Lowell Bell
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Nintendo Life Latest Reviews
Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land manages to stand on its own two rocket-powered high heels through the strength of its comfortable cast and flashy, fun combat. I still wish the open-world puzzles and base building weren’t so shallow and derivative, even if Atelier Yumia doesn’t penalize you too much for not engaging with them. This isn’t the major shift toward the mainstream that the series needed but if your expectations aren’t too high, you’ll have a great time exploring Adaliss with Yumia and her friends.
A memorable core cast, often hilarious side quests, and a gripping main narrative make Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 a must-play medieval RPG, despite its late-game progression woes and rough edges.
A charming comic book aesthetic and a tight, satisfying gameplay loop make Wild Bastards a worthwhile FPS roguelike, provided you can bear its gratingly chatty cast and often underwhelming upgrades.
In the end, our review is that Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn isn’t a must play for narrative-driven action RPG fans or the Soulslike-obsessed looking for their next fix. It is, however, an enjoyable enough way to spend a couple weekends with a good combat system verging on great and a beautiful world to explore. If you go in fully capable of looking past some disappointing enemy variety and a bland overarching narrative, you’ll come away happy enough with Nor and Enki’s quest.
While Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus plays it too safe with its gameplay, its engrossing setting and large cast of charming characters help it stand apart in the ever-crowded Metroidvania genre.
While the first part of Animal Well was a clever puzzle adventure with Metroidvania mechanics that just about anyone could work through without too much difficulty, working together with peers to uncover these truly esoteric secrets quickly enshrined Animal Well as one of my favorite gaming experiences in recent memory. That said, as the mysteries grow more complex and the discussions more intense, I’ve decided to bow out lest I melt my brain further.Perhaps I’ll return one day to solve these mysteries for myself or hop back in with a friend who is simultaneously playing to see if we can’t crack the many codes together. Either way, Animal Well was a wonderfully unique experience full of neat little ideas that drip-fed me dopamine derived from a constantly satiated sense of discovery, made all the more impressive as it was created by a single developer. It deserves to stand among legendary puzzle-oriented indie titles such as Braid, FEZ, and Tunic, and I cannot wait to see what Shared Memory does next.
Whether or not you’re a fan of Suikoden II, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is just about worth your time. Unfortunately, almost every high point in Nowa's adventure is met with a painful low, making for a disjointed experience bursting with forgettable minigames and characters.
Sea of Stars is a worthy pseudo-spiritual successor to some of the greatest JRPGs ever made. It improves on what made those games so special by modernizing their magic through balanced and engaging turn-based combat wrapped up in an enthralling world to explore.
We still have a lot of adventuring left to do in New Wirral, and we’re in no way upset about it. More monsters to record and remaster, a few more mysteries to uncover, characters to grow fond of, and about 13,970 more fusions to see. Some (hopefully pre-launch-only) performance issues, wonky balance, and overly complex battle mechanics did little to affect how much we enjoyed Cassette Beasts. In fact, it’s one of the better monster-battling games not starring a little electric rodent that you can enjoy on your Nintendo Switch.
While we did grow a little weary of the overwhelming amount to explore and backtrack through in Afterimage, we didn’t grow tired of whacking its wide range of enemies, nor did its gorgeously hand-drawn environments — which Switch unfortunately struggles to do justice to when docked — ever disappoint. It's best experienced elsewhere if you're playing on a television, but if you primarily play your Switch handheld, Afterimage offers a lengthy, lovely-looking Metroidvania adventure.