Cladun: This is an RPG certainly has novelty, but the novelty is not enough to overcome the game's shortcomings.

Don't go near this game.

For fans of Fairy Tail, I recommend turning on a podcast and smashing some monsters with your favourite Fairy Tail characters while filling up various experience bars. Not a fan of Fairy Tail? Then I don’t see much to keep you around. Some of Gust’s charm and design comes through, but not enough to make the game stand on its own. The story is likely to be almost incomprehensible without prior knowledge, and corners are cut in all aspects, from the environments and quests to the combat. I enjoyed my time with Fairy Tail less than I thought I would, but I sincerely hope Gust gets another chance at making a licensed RPG, just without all the budget cuts.

Unfortunately, I simply can’t recommend Chinatown Detective Agency. I wanted to love it, the premise is up my alley, and the setting immediately won me over. But it’s so bogged down by technical issues and design decisions that I couldn’t wait for it to be over. Amira’s a likable protagonist, and some of the puzzles will stick with me, but the problems eclipsed any enjoyment I could have experienced.

D3 struck gold once, which is fantastic. Aside from the titans of the gaming industry, many developers have trouble creating a truly innovative title that's also good, old-fashioned fun. That was Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. However, after two major mistakes with what's essentially the same design, one has to wonder if they should throw in the towel on this franchise.

While it is the strongest version of The Caligula Effect, it is hard to recommend Overdose to anyone but the most hardcore of fans given its flaws.

It’s disappointing to say that Neon Blood is dripping with unrealized potential. Clearly, the developers put effort into the impressive visuals and the quicktime events, but equal effort was not extended to the writing in a game that so heavily depends on its narrative. It’s not like there’s so much cyberpunk-style media that there isn’t room for more, so it’s too bad this one doesn’t come together. Maybe someday, someone will flesh out Neon Blood to make it as human as it is machine.

Perhaps in the course of the nearly 30 hour romp I had through Final Fantasy II, I missed some mystical item that magically makes the game fun and so I was never able to actually appreciate the full worth of the game.

Creeping Terror feels like your typical horror movie that one would watch to get a cheap, quick scare but proceed to forget about once it's over.

The people at Muteki Corp. made a game they and their fans would enjoy and there is definitely an audience for it. Unfortunately for anyone else, Dragon Fantasy Book II is often broken, and when it does work, it never transcends being derivative.

I'm rarely disgusted after beating a game. Risen 2 left me aghast, and I'm not even a pirate fanatic. I can't imagine the disappointment of those expecting to finally lay their hands on a quality pirate RPG. What could have been a heavily nuanced action RPG is instead a waste of potential and a cheap product. Risen 2 doesn't just leave the niche as empty as it found it. Risen 2: Dark Waters gives pirates a bad name.

For all the Valkyrie Profile fans out there who are wondering about Anatomia: let me put your anxiety to rest! Valkyrie Anatomia is a game absolutely worth skipping. You need not lose bandwidth or storage space over this one. If you must know what is going on, follow the wikis out there and read story summaries from time to time.

This 10-15 hour journey at $30 on release is riddled with bugs and housed in boring game design and even worse execution. Nothing excites me about playing The Ascent. If only this were an adventure game.

There was nothing fun, enjoyable, or remotely redeeming about this game at all. The experience was akin to having a root canal.

The game is obviously not Harvest Moon as we know it or even a "real" Harvest Moon game, but even when taken on its own merits and values, it's simply a throwaway game.

My immediate thought after playing Fighting Fantasy Legends is that I'd rather reread/replay my old, if dusty, Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. The books had haunting text and astonishing artwork that were captured beautifully in inkle's Sorcery! video games, but were sorely lacking in Fighting Fantasy Legends. This is largely because Fighting Fantasy Legends' repetitive and luck-dependent board game format made me feel completely disconnected from the adventure and did not engross me the way that Sorcery!'s "visual novel with RPG elements" format did. Fighting Fantasy Legends' menu option to increase font sizes pleased me and leveling up my dice was nifty, but I still found the game a disappointing waste of my time.

Kitaria Fables is an action RPG with a failed farming component. Hell, even the action RPG aspect is failed. The dialogue, while cute and child-like, goes on and on with more telling and less showing. On its surface, this looks like a fun kids game, but the punishing enemies and excessive text tell otherwise. I’m not sure who this is for. Actually, I’d say it’s for no one. In no way is this any fun. It felt like work from beginning to end, and I can’t even say that’s because I was doing any farming.

Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness is a hot mess of a game. I respect that rules from Made in Abyss’s world and mythos translated into the game mechanics, but that made for a wholly unappealing play experience. While I wouldn’t recommend playing Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness, I would definitely recommend checking out the Made in Abyss anime or manga to see why it’s highly regarded.

Fans of this archaic throwback to Wizardry dungeon crawling of old may enjoy the nostalgia captured here, but those craving story and more engaging gameplay best look elsewhere.

Robotherapy not only falls short of even the most basic of my expectations, it’s completely unremarkable in almost every regard. It fails to capitalize on its premise in any meaningful way, and the story that it does choose to develop struggles with the prohibitively short overall runtime. If you’re looking for a simple pick-me-up, Robotherapy might provide an hour of decent entertainment. But anyone looking for a more substantial experience, this is not it.

If you're itching for a dungeon-crawler, go for Etrian Odyssey or Unchained Blades instead.

If you've already beaten every DS RPG to date and you have plenty of money, then buy this one. If you're into repetitive dungeon-crawling and repetitive fighting to level monsters who are much less interesting than their franchise-based rivals (Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh), then give this title a play.

Re: Hollow Fragment is an appropriate title for yet another shallow licensed game.

At this point, it should be obvious that if you're considering purchasing this game, I'd advise you not to. There are so many other, better games you could be playing.

A visually appealing but ultimately trite series of references to much better games.

All in all, this is just a disappointing game, and the Mana series doesn’t deserve to be brought down like that since it already has so many hit-or-miss games. Wright Flier Studios needs to rethink and retool this one and fast before the player base is gone and won’t come back. They only need to look at other Square Enix gacha games to see how to do it right, like Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe, or even their own Another Eden. I can not recommend Echoes of Mana in its current form, but hopefully it can be fixed before it joins the graveyard of other dead gacha games.

The isometric grid muddies the waters instead of providing meaningful depth, the companion and charm systems feel several iterations short of being finished, and the core deck mechanics lack the consistency and design work that make its inspirations so enduring. Shuffle Tactics is brimming with things to unlock but starved for meaningful ways to enjoy them, leaving it less a cohesive “greatest hits album” of roguelite elements and more of a confused compilation of good ideas played out of tune.

Those who couldn't get enough of Tokyo Xanadu's combat will no doubt be pleased with the extra content here, especially a robust post-game that takes place during Halloween. Everyone else, however, is better off passing this one up. eX+'s additions are so flimsy and superfluous as to actively detract from the original game, dragging out an already thin premise to another 25 hours.