Sometimes, Etrian Mystery Dungeon likes you a lot. You’re its pal, and it wants you to have a nice time. You’re gonna be buddies for dozens of hours, after all. Other times, Etrian Mystery Dungeon misses out on its morning coffee or something, and takes its frustrations out on you with a targeted viciousness. In sum, surprise! It’s a Mystery Dungeon game! READ MORE
Sports and management simulation games have enjoyed a bit of a resurgence, thanks to the massive amounts of memory and processing power available to games these days. This has allowed them to greatly increase the complexity without torturing players with horrific loading times. Out of the Park Baseball 16 takes the already-insane amount of detail and depth for which the series is known and ratchets it up to the max. READ MORE
The schism of the farming game world — that of developer Marvelous and Western publisher Natsume —is finally starting to show its repercussions. Since Marvelous decided to hand its Bokujou Monogatari series to its own team at XSEED and Natsume forged ahead with its Harvest Moon IP, it’s easier to see what each brought to the table. In Natsume’s case, it turns out that’s not much more than enthusiasm and good intentions. With its first separated release in Story of Seasons, Marvelous shows this move to have been only a good thing. READ MORE
Brawlers seem to be in short supply as of late. Aside from Super Smash Bros., the lack of new entries has left me wondering when other consoles will provide something of the sort. While it’s not Smash, Paperbound, the new game from a small team at Dissident Logic, can fill that void for PS4 and PC players in the meantime. READ MORE
Final Fantasy Type-0 was originally a Japanese PSP release, and one of the very few two-UMD games. Fans waited impatiently for a US release, but the PSP was already dead in North America and the Vita wasn’t selling particularly well. In the end, what really saved this title’s localization hopes was the crazy speed at which Western audiences picked up the PS4 and Square Enix’s desire to jump on the opportunity. Type-0 HD is out on Xbox One as well, but PlayStation still drives any Final Fantasy decisions; the vast majority of people who buy Japanese games do so on Sony’s platforms. READ MORE
