Moonless Knight is a meal with an interesting assortment of ingredients, but they entirely fail to come together into the intended dish. The compelling Japanese-Lovecraftian fusion just cannot be executed with this rough, lazy script. It’s a failure of a Metroidvania, and it’s a bad and clunky action RPG as well, with progression mechanics that fail to synergize with the rest of the gameplay and ultimately drag the experience down even further. The experience is wholly disappointing, and Moonless Knight is simply not worth a player’s time.

It all adds up to a game that’s more commendable on paper than in its execution. GreedFall: The Dying World is an ambitious title by a smaller developer that tells a story from a perspective not often seen in the medium. A story about the horrors of colonization, not to mention told from the point of view of the colonized, is a laudable endeavor. But there isn’t much about the game that makes it a fun outing. Characters lack personality, and it’s entirely up to the player to seek it out where it exists, combat is an overly complex mess of options layered on a foundation made for brute-forcing, and both presentation and technical optimization are in need of fine-tuning. With the change away from the more action-oriented combat being a questionable one, fans of the previous installment may still be on board for another chance to visit the world of Teer Fradee, while all others may want to miss the boat this time around.

Calamity Angels: Special Delivery is an ambitious title that took one-note jokes way too far. A title about deliveries at its epicentre has promise, and the character designs are very enjoyable. Combat has moments where the absurdity all connects, and a wonderful finishing move is shown on screen that always brings a smile, but that smile quickly becomes a twitchy bunch of frustrated nerves when the party will not listen to commands. The constant chatter and disdain from the party is easily annoying, and while the game is only twenty hours, it still feels painful herding them to complete the most basic survival instinct-related things. This constant source of manufactured tension sadly overshadows most of the good on offer here. This courier is anything but dull, but the chaotic frustrations will cause many prospective clients to look elsewhere.

Despite all of its environmental detail, scope, and promise of a wider, more exciting space-faring adventure, The Outer Worlds 2 is a disappointment. While it offers divergence and choice, its paper-thin satire, tonal mishmash, and balancing oddities see the experience crumble under the weight. In addition, the review build’s far too many immersion-destroying bugs, blocked questlines, and other sequence breaks ensure that the game’s issues outweigh its redeeming qualities.

Varlet has a few interesting elements. The story is enjoyable enough to experience, with a welcome cast, and it’s quite enjoyable to listen to. However, the gameplay is ultimately little short of a disaster. While Varlet does a lot wrong, players can still readily get through it. However, the worst failing the game has is that it feels a significant improvement could simply come from excising much of its gameplay.

I do not enjoy being harsh on any game, but I can’t recommend Nova Hearts. It’s a game with no spark or excitement. While I don’t mind some chaos and messiness in my stories, and prefer that, the story, characters, combat, and music all suffer from a level of disjointedness that is too noticeable to overlook. This is one of those games where more time in the oven and a less-is-more approach truly could have helped it hit its full potential. Unfortunately, as it stands, Nova Hearts is a half-baked game that tries to do too much, and does none of it well.

All in Abyss might be that title that caters to the most specific of niches of what is already a subset of gamers. The narrative lacks any redeeming characters, the poker gameplay tends to get old fast, and the gameplay is reductive. Most offensive, however, are the perverse torture scenes that are treated as collectible trophies but will turn the stomachs of many. The gratuitous cruelty simply isn’t enough to sustain a worthwhile game experience, and it quickly plummets from “going overboard” to “growing overly bored”. Those who feel intrigued by this concept may still find a good time here, but all others would do well to steer clear.

Unfortunately, it’s very hard to find reasons to recommend Reynatis. The story has some intriguing elements that provide curiosity about where it’s going to go next, while there are some interesting gameplay ideas and the music is decent. However, the game’s execution across the board undercuts all of these. The stronger parts just don’t have what is necessary to make Reynatis much more than a curious disappointment.

All in all, it’s hard to imagine many players will get a lot out of Bleak Faith: Forsaken. It successfully pushes to the forefront an alien and otherworldly experience which is indeed as bleak as its name implies, but this alone does not an enjoyable time make. With large-scale issues embedded within its narrative structure, progression, exploration, and combat, the cons easily outweigh the pros. There are reasons to praise the design team’s overall effort — particularly given the game’s scope and the extreme limitations they had to cope with — but beyond an academic appreciation, Bleak Faith simply isn’t a fun game to play. With no shortage of far superior similar titles available on the market, this one may be relegated to go down as a hopeful starting point for its creators, but not one that will stand tall on its own merits.

There’s a good premise locked behind bad execution in Fate Seeker II. There’s plenty to explore and everything is connected to something. The detective work is meticulous and the awful translation makes reading for any amount of time a headache. Combat is sprinkled in as a highlight, but when most of the game is dialogue heavy, it is not enough. The poor presentation magnifies every weakness so avoid this headache at all costs.

Astor: Blade of the Monolith feels like a game that needed a few more months to cook. The gameplay is underdeveloped, there are multiple bugs, and and the plot really could’ve done with some punching up. While this adventure has potential for improvement, but it’s very difficult to find reasons to recommend it in its current state.

The Legend of Legacy HD Remastered fails to live up to its promise of delivering a captivating dungeon-crawling experience. With its lackluster narrative, uninspired combat, and flawed progression systems, the game struggles to hold the attention of players and ultimately falls short of expectations. While the nostalgia may appeal to some fans of the original release, newcomers are likely to find little to redeem this lackluster remaster. As players journey through the world of Avalon, they’ll find themselves longing for a more fulfilling adventure, leaving The Legend of Legacy HD Remastered to fade into obscurity.

I wanted to love Fae Farm, but honestly, the full package was mostly disappointing. It is a game that tries to compete with the popular farming sims, but never quite does enough to stand on its own feet. While there are kernels of good ideas, they are marred by questionable design choices, with quests and goals that never feel satisfying. I am all for the coziness revolution, but Fae Farm, unfortunately, feels anything but.

I adored Rhapsody and Rhapsody II, but Rhapsody III feels like an unnecessary addition to this fun series. The game feels like more of a cash grab, offering mediocre stories regarding the series’ wonderful cast of characters, and it’s accompanied by uninspired dungeons and question combat design. Rhapsody III was a rollercoaster I was begging to get off because the constant ups and downs felt like whiplash. Two out of six short stories are not enough for me to recommend Rhapsody III, even for series fans, but one could say its presence for a bundle helped finally give Rhapsody II its welcome western release.

I had every intention of enjoying Xuan-Yuan Sword: Mists Beyond the Mountains; I quite liked Xuan Yuan Sword 7 when it received a western release a few years back, and I am generally a fan of throwback, pixel-art styles with turn-based combat. But it didn’t take long for the game to tear down any goodwill built up by its predecessor or my personal inclinations. When push comes to shove, there’s just no way to ignore the terrible blow dealt to the game by its one-of-a-kind translation, evident in everything from the philosophical musings of the plot to how character arcs unfold. And if that alone wasn’t the deathblow, then the frustrating and plain unfun balance issues that made me beg for credits certainly did the trick. There’s no two ways about it: Mists Beyond the Mountains would have fared better staying shrouded in the fog of ancient obscurity.

Soulvars will hold limited appeal to turn-based RPG fans. Those looking for a compelling plot and lovable characters will likely want to search elsewhere. The battle system is good enough to entertain players, but offers little to compel them to return to the game once it is beaten as the replay value is nearly zero. Unfortunately, its soulless plot and characterization make it a grind to get through.

Miasma Chronicles is more than just a solid tactical RPG experience; it’s a game that’s both tongue-in-cheek fun and darkly mature, chronicling a humankind on the brink of extinction. The world-building and presentation offer much to take in and enjoy, while the combat is deep and sound, with tons of variables to constantly keep up with that can turn the tide of battle at a moment’s notice. It also has quite a keen edge, and those who enjoy a firm challenge will be well-served by what’s on offer. Despite a few technical hiccups in its current state, Miasma Chronicles has a lot to love, and is an easy recommendation for those wanting to scratch their next tactical itch with a game that asks much of its players, but also offers a wealth of quality in return.

I am not such a purist that I can’t enjoy a lower-budget indie take on the Souls-like formula, and the team at GoldKnights shows its chops in several of The Last Oricru‘s aspects. The writing and world-building are enjoyable, and the vision of giving the player lots of choice in how the story should unfold has been well realized. But when it comes to combat and performance, the game is a mess. Even if one is lucky enough to avoid game-breaking bugs, combat is executed so poorly that it spreads its taint onto the rest of the experience. When having to restart a game completely due to a bug isn’t even the worst issue encountered, I think that about says it all. In the end, the development team has much to prove to bring the gameplay in line with the good elements it showed it is capable of.

Soccer Story provides some enjoyable basic entertainment that comes from just kicking the ball around and taking on the challenges and targets as players explore. Some of the puzzles and challenges are good fun and satisfying to complete, but there are also many that are made more frustrating than they need to be. With a flawed match system that becomes trivial once its workings have been figured out and technical issues that stack up as the game progresses, it’s incredibly tough to recommend.

Metal Max Xeno: Reborn is allegedly a refined experience of the initial game, but there are simply too many under-baked mechanics thrown in for anything to stick. At the end of the day, Reborn feels more like a tank management simulator with occasional forays into combat and exploration of an empty, generic-looking wasteland. Players are simply dropped into Dystokyo and left to their own devices. While some gamers will find themselves engrossed with monster hunting, others will find themselves frustrated by how Metal Max Xeno: Reborn is still unable to get things right, even after being fully reconstructed. A campy sense of humor can only carry a game so far. Unfortunately, this second chance at life is inexplicably held back by the same quality issues that plagued its progenitor.

It’s not trying to be big, flashy, or grandiose. There is no greater message it is trying to convey. It is simply a game wherein cute puppy dogs run around blowing stuff up with machine guns and missile launchers, and that is all it needs to be.

The Good Life has a name behind it in SWERY, and as such, the story brings all the insanity and the confusion one has come to expect from his previous titles. There is scope for the humour to work, but factoring in fighting with the camera and struggling with the controls the whole experience is just not worthwhile. In a self-fulling prophecy, Naomi points out a lot of faults in games that The Good Life just blithely repeats itself. Throwing a crazy ad-lib together and keeping fingers crossed the game works may have worked in the past, but this game has none of the fun or the charm to be successful nowadays.

I’d like to be able to say that aside from the bugs, Monster Harvest is a great game, but that’s just not true at this point. The game is just missing too many staples that other farming sims feature. There is little main story, no NPC interaction, a near featureless battle-system, no side quests, and barely any small intermediary goals throughout the game. Even beating the final boss is greeted with a single line of dialogue and zero fanfare. Publisher Merge Games has repeatedly claimed additional content will release when debugging is complete. It would be worth RPGamer’s time to wait for both of those events to occur.

What’s hard about WitchSpring3 is that there is so little in it that is enjoyable. There is no personality in the game, and everything that is happening in the story or the gameplay feels so unremarkable. I appreciate how short an experience it was and that it was very direct in its approach, but there was so little in it to explore and engage with. This is a hard game to recommend as it can be welcoming for some gamers, but this port feels as though very little effort was put forth. WitchSpring3: Re:Fine is a boring and hollow experience that cannot be recommended at a $39.99 price point.

Aluna is really an interesting character and it is a shame that she doesn’t get the full showcase in this game. Aluna: Sentinel of the Shards simply plays things too safe in creating a game that is functional but not interesting. No risks were taken with the characters, the story, or the combat leaving a very linear game that is only really noteworthy for its setting of 16th-century Latin America. Even those die-hard enough to travel back in time for the experience are given an unfulfilling trip, consisting of stilted visuals rather than vibrant tapestries. The concept and the background of the game hold so much promise that they make this by-the-numbers, low-risk effort that much more disappointing.

Despite some interesting ideas, Biomutant commits the cardinal sin of media — it’s boring, and that ultimately seals its fate. The game has a gorgeous world and adorable character designs, yet it’s soulless and falls far short of its ambitions. What makes it even more depressing is that, although it has potential, it’s plagued by too many poor gameplay elements plus a story that’s bloated with exposition and undermined by poor character development, as well as the rampant technical issues. Offering a main story that can easily be completed in less than fifteen hours, Biomutant is a quick experience but the dullness still comes in that short amount of time. Ambition is a beautiful thing to have, but if you cannot fulfill it, it’s nothing but wasted potential and time.

Those looking to spend more time with the goddesses will at least enjoy more of their humour, and VTuber fans will likely get a kick out of their cameos. However, gameplay is very much lacking, with everything being done considerably better elsewhere, and ultimately, as an overall experience, Neptunia Virtual Stars remains a disappointment.

Woodsalt feels like something whose ideas would have been better served as a visual novel. The sparse gameplay that is there is so superficial that it ends up detracting from the experience. It’s at least respectful of the player’s time in that one can easily get a playthrough done in well under ten hours, but even then it’s very hard to recommend.

Despite all the problems Arcante has, it offers a fair degree of entertainment. The steam runs out after a few hours when players reach the second town, and by the end of the game, everything just falls apart due to the lack of depth and story to compel RPGamers to explore more of the lifeless world. However, for those who have nostalgia for the computer RPGs of the ’80s and ’90s, this may partially satisfy that craving — just don’t go into this game expecting much, because it feels incomplete. At least the journey is very short and doesn’t overstay its welcome.

With the release of Seven Knights: Time Wanderer, Netmarble attempts to replicate their free-to-play title’s success with this console offering. Unfortunately, the game underserves both the source material and players on the Switch. While fans of the Seven Knights mobile game may enjoy this title, there are scores of more fulfilling experiences available on the console.

Fantasy of Expedition is ambitious for its attempt to combine elements from real-time strategy games, roguelikes, RPGs, idle games, clicker games, and 16-bit nostalgia. However, the resulting product feels time-consuming and not rewarding in its power creep or challenge. The simple story is representative of the depth of each of these elements but also highlights where the game could shine if just a few of them were further refined or removed.

Necromunda: Underhive Wars is its own worst enemy; no game should be in a constant war with itself to be playable. Instead it should show off its map and objective variety with a completely capable combat system. While it is possible the game can be redeemed with multiple patches and quality-of-life improvements, for now it is a rushed and half finished experience with only faint hope that anything can be salvaged.

The problem with Pong Quest on a whole is that for a crossover, it doesn’t lean heavily enough into RPGs to be interesting for RPGamers, and by the other side of it, you can only play so much Pong before it gets stale. Pong Quest is a cute experiment that is plagued with just too much damn Pong and not enough RPG.

Conglomerate 451 has a solid gameplay base, but that’s really all there is to it and it’s not enough to fully support the game on its own. The combat is decently engaging, but the repetitiveness and lack of interesting elements outside of it means it fails to garner full attention for any extended period of time. Those looking to crawl through neon corridors and vaporise cyborg punks will find some enjoyment from it, but it’s ultimately forgettable.

Combining tactical RPGs and soccer is a good idea that could be further developed and improved upon, but Ganbare! Super Strikers really misses the mark in execution. The lack of substance that prevents the game from soaring once the novelty of the premise wears off and the flaws in the balancing become noticeable. As someone who generally prefers to play games single-player, the game failed to impress and I doubt this will hold much appeal in the multiplayer department for anyone who isn’t already a hardcore fan of both soccer and Tactical RPGs.

Though the combat holds up, it’s just too difficult to find a way to recommend Element: Space as a whole. There’s not much of interest from a narrative standpoint, while all of the good points about the gameplay are offset by the technical problems. It’s a shame, as there’s a good base underneath it, but even with giving leeway based on the small size of the development team, the annoyances currently outweigh the good.

It’s very hard to find the positives from Arc of Alchemist. The music at least alleviates some of the monotony and players won’t need to spend too long with it to spark the ending credits, but the combat and systems contrive to make the gameplay far from enjoyable, and the story is almost not worth mentioning. One can only hope that it allows lessons to be quickly learned ahead of any future action RPG endeavours.

Everreach: Project Eden somehow manages to avoid being as annoying to play as its constituent parts would indicate, and there will be some out there who can get a decent evening or two’s entertainment from it. The game at least flows along quickly and the writing just about holds interest through the six or so hours it takes to see everything on offer. But this papering over fails to deal with the major underlying cracks, and it remains one that is impossible to actively recommend.

Stay Cool, Kobayashi-san! can easily be completed in under two hours, and the online rankings indicate that under ten minutes is readily doable once upgrades have been purchased. The game features multiple endings, though these are anticlimactic involving a tiny interaction based on those initial created character choices. There is a “true ending”, which is achieved by defeating the bosses in numerical order, though this order is only revealed in the text when meeting the bosses for the first time, so it is incredibly unlikely to get the first time. In the end, I’m not even sure if the game was even worth those few hours, and is one best left forgotten.

There are many unique mechanics introduced here that have a lot of potential, but between the lack of interesting ways in which said mechanics are used and the terrible controls, they only work to hinder the game. The game is also one of the buggiest games I’ve played; its litany of bugs range from falling through walls, to abilities that don’t work correctly or unintentionally trivialize encounters and obstacles, and even bugs of the game-breaking kind. This is a game with great ideas but horrid execution, both from a technical and a design perspective, and it’s really a shame. Here’s hoping the developers will take what’s good here and execute better on it in the future.

Mariage is a game with some decent ideas that are completely undone by execution. The concepts for the battle system are good, but balance is lacking. The idea of carrying over stats to a second generation is enticing, but there is so much grinding that any interest will be sapped long before reaching the end. Mariage‘s adult-oriented material will also narrow its player base somewhat. There’s just not enough good about Mariage to balance out all the issues the game has. Mariage is not an experience players will want to make a long-term commitment to.

I had a good time with Keepers of the Void, and appreciated the feeling of puzzling my way through a dungeon, as well as the spike in boss difficulty by the end. Even though it doesn’t add much, if anything, in terms of lore or storytelling to the game’s world, it’s a dungeon experience that Darksiders III overall benefits from. It doesn’t have many long-term rewards for those that have already cleared the main game, but it’s a worthwhile return trip to the world of Darksiders III nonetheless, even if only for a few hours, and the kind of thing I’d love to see integrated into the base game design for future outings in the franchise.

Fans of games such as older Elder Scrolls titles and even Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will likely find this an enjoyable experience. While Outward lacks the polish of those titles, it shares the vision of making a harsh, open-world experience into something memorable. It makes every victory feel like an accomplishment, and it allows the player to write their own story in a new and unforgiving land. And, for some, that is all they need from their RPGs to feel happily satisfied.

I don’t feel like Nelke was the best version of itself, especially when players are reminded that this cheaply made game doesn’t exemplify what makes the Atelier series great. Nelke lacks the spark and unfortunately reminded me that perhaps my love of the series has truly come to an end.

The right person can find some level of enjoyment with Dragon Marked for Death. Unfortunately, the right person is likely somebody who has supplied a group of their own friends with copies of the game to join in on-line co-op, or else just has a hankering for stat-tuning and mission grinding. To the average gamer, the game’s repetitive nature in the face of its overall lack of multiplayer alternatives will spell anathema. Online games aren’t designed to put their best face forward when played solo, and it sadly seems this game’s timer is already ticking dangerously close towards its expiration date.

The Princess Guide provides some moments of enjoyment, but overall the game does very little to endear the player. It feels like the game goes out of its way to obscure anything that might add depth, while some amusing conversations can only distract momentarily from the egregious waste of its premise. Though The Princess Guide at least avoids some of the pitfalls of frustration, it simply doesn’t have have much to recommend it.

Ultimately, there are many issues with The Caligula Effect: Overdose. There were many things in the game that I truly wanted to like, but unfortunately they do not save it from being a poor title. In its entirety, The Caligula Effect: Overdose is an underwhelming and mediocre experience from beginning to end.

I can truthfully say that Mary Skelter: Nightmares is the very first game I have ever played in which giving a woman multiple meatless pancakes demonstrably raised her affection for my character. I can also truthfully say that it exceeds the level of quality seen in my previous experiences with Idea Factory and Compile Heart. That comes with the significant caveat of a point where the game refused to recognize I had the critical item for progression, until after about 150 tries it finally allowed me through. Cranking the quality up from completely wretched to only somewhat wretched isn’t all that much of an accomplishment though, and leaves me no wiser than before about how these companies remain in business.

Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics is the kind of mash-up property that by all rights should have the right ingredients to hit that sweet spot. By all accounts, the original property actually does manage to do just that. But the digital adaptation lacks on several fronts, not the least of which is the unfortunate underusage of the occult element of its namesake. The grindy battle system with little enemy and environmental variety is also nothing to write home about. Cthulhu Tactics sounds like an intriguing mix of its two titular elements, but fails to deliver on the promise of either.

Weird enemies, fast combat, and tank customization don’t save Metal Max Xeno from being an unbalanced disaster. The game also manages to end on a particularly poor note with an ill-conceived boss-rush followed by a monstrous final battle that requires expertly tuned tanks not needed anywhere else in the story. I spent nearly as much time trying to beat the final boss as I did on the rest of the game. It’s just another in a host of bad design decisions. There are some interesting parts that could have formed the basis of a good game — the tank battles against giant monsters festooned with cannons are fun — but those parts are buried by all the other terrible decisions.

It took me about five hours to reach the final mission of Moonfall Ultimate, only to be confronted with what appeared to be a glitched set of mission instructions at the end. I tried going through the game again using a different class, and encountered the same glitch, except this time I ignored the text and just plowed through everything as best I could. There are plenty of hack and slash titles available, and this one doesn’t stand out in any particularly positive way.

For as simple as a game it is, the game runs fine on the Switch. The draw distances of the levels and the pop-in is noticeable but really doesn’t impede gameplay in any meaningful way. The music and sound design is as bland as they come, leaving so little an impression that all that’s left is the admittedly fun creature design. But engaging with enemies isn’t entertaining and the levels offer no fun secrets to explore. Hyakki Castle promises an interesting premise but can deliver on little else besides some pretty loading screen concept art.

Provided the rest of the game keeps up with its strong opening, Phantom Doctrine is very well set up to be one of this year’s pleasant surprises and one that strategy fans be will happy to sink many hours into throughout multiple campaigns.

Chamber of Time is an incredibly uneven experience. It’s an amazing recreation of the Little Witch Academia universe with impressive art and fantastic voice acting. However, that accomplishment is squandered by how tedious the navigation of the academy becomes, bland fetch quests, poor AI, bad boss design, and sub-par combat. This could have been a good game with better choices, but instead it’s difficult to recommend to even the most rabid Little Witch Academia fan, much less the broader RPG-playing public.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with its focus on button-mashing action; in fact, the addition of the calculator to bribe enemies into joining you is a welcome idea that has merit. But each time the game hits its stride and lets the player feel a sense of fun, it’s quickly dashed by repetitive gameplay, dull story, or another crushing difficulty spike.

The Witch and the Hundred Knight 2 is the worst gaming experience I’ve had in recent memory. The longer I played the game, the more negative my opinions became. While it started out as a harmless, bland action RPG, it beat me into submission with repetitive dungeons, bad combat, and poorly-designed boss encounters. While there may be a few interesting ideas in the story, it’s not worth suffering through the dungeons and needlessly verbose scenes to experience them.

Saying that Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet is at least playable is the best compliment I can give it, as there's occasional fun to be had from running around and shooting things, though not nearly enough. Almost everything else about the game amounts to a sterile waste of time. The story is vapid, the variety of locations and enemies is practically non-existent, and everything you do in the game feels completely pointless. It's not even content I'd recommend to diehard fans of the series, as there's not really even enough of that here to matter. Fatal Bullet was a chance for the game portion of the Sword Art Online franchise to step up and shine under a new developer with a new gameplay focus, but instead the entire thing shamefully fell flat on its face.

River City: Rival Showdown isn't a strong or memorable title in this franchise, especially when compared to Tokyo Rumble, which is by far the more quality game. With the lack of direction, the difficulty spikes, and the time it takes to upgrade skills and equipment, Rival Showdown is an exercise in frustration more than anything else.

Perhaps the best overview of Empyre is as a collection of theoretically good ideas that were never fleshed out, with a storyboard rather than a story, and a hodgepodge of gameplay mechanics rather than a coherent set of fun game systems. And that's unfortunate, because the game is full of unique and intriguing elements in its setting, overarching plot, and combat, and could have easily made for an excellent experience. But as is, it's not much more than a buggy proof-of-concept in need of serious refinements and overhauls of all its core components.

I can't deny that the fifty or so hours spent playing Valkyria Revolution had some fun times. The litany of problems present made it more enticing to stay in an endless loop of free missions rather than return to the story though, and even when doing that I kept finding issues quality improvement should have spotted. If this is the best Sega could do to revive the Valkyria franchise, no wonder it's been dormant for years.

While I have spent most of this review ragging on Harvest Moon: Skytree Village's issues, I am glad I played the game because it satisfied my curiosity in regards to how Harvest Moon has changed in the last five years. While there are inklings of interesting ideas, the overall package feels hollow, as though it's missing a spark of greatness where other games have succeeded. Skytree Village doesn't offer enough incentive to keep players actively engaged, and I can only hope that the next iteration of the series makes some drastic changes to get this series back on track.

Sadly, The Caligula Effect really just amounts to a waste of time. It's a shame because there's some neat ideas within it, particularly on the premise and story side of things, that are stuck behind terrible design choices and poor implementation. Despite its short length — approaching twenty hours depending on how well players can avoid the mindless drones — there's no reason to abandon other plans to give it a try.

I wanted to give Arelite Core a chance, and found little things to admire even while the package as a whole was a disappointment. It's pretty hard to forgive a game in which beating the final boss is greeted by an immediate unknown error that crashes the whole shebang though. I'm hopeful Dragon Slumber will be able to move on to better things in the future, because this isn't a very good advertisement of whatever talents it possesses.

As a stand-alone product, Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization has very little to recommend it. Gameplay is decent enough to hold interest, but better versions of every aspect can be readily found elsewhere. Even for ardent fans of the series, it's highly debatable whether the game is worth the time. Hollow Realization shows no progress for a series that appears to be relying solely on its base franchise for sales.

Sword Coast Legends has overreached far beyond its abilities. What might have been a fine successor to Neverwinter Nights is instead a playable, but dull experience for every playstyle it offers. Dungeons & Dragons brand name represents a long lineage of CRPGs. Some excellent, some considerably less so. I, personally, had hoped that this entry could have been the former, given its ambitions to the Neverwinter Nights lineage, but ultimately this game fails to interest for any length of time.

In the end, there doesn't seem to be much reason to think of Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity as more than a left-field oddity. Newcomers to the established universe will be nonplussed by its cast of characters who lack all introduction and its fly-by-night story. Repeat visitors to Gensokyo will still be hard-pressed to locate any challenge or semblance of fun within its dreary gameplay and level design.

I've enjoyed a number of dungeon crawlers over the years, but never have I felt compelled to go back and experience the earliest renditions of the type. Stranger of Sword City gave me some uncomfortable flashbacks to The Dark Spire while I played it, and one deliberately-archaic title in that mold was plenty to last me a very long time.

In spite of the irritations, I have a bit of affection for Dungeon Punks — it let me ride on a gorilla, after all. I can't overlook just how much time I spent waiting for its freezes to end though, and without a fix for that it's impossible to give a recommendation. No arcade cabinet which experienced constant technical trouble would have gotten enough business to justify its existence, and the ability to play online with friends doesn't help much when everyone will be cursing the constant dead space.

My biggest piece of advice when it comes to this game is to play the demo. You will experience everything the game has to offer in it and you will know very quickly whether you can stomach the fan service.

This isn't a good tactical game, and I'm hard-pressed to actually recommend it to anyone with standards.

Enjoyment of Siralim seems highly dependent on how much grind and padding one would be able to handle.

At first I was enraged when I started to get killed all the time. Then I figured out how to just grind, and the game became easy again until the final boss demanded further statistic embellishment to take down. Now that I have experienced the entirety of a Kemco title, I too understand why this constantly-reviled publisher gets so much flak. Maybe other games under the Kemco banner are better: it wouldn't be hard.

At the end of the day, Re: Hollow Fragment is lazy in every sense of the word, and just isn't worth the dollars that Bandai Namco is asking for.

For all of its small charms on the screen, the play of the game is an exercise in bashing one's head on a wall of monsters in the hopes that the random number gods smile upon the player and allow passage. And the reward for that is only to repeat the process again until the shallow and unsatisfying conclusion is reached.

I had paid no attention to Swords and Darkness prior to downloading it and starting the adventure. By the time I was done, all the repetitive thumping of the Y button I had done was starting to take a toll of my hand, and the anticlimax at the conclusion was a relief because it meant the game was over.

I felt no real desire to spend any more time in Lord of Magna, and will likely forget most of what I experienced in a few months. While it's not quite at the level to warrant George Carlin's famous comparison to the act of viewing a golf game, getting anywhere near that area is not an accomplishment a developer should ever want.

The Awakened Fate Ultimatum draws heavily on tired anime humor and noodling about transcending one's fate. Perhaps a smack with a cake pan or a high-intensity training montage would have fuelled its own will to power.

At the ten dollar price tag, Excave II is highway robbery. There's just nothing here for RPGamers that they haven't seen and/or experienced in a better form.

As the basic framework of a game, it serves adequately, but that's about the most praise possible.

I had fun for a little while with Excave, but frustration at its many unpleasant aspects was a constant feeling later on.

This was supposed to be the first entry into an episodic game, but there are currently no announced continuations, and it is doubtful any who played this game are eager for more.

Perhaps in a different world, Tales of Xillia 2 could have been the proper sequel that Tales fans wanted, one that more thoroughly explored the Elympios half of the world which was mostly glossed over in the first game. Instead, we got a game in which players collect cats and pay off their medical bills.

This gets the job done for those who desperately need a new tactical experience and can't find anything else to play, but it's a hard recommendation to make even so.

It's hard to find any reason to place Sacred 3 above the majority of action RPGs released recently. It doesn't do anything particularly well, with every aspect having been done considerably better elsewhere. Fans of the first two games in the series will likely prefer to pretend this never happened.

Even as a compilation of the iOS content, Squids Odyssey ends with a 'to be continued' notification because the story is far from concluded, though developer The Game Bakers is unlikely to wait long for further updates. I feel like I got my fill of calamari with what I've already had though. Unless future installments receive a great deal of fine-tuning, my time with squid does not need extension.

If you're going to rip-off the classics, at least be competent about it, which Grinsia fails at with flying colours.

The Rise of Digitoll may look cute and accommodating at a glance, but don't believe it. It would be one thing if the game was trying to be a brutal dungeon crawl, but a massive revision to its mechanics would be necessary for that to work.

If simply tossing many hours at a game is all that is necessary to deem it worthwhile, Agarest certainly qualifies. Then again, I could take a similar amount of time to watch videos of stupid things people have uploaded to YouTube and probably learn something useful, a claim Agarest cannot make.

It's difficult to justify players paying full new game price for Bound by Flame, particularly for the premium cost PS4 version. Ultimately, the game has an interesting premise and selling points that on the face of things are worthy of attention, but the scope aimed for is such that the resources and timescales devoted to it sadly had no hope in achieving.

Steel & Steam has considerable potential for however many future installments it sees, but this first one didn't make me happy very often.

It's hard to imagine just what the developers were thinking when creating The Witch and the Hundred Knight. Metallia is so immediately distasteful that most players will be turned off in the first hour, and players who stick it out longer will likely grow bored and annoyed.

The more one looks back on it, the more it feels like Magus' primary purpose was to acquaint a new development team with the tools at hand while building up a few skills.

The potential is still there, because Romance Dawn doesn't do nearly enough right to make this an adequate substitute for reading the manga or watching the anime.

In the end, there's simply nothing interesting or worthwhile about Valhalla Knights 3.

To be honest, I have a difficult time even calling Hometown Story a game, as its gameplay mechanics have almost nothing to do with its progression. Without a massive overhaul of how progression in the game works, it would probably have been better served as a visual novel, and even then, it would have been a pretty poor one.

The best indicator of whether a given gamer will appreciate Black Rock Shooter is its visual style. The game offers moderately entertaining combat and sad girls in snow, but these can be obtained elsewhere at a fraction of the aggravation. At its core, the story is a familiar one that isn't able to justify its retelling with a new twist. There is something to be said for a game that embraces zoning out and rhythmically blowing things up, but it's not always a straight-up compliment. Look, but don't touch.

ArcaniA is just an altogether frustrating experience. Its few good points fail to shine through in any way thanks to the vast number of technical and design issues. Even a fun battle system can't do much for the game other than highlight even further the wasted potential.

Time and Eternity is utterly embarrassing in so many ways that I do question how much it will hurt NISA's overall image.