This foundation is shaky at best, so White Knight Chronicles needs some work.

It's hard to recommend Operation Abyss to anyone except hardcore dungeon crawler fans. The story just doesn't have the content for a game of this length, and dungeon design issues often make exploration and advancing a major annoyance.

The game sports an involving combat system and a fascinating world to explore, one that is ripe for expansion in a promised sequel. I commend the work that went into this title from Talerock’s dedicated staff. The technical issues that creep up are hard to ignore though, and the localization doesn’t help a game that’s trying to have a spectacular narrative. Hopefully the promised follow-up improves on this first Grimshade.

Despite a lot of issues in the gameplay, I actually had a lot of fun playing Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory, and that's largely in part to the humorous script and terrific localization job.

Trying to combine peanut butter and jelly into a delicious sandwich, tri-Ace instead takes two very different battle systems and combines them into something like ice cream with poached eggs on top. The tactical parts alone are decent with lots of customizability and strategies to ponder, and the Valkyrie Profile system is about as good here as it is in the first two games in the series, but instead of meshing and working together, they pull against each other as the player is left wishing he had just one system or the other.

Disgaea 6 ticks many worthwhile boxes for series veterans looking to chase that next stat fix; however, newcomers may find the sweet relief when the final boss is at last vanquished by the auto-battle system to be the only high worth noting, and for all the wrong reasons.

Citizens of Space is an ambitious game in many ways that delivers an incredible variety of systems both in and out of combat to occupy players. To be sure, the game oozes with creativity at nearly every turn. But it takes a risk in going with a story focused primarily on humor, which unfortunately doesn’t pay off, and is instead overburdened with mostly predictable punchlines and tired, overused phrases. The end result leaves the game without much of a narrative, characters with flat personalities, fights that can drag on for a little too long, and lackluster presentation throughout.

Blackguards is a fairly decent first go, and fills up the roughly forty hours it takes to complete, including most side quests, quite nicely.

It's cute and I can see certain subsets of gamers becoming addicted to treasure hunting and meeting all of the residents, but there are no new discoveries to be found here.

The problem with Yakuza: Dead Souls is that it's a game full of wasted potential. The story is fun and the atmosphere is excellent, but the broken controls and awkward camera make this game more frustrating than fun.

Eternights deserves some credit as it brings a lot of ideas to the table – perhaps too many. Players are tasked to manage party members, social relationships, a calendar, dungeon crawling, and more during the game’s short run time of less than a dozen hours. There’s a lot going on, most of it competently designed, but lacking that touch of finesse or technical flourish that oozes from the few series that serve as inspiration. The game wants to be a hot date, with some beautifully designed characters who are full of personality. Unfortunately, like those characters stuck on a train during the end of the world, Eternights is all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope's drawing power is really its battle system and little else. Despite a solid plot and strong item creation, the shoddy localization and terrible level design mar the experience beyond salvaging.

Pixel Noir is a wonderful concept that I felt so much excitement towards. What the game gets right, it does incredibly well, but what the game gets wrong falls flat on its face. The game is clearly a labour of love by SWDTech and that is apparent in all facets of the gameplay, story, and presentation. Unfortunately, the game is so riddled with game-breaking bugs that it can’t be recommended in its current state.

Ultimately, Digimon Story: Time Stranger is a mixed bag. An excellent Digimon raising and customization system is held back by a shaky combat core, and the game’s interesting yet linear plotline is severely hampered by awkward voice acting and dialogue. There’s parts of the game that are enjoyable, but its flaws hold it back from being truly memorable.

At present, Celestian Tales: Old North is a bit of an odd bag, feeling more like a prologue to something bigger than a full title standing on its own.

The Skull of Smakh-Daon undoubtedly delivers exactly what it promises. Amusing dialogue and situations aplenty will be found wrapped inside a laborious dungeon crawler that tosses invisible dice around to determine everything inside of battle.

Although X-Men Destiny is extremely short, wrapping up at six hours or less, the game's many customization options, including three power sets with multiple individual power options, three playable characters with different backgrounds, and two factions to join, give it a lot of replay value. Unfortunately, other elements of the game are not up to snuff, and it's difficult to recommend as a full-priced product.

I had high hopes for a lot of the new ideas being introduced, but sadly Atelier Firis breaks my heart in a lot of ways. As someone who loves to get lost in big open worlds, I struggled to enjoy this installment with the same intensity that I've had for the Atelier series over the years. Firis feels like a larger step backwards than Sophie did, and I can only hope that the third game in the Mysterious subseries will fix the blemishes, because there are some great ideas here that just needed smarter execution and more polish.

Strategy RPGs and visual novels seem like a suitable match given the history of great stories in this sub-genre. A fine union may still be possible, but Tears to Tiara II is certainly not it, and not because of a lackluster story.

Overall, League of Legends holds a lot of promise, but comes up short as a retail product.

For all the ways The Alliance Alive seems like a pleasant throwback RPG early on, it features too many frustrating design decisions and gameplay systems that have little impact until the endgame. It all adds up to a game experience that elicited very little satisfaction, ending with a variety of negative emotions and an unpleasant lasting taste.

Overall, Chantelise will tickle those who are gluttons for punishment, but with its unfriendly game design, it'll leave many newcomers starving for something more approachable.

While Phantom Brave: The Hermuda Triangle isn't a poor game, it fails to distinguish itself from the multitude of tactical RPGs already around.

Death end re;Quest 2 tells a decent story in and of itself, and does so with good overall production values, at least on the visual novel side of things. But whereas the first game clicked with me better and made me generally interested in what was to follow, I’m afraid that my anticipation for a third installment is at an all-time low now. The already-repetitive combat has been further stripped down, and is now something I actively dislike about the game, and while the story sort of works as a standalone project, the attempts at tying the two games together are puzzling and tenuous at best. The game is not entirely without merit, but the overall picture being painted is now one of a fractured franchise whose parts don’t mesh well with each other.

For what is supposed to be the next step forward for Pokémon, Pokémon: Let’s Go Pikachu! feels like it has taken a few steps back. While there are aspects of the game I do enjoy, there are also glaring issues that I cannot just ignore. Ultimately, Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! needlessly simplifies core mechanics in a series that does not require such streamlining.

Various Daylife is the kind of game that’s hard to universally recommend playing or avoiding. It’s structured like a game that’s intended to be played in short bursts, but the massive amount of content — a minimum of 30 hours to finish the main story, at least that much again to finish all the content the game has to provide. Anyone playing the title in 10 to 15-minute chunks would require nearly a year to finish fully. For the patient RPGamer, dive in — the story’s interesting and there’s a lot of great ideas to be found in Various Daylife. It’s unfortunate these unique ideas aren’t implemented or supported in better ways.

If you're desperate for a portable Little King's Story experience, New Little King's Story should sate your appetite, but be warned: little Corobo's all grown up, and he's lost his imagination.

Light Fairytale Episode 1 has some decent bones of a good JRPG, but there’s very little to speak of about the body of the game at this point. For the most part, the game looks and sounds nice, but battles are lackluster affairs that boil down to attack-attack-heal, with many systems not yet fully implemented. Plot is similarly thin, with no character growth or development yet. While this Episode 1 shows promise of something perhaps worthwhile in the future, at this point it’s nothing more than a paid prologue.