I want to love this series, but I feel it totally lacks some of the basic mechanics necessary to make for an interesting RPG in this day and age. I’ve played about half a dozen roguelikes to completion (not rogue-lites which implement permadeath elements into other genres. (I love the hell out of those) Roguelikes are…

I was really disappointed reading this (as someone who puts Xenoblade Chronicles right up there in his top 3 RPGs ever) but I was relieved to hear you’re one of the people who didn’t like the original. You should consider editing that opinion into the article, as it gives a more solid foundation for understanding how…

Personally I loved the story (if not the characters so much, but at least it beats the hell out of most Final Fantasy games in that respect), loved the way sidequests were handled, felt satisfied and reasonably engaged by the combat (not great but doesn’t play itself like FF 12), enjoyed exploration and found the…

The main statistics you’re reporting are coming from a very simplistic mobile port that has little place on PC (and which you’d probably get bored of in under an hour either way), and a 2D game which throws you right in at a high difficulty level, which a lot of people understandably won’t have the patience to get…

Reddit’s great, because if a particular sub (like the button one) is a giant circlejerk or constant stream of dumb memes, you can unsubscribe. Or not subscribe in the first place. You can pick and choose where to spend your time being a part of the community, and you get both tight-knit small groups and giant…

Ask them how Monster Hunter Frontier on Xbox 360 sold.

>If you could call and text on a 3DS what would it be?

Maybe it’s part power fantasy, the way burly dudes gunning down baddies is to American males, Japanese girls all want to be ninjas. I’m sure the katana holds some significance culturally, and that must weigh into their choice of weapon - when you have a female character specializing in melee, it’s the go-to for…

I loved the challenges in Galaxy. The mechanics they used were mind-boggling and just absolutely fantastic. Levels where platforms appeared and disappeared to the beat of the music, bubbles of space-time distortion that remove physical platforms and walls when intersecting with them, platforms that flip every time you…

It’s pretty well-done, but I think it has some issues that actually show how well-thought out the original game really was. Look at all those long sections of just walking along empty road. The original had bits like that, but a key difference is that in those levels, you would often be presented choices to make on…

I can assure you, the phone is the last place I’d ever want to play Gradius.

Nintendo has a ton of IPs covering pretty much the full range of genres (moreso if you consider the spinoffs) and they’re always trying new things like Splatoon... it’s just mixed in with a constant stream of “safer” releases in popular IPs. I want more new IPs like Splatoon and Harmoknight as much as anyone, but even…

Wouldn’t be surprised in the least. I saw at least 2 different niche fetishes represented via Yooka-Laylee porn on the day the Kickstarter went live.

I don’t care about anything presenting itself as “8-bit” when the people making it clearly don’t care about working under the limitations of 8-bit graphics. There’s a lot of interesting artistry and design sensibility that goes into working under those restrictions, and at least on the surface it’s not hard to make…

I was wondering why the background was designed under 8-bit limitations but they weren’t even trying with the character, and didn’t even come close to making his pixels the same size.

I’m not impressed.

Look, here’s my issue with that thinking: I could make a game right now that requires two GTX 980s in SLI just to achieve a consistent 30 FPS on “high” settings. We in the industry have graphics effects that, in the right combination and used with complex scenery and shaders, could end up bringing even the most…

I want to like this series, but I just can’t do standard roguelikes anymore. The dungeons are all rectangles connected by hallways. The random generation serves to make every dungeon you enter feel the same, rather than making every playthrough of the same dungeon feel different. The gameplay is nothing to write home…

Odin Sphere is a bit of a strange comparison. It was more of a simpler Muramasa or fully-2D Dragon’s Crown, focusing on controlling one character running/jumping around and slashing at things. Plants were an added element which gave you an alternate use for the XP bubbles floating around, usually trading those in for…

If it’s still nicking Bejeweled match-3 then probably yes. Every game with those mechanics is 80% about blind luck. It doesn’t take much to recognize the best possible moves on the board (given there are usually like... what, 4 possible on average) in terms of what colors you need, and the chances of getting lucky…