Black Sigil's unpleasant combat is truly a shame, because just about everything else in the game successfully emulates the feeling of playing a great lost Super Nintendo RPG.

Knights is something completely unique and as such has a learning curve. But, once the game is understood, it only gets better and better.

The game sounds great, looks great, plays well, feels old-school, and has a deep and interesting plot with characters we already know and love.

Despite its mostly average base components, Crimson Gem Saga is a surprisingly good game.

In the end, Cross Edge is a disappointment.

Steal Princess's entire structure is antithetical to exploration and its mechanics are more often infuriating than not.

In the end, the game was very fun to play, very fun to listen to, and very fun to watch, but the frustration caused by the game's inability to give better information ruined the overall enjoyability.

It's a simple hack 'n' slash dungeon crawler, and at that it succeeds. But with virtually no story and a myriad of pointless, distracting side quests, the game relies almost exclusively on multiplayer for a complete experience.

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.

Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier succeeds in trying something new and making it work.

Ultimately, the appeal of The Dark Spire will be limited to those looking for a trip down memory lane or those looking for a challenge.

Dokapon Journey fails to impress.

Overall, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Times is an enjoyable game with a few noticeable faults.

Although it is riddled with annoyances and oversights throughout, The Last Remnant is an addictive game.

While not significantly different from Diamond/Pearl, the expanded initial Pokédex alone makes the nearly sixty-hour game far more enjoyable.

Rune Factory: Frontier can be somewhat tedious at times, but at the least it always gives players something to do.

Whether you're a fan of the series or not, you will very likely enjoy the story of Suikoden Tierkreis and have a blast playing it, if you can get past its flaws. This is the type of game that could have been so much better had Konami put more effort into it, but that doesn't stop it from being a great DS RPG.

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.

Avalon Code is a quirky, highly original action adventure that will probably appeal most to fans of the Legend of Zelda series or Harvest Moon's relationship systems. The glaring interface issues detract from the experience somewhat, but for the most part aren't much more than a minor irritation and can be alleviated with a bit of storage management on the part of the player. There are also a handful of localization errors that make a small number of the recipes unusable, though.

The port's errors transform an average game into an abomination barely worth touching. Atelier fans that have not yet checked out this spinoff series or readers interested in the combat and alchemy should avoid Student Alliance and hunt down the PS2 version.

If you can track down three friends to play with and enjoy this style of gameplay, Phantasy Star Portable might be an enjoyable experience. However, it remains an excessively repetitive grindfest with little lasting appeal, regardless of multiplayer capabilities.

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.

Legacy of Ys provides a peek at what might have been for JRPGs had Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy not run away with the genre. Ironically, the gameplay in Ys has aged better than these ultimately more successful series originals.

Puzzle Quest: Galactrix is a game that improves in many areas upon the original Puzzle Quest, but simply doesn't do enough to make itself anything more than a spruced up casual adventure.

Drakensang is ultimately a rich and polished experience, and fans of the old party-based PC RPG design will find the same virtues and flaws that come with this type of game.

If you're really itching to play another strategy game, or you happened to really love the 360 original, Blue Dragon Plus will absolutely do the trick, but otherwise it's another game that you shouldn't feel guilty about skipping.

There are a few things done unusually well in this specific title, namely a story the player should actually care about, an even and consistent pace that was missing in Dragon Quest IV, less need to level grind, a party-forming mechanic that gives the player several diverse options to consider, and an overall experience that develops and changes over the course of the game, flowing naturally with the plot and maintaining a fresh feel for the battle system.

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon could be played by someone new to the series quite easily thanks to its many refinements and the tutorial contained within the Prologue chapters. Veterans of the series will find a game that combines the refinements of more recent entries, save for a lack of variety in battle objectives.