Heroes in Time, sometimes known as ‘SEED 3’, is part of a KRPG series from Chillingo Ltd that appeared relatively early in the mobile gaming boom. As such it mirrors a lot of the early promise that portable gaming of this type had to offer, and manages to fall into some of the same traps as other early titles.
Kemco has gotten something of a reputation for publishing games from teams that rehash the same engines over and over again with a new skin, shared resources and little to no advancement of their genre. Tears Revolude is then something of an oddity for them, featuring an all new system and graphical engine built from the ground up.
The spiritual sequel to Barcode Kingdom takes the core concept of the original and places you in the boots of a single hero instead of an all-powerful god ruling over a miniature land. It’s a refreshing change of pace but is it enough to justify a second title in this manner?
Many people believe the the pinnacle of roleplaying on Nintendo’s Wii was Xenoblade Chronicles, but there’s a little title from Mistwalker Studios that makes a compelling case against it. The Last Story may perhaps be the greatest return to form from Sakaguchi since Final Fantasy IX.
Many people dislike the sequel to Dragon Age Origins, feeling that it was rushed out to capitalise on the popularity of the original. I won’t argue that it leaves something to be desired in terms of variety of locations to explore, but I will admit that I’ve probably played it more times to completion than its predecessor.
Bioware have made a name for themselves in the Western RPG genre by producing some of the best and most complex titles around. ‘Knights of the Old Republic’ and ‘Baldur’s Gate’ were huge, making RPG fans out of many people who had never even touched a game before, but they were based on the worlds and systems of others. Dragon Age Origins is what happened when Bioware turned its creative talents to an original IP within a fantasy setting.
After two successful releases on the Game Boy, Game Freak shifted their attention to the new Game Boy Advance for the third entry into their popular Pokémon series. After the twin regions to explore in Crystal people were expecting something pretty impressive on the new hardware, and whilst it doesn’t break much new ground it is a solid evolution of the series.
Sequels to titles in the Final Fantasy main-line series used to be non-existent, so when a direct sequel to Final Fantasy X on the Playstation 2 was announced there was no small amount of interest from players at the time. I personally picked up ‘Unlimited Saga’ largely for the bonus disc with the ‘linking’ short animation they included with that game. To say that people were intrigued with what could happen AFTER the world had been saved was putting it mildly.
Swords and Poker is something of an odd duck, an excellent little mobile title that fuses RPG mechanics with Poker, but also manages to be a total rip off of another property, in this case indie mobile title Sword and Poker by Gaia Co. There appears to be some question online as to whether Gaia Co are involved in this latest installment of their franchise at all, with Gaia Co going dark, however Cozy Okada (founder of the company) gets no mention on the credits of this latest title.
Fearless Fantasy was released some time ago on the PC, but seems to have found itself a natural home on mobile devices. Developed by Tinybuild and featuring revamped graphics and gameplay tweaks, the most recent rendition of this game appears to be the definitive version.
My Boxed Universe 