Robin Bea
This author account hasn't been claimed yet. To claim this account, please contact the outlet owner to request access.
Writing For
InverseLatest Reviews
For all the ways it frustrated me, I came away from The Veilguard with mostly positive feelings about it. Despite its quirks, combat is fun on a gut level, and building your character from the game’s massive skill tree offers multiple interesting playstyles no matter how you approach it. Though the narrative hands too much power to Rook in big choices and not enough in small ones, it’s full of great character moments with a compelling central cast. The series I fell in love with in the 2009 tactical RPG Dragon Age: Origins is hardly recognizable anymore, but what’s replaced it is still a solid blockbuster action game with plenty of reasons to recommend it.
Echoes of Wisdom proves that even after nearly 40 years, The Legend of Zelda still has room to surprise us. Finally giving Princess Zelda the spotlight is a major shakeup on its own, and the game’s inventive new mechanics show that even after Breath of the Wild, top-down Zelda games have plenty of new ground left to cover. While it doesn’t fully commit to its best mechanical ideas or its newfound heroine’s ability to lead her own game, Echoes of Wisdom feels like the Zelda-fronted game I’ve been waiting decades for. I only hope this isn’t her last turn as the series’ star.
It’s a shame nothing else in Visions lives up to its gorgeous presentation. While it’s a joy to look at, I found it dull to trudge through, with too many undercooked systems bogging down what’s otherwise extremely simplistic gameplay. Even that wouldn’t be a dealbreaker if its story and characters were good enough, but alas, no luck there either. As someone with a soft spot in my heart for Secret of Mana, I keep hoping that the series will see another truly great game again someday. Unfortunately, Visions of Mana isn’t it.
Creatures of Ava is a mixed bag when it comes to mechanics, but it’s a game I couldn’t stop playing once I saw the beauty under its surface. The world of Ava is one of the most compelling environments I’ve explored in a video game in some time, and its subversion of worn-out story tropes is nothing short of brilliant. Where most games make playing the hero about laying waste to your enemies, Creatures of Ava provides a needed counterpoint by showing that you can’t always be the hero, and not every story even needs one.
Unicorn Overlord’s story may not have thrilled me, but I still can’t recommend it highly enough to strategy fans. Every time I found myself longing for more character depth or a less predictable story, those critiques were washed away by the next hour-long battle pushing my strategic abilities to their limit. It’s hard to focus on shallow character dynamics when every brain cell is focused on developing the perfect set of tactics to pull off a clutch victory, after all. The sheer joy of leading your army to victory through nothing but clever planning is hard to overstate, and I’m convinced it will make Unicorn Overlord a new classic of the strategy genre in years to come.
I’ve gone back to play quest after quest every night since I finished the main story and I can’t see myself stopping any time soon. Developer Cygames has already announced additional characters and bosses coming in post-launch updates. As long as there’s more on the way, I can see myself returning to Granblue Fantasy: Relink’s gorgeous floating world for a long time to come.
I spent the first few hours of Potionomics falling more and more in love with the experience. Even once the new-game shine wore off, I never stopped being charmed by the meticulous care Voracious Games clearly put into every detail of Potionomics. That elevates an already great experience into one of the best games of the year, and one of my favorite management sims ever.
When I reached the credits of Citizen Sleeper, I looked back at those first underwhelming hours differently. The lack of choices I felt when getting adjusted to the station felt like a consequence of being trapped in a system far larger than myself, rather than an undercooked game mechanic, which only made the later moments when I was able to assert some agency more powerful. I still wish Citizen Sleeper’s resource management sold the fragility of your life on the fringes of space better, but its narrative stakes more than make up for its lack of mechanical ones. In the end, the choice of where to spend your limited dice rolls is far less interesting than the choice of whether to flee for some imagined safe haven or try to build a better life in a broken world among friends.