After three relatively solid entries into the Onimusha series of adventure/horror titles (arguably Action RPGs with their levelling system for weapons) that closed off a tight trilogy in 2003, Capcom started to experiment with the IP. This gave us smash-clone ‘Onimusha: Blade Warriors’, ‘Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams’ the fourth entry into the series, and ‘Onimusha Tactics’ a fully-fledged tactical RPG for the Game Boy Advance.
There are two schools of thought to Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness; there are those who think it’s a triumphant example of a traditional JRPG from Square Enix and those who derive the lack of significant process for the series and shallow story. Neither viewpoint is wrong, and that’s what seems to have led to this title being something of a black sheep of the 2017 games line-up.
Combining RPGs and CCGs has been all the rage for some time on mobile platforms, however few of them actually feel like they could feasibly function as an actual deck of physical cards. Dungeons and Girls, for all its anime-cliché trappings, actually have a good stab at producing a well-rounded package.
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.
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.
