Games

Final Fantasy III – Pixel Remaster (PS4) Review

David Hogan2 Comments

Taking a bit of a break from RPGs series I’ve not played before with a return to the always fun Pixel Remasters. Final Fantasy III thankfully brought the series back to traditional levelling up systems and added in Jobs for the first time. Admittedly they also reintroduced nameless and personality-less protagonists and a more simplified story, but hey-ho, can’t get it all right, I guess! … Well, later entries will prove they can actually get it all right, but you know what I mean… Anyway, let’s take a look!

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Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition (PS4) Review

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The next “RPG series I’ve never played before but decided to give a go now I’m back into the genre” is the Tales Of series, starting with a lot of people’s favourite entry in Tales of Vesperia. It was interesting looking into which one to start with as the fanbase is actually quite split across a few different titles for a few different reasons, but in the end I went with Vesperia, if nothing else I thought it would make the two Project X Zone games make a little bit more sense when I get to them in the next year or two! After having played through the game I can say I really enjoyed myself, a few niggles here and there, most of which I hear were fixed in later titles, so… yeah. Let’s take a look!

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Super Robot Wars Y (PS5) Review

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When I finished Super Robot Wars 30, all 100+ hours of it, I was so burnt out from the experience I wondered that if they did announce another one whether I’d bother or not… silly really, because a few years later SRW Y is announced, and able to be brought legally in the UK no less, so of course I was in, DLC season pass and all. So what’s it like? It’s like the other 4 SRW games I’ve reviewed on the site but with slight UI changes, a new mechanic that’s a lot like existing mechanics, and some new featured series. Review done. … Oh okay, fine, I’ll go into more detail then…

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Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake (PS5), Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition (Switch) and Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance (3DS) Reviews

David Hogan2 Comments

In what I hope will be the last of the collected catch up mini-reviews now I’m starting to crawl out of the darkness it’s time to look at some games I played at the end of last year / start of this year, three JRPGs in fact, and on three different consoles to boot! Sadly with this trio none of them blew me away, and in fact one of them I didn’t enjoy enough to finish. Which one? Well…

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Final Fantasy II – Pixel Remaster (PS4) Review

David Hogan5 Comments

After enjoying gliding through the Final Fantasy I Pixel Remaster a while ago (or a few weeks ago, review upload-wise) I decided to jump into its sequel as soon as another gap in my gaming appeared… without remembering that it was the often-cited “black sheep” of the series due to its really weird levelling up system. Well, the Pixel Remaster at least goes someway in remedying this issue but it’s still very wonky as a game. All that being said, it did introduce a lot of important stuff to the series, not least named characters and a slightly more layered plot (plus Chocobos!) so it’s not all bad. Let’s take a look!

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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (XBOX 360) / The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (PS5) Review

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Taking a break from the Japanese-created, turn-based or strategy RPGs for a week it’s time to head west and look at the game that convinced me to buy an XBOX 360 back in the day as well as its visual remaster that I enjoyed dipping into last summer. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a first-person (at least for me it is, third-person is available!) free-roaming RPG that encourages you to go exploring rather than strictly following the main quest, and as with most Bethesda RPGs, that exploration is the heart and the joy of the game. Let’s take a look!

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Namco X Capcom (PS2) Review

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I’ve been wanting to play this for literally decades, sometime after I found the intro movie on the early days of YouTube, but I waited and waited until it became increasingly obvious the game was never going to be localised. Then its two sequels, the Project X Zone games, came out! … on the 3DS, which I didn’t own until just a couple of years ago (and so admittedly I watched a commentary-less play through of both soon after they were released…) Basically I’ve wanted to actually play this trilogy forever and now I have the means to play the X Zone games I also found out about the rough but nonetheless complete fan translation of Namco X Capcom, so I can actually play the whole trilogy! So let’s take a look at Namco X Capcom and see what happened when the Super Robot Wars team made essentially a SRW game but with a tonne of non-mech franchises from two of the biggest gaming companies in the world…

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Mega Man Battle Network (GBA) Review

David Hogan1 Comment

As a fan of both Mega Man and RPGs the Mega Man Battle Network series has always interested me from afar, but the combination of being on a handheld, which as mentioned before on this site just was never my thing, and seeing cards involved just put me off. So when the full Battle Network series of games got a big compilation release a year or two ago just as I was in my RPG renaissance the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. So it’s time to dip my toe in the Battle Network series and see if I want to return to the waters down the line…

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Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (GBA) Review

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Fire Emblem, or “Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade” to give it its actual title, was the first of the series to see a release in Western territories and I remember being interested thanks to Roy being my most-played character in Smash Melee, but as I often did at that time I assumed I’d be crap at tactical RPGs and the idea of permanently losing party members really didn’t appeal due to that assumption. Fast forward a decade or two and this game ended up on the Switch Online app and with renewed self-confidence and interest in JRPGs of all kinds I decided to give it a go, and you know what? I really enjoyed myself. I’ll admit I used save states at the start of each map for quicker restarts should I lose someone I don’t want to, which isn’t in the spirit of things, but beyond that I played legit and eventually got the hang of it and had fun. Want to know more? Read on!

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Final Fantasy I: Pixel Remaster (PS4) Review

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Kicking off this mini-marathon of “RPGs I’ve played recently” is one of the pioneers of the genre: Final Fantasy I. It’s a game I’ve always wanted to play through and tried several times but the old school grind without a story to motivate me led to me dropping it. Fast Forward to today (or, well, a while ago) and I finally brought the Pixel Remaster bundle of FF I – VI knowing that you can put an XP multiplier on in order to speed up a lot of the grind without necessarily “cheating” the game and wouldn’t you know it? I finally completed it. Now, I won’t go around saying I completed it legit, but it was pretty close, so what was it like as an experience in the mid 2020s?

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