It's been a while since we've had to rewind a video tape before returning it to Blockbuster, but Digital Eclipse is ending 2024 by bringing us back to 1993 in all its Putty-punching glory. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita's Rewind is a side-scrolling Brawler straight out of the ‘90s, and fans of the show and that generation of video games should find an enjoyable romp. It's not without a few blemishes that keep it from reaching the heights of other recent beat-'em-ups, but the gameplay variety manages to keep things fresh enough to make it worth summoning the Megazord one more time.
The plot of Rita's Rewind takes us from the present to the past as a robotic version of the titular villainess finds a way to open a time portal to bring herself back to the ‘90s and the beginning of the original Power Rangers’ team and story. Yes, we're talking Jason, Billy, Zach, Trini, and Kimberly, and you can throw in Skull and Bulk for good measure. Your objective is to foil the plans of not one but two Ritas as they cause havoc all over Angel Grove. From city streets, rooftops, and highways to a base on the moon, it's your job to put the “might” in Mighty Morphin.
The controls feel pretty good as you punch, jump kick, and blast your way across more than a dozen stages. Most of these come in the form of straightforward side-scrollers, some play like rail shooters like Star Fox or Space Harrier, and the rest consist of Punch Out-like boss bouts. The brawler segments feature secrets to find and pretty standard elements like health restoring items and a super meter that fills up as you smash Putties, taunt, or collect coins (typically found in crates). The shooter stages utilize a behind the back camera as the Rangers zip through in their Zords or on motorcycles. The larger-than-life boss fights in the Megazord are challenging but largely play out the same each time, which is a bit disappointing.
The Switch version has local co-op for up to five players (six after rolling credits) with online multiplayer set to be added in a planned update. Performance is solid all around, and the attractive hand-drawn pixel art helps to conjure up nostalgia for when I had my own light up Morpher toy and Dragonzord-summoning dagger. The soundtrack is fine enough and employs the classic theme an appropriate amount. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to switch characters outside of quitting the game and reloading your story file, which is a little frustrating.
In addition to an unlockable sixth character and fourth difficulty mode, there are a handful of early arcade-style games you can access after finding hidden parts in the game. These arcade cabinets are at the show’s juice bar, along with some familiar faces you can interact with. A speed run mode rounds out the extras on offer. There's an odd mechanism that pushes the screen forward sometimes and can force your party members to fall into a pit or miss out on collectibles, and I hope it gets addressed in a future update.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita's Rewind does an admirable job of channeling the ‘90s show and video game era. The Rangers themselves are a bit hard to distinguish in terms of how they play, which makes subsequent playthroughs a bit less enticing, but there are stage objectives to complete for those so inclined. While the different stage types keep the action from getting stale, the Megazord segments are a bit of a letdown in terms of both gameplay and presentation. All in all, seeing another decades-old property brought back for another ride that plays well and hits those nostalgic notes is a welcome fourth quarter addition to the Switch’s stable of brawlers.
Turn-based RPG players may be among the most nostalgic individuals in all of video games. The developments in storytelling, music, and gameplay often contain major influences from the classics that came before, like the original Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. It's not uncommon for smaller development teams to try and capitalize on that nostalgia with throwback titles that utilize a retro art style and other trappings from once upon a time. 8-Bit Adventures 2 is one such game that panders to that thirst for the distinct flavor of ‘80s and ‘90s RPGs, but its insistence on handholding and a painfully slow opening hold it back from soaring in the way some of its predecessors did.
The story revolves around an antagonist known as the Glitch and a growing party of heroes who come together to stop the Glitch’s plot to transform the world they all live in. The young and plucky Charlie is one of the main protagonists who recruits powerful allies to take on this quest, including the three main characters from the game’s direct predecessor, 8-Bit Adventures. Fortunately, the sequel doesn’t require knowledge of the first game. Spending more hours with the cast does reveal enjoyable character moments and a greater level of depth and charm, but it does take some time and patience to reach that point.
The turn-based combat perspective is reminiscent of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, but fortunately it's much more involved in actual mechanics and fairly transparent. A bar on the right keeps track of turn order, and enemies have a health gauge above their heads that depletes as you strike them. You take up to three characters into battle but can swap them for other party members as your crew grows. The cast each bring their own abilities and skills to the battlefield, leading to some fairly engaging fights as the game progresses, especially with the satisfying Omega Burst finishing moves thrown in. In the early game, though, the number of encounters and boss battles is quite low, which means that one of the highlights of 8-Bit Adventures 2 takes a bit of a backseat until later on.
The game runs into trouble in terms of pacing, with the first 5 to 10 hours being particularly dialogue heavy and light on action and memorable events. It's completely fair for an RPG to take time to really get going, but it somewhat sours the overall experience when an homage to something like Final Fantasy on NES frontloads so much story and character interaction without interspersing fun combat sequences or puzzles. For comparison, the opening two hours of that NES classic featured the fight with Garland, the bridge crossing scene, and even earning your own sailing ship. On the other hand, there's a lot of Point A to Point B before 8-Bit Adventures opens up in the second half. Fortunately, there are some interesting places that you eventually get to visit after you get an airship, and it’s fairly satisfying when the game finally does find its footing.
Neat features like strategic airship battles and the ability to swap party members in combat buoy an experience that can at times feel overly jokey and contrived. The graphics and art style do a great job of transporting you back a few decades, but some of the music can be a bit repetitive and droning. On the plus side, the choice to replace random encounters with enemies on the map is a welcome change from the RPGs that inspired 8-Bit Adventures 2. The vibrant use of color and variety of settings help make adventure maintain momentum once it gets going, but it’s hard not to see the finished product as needing a good trim. If you need to explain what a save point does in a game tailormade for RPG fans, then you aren’t really respecting the time of your target audience. There’s a really enjoyable 20-30 hours here if you cut out a portion of the early game and the over-tutorializing, but in a year of incredible additions to the RPG genre, 8-Bit Adventures 2 is a tougher sell.
It may seem standard practice to begin any SaGa game review with a history lesson, about how it’s seen as a successor to Final Fantasy II and how it would borrow that naming convention for the Western releases of the Final Fantasy Legend games. There are more than a dozen entries in the series, but Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is all about looking forward. It epitomizes the heights of what can be achieved when remaking something old, and it absolutely soars with its unique gameplay, approachable systems, and countless surprises. While it retains a lot of what SaGa veterans love about the original versions of Romancing SaGa 2, it’s the modern upgrades lovingly implemented that make this not only the definitive SaGa experience, but an unmissable RPG that stands among the giants of the genre.
At its core is a lineage system that deftly interweaves progression and world building. Your hero, the Emperor of Varennes, persists across generations, which means that should he or she fall in battle, they return as a new Emperor; or perhaps you accomplish a major victory against one of the titular Seven, triggering a time skip of 48 or maybe even 86 years. The progress you’ve made comes with you, including sites and cities you’ve visited, stats you’ve gained, and equipment you’ve acquired: all of these stay with your kingdom.
What follows is an engaging push and pull between wanting to see your Emperor and their retinue go as far as they can, and then perhaps unexpectedly having the reset button pushed (or pushing it yourself), forcing you to discover the joys of new character classes or seeing how familiar places have changed in the intervening years. Some of the quest paths are tied to having the Emperor take on a particular job class or gender, and so there’s much to be gained from having a new individual donning the mantle.
The world around you grows steadily as you complete quests and converse with your citizens. Spending a night in the inn or downing a pint at the pub can lead to conversations that populate new places to visit on the world map, and so begins a simple but satisfying loop of exploring the sights in one territory until you reach its boundaries and push into the next one. It doesn’t hurt that the music and voice acting are also excellent and truly do bring this world to life. Even tracks that were repeated in many instances continued to leave me humming along long after my latest play session had concluded.
Along the way, you’ll encounter the deformed members of old heroes who have come back to exact their revenge, and it’s through taking them down that you recapture territories for the empire and expand not only your revenue generation but also your exploration horizons. In various caves and dungeons you also run into relics that grant a look back at the past to understand what happened to the Seven that set them on their course for vengeance. Story beats like these are doled out at a steady clip that help to color the world of Romancing SaGa 2.
Rather than feeling like a long connected story, the 30 to 40-hour runtime plays out more like a series of vignettes, with each territory of the empire having its own smaller tales and overarching narrative. Fighting the Seven and understanding their backstory provides a throughline for the game, but its soul comes from the way you accomplish different goals in every generation. The world is full of surprises and wonder, and there aren’t countless hours of wandering in the middle (aimless or otherwise) that sometimes bogs down RPGs of this length.
One of the glimmering stars of the show is the combat system, which feels refined compared to recent SaGa titles and a generational leap or two ahead of the original Romancing SaGa 2. After adding four comrades to join the Emperor in battle–from over 30 job classes–you slot them into a growing number of battle formations that bestow advantages and disadvantages to take advantage of based on your team composition. Throw a tank in front who will absorb most of the punishment, or perhaps opt for a formation that boosts your spell power and go mage-sage crazy. Many of the side and even main story quests unlock new job classes, and it’s good fun to start every generation with a fresh face or two as you work toward building the right party for the challenges of a new age.
The actual turn-based battles themselves feature a timeline at the top of the screen that displays ally and enemy turn order, including when your foes are preparing a particularly dangerous move. It's familiar proceedings, barring a few wrinkles.
One of these is the United Attack, which carries over from SaGa Scarlet Grace and Emerald Beyond, allowing multiple party members to unleash double damage blows in succession. Another is the Glimmer system, where new techs and spells are learned at random in and after combat. A light bulb icon will show up beside moves in your arsenal that offers a chance to glimmer a new ability, and so even though your basic sword slash attack might not hit a weak point or do the most damage, it may be worth choosing to increase the number of sword techs in your repertoire. The likelihood of glimmering goes up against stout opponents like bosses, which creates an exciting risk-reward system for expanding your kit.
Enemy weaknesses are displayed below their sprites in battle, and as you discover them this information persists across generations. With eight weapon types and six spell elements, it's worth unlocking as many weaknesses as you can so your future parties will know how best to dispatch foes. You also glimmer the ability to evade certain enemy attacks, and these become equippable in future generations. But outside of boss moves, it can be hard to know which evasions to bring with you into battle. As much as the combat feels like standard genre fare, it takes beloved elements from earlier games like Octopath Traveler and Final Fantasy X and creates a system that stays fresh over an entire playthrough.
Character progression is fairly transparent and carries over between generations; this includes both the Emperor and the job classes of your party members. It can initially feel like starting over from scratch when a time jump occurs or when your party falls in battle, but it's central to Revenge of the Seven’s premise that you are playing a lineage and a world more than an individual character and a static setting. The world progresses with you, with areas opening up as you liberate them from evildoers and monsters or follow tribes as they migrate across the land. The game is brimming with compelling and rewarding side stories that tell about the lives of those living in your kingdom, with the Emperor being a figurehead almost universally beloved and respected by the populace.
Another remarkable aspect of Romancing SaGa 2 is your choices really do matter. I wasn't able to see everything during my first playthrough, with a couple of paths and multiple sidequests eventually gated off as I focused on other objectives. Your order of operations as a ruler plays a key role in how much of the world you get to experience, and so it may be easy for new players and the unprepared to miss out on parts of the game. Rather than be disappointed by this, it instead galvanizes my resolve to start another playthrough and try out different classes and strategies, working to see what I missed the first time around.
In spite of how much I enjoyed my time with Revenge of the Seven, its performance on Switch is not without flaws. There’s a slight hitch when loading into combat or accessing some cutscenes, and I experienced three or four crashes during my first 10-15 hours (with none in the remainder of my time). Fortunately, the auto-save is quite regular and no real progress was lost. The visual fidelity is pretty decent in both docked and handheld, but there’s texture pop in, particularly with the clothing worn by the various characters. I experienced noticeable frame drops in one late-game fight, but otherwise frame rate appeared to be fairly steady. If you’re particularly attuned to performance issues, you may want to consider another platform, but for me the overall quality of the game was able to win out over these nagging concerns.
Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven has become my favorite game of 2024, and it might be the best turn-based RPG on Switch. From the moment I played the demo at PAX West to when I rolled credits and immediately dove back in, I’ve been completely enamored with its nonlinear trappings and charming world-building. It’s my sincere hope that the team that brought this remake to life will be given the reins to a Romancing SaGa 3 remake and then new SaGa titles moving forward, because they hit a grand slam with this one. There’s no doubt on my end – cold or otherwise: Revenge is a dish best served with romance.
It feels like this generation, more than any other, we're blessed with a bounty of retro compilations that allow us to relive or discover classic games. Castlevania Dominus Collection gathers not only the three Nintendo DS games, but it offers two bonus games: Haunted Castle and Haunted Castle Revisited. A bevy of achievements, art images, and music tracks mark another worthwhile set of re-releases from Konami.
The first of the Castlevania trio, Dawn of Sorrow, is a sequel to Aria of Sorrow, which appeared in the Castlevania Advance Collection. It will likely feel the most recognizable to those coming from the GBA trilogy or Symphony of the Night, whose absence from the eShop continues to be inexplicable. Protagonist Soma Cruz uses whips, swords, lances, and other weapons, in addition to an ever-growing arsenal of magic, to navigate a replica of Dracula's castle. Defeating enemies will sometimes yield souls that turn into abilities and buffs you can equip. The frequent save rooms, teleport pads, and enjoyable boss fights make for a fun, if overly familiar experience. It's solid but stands out a bit less compared to the other two DS games.
Portrait of Ruin is the first Castlevania title (I believe) to feature two protagonists whom you can switch between and even use both simultaneously to solve puzzles and take down creatures. This is its primary gimmick, but its secondary one involves adding smaller zones to the larger castle setting. Heroes Jonathan and Charlotte can hop into large paintings scattered about Dracula’s castle to find new items, abilities, and bosses to defeat. The paintings take you to a haunted fair, a mummy-filled pyramid, and an abandoned city, among others, and their addition adds nice flavor to the tried-and-true Metroidvania experience. The final boss gauntlet is an absolute doozy, and being either incredibly skilled or well stocked with potions seems required to pass this ultimate test.
Order of Ecclesia is the most interesting of the trio for the ways in which it takes the usual formula and twists it around. It adapts the ability-granting soul system of Dawn of Sorrow by swapping souls for glyphs, which drop from enemies and become weapons or bestow skills. You can even equip weapons in two different hands (on two buttons), allowing for a quick succession of thrusts or stabs, for instance. What genuinely separates Ecclesia from Dawn and Portrait is its inclusion of a world map, complete with a hub town and individual levels you can select. These levels have their own maps as well, with some of them functioning in a similar way to the interstitial stages of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. The character sprites during dialogue exchanges do look pretty rough in the transition from DS to Switch screen, but some of the abilities that protagonist Shanoa wields are really neat. And she needs all of them for what may be one of the hardest Iga-developed titles in the Castlevania series.
The transition from Nintendo DS to Switch was definitely one of the concerns before the announcement of Castlevania Dominus Collection, I think that those fears are mostly allayed by the final product. The touch screen functionality has been relegated to a cursor controlled by the right stick, and the second screen is simply reproduced on the right side of the Switch or TV screen. In handheld mode, the map screen is admittedly quite small by default, but there are five screen settings to choose from that can address this potential issue. Making matters more welcoming for new players or those seeking a slightly less challenging search action romp are save states and a rewind feature, and I feel no shame in admitting that I almost broke the latter trying to finish Portrait of Ruin. Not today, Death!
Well, maybe today after all. The two bonus games mentioned earlier take Castlevania back to its roots. Haunted Castle is a title I had the misfortune of experiencing back in 2019 with the Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection, and even save states and rewind do little to make Haunted Castle less of a nightmare. The more interesting inclusion here is Haunted Castle Revisited, which is much prettier and more playable than its predecessor. For some reason, it doesn’t have save states or rewind, but it ends up being fairly short and largely forgettable if you’re a Dracula-slaying veteran. It’s an interesting novelty but more of a distraction compared to how satisfying the three DS games are.
Konami stays winning with their compilation releases, as Castlevania Dominus Collection brings even more Metroidvania goodness to Switch players. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia in particular feature some absolutely banging music tracks. While we aren’t hurting for Metroidvanias on the eShop, the ones on offer here are among the finest in the genre and are all well worth the time it takes to go through them. We’re not quite into the spooky season yet, but you’d do well to add this package to your wishlist so that you’re prepared with the proper amount of skeleton-smashing entertainment ahead of Halloween.
The two Miles Edgeworth games that comprise the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection represent a noticeable departure from the adventures of Phoenix Wright and Apollo Justice. The pair of Investigations titles also mark the final two dominoes falling into place: every Ace Attorney game (barring the Professor Layton crossover) is now available on Switch. Who needs a GBA or DS anyhow?
While still dealing in the facts and truths of legal cases, protagonist Miles Edgeworth brings his own brand of justice and flair to Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit. The latter is particularly notable for being unlocalized until the release of this compilation, and long-time fans who have been clamoring for more Edgeworth are finally seeing their wishes come true. As someone who didn't play the first game, which originally released on DS in 2010 (in North America), being able to sink my teeth into not one but two completely new games was a genuine treat.
Whereas Phoenix Wright spends more than half of his time in a courtroom, the Investigations games see Miles Edgeworth doing just that: going hands-on to investigate crimes in the field, often within hours of their occurrence. There's also a shift from first person to third person that adds a welcome new flavor and a bit more of a dynamic quality to the gameplay. The player uses the control stick or D-pad to move Miles around a crime scene and connected areas to find clues and piece together exactly what happened. And “piece together” is a perfectly apt phrase because one of his signature mechanics is to combine mental puzzle pieces using Logic to gain new information or a fresh perspective on the case. Little touches like visual indicators of an object or scene element having been fully explored helps remove some of the potential repetition that can drag down adventure games. Overall, the investigations in this collection feel different because of the proximity to the crime and the criminals.
The other gameplay type is rebuttals, during which you'll use evidence collected to find inconsistencies in the testimony of other characters and suspects. Like in the other Ace Attorney games, you can press for more information and present evidence when you discover a contradiction. These segments are quite similar to the courtroom scenes of Phoenix and Apollo, but there's no judge character to interject or be swayed, which leads to a more serious, mature atmosphere (at least in some places).
Both Edgeworth games contain five episodes, each of which is divided into chapters. You can choose to start with any episode and even any chapter, allowing you to bypass events you may have already experienced previously. The crimes that Miles deals with are more adult and violent in nature; there's a departure in tone here if you're coming from the mainline Ace Attorney series, which can feel more slapstick or played for humor. The two Investigations entries are an effective complement to the courtroom-focused adventures, and while the gameplay is still very much point-and-click, the sum of all the small changes (such as the hologram crime scene recreations or mental chessboards) make for an experience that feels fresh. That said, the pacing is more effective in the first Investigations title, so be prepared for a bit of a longer, sometimes tedious journey through the second game, with your reward being a story that coalesces into something great.
Seeing Edgeworth, Dick Gumshoe, and newcomer Kay Faraday have their time in the spotlight makes for a pleasant detour from the affable Apollo and charismatic Phoenix. Ace Attorney Investigations Collection also contains built-in achievements, a music collection, a handful of design documents, 20 save files, and the ability to switch between the original pixel art or the updated HD visuals. If you're a fan of the Ace Attorney series, you owe it to yourself to give the Investigations Collection a shot, just don't use a loaded gun or you'll have Mr. Edgeworth giving you the business.
I always look forward to finding my favorite game of the show when I come to PAX West, and this year none of the indies and other games in the expo hall were grabbing me. Fortunately, I had a booking with Square Enix to try out a few of their upcoming RPGs, and the one I went into the appointment thinking the least about, Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven, not only surprised me; it blew my expectations out of the water.
Having played both Romancing SaGa games on Switch at their respective launches, I was familiar with their brand of turn-based goodness, but for a multitude of reasons, the newer SaGa entries like Scarlet Grace and Emerald Beyond just didn't hit for me. Before actually getting hands on with Revenge of the Seven, a top-to-bottom remake of Romancing SaGa 2, even the short presentation we were shown got me excited about all the changes coming to this updated version. My positive feelings on the game only grew as I sat down and relished just over 30 minutes of demo time on Switch in handheld mode.
The demo situates you as the next in line for the throne after your father (the king) has passed away. Romancing SaGa 2 employs a lineage system where offspring receive bonuses and buffs from their departed forebearers, and it is with these passed down benefits that you can eventually become strong enough to defeat the titular Seven. There's even a moment near the end of the demo that showcases this system in an extremely cool way, but more on that later.
Within the game's hub town, you can change up your party members and purchase new equipment. Your typical classes are present here–knight, archer, mage–and there are over 30 classes in the full game, with the protagonist apparently able to learn skills from all of them. While we only got a taste of the party composition and lineage mechanics, I'm eager to see more and experiment with different paths and options.
The demo offered a few different objectives to take on, including defending the castle and surrounding town from an orc attack. After sprinting around the city to repel the invasion, I faced an orc captain mini-boss, who put up a solid fight. I should also note that I was playing on the normal difficulty, of the three available, with the “Hard/Classic” representing the challenge of the original 1993 release. After successfully defending my castle, a ceremony was held and one of the not-yet-convinced companions ended up joining my ranks. From there, I had the option of heading to the orc’s hideout for retribution or seeking out one of the Seven, Kzinssie, who was holed up in a mansion across the continent. Completing all of these tasks provided a great sense of how combat and progression work, and it’s hard not to see the evolution in this remake as an excellent way of modernizing the series.
The turn-based combat of Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven was an obvious standout from my time with the demo. A particularly noteworthy feature was a light bulb icon that appears beside your attacks, indicating moves that have a chance of “glimmering,” which unlocks a new move and is one of the primary progression methods. More than that, every successful battle awards technique points towards your weapon proficiency rank and meters that raise your HP and BP (battle points). United attacks and formations add another layer of depth to the combat, too. All of this is to say that progression and growth are much more transparent than maybe they’ve ever been, and so Square Enix seems focused on making these games more approachable for a wider audience.
Even though the handheld visuals left something to be desired, performance was solid over the course of my playtime. This may be one of those RPGs where you’ll want to dock your Switch to better enjoy the look of the remake, but if you’re okay with a softer, less sharp look, there didn’t appear to be any major drawbacks in how the game ran portably. Battles in particular were snappy and quick to load, which was a welcome sight for a combat-heavy experience.
What really solidified Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven as my game of PAX West 2024 was when my hero, Gerard, starring certain doom in the face, announced that he had inherited the memories and abilities of his father, allowing him to evade Kzinssie’s deathblow. It was a poignant reminder of the lineage mechanic at play, and it made me think of cartoons and anime where the hero is finally able to use all they’ve acquired in their journey to defeat the final boss. To put a fine point on it, I’ve dabbled a fair bit in the SaGa series, as far back as The Final Fantasy Legend, but I’m expecting this remake of Romancing SaGa 2 to make me a dedicated believer. While I’ve already circled October 24 on my calendar, it’s going to be tough seeing the leaves start to fall with Revenge of the Seven firmly imprinted on my mind. Akitoshi Kawazu, it looks like you got me again!
Another demo provided to us at PAX West was for Fantasian: Neo Dimension, which was announced during the June 2024 Nintendo Direct. Long thought to be trapped on Apple devices, Fantasian potentially represents Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi’s final RPG, and so it was with much fanfare that a version of the game was finally coming to consoles and PC. I had an opportunity to play a brief demo of the game in Switch handheld mode during an appointment with Square Enix, and while certain aspects were definitely appealing, others made me more skeptical of this born-mobile title.
Starting from a save file a couple hours into the adventure, I was introduced to the battle system almost immediately, which pit two of my characters against a couple wolf-like foes. There’s a simplicity to the presentation that reminds you of Fantasian’s mobile roots, but at the same time it’s neat how you scroll through your abilities and then your items simply by pressing right on the stick or D-pad. Doing so brings up a vertical list on the right side of the screen for easy access to spells, techniques, and your stock of items. The result is a view of combat that’s less cluttered for sure, and I hope that some of the more advanced attacks and formidable bosses will take advantage of the increased amount of screen space.
As soon as I regained control of my character and started roaming around the hilly landscape, my audible sigh simply could not be suppressed: the controls are downright wonky and just feel awkward. Pressing the stick in a particular direction won’t always take you in said direction, and while I could brute force my way through the bridges I had to pass over, the movement was fairly unsatisfying overall. It’s unfortunate, too, because the diorama-based environments are quite unique to look at, even if there’s a twinge of uncanny valley in seeing your sprite move around them. Another sour note was a random encounter I had with a talking pot creature who asked me to give it particular items and then wail on it, with the promise of a special reward if I finished the job quickly enough. Much to my chagrin, I wasn’t able to deal enough damage before the creature transformed and started smacking my entire party with a giant hand, making short work of my squad. Fortunately, I had the option to just restart the battle, but it was annoying for what might have been an early-game encounter.
I didn’t quite make it to the golem boss waiting at the end of the area, but I was able to try out the “Dimengeon” system, which essentially stores random encounters within a separate dimension until it reaches capacity and you get to fight all of the creatures at once. One of the highlights of Fantasian’s combat is that many of your abilities have either a radius of damage that can hit multiple foes or follow a straight-line path that can hit any enemies on that line. This mechanic is made great use of in the Dimengeon, where enemies litter the screen and need to be dispatched before they can gang up on you. Your attacks and spells can even hit small bonus orbs that enhance your stats or grant extra turns. Just the visual spectacle of seeing the battlefield filled with all sorts of enemies and then the joy of hitting three, four, or five of them with one move makes for an exciting and engaging event, and I’m glad I got to see it in action.
I went into the Fantasian: Neo Dimension demo with fairly high expectations, and I’d say those are more tempered at present. It may be a blessing that the game has yet to be given a solid release date outside of Winter 2024 as this could signal the developers taking more time to improve the controls, for example. That said, as a lifelong Final Fantasy player, I’ll definitely be keeping my eyes on what may be Sakaguchi’s last story–not to be confused with Wii standout The Last Story.
Over three years ago, we got our first look at the latest remake for the long-running Dragon Quest franchise, a series that’s been no stranger to the remake treatment. My main exposure to the third Dragon Quest title came in the form of the mobile port released on Switch in 2019, and while I did enjoy the gameplay and story, the visuals left me wanting. You can imagine my delight at the 2021 announcement of Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, and with the game’s November 14th release date looming, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to go hands-on with the Switch version at PAX West.
The demo begins in the town of Romaly, and we were encouraged to try out the new monster arena battle mini-game that’s been added for the remake, which will be familiar to long-time DQ fans. After trouncing my three sets of opponents, I raked in some rewards and set off for the open dungeon of the demo, Skyfell Tower. It was handy to have the Zoom spell available from the main menu, rather than it being a spell I needed to learn and cast. The dungeon offered random encounters that showcased the revamped battle screen in all its HD-2D glory, with your squad of characters visible at the outset of combat before the perspective reverted to the traditional menu-based/row of enemies look. Spells and attacks had a much more distinct effect on screen, but I could see newcomers and even veterans perhaps wanting a little bit more oomph (not the spell) in terms of the battle presentation. The random encounter also seemed a little bit high during the dungeon portion of the demo.
Following my victory over Robbin' 'ood and his pals atop the Tower, I elected to explore a couple of the towns to soak in the visual splendor and test performance. Playing the game in handheld mode provided an opportunity to gauge things like loading times, pop-in, and frame drops; from what I could tell in my 30-minute session, the performance was very solid, with fairly short loads, almost no object pop-in, and what appeared to be a consistent frame rate. The HD-2D graphics add a palpable vitality and charm to the already charming towns I visited, with the standout being a woodland village whose name escapes me. The familiar sights and sounds that DQ fans have grown so fond of are alive and well in this Square Enix remake.
With the ability to customize your own party, in the vein of the original Final Fantasy, and the addition of a new job class–Monster Wrangler–whose talents focus on using monster-inspired abilities, there’s more to love about Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake than just what’s in front of your eyes. Seeing the game in action and getting some hands-on Switch time with it made me confident that this version should be able to hold its own against those on other platforms. November 14th may be just around the corner, but we’ve got a few other RPGs to cover at Nintendo World Report in the meantime, so stay tuned for more impressions from PAX West.
It’s not uncommon for indie developers to take a well-known formula and put a new or different spin on it. In the case of Castaway, from the solo developer at Canari Games, the top-down Zelda format is put under the shrink ray to create something like Link’s Awakening in miniature form. Consisting of two parts, Castaway tasks players with completing a more traditional Zelda experience in The Island, which takes less than an hour to finish, and then The Tower, which takes the same mechanics into a multi-floor dungeon. If you go into it expecting a more bite-sized experience, Castaway certainly delivers on what it sets out to do.
When the hero’s spaceship is shot down, he and fragments of the ship crash land on a colorful island. The primary quest involves hunting down the hero’s hound, who is dog-napped by a band of pterodactyl-looking creatures. The same beasts steal away your hookshot and pickaxe, too, and so you set out to scour the tiny island so you can reunite with your beloved pooch and some familiar tools.
The slow walking speed of the hero makes your rolling move a necessity, for speedrunners in particular. The sword swing feels good, but the enemy variety does leave something to be desired. The puzzles you encounter often involve pushing pink-hued boulders to create a path for you to walk through. When you make your way into the first dungeon, it’s only a handful of screens before you encounter the boss, earn an extra heart for your life meter, and head back outside to see what paths are now open to you.
After completing The Island, you’ll unlock The Tower, which shrinks your heart meter down to two while leaving you with your trio of weapons/tools. Across 50 floors, you battle minor enemies, avoid spiked floors, and collect coins to level up and either boost your stats or refill your health. It only took a handful of tries for me to finish The Tower, but I’d consider myself a seasoned veteran of the genre; others may get more mileage out of it. Nonetheless, I ended up enjoying The Tower portion of Castaway even more than The Island, so it was a nice bonus to have after finishing what is essentially the game’s story mode. What adds more flavor to the package is a handful of settings for playing The Island, including Pacifist and Invincible modes for newer players and Unfair and Speedrun modes for more adept ones.
Visually, Castaway takes clear inspiration from Link’s Awakening and the two Oracle games, but there’s an effective use of color throughout The Island, especially. The soundtrack is appropriately light but epic, and the sound effects make the combat and exploration more enjoyable. The artwork of the static cutscenes that play when you reclaim an item is quite eye-catching, too.
Castaway offers a pleasant way to pass a few hours for those wanting a light Zelda experience or maybe for those who’ve never had one. Its roguelike mode is definitely a highlight if you’re looking for something a bit different, but it’s a good idea not to go into the game as a whole expecting more than a fun diversion. I’d love to see either a new setting for a sequel or new game modes added in the future as there’s a lot to like about the simple charm of this deserted island and its plucky hero.
From publisher Spike Chunsoft comes cozy adventure game Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid. You play as the titular sweet summer child, Satoru, who is spending his vacation in the Japanese countryside, specifically Yomogi Town, which is surrounded by trees, mountains, and sea. If you're looking for a light and breezy experience in the vein of Animal Crossing or 2021's Shin-chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation (also developed by Millenium Kitchen), then Natsu-Mon might well scratch that itch.
The overall pacing of Satoru's summer break is a relaxed one, and the game's greatest strength is the way in which it genuinely emulates the feeling and sensibility of a youthful summer. The main story is light and takes a backseat to gameplay, but it revolves around a circus troupe that has come to town and needs to raise money to continue operating. It's also a group that Satoru is eventually intended to lead, so you have a vested interest in the troupe’s success. Much more than this single narrative is the many others you find as you explore your surroundings and speak to the locals.
For example, you encounter a group of kids who are playing at being detectives, and as an outsider to the group (one of whom literally labels you “Visitor”), you are tasked with assisting the group with a variety of quests. Other townsfolk have jobs for you, too, and many of these tasks reward you with items, money, or stamina-boosting stickers. You'll want to gather a bunch of these stickers early on so that you can climb to higher places and spend more time sprinting around. As much as the pace is relaxed, there are still sizable distances to cover, and not having to take a breather as often makes for good motivation to lend a helping hand.
When you're not playing white knight, you can go fishing, catch bugs, and collect treasures (like precious stones/minerals). Whereas Animal Crossing asks you to denote these pick-ups to a museum, Natsu-Mon focuses on the creation of a personal journal. When Satoru fetches a new bug in his trusty net, he'll open up his vacation journal and make a sketch of his finding, including a mini description. Every so often, you'll hit a milestone number of bugs or fish, which will complete a sidequest and grant another reward. One feature that really stands out is how insects you haven't yet caught are highlighted with a clear ring around them, drawing your attention towards a worthwhile catch. At the end of each day, just before you hit the hay, you'll add events and accomplishments to the journal, each with their own small, medium, or large caption, and so it is that your summer exploits are chronicled.
Where 20th Century Summer Kid stumbles is in the fairly plain dialogue and interactions with other characters and a general sense of repetition. You can see who is where on the map screen, and even throw down a marker to guide you towards them, but these conversations are less interesting than the exploration aspects of the game. This could be chalked up to the concept of a child speaking to adults, which makes some sense. While there is a charm to the quaint world of the game, it's found more in the simple design of the surroundings and the sense of discovery from roaming to your heart's content.
There's a joy in collecting seashells by the beach and an equally powerful sense of guilt from missing morning exercise. This is a countryside that lives and breathes, and an experience that really isn't meant to be rushed. When you're unsure of what to do next, the topic of the dinner time meal will often turn to an event to come or task to be completed, getting you back on track. That said, if you treat playing the game just like living through your own childhood summer vacation, you may be able to get a lot more out of it. Just pick a direction and see where it takes you.
Even though I haven't experienced all that Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid has to offer, I've seen enough to know that it should well serve a niche looking for a laid-back, Animal Crossing-like experience. The game follows a one-month summer countdown, so it's unlikely that you'll see everything on offer during a single playthrough. Almost every single in-game day brings something new, though, and if you have patience enough to buy into the premise, you'll be rewarded with your own chill summer break. It has some rough edges, but it's hard not to jive with the small town vibes of Satoru’s summer home.
At the end of July, I attended a digital preview event for the next entry in the long-running Ys series, Ys X: Nordics, hosted by NIS America. Adventurer Adol Christin is back again, and this time his exploits play out on the high seas aboard a ship called the Sandras. The demo (which appeared to be running on a PS5) took place in Chapter 4, which is early on in Adol’s 40 to 60-hour journey, and we were given a sense of what naval and land combat look like, in addition to some of the systems and mechanics Nordics has to offer.
Compared to the large island space of Ys VIII and the urban areas of Ys IX, Ys X involves island hopping and filling out sea maps as you build up the crew of your ship. As in those earlier games, the friends you meet along the way will move onto your ship and offer sidequests and services to help you on your adventure. I was happy to see the idea of a home base show up again, as that was my favorite aspect of Lacrimosa of Dana. You can also customize your ship, such as bolstering your cannons to make short work of enemy ships and shield towers. During the demo, we saw a “recapture battle,” wherein Adol and his crew sought to take back an island from undead enemies known as Griegr. The second part of the battle saw Adol and his partner Karja take to land to make their way through a brief three-floor dungeon that culminated in a mini boss fight.
The dungeon segment showed off the action combat the Ys series is famous for, with quick swapping between Adol and Karja and their distinct weapons being one of the key mechanics for successful fights. The pair can link up for more devastating special attacks, too, and it looks like you’ll want to be busting these out to whittle down bosses’ larger health meters. There’s a fair bit of visual flair to the linked up moves of Adol and Karja, and I’m eager to see more of the combat and how it evolves over the course of the story.
We weren’t given a lot of context about the overall story of the game, but I did ask about the choice to include only two playable characters, which is noticeably slight compared to the six each in Ys VIII and IX. I was told that, from a narrative standpoint, there’s more you can do depth-wise with a two-member party, which makes sense. Mechanically, it’s also possible to flesh out the skills of Adol and Karja more given that they are the development focus. It remains to be seen if a series that generally leans into a more expanded cast will succeed with this slightly new trajectory.
As August begins, we’re but a few months away from the October 25th release date for Ys X: Nordics on Switch. Questions remain about the game’s performance on Nintendo’s aging platform after the numerous issues that plagued Ys IX: Monstrum Nox, but I’m optimistic that having even more experience developing for the system will yield positive results. Be you landlubber or pirate, if you’re in the mood for more Ys action, you don’t have much longer to wait.
Nintendo's summer offering to satisfy the thirst of old-school Nintendo fans is Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, which is essentially a collection of speedrunning challenges. Instead of igniting discussions about who’s the fastest or most clever when it comes to titles like Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, it reminds us of how Nintendo frequently drops the ball when it comes to online functionality and how its cheap cash-ins are a major disappointment compared to its more creative and unique projects. One of those projects was the NES Remix series that started on Wii U and also ended up on the 3DS. I'll offer three ways that the NES Remix games are better than the ironically named Nintendo World Championships (NWC).
1. Leaderboards
The most glaring omission of NWC is its lack of consistent online leaderboards, which even the most basic of score, and speed-based titles have managed to integrate. To be fair, the game does have competitions with a rotating set of challenges where players can compete for a world ranking, but your ranking isn’t actually revealed until after the competition ends, so there's no feeling of trying to catch up to the faster times of others or see how friends are doing. It was obviously a choice to not include a persistent ranking system where players could compete against friends and the world, and it begs the question of how Nintendo can even use the word “World” when so much of the experience is centered on competing against yourself to set a new personal best.
While it didn't have them from the outset, NES Remix and its sequel had a Championship Mode that unlocked if you owned both games. This extra mode tasked players with collecting 50 coins in Super Mario Bros. and 25 in Super Mario Bros. 3, and then going for a high score in Dr. Mario. While somewhat limited in scope compared to the actual remixed challenges present elsewhere in the game, this was a persistent ranking that you could keep working on, which is itself an improvement over the scheduled competitions of NWC.
2. Familiar vs. Fresh Experiences
The Speedrun Mode of NWC is where you play and unlock challenges from 13 different NES classics. These vary from collecting an item or set number of coins to completing a boss fight or single stage as fast as possible (no warp pipes allowed!). The final challenge from Super Mario Bros. actually tasks you with finishing the game as fast as possible. As someone who grew up with these games, it's hard not to feel a very strong sense of the familiar; I've finished SMB dozens of times, and now I'm just playing segments of it–or maybe the whole thing–as quickly as I can. We're all privy to the question of how many times Nintendo can release Mario's first platforming adventure, and it doesn't feel like we are getting much more than that with NWC.
NES Remix, on the other hand, offered both simple challenges like those of NWC but also much more in the form of its Remix stages. Examples include weather effects and disappearing platforms in Super Mario Bros., a dark screen illuminated only by a single spotlight in Donkey Kong, or knocking over rival racers against a green background in Excitebike. These were new ways of experiencing games many of us have gone through countless times. The fact that none of the NES Remix games are on Switch is an absence more painfully felt after spending time with NWC.
3. Game Variety
NWC draws from 13 different NES games, including relatively lesser played titles like Balloon Fight, Kid Icarus, and Ice Climber. Along with Donkey Kong, this foursome has the fewest speedrun challenges compared to the other nine games. As you might expect, the four Super Mario Bros. games (Yes, the Famicom version of SMB2–The Lost Levels–is also present here) make up the lion's share of NWC's 150 or so challenges. Mario-style platformer fans have ample opportunity to ply their craft, but the overall lack of variety is another nail in the coffin for this game's longevity.
Given that you could have used the same $29.99 USD to purchase both NES Remix Games on Wii U or Ultimate NES Remix on 3DS, it seems fair to compare the total number of NES games that each of those options had on offer. Remix 1 and 2 drew from 28 different NES titles, while Ultimate Remix drew from 16. Whether portable or home console, either prospect meant more variety than what NWC brings to the table. I particularly enjoyed all of the sports games that made an appearance in the Wii U offerings, like Baseball, NES Open Tournament Golf, and Ice Hockey.
As it is at present, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition presents as a lackluster and fairly empty filler title for what is likely the Switch’s final year as Nintendo's main console. It pales in comparison especially when put side-by-side with the unique and charming NES Remix games, which remain trapped on older hardware whose digital storefronts are now closed. While it may be unlikely, updates to NWC such as full leaderboards and a greater library of NES games would go a long way to making it worthy of recommendation. Today, though, I'd rather dust off my Wii U and enjoy the sight of Link smashing bricks and collecting coins in a Mario bonus room.
The premise of SCHiM is that you’re a lost shadow trying to return to your human. In translation, “schim” comes from Dutch and may refer to a ghost or spirit, and so you end up playing as this small apparition that behaves almost like a frog and hops from shadow to shadow to reunite with its person. The wordless narrative of the story provides justification enough for the platforming of each stage, but it’s the simple, pure style and gameplay that win the day for SCHiM and make it well worth the price of admission.
While It’s billed as a 3D platformer, I’d argue that SCHiM plays out more like a puzzle-platformer, with each area requiring the player to figure out the correct path towards the goal and how to utilize the elements around them to progress. Anyone with platforming experience will quickly learn to master the schim’s two-jump capacity–a long leap followed by a short hop–and this simple mechanic coupled with the satisfying flow of movement result in a smooth experience best enjoyed in short bursts. Because each level generally involves jumping from shadow to shadow until you reach your target and progress to the next area, there is the potential for a feeling of repetitiveness to set in after working your way through half a dozen levels.
In addition to solid gameplay, the simple presentation certainly contributes to SCHiM’s charm, with a shifting palette of colors to emphasize both the setting of each area and the shadows that serve as your platforms. You can even choose from a handful of shades within the options menu for every area. Each level features one or more target objects or living things that you need to reach in order to advance to the next part of the level or to the next area entirely, and these are highlighted to mark their significance. While the schim’s signature plopping and dripping sounds feature prominently as you hop from and into each puddle-like shadow, there’s also chill music from Moonsailor that fits the vibe of SCHiM perfectly. Another highlight is the balance between busy city spaces and more serene and empty interior settings (sometimes a contrast between bright sunlit areas and darker moon or streetlit ones), which does help to alleviate some of the repetition. A handful of really stand-out stages involve constantly shifting light and darkness that put your timing and decision-making to the test.
Another element that pushes SCHiM towards the puzzle genre is the way in which you can press a button to activate or trigger the object whose shadow you are floating in. At times, you’ll find gaps too large to cross with your two jumps, and so you may need to activate a bird or dog to fly or run around, or you might have to raise a pole or barrier, lengthening their shadows and extending your reach. Each of the 65 levels has one or more collectibles to find and pick up, and these come in the form of everyday objects like umbrellas or car tires; interestingly, the objects can even assist you in completing each stage as some will open up new shadows to leap to.
While the stages do vary in length, most of them have checkpoints that give you a bit of a breather as you traipse across wider cityscapes. What’s also forgiving is the way in which you generally aren’t punished for missing a jump; the game constantly establishes new shadow checkpoints as well, so the most you might be sent back is a handful of jumps. That said, there is some tricky late game platforming where a mistake will send you back far enough that you’ll need to complete a difficult sequence a few times, but this was never more than a small annoyance. For those who want more of a challenge, you can even turn off the second jump and level checkpoints (but only after finishing the story).
SCHiM is an enjoyable light and dark-based platformer that manages to hit the spot due to smooth mechanics and a simple but charming presentation. There was basically never a moment where I didn’t find the game fun to play, and choosing to make my way through its story over the course of a week rather than all in one sitting alleviated the potential repetition of its gameplay. The aesthetic of SCHiM is fully complementary to the experience, and I find myself being unable to stop thinking about the game after rolling credits. In SCHiM we have another example of how less can definitely be more, a fitting title for the summer season and all of the shadows and shade we’re sure to be seeking out.
Night Reverie, put simply, marks an great starting point for those unfamiliar with top-down adventure-puzzle games. For most of its approximately two-hour runtime, you'll be moving from room to room within a medium-sized house, putting items together, and interacting with a handful of characters to move the story forward. Those with more experience in this genre will likely find its simplicity and lack of depth unsatisfying, but I found it a nice change of pace after some of the longer titles I'd been playing recently.
You play as Matt, a boy who dons a cape and pretends to be a character called the Night Explorer. Minutes after the game begins, you are transported to a seemingly alternate version of your home, which is both similar and different at the same time. In search of your sister, you encounter a small ball of flame named Sparky, and the two of you traipse about the house, solving puzzles to learn about her whereabouts. You end up encountering living, human-sized versions of stuffed animals from the real world, and much of the adventure sees Matt solving puzzles to acquire objects that these come-to-life pals are seeking.
In truth, though, Night Reverie isn't incredibly puzzle-y; it feels more like a series of fetch quests. You need to thoroughly search each room so as to not miss an item you will need to solve a problem, fulfill a request, or open a locked door later on. At times you'll need to combine objects from your inventory to form something new, but none of the tasks requiring combination were all that tricky. There's a straightforwardness to the game that newcomers are likely to appreciate and that may turn off more seasoned players. There are also a few mini-games that you get to play, and these added a bit of variety to the proceedings.
Night Reverie offers a pleasant adventure game jaunt with basic mechanics and a touching ending. It's a serving of lite fare if you're in the mood for something that won't overly tax your brain (but still might make you feel a wee bit clever); ultimately, though, it's a lot of putting round pegs in round holes. While the pixel art is nice to look at, the text font is decidedly not. As a palette cleanser, it did the job for me, but I can't say it will linger on my mind for more than a night.
Having played all of the recent Nihon Falcom Trails games to come to Switch, I was particularly excited to get my hands on Trails Through Daybreak, the latest entry in The Legend of Heroes franchise to receive a localized release. Daybreak skews a bit more down to earth and mature in tone and subject, and it makes fairly sizable overhauls to its battle system, including action combat that can be initiated against non-boss enemies. It keeps a lot of what has worked from Cold Steel and Reverie, but takes a slightly different approach across its 50-plus hour story, and these changes give the game a much needed refresh.
Trails Through Daybreak follows the exploits of Van Arkride, also referred to as the spriggan, who operates between the lines of law and legality and takes random jobs posted specifically for him on bulletin boards. His firm, Arkride Solutions, helps those in need (for a price) and throughout the course of the game he brings in assistants to help with the business and also to solve the mystery of a special object brought to him by Agnes, the first character to join your crew. The detective agency-like setup of Daybreak works well, and it suits the hard-nosed Van well, helping to distinguish him as a protagonist from Rean and Lloyd before him.
You spend a fair amount of your time in Edith, the capital city of Calvard, which is the oft-mentioned region of Zemuria that Trails fans had yet to visit. Rather than taking a train between different cities, Van drives the group around in his truck, one of his most prized possessions. The road trips in each chapter allow for fun bonding moments between the growing staff of Arkride Solutions, and the smaller overall cast compared to games like Cold Steel 4 and Trails Into Reverie make it easier to develop a fondness for each individual. The excellent localization and convincing voice work also go a long way towards making the cast so endearing.
Most of the game's lengthy chapters follow a similar pattern of patrolling Edith, searching for requests to tackle, accepting an invitation or job in a different city, and discovering a plot thread that connects to the main story. The narrative loop works quite well, but at times it can feel like the combat is either a little sparse or thrown together all at once. Fortunately, the story on its own is quite compelling, and the character interactions, both optional and required, are a healthy blend of touching, entertaining, and hilarious. It's the adjustments to combat, though, that genuinely deserve to be highlighted.
When you enter a dungeon, you'll see enemies roaming around as in previous Trails titles. The difference here is that you can defeat them without entering a turn-based battle, just by slashing or stabbing at them until their health meter is whittled away to nothing. A meter builds as you attack that allows you to perform a more powerful strike, which can help you stun these enemies. At any time you can press a button to shift into turn-based mode, and you'll get a bonus shot at them if you make that shift when enemies are incapacitated. Being able to grind a bit more quickly by playing parts of the dungeons like an action RPG made for a welcome change of pace in a long game with plenty of required turn-based battles.
That said, even when the proceedings do shift to turn-based, there's more incentive for moving your characters around the battlefield than ever before. In addition to getting into range for basic attacks or magic spells, you can activate bonuses by striking enemies from the side or back, and characters that attack when next to another party member will prompt a follow-up hit. A new mechanic called the Shard System is also involved in turn-based combat, and characters will bestow shields and other bonuses based on meeting specific Shard-related criteria. I wasn't always sure how and why things were happening, but it was still a blast seeing it all play out.
Multiple times each chapter I would be surprised by the mature tone and language of the conversations happening. Expect more cursing, innuendo, and suggestive language from the older members of Van's retinue. These don't feel out of place, however, given the (slightly) more realistic plot and the part hard-nosed, part hard-boiled hero of the story. Daybreak succeeds in breaking away from the more innocent and the more fantastical, at least until its final chapters.
The soundtrack is a major strength of Trails Through Daybreak, approaching some of the best work we've heard from Nihon Falcom. The visual style is mostly the same that we've seen this generation, but it still manages to get the job done. Switch performance isn't nearly as bad as it was with Trails Into Reverie; that's the good news. The bad news is that pop-in is so frequent that you may find yourself waiting for key NPCs to actually appear on screen before you can interact with them. Slowdown is present in a number of sequences, but again it wasn't as distracting as in Reverie. That said, I'm still eager to see these incredible RPGs running on better Nintendo hardware.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak is a standout entry in this long-running franchise that I affectionately refer to as the best RPGs you've never played. Van is a charming and vocal protagonist who gives as good as he gets, and rest assured, he isn't shy about giving a loving head patting when the opportunity arises. Those who have played earlier Trails games will enjoy the returning characters, mentions, and nods to earlier events and people, but even if you're an RPG player unfamiliar with the Trails games, you'll find plenty of reasons to sink your teeth into this latest one. It's no surprise that the hero of Daybreak has a proclivity towards indulging in cakes and pastries; he happens to star in one hell of a sweet adventure.
I had the opportunity to attend a brief preview event for Grit and Valor - 1949, a tactics-focused RTS coming to Switch in 2025. From UK developer Milky Tea, who previously released HyperBrawl Tournament and Coffin Dodgers, Grit and Valor takes a darker and more serious tone compared to the studio's previous offerings.
In randomly generated battlefields, players are tasked with survival-style objectives and the opportunity to upgrade their squad in between missions. Waves of enemies ratchet up the tension as you work on lasting to the final wave and completing your regular and bonus tasks. What really caught my eye was the almost diorama-looking perspective and the need to stay on your toes to outsmart your opposition, not to mention the importance of customizing your mech squad effectively for each battle.
You can find the announcement trailer below. I'm excited to see more Grit and Valor - 1949 ahead of its launch next year.
Master Key belongs to the indie category of minimalist Zelda-likes, in the vein of games like Minit and Tunic. Fans of the original Legend of Zelda and Link’s Awakening will feel right at home with the puzzle solving and lack of handholding present in Master Key. It’s filled with those light-bulb conjuring “eureka!” moments that make adventure games so memorable, ones that often come on the back of minutes of aimless wandering and confusion. There’s a charm to the simple presentation that works well for what Master Key is trying to achieve, even if it won’t strike everyone’s fancy. I’ve yet to uncover all of its secrets, but I’ve had a blast spending time in this miniature world.
Without preamble, your fox-like character is dropped into a dark cave, with only a small circle of light to see you through the pitch black interior. Torches around the cave provide some guidance, and eventually you scamper through and open a chest containing a single, noteworthy key, which serves as your first weapon. Your journey takes you to four dungeons at different corners of the map where you must retrieve other similar keys, but this larger goal takes a backseat to just exploring the world at your own pace and experiencing the joy of discovery.
Using your trusty key/sword, you’ll cut through bushes and a smattering of different enemies as you make your way around. Coins that drop serve as both monetary currency but also restore your health, and the central town’s shops offer numerous upgrades and items that range from helpful to necessary, so you’ll likely return here often. The first of these is an object that lets you charge up your sword so that you can break fractured boulders impeding your progress, but you’ll need to decipher Master Key’s pictograph language to figure out this initial puzzle. You see, this is a game world without words, which means you’ll need to rely on your other video game senses to navigate the various obstacles and puzzles this world throws at you.
Where Master Key genuinely shines is in the way so much of its world beckons you to re-examine it. When you first arrive at a new screen, you’re likely to see a treasure chest or ledge that you can’t yet reach, so you make a mental note to return there later. This design isn’t one unfamiliar to Zelda enthusiasts, but it permeates so many of the spaces in Master Key. Another feather in its cap is the way that coins feel like a meaningful and valuable resource; from upgrading your wallet or sword, to adding on to your health meter, there’s almost never a point where you aren’t wanting to put money in your pocket. Enemies can hit pretty hard, too, so you’ll want to pick up every coin you can just to stay alive.
While the endgame ramps up the challenge a fair bit, there’s a steady difficulty curve for most of Master Keys's 5 to 10-hour runtime. Each of the main dungeons offers a unique theme and set of obstacles, and you'll have to keep your thinking hat and detective kit close at hand to solve the numerous puzzles located within. Aside from the familiar ones that involve hitting switches, you’ll also need to be creative with your growing arsenal of tools to navigate the trickier situations. I regularly found myself doubling back and pausing the game just to review and reflect on what I may have missed or not tried yet. The heavy emphasis on mental tasks is reminiscent of the Oracle of Ages on Game Boy, and it's refreshing given how other Zelda-likes can lean more into combat.
The minimalist visuals won’t appeal to everybody but they work well in a game with fairly simple gameplay mechanics. Pushing blocks, swinging your sword, and launching your hookshot are among the actions you’ll have at your disposal, but there’s a bit of jank to how combat actually works. While enemies don’t get knocked back by your attacks, you are by theirs, and so the few boss encounters you do have are made all the more challenging by this imbalance. Fortunately, the dungeons housing these bosses are memorable and contrast nicely with the world outside.
Completionists will also have their hands full with the many secrets and collectibles scattered throughout the world of Master Key. One such object is a music record, of which there are a few dozen to find that unlock the game’s music tracks for your listening pleasure (the town’s theme that opened the video being a favorite of mine). Even those not aiming for 100 percent will want to be thorough so as to be well prepared for the trials of the game’s final hours.
Overall, Master Key finds solid ground to share with other notable indie Zelda-like games, feeling very much like a minimalist version of Tunic. The countless secrets of its world and the way in which it encourages you to search and reflect on every screen give it a remarkable sense of vitality. I know I haven’t seen all that its dense map has to offer, but I’ve still thoroughly enjoyed my time with Master Key and look forward to eventually diving back in to find what I missed.
Read Only Memories: NEURODIVER is a follow-up to 2064: Read Only Memories, which originally came out in 2015. Both titles are point-and-click style adventure games, but whereas 2064 featured a bit more in the actual pointing and clicking department, NEURODIVER plays much more like a visual novel. Another significant departure is in terms of the length, with the original game running about 10-15 hours long compared to the 3-5 hours of the sequel. The cyberpunk setting and aesthetic work well, and it’s fun to see characters from the first game show up in NEURODIVER, but ultimately the follow-up left me feeling like I’d be served an appetizer for dinner.
Read Only Memories: NEURODIVER follows protagonist ES-88, who’s also called Luna, as she works to assist various people with recovering their memories. As an employee of the company MINERVA, Luna also interacts with a variety of her co-workers before heading out for each mission. She is often accompanied by her partner and confidant Gate, with the pair often on the edge of being more than just friends. The new and returning cast members are well written and fun to hang out with, but the brevity of each chapter makes it hard to feel satiated by the lack of more in-depth interactions. Aside from Luna and Gate, the conversations you have with other characters feel slight, and I constantly found myself wanting to revisit areas I’d been to or push conversations further; the linearity and constrained nature of NEURODIVER ultimately work against it. Other games in this style, like Coffee Talk, succeed because you have multiple opportunities to build relationships and catch up with budding friends and colleagues.
The plot involves a character known as Golden Butterfly who is infiltrating people’s memories and fragmenting them; it’s up to Luna to use the bioengineered Neurodiver creature to transport herself into their memories and repair the damage. Each of the six or so chapters begins with Luna waking up in her apartment at MINERVA, collecting the Neurodiver, checking in with reception, and then meeting with one of the employees at the company before getting her next assignment. The narrative itself plays second fiddle to the interactions between the game’s cast members, and part of this is due to the main antagonist just not having quite enough stage time to make much of an impact.
As mentioned earlier, the gameplay takes on much more of a visual novel style in ROM: NEURODIVER compared to 2064, and that removal of player agency leads to a less compelling experience overall. 2064: Read Only Memories INTEGRAL was one of my favorite early Switch ports because of characters like Turing and much more traditional point-and-click adventure game mechanics. NEURODIVER condenses these down into memory clues that you pick up and insert into distorted fragments to repair each client’s memory, which moves the plot forward but offers little in the way of puzzle or mystery solving. The aforementioned fragments each require a handful of clues to be slotted in for the repair to be successful, and it didn’t seem like there was any rhyme or reason to why one set of clues was needed over another. Placing them in any kind of order isn’t required, either, and so you just need to pick them up or acquire them from conversations and then drag and drop them–trial and error style–until the distortion clears up.
The greatest achievement of Read Only Memories: NEURODIVER is that it helps to conjure up nostalgia for its much more effective predecessor. The sequel really feels much more like a robust piece of DLC than a full-fledged release. Fans of the original who go into it expecting a similar amount of content and playtime will be sorely disappointed. While the retro-looking aesthetic and FM synthesis-filled soundtrack are noticeable high points, there isn’t much else that makes the journey worthwhile. If you’ve already played 2064: Read Only Memories, you may get a bit of a kick out of NEURODIVER, but you’d probably be better served replaying the original, which overshadows its follow-up in almost every way. As likable as most of its cast is, they simply don’t get enough time to shine, leaving the adventure of Luna and co. feeling flat and incomplete.
It’s undeniable the impact that Toby Fox’s Undertale had on the video game industry, and indie games in particular. Few titles, however, have been bold enough to try and more or less replicate the experience wholesale. Enter Athenian Rhapsody, which seems to skirt the border between imitation and homage, especially in terms of its RPG combat. That said, whereas Undertale dabbled in a mix of both subtle humor and slapstick, Athenian Rhapsody is much more in your face with its comedy, with hilarious sound effects, fart jokes, and a cavalcade of outrageous characters.
After a series of quiz questions set against a black background, your Ness-looking character awakes in the world of Athens, and it's hard to ignore the vibrant, cartoony environment in which you find yourself. Among the first characters you encounter are a pair of inseparable creatures that look like either Grimace knockoffs or Pokemon that ended up on the cutting room floor (which could actually describe a fair few of the ridiculous Athenian denizens you end up befriending). This is Richard and James, and they set the tone for the incredibly absurd puzzles, antics, and trials you’ll encounter throughout the game’s approximately 10-hour main story. Your ultimate objective (insofar as the game actually has one) is to reach the Gardens area at the end of the world, while working to understand the drive of so many in Athens to earn as much EXP as they can. However, a much more effective way to experience Athenian Rhapsody would be to frequently stop and smell the roses, even if you’ll eventually catch a whiff of something rather unpleasant.
Unlike larger or more mainstream RPGs, there is no quest guide or checklist to work on as you weave your way around Athens. Instead, you’ll need to listen to what characters tell you and speak to everyone, which ends up being worthwhile for other reasons, too. For instance, it’s not always obvious which characters can be invited to join your party, so adding to your stable is one reward for chatting everybody up; another perk is that a lot of the writing is genuinely funny, and I never found it boring to walk about a new area and check in with all the locals. Each new environment within Athens offers a new color palette and design as well, which helps to distinguish these areas and keep pushing you towards the endgame. The catchy soundtrack doesn’t hurt, either.
You can win turn-based battles by attacking and defeating enemies or by befriending them, which sees you taking an action like posing, insulting, or laughing until your opponent is ready to give up and accept your friendship. During an enemy’s turn, you’ll need to play a dodge-’em-up minigame that is exactly like that of Undertale, wherein you need to carefully avoid a series of projectiles from all sides of the box in the middle of the screen. Every basic enemy and boss has a unique version of this minigame, with bosses often introducing a handful of variations to it. If you choose the more pacifist befriending route, you’ll need to step up to the challenge of an HP meter that basically never grows (since you don’t earn any EXP) and enemy attacks and obstacles that can put out heaps of damage. You do earn coins from any successful combat, and these can be used to purchase healing items, but your pocket space is limited, and so you may find that health restoration is regularly in jeopardy.
Two factors that can help turn the tide in battle are the ability to swap your main character out for your chosen partner ally, who has their own unique abilities to prop up your team or finish a fight. The other is the Burst mechanic, which allows you to draw from another pool of points to heal yourself or speed up your avatar in the dodging minigame. Successfully evading enemy shots can quickly restore your Burst meter, but taking too many hits will decrease both your health and Burst, which makes for a harsh penalty. Athenian Rhapsody does have a “Chill Mode” option that can make the fights a bit more palatable (by offering temporary invulnerability after you get hit), but even with it activated the difficulty level never felt too low. What at all times did feel too low, however, was the overly restrictive item storage box and your character’s own pocket, which combined still only allowed you to keep about 20 items.
There are elements of Athenian Rhapsody that point towards a long-tailed future for the game after its launch. For one, each playthrough of the game creates an individual, personalized Rhapsody, which can be shared with other players or rewatched by yourself. The game’s Steam page suggests that Rhapsodies can be combined or even used to access special in-game events; I’m eager to see if a substantial community forms around the game and if these features lead to some fascinating ways of sharing and storytelling. I know I haven’t seen everything the world of Athens has to offer, but it sounds like there’s potential for this world to grow if the support is there.
Athenian Rhapsody is much more than just another creator’s take on Undertale. Through effective comedic writing, a world that is filled to the brim with surprises, and an attractive presentation, developer Nico Papalia has crafted an experience that stands on its own as both an homage and a reimagining of what Toby Fox accomplished almost a decade earlier. The idea of each playthrough being transformed into its own object and gaining a tangibility is an intriguing one, reinforcing the power of decision-making in a world of unknown consequence. The vibrancy of Athens comes as much from its nature and biomes as it does from its inhabitants, and it was ultimately a sincere pleasure to spend time here. As a lover of both Earthbound and Undertale, I found in Athenian Rhapsody another experience that felt like home, complete with characters randomly exploding more times than I could count.
The result of an incredibly successful Kickstarter in 2020, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is a spiritual successor to RPG series Suikoden. Interestingly enough, in 2022, Konami announced that they would be releasing a remaster of the first two Suikoden games, and so we won't have long to wait before the old that's new again can be compared directly with a modern interpretation. Unfortunately, Hundred Heroes leans far too heavily into old genre trappings and suffers major performance issues on Switch. As a result, I'm left pinning my character-collecting hopes on the forthcoming Konami remaster.
Eiyuden Chronicle tells the story of Galdea, a world on the verge of a war between the powerful Empire and the Alliance determined to resist. Among the expansive cast is protagonist Nowa, who ends up being thrust into the leadership role as more and more people and factions end up relying on him and raising him up. As the story progresses, you'll spend a fair bit of time recruiting others to your cause, and while it's fun to meet new characters and learn a bit about them, the size of the cast means that basically everyone presents at merely a surface level. The character interactions lack the type of depth that make better RPGs stand out.
One of the greatest failings of Hundred Heroes is that it simply doesn’t play very well. Put simply, it’s an absolute chore of a game, and on multiple occasions I told myself I was going to just put it down altogether. The dungeon design is atrocious, with many dungeon spaces made up of circles and winding paths. It’s exacerbated by the game’s high random encounter rate, a feature that I thought we left behind in the ‘90s. You eventually recruit a character that can be added to your active party to reduce the encounter rate, but if you do that then you have to devote that support slot to mitigating an element that either shouldn’t be in the game or should come with some kind of toggle. Bravely Default had this figured out in 2014; if you have random encounters, make them optional.
Aesthetically, outside of the character designs, the world is boring and lifeless, with similar colors, objects, and patterns repeated regularly. Compounding this fact is a blurring of the top half of the screen that only allows you to see objects, landmarks, and people as you get closer to them; annoying only begins to describe constantly having to walk up to everything to determine what it is. The overworld is particularly guilty of being bland, and so it’s no small mercy when you do finally recruit a character that opens up fast travel. I’ll give credit to the music for bolstering the experience, with the town themes a high note in a game filled with sour ones.
Another of the few strong points of Eiyuden Chronicle is its combat, which allows for up to six allies in two rows of three to battle up to the same number of enemies. Certain pairs or even trios of characters can perform Hero Attacks if all participants have enough stamina points, which regenerate at a rate of one point per turn. Most abilities are powered by stamina, but you can also equip runes that bestow magic abilities across a handful of elements. What’s frustrating early on (and even late in the game to an extent) is that the MP costs of these spells are weirdly high, and so you can rarely rely on healing spells as a way of seeing you through early to mid-game encounters. Of course, seasoned RPG fans may find the overall difficulty a little bit lacking, rendering the spell cost issue moot anyways. But the enemy variety and smattering of boss fight “gimmicks” (literally) do add some much needed flavor to this Hundred Heroes dish.
An unforgivable stumbling block for Eiyuden Chronicle is how it handles a variety of its RPG mechanics. For one, a major goal of the game is to recruit dozens of characters to your fledgling alliance, and so almost every town has one or more individuals who can be persuaded to join your merry band. The problem is, the game fails to keep track of all these potential recruits and the tasks they put on your eventually crowded plate, and so when the endgame comes and the story gates off your progression until you’ve added an unknown quantity of heroes to your roster, it’s beyond frustrating to have to scour the world for allies and then try to figure out exactly how to get them to enlist.
Another issue is that the way in which equipment (and menuing in general) is handled is nothing short of laughable. Party members retain their equipment and cling to it like grim death; specifically, you can’t just remove accessories and armor from any character unless they are in your active party, which is yet another problem solved decades earlier in games like Final Fantasy VI and VII. Now multiply the cast by three or four and try swapping rings and other pieces around whenever you’re forced to carry two or three new party members on your squad for a specific story mission. This isn’t even to mention the way weapon progression works, which involves visiting a blacksmith to level up each character’s individual weapon, but again, you need to do this for every character, one level at a time, and at a prohibitively expensive cost.
As you might expect with a game about recruiting a hundred heroes, there’s also a base building mechanic, but it manages to offer about as much entertainment as a game of Monopoly where trading properties is banned. In addition to needing funds and materials to build a new addition to your castle, you also need a specific hero, and until you’ve met them in the world, they just appear as a darkened silhouette. Once you do meet them somewhere out there, I hope you remember where you did and why they didn’t join up in the first place, because your castle ain’t getting off the ground until you bring in these particular folks to spruce the place up. And while missing out on a homebase blacksmith kind of sucks, what’s worse is that you’ll fail to pick up a fair number of recruits strictly because your palace isn’t palatial enough.
If you aren’t dissuaded enough by the latter commentary on Eiyuden Chronicle’s numerous flaws, I’ve saved the most egregious for last. In short, the Switch version runs like a dumpster fire and looks like the trash inside said dumpster. I’ve lost multiple hours of progress to screen freezes and a crash to the Switch home menu, and it’s entirely possible that I’ve spent even more time than that just watching loading screens or waiting for the menus to stop hitching. The frame rate jumps all over the place, and slows significantly during the strategic war battles that are as unattractive as they are unnecessary. There’s enough of a mess here that I’m not sure a hundred patches would be enough to clean it up.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes may yet find an audience with those unlucky enough to have supported the game’s Kickstarter campaign, filled with hope that they’d be getting a true successor to Suikoden. While Hundred Heroes may have aspired to such an accomplishment, there are painfully few ways it has lived up to that standard. Playing Hundred Heroes feels like a burden, and even more so when you consider the high caliber of RPGs that have already released in 2024 that it might be taking your attention away from. Any moments of joy the experience offers are immediately dashed by baffling game design choices that would feel antiquated at the turn of the century, let alone decades after that. Were I not reviewing the game I would have put it aside after a few hours and never thought about it again. Eiyuden Chronicle comes after scores and scores of excellent and successful turn-based RPGs from which it could draw inspiration. Instead, it neglects so many of the lessons learned throughout the years in favor of outdated, tedious gameplay.
Felix the Cat is a collection of two games of the same name originally released on the NES and Game Boy in 1992 and 1993, respectively. The compilation includes a few quality-of-life enhancements that we’ve become accustomed to seeing in retro re-releases, including a single save state, a rewind feature, and a CRT filter. There’s also an unreleased Famicom version here (for some reason). While Felix may have been around for 100 years, there’s a reason these two titles have not: they offer little in the way of unique or above-average gameplay. They are almost as barebones as a platformer can be.
The NES game consists of about 10 worlds, and most of these have 3 separate stages to complete. The levels are generally quite short; the ones that do have a bit more length are largely just repetitive. You’ll come across the same basic enemies for most of the game’s abbreviated runtime, and even the boss fights feel more like palette swaps than handcrafted challenges. One feather in Felix’s fur-covered cap is the different transformations that he undergoes in certain stages, like those where he takes to the sky or goes underwater. Collecting Felix tokens, like coins, award hearts that imbue you with new magic devices and vehicles, almost like power-ups in a Mario game. They typically give you projectiles to launch or added maneuverability, but also allow you to take damage at the cost of dropping down to the previous power-up level. All in all, though, the playthrough is still a brief and largely forgettable one, and for some reason, my high score didn’t even save after finishing the game.
Felix the Cat on Game Boy is essentially the same experience but with fewer worlds and stages and less of the interstitial content from the NES original. All of the transformations are present here, but what does unfortunately get added to this portable iteration is a hefty dose of slowdown, making some of the jumps and other obstacles more frustrating to navigate. That said, it's still kind of impressive how faithful the game is when shrunk down to Game Boy proportions.
While neither part of the package is all that eye-catching, the upbeat soundtrack from the NES game in particular is quite pleasant and complements the playthrough well. The sound effects, though–like the one for Felix’s jump–can be a little on the grating side, so I was happy to reach segments of the game where less jumping was required. There is a neat visual flair to the rewind function that I did appreciate, but that's one of the few interesting presentation elements.
Felix the Cat may have been a bit more of a novelty on the ‘90s platforms it arrived on, but time hasn’t been kind to this comic feline’s pixel-based adventures. Despite starring a cat with a magical bag, these two games have almost no tricks up their sleeves. The addition of the Famicom version yields very little in terms of noticeable gameplay differences, so its inclusion is a bit of a mystery. I know the answer, but why couldn’t these two games have just been added to NSO instead? What's more, the overall challenge will be markedly light for anyone with platforming experience, and there’s no shortage of extra lives to earn and power-ups to keep you from danger and propel you through the largely pedestrian level design. If this 2024 collection had a few more interesting extras thrown in, it may be worth a pick up, but as it stands, this is just another black cat you don’t want crossing your path.
In the continued spirit of what is old becoming new again, developer Wayforward has partnered with Konami to bring back a familiar run-and-gun staple with Contra: Operation Galuga. Whereas 2019’s Contra: Rogue Corps went rogue with its top-down, twin-stick style, Operation Galuga (Contra: O.G., get it?) returns to the tried-and-true side-scrolling gameplay that has made the series so endearing. This isn’t Wayforward’s first kick at the can, either; they also developed Contra 4 for Nintendo DS, regarded as one of the stronger entries in the Contra franchise. Have they managed to recapture that magic in this reimagining of the original experiences from the ‘80s?
Operation Galuga begins with heroes Bill and Lance being sent to the Galuga Archipelago to investigate the presence of a terrorist group and unknown gravity waves after a meteor shower event from six months earlier. The island setting offers jungle, town, underground base, and even snowy mountain train-themed stages, and uses some fun changes in perspective to add visual flair and keep players on their toes. The story will feel familiar to fans of the earlier Contra games, with monstrous alien foes eventually stepping in for the more mundane human cannon fodder, and some larger-than-life bosses offering a fairly decent challenge.
Story Mode takes you through the game’s eight total stages, and a few different characters unlock as you make your way towards the final level. What’s interesting about these new faces is that they bring with them some small gameplay tweaks that make it worth experimenting. Ariana, a native of Galuga, can slide under enemy fire and other dangers, as compared to the dash move shared by Bill and Lance. Lucia, a commander who provides assistance to the Contra unit, only has a single jump, but her Spread Shot fires differently and can be charged up to do a stronger wave-type blast. Lt. Stanley Ironside also trades in the double jump of his allies, but he can use a jetpack to float for a few seconds or activate a vertical grappling hook to reach platforms or ceilings. His Machine Gun and Laser Beam weapons also fire in a distinct way, and so you have a handful of options that do vary up the gameplay to an extent.
The stages themselves last anywhere from 4 to 10 minutes, and the environmental variety, mini-bosses, and end bosses make for a fun and satisfying run from beginning to end. While Story Mode only allows you to choose characters that have been unlocked by that point in the plot itself, Arcade Mode lets you choose any of these five characters, in addition to Probotector robots that function like Bill and Lance. Besides the three difficulty modes available, you can also choose to have a health meter or equip a variety of unlockable perks, like starting every stage with a particular weapon or not losing the second stage of a given weapon when you get hit. The challenge of Operation Galuga is largely in the hands of the player, which is a welcome feature for a series famous for the Konami code and the abundance of extra lives it provided. You may not need the code to roll credits on this Contra game, but you might as well try it at the start screen anyways.
Rounding out the package is a fair-sized Challenge Mode, with a couple dozen events to complete. Typically, these are speedrun-style challenges that task you with running through a level segment or completing a boss as fast as possible. Certain ones even limit the amount of ammo you can fire or the weapon you can use. Each one awards credits that can be spent in the Perk Shop to open up the equipable perks I mentioned earlier, with extra credits earned for making it through a challenge ahead of the given par time. Once you complete the game proper, some very neat but pricey options get added to the shop, and it’s a bit of a bummer that earning enough currency to unlock them will require an immense amount of time and patience.
In terms of performance, much has been said prior to launch regarding the Switch version’s drop to 30fps. In a fast-paced game like this, it's hard to argue 60fps doesn’t make a difference. That being said, so long as the 30fps target is hit and maintained with consistent frame times, it shouldn’t be too big of an issue. From our testing, Operation Galuga does exactly that. Outside of the very occasional one or two frame drop, the target frame rate is met the whole time. Image resolution hits a full 1920x1080 docked and the expected 1280x720 handheld. Given that both of these are the max resolutions for either configuration, it does make you wonder if some sort of performance mode could have been possible, exchanging a lowered resolution for 60fps. The one other technical detail worth highlighting is some odd foliage materials, which can be seen in the opening stages of the game. Many of the random shrubs and other plant life in these stages appear to have unfiltered, dithered, alpha transparencies. This results in blocky pixelated edges. It's possible this could be some sort of artistic choice, but to me it reads more like a settings bug in the alpha channel for that material. Either way, it really stands out.
If you enjoy classic Contra-style gameplay and want to wash the awful taste of Rogue Corps out of your mouth, Contra: Operation Galuga is a worthy palette cleanser. What it lacks in visual attractiveness, it does make up for with a solid run-and-gun experience that is comparable to the best Contra games of the past. The additional characters, four-player Arcade Mode, and tricky Challenge Mode extend the replay value, but some of the more fun, Easter egg-type perks that you can unlock require far too much grinding. While it may fall a bit short of being a sure-fire hit, Operation Galuga provides a fair amount of entertainment and some good ways of adjusting the difficulty of what has been a notoriously tough video game series.
March 23, 2024 - Review has been updated with a final score
Unicorn Overlord impressed in its 2023 reveal trailer with stunning visuals and that unmistakable VanillaWare style that made 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim and Dragon’s Crown so memorable. Channeling Fire Emblem to an extent but Ogre Battle even more so, Unicorn Overlord is an incredibly deep and rewarding experience that real-time tactical RPG fans will fall in love with. After 20 hours with the game, I’ve only seen half of the world map and even less of its secrets, but there’s no doubt in my mind that VanillaWare has another stone cold classic on their hands. Given the sheer depth and customizability of Unicorn Overlord, I’m holding off on assigning a final review score at this time, but I’m stoked to share my impressions thus far.
The overarching story follows protagonist prince Alain, who becomes leader of the Liberation army after his castle and homeland of Cornia are besieged years earlier by the Zenoiran army and its villainous emperor Galerius, a former general of Cornia. Bit by bit, Alain must bolster the ranks of the Liberation army by recruiting friends and even defeated foes along the way. Across five kingdoms, you’ll encounter a variety of story beats involving Alain and his retinue of followers, and as his army swells, so too do your chances of finally taking the fight to Galerius and freeing the world of his tyranny. So far, the narrative elements of the game have been buoyed by excellent voice acting and writing and frequent but short cutscenes before and after most battles. I’m quite eager to see how Alain’s story concludes, and I’m trying to savor every minute of it.
There are effectively two primary gameplay modes in Unicorn Overlord. The first involves traversing the overworld to encounter characters, towns, forts, events, and battles, in addition to collecting items and discovering hidden secrets. The semi top-down view makes for easy navigation, but the camera can make finding every shiny spot (which denotes an item pick-up) a bit of a mystery. It’s worth being thorough, too, since objects you find in the overworld can be traded in at towns to acquire gold, equipment, and Honor, but more on that shortly. You can fast travel to towns, forts, and battles you’ve previously unlocked, and so you may want to back track to gather more resources to improve your troops. At forts, you can expand your units, hire new troops, and promote your individual characters to upgraded classes. The overworld segments provide a pleasant contrast to the more stressful combat situations.
When you enter a battle–some of which are small and last only a few minutes; others can take upwards of 30 minutes–you’ll start by seeing the win and loss conditions and then deploying specific units to the battlefield. Each unit initially holds only two individual troops, but this number can grow up to five (maybe even six?) by cashing in your accumulated Honor. Most of the time, you’ll click on a unit you’ve deployed and then select an enemy, garrison point,or other area on the map to which you want the unit to travel. When your unit comes in contact with an enemy, a combat encounter takes place, but what can be jarring at first is that you don’t actually do anything during such encounters. Instead, all troops in combat take turns according to their initiative number and the abilities they have equipped. Typically, you’ll win a battle by reaching a particular enemy leader and taking them out; however, you’ll lose the battle if your starting garrison is taken over by an enemy, you run out of time, or (in some cases) if a special character is killed.
To prepare for combat, you'll not only need to outfit your troops with their own equipment, but you can even set specific parameters on their individual abilities/attacks. For instance, you can set your healer’s curative spells to target an ally with the lowest total defense or the one who has the lowest percentage of health remaining at the time when the ability goes off. One of the closest analogs I can name is the Gambit system from Final Fantasy 12. Moreover, you'll need to choose which troops to slot into which unit positions, which consist of a 2x3 grid. Putting a heavily armored class in front of an archer or witch can shield them from some (but not all) attacks, but this is just a simple example; the reality is more complex. There are dozens of classes, and I'm still discovering more. Marketing materials for Unicorn Overlord boast more than 60 characters all told, and I've found just about half of them. It's a fascinating experiment just playing around with all the different class combinations within a unit. When you factor in skill customization and even how ranged units can assist other units in combat, you start to understand just how deep this well is. And that's without mentioning the separate powers each character can call upon within the battle map to spend Valor Points on specific buffs and debuffs and out-of-combat strikes and spells. It's a lot to take in, I know, but the game doles it out gradually and gives many, many opportunities to test your limits.
Some of the greatest moments I’ve experienced have come from seemingly innocuous discoveries in the overworld. Exploring some of what appear to be abandoned temples, ruins, and towns, I came across a small event where I discovered an enemy catapult that I promptly dismantled. Partway through a subsequent battle that I entered near where the event took place, the enemy leader–hoping to turn the tide in their favor–was shocked to discover that their hidden catapult was no longer where they had placed it. A random and potentially minor interaction at the time for my squad ended up having noticeable repercussions later on, and that speaks to the heart of Unicorn Overlord: small decisions potentially having major ramifications. On the battlefield, you need to adapt quickly and without hesitation. While you can pause the battle at any time to set up your units, use items, and determine everyone’s position and path, you’re also working against the clock and what can be a near endless supply of enemy units; if you’re not regularly saving your progress during a battle, one misstep can result in a total loss for your side, forcing you to start over from the beginning. There are real consequences to the decisions you make in and out of combat, and it’s a delightful balance between trial and error that makes this game so hard to put down.
While most of the gameplay makes Unicorn Overlord feel like a spiritual successor to Ogre Battle, there’s definitely a little bit of Fire Emblem thrown in as well, primarily seen in the character interactions and morale building that occurs between pairs. When you accrue a certain amount of Rapport, you unlock brief vignettes between characters that shed a bit of light on their past or their connection; some of these scenes are more lighthearted while others are more emotional. Characters with a stronger bond are rewarded with stat bonuses that make them more capable, and in addition to forging bonds on the battlefield, you can also do so at city taverns by spending some coin on a meal to share with multiple invitees. There are a lot of meters, hidden or otherwise, to manage, but the feeling of seeing your units grow stronger and more capable and finally overcoming a previously insurmountable challenge is relentlessly satisfying.
I’m not done with Alain’s campaign to restore his kingdom and set the world to rights, but there’s no denying how exciting and captivating Unicorn Overlord has turned out to be. It’s a love letter to deep, complex tactical RPGs and will most likely appeal to those who appreciate the Fire Emblem and Ogre Battle franchises, but as someone who only has very sparse memories of the latter, I’m still enthralled by what VanillaWare has done here. The Switch performance is excellent, and the art style remains one of the clear strengths of this developer. I expect that I’ll need another 10-20 hours to see the main story through to completion, and even more to discover all of the secrets hidden around the world map. Once those tasks are complete, I’ll be updating this review with a final score. Until then, I feel confident in saying we’re looking at another candidate that’s sure to take home some end-of-the-year accolades.
There's a lot of nuance within the action-platformer genre, and with later Mega Man games in particular came a heavier focus on exploration and replaying levels with newly acquired powers. Berserk Boy is a fast-paced indie game that channels the Mega Man X, Zero, and ZX games–as well as the Gunvolt series–to try and carve out its own space in this very crowded genre. It manages to provide a fair bit of entertainment across its 15 or so stages, but a couple hiccups hold it back from achieving must-play status.
Berserk Boy is at its weakest when it spends time doling out story beats that aren't nearly as captivating as its gameplay. The premise is that a boy named Kei gains the ability to transform into Berserk Boy via a strange orb, and as he collects more of them, he acquires even more transformations. Within your home base hub, you can speak to NPCs, visit a lab to improve your powers, and select new missions. Between end-of-area boss fights, you'll also be tasked with running around the base to clear out enemies that have invaded, but these segments are fairly tedious. The hub may add a bit of flavor, but it gets in the way of the true star of Berserk Boy: the way that you can fly through stages, swapping powers at the touch of a button.
Every stage features multiple checkpoint doors that allow you to return to earlier parts, if, for instance, you missed a collectible. However fast you choose to play through them, the levels can be quite lengthy, with lots of secret passages to uncover and obstacles that require specific transformations to bypass. In addition to platforming challenges, you'll encounter basic enemies, mini-bosses, and a few different types of collectibles; one of these opens up a time trial mini-stage and the other ends up coming into play near the game's conclusion. The latter collectible is actually required to unlock end-game content, which is more than a little frustrating.
Kei’s first transformation is one that grants lightning-based powers, including a high speed dash that allows you to zip across the screen, striking enemies and enabling a lock-on projectile for extra damage (not unlike how the aforementioned Gunvolt functions in his own games). The other Berserk Orbs you collect unlock a flame-based outfit with drilling capabilities, an air-themed suit that allows you to float, an ice ninja form that can hang onto moving platforms, and an earth-based form that allows you to scan doors and platforms to unlock them. Later stages force you to switch on the fly (sometimes literally), and so becoming familiar with each form is key, or it would be if you even needed anything other than the lightning form to take out almost every boss you encounter. If you’re expecting anything close to the difficulty of the hardest Mega Man games, you’ll need to turn on the Retro difficulty when starting a new save file, which gives you a set number of lives and tougher enemies–compared with the unlimited retries of Modern mode.
In terms of presentation, Berserk Boy boasts a vibrant color palette and neat visual effects, like a disappearing shadow trail that appears as you run and jump through each level. Each world consists of three main stages that center on a particular element/biome, and these are accompanied by the signature sounds of composer Tee Lopes, so rest assured your ears are in for a treat. The ease with which you can switch Berserk forms via the L and R buttons in addition to the rest of the smooth controls make for a gorgeous and smooth ride across Berserk Boy’s multi-hour campaign.
Despite its strengths, the repetitive boss fights, lack of enemy variety, and tedious base defense segments throw a few sour notes into the upbeat and satisfying jazz that is Berserk Boy. Another issue is that the lab where you can buy upgrades doesn’t quite work as intended, with the health upgrades I purchased not registering at all towards my health meter. That the true conclusion of the game is gated behind collecting dozens of tokens across the game’s five worlds is a definite misstep, but the overall package will remain an enticing one for action platformer fans.
Berserk Boy offers a fast-paced diversion that will appeal to those who like the speed of Sonic and the transformations of Mega Man. It’s aesthetically pleasing from start to finish, and the gameplay shines through most of its runtime. A handful of issues keep it from putting both feet solidly in must-play territory, but all told it’s a good time and scratches that run, jump, and shoot itch.
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