John Cal McCormick
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While the Atelier series has been steadily evolving and tweaking its winning JRPG/craft-'em-up formula across 30 years and 20-plus games, Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land perhaps represents the most radical shift yet. But that doesn't mean existing fans should be worried: for all of the changes, Yumia is still an Atelier game at heart, only bigger, more action-focused, and a little darker than before.
Fantasian Neo Dimension is a little like Japanese role playing game comfort food. There's the slightly androgynous amnesiac hero. He'll go on a quest to reclaim his memories and along the way he'll meet up with a slightly kooky orphan mage with secrets of her own to uncover. They'll befriend the sassy princess, the lovable rogue, the comic relief, and more. Together they'll discover that there's a world, nay, universe-ending threat on the horizon, and only they have the means to stop it.
Indika is a game of wild contradiction. It's compelling, thoughtful, and ambitious, but also tedious, rote, and derivative. It's the sort of video game that ruminates on the nature of devout faith, free will, guilt, shame, temptation, and morality, and then asks you to solve boring box puzzles. It's the sort of video game that asks you to solve boring box puzzles and then leaves you earnestly wondering whether the box puzzles were intentionally boring just to mess with you.
Eternights begins with your unnamed teenage protagonist setting up his Tinder profile while his best friend gives him top tips like photoshopping his picture to make himself look more heroic, and lying about who he is to be more appealing to the ladies. This, apparently, is sage advice, because almost instantly our hero matches with a lady who offers to send him dirty pictures before he's even had a chance to use any of his best chat-up lines.
Let's get the boring paperwork out of the way quickly. Yes, Wild Hearts is a lot like Monster Hunter: World. The similarities are plain to see, both structurally and conceptually. However, far from being a Monster Hunter clone, thanks to mostly fantastic creature design and splendid, fast-paced combat with an emphasis on ad hoc building, it manages to differentiate itself and stand on its own two feet as a viable alternative.
After forty-five hours, a few smiles, and one or two frowns, we walked away from Star Ocean: The Divine Force with a shrug. It’s a middle-tier Japanese role playing game that at no point, ever, threatens to get promoted to top-tier status nor sink so low that it ends up sandwiched between Hyperdimension Neptunia and Unlimited Saga. Mid-table mediocrity. The Crystal Palace of JRPGs.
There's something distinctly old school about Valkyrie Elysium, and we don't mean because it's part of a long-running franchise; a series that started with the turn-based JRPG Valkyrie Profile way back in 1999. This is a game with an almost PlayStation 2 style design philosophy, for better and worse, and what you're here for will determine whether that dated approach is appealing or not.
Republished on Wednesday 29th June 2022: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of July's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows.
If you read our review of Borderlands 3, then you've basically read our review of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, only this game isn't as good. We're just doing it again in different words, and we're a little more weary this time around. Nothing of much consequence has changed between the two games. The budget is lower, clearly, and the level design is worse, pretty much objectively. Oh, and it's wearing a wizard's hat this time. Other than that, it's just another Borderlands game, and this is just another Borderlands review.
The first four minutes of the ludicrously titled Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin set the scene perfectly. There’s a cutscene of a dark knight annihilating a platoon of soldiers while he carries an unconscious princess on his shoulder. Then you’re in a boss battle against a multi-headed creature without context or justification that begins with a man shouting “Bring it!” and ends without resolution. Next there’s a scene of a man walking through a cornfield while Frank Sinatra’s My Way plays only for it to cut out right before he sings “My Way”. And then, finally, a tutorial where you learn how to hit a goblin with a big sword.