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Battle Chasers: Nightwar, a turn-based RPG based on Joe Madureira’s fantasy comic, boasts a beautiful art style and a serviceable, if repetitive combat system. Unfortunately, its barebones story leaves much to be desired: Nightwar may look and play alright, but the narrative element that could have improved the experience is just not there.
The story follows a group of misfits, led by a girl named Gully, who wears a pair of magical gauntlets from her dead father, who was once a great hero. This puts a target on her back, but fortunately, she has some friends (the swordsman Garrison, the golem Calibretto, the rogue Red Monika, and the wizard Knolan) to protect her. These [...]
Radiant Historia is a fantastic JRPG that offers not only an innovative and complex battle system but also a great story, packed with tragic characters and interesting twists, that is only marred by a bit of bloat in the 3DS version.
The setting is “a decaying world in which everything is slowly being engulfed by sand,” which leads its two greatest nations, Alistel and Granorg, to war over the few fertile lands that there are left. Stocke is an intelligence agent of Alistel who one day is assigned to an extraction mission by his supervisor, the Machiavellian Heiss, who entrusts him with an enigmatic book called the White Chronicle. When the mission goes awry, Stocke finds [...]
Fragments of the Forgotten Past is a great – if not the best – entry in the Dragon Quest series, offering a multitude of complex, touching, and tragic short stories. It certainly can be accused of overstaying its welcome, and its gameplay is also too easy for its own good, but Dragon Quest VII still manages to shine by the force of its narrative alone.
The protagonist – who you can name as always – is a sixteen-year-old boy who lives in a small peaceful village in a small peaceful island. His best friend is prince Kiefer, a hot-headed and impulsive boy who wants to discover what else lies beyond their island, across the ocean. Although they are taught that their island is the [...]
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King is far from being one of the franchise’s best installments, failing to explore the series’ tradition and the few new things it brings to the table. It’s a simple and tedious JRPG that offers a bland, bad developed story, and boring gameplay.
The plot follows an unnamed hero – who serves as the player’s male avatar – whose mission is to end the curse that plagues a king and his daughter: the king has been turned into a troll and the princess into a mare. To do this, the protagonist needs to destroy the one who has cast the curse, a mysterious court jester named Dhoulmagus – although he eventually discovers that there are more [...]
Torna – The Golden Country is the expansion for the great, ambitious, and overly complex Xenoblade Chronicles 2, acting as a poignant prologue that works even better when experienced before the main game. Its revamped combat system giver a faster pace to the battles, and its story benefits from being more tightly structured than the original.
This time, the protagonist is Lora, a young warrior who grew up alongside her Blade, Jin, after he cut off the arm of her abusive father to protect her. Lorna is a mercenary, and the first time we see her she’s in a forest battling a group of monsters alongside Jin. Lorna, however, is in a personal quest to find out the whereabouts [...]
Shin Megami Tensei IV is an RPG with great narrative ambitions, trying to discuss relevant themes – such as the purpose of religions and the problems surrounding the forms society is usually structured and organized – while presenting a complex – albeit very unbalanced – battle system. Its narrative, however, is very erratic – there is a good chunk of time when nothing relevant happens – and sometimes it also falters by putting its focus on its least interesting elements.
The game’s protagonist, initially called Flynn, works as an avatar for the player, who can change his name. Flynn is a commoner that lives in the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado, a medieval society based on a rigid [...]