Category Archives: Reviews

Dragon Quest Wars Review: Tactics O-Goo-re

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The Dragon Quest series is no stranger to spin-offs that step away from the main titles’ sword-and-sworcery dungeon-crawling and world-saving. The various Monsters games are the best known, but DQ has dipped its feet into rougelikes, first-person rail shooters (or sword slashers, in this case), musou beat-em-ups, and Minecraft. Surprisingly, Dragon Quest hasn’t dabbled in tactical games too heavily, unlike its rival Final Fantasy. Dragon Quest Wars is an initial, and oddly under-the-radar attempt at breaking into the strategy RPG (SRPG) genre.

Dragon Quest Wars was originally released in 2009 as DsiWare. The game was a co-production with Intelligent Systems, best known as the developers of Fire Emblem and Advance Wars. The game’s producer, Taichi Inuzuka noted that Wars was intended to be an introductory game for players new to strategy games. A direct sequel to Wars never materialized, but it seems to have a successor in the mobile game Dragon Quest Tact.

(Author’s note: I was unable to screencap the game properly with my 3DS, so the screenshots used in this review are from the Dragon Quest Fandom wiki.)

None of these names will ever surpass ‘Chrono Twigger’ from Rocket Slime.
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Evil Tonight Review: Getting Paid To Yell at Children

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Evil Tonight was developed by Spanish studio DYA Games, composed of brothers Alberto and Dani. From some light research, Alberto is the pixel artist and character designer for all  their games. DYA previously practiced in making horror games with Viviette, which seems to be about a man escaping his mansion from his murderous wife, landlord, or overly-attached piano teacher.

Resident Evil and Sword of Mana for the GBA combine in Evil Tonight, a game about medium-for-hire Sylvia’s recent mission to investigate a haunted…ballet and theater school. Sylvia has to solve puzzles, fight monsters, ration ammo, and protect a bunch of middle schoolers from whatever has died here and will not leave. Evil Tonight starts as a survival horror, with the stamina depleting knife being the most frequent weapon. However, by the second half, the San Paolo De Rosa academy becomes an overcrowded maze of ghosts shooting projectiles and jack-in-the-boxes with sharp fangs. As in most survival hour games, running is a tactic, but often the rooms are so small that combat becomes necessary. The game’s bosses feel more familiar with adventure games than survival horror, with their lasers and teleporting.

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Miyoo Mini + Review: Retro Rampage

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Since hacking the 3DS and Vita in the past year, I’ve gone down a bizarre rabbit hole that led me to single board computer gaming. The term is broad and, as the name implies, refers to computers built on a singular board. While the term can refer to devices like the Raspberry Pi, or handheld consoles like the GameBoy and Steam Deck, it’s also commonly used in the context of portable emulators. SBC portable emulators typically originate from China, due to lax copyright laws, and are usually built on custom Linux or Android operating systems. These emulators also come in a variety of form factors and hardware power, from the teeny-tiny Trimui Model S to the beefier Switch-esque Ayn Odin. 

The 3DS isn’t perfect for emulation. Specifically, the 3DS struggles with pixel-perfect upscaling, resulting in GB and GBC games either being windowed to match the aspect ratio or being scaled up with an ugly blurry effect. Additionally, the 3DS’s inherent SNES emulator can be fussy with certain games, like Terranigma, and need to be played using a third-party emulator. While the 3DS can run GBA games well, they still have the aforementioned aspect ratio problem, don’t have save states, and cannot be put to sleep. Well, you can technically make injects that work with sleep mode, but they aren’t perfect, re: my 50+ hour Mother 3 file that tracked my time even when I hibernated the 3DS. Lastly, I was fed up with having to make injections for games, instead of being able to plop ROMs onto the SD card. The PS Vita fares much better with emulation, but (and this is honestly a weak excuse) I wanted to reduce wear and tear on the console. 

For personal emulation needs, I wanted something that could at least handle GB/C, GBA, and SNES. I’m not currently interested in N64 or Dreamcast emulation, and any sixth-generation home consoles would be covered by a potential future Steam Deck purchase. I currently don’t do a lot of public transportation commutes or long-form traveling, but I wanted something small-ish that I could pick up for short bursts AND long periods. Basically something I could use to kill 15-20 minutes on puzzle games before going to cycling class or for camping at a coffee shop for a couple of hours to dig into an RPG. My current emulation interests are Pokemon ROM hacks, the dearth of fan-translated JRPGs, some attempts at getting into Tetris and Puyo Puyo, and indie stuff like Pico-8 and GB Studio games. Ultimately,  I decided to go for the Miyoo Mini +. 

Retro earbuds courtesy of Retro-Ko.
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Machina of the Planet Tree -Planet Ruler- Review: Slogging Through Fantasy Mines

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Machina of the Planet Tree -Planet Ruler- (from now on, referred to as Planet Ruler), released in 2013, is the first game in the Machina of the Planet Tree series, developed by indie studio Denneko Yuugi. Like Sting Entertainment’s Dept. Heaven series, other Machina of the Planet Tree games (which so far only includes Unity Union) seem to share the same name but do not follow the same playable characters. On the topic of playable characters, Planet Ruler follows big-gauntlet-welding mining student Cram and mercenary cat-girl Retla, as they work together to find and protect Machina Tree priestess Etsy from the villainous Elite Four. 

An initial problem with Planet Ruler is that it requires getting reacquainted with the difference between story and plot. The short sentence above, about who our heroes and villains are, is seemingly the entire game’s plot, wherein the heroes must protect a person or thing from a Megaman Battle Network-sized team of mono-colored bad guys. The story of Planet Ruler is faux complicated  by the way characters tell it. Planet Ruler is supposedly not a long game, which means all this world building and lore must get crammed into every sentence. New term after  new term must be given and then defined. The game does have  cute optional side chats with the heroes vamping about save crystals or some nonsense from Cram’s far more interesting gauntlet Chronos; it’s a feature that makes Tales of games special. cannot replace turning all characters into creatures of exposition. RPGs involve caring about party members because they are who the player follows and controls. Their dramas and conflicts, their adventures and setbacks, their tastes in high fantasy monster burgers, all need to mean something. After a few hours, I was left feeling that Cram sure was smug, Retla was cute but does not get to do much, and Etsy sure is a robot girl trope character. 

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Dusk Diver Review: Diver Down

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Dusk Diver originally released in 2019, and was developed by JFI Games, a seemingly obscure (or perhaps just small) game studio from Taiwan. I wasn’t able to find much info about the studio other than that they worked on a mobile card game called Bound Strike at some point. A direct sequel, aptly titled Dusk Diver 2, was released in 2022.

Dusk Diver focuses on high school student Yang Yumo, on her summer break in the Ximending district of Taipei, Taiwan. During an average shopping outing with her friend Yusha, the two are suddenly transported to an alternate version of the city, known as Youshanding, and attacked by monsters called Chaos Beasts. Yumo is assisted by Leo, a stone lion Kunlunian Guardian from the spirit realm. In the heat of the action, Yumo borrows Leo’s spirit energy and fends off the monster threat, but finds herself unable to re-disperse Leo’s powers back and maintain her non-fiery-haired normal form. After being introduced to Boss, a mysterious researcher Guardian trapped in the form of a ceramic bear, Yumo reluctantly agrees to work for Boss’s convenience store in exchange for possible assistance in returning to her normal self. As Yumo becomes more involved in investigating supernatural incidents in Ximending, she’s later joined by two other Guardians: Bahet, a bat Guardian slowly learning the ways of the human world, and La Viada, a fish Guardian and popular model and actress.

Just tell people you’re working on your Promare cosplay.
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What Comes After Review: Get On The Train

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What Comes After is a collaboration between Indonesian Coffee Talk creator Mohammad Fahmi (editor’s note, who has sadly passed away) and studio Rolling Glory Jam about Vivi, a young women who falls asleep on the late night train while returning from work. When Vivi wakes up, she awakens onto a subway car filled with ghosts. Informed by the conductor that this situation was a mistake and she can leave when the train goes back in the morning, Vivi must pass the time by talking to other passengers until dawn.

The first thing to notice about What Comes After is that it’s a game set during Covid. All the living characters wear uniform cloth masks (looked up photos of Indonesia during covid and it would have been nice if at least a few people were wearing disposable medical mask to add to the realistic similitude) and stylistically, all the passing ghosts don’t have mouths. It’s the first time I’ve played something that’s even mentioned Covid, but thankfully it’s referenced in a way that’s respectful and is never mentioned in the narrative.

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West of Loathing Review: SpaghettiO Western

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West of Loathing was originally released in 2017, by developer Asymmetric Publications. It is a spinoff of long-running web browser MMORPG Kingdom of Loathing, and maintains similar mechanics, terminology, and stick figure visuals from. A DLC scenario, Reckonin’ at Gun Manor, was released in 2019, and a follow-up game themed around a Lovecraftian setting was released without prior announcement in November 2022.

West of Loathing follows the adventures of the player-created protagonist, who can take the role of a Cow Puncher, Beanflinger, or Snake Oiler (fighter, mage, and ranger, respectively). After leaving their mundane family life behind, the protagonist journeys their way west, with the thriving town of Frisco as their destination. After first traveling to Boring Springs, the player picks up a horse for traveling and a pardner to assist in combat, before heading to a larger region divided by the mountains. Along the way, the protagonist tangles with demonic cows, evil rodeo clowns, mysterious alien technology, necromancy, cultists, and ghost bureaucracy. 

An image relatable to 8-year-old me and also almost-30-year-old me.
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Little Noah Review: Here We Go Again

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Little Noah is a side-scrolling roguelite developed by Cygames, of Granblue Fantasy and Princess Connect fame. Based on an earlier, now defunct, strategy mobile game, known as Battle Champs in the west, it was developed by BlazeGames Inc. They alsos helped develop a number of games published by Cygames, including Dragalia Lost and World Flipper.

Little Noah follows the adventure of Noah Little (yes, that’s her name) as she searches for her missing father. In this particular instance, she was tracking a floating ruin with a large energy signature. Confident in her abilities, Noah approached fearlessly and things were going well, until they weren’t. An odd cat crashes on her airship and, after a misunderstanding, the feline summons a storm that crashes Noah’s ship and puts it out of commission. Stranded on the floating ruins, Noah must venture into its depths in order to acquire mana, which she can put to use to repair her ship. She must also figure out the secrets behind the cat-whom Noah eventually befriends and names Zipper, and the ruins he inhabits. She’s not alone in the task, as yet another alchemist by the name of Greigh prowls these ruins to uncover its secrets, and the two are more connected than they could ever imagine.

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Fragrant Story Review: Floral Fantasy

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Fragrant Story was created by William Kage and his development team Squire Games. Previously, Kage worked on a variety of fanmade tracks for existing SNES games, even going so far as to create a library of Soundfonts for other artists to use for the creation of ‘authentic’-sounding retro music. Kage has completed a Final Fantasy VI ROM hack, and is currently working on several not-for-profit game projects inspired by SNES titles. His main work-in-progress is an EarthBound/MOTHER-inspired game cheekily titled Otosan. Kage planned for Otosan to see a 3DS release, but due to Nintendo discontinuing the 3DS in 2020 with plans to close the console’s eshop in 2023, Kage scrambled to create a smaller-scale game to submit to Nintendo for last-minute approval. Kage opted to expand on a mini-game from Otosan, and Fragrant Story was released as a stand-alone.

Contextualized as a VR arcade game played by the kids in Otosan, Fragrant Story weaves a simplistic tale of battle within the kingdom of Flowergard. The kids take on the role of Fleuristas, warriors with different skills and powers, to protect the kingdom’s leader, Queen Mango. Led by the smooth-talking Colonel Rhubarb, the Fleuristas must fight their way to Wolfsbane, a vicious wolf man who guards the game’s final area, Bramble Hollow.

He may not be a sky pirate, but Rhubarb is delightful all the same.
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Monster Crown Review: The Unfortunate Paper Birthday Crown

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Monster Crown was developed by Studio Aurum, an independent development team composed of lead developer Jason Walsh and designer/writer Shad Schwarck, along with their music team. According to the game’s Kickstarter, Monster Crown was a project developed in their free time in early 2016, before being Kickstarted in 2018, and finally released in 2020. 

In a world where monsters and humans coexist, Monster Crown places the player in the shoes of a bright 14-year-old, living in the countryside with their parents. After helping their Dad with some errands, and showing promise as a budding monster tamer in the process, the player receives a starter monster from a magazine personality quiz. New friend in tow, the player sets out to befriend more monsters and travel across the continent.

Go godless abomination, I choose you!
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