Living her life in a beautiful little town, Crisbell is an orphan with not a care in the world, until two things occur to shake up her idyllic life. Firstly, the rose she picked that very morning was stolen by a frog in a top hat, leading to her having to trek all over her town to retrieve it. Secondly, a bunch of monsters attack the town, setting the crops alight, and resulting in a battle for Crisbell and awakening her new powers as a Time Mage.
Do you remember the scene from the opening of The Incredibles where Mr. Incredible says that he feels like the maid and just wants the world to stay saved for a little while? That’s how I feel about the Crystals in the world of the Bravely franchise, and Bravely Default II doesn’t buck the trend. Beginning with throwing together your rag tag band of misfits, led by Seth, you venture into the world to save the Crystals.
The first, and lasting, impression that SWORD ART ONLINE: Alicization Lycoris gives is anime, and plenty of it. All of the well-trodden tropes are present here. Blue-haired swordsman protagonist? Check. Fast-paced and heavily over-cut intro? Check. Inexplicable amnesia? Check. Anime waifu goodness? Check, check and check.
This also means, however, it suffers a couple of the pitfalls too.
Playing a lot of anime games, you quickly become desensitised to a lot of things that other people might find egregious, with the quirks becoming mundane over time. Then, on the rarest of occasions, you get hit square between the eyes by something so absurdly Japanese that the force practically leaves you with whiplash. You likely already know where I’m going with this.
Sometimes, as a writer, you just have opinions that don’t align with others. This has been the way with me and the Tokyo RPG Factory games, with both I Am Setsuna and Lost Sphear appealing to me, but not resonating with that many others. So, when Oninaki was revealed earlier this year, I was already sold on it and honestly couldn’t care that no one seemed to agree.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve been keeping an eye on Numskull Games since they revealed themselves to the world a short time ago. With their focus on high quality merchandise, I’ve been looking forward to seeing how their game publishing ventures turn out, and I’m definitely not disappointed.
I love traditional JRPGs, and I mean I love them a lot, so it was unlikely that I was going to go into Octopath Traveler with an overly open mind. But after playing through the incredible action-JRPG, Ys VIII, I needed something a little more comforting, but was the game the big thick, number-heavy cosy blanket I needed in my life?
Personally, I’m a huge fan of JRPGs, the problem being that I often don’t have time to play them through. Ignoring my better judgement over whether it would be wise, I started Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana on Nintendo Switch, and I settled in for what I was prepared to be the long haul.
Kingdom Hearts III is here, after what feels like three million years. As I put my head to the task of choosing the worst worlds in the series just last week, it stands to reason that I also had favourites instead of just hating everything about it. So here it is, my Top Five Best Kingdom Hearts Worlds.
Tales of Vesperia has always been a missing link in my love of the Tales series, as a game that I had no means of playing (outside of imports) and yet one that was more widely praised than any other title in the whole franchise, and so I spent years of generally feeling sad about not playing it.
Reu The Gamer 