like a combination of the tunes in Demon Gaze and Ray Gigant. This extends to the interface sounds as well with an upbeat jingle on completing a quest that would fit right in with Experience Inc.’s Ray Gigant.

After more 30 hours with Demon Gaze II, I’ve still feel like there’s loads left to do. This is a great conversion to PS4 and it almost feels like they started out planning for more than a Vita version because outside of one UI element, everything looks great on the big screen. Demon Gaze II is also the first DRPG on the PS4 and this was definitely an interesting experience for me considering I’ve played all the others on handheld platforms. Experience Inc. continues to impress me and I’d say this is a great game to get into the genre with. It has multiple difficulty options for both new and experienced (sorry) players and doesn’t look like a low resolution handheld game on the big screen. 2017 has turned out to be a fantastic year for NIS America for sure.

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As with Yomawari: Night Alone, Midnight Shadows starts off with quite the traumatic scene. While it begins with an innocent trip to the mountains to watch the fireworks festival, Yui and Haru get separated. While you’re introduced to the controls here, there’s a scene involving a noose right from the get go. This is Yomawari. Night Alone will definitely be one of the scariest games you play and the sequel while not requiring any knowledge of Night Alone, will basically destroy you the more you play. The town here is much larger and there have been a few quality of life improvements to checkpoints and saving making them not as annoying as in Night Alone. The setting here being a rural town involves a lot of trees and dense forests.

This is an isometric game for the most part. There are some 2D exploration segments but it is basically an isometric survival horror game. Your flashlight is basically your only friend in the night and the team at NIS went the extra mile this time with their horror design. The monsters are horrific and pretty damn grotesque in some cases. There still is a stamina bar at the bottom of the screen that drains as you try and run. The moment the atmospheric music switches to the heartbeat sound, things are going to get bad very quickly. There’s a lot of trial and error with learning enemy patterns and exploring. You also solve a few small puzzles through interacting with objects in the environment.Your aim is to run away or hide from enemies because death is instant and you will die a lot.

When a game does well, sequels usually have a higher budget and that is pretty evident here. The environments are gorgeous. The tonal difference between the chibi nature of the character design for the girls and the dark overall feel with various monsters coupled with the fantastic audio design makes for an unforgettable experience. The 2D sections in particular have a lovely parallax effect in the environment and the colour choices are very good. A lot of the screenshots you take will be wallpaper worthy and Midnight Shadows looks great on both PS4 and PS Vita. I love the hand-drawn feel and chalk writing style that is seen through dialogue boxes and the UI.

While I do enjoy discussing music in games, the discussion here will be about the audio design and how great it is. Playing this with a good pair of headphones and with the lights either turned off or your eyes glued to the screen is how you should play this. They’ve done an amazing job with the atmospheric sounds here.

Jump scares aren’t something new in horror games. I’m not a fan of overdoing a single mechanic and there are far too many jump scares here to the point where things feel a bit cheap at times. These result in far too many cheap deaths forcing you to replay sections.

Yomawari: Midnight Shadows is a very good survival horror game and a great complement to The Evil Within 2 this month. I like that the team took a lot of the feedback from the first game to heart to make this one longer and fix some of the gripes many people had with Night Alone. I’m also looking forward to NIS’ next small project like this. 2017 is definitely a year horror fans will remember fondly.

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Touhou Kobuto V: Burst Battle’s base game was actually released before Genso Rondo. Kobuto V is an arena fighter that plays like a combination of Virtual On and a bullet hell lite experience. There’s a story mode which is just some padded dialogue through nicely drawn backgrounds that always lead to battles. The story mode is probably the best showcase of the character art. I would’ve preferred just a visual novel like mode here without forced battles or a story that feels throw away.

You will be spending the most time in the Arcade or Score Attack modes. A day one patch adds online functionality. If you play without this patch, the Vs Online mode will just allow you to setup ad-hoc rooms. There’s a separate local wireless mode as well. There’s a split screen mode where you can play versus a friend using a single Joy-Con each which is always welcome on the Switch. The big problem is how boring the gameplay gets. I mentioned Virtual On and you are mostly locked on to your enemy here as you move and focus on the various attacks. Getting up close will allow for a mêlée attack. I got bored after a few games with each character. I get that this won’t be a high budget experience like ARMS, but it still isn’t great for content at all.

I’d recommend looking at the Manual which is a menu option on the bottom right to check out the various moves you can execute here because there are loads of things not explained to you during gameplay. In my testing, I haven’t been able to get a single game on either PS4 or Switch. As of this writing, it hasn’t released in Europe yet, but it is available everywhere else.

There are less than 10 fighters and literally 2 decent looking stages. The remaining few stages harken back to the PS1 era environments. While the character art is good, their character models in game aren’t great. The visual flair for the bullet hell like attacks also look poor. Aside from the story mode character portraits and two of the stages, this release looks plain bad. Performance is mostly solid with a frame drop only on one particular stage that was noticeably bad when you jump and are floating down. The soundtrack is pretty good and Japanese voice acting complementing the gameplay.

If you want a good local arena fighting game and can’t be bothered to get ARMS or any of the SNK classics, this maybe for you. It has too many issues for me to recommend it. I’m glad that NIS America is continuing to not just localize Touhou games in the West but also port things to the Switch. This Touhou game is definitely not what people should play when there are far better ones available elsewhere. Genso Wanderer would have been a much better first impression for newcomers to Touhou games on Nintendo Switch.

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You play as a highschool girl with the default name of Rinka. On your way to the first day of school, you get run over on the road and basically die. This is quite the opening. You then wake up in an otherworld in front of another school where you meet someone wearing a bunny mask that would not look out of place in Hotline Miami. Thus begins Rinka’s tale that will see multiple endings, multiple love interests, tons of character development, and a plot that will feel right at home to Angel Beats! anime fans. If you’ve ever wanted to play an otome game and love Angel Beats!, this is the game for you. There are loads of parallels with the world having a high school, a focus on the resistance trying to break the rules, and of course “graduating”. There are also tons of references to things like the seven deadly sins, the apple of eden (forbidden apple?), and the name of the school, NEVAEH, which is HEAVEN backwards. The two warring sides in this academy are the disciplinary committee and the bad apples.

After you pick a side at the start of the game, you can basically set the game options to auto pilot and relax and read through the very nice story. This carries over to all the endings with each love interest. Instead of having the usual choices in a visual novel during dialogue, there’s a map system where you get to select your next location and a touch system. In the map choice, each location is indicated with a colour letting you know who will be there. The touch system has you touching your love interest in a CGI scene. Touching in the correct location will result in backstory and progress but the wrong one might lock you into a bad ending later on. I will commend Otomate for trying to keep things fresh with each of their visual novels.

At first the character art felt a little off to me. After a bit of playing it made sense. The interaction between the environment, generous use of red through the UI, are very well done. The interface is smooth and you can touch to navigate and progress dialogue which is one of the most important things I look for in a visual novel. The big complaint I have with Bad Apple Wars is actually not related to the story at all. It is the font used in the localized release from Aksys. I don’t know why the developers decided to go with a font that is hard to read when a visual novel is all about reading. It is just a terrible design choice in an otherwise well thought out experience.

If you ever wanted to listen to a modern Shoji Meguro (Persona) and Masafumi Takada (Danganronpa, Digimon Story) mashup track or collaboration, the soundtrack here will be exactly what you’ve been craving. It is brilliant. The Japanese website has background music playing and I recommend checking out the first track here. Voice acting is memorable and it is all in Japanese as expected in an otome game.

I’d say Collar x Malice has the slight edge over this release in terms of story and theme, but for everything else they both are an even match and absolutely worth playing for fans of visual
novels not just otome game fans. I’m glad more games like this are getting localized because for visual novels, importing isn’t an option without Japanese knowledge. I just wish the damn text font wasn’t this bad.

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When the sequel was announced I was understandably excited, and the idea of playing on the Switch with that same handheld to console synergy… well, I’ve been eagerly anticipating this for a while. I was right to be excited, Image & Form have easily matched and bettered the original game, retaining everything that made the original special despite the missing Rusty.

The lack of Rusty means that the blue bot from the olde town, Dorothy is out to find him. There are earthquakes, a doomsday cult and a panicky populace in the town of El Machino. Rusty’s apparently been through, but hasn’t been seen since the earthquakes started, it’s all very suspicious. Anyway, this means that Dorothy has to take up Rusty’s favourite past-time of mining in a quest to figure out what he has to do with the current goings on.

You’ll carve your own pathways through the rather large caverns, collecting ore and killing creatures, all the while a chill soundtrack plays. It’s very relaxing, and nice to just take it easy, plot your route to the objective and mine away. Mistakes in your route don’t matter, as you’ll always have a way to get back up via wall jumping, or, later on, a grappling hook and rocket boots. The way these new abilities are dished out is glorious, with Dorothy entering a forge under a burst of steam, then turning bright yellow like she’s just been reforged, it’s a lovely touch.

Dorothy’s abilities aren’t the same as Rusty’s. Instead of a steam jump she has rocket boots. There’s no big drill, instead Rosie gets a jackhammer to get rid of pesky rocks, but the best thing is that grappling hook and zipping Rosie from spot to spot. A lot of the latter puzzle rooms require deft use of this item with some rather clever implementations required for you to claim your prize. Almost all of her abilities can be upgraded as well, and each can also be enhanced with cogs, granting extra bonus abilities like extra light, damage reflection and more. It’s not possible to get every cog modification, so you’ll need to curate them for where you find yourself.

The game’s pace is very chilled, but it can take a while to get going. For the first two hours the constant trips back to empty your bags do take their toll. There’s also one really horrible segment just before the game really gets going that’s awful to play through, and could be nightmare inducing for young children, my son loved the original game, but I have to worry what his reaction would be when he plays that part.

Still, once you’re through that, you’ve emptied your pockets a few times and upgraded your bags and furnace, things open up considerably giving you more time to move about and discover all the little things Image & Form have squirreled away in all the nooks and crannies. It’s always nice to follow the objective, going the fastest route from A-to-B, but the joy is in exploring, finding rocks to bash through and seeing if there’s a path there for you to discover. There’s a whole load of caves to find along the regular route, but there’s just as many off the beaten track as well, all with their own little treasures and trinkets to find.

Sadly, the biggest downer with SteamWorld Dig 2 is it’s length, I’ve already mentioned it takes its time to get going, and when it does it’s over all of a sudden. I must admit that when I defeated the boss at the end (something I never managed to do in the original) I kind of hoped that there was something else, something more for me to dig my way through, but it never came. I guess that when you find yourself wishing that a game would go on then you know that that game really has imprinted itself on you.

This is such a charming game, the trademark harsh lines and bouncy animation are sublime, the music is soothing (until the action ramps up and it really gets your pulse pounding), and then there’s Fen. A companion character wasn’t needed in the original, but Fen is just great here, and his dry wit and love of destruction are very welcome as you explore the world. His character arc is also well judged, from original boss to a devil on your shoulder, through to caring and compassionate to his host, he’s alright for a little blue flame.

There’s so much to like about SteamWorld Dig 2, but like the game itself it’s all about exploring. There’s not much to complain about, and a short run time should only bother you if you’re doing a straight run to the finish. Take time to look around and you’ll find the length increases considerably, it’s all about getting out what you put in. As a working father a short game is very welcome as well, all too often games fall by the wayside, and as a result a game that isn’t a 100 hour epic, that I can take at my own pace is a blessing. This is everything I could have wanted from a sequel: an utter triumph.

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As always, it is difficult to talk about the story without spoiling stuff. There are still “ultimates” in an academy as you’d expect in a mainline Danganronpa game but things never stay peaceful with Monokuma around. This game sees the introduction of the Monokubs who have their own personalities and one of my favourite theme songs in the franchise. The only way to escape is to kill and Monokuma definitely helps speed up the process just like in past games with motives. There are definitely some really disturbing themes in the plot and while nothing reaches Ultra Despair Girls in that aspect, expect some questionable characters and story moments here. Kazutaka Kodaka could have had an amazing story here but it has too much padding. Kokichi and Miu are definitely my favourite characters here. Overall this cast is not as good as previous games but still has some memorable characters. I have a lot of issues with the pacing of the story and how some gameplay changes make progressing through the story painful but the ending more than makes up for many of these problems.

School life and trial sections are still the major portions of the core gameplay here but everything takes longer. It took me little over 50 hours to finish the main story without any of the extra features. This is nearly double of the time I spent in previous games. Trials are much longer and you should expect to take more than three hours for each trial. This is because the new minigames take longer and also because there are just more sections in the trial to get through. The School Life allows you to spend time with fellow students to unlock “memory fragments” which are useful to buy skills for the trials. This bit still feels like social linking in Persona and the payoff with character development will vary depending on who you spend time with. Remember that your favourite character(s) will most likely die because this is a Danganronpa game.

I don’t know why Spike Chunsoft decided to make minigames longer or just complicate them further here. People play these games for the story, characters, and mystery more than pointless time wasters to get to the bottom of things. I had some trouble with investigations on PS4 as well because of how inspecting works and the reticle needing to be on a specific area of an object to inspect it. Class Trials have new minigames and some changes like using a Lie to reveal a truth. Psyche Taxi is like OutRun with Hotline Miami like visuals and this feels like pointless padding. Rebuttal Showdown and Mass Panic Debate are nice additions. Trials feel a lot more involved with a teamwork feel thanks to a lot of the new additions.

This is the first Danganronpa game that is apparently made for both handhelds and home consoles. I say apparently because while a lot of the visuals are an upgrade over previous games, there are a lot of remnants (no don’t even go there) of handheld assets in the PS4 version. Some of the animations zooming into characters reveal blurry portraits and a lot of the environment uses far too low resolution assets for the big screen. The UI on the other hand looks great and even the little things like the song playing on the top left and the menus during trials all look super. I wish they had spent a bit more time polishing the rest of the assets for PS4. The demo felt a lot better on the Vita even with the fps not being 60 on Vita. I got used to the inconsistent visuals after a bit but the big problem is in how animations and transitions take place. Investigating or trying to talk to someone results in a delay in a second or little under a second which feels like a freeze. This really annoyed me during the investigation sections. I even booted up Danganronpa 1+2 Reload and that felt a lot better in comparison.

NIS America’s localization is, for the most part, great. Voice acting is superb in both English and Japanese. I was hoping to see full voice acting for every bit of dialogue but it looks like we will need to wait for another game if at all to get that because there are still moments where there’s a sentence of dialogue in text but only a single spoken word here. I was a little shocked when I heard that the soundtrack was 5CDs compared to 2CDs for the other Danganronpa games. Masafumi Takada has outdone himself with an excellent soundtrack with both new music and new arrangements of old tunes. The trial finale music is my favourite arrangement of the lot.

Screenshots are unfortunately blocked after the first trial. This is something Japanese developers need to stop doing and something Sony should not allow. I get trying to prevent spoilers (Atlus should’ve patched Persona 5 by now to allow screenshots) but when your game is on PC as well, what is the use of blocking screenshots on some platforms? Baffling that platform holders are allowing this when developers restrict certain features on some platforms but not others.

Danganronpa V3 is my least favourite in the series but one that has higher highs than Ultra Despair Girls. If you’ve been wanting to get into this franchise, start with the first two that are on PS4, Vita, and Steam. Killing Harmony manages to salvage itself with the ending and some genuinely great trials but could’ve used less padding overall. Since this is the first entry to be on console day one, I thought Spike would actually do better for visuals especially with portraits. This is one adventure game that fans will be talking about for a long time for both good and bad reasons.

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The world has been taken over by mech bugs and only the Drive Girls can save everyone. When this was announced for localization, I kept joking that Transformers Devastation for Anime fans is finally releasing and I wish this was as good as Devastation. You play as one of a few Drive Girls who can transform into cars at will in combat that is pretty deep and satisfying. You slowly unlock more playable characters and the little fan service moments that there are feel poor. I’d say the fan service bits are all as poor as the story and the only reason I keep playing through missions is the gameplay.

Earth Defense Force is a franchise that looks terrible and runs terrible on most devices but has a cult following (including myself) because the gameplay is that damn fun. Drive Girls for me has a near EDF level gameplay for fun and I definitely see myself revisiting it later on just to plough through the main story missions again to relax. As with the combat, customisation is pretty deep with stickers and more you can use for various stat boosts or buffs in both girl and car form. The campaign took me about 8 hours with a bit of replaying here and there to experiment. Speaking of experimenting, the tutorial is pretty terrible at explaining combat to you. I’d recommend replaying early missions and experimenting with combos and button inputs to get familiar with the combat. Missions aren’t too varied but just like EDF, I didn’t get bored at all during combat. The story scenes on the other hand had me pressing Square as soon as I could after the initial charm wore off.

I didn’t expect much with visuals, but quite like the character models. Environments are really boring and items in the environment sometimes blend in thanks to colour choices. There’s also quite the load time when you wait for each character model to load in the customisation screen while adding or changing stickers. Enemy variety is poor as well, but animations in combat look good and switching into a Drive form mid combo is fun if you manage executing it properly. I keep wondering how the developers decided to go with so little fan service. Even the loading screens are all the same image which is a static portrait of all the girls. Not having different ones of each girl is a missed opportunity.

Given how low budget this title feels in almost every area, you won’t be surprised to learn that it only has Japanese voice acting. During story moments it is decent, but gets super repetitive during combat when you pick up multiple items. Music is nothing to write home about either and for some reason the main menu music kept reminding me of Thriller.

There’s definitely some good here and fans of other Tamsoft games will find enough to like here, but for everyone else, avoid this unless you keep your expectations in check. Drive Girls falls under the category of games that I need to own a physical copy of just because I’m surprised it exists. It is definitely one of the bottom tier titles Aksys has published in an otherwise super year for their releases.

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One good thing about late localizations is that the wait between Mask of Deception and Mask of Truth is only a few months compared to a year in Japan. Mask of Truth is quite different when it comes to pacing. It feels like the team took some feedback to heart and made sure things progress steadily and not like Mask of Deception with the slow opening that builds up to a cliffhanger. The conclusion to the story is immense and Utawarerumono has become one of my favourite stories in games for sure. Being a direct sequel, it’s hard to say anything without spoiling the previous game. There’s a lot more exposition and development for the plot points that only were touched on last time. There’s a decent amount of SRPG battles giving you a breather from the great plot and expect to spend upwards of 70 hours at least depending on your reading speed. Seeing some characters that didn’t feel important in Deception grow into super interesting people here is very nice to see.

My only complaint with the story is the false (haha yes I just did that) sense of choices. If there’s ever a choice, it just feels like the developers put one in to make you feel like your decisions matter. In the end, things will progress as intended regardless. The SRPG sections still have QTEs (slight changes to how they are implemented here), critical hits, ability unlocks, and more. Things aren’t too simple, either, in the Normal difficulty mode.

I’m constantly blown away by Aquaplus’ art direction. The attention to detail on clothing, facial expressions, and the eyes (this is worthy of its own mention) is fantastic. Again, the Vita version could’ve used some love in the SRPG sections. While they look very good on PS4, given this is the second game for Vita, I was hoping for an improvement. Both Utawarerumono visual novels on the Vita are some of the best looking visual novels out there during the novel sections.

While the opening song doesn’t resonate with me as much as Nuedori from Mask of Deception, I had a blast with the soundtrack. Aquaplus is one of the few Japanese developers to put their music up for purchase digitally and I went ahead and picked up the live concert as well. As much as I love Steins;Gate, Utawarerumono has it beat in the music for sure. Voice acting is top notch as expected as well and I feel like the delivery is as impactful as the voice acting in Yakuza 0.

The Vita has a touchscreen and I enjoy reading visual novels on it because I can relax and just tap away at the screen to progress through dialogue. It is one of the reasons I dislike both PS4 and PC for visual novels. Mask of Truth still doesn’t let you progress dialogue by tapping and you’re forced to press Cross. I’ve got a workaround on PSP titles on the Vita since you can remap some buttons to the touchscreen but no way of doing this in Mask of Truth unfortunately.

If you managed getting to the end of Mask of Deception, you probably already have or are playing Mask of Truth right now. All the effort spent to complete the previous game pays off brilliantly here. Together, these two games make up one hell of an experience that will last over a 100 hours easy. The gripping narrative will have you on your toes throughout. I’m really glad Atlus took a chance on bringing this to English speaking countries.

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The game itself is part fighting game, part volleyball, and part frisbee; the aesthetic is like the late 80s never went away, with fonts and a colour scheme lifted from a muscle beach promotional video, it’s just you and someone else, Mano-a-Mano, throwing a frisbee back and forth with the intention of getting past and scoring.

In a world of regular games looking like throwbacks to those of yesteryear Windjammers fits right in, the menus full of bright, garish yellows and pinks and presented in great pixelated fashion, it’s hard not to love it as the great 16bit-esque chiptune plays away in the background.

Gameplay is nice and simple, you throw the frisbee back and forth attempting to get it past your opponent, the orange areas net you three points while red gets you five, you can’t move around when you’re holding the disc, but you can bounce it off the walls to try and get it around your opponent. You can also lob the disc high over onrushing opponents, or curve it with a flick of the stick, there’s rarely a time when you can’t catch the disc either, as pressing Cross grants a nifty dash move to the receiver, you just need to ensure you’re pressing the right direction when you go for it, lest you’ll watch the target sail right past you. This simplicity means that matches can progress at a fair lick with the characters dashing all over the place trying to assert their control over the court. It’s fantastic against the AI, it’s great against people online, but it’s truly something special when played with someone in the same room

When this was revealed at 2016’s PlayStation experience I wasn’t really sure what to think, I mean, I wasn’t sure what type of audience this game was supposed to be serving, but thanks to Windjammers the spirit of games like Super Tennis and Smash Court is alive and well. If you were a fan you want this. If you lament the lack of a decent tennis game this generation then you want this. It’s a fantastic time capsule that slips in effortlessly alongside modern games and indies, but, you know what? It’d be a great fit for the Switch.

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Originally announced at TGS 2014 for PS4 and Vita, Ys VIII has seen quite the release cycle. The PS4 version was delayed and it launched to great success on Vita only. Then Falcom enhanced the Vita game for PS4 with better visuals and performance and added some extra content before it finally released on PS4 earlier this year in Japan. Now both those version with the addition of a PC port will be localised and released in a few weeks by NIS America.

Ys VIII starts off with you on a ship called the Lombardia with Dogi and a few other people you interact with in addition to a large crew. Calamity strikes and you find yourself stranded on Seiren Island that is part of a mystery at sea. Think of this as sort of Bermuda’s Triangle. This deserted island is bereft of humanity and has loads of monsters and areas for you to explore. Soon after waking up, you meet up with a few people who were on board the ship and start to build a village. One thing leads to another with exploration and you find more people before discovering something great. I won’t get into spoilers, but the plot isn’t just tacked on here. It fits into the gameplay well and there’s way more dialogue than I expected for a Ys game. People called this Ys no Kiseki as a play on Sen no Kiseki (Trails of Cold Steel) which is full of a ton of dialogue and Ys which is all about that fast paced action combat and I agree with that monicker.

Gameplay for the first major part of the game follows a simple loop that is a lot of fun. Later on things get a bit more focussed and I prefer the early bits. You have the Seiren Island to explore with a lot of freedom. There are some areas that are inaccessible early on but you get the means to go to those locations through items, equipment, abilities, or rescuing more people. The in game map is really well done and the ability to warp to various crystal points is super useful. Crystal points basically trigger an autosave (yes Ys VIII has autosave in addition to manual save) and heal you. There’s fishing, killing various forms of enemies, partaking in fantastic boss fights (with kickass music), exploring, protecting your settlement from waves of enemies, and more to do here.

Switching between party members allows for things to remain fresh and each one has his or her own abilities and strengths. The more you fight and use skills, the greater the chance of unlocking new skills that you can assign to each face button for use with R1. Speaking of the buttons, you are able to reassign every action to anything on the controller. I made full use of this but was pretty disappointed that the tutorials will still refer to the original button for said action. The loop of going out to explore, coming back and trading in the spoils of battle, upgrading or crafting equipment, cooking, and doing a side quest or two early on is great. You really have a lot of freedom which is great in a Ys game.

You know how people say the Switch is what Nintendo wanted to do with the Wii U in the first place and this is them finally realising it? Well Ys VIII and Celceta are like that. I see a lot that reminds me of Celceta but things just weren’t great there. VIII on the other hand is a joy to play through and through.

Playing this on both the PS4 and Vita has made me appreciate both versions and I’m simultaneously playing different saves across different difficulties on both. Each version has advantages and disadvantages. Vita is portable and this is how I have experienced a large part of Falcom’s catalogue, but it also has an erratic frame rate. It isn’t a deal breaker, but alongside the slightly long load times it maybe an issue for some. Still, it is fantastic to experience on the go. The PS4 version has almost no frame rate issues and it is nearly at a constant 60fps compared to the Vita’s 30fps. While everything is higher resolution, there’s no denying the portable roots here and I’d go so far as to say the Vita small screen hides some of the visual inconsistencies well. The biggest problem with visuals is when there’s a large mob of big enemies. This makes the camera annoying and I don’t think they thought some of these encounters through when it comes to the camera movement.

You probably already know how much I love Falcom Sound Team JDK’s music. Ys: The Oath in Felghana is one of my favourite soundtracks of all time. Ys VIII has a mostly amazing soundtrack through and through. The non-combat and non-exploration tunes feel a bit off in comparison though. You have the option to play with English or Japanese voice overs (On Vita English is in the base game and the JP one will need to be downloaded separately) and the English VA is inconsistent. Some dialogue options have characters expressing themselves in ways that absolutely do not fit the scene or the tone of the conversation. It feels like a step down from some of the past Ys games for sure.

Over the last few months we’ve seen English footage of early builds through press events or conventions and there have been issues. Thankfully things like boss names that had errors earlier are now fixed but the localisation has some issues that aren’t just about the translation. There are sentences where < and > are used for quotation marks which is something seen in Japanese text but never in English. I’ve had no real trouble with NISA’s work on Danganronpa before or any of the recent games so this is disappointing. It doesn’t ruin the experience but it is a noticeable flaw especially with actual grammatical errors.

Ys VIII feels like a new generation Ys game for sure even though it may not as good as it should. The varied and fun combat with multiple playable characters, interesting boss fights, and an incredible soundtrack all make Ys VIII a must play. I know September is rough for everyone in gaming with the slew of releases each week but this is absolutely worth your time if you like fast paced action RPGs.

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I’d heard a lot about this when it released on Steam in English from Sekai Project and was always intrigued. I decided to buy it and instantly fell in love with it. There’s no shortage of indie metroidvania games, but the way Rabi-Ribi combined bullet hell mechanics with this made it special. Replaying it on PlayStation 4 has been fantastic and there is little wrong here barring the art style which I love that might put off certain people.

You start out playing as Erina, a rabbit, who lives in Rabi-Ribi town with her master. Erina wakes up and discovers that she is no longer a normal bunny but what looks like a cute playboy bunny only with real bunny ears. The search for your master begins here and you eventually meet Ribbon, a small fairy. With your powers combined, you have various ways to attack the plethora of enemies scattered all over the place. The aim initially is to get more people as helpers through exploration and boss battles.

Difficulty options are always great to make things more accessible or challenging if needed. Rabi-Ribi even has a mode which adjusts how boss battles play depending on items found which you can switch early on. Your aim is to keep exploring, finding helpers, fighting through superb boss battles full of bullet hell mania, and discovering secrets. The story as such is nothing special at all. In fact, aside from the premise it just feels tacked on. Thankfully mastering the combat systems is very satisfying. You will need to get the hang of knowing your SP limits while using Erina’s hammer initially, to utilising Ribbon’s abilities when the time is right through a barrage of bullet hell patterns and just boss movement in general. Controls are very responsive and it takes little to get comfortable and just have fun. There are some conveniences like save points scattered at a frequent basis and warp points. You will spend over 10 hours here as well so it isn’t a short game as is expected from a lot of smaller projects these days.

Visually there’s loads I love here, but a few annoyances. For one, the opening logos and title cards aren’t great looking. Even the publisher’s logo looks like it was cropped out of something else and pasted here. While exploring, there are loads of dialogue sequences where you see the amazing character portraits with text boxes. While the portraits are excellent, there’s a slight freeze or stutter while switching from in-game movement to these sequences. Other than that, the lush and varied locations are great and the sprite work is exceptional.

Cave Story+ from Nicalis on the Switch has varied soundtrack options with the same score available in multiple styles. I mention that because the cheerful music which sounds pretty modern gels with the somewhat retro aesthetic here quite well, and it reminded me of whatever I’ve played of Cave Story+ quite a bit. The score here gets a lot better later on just like the challenge overall. One thing I would’ve loved is voice acting for all the dialogue.

I’ve seen loads dismiss this on Steam thanks to the art style and while I am a fan of it, looking beyond it will reward you with a tight and fun experience unlike almost anything else out there. The blend in genres worked out fantastic for Rabi-Ribi and I look forward to replaying this on Vita soon. Hopefully the few visual issues get fixed in a patch.

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Warriors All-Stars is a game that looks to do for Omega Force’s own publishing house as to what they’ve done for Square-Enix with Dragon Quest Heroes and for Nintendo with Hyrule Warriors and the soon to appear Fire Emblem Warriors. Now there’s a space for all the characters you either know and love, or never gave two hoots about to join in in one space and have a good old scrap. It’s safe to say that fans will find much to spaff over, whereas people who don’t have a clue will be wondering who all these people are.

Characters from the Atelier series, Dead or Alive, Deception, and even Irish Samurai William from Ni-oh appear alongside musou stalwarts in Omega Force’s musou to end all musous, well, until the next one at least. This one, as well as being 100% fan service also aims to woo in a base of furries, as the heroes are summoned to a world of half dog, half human bipeds who are locked in a sort of succession war while their world stands on the brink of ruin. These furry humanoids all stand around with barely any clothing on, which is more of a question than the story surrounding them all. Anyway, a ceremony has gone wrong, and all these heroes from all of Koei-Tecmo’s output find themselves having to slaughter a load of indentikit creatures in order to restore peace to the world. Peace through slaughter is a beautiful thing isn’t it?

Anyway, it’s safe to say that if you’ve played something from Omega Force then you’ll be very much at home here. Characters fall into swordsmen, firearms, and magic users, and they run around capturing strategic points and beating important enemies to win the day. That’s what happens. In my opinion Hyrule Warriors is the best of Omega Force’s output, and All-Stars here borrows from that with capturable bases. There are points throughout the map which if you infiltrate and murder a set number of enemies within, the base boss shows up, kill him and the base is yours, and an advantage on the battlefield is gained. It was one of the best parts of Hyrule Warriors and I’m glad to see it’s return here.

Being a musou-fan’s-musou Warriors All-Stars doesn’t skimp on things for the discerning player, in fact they’ve literally slathered the game in content, while still making it feel cheap. Animations and character renders look rough, menus are sparse; comic-like, but functional, but the game while not being feature rich is buried in mechanics, gimmicks and missions, which would be admirable if it didn’t all feel so similar.

Once you’re past the initial few battles and taken to the map screen you will find yourself in awe of the wealth of missions to take on. Merchant caravans to defend, shrines to take, heroes to recruit, it all looks like so much to do. But while the end goals and rewards change up, the actual execution is identical each and every time. You might get the odd side mission but it never feels different, and even after you’ve slaughtered you nine-thousandth two footed muscular red fox you’ll grow weary of all the death and want something else to do.

The game does at least want you to have some variation in how you massacre people, square does a light attack while triangle does a heavy one, you’ll combo these together and as you level up more combos become available. You have a party of up to five people, and can perform combo routines with them by pressing R1 and then hitting the corresponding face button to have them jump in and perform a move. Then there’s bravery, which affects how much damage you or your enemies deal, which goes up should you kill an enemy who is also feeling brave, then there’s the Rush mode which brings down the disco lights, spawns a shed load of enemies and just lets you go to town without fear of repercussion. In fact, while rush mode is on, you’re invulnerable, and the more enemies you kill the longer it lasts for, and the better you perform the more of your team-mates that turn up within the UI to cheer you on and help you perform better. It looks naff, and it’s a great big IWIN button, but it’s terrifically silly and I like it.

There aren’t any weapons to equip, instead you gather materials and hero cards which can also be created and upgraded to improve your heroes along with the customary level ups from XP. And… well, it just gets exhausting, as there’s so much going on and it’s all introduced through static screens that you really don’t want to read. It’s alright having a load of different systems in your game, but make them fun to use, and more importantly learn. Static screens are the antithesis of fun, and in a game that wants to make you feel like a fast mobile killer they break the flow terribly.

This leaves me in a hard place, as what Warriors All-Stars really is is Omega Force having fun with their series, layering it with silliness and fan-service, which is something that really speaks to me on a fundamental level. Yet, every victory, every reference, every wink and nod is let down by repetitive recorded dialogue, by wooden animation, by a mass of clone soldiers that stick out more as furry bait than they ever did as well armoured samurai.

That said, this is easily the most fun I’ve had with a musou game since Hyrule Warriors. It never really goes the extra mile like Link’s adventure did, but while the missteps grate, you can’t help but admire Omega Force for having a go, and a laugh, sometimes games can be a little too po-faced, it’s nice to find a game and a studio that tries not to take themselves too seriously at times, just, don’t expect this to be the game that gets you into the genre, if you didn’t like it before.

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Shaking things up is very important for any developer who is known for making games in a single genre. I love how Otomate try and make each of their games feel different even as visual novels. Collar x Malice feels more like a thriller detective experience than a pure otome game. It also has a lot of decisions of various types that affect the route and in turn endings you can get. There are multiple bad endings, bullet sections where you have a QTE to either win or lose, ace attorney-lite investigation sections, and more. You need to also accomplish certain tasks and get certain endings before unlocking the best one so replaying is encouraged, but that’s par for the course in visual novels.

You play as Ichika Hoshino who is a young police officer in Shinjuku. Shinjuku is basically under quarantine right now thanks to a terrorist organisation called Adonis. On April 1, a video was shown off where Adonis members spoke with garbled voices letting the people of Shinjuku know that they want to cleanse the place and are taking things into their own hands. After that day, each month a new murder or set of murders take place on a day with a Roman numeral left at the crime location. These numbers are counting down and the government has ordered the city to be closed down from all sides to make sure things don’t spread outside.

Hoshino is caught in all of this during the ongoing investigation when she (you) wakes up with a collar around her neck after being kidnapped and drugged by Adonis. This collar can kill you and only a few people can know about it. Some decisions you make affect trust and affection of your potential bachelors while others contribute more towards the actual mystery of the main story. There are quite a few texting and phone call related choices as well which again affect your progression. Seeing both the protagonist and her love interest develop over the course of each route is great and it feels realistic in a fictional setting.  Expect to spend more than 30 hours with your pals in Shinjuku if you want to see everything and get to the bottom of every mystery.

Otomate is no stranger to great looking characters and background art. What sets Collar x Malice apart is how well they managed fitting everything into a small set of colours to reflect the mood and tone of the game. This stylistic choice extends across the board and even manages fitting perfectly with the music. The soundtrack is fantastic. There’s loads of tension in the tunes and even with some of it playing on loop for a while, I was never bored. There’s a nice album section that lets you listen to music unlocked, watch previous scenes, listen to your love interests introduce themselves, and two other things that relate to the story.

My only major complaint with this release is the errors in the text. There’s typos and even a situation where the wrong name is used in a conversation. For a game that’s core purpose is delivering a story through a lot of reading, this is a problem.

Instead of just being a typical love story or something that adds some superficial narrative over one, you will always be working towards surviving while finding the truth here. The love interest bit is something that just happens to be a part of the experience. I definitely want more of these kinds of games from the developers. Otome fans who are looking for a pure romance experience best stay away from this. For everyone else, it is worth a read.

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The next evolution of interactive books is most definitely interactive apps and games on touch screens. In fact the Apple even features games like Metamorphabet (and awards them with an Apple Design Award) when educational and interactive apps are done right.

It’s Spring Again is a short experience that aims to teach young children about the seasons. It is based on a real life puppet show where actors interact with puppets showing off how seasons change and what happens to trees, sky, and land during the changes. That has translated really well to the game.

The actual gameplay is just interacting with the various objects on screen while listening to the narrator to see the seasons progress. Almost everything responds to touch like the land will cover its eyes when you try and touch the face. Different characters come into the main area of the experience as the seasons move on and the trees keep reacting slowly. Children need to tap at the ground for flowers to grow or tap at tree leaves for fruits to grow and eventually fall. The full thing will take about 10 to 15 minutes to see all the way to the end. It automatically loops and even has an autoplay mode if you want your child to just watch and not play.

I checked out some of the puppet show videos and images and that has translated very well to the 2D art. Everything is colourful and well drawn. Some of the faces remind me of Broken Age’s art. The way the llama and the rainbow trot into focus is really nice. Animations are all nice as well but there were some scenes that caused slowdown in performance on the Vita. Unfortunate but these things happen on the handheld sometimes. The narration from Ekaterina Efremova is excellent.

It’s Spring Again has a definite target audience but I don’t think that will be on the Vita. If you’re looking for a nice short way to teach your children about the seasons through some lovely art and narration, get this. It’s low asking price makes it an easy recommendation even though it is quite short as it definitely accomplishes what it sets out to do well. If you can, I’d recommend buying the collector’s edition on Steam that even has a video and a digital artbook included.

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Nurse Love Addiction is a visual novel about the life of Asuka Osachi who is trying to become a nurse. Asuka and her sister Nao have joined Teito Nursing School and over the course of about 40 hours (that’s how long I took for getting all the endings), you will learn about their lives, Asuka’s relationships with other key characters, and more. This is a Yuri focused story which basically means it involves love between women. Unlike many other stories that involve specific character routes, there are 4 main characters which seems less than you’d expect. This allows for more detailed character development through the various good and bad endings. The endings outside of one particularly poorly done one, are pretty damn great and unique.

Getting attached to fictional characters through visual novels is always fun when bad things happen to them. Danganronpa is a great example of this because characters you grew to love, died soon after. Asuka’s relationships reveal more about herself as well as the woman she is slowly falling in love with in a route. You will see death, emotional trauma, bondage, innocent love, grief, and more through each story that unfolds here. There are choices throughout, but few of them are important and they decide which route you get into. I recommend using a guide after you finish one ending to get everything without wasting too much time.

Since visual novels are all about reading and getting into the story, it is always nice to see developers go the extra mile for character models and well done CGI. Characters, their expressions, and the environments are all amazing here. The developers and artists did a fantastic job in creating an environment that both feels real and looks great. The only downside to the visuals is the in game menu. It feels like an outdated Android app that looks terrible on a modern system. The text in the in game pause menu looks like a poorly thought out children’s birthday card. I hope they fix this in an update because it is the only negative about the visuals.

Voice acting and music are top notch. Every character including some of the side characters sound great. There’s emotion and depth in the voice acting which is all in Japanese as is the norm for visual novels. The score that will be your ear worm for the time you play is piano focussed with varied themes for each character altering the tone of the scenes very well.

There are two issues I have with the overall experience I had in Nurse Love Addiction. The first is how slow it was to get anywhere. Once you get your first ending, it doesn’t take too long to fast forward through previously read text and make decisions again. While the opening to most visual novels is slow, this one felt like it was dragging its feet for far too long. This might make the uninformed drop it before even reaching an ending. The second issue is with the lack of an in game glossary. Steins;Gate has a notes section that pops up each time a new term is mentioned. It would have been nice to have something similar here instead of making you google something on your computer. One other small issue is with a few grammatical and spelling errors across the vast script.

Nurse Love Addiction was a joy to experience. I loved the main character routes and seeing completely different bad ends for each of them was absolutely worth the time I put in. While it is easy to get the only ending I consider bad from a quality standpoint, once you learn or use a guide to get one of the good ones, it is easy to get the rest. There are a few rough edges with the interface but any fan of true visual novels should play and experience Nurse Love Addiction.

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As our hero, Kaguya and her allies travel across the land of Mizuho. She’ll not only encounter new allies to fight alongside, but a host of enemies, both human and otherwise, who’ll try to block her progress and  must be defeated in turn-based battles. After placing your heroes at the battle’s opening, each turn sees you and the AI moving each of your troops across the grid-based map, with the order decided by each unit’s speed rating, to try and outmaneuver and defeat the opposing team. Occasionally the game throws a different win condition at you, i.e. kill the enemy leader or defend an ally, but ultimately these also boil down to killing all the opponents. I’d also recommend utilising the quick save option during battle to backup your progress, in case the tides turn against you later, as the main story battles can become rather lengthy so having to replay one from scratch is very frustrating.
 
Running straight into fights isn’t going to net you much progress here, as God Wars is all about battle tactics. Attacking from behind, to the side or from higher terrain than the enemy will grant bonuses to both the attack power and accuracy of the strike, so gaining position over the opposing units becomes essential to winning. Each unit also has a batch of special skills to use in battle which can damage or debuff opponents as well as heal and buff teammates but all of which have an associated cost to the slowly regenerating MP bar. Do you use less effective skills more often or save up MP for more powerful ones later? That’s a decision you’ll have to make constantly throughout the lengthy campaign.

 
Outside of story missions, there are only a smattering of shrine battles to participate in, which occur on maps you’ve already beaten, but with a new scenario i.e. defeat a pack of wolves or rescue x person from y enemies. But these tend to be smaller in scale and thus more brief, mainly to be used for grinding levels as they provide little variety to the main quest and lack the draw of its driving story. You’ll also have to spend a great deal of time customising your heroes between fights as each character can have a total of three swappable job classes: a main one that determines the armour and weapons available to them, a sub class that grants additional skills and a unique job that cannot be changed. Each of those then has an associated set of skills and experience, only applicable when that job is equipped, that can be used to upgrade and unlock new skills. Add all that to the customisable equipment loadout of each hero and there’s a lot of prep work to do to keep your team at their best before a fight.
 
The simplistic visuals and fairly basic strategy gameplay of God Wars: Future Past are clearly designed primarily with the Vita version in mind, and would work better on the portable system, but the experience translates reasonably well to the home console, particularly if Japanese folklore-based stories and heavy character customisation are up your alley.

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Unlike most rhythm games that allow for various control schemes, Deemo is purely a touch based experience. This extends through the interface. You cannot use the buttons or analog sticks for anything here. I’m a little disappointed by this. While the core gameplay works fine (for the most part), navigating the menus would have benefited from button controls. The UI in particular hasn’t really been tweaked from the phone release and there aren’t bezels big enough on phones that make things feel awkward like they do here when you have buttons in the middle of the screen. The screen is very responsive though.
 
Deemo is a mysterious character who plays the piano. A girl falls into a world with Deemo from a trapdoor in the sky. As Deemo you play songs to grow a tree so the girl can return to her own world. The tree grows from the piano as you complete more songs and this opens up some areas to explore for additional dialogue. The voice acting is in Japanese and you do come in contact with a few other characters.

 
Songs are split up into collections and the base game has little over 30 songs with a free DLC pack adding some more. There are collections available for purchase adding up to more than 200 songs. I’m a bit disappointed to not have everything included in this release, but the publisher has kept the price low allowing for extra songs to be bought if desired. The story told here is complete and requires none of the DLC which is nice.
 
Everything revolves around piano music here. The touch controls are responsive with audio feedback like a piano to your touch and every song whether vocals are included or not, feature the piano as the core instrument. This is great because I love piano music and managed to power through the mediocre narrative in I Am Setsuna thanks to the great piano score.

 
I wish Rayark had put a bit more effort into the Vita version. The UI could have definitely benefited from some tweaks because phones don’t have extra useless (full touch so buttons are useless) buttons on each side of the screen making it a bit hard to reach the middle of the screen. Having more difficulty modes would have been nice as well.
 
Deemo: The Last Recital is a great beginner’s rhythm game. More experienced players of the genre might find things a bit too basic, but the music here makes it worth experiencing. If you don’t own a Vita, it is definitely worth checking out on iOS and Android as well. On the Vita the low asking price makes this an easy recommendation for anyone interested in rhythm games.

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Unlike everything people are used to with Falcom, Tokyo Xanadu has a modern day setting. There are high school students, dungeons, relationship building, mini games, and more here, and I know what you’re thinking. There’s definitely an influence felt from Atlus’ Persona 3 and Persona 4. But there’s also a generous helping of Falcom’s storytelling in general and the combination of elements from newer Persona games with the Falcom touch has resulted in a wonderful experience. Outside of being an action RPG, there’s nothing that connects Tokyo Xanadu to Falcom’s earlier Xanadu games.

Instead of being set with a fantasy backdrop, things are more modern here. In fact the fictional modern day Tokyo has a nice recreation of key parts of Tachikawa City (where Falcom’s head office is), and exploring the locations within has been a lot of fun. You play as Kou Tokisaka who is a 17 year old high school student with tons of part time jobs. On the way home from work one day, he is caught in a certain incident involving a classmate and ends up discovering an alternate world (dungeon). His classmate, Hiiragi, manages to make a weapon appear out of thin air. Kou wakes up the next day with almost no recollection of what happened the previous night. This is where his adventure begins and one that will reveal and make him remember a very important childhood incident that turns out to be part of a major conspiracy.

Just like in Persona, there are two main aspects to the gameplay loop here and there’s even an in game calendar system. You have free time that allows for mini games like Skateboarding, Blade Card game, or even a Whack-a-mole like game. You can also use your free time to do various quests and befriend more people. There are even class segments where you have to answer questions that raise your wisdom. The best part about free time is getting to experience Trails-like story telling before deciding to move into a dungeon.

Dungeons here are called Eclipses and these exist as a parallel to reality. If they aren’t dealt with quickly, the monsters or Greed penetrate into the real world. The end bosses of Eclipses are called Elder Greeds and defeating them will let you get back to reality. I wish the layouts were more interesting. Most of them feel the same and the only real “puzzles” are activating something to unlock something else. Thankfully the combat feels great. It isn’t as fast as Ys but more of a mix of Ys with Trails’ engine. Unlike the sub par performance in Cold Steel, Falcom definitely managed to squeeze out some good performance on the Vita here. Even the X Drive special moves look and run great. There are elemental affinities, an Orbment like system for your weapon, and more at play here. You can even switch between yourself and your partner on the fly during combat and it always helps making sure you can tackle most elemental weaknesses to finish off battles quickly and earn higher ranks for stages. Action game aficionados might find the normal mode a tad too easy so I’d recommend playing at a higher difficulty.

I’ve mentioned the Cold Steel engine before, but even a lot the user interfaces during quests and dialogue are exactly how they are in those games. This isn’t a bad thing, but I was hoping to see something new like the NiAR system that is an in game PDA and your main menu. Character models and the visual fidelity is almost the same as well but the major difference is performance. While Cold Steel didn’t suffer too much from the frame drops due to the combat style in that game, Tokyo Xanadu benefits quite a bit. Combat feels great, movement and exploration of both dungeons and the city is smooth. Things still look like a PS2 era game which is par for the course for a Falcom handheld release. I wish it had some polish put into icons and reflections though. Some of the icons that indicate mood like anger or confusion are too low resolution and the running and walking animations in the cutscenes still looks awkward.

Music is one of the most important parts of a game for me as you know, and it is fantastic being able to experience a new Falcom Sound Team release thanks to an all new game. Tokyo Xanadu’s soundtrack while sounding a bit too much like Meguro’s style in some of the high school segments, manages to come into its own just like the rest of the game. There’s definitely an influence, but it feels more of a tribute than anything. One downside for many in the audio side of things is the lack of an English dub. XSEED did a fantastic job with the voice acting in both Cold Steel games and there’s only the original Japanese Voice acting here. It is fantastic with a colourful cast of voice actors, but I would’ve definitely preferred an English dub just because that’s how I’ve experienced Falcom games before.

While it does feel a bit weird playing a modern Falcom game with Japanese voice acting, Aksys has done a great job with this release. 2017 has seen some great and not so great releases on the Vita. Tokyo Xanadu has earned a spot in the former category and I look forward to replaying this when the PlayStation 4 version releases later in the year.

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Ragnite, is a blue (or Azure) mineral that has lead to a rapid industrial revolution in the Ruzi Empire. The main story revolves about five orphans who are out to seek revenge. They have had everything taken from them but have grown and become adept in various fields over the last 10 years. Amleth, the protagonist, is a powerful soldier who is the leader of the Circle of Five (the orphans) and the captain of the Vanargand which is an anti Valkyria squad. The Circle of Five decide to take advantage of the war in the empire to carry out their plan for revenge against the empire lead by Emperor Klaudiusz. While I enjoyed the setting and some of the characters, the pacing is terrible. Some scenes go on for ages when they could have been done with a single loading screen giving you information or a quick portrait with a dialogue box.
 
It isn’t new for games to drop stapes in franchises while doing a spinoff and the combat system here plays like a combination of a Musuo game, MMO combat, and Real Time with Pause combat. The AI is mostly brain dead aside from a few boss fights where you need to pay attention and I quite liked the combat here initially. It does well to make you feel like a badass with skills, but will get boring very quickly. There’s an action gauge that you use during attacks and skills and once it is empty, you have to wait for it to replenish. The weapon and upgrade system is good and there’s always some free missions for you to play to level up if you need to. I wish there was more weight to the combat. I feel like a lot of Japanese developers that go for an action combat style falter with things feeling too floaty. The recent Tales of Berseria has a great action combat system in contrast to Valkyria Revolution. The gauge on top that fills up allowing you to go in without any cool down is a welcome addition and makes the combat a lot more fun.
 
I usually try every new Japanese game demo on PSN to get a feel for the game before the localisation happens and what I played for Revolution was pretty disappointing. The visuals and performance weren’t great and when I got my Vita copy of it for review I was actually impressed. Media Vision has done a great job with the Vita version. The smaller screen with a lower resolution also manages to hide some of the visual inconsistencies albeit with less flair than the home console version. The long drawn cutscenes are the only downside to playing this on the go. I like the character designs even though they look a bit too clichéd at times. There’s also the Not Selvaria Valkyria, Brunhild who definitely caught my eye in the promotional art. Environments are bland and the art style lacks any sort of charm. There are in game cuts to characters during key moments and they don’t have any lip movement when dialogue is playing. Everything feels too ambitious for a very low budget on the visual side of things.

 
Thankfully the audio side of things is almost completely good. Yasunori Mitsuda’s (Chrono Trigger) soundtrack is really good. The final boss music is really good and his score is the saving grace for Valkyria Revolution. There’s also support for both English and the original Japanese voice acting. The English dub is very good.
 
There’s a lot that could have been improved to make Valkyria Revolution turn out better. The funny thing is Valkyria Chronicles, a game from nearly a decade ago, has aged so much better visually and Revolution that is a 2016 game (in Japan) looks like it is from a decade ago. 2017 is a cracking year for games and you are better off putting your time elsewhere. Buy the soundtrack instead of the game unless you absolutely want to play anything with Valkyria in the name.

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As narratives go, Spirit of Sanada maintains a pretty straight-faced and easy-going approach throughout, without being too dramatic or oppressive. It isn’t bad in any way, it’s just that the game’s primary focus is elsewhere. Masayuki and his family aren’t the most developed set of characters that you’re ever going to meet, but when their main job is to kick backsides and take names, they don’t necessarily have to be.
 
Unsurprisingly, the combat is the big draw here. Fans of Dynasty Warriors, of which Spirit of Sanada is a double spin-off of, will likely feel right at home thanks to the hack-n-slash nature of combat. It’s particularly exaggerated, a bit silly and somewhat satisfying,with each strike throwing your enemies either into the air or further away from your good self. The impact of charged and special attacks is even more enjoyable, with your foes tossed up into the air like ragdolls in zero gravity. It’s silly, non-bloody violence; the grunts you come up against offer barely any resistance, and are essentially fodder to boost your KO chain, but the emphasis is on fun here, and it works. Even though battles have time limits, it never feels like you don’t have long enough to accomplish your goals.
 
You’re not expected to take out all of the enemies on offer in the game’s decently-sized areas, which is just as well as they can frequently number over several thousand. The game instead encourages you to explore each map, uncover sub-objectives like battling lieutenants, pick up materials and eventually take down a boss, thus ending the battle. These large-scale fights will slowly get more complicated as you delve further into the game, with the ability to control multiple characters, issue commands to attack specific targets and unleash stratagems to strengthen either yourself or your troops added into the equation. Traversing each map is made easy thanks to the addition of a horse, who will remain nonchalant and utterly unfazed as you chop down hundreds of people right next to it, whilst awaiting your next command obediently. Cracking steed.

 
Away from battle, time is spent in your hub doing standard RPG stuff; fishing, item upgrading, crafting and training. It’s a nice change of pace from combat, with the ability to slash enemies repeatedly and mercilessly nicely juxtaposed by the fact that you can give presents to the other members of your clan. Would your son like a dandelion, a stick, or a wolf pelt, perhaps? Everyone’s too polite to say anything other than thank you, at least, even if you don’t give them their favourite type of item. All of these things and more can be picked up from previous areas that you’ve explored, with exploration outside of main story battles encouraged as a means of gaining loot, and then using said loot to upgrade your abilities, like attack, reach etc with your chosen weapon. Fishing feels disappointingly basic, given that your input is a simple, quick button prompt when you’ve got something hooked, but it’s nice to have it there at all. The addition of museums that house the game’s cutscenes, soundtrack and a comprehensive index that chronicles every character, place and minute element of this world is a nice touch, too, given that the game’s plot can get a little convoluted.
 
Spirit of Sanada doesn’t feel particularly tough to get into; even if you don’t have an interest in the narrative, the basic principle of a game handing you a weapon and a seemingly unending supply of enemies and prodding you to have some fun isn’t tough to wrap your head around. What it loses due to the quality of its visuals, it makes up for with a consistent framerate, colourful style and good performance, which is impressive given how often the sheer multitude of the things happening on screen borders on the ridiculous. As action RPGs with plenty to offer and fun combat go, Samurai Warriors: Spirit of Sanada will likely quench your thirst for throwing fools up into the air whilst making you feel like a historical badass in the process.

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