An enjoyable shift in Social RPGs in recent months has been a growing trend in putting the focus on storytelling. Earlier this year we were pleasantly surprised with the amount of inter-character sequences in Dissidia’s mobile outing from Square Enix, Nintendo has managed to finally give ‘Fire Emblem: Heroes’ a compelling arc with its second chapter, and now we have Sdorica Sunset to add to the list of genuinely interesting narratives.
Phantasy Star III is often viewed as the black sheep of the series, and it’s a fair standpoint. In terms of world setting, gameplay and characterisation there’s a definite disconnect from the other titles in the series and many of the further-reaching or impactful elements are tied in retrospectively by the games successor instead of directly in the game at hand. Still, does that necessarily make it a bad game? Continue reading
It’s taken a surprising amount of time to get a game that exemplifies what most people would have expected from a Harry Potter title. The pitch practically writes itself in fact; take the setting of Hogwarts school for Witchcraft and Wizardry and allow players to create their own avatar and enjoy a mixture of school sim and original adventure. Set it within a period where enough recognisable faces from the popular novel series are around but not while Harry, Ron or Hermione are in attendance to avoid breaking canon.
Known in some regions as ‘Dark Cloud 2’, Dark Chronicle is a follow-up to the PlayStation 2 launch title that put Level-5 on the map. A sequel in the loosest terms (the game carries over none of the characters, story or world trappings, but does incorporate and build upon systems first seen in Dark Cloud), it’s an Action RPG that many consider to be the hidden peak of the genre on Sony’s black box, eclipsing even the far more prominent ‘Kingdom Hearts’. Continue reading
Famously the last game to be translated and released for the Sega Saturn, the CLAMP property ‘Magic Knights Rayearth’ also saw release on the SNES in the form of a more traditional JRPG.
I am Setsuna lives in an interesting space between being a heavy nod to ‘Chrono Trigger’ and an attempt at an art-house take on an old-school JRPG. It’s trying to be stylish and original at the same time as reminding players how much they enjoy the old classics. Somewhere in the middle the game gets a little muddled and it doesn’t always reach the high-notes of either approach.
It would be very easy for people to glance at the Wave Light Games catalogue and assume that Strike Team Hydra is just a simple reskin of their excellent ‘Demon’s Rise’ series with a Science Fiction coat of paint. If this were the case it would still be worth your time, as the Demon’s Rise games are some of the best tactical games on mobile at the moment (and hey, it worked for Games Workshop with ‘Warhammer 40K’), but Strike Team Hydra is so much more than that.
