It’s been far too long since ‘Arc the Lad: End of Darkness’ effectively brought the franchise to a screeching halt on the PlayStation 2 in 2005, and although the Arc series as a whole has never brought the kind of mass acclaim that other venerable RPG franchises have, it’s been time wasted for those who got to experience its other entries. Now, a mere 16 years later for those in the west, the series is seeing an attempted resurgence on mobile.
The endless tide of Match-3 RPG hybrid titles seems to have slowed down of late, and attempts to really dive into a blend of the two that goes beyond ‘Match-3 that resembles combat’ have become rare. The original Gunspell was released on mobile and Steam in 2014 and stood out in the crowd of anime-styled titles by have a strong WRPG vibe and modern supernatural fantasy setting. It’s sequel arrived early 2020 and looks to build on that formula. Continue reading
When SquareEnix announced that ‘Kingdom Hearts 3’ was going to end the original story setup to date through the series, which at the time spanned 9 titles across consoles, portable systems and mobile, it was highly expected that we would see the end of Sora and his nemesis Xehanort. Little did we know that Dark Road would be releasing to flesh out the series’ antagonist’s younger days.
After two sequels on the PSP and a spinoff action title, the Valkyria Chronicles series finally finds its way back to console after interest peeked in the IP after a successful remaster of the original game for PS4 and on Steam.
The first sequel to smash-success Kingdom Hearts wasn’t Kingdom Hearts 2, as many gamers were expecting. In fact that game was some time away from release when the Game Boy Advance received an ambitious bridging chapter in Sora’s story called Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories.
Kingdom Hearts is perhaps one of the RPG scene’s best known franchises, in part because it features the mix of Squaresoft at its best with the star power of Disney, and in part because of its compelling and rich story.
The arrival of an English translation for each Legend of Heroes game is something of a wait vs reward game. On the one hand we got this title after the East had already gotten their hands on its sequel, Cold Steel IV, but the game and indeed the series as a whole is of such quality that any Legend of Heroes title getting a Western release is a thing to appreciate.
It’s often the case with mobile stores that great indies get swept under the rug in the wave of freemium efforts from AAA developers trying to break the market or the latest release from the big-boys of the mobile space. Fairy Knights is one of those games that’s managed to fall through the cracks for many, but manages to be a creative entry into the Puzzle-based RPG scene.
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Square Enix keeps pushing out mobile titles packed with free-to-play mechanics but rarely seems to hit the nail on the head. Here in the west we’ve seen only a limited few based on the Dragon Quest series, but to the east they have already seen a slew, and with two more promising titles on the horizon (a Tactics RPG and a Geo Quest title to compete with ‘Fire Emblem Heroes’ and ‘Pokemon Go’ respectively), is Dragon Quest of the Stars worth playing?
Aside from a single adventure game release in 1982 by Sierra, the unique world setting of Jim Henson’s film ‘The Dark Crystal’ has been curiously unexplored in video game form. Though it’s always been a cult classic, a recent resurgence in interest led by a series of young adult novels and comics cumulated in Netflix commissioning a prequel series subtitled ‘Age of Resistance’ that also came with its own Tactics RPG tie-in.
