Fallout 3 was a landmark game. It emerged at a time when high fantasy primarily represented 3D open-world roleplaying games and shifted the genre’s possibilities. There had been some alternative settings at the time, but Bioshock euphoria dominated the cultural zeitgeist. In 2008, large, first-person game worlds with a distinct level of verisimilitude existed in the domains of a select few: Bethesda’s own Elder Scrolls series, smaller studio efforts like the Gothic series, or older offerings like Deus Ex. Even these compatriots failed to match the level of graphical fidelity and thematic intensity depicted in the Wasteland of Fallout 3.

It also helped that players had previously explored and fleshed out the Fallout world in the isometric CRPG genre through its predecessors. Fallout 3’s older siblings succeeded in creating a fascinating game world but were limited to PC users and a small genre niche. With the coming of the PS3/Xbox360, millions of potential new players were on hand to bathe in the Fallout glow and bring the franchise to the mainstream in the process.

Cleverly, the game starts small—you chart the main character’s life from their birth in an underground Vault on the east coast of the USA, many years on (as it is revealed) from a nuclear war that shattered the world. The Vault was designed to save the best and brightest of the population and developed its own social order over the many years of seclusion. After a kerfuffle involving the player’s father, we are soon on our way through the Vault and moving toward a destiny amongst the Capital Wasteland.

Most of us know the story beats and locations and are familiar with the journey to discover a father’s ideas and heritage. It would be wrong to call the narrative exceptional. Yet it is enough to have us following plot breadcrumbs from one place to another, drawing us toward the first humanitarian gatherings that form the world’s fabric. Megaton, Arefu, GNR Station: places that now resonate more with the memory of what we did with (and in them) than how they fitted into the main story. The characters, places, and missions that take place as a sideways step have always been the main draw and led to the most emergent storytelling. Who hasn’t accidentally shot up a traveling merchant during a Raider firefight, forever removing them from the world? Or seen a horde of giant ants savage civilian characters (and each other)? Or just plain wanted to deprive Megaton of its sheriff? In these moments, the game draws upon its older parents the most through the choices it offers our characters or that we offer them.

And, like the earlier installments, our character is our own. The SPECIAL system returns in an adjusted format, with skills and perks to further define what our avatar can do well. Whilst combat and firearm skills are simplistic (even a noob can point and shoot most any weapon in the game), the social and technical skills gate off certain options in the world, forcing players to consider whether a stealth approach is their means, rather than opening locks or hacking computers. It’s a solid system, and given that open-world RPGs of today still use a similar approach, it’s a design that has stood the test of time, with a few variations. In fact, the line of connectivity from Fallout 3 to Starfield (16 years!) is clear to see. It’s remarkable to feel that the design at Bethesda remained static and locked during that period.

The downside is that it becomes a zero-sum equation in 2024. Whilst this was unique in 2008, we are now so used to skill variants that we almost meta the approach without thinking. On the original release, it was cool to realize that a character could be rubbish at picking a lock but might locate a terminal nearby that opened a door to the same area or different goodies.

Now, when we get to an area without the proper skills, we automatically look for the Persuasion approach nearby, the terminal to hack, the stealth route to follow, or the rocket launcher to go postal with Either that, or we return later when we have the right perk or leveled up the right skill. After all, we likely know where all the Bobbleheads are, and the skillbooks, right? It’s still incredible to admire the range of approaches that can be taken at so many points in the game. Still, I found the familiarity of some areas so clear in my mind that I couldn’t help optimize the fun out of them, and this made me realize that, like anything new, it’s only new once.

But it’s the journey and the new vistas that keep us interested. As we leave behind the initial haven of Megaton, and venture further into the Wasteland, the landscapes become more ambitious. The ruins of Washington appear, feeling oppressive and speaking of faded glory, before the path through them is capped by the wonder of Rivet City. Broken buildings and piles of rubble remind us that, graphically, the genre has moved on massively. Texture and lighting effects are quite basic, and the color palette is mercilessly drab. It’s the little things I noticed most too—look around any Fallout 3 interior all these years later, and you’ll quickly realise how little detail there was inside, bar a few tables, scattered stimpacks, busted coffee machines, or perhaps the ubiquitous ‘earnings clipboard.’

Having said all that, this is an area where the game’s modding scene continues to impress and deliver. Texture packages offer a large range of enhanced detail for modern PCs and make a lot of difference in the areas of the game that spring up a lot. Therefore, having sharper details in ruined cities or industrial buildings, and even on individual assets like walkways and office chairs, enriches the experience endlessly. There are even specific mods for increasing the level of immersion to modern levels, like having tents animate as if caught in a breeze or facial sculpture mods that adjust the awkward structures and tones of the vanilla game.

Mind you, the sound design still feels fresh and is filled with excellent environmental effects, as well as that underlying music score. I had forgotten how significant an impact selecting a radio feed makes on the immersion in the world. This design beautifully and awfully captures this sense of isolation when things get quiet far from a settlement. All in all, it still serves as an incredible balance between epic roleplay scores and a wistful longing for a long-disappeared Americana. Voice-over acting is similarly well balanced, with just the right number of grizzled, cynical performances offset by the truly zany, batshit characters. Although well acted, I still feel Fallout and Fallout 2 still have the edge in characterisation and theme—Fallout 3’s voices are just a little too similar in tone, and the writing just a little too straight.

There’s still jank in the quiet moments, too, despite countless patches and mods that address most of the issues. Clipping and level geometry still offer some hilarious moments, as well as some annoying ones. Missions occasionally don’t trigger or end. It’s still stable, though, and most things work how they’re supposed to unless you’re trying to push the game world and systems to their limits. And let’s be fair, a lot of us are doing that.

In addition to the texture packs mentioned above, I settled on the unofficial patch for the game, as well as firearms and Hardcore mods. There are dozens more options, as long as you’re willing to tolerate finding the correct version and comfortable editing and adjusting game folders. Playing the game with the Hardcore mod presented it in a different light and made the choices and some of the meta-gaming mentioned above totally fresh. What do you mean I can’t carry dozens of rounds of ammunition around the Wasteland because it now has a weight value? Suddenly, choosing what firearm to keep and where to store the rest became critical. And as for sleep not healing my broken limbs, well, doctors are not common in the Capital, so I quickly became a character that shambled around at times on one leg and with one arm, praying that the raiders in the distance wouldn’t see me. It’s not for everyone, and the pace of the game slows down immensely when every encounter needs to be calculated carefully as to whether you’ll even survive or what resources you’ll use up to do so. Still, I’d recommend that those who have yet to sample such survival aspects have a go.

Bethesda produced a range of DLC packs supporting Fallout 3, most of which are worth adding for what they offer, especially as the whole bundle is often on sale for a few bucks. Broken Steel is a favourite, offering an increased level cap and a 10-hour narrative exploring the Enclave and the fight against them. It really helps to flesh out the world’s lore whilst adding some additional item goodies in the process. Point Lookout offers a similar level of extra narrative but focuses on the swampy mysteries of Maryland with a more ghoulish bent. It’s worth pointing out that many mods require the DLC (all or part) to work.

Overall, Fallout 3 still stands up all these years later as an engaging open-world RPG. It nails its sense of place and time, and even if its graphical limitations are more noticeable now, the excellent sound design still shines bright. Better still, the open narrative and plentiful places and people to discover still offer emergent storytelling that is at least on par with the best examples today. The systems for interacting with this narrative are still functional, too. However, this is where the aging combat systems and familiar quest design become most apparent and where I found myself battling most against the game. But with the right patches, mods, and a willingness to not fall into familiar choices, I recommend Fallout 3 to those of us who have already completed multiple playthroughs and those who have yet to even set foot in the Wasteland.

The Rhapsody trilogy recently had its 25th anniversary, yet for 24 of those years, we’ve only been able to play one of the three games. Thanks to Nippon Ichi Software’s recent push to remaster, re-release, and localize their back catalog of games, fans of the original wondrous musical adventure are finally able to play these entries in English. With the previous games being the most charming RPGs I’ve ever played, my expectations for the third entry in the series have been high.

While Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure and Rhapsody II: Ballad of the Little Princess were linear adventures with a small cast on a grand quest, Rhapsody III: Memories of Marl Kingdom follows a wildly different approach. The game is more episodic, taking place all over the general Rhapsody timeline, and feels more akin to a nonlinear game such as Live a Live. Throughout Rhapsody III, players control both past heroines and former enemies as they partake in small side adventures, learn the value of friendship and family, and discover the history of the Marl Kingdom as a whole.

Although the first half of Rhapsody III‘s story could be considered frivolous side content, the chapters are focused on worldbuilding, digging into the lore of the Marl Kingdom, and answering questions players may have had since the first game. The latter half of Rhapsody III focuses more on the Ancient Civilization and what brought it to ruin and gives players a chance to finally play as Cornet’s late mother. However, before digging into the real meat of the game, a handful of side stories act as the appetizer. These chapters follow the series’ protagonists Cornet and her daughter Kururu, as well as the villainous Marjoly and Arkujo families alongside their mischievous minions. Once again, the story is a mixture of light-hearted whimsy with a sprinkling of darker and more serious subjects.

Rhapsody III‘s general gameplay loop is largely in line with the original games, yet its structure is more bite sized and focused on vignettes. Rather than freely wander the world, the game is split up into smaller sections that focus on a handful of areas. Each chapter follows different characters, though the monsters recruited in one chapter can be summoned for use in others with the only caveat being a minimum level requirement. While it’s great to be able to continually strengthen a favorite set of monsters, it can be daunting to reach a new chapter and be unable to summon those monsters due to them being dozens of levels ahead of the player. This unfortunately encourages grinding to get new allies or reach the levels needed to summon the aforementioned monsters.

The battle system in Rhapsody III is an evolution of Rhapsody II‘s with a touch of Rhapsody sprinkled back in. In Rhapsody, battles took place on a tactical grid with Cornet and her puppet allies. You could move each puppet and give commands such as attacking or using spells. In Rhapsody II‘s revamped battle system, puppets were no longer party members but instead acted more like spells or gear to be equipped. Rhapsody III combines these elements by introducing four Leader slots, each with three Partner slots. This brings the total party size to a dizzying 16 characters in battle. However, only Leaders need to be given commands, and their Partners will act on their own unless manually given commands via the menu.

Combatants are divided into categories such as Human, Puppeteer, Puppet, or Monster. As expected, only Puppeteers can give commands to Puppets, yet some Puppets may also act as Puppeteers. Humans and Monsters can issue commands to all but Puppets. With such a huge party on the field, battles can take a bit longer than expected due to each character needing to fire off a spell or an attack. Add in the higher-tiered spells with longer animations and a round of battle can make the fight drag. On multiple occasions, I found myself setting the Steam Deck down and letting the party auto battle until I ran out of SP.

Much like the previous games, monsters have a chance to join the party after battle. Each monster comes with an elemental type, and stacking elements can influence what spells a leader can use. Additionally, players can have specific configurations of monsters that unlock special skills, such as Kururu and three Elinger mushrooms unlocking a super attack once they reach a certain level. Capturing enemies and setting up teams adds a touch of monster collecting that could lead to nearly infinite theory-crafting and team-building strategies, yet team composition only becomes a concern with a handful of boss fights. There are a lot of systems at play in Rhapsody III‘s combat that feel unnecessary until a boss comes along.

Visually, Rhapsody III remains a gorgeous game. Much like its predecessors, the game has aged ever so gracefully. Character sprites are rife with personality and style while maintaining the perfect amount of detail. The shift from 2D fields to 3D is flawless thanks to the game’s colorful art style. As Rhapsody III was originally a PS2 game, the visuals are a touch more modern and serve as a perfect example of how to remaster a game with character sprites on a 3D background.

Like the rest of the Rhapsody games, the OST is a genuine treat. Once more, Tenpei Sato’s team created an incredibly fun and bouncy soundtrack that radiates a sense of whimsy and joy. Of course, as Rhapsody III is still a musical, the array of vocal tracks and meticulously crafted song and dance sequences are ever impressive. It’s incredibly easy for songs to become earworms, yet a few small issues remain. While the musical numbers are voiced in Japanese with English subtitles, there are still a handful of pre-song lines that remain untranslated. Additionally, due to the frequency of battles, players are forced to hear the first minute of an ambient track over and over as the player jumps in and out of combat.

Despite being the most modern entry in the Rhapsody series and resolving many of the headaches from its predecessors, Rhapsody III introduces a few new frustrations of its own. While combat in Rhapsody was a complete afterthought but vastly improved in Rhapsody II, the third game’s combat is little more than serviceable. Rhapsody II featured an interesting mechanic that issued a direct monetary value to spells via the game’s Inotium currency. This created a unique balance that made players think twice about burning their big spells if they were close to a new gear purchase or needed to stock up on healing items. It forced the player to get a bit more creative, and as Inotium was rewarded after every battle, there was a sense of resource replenishment after every fight. Naturally, the costs became negligible by the end of the game.

Rather than iterate or fine tune the Inotium-based resource system, Rhapsody III does away with it completely and introduces the ever-familiar SP mechanic. This system only applies to the leaders in battle, meaning that monsters, puppets, and supporting characters have infinite SP essentially. Most battles—outside of boss fights—boil down to mashing the attack command and letting the AI spam whatever magic spell they want. Despite all these systems at play, battles are still a touch too easy and make element levels, positioning, and party composition feel unnecessary. However, bosses provide a challenge with powerful AoE attacks that may wipe out Partners. I found myself having to adjust my strategy on the fly and scramble to slap on status effects and heals.

One minor headache is that Rhapsody III is simply a product of its time. Without any maps (including minimaps), navigation can be a bit of a pain—especially when roaming around a cave with similar-looking layouts. Pair this with a frequent encounter rate, and you have a recipe for entering pushover battles every minute or so. With sixteen characters in battle and the ability to summon older monsters from other chapters, enemies get steamrolled and begin to feel more and more like a waste of time when simply trying to travel from point A to point B.

Ultimately, Rhapsody III feels simultaneously like a prequel and a spinoff. It attempts to answer questions about the world while also trying to tie up loose ends, but it mixes in a bit too much filler. Additionally, the new battle system also introduces a layer of complexity that sounds good in theory yet adds little to the experience. Rhapsody III is still a step forward in most cases. With a new engine, the 3D environments are leaps and bounds above the previous two games, and while the dungeons can still be a bit confusing, they’re far more engaging and full of life. Even when the story is covering relatively pointless fluff such as the Nyanko storyline, it’s still as charming and whimsical as ever.

Rhapsody III is a fun and breezy musical RPG that is both cute, simplistic, and amusing. While it’s not the best of the trilogy, it serves as a solid capstone to the Marl Kingdom trilogy. It gives a peek at the often unnecessary and over-the-top mechanical insanity that Nippon Ichi Software later became synonymous with. I can only hope the recent remasters are a teaser for a new entry in the Rhapsody series.

War. War never changed. Fallout 2 never got an expansion pack. 

A lot has changed since Fallout 2‘s 1998 release, even in the world of the Fallout series. It is a product of its time in that, along with Diablo, Fallout and its sequel set the tone in a new way for modern CRPGs, feeding into the series cousin and successor, the legendary Baldur’s Gate. Instead of drawing on Western fantasy, as most of the RPGs before it, Fallout 2 continues the degenerative path blazed by its predecessor in a mix of sci-fi and futuristic fantasy now known as postapocalyptic. It’s weird to think about Fallout 2 being limited because of technological restrictions at the time of its release. On the contrary, the Fallout games pushed what was even possible back then. What Fallout 2 lacks in technical prowess, it makes up for in allowing its players freedom, with so many branching paths that it’d take a long time to see everything worth seeing. 

Much like Mad Max, the movie series from which Fallout 2 primarily takes its inspiration, you’re an inhabitant of a wasteland that purportedly used to be the United States, except in this case, it’s hundreds of years after civilization has fallen. In fact, it’s an expansion of so many things from George Miller’s original trilogy—from the style, with the one-armed leather jackets, spiky shoulder pieces, generally violent nature, and general dustiness, to the ideas of settlements in conflict over resources. Similarly to Fallout, you’re a member of a tribe nearing total disaster, and the elder tasks you with finding a Garden of Eden Creation Kit (GECK), which, by the sound of it, would bring restoration in some way. In a callback to the first game, the original Vault Dweller’s jumpsuit with “13” on the back is hanging in a shrine, a relic from the events of the first game 80 years prior. Since it’s your turn to save your people, you put it on and head out into the wasteland. 

Fallout 2, naturally, builds on everything its predecessor set up, with more densely populated locations and deeper stories, both in the main quest and in the diversions along the way. It stretches much of what the first game brought to ridiculously creative degrees, including some of the most colorful companions in the entire series. The early stages of wandering to different locations and getting involved in everything from joining the mafia to being sheriff for a day to being the giver of life or death to so many people are enjoyable for how many possible directions you could choose in any situation. You can be creative when finding solutions to your problems. But even the first portion of the game is only a warmup for the stellar 5- to 10-hour final push to the quest that completes it. It’s always astounding to see how a game from that time weaves together the connections between so many moving parts in its world. Some random encounters are fun and exciting because they’re so varied and dynamic, and you can join in your own adventures with many of the groups you encounter on the road, from slavers to cattle drivers. 

Especially from a modern perspective, Fallout 2 carries over the same frustrations as the first game. Much of its notorious difficulty stems from the random encounters you experience on the road. The traveling segments are mechanically similar in their oppressive nature to Oregon Trail‘s, except with deathclaws, which are somehow deadlier than dysentery. While the many deaths you experience from the horrible things you find on the road accentuate the wasteland’s inherent danger, it’s also purely frustrating. You rely on luck to eventually discover the breakthrough you need—whether it’s a piece of armor or a weapon—to make real headway. You have to go into it with the mindset that you’re going to die a lot, and there’s nothing you can do about it, which can be discouraging. The fact that you face this kind of trouble at the beginning is tough enough, but that you can experience it every time you try to make your way to a new part of the map gets old. Being successful in Fallout 2 almost necessitates having a self-deprecating sense of humor or at least an indomitable will to push onward in the face of great adversity.

Some aspects of the hex-based tactical combat were innovative for its time, namely the VATS system, which allows for targeting enemies’ individual limbs or head. Overall, however, I never found combat to require all that much strategy. Whether you win or lose is mainly determined by your level and equipment, and it’s also down to luck whether you can run away if the odds aren’t on your side. Of course, it’s fun when you can use whatever shiny new gun you just acquired to tear apart enemies who used to do the same to you, which makes your character’s growth satisfying.

It’s also exciting to get a taste of what else is out there and get hit with a sense of wonder at discovering something new (and deadlier than you’d ever expected) or to see a group of raiders fighting a bunch of radscorpions (then picking up the spoils yourself later). It’s also weirdly heartening to know that any horrifying death contraption you see human enemies using, you will someday have access to yourself. That’s why this system works at times, despite itself. It’s nice that what you need to get through the game is supplied to you in the locations you visit, but it’s even more frustrating that you must suffer through the wasteland portions to get to that point. 

Fallout 2 is unique from the Bethesda games in its scope, taking place across a large swath of the Western U.S. It’s a massive area compared to the later games (at least the base game), which stick to a single city and its outlying areas. Your date tracker shows that traveling takes several days, and your overall quest takes years to complete. I relocated to Nevada a couple years ago, and I enjoyed seeing that Reno’s “Biggest Little City in the World” sign is spared from the nuclear destruction and lives on in New Reno. And I wouldn’t ever want to cross that desert on foot.

Fallout 2 also feels dated in aspects beyond the graphics and design philosophy. It’s great that it doesn’t take itself too seriously and handles everything it touches with a smirk. But it gives into that late ’90s demand for shock value for those who thought Jerry Springer and Pulp Fiction were so smart for exploiting taboo topics, with all the smugness of that smiling Vault Boy mascot. For instance, there are sex workers in most towns whom you can hire for their services, but the game doesn’t delve into that subject any deeper than surface level. A few pop culture references that may have been fun at the time but feel quite dusty today also date the game. Finding references to Monty Python and the Holy Grail in a two-decade-old game, while inoffensive, might be a sign to current creators that those kinds of references might not hit the same way in the future as they do now. 

That said, some of the political commentary in Fallout 2 hits its target and is timeless, smartly handling large-scale conflicts, both cold and hot. It’s telling that groups of people seen as less human or nonhuman, the outcasts and outliers, tend to handle their societies in less destructive ways than the squabbling humans who consistently believe they have all the right answers. For Fallout fans, Fallout 2 reveals some aspects of the world that color the rest of the series. You won’t miss out on anything vital by not playing this game, but it does illuminate some interesting facets of this futuristic world. That makes Fallout 2 worth checking out for hardcore players who have only played Fallout 3 onward. 

Even for the obvious visual limitations of the time, much effort still went into the game’s appearance. Characters and items have a rounded look that tricks the eye into thinking there’s more depth to the two-dimensional sprites than there actually is. The environments are fine, and there are some distinctive areas and structures, but much of the textures are copied and pasted, so many areas look the same. The audio is excellent. Voice acting is only available for a handful of important characters, but it’s impressive for the time. Even the video cutscenes still look great for what they are. The music is atmospheric and mostly unintrusive. The sound team knew to save their best for when they needed to hit you, using a simple yet ominous rising tone that brings goosebumps. Sadly, Fallout 2 is missing the series’s trademark song, “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire” by the Ink Spots. Instead, it includes “A Kiss to Build a Dream On” by Louis Armstrong, which keeps the setting grounded in its Golden Era aesthetic. 

Despite some elements that don’t hold up decades later, Fallout 2 still holds a lot of fun for those willing to push through its frustrations. Fans of later Fallout games, especially those curious about what came before, owe it to themselves to give into that curiosity because Fallout 2 will handsomely reward them—if not in bottle caps, then in some lore that takes the series even higher. It’s remarkable what the Black Isle crew pulled off so long ago in creating a system that allows so much freedom in character creation and decision-making before those elements became standard in CRPGs. Even if they didn’t want to set the world on fire, they still did.

CRPGs were going through a difficult time in 1997. 

Once the darling of PC video game enthusiasts, computer roleplaying games were approaching the status of a dead genre by the mid-90s. The popularity of the Ultima series had fizzled out, and stunning JRPGs like Final Fantasy VII on consoles and first-person blockbusters like Quake on PC were reigning supreme. But thankfully, that state of affairs perfectly set the stage for an unexpected comeback story. 1997’s Fallout was a game that no one saw coming, not even its publisher. Its modest sales success spurred new interest in the genre, leading to a golden age of isometric CPRGs between 1997 and the beginning of the 21st century.

One hundred years after a worldwide nuclear war, you’re a resident of Vault 13, an underground fallout shelter that protected your descendants from the atomic destruction above. But now, its water purification chip has failed after a century of constant wear and tear, leaving only 150 days of drinkable water. Your task is to leave the Vault for the first time in your life to find a replacement for the water chip. On your journey, you will discover the ragtag, savage civilization that has sprung from the ashes of destruction, struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. And in your quest to save your Vault, your choices will impact every corner of this new world, determining who will live, thrive, struggle, and perish.

Fallout was the forerunner in a popular resurgence of CRPGs of the late 90s published by Black Isle Studios, including Bioware’s Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2 and Black Isle’s own Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale. It takes an extraordinary game to repopularize a thought-dead genre, and Fallout certainly fits the bill. If you’ve only ever played the Bethedsa-era entries starting with Fallout 3, you’re going to be in for an adjustment when you step into the California wasteland. While you will find some comforting aspects from the series, such as Vault Suits, the Brotherhood of Steel, and Power Armor, other parts, such as the extended Vault-Tec lore, 50s aesthetic, and iconic sense of humor, are yet in their infancy.

Fallout opens with character creation, leaving fans of future titles feeling reassured that they are playing a Fallout game. First, you select your stats in the SPECIAL system, also picking three skills and two traits that determine the shape of your playthrough. You also get offers of potential perks every few levels to further customize your character and playstyle. If you want to play a happy-go-lucky charmer who talks their way through every confrontation, put your points in Luck and Speech skills. If you want a super-strong bruiser with the IQ of a mole rat, put your points into Strength, the Big Guns skills, and leave your Intelligence as a dump stat. There are so many different ways to play Fallout, and all of them are right! 

Rather than the first-person shooter RPG that it evolved into with Bethesda, Fallout offers an isometric POV that became the standard for most CRPGs of its day. Even though character sprites were highly detailed, the graphics aren’t what anyone would call eye-catching, even by the standards of the mid-90s. Compared to the N64, PSX, or other contemporary PC games, Fallout looked retro at best and dated at worst. Despite this, I found the graphics charming, with imaginative character and monster designs. Environments are a little flat (literally, as the vast majority of buildings are a single level), which, unfortunately, limited the environmental storytelling the series would become known for. But really, if you’re judging the game based on how it looks, you’re missing the point. The graphics here are the kind of thing that you need to accept and move on.

The most important piece of advice I could give to potential Fallout players is to read the brilliantly imaginative manual cover to cover. This Vault Dweller’s Survival Guide will not only clue you into the lore and backstory of post-apocalyptic America but also teach you how to actually play the game because, unlike today’s RPGs, you aren’t going to find anything close to a tutorial. Much like your Vault-Dweller, the game dumps you into an unfriendly world with a gun and says, “Figure it out.” At first, the interface can be cluttered, confusing, and decidedly not user-friendly. I found that learning to navigate the menus effectively was my biggest challenge. Inventory management can be especially infuriating, clunky, and unintuitive. That said, it isn’t like Bethesda entries improved much on this, as Pipboy inventory management is still pretty terrible, even today.

Combat in Fallout is a relatively basic turn-based affair. Every round, you have a limited number of points to spend on attacks, movements, and actions. Firing your gun can take anywhere from four to six points. Aiming at specific body parts (a mechanic that will become known as the VATS system in future games) takes even more points. If you want to maneuver your character around the map, each step will be a single point (and believe me, movement will be important if you want to avoid friendly fire from your companions, as many old Fallout memes celebrate). After your turn, your enemies and companions take their actions while you stand observing the unfolding situation. Repeat until all enemies are dead or you are. 

Of course, you aren’t limited to firing your gun every turn. You can use stimpaks to heal yourself, toss off a grenade, or take some drugs to buff your stats (be careful not to become addicted). This system lacks some of the more interesting combat options of other CRPGs, like magic or character-specific abilities, but the limited selection of combat actions works very well in context. As Fallout is a classic CRPG, your success on and off the battlefield depends on RNG and rolls. The higher your stats in a specific area, the better the odds that you succeed in your actions.

This system lends itself to a remarkable amount of flexibility regarding choices you grapple with in the Wasteland. Your actions and decisions have real consequences on the world. Take too long to find a water chip, and you find everyone in your Vault dead. Don’t stop the Super Mutants soon enough, and they start invading and eliminating settlements like the Ghoul-inhabited Necropolis. Just accept that your first run won’t be perfect and you will miss a ton of content. Seeing everything that the game has to offer is what repeated playthroughs are for! There also isn’t a fully formed karma system here yet, but there are faction reputations and choices that you could categorize anywhere between goodhearted and insanely evil that will shape how the denizens of the Wasteland react to you. 

Though future entries are known for their expansive soundtracks featuring vintage music, Fallout only features a single period-specific song: Maybe by the Ink Spots. Turns out that this iconic tune was all that was necessary to set the mood for the entire game, and arguably, the entire series. The background music tends to be unobtrusive, offering more of an appropriate ambient soundtrack than memorable melodies. Voice acting is limited mainly to primary quest-givers and important NPCs. Thankfully, these character moments are voiced by an incredible cast of legendary voice actors, including Keith David, Tony Joy, Tress MacNeille, and the voice of Fallout himself, Ron Perlman. 

Mind you, I do wish they spent a few members of that incredible voice cast on the companions. In Fallout, companions are barely even sketches of characters with minimal, if any, backstory. They are helpful as meat shields and pack mules and not much else. On top of that, their battle AI is also thicker than the dumbest Super Mutant in the Wasteland. The most famous example is the eagerness of your companion, Ian, to blow you to shreds with a burst from his SMG if you get between him and an enemy. Another issue with companions is the lack of customization. Getting them to upgrade their weapons or armor is an incredible chore requiring you to go through multiple conversation trees. Companions also become increasingly useless as you approach the endgame, as they can be instakilled by a single Super Mutant wielding a minigun or rocket launcher. I recommend leaving them behind before storming the final dungeons, unless you want the karmic payoff of watching machine gun fire tear Ian apart. I sympathize with you if you do.

When I think of modern-day Fallout, I think of modding. Fallout and Fallout 2 lack the robust modding scene of future titles. However, there are still many ways to customize your experience. Fallout Fixt, an unofficial restoration patch, not only fixes 30-year-old game-breaking bugs but also removes controversial censorship included after release, such as the removal of child NPCs. I am not a virtual child killer, but I do think that it should be an option (Now THERE is a line that could be taken out of context). The Fixt patch also offers a range of non-canon mods that can greatly enhance your experience by modifying features, restoring cut content, and rebalancing the overall difficulty. I played without any of these enhancements, as I wanted as “pure” a run-through as possible, but if you’re looking to play Fallout for the first time, I would highly suggest exploring some of these options.

Fallout is many things: a brilliant CRPG at times, a disjointed mess at others, and a foundation of great things to come. But is it any fun to play? Absolutely. I primarily played Fallout because I was curious about where one of my favorite series started, but I walked away with a great appreciation for it as a standalone experience. Yes, there are a lot of gameplay quirks of the time that haven’t aged well, but the core of the game is unbelievably solid. Pushing past the initial struggle with the dated interface and clunky gameplay can be challenging, but it’s well worth the effort. Fallout turned out to be one atom-bomb baby that was exactly like I wanted her to be, a million times hotter than TNT!

Broken Roads take me home 
To the place I belong 
Australia, outback mama 
Take me home Broken Roads 

Unless you want to set the world on fire, the Fallout games don’t have the most melodious vibes. If you’re a fan of the first two entries in that series and Bethesda’s attempts to modernize it have left you feeling stranded, Broken Roads hopes to take you home but with an Aussie flair. Though you can be a straight-up brute in Fallout, Drop Bear Bytes’ new game aims to raise your intelligence stat both in the game and in your head. If you’re not well-versed in classical philosophy, don’t worry, because Broken Roads wants to give you a crash course. 

Broken Roads is a CRPG, and with Fallout being the root of modern CRPGs, this game wears its inspirations on its sleeve without feeling like a direct copy. Instead of wandering through a city or region of the United States, Broken Roads is set in Australia, mate. Regardless of setting, there has to be something that caused the apocalypse in any post-apocalypse. Much like in Fallout, an existential disaster essentially hit the reset button on human society. You come in maybe a hundred years later in Australia, after societies have begun to form anew. Without all that complicated history and technology to maintain the status quo, much has changed, yet it’s stayed the same in many ways.

Broken Roads diverges from its spiritual predecessors in that it wants to get into your head, man. Think Fallout’s karma system visually tracked on a graph. You have plenty of agency in making choices, being a person of significant influence in this world. Tracking those decisions is a literal Moral Compass, which charts your worldview in four modes of thought: utilitarian, humanist, nihilist, and Machiavellian. Many of your responses affect not only how other people think of you but also how your character thinks and reacts. Before playing, you take a personality test to see which school of thought you belong to. A golden arc on your compass marks where your personality is currently sitting, and though your responses can shift the arc, you don’t have much control over it. You’re in your worldview, and breaking out of that is not easy. 

It’s a realistic simulation of thought that pulls you away from your own ideas so you can understand how thought works from a bird’s-eye view. Your worldview often limits your responses to other characters, though sometimes you can sneak in an idea from the periphery of your arc. Every time you pick a dialogue response, it shifts the arc. While you can be hard set on a limited worldview, ideas are slippery things and you can eventually completely shift your mode of thought. That’s basically how thought works. People often have tunnel vision, and their beliefs are circular and self-reinforcing. But then again, there aren’t solid lines demarcating belief systems, so it’s not so weird to become influenced by something else that seems to be aligned. So, here’s where our grand thought exercise begins anyway. 

Broken Roads‘ world is similar to those in other post-apocalyptic media. The Outback is mostly empty, with a few more densely populated areas. When you roam outside of towns on the big abstract map, you might encounter kangaroos, giant spiders, and unfriendly humans, all of whom want to kill you (which doesn’t seem too far removed from reality). There’s also an internal clock; some events are in constant motion where there’s a deadline for the event to happen, such as an election in one town, and some characters are independent and might not always be found in the same spot. The train is moving, so no time to be neutral. In addition to the typical marauding raiders, towns thriving off of slave labor, and soft fascism masquerading as socialism, there are a few locales where the nerdy academics (my kind of people!) have managed to build up societies with likeminded people and somehow secure themselves against the outside forces that would undo them and steal their hard work. These are the places where the best conversations happen and are one of my favorite aspects of Broken Roads. 

Ultimately, this is a narrative about survival, one that shifts from survival of a group to survival of the human race to survival of society. Your part is as a nobody who gets thrown in with a group by circumstance and eventually gets roped into leadership. Some violent events force you into roaming the wilderness searching for answers. Despite Broken Roads promising a level of freedom, your story winds up being more deterministic. That’s not necessarily a bad thing for what the narrative is attempting, but it’s also something not everyone will appreciate. It’s appropriate because the story takes a deterministic view of humanity in that there will always be kind people and tyrants who clash in a reset world, cycling back toward someone deciding to reset everything all over again. The story is eventful, and I enjoyed the twists and turns, but it loses the plot when it tries to get all philosophical. 

The Moral Compass works together with everything else as a sort of social experiment. At times, it’s brilliant; at others, it’s like a bad philosophy professor trying to reverse-engineer his own worldview onto his students who gets upset when they don’t see things his way. Broken Roads mimics life in general in that truly great things for humanity are within sight, yet something always stands in the way of a true breakthrough. Maybe the game wants you to feel that frustration, which is understandable, yet it still ends in frustration, which is not something anyone desires. It takes a high view of humanity, but it also takes a nasty low view which feels like the poop in the punch bowl. It reflects an ugly Reality that, while perhaps not inaccurate, isn’t something one needs to be reminded of constantly. Broken Roads should be pretty polarizing, is what I’m trying to say. 

Onto something else, combat is not bad. At the beginning, it feels too limited. Similar to the old Fallout games, it’s tactical-style, though it’s never too complex. The wrinkle is that movement points and action points are separate. At first, pretty much all you can do in a turn is move once and do an action, such as attacking, once. As you level up, you’ll pick up more action points, meaning you might be able to do a couple things. Is it smarter to go for a single, more powerful ranged attack or several weaker melee attacks? Equipment is simple: Better weapons do more damage. This stuff won’t break anyone’s brain, but it’s enough to engage the mind slightly. The biggest problem is that the enemies don’t evolve at all. Early, they’re mostly too powerful for you to fight, but as you get stronger, you eventually breeze through opponents. You can often flee from fights, and completing quests nets you more experience, so you can focus on or avoid combat depending on your preference. And your companions are formidable enough to pick up any slack if your character is weak in that area. 

But you’re never too weak in any one area if you don’t want to be. There are ample opportunities to completely respec your character, almost at will. While it sounds like it should feel freeing and open and tactically tasty, it was actually too easy to max out the stats I needed for any task at hand. The player character is already a blank slate anyway, but not necessitating creative solutions for problems makes it feel as though there’s nothing of substance to them at all. The companions sort of pick up the slack in the personality department as well, but as much as I wanted to learn more about them, there weren’t many opportunities to do so. There are intriguing aspects to the characters, but I would have been more interested to learn about their complexities over time rather than it all being dumped at the beginning. 

Broken Roads suffers from some anti-quality-of-life features, mainly the journal. While it usually keeps track of all the information you need for the many quests available, it can cause a lot of confusion and potentially waste a lot of time when it falters. In one instance, I couldn’t for the life of me find a certain character in the area where the journal told me they would be. I wandered all over the map trying to find them. Eventually, I reloaded a past save and found I had been told how to find the character, but that information wasn’t recorded in the journal. My fault for not remembering it in the first place, but you’d think vital information wouldn’t be omitted. In another instance, a character was simply in a different location than the journal told me they would be. I wouldn’t have had a problem searching a vague area for the character, but the inconsistency made me unsure if it was a glitch or if I was missing something. 

I did like the look of Broken Roads. Though it’s understated overall, there’s a hand-drawn edge to everything that gives it a well-worn appearance. A few locations are visually striking in ways that drive home their significant place in the world, especially in contrast to the typical drab post-apocalyptic environs of the rest of the world. There’s enough going on visually with the characters to enunciate their personalities. The music is similarly understated but also enjoyable. The light guitar plucking provides a chilled, pensive, and reflective mood that fits with the empty existence of this post-apocalyptic world. Voice acting is sparse, though mostly pretty good, but the narration voiceover seemed unnecessary and trying too hard to oversell the drama. Mouse and keyboard is the way to go for controls, though sometimes the icon denoting a point of interest is off or nonfunctional, which is frustrating at times. 

Overall, the ways Broken Roads challenged me were fascinating and frustrating, sometimes simultaneously. It definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, though I suspect some will adore it. If you’re the reflective type, it’s sure to get the gears turning. If nothing else, it’s much cheaper than taking Philosophy 101 at a university.

Monster Train stands out amongst the crowd of deckbuilders following the outstanding success of Slay the Spire. While imitators abound in this seemingly simple genre to design a game around, Monster Train innovates in a meaningful way not just in terms of combat, but presentation. In a runaway train akin to the movie Snowpiercer, players fight saintly minions in order to maintain their nearly extinct evil empire. Inkbound follows suit not just in terms of gameplay novelty, but once again theming.

I am not entirely sure what Inkbound is about; I don’t think I’ve ever written that statement in a review before, but I am absolutely baffled by what’s going on. In terms of storytelling, Inkbound is vaguely about staving off blight to protect—books? Stories? You play as one of many Needless who are working in an enclave of sorts to delve into a world and fight baddies, surrounded by a naturey aesthetic and bookshelves. Yet, while the story is confusing at best, I adore the world Inkbound is set in, which is, in part, due to the artistic vision beautifully portrayed on the “page” (computer monitor). Although I’m not sure what’s going on, I am happy to be here and explore this world because it’s like no other game world I’ve experienced, with its impressive detail and meandering feeling that instills a sense of wanderlust.

Okay, so the story’s not incredibly well-implemented just yet, but that’s not why we’re here. We’re here to enjoy outstanding gameplay, and Inkbound delivers that soundly. Not only that, but it offers outstanding gameplay we can experience with up to four friends online. At its core, Inkbound plays out as a set of rooms where players fight baddies in isolated, turn-based combat using action points and then access the chosen rewards. Do this a few times, fight a miniboss, do it a few more times, fight one more miniboss, then do it one more time and fight the big boy. The formula, while repetitive, never feels repetitive. In fact, because of the crisp, deep game design in Inkbound, I kept coming back for more.

Battles play out in an arena with just enough room to run around without feeling constricted, but not so vast that players feel like they can cheese the game by moving in one direction away from slower-moving enemies; the size of the battlefields is perfect. Get used to seeing circles everywhere, because at turn start, players see enemy attack circles, arrows, or rectangles to demonstrate what enemies will do. Avoid those geometric hazards and you avoid damage. Healing isn’t entirely common. Players also move within a limited circle based on movement points. At default, players can use four will (action) points to execute one of three to five abilities to attack foes or do some utility nonsense. Moving and attacking as one sees fit breathes freedom into a genre that typically requires players to move entirely first or at the end. In Inkbound, players can move a little bit or a lot, use an action, and then continue moving, or use all of their will points at the start and then move—it’s completely up to you.

If you’re engaged in multiplayer, players can act in tandem before enemies act, which is important for strategy. Depending on the group’s abilities and classes, players may want to weave their actions together every other action, but in some cases one player may want to blow their entire load and then let the other player wrap things up. Have an area-of-effect death move to loosen the jar at the start? Probably more efficient to use that before your single-target, high-damage friend starts picking ne’er-do-wells off. Building a tank? May want to use the last attack on a tough enemy to slap him and draw the ire so your glass cannon ally doesn’t get pounded into the ground. The depth of strategy goes far beyond damage juggling, though. Several status effects can enhance damage, manipulate enemy movement, or synergize with the other player in order to maximize damage output. In this way, Inkbound can make players feel smart without making the game feel like a boring cakewalk.

At present, monster variety’s a bit lacking, though the wealth of trinkets, abilities, and buffs between eight classes of characters add enough customization to make the same enemies feel different with each run, depending on one’s approach to success. Typically, players can choose three fight options before delving into the fray with a couple promised rewards. Choosing an easier route leads to less attractive bounty, but a harder route might not offer the kinds of treasure one is seeking. For example, a hard route may offer rare trinkets, but if trinket slots are full, a player may want to seek passive buffs for their attack abilities on the easier route, even if these are less rare.

Speaking of trinkets, players can grind those trinkets to dust to retain the icons on those elements and make room for new trinkets. While these trinkets, called Vestiges in-game, can offer powerful abilities to enhance a player’s strategy, the icons on the trinket offer unique benefits if players accrue enough of them, and there’s a bevy of them. This allows for tough tactical decisions not seen in most games that only offer a higher number here or lower number there for a bigger benefit somewhere else. Inkbound also has those options, but enough variety exists elsewhere to make this more than a numbers game. For example, if players can meet a condition on their turn like taking no damage, they can enhance a future turn by giving each ability a guaranteed critical hit.

What keeps Inkbound fresh between runs (since the story isn’t quite there yet) is the sense of progression. Meet some unique NPCs, satisfy a quest condition, and stack up enough wins, and players can unlock new Vestiges, in-game achievements, cosmetics, and characters to play as. For the roguelike snobs out there, don’t worry. This isn’t the kind of game that offers stat upgrades over time in order to beat the game. Players make the game harder with each win (like a classic ascension system seen in many deckbuilders and roguelikes) while only offering new tools along the way that aren’t objectively better than other tools. In this way, player strategy wins the day, not toiling away across dozens of hours of runs just to get higher numbers. Once again, this makes Inkbound a satisfying romp that rewards players for skillful play rather than grinding.

Inkbound isn’t singularly wonderful, though. As suggested earlier, some may find the game repetitive with some areas, such as enemy types, lacking variety. Also, Inkbound is a tad inaccessible at the start, with icons all over the screen, numbers and modifiers that aren’t always clearly explained, and a flow taught through experience rather than exposition. For those who prefer clarity rather than getting messy to learn, this is going to be a touch stressful, but Inkbound’s teaching style works. Over time, I have learned more and more how the systems work, but I wish everything were more explicitly stated; this is a game that could benefit tremendously from an in-game encyclopedia.

While I’ve already lauded Inkbound for its artistry, the music is no slouch, either. Every tune accentuates the action humbly, with final boss encounters stealing the show. Meeting the big baddie is exhilarating enough after a tough climb, but to be met with these weighty battle themes just makes the experience grander. Not all of the dialogue is voice-acted, which can feel odd at times when an NPC is all text and silence. Even then, the voice acting is fine, not stellar. Inkbound controls just fine with mouse and keyboard, though some may stress a bit over finding that “magic pixel” to maximize damage output and minimize input.

Shiny Shoe, the developers, have done it again with innovative game design and atmosphere. While Inkbound is by no means a perfect game, it’s certainly addictive and rewarding. What’s more, it plays phenomenally in solo or multiplayer. I applaud the devs for their unique ability to create an authentic experience unlike what others—AAA or indie—are capable of doing. Hat’s off to you folks, and thank you for pushing entertainment forward with your awesome ideas and execution. Your work will undoubtedly be written into gaming lore to inspire others.

Uncovering secrets can have a lasting impact, which is definitely the case for Secrets of Grindea, an old-school action RPG that provides an enjoyable experience if given the chance. That is, so long as you’re patient and remember that the game’s title holds a clue about what to expect on your journey. It should come as no surprise that Secrets of Grindea sometimes requires level grinding to surpass its numerous challenges. Still, it’s worth it once you’re triumphant in some of the game’s particularly challenging boss fights.

I spent most of my time for this review in Secrets of Grindea‘s story mode (there is also a separate arcade mode that is a roguelite version of the game), which begins with your customizable protagonist preparing to undertake a journey following in the footsteps of their accomplished parents by becoming a Collector. Collectors are capable adventurers who travel the continent searching for essential artifacts and special magical items known as cards. Still, you have to prove yourself first before joining their illustrious ranks. To help you on your quest, your dad lends you a family heirloom of great import: a sentient talking artifact known as Bag, who isn’t thrilled to be saddled with a wide-eyed kid as a sidekick but reluctantly makes do. You and Bag’s travels soon take you to different locations, including back-and-forth through time and even traversing the ghostly realm, as you uncover other talking relics of the past and a shocking conspiracy that could cause calamity to befall the world. Fortunately, the land has a Collector like you to step in and defend it.

To say more on the individual story beats for Secrets of Grindea would be a disservice, given the amount of care and attention to detail that went into crafting them. There are some unexpected twists and turns in the plot, with an impressive buildup as the game’s deceptively innocent and wholesome beginning presentation gradually takes on darker edges. Plus, the game’s script has an incredible knack for being tongue-in-cheek, managing to poke fun at tropes and archetypes in old-school RPGs while still embracing and celebrating them.

Many characters populating Secrets of Grindea’s world are well developed and memorable. My favorites include your doting researcher father, simpleminded but lovable Collector friend Luke, the taciturnly blunt guild leader Ivy, and the spoiled but begrudgingly decent rival Marino. Special mention goes to Bag, who could quickly have become an annoying helper given how frequently he shows up in the plot with his gruff mannerisms. His reactions, overall character growth, and later revelations make him memorable instead.

As the title and the game’s old-school feel might imply, grinding is the way to proceed in Secrets of Grindea. You regularly reach points where you want to level up more or gather extra materials for crafting more vital gear. Boss fights are plentiful and provide real challenges. I often had to repeat a battle at least once, often more than that, to develop a viable strategy to overcome it. Most bosses, save for the occasional repeats or variations, offer distinct challenges. If you enter a new area and notice yourself struggling against regular enemy swarms, then it’s time to look at your character stats and abilities and level up or do some of the game’s numerous side quests to earn experience, talent points, or new gear/materials. This process repeats itself at regular intervals.

Fortunately, some gameplay components help alleviate stress during challenging encounters. For instance, you can customize your character’s statistics and abilities. You earn skill points as you progress, which you use to gain and strengthen various abilities ranging from physical attacks to magical ones or even buffing/debuffing skills. Passive abilities, or talents, provide a much-needed offensive or defensive edge in combat. There are a multitude of ways for you to design your character build since so many skill options are available. You can also respec skills and talents to develop different strategies should you have the money for it, which I found helpful in the game’s later stages. My initial character build relied more on brute-forcing through fights with one-handed weapon attacks. Still, for survival reasons, I leaned toward a more defensive/magic-oriented playstyle during the final round of battles. Barrier and Fortify, in particular, are lifesavers! It is also essential to take the time to complete the potion-acquiring sidequests so you can strengthen all potion-related talents.

After learning an ability, you can feed more points into it to strengthen its effects. You can also assign a controller button to activate it during combat. The control schematic is easy to grasp, and you can fluidly flip through different commands, allowing for seamless action RPG combat. You can also raise stats using specific equipment to bolster your character, such as the vital “Crabby” gear that considerably raises defense.

Defeated enemies might drop cards, unique stat-raising items that grant constant benefits during combat, such as increasing the likelihood of dodging or increasing attack speed. Creating a significant collection of cards through grinding and farming can make a real difference if you are initially unable to overcome a boss fight. Once a card is added to your arsenal, its special trait will automatically come into play and serve as a permanent bonus for your character.

Of course, combat isn’t your only challenge in Secrets of Grindea. Sometimes, you need to get through exciting and tricky puzzles. The most unique of these is the teleport puzzles that require you to navigate chasms while avoiding mirrors that redirect you. One of the more frustrating puzzles is where you must traverse a cave filled with health-depleting poison gas. Puzzles are varied and range in challenge, but they keep you on your toes just as much as the boss fights.

Aside from challenging puzzles and boss battles, there are plenty of secrets to uncover in Secrets of Grindea beyond the main quest. I’m honestly impressed by the game’s amount of side content, as you can not only engage in helpful fetch, fight, and puzzle sidequests to help level grind, but you can also craft gear, design your own house, gain some adorable and sometimes surprisingly helpful pet companions, and even play minigames such as the obligatory fishing game. There’s a lot to do should you need a break from dungeons and boss battles.

As impressive as Secrets of Grindea is in terms of scope, content, and overall challenge level, that isn’t to say there aren’t frustrations. Overall, the game is exceedingly difficult if you aren’t willing to take the time to grind or occasionally experiment with different builds and playstyles. I never found it impossible, but particular boss fights toward the end of the game can be frustrating, requiring no small amount of patience to overcome. I repeated one final battle for several hours before figuring out the timing to an enemy’s frustrating and powerful energy attack, and planning how to respond to that helped change the outcome of that fight for the better. This is especially true of later boss fights when you have multiple fights in a row and a defeat brings you back to the start, regardless of how far you made it. There are also some noticeable bullet hell influences in some boss fights that can border on aggravating if you aren’t expecting them.

The game is playable either solo or with up to four players, though some endgame fights are much more stressful if you don’t have a companion or two to assist, as playing solo means you don’t even have AI assist companions. Secrets of Grindea is fun either playing by yourself or with others, but you might have to change your approach and strategy a little depending on if you’re playing on your own or in multiplayer. The game is verified on Steam Deck and plays exceptionally well on the platform, but its initial loading time is so long that I thought the game froze at first.

Visually, Secrets of Grindea‘s pixel sprite work and animation are stunning. I love the level of detail in the characters and backgrounds, and the vibrant color palette is a sight to behold. Every character beyond your player-controlled avatar also has a detailed, cartoon-like character portrait. I love the charming retro-styled boss battle introductions that set the stage for those memorable fights. The music and sound effects are incredible, with some especially moving and dynamic tracks that help the game’s story and frenetic action sequences come to life. The script work for the English version is top notch, with few to no grammatical errors.

Secrets of Grindea is a passion project developed over thirteen years. It’s evident that a lot of care and thought went into the game, and the finished product is fine tuned and polished. Overall, I remain impressed with the title and feel no small accomplishment for overcoming its numerous challenges. Old school-styled action RPGs might not be for everyone, given their sometimes steep difficulty and the necessary patience to level grind. Still, Secrets of Grindea is a love letter to the genre that makes for a thoroughly engaging experience if you’re the right audience. It’s one secret worth telling.

One of the best things about indie RPGs is that they often revisit genre classic formulas with a new lens. The best indie homages update the core mechanics for modern sensibilities or place familiar mechanics in new and unique worlds with endearing characters, free from the restrictions of massive publishers who are overprotective and less experimental with their IP. Examples of this approach working well are 24 Killers, Bug Fables, and Chained Echoes, all great games that take heavy inspiration from classic RPGs while putting their spin on the concept. However, this is a fine line to walk, and it’s just as likely to result in a lackluster facsimile of your inspiration. Unfortunately, such is the case for Another Crusade, the debut title from independent developer Dragon Vein Studios. In seeking to create a modern take on Super Mario RPG, Another Crusade delivers a mostly decent replica of the gameplay mechanics yet fails to capture the spark and personality that made it so special. 

Another Crusade begins rather abruptly, with protagonist Rai Reysend sitting by himself on a hilltop at night. Suddenly, a shower of brightly colored meteors rain down from the sky, with a bright red one landing at his feet. All across the world, large domes of brightly colored light have imprisoned the various towns and villages, and monsters are attacking in droves. Rai sets out to discover what’s causing the calamity and protect his home from the monster attacks. It’s a very cliche setup, and although the game does delve into the mystery behind this occurrence in the journey’s later hours, most of the game feels like a contrived hunt for magical McGuffins without much motivation. 

As he frees the various towns and villages across the land from their magical imprisonment, Rai meets up with various companions who join the party. They mostly fit into the typical RPG stereotypes, like Niro the mage and Varenna the alchemist, though the final two party members (a Castlevania-inspired demon hunter named Vincent and the Dragon King Zhion) are more interesting both in concept and due to their relationship to Rai and his organization, the Light Order. Unlike Super Mario RPG, the companions lack personality. Rai is a silent protagonist and has limited interaction with the other party members, and conversations between the cast are sparse, giving them little time to develop as characters.

To the game’s detriment, the most talkative party member is Niro, who is frequently employed in ham-handed attempts at comic relief. He has a habit of engaging in fourth-wall-breaking humor that falls flat. Most of the jokes poke fun at standard RPG cliches, but it’s hard to find the humor in them when the game does very little to immerse you in its world or endear you to the characters beforehand. I’m fine with humor in games, but because the premise is so bog-standard and the game’s tone barely takes itself seriously, most of the time I was left wondering why I should care about what was happening in the narrative.

Thankfully, Another Crusade does have quite a few positives in its favor. The low-poly, wooden puppet aesthetic of the characters and enemies is distinct and charming, and the animations feel appropriately jerky and stilted, as if being manipulated on invisible strings. These labored animations also make it easier to understand the timing for the action commands in combat, which are executed nearly flawlessly. The action commands adhere closely to the template set by Super Mario RPG, with a button press at the right time during the attack dealing increased damage and a perfectly timed block avoiding damage from enemies. Damage from enemies is high if you fail to block, and special skills require precise inputs and timing to pull off successfully. Each character has a wide variety of support and offensive skills, all with unique action commands that may require rotating the stick, mashing a button quickly, or inputting a series of button prompts within a short window. Overall it’s a satisfying evolution of the combat system introduced in Super Mario RPG, just tuned to be significantly more challenging to heighten the sense of risk and reward in battles. 

One significant alteration Another Crusade makes to the formula is the SP system. Each character has a certain number of SP gems, and activating skills will drain these gems, while physical attacks against enemies will slowly refill them. The additional layer of resource management is a good idea on paper, but magic users have such weak physical attacks that it’s more advantageous to spend a turn fully restoring their SP with an item rather than attacking repeatedly. Since using an item carries no chance of failure, this method bypasses the risk/reward of the action commands and causes the SP system to feel slightly sloppy.

On the other hand, Another Crusade carries over the isometric platforming from Super Mario RPG to a frustrating effect. Jumping feels stiff, and the dungeons include long platforming gauntlets where you need to jump across many excruciatingly small platforms in quick succession with no checkpoints far too often. It made sense to have platforming sections in Super Mario RPG since that game was an RPG adaptation of a platformer series, but they make little sense in the world of Another Crusade and only serve to aggravate the player and pad the game’s length. The dungeon design can be a tad too labyrinthine at times, but I appreciated some of the dungeon puzzle designs that broke up the monotony of repeated enemy encounters quite nicely. 

The character progression mechanics are satisfying, as you can assign bonus points to a range of stats upon level-up, tailoring the characters to specific roles. Another Crusade rewards thorough exploration by chests filled with powerful loot, as well as hidden crystals that permanently increase characters’ stats. One nice touch is that weapons appear on the character model, and each weapon has unique animations and timings for its action commands, ensuring that executing basic attacks stays varied throughout the game and new weapons feel valuable every time you find one. 

I came away from Another Crusade with the impression that the developers fundamentally misunderstood what makes Super Mario RPG such an enjoyable game. The action commands and platforming sections arose out of a desire to convey the feeling of playing Mario within the genre conventions of an RPG, and the story and characters are a clever subversion of the familiar Mushroom Kingdom. Creating a battle system that required precise timing was so revolutionary because it felt like playing a Mario game, and fighting alongside Bowser in your party was so mind-blowing because it was something Nintendo would never have done on their own.

When divorced from that context, the mechanics of Super Mario RPG just aren’t engaging enough on their own to carry an entire game. If Another Crusade had the creative worldbuilding and lovable characters of a game like Bug Fables, it could get away with copying familiar gameplay mechanics. Unfortunately, Another Crusade‘s world is bland and the characters don’t have enough time to shine amidst all the hackneyed attempts at humor that undercut any opportunity for narrative intrigue or personal pathos. There is a solid foundation here to build a truly great RPG, but Another Crusade fails to realize that potential.

As a child of the 1980s, I spent my youth watching The Smurfs, Snorks, Fraggle Rock, and other assorted programs featuring communities of fantasy beings in imaginative worlds. By that line of thinking, my childhood self would have liked Yordles — a race of adorable, vividly colored, magical beings from the League of Legends universe. Yordles live in Bandle City, an enchanted realm consisting of several floating islands connected by teleportation portals. With my inner child’s curiosity piqued, I decided to check out the Yordle-centered crafting RPG Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story. Familiarity with League of Legends is not needed to play Bandle Tale, but those in the know will enjoy plenty of references.  

Bandle Tale‘s pixel art visuals look stunning in still screens and in motion. The delightful Yordles and their vibrant world feature lush, vivid colors and tons of smooth animations. There aren’t many locations, but each one is unique-looking and packed full of details. Bandle Tale‘s setting encourages you to stop, smell the roses, and allow each location’s vibe to envelop you. The graphics are easily Bandle Tale‘s crowning feature.

The whimsical yet complex music is good but doesn’t quite match Bandle Tale’s visual splendor. While the compositions are reasonably engaging to listen to without getting too repetitive, there aren’t enough of them. I would have liked a distinct title screen theme and greater number of unique location themes, to give a couple of examples. More compositions would have added variety to the soundtrack.

Bandle Tale puts you in the role of a curious Yordle (whose appearance you customize) that just finished a century-long knitting apprenticeship in Yarnville, one of Bandle City’s outer islands. You want to celebrate by attending a massive party happening in Bandle City’s hub, but your stodgy mentor Gramps forbids it. Not to worry, because your clever friend Clover sneaks the two of you out of Yarnville and into the party. Once at the party, you help the host, Ozzy, with some last-minute preparations for the party’s grand finale. Unfortunately, it goes awry and a massive explosion destabilizes and obliterates the transport portals, leaving many Yordles high and dry. To make things worse, the unstable portal claims Ozzy and Clover. The quest to restore the portals and save your friends through the power of knitting is afoot.

Despite the dire situation, Bandle Tale lacks any sense of urgency to drive it. The world is in chaos and your friends are missing, yet the overall vibe is laid-back. Perhaps too laid-back. That mismatch between a desperate save-the-world plot and the overly relaxed slice-of-life storytelling jarred me. There were some cute, if shallow, plotlines, but those felt more like disjointed vignettes than a fully cohesive story. Brief storytelling snippets only occur between lengthy periods of play, so those expecting a compelling narrative could be disappointed. 

Bandle Tale features no combat, as the game’s premise is that a fractured world is stitched together by a newly anointed knitter. The focus is on crafting, so the gameplay revolves around gathering raw materials, refining them, and transforming them into objects and resources to cultivate land, rebuild communities, and reconnect the world through various crafting quests. It’s helpful to adopt a point-and-click mindset rather than an RPG one for Bandle Tale.

Yordles’ emotional bonds with others fuel the magic used to connect the islands of Bandle City, so a large part of physically connecting the world is bringing communities together via pop-up food stands, parties, and other events. Yordles love to party, so Bandle Tale’s goal is to throw the most epic party in all of Yordle history to generate enough positive emotional energy to fully restore the broken portal system.  

Bandle Tale plays best in small doses rather than marathon sessions since its gameplay gets repetitive, and progression often drags over its lengthy 40+ hour course. When elements fell into place and I got into a good rhythm, Bandle Tale was decently fun. Unfortunately, those moments were few and far between. Doing various tasks or unlocking the prerequisite skills to do so often took longer than necessary. I sometimes invested points into skills I thought were cool but were not needed to progress, so I frequently got stuck. I knew what I needed to do to get unstuck, but unlocking the “right” skills and earning skill points to allocate were tedious grinds. It didn’t help that additional gameplay systems stacked on top of each other throughout the game, making otherwise straightforward crafting tasks needlessly convoluted. That said, diligent players willing to invest time into learning the systems well enough to exploit them can find workarounds.

I played using a gamepad, and the control scheme worked fine for me. I needed to learn the interface and get used to the controls, but once I got my sea legs, I fell into a decent groove. Ironically, I found the mouse and keyboard controls more awkward than gamepad controls when, upon first glance, Bandle Tale seems like it would function better with a mouse and keyboard scheme. Unfortunately, there is no way to change the button mapping.

The menu interface could use some refinement as well. For example, equipment, items, and raw materials all exist in the same inventory. Separate categories would have kept the inventory more organized. A quick way to switch between the various multi-tools you can equip for material gathering would have been nice too. While I’m at it, multi-tools that don’t break would have been great because breaking a multi-tool while gathering materials and then having to make a new one is not fun.    

Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story has lovely visuals and some solid ideas, but felt like an overlong rough draft in need of editing before going to print. I needed to call upon all my patience and perseverance to get through Bandle Tale. There were even times when I had to step away from the game for a night or two and return to it with a fresh mind. Spurts of fun were flanked by lengthy stretches that dragged, making playtime feel artificially padded. If Bandle Tale were shorter and more tightly focused, it would have been a more pleasurable experience with fewer lulls and more cohesive storytelling. Bandle Tale may not be perfect, but Bandle City and the Yordles are a wellspring of good multimedia material, so I hope to see more Yordle-centered League of Legends material in the future.

Over the last five years, turn-based RPG fans have been blessed with a range of options on PC. The recent commercial and critical success of Baldur’s Gate 3 has shifted the genre back to the mainstream, with many gamers keen to explore similar offerings. Tiny Trinket Games developed their single-player entry, Zoria: Age of Shattering (Zoria), over the last seven years, with the small team recently moving to full-time work to complete their opus project. While it does not reinvent the genre and stumbles on style and presentation, Zoria is a bright and breezy tactical RPG offering a generous helping of character options, oodles of colorful loot, and an added flavor of survival and base-building mechanics.

The game begins with the customized creation of the player avatar, Captain Witherel, before selecting a class from nine available options. Class choices are rooted in genre staples, including the slow-moving Sentinels, who can absorb immense damage, or Rangers, who can operate more effectively at range, lay traps, and pin down opponents. Each class has a varied ability tree to upgrade as they gain experience and level up. In a more unique twist, they also have abilities that interact with the map during exploration.

From here, the story opens with an illustrated montage: The nation of Iziria seeks to violently occupy the kingdom of Elion and is close to victory. The Izirian use of forbidden Death and Necromancy magic seems to give them an edge, and it becomes the Captain’s mission to hold the Elion line and turn back this tide. The story is nothing spectacular, but it does tell a narrative that goes deeper than geopolitical conflict, and the cosmic revelations towards the latter end offer a different spin on the rural, high-fantasy world it begins in.

To complete this mission, the Captain and up to four followers (who can be recruited throughout the story) explore area maps in real-time, journeying to sites of interest and undertaking main and side quests. Some areas of the map are only accessible to specific classes, so this adds a gentle persuasion to expand your team and try alternative party formations. The followers do have some personality, but it is limited.

Zoria is a brightly defined world at the standard zoom level, but it’s not unique compared to other rural, high-fantasy settings. It contains several biomes: grasslands, ancient keeps, crystal caves and suchlike. Even with incidental details and scenery, they are not inspired nor do they display eye-catching style in the same way as The Iron Oath or Ruined King: A League of Legends Story. Characters and creatures are also painted in lush, primary colors, although their design does not push the boundaries of the genre either: wolves, bandits, and golems are the expected sort of enemy fodder.

Combat smoothly switches to turn-based using a gridless map and two-action economy system. Battles are quick and don’t bother with specific victory conditions or annoying escort or timed missions — it’s all purely a fight to the death. At this point, class abilities are used frequently, as well as characters’ underlying statistics, such as strength or magical attack. Abilities are not flashy or cinematic, and graphical effects are pretty low-key. Magic abilities require mana, while others require Focus gained by using basic attacks and fighting continuous battles. The more the party engages in combat, the more fatigued it becomes, which reduces character stats significantly. Resting at camp reduces fatigue, assuming the party has enough supplies. This means regularly rotating your formation is a key strategy in this aspect too, and even more important considering how valuable supplies become in the other core systems of the game.

There is a unique kink to this approach. As combat initiates from a real-time map with enemies freely moving around, it is simple to lure a single mob member to a quiet corner of the map and pulverize them. Rinse. Repeat. I realized that I could lure over individual enemies for most of the combats in the game, aside from a few set-piece battles if I so desired. But this soon becomes a more thoughtful choice between lots of small, fatigue-draining combats or larger combats luring in more foes. In these battles, where I was trying to save on having to rest too often in order to use supplies and consumables elsewhere, the full range of character abilities came into play and the game felt most tactical.

Looting, upgrading, and crafting items is another central system in Zoria. A massive array of options should appeal to those who love working a good stat boost. In some ways, it’s almost too much. The amount of loot lying around the very first map area and available after the very first combat is significant, and it never stops. Everyone drops loot. Everything. Most barrels have something useful lurking within. Crystal formations stand silently, waiting to be harvested. Mushrooms await. Coupling the sheer amount of loot and craftable items with the fact that every weapon or armor piece is uniquely named, statted, and rarity-coded, this approach becomes genuinely dizzying. There’s undeniable fun in knowing that every combat drops something that might be useful, and this design choice only adds to the larger-than-life approach the game takes. But still, if you’re not into the fastidious organization of many item types and the accompanying storage faff, this may not be your bag.

The options don’t end there. In short order, the Captain gains access to a fort that offers free resting, a place to craft items, and different buildings to upgrade. These are standard fantasy tropes: an inn that unlocks cooking recipes or an alchemy lab that unlocks more advanced and powerful consumable mixtures. There’s even a missions board that followers not currently in the party participate in to gain experience and acquire rare resources. Building upgrades require a team of specific classes to research in real time, reinforcing the need to gain and use a range of followers. The whole raft of improvements links cleverly with the survival systems. Upgrades and missions require supplies and money, which puts a further choice on how much you portion these precious basic resources.

This push and pull of timed systems and portioning of supplies and money offers Zoria’s most strategic aspect. I need supplies to complete follower missions and to build my fort, but I also need them to heal and rest when I’m out exploring. Or I need my Focus to be high and want to make use of my timed stat buffs when I’m out in the field, but the longer I spend wandering around, the more I lose these benefits in combat. It can get even more compelling: maybe there’s a nearby Shrine to buff my stamina — do I take the risk of using it now to complete a quest using a semi-battered party, or do I leave it and rest, losing all my stored Focus and buffs? Heck, do I even have the right follower to activate the Shrine? Do I head back to the fort to think again?

This risk/reward dynamic adds originality to the game that isn’t found much elsewhere in the genre, and it’s a design that offers a level of choice in how players address the game and what balance of priorities they want to give to their fort, item crafting, and their combat readiness. It’s perfectly viable to focus on keeping your core party rested and not focus on your fortress or crafting. Equally, you could pour everything into having the widest range of followers leveled up and equipped and avoid having to rest too often by using them more frequently. It also makes onboarding for those newer to the genre very welcoming; you can’t really go too wrong on the easiest difficulty playing the game your way.

Some issues hold Zoria back. Combat selection can be fiddly, both through the hotbar and enemy selection in combat. This is compounded by a smallish default text size with no way to resize it. There are other odd choices too, such as how you can highlight interactive containers and switches but not enemies, some of whom can be difficult to see in the darker maps. Inventory management could also be improved — while there’s a handy tab for each character to show equippable items, the selection does not default to this, and considering how much loot there is, this is a lot of extra clicks.

These quirks also extend to the general presentation: past chapter summaries in the game journal disappeared for me, and unsolvable quests remained in my ‘incomplete’ log. There are occasional typos and awkward sentences in the dialogue, and the fact that this is only partially voiced (sometimes stopping midway through a character’s single spoken response) makes the effort feel abrupt. The narrator voice offers the most consistent approach, but even this has sections that are left silent. Music is also largely bombastic and pretty uninspiring; you can pretty much guess the scoring for the gloomy caves, misty swamplands, and besieged fort. It all served to take me out of the game world after dozens of hours rather than absorb me in it.

There are other odd logic presentations to consider: friendly NPCs exist in the world, but if you initiate combat in their proximity they will remain oblivious. This includes your military. The party can be running from a horde of chasing enemies and still access a merchant along the way for as long as is needed. And these dudes never stop chasing. Any lured enemy stays with you for as long as you want to click. Again, it took me out of the world and offered a reminder that the nicely crafted scenarios and interactivity with the story would only go so far. I get that Zoria is not aiming to be a fully interactive RPG, and that combat takes precedence, but logic like this just seems off.

Overall, Zoria: Age of Shattering is an engaging tactical RPG with a few drawbacks involving its presentation and graphics. It offers a wide range of player choice and class synergies, and the survival mechanics add to this. I had to genuinely think hard about prioritizing party survival, creating new weapons/armor, or upgrading my fort. Tiny Trinket Games is a small indie team working in a complex genre, and I hope to see them accomplish more in the same vein; their passion is palpable. Zoria won’t shatter your expectations, but it will meet them if you relish the clever interplay of turn-based combat, survival, and crafting systems.

In ancient times, a myriad of gods visited the mortal realm, bestowing their blessings upon devoted humans. Humanity forgot about the gods and their gifts, resulting in the disenchantment of many of the gods who left the mortal world behind for good. Only a few gods remain, with varying views on humanity and the current state of the world. In the Japanese indie otome visual novel Yukar From The Abyss, a strange turn of events leads to a young woman encountering some godly remnants. Will her encounters with these deities ultimately bestow blessings or curses?

Yukar From The Abyss stars Kurumi Oki, a woman moving from Tokyo to her grandmother’s rural Japanese home after losing her job in a toxic work environment. While trying to make the best of things, she falls asleep on the train ride back after catching up with an old friend at a bar, missing her stop. The last train station drops her in unfamiliar territory, and as Kurumi tries to make her way to a shelter, she encounters strange lights. Following the lights, she experiences supernatural occurrences of a godly nature, careening her down the path of four particular deities. How is Kurumi connected to this immortal realm, and can she survive her encounters there?

Based on Ainu mythology, Yukar From The Abyss is a straightforward visual novel experience. Those familiar with the genre and otome titles, in particular, will know what to expect regarding gameplay. You can skip through script text you’ve seen from previous playthroughs, which is a boon since the game lacks a story map. Fortunately, there are only four routes to get through, with three permutations to the endings depending on the player’s choices during the game. Each route is relatively short, at around four hours long, so the lack of a story map isn’t as detrimental as it could be.

Yukar From The Abyss is a concise VN that you can get through quickly, but it’s noteworthy that the quality and pacing of each route don’t feel lacking or rushed. The four main love interests all have fleshed-out stories to experience. The character development is phenomenal, especially if you get the excellent End 1 outcome for all four characters in which Kurumi and her chosen love interest stand on equal footing in a true partnership. These endings show Kurumi taking on more agency and even gaining a large percentage of power herself supernaturally and through choice. As stated earlier, the story is influenced by Ainu mythology, which makes for a unique storytelling experience. I wasn’t as familiar with Ainu mythology as I thought and greatly enjoyed exploring this fascinating and unique culture’s belief systems through this VN. Some of the routes, notably Kyril’s, delve deeper into Japanese history, too, and I appreciate those insights.

I even like the character routes that are antagonistic in the beginning, such as Moshirechik’s, who gradually develops from a haughty and self-centered character who struggles with controlling his emotions to someone with an understandably upsetting backstory who acknowledges his faults and tries to overcome them. This changing of opinions on characters stems from how believably they evolve and progress in surprisingly positive ways should you see their stories through, which isn’t something I can often say for those types of characters in other otome titles. Some side characters, notably the loyal Koshimpuk and the cheerfully helpful Upa, are also significantly fleshed out and likable throughout the differing routes. Kurumi herself is a great main character as well, with a lot of depth depending on the route.

Visually, Yukar From The Abyss brings to mind stark scenery with many of its natural background vistas. The backgrounds are detailed and gorgeous, and the character art is beautiful and expressive for those characters who have it. I love the minute detail and intricate touches on the clothing for the characters based around the Ainu culture, and when the art showcases elements of nature in a character’s designs: for example, Pewrep’s bear ears or when Huaisu reveals some of his more birdlike qualities. It’s so good that I’m somewhat disappointed that certain minor characters get relegated to black silhouettes. The CG illustrations players earn depending on their actions are also gorgeous. Supernatural elements are presented visually in an almost painted fashion that compliments the mythological undertones of the plot, though there is an almost photographic realism to the backgrounds in particular. Special effects for fight scenes, such as an icicle wrapped in wind or bursts of flame against the screen, happen frequently. While they aren’t bad, they sometimes take you out of the story since they look more artificial than the drawn art and photograph-like images used for backgrounds. Overall, though, this is a very nice-looking VN!

Yukar From The Abyss’ soundscape is also lovely, with a musical score that perfectly fits the atmosphere and story. The instrumentation used for the songs emphasizes traditional sounds and effects, which fits with the story’s mythological themes. The main theme is particularly noteworthy in that regard. The only voice acting is for the four love interests, and their Japanese voice work is top-notch. You can hear the voice work in the game’s Switch trailer. The music in specific routes could sometimes drown out the voice acting depending on what was happening in a scene, but it wasn’t a significant issue. Because the voice acting is so good for the four love interests, I would’ve loved it if other prominent characters had voices, too!

There aren’t a ton of extras found in Yukar From The Abyss. You have the customary CG gallery for any illustrations you uncover during gameplay and a helpful dictionary that updates with new terms and information whenever necessary. The dictionary is especially great for those who want to learn about Ainu myths and culture. There are also character route scenarios where you can view the start of specific character routes and any of the three endings for a character uncovered. Getting an End 1 finale for a character unlocks an “After Story” segment in their scenario, which serves as a nice epilogue. Script-wise, the translation is well done, with only a few grammatical inconsistencies.

Yukar From The Abyss is a short, nicely scripted otome VN experience for either PC or Nintendo Switch. I enjoyed playing the game and especially love the story and character development that occur in pursuit of the “good” endings. Those who don’t mind romance intermixed with godly tales may want to give Yukar From The Abyss more than a glance.

Sometimes after a long, hard week at work or home, all we want to do is kick back and relax with a quick game session: maybe a few runs on Slay the Spire or a few rounds on Persona grinding for that next creature fusion. Other times, the idea of a meaty, involved RPG narrative is just what’s needed. Those times where we’ve ordered the pizza in, got a drink (or two) to hand and turned the lights down low. The Thaumaturge, developed by Fool’s Theory, is of the latter variety, and takes itself pretty seriously in its aims. This commitment to exploring a dark, personal story of identity is mostly successful, taking place in a richly detailed world that intersects with key events of an alternative European history.

The Thaumaturge is set in early twentieth-century Poland, and follows Wiktor Szulski, a thaumaturge who makes his way back to the Russian-occupied city of Warsaw after learning of a family tragedy. As a thaumaturge, he is able to read emotional imprints on objects and explore the psyches and mental flaws of people he interacts with. He is also able to recognize and bind “salutors,” metaphysical creatures of different types which attach themselves to individuals with such flaws. His own salutor, Upyr, is the prideful spirit of an old soldier he encountered when he was a child and who acts as a muse to him throughout the game. As he explores his family’s past and the factions that make up the city, Wiktor is drawn into myriad plots involving the future of Warsaw. Soon he is entangled in mysteries involving a Warsaw-bound pilgrim, Rasputin, the socialist rebels of the city, and the Russian Tsar.

The Thaumaturge‘s story is uncompromising, doubling down on historical perspectives of personal liberty and self-determination against a background of foreign partition and class tension. It is worth noting that the historic inequalities of the era, and how these are replicated in character representation, are used throughout the narrative. The game does not shy away from this. The supernatural element of the story is quite subtle, woven into this tapestry as an additional veneer to the plots taking place. None of the main characters, including Wiktor, are traditionally heroic or altruistic, but they all commit to their ideals and desires with bluster. It is a brave decision to drop the player into such a paranoid and, at times, hopeless setting, but it does add weight to the decisions that open up. Just be prepared to accept a bleak and brittle narrative where there are very few winners and many losers.

As the story develops, the player is introduced to a narrative design system whereby Wiktor draws conclusions from observations he makes as he interacts with the world. Using his powers, he can draw out memories and histories from objects that offer new story or character insights. Not all details are available at once, and some only become clear once the links to his salutors develop. This then allows for different conversational options and alters how characters perceive and react to Wiktor in dialogue choices. It is not a full investigative minigame, but it does serve as an ambitious, thematic way to pick up breadcrumbs of the story.

The system is not always smooth, and certain dialogue starts or actions feel abrupt or are full of non-sequiturs, depending on the order of clues gathered. And be prepared for a lot of reading — the sheer number of observations quickly fills up through the mid-game. Merely passing through a map zone on the way to a quest marker can result in a half-dozen observation prompts popping up, which kills the pace somewhat. They’re not always connected to the same conclusion either, so it slows the game down further when trying to find the story string it relates to in the journal. As a result, it sometimes feels like conclusions happen arbitrarily rather than through careful observations or clever guesswork.

At points during the story, scripted combat encounters occur, and this is where the majority of the salutors’ abilities come into play. Wiktor does not level up or gain statistical improvements in the traditional manner. Rather, the combat systems revolve around unlocking and slotting different abilities and status effects as he learns more about his salutor bonds and gains experience in the world through exploration and combat. There’s a good mix of offensive and passive abilities, as well as actions that break down the Focus of the enemy. Focus is a sort of mental armor that Wiktor and most enemies possess, and reducing this allows for more devastating attacks to be made. Different enemies also have resistances to different salutors, so part of the combat pattern is regularly cycling through Wiktor’s collection, matching up the right salutor to the enemy it will affect the most.

There are few direct healing powers and no healing items, so a good chunk of combat involves managing damage over time and abilities which allow the thaumaturge to heal himself at the cost of his enemies’ health. All these actions are coded to specific speeds, and the game uses a turn bar to indicate how quickly different actions will be activated. As Wiktor (and his selected salutor) are the only controllable characters, linked combinations and strategies become apparent quickly. All-in-all, combat is effective and quite cinematic, as the camera switches to a more closed-in version of the action, with damage and status icons painted in stylized red and gold which suits the sort of internal and external conflict taking place. Control is well-mapped both for controller and keyboard, and the UI presents the information for health, abilities and effects clearly or with expanded selection prompts.

Battles involving salutors offer a flair all their own. When these conflicts occur, the animated salutor looms large in the background of the combat, presiding over a range of spectral enemies. Their health is tied to these enemies, and most battles consist of multiple waves of replacements that must be defeated.  In an additional twist, they each have their abilities, such as damaging Wiktor directly or boosting their allies when their turn arrives. These battles show off the otherness and painstaking design of the salutors, and they run the gamut from the ghostly to the mythologically-inspired to just plain Lovecraftian. They suit the dark themes and the tone well and plenty have a basis in the esoteric beings of folklore and tradition of the real world. The brutal Bukovac doubles down on savage attacks that generate damage over time, whilst Upyr offers abilities which restore Wiktor’s health when an enemy is damaged, for example.

But these fights are few and far between: overall combat variety is rather limited outside of them. All direct foes are humans, with very similar animations and attack patterns. Combat complexity is generated more through increased hit points, increased Focus, and an increased number of enemies rather than a wider range of enemy types and abilities. Combat therefore becomes more repetitive as the game goes on, despite Wiktor having an increasing number of abilities to try.

Although The Thaumaturge does not begin in Warsaw, the city soon becomes the star of The Thaumaturge. From the worn-down tenements of the back streets of Powiśle to the grand ballrooms and upper-class manors of Praga, there is a lived-in sense of graphical detail across Warsaw and its environs that underscores the commitment to realism. Every district is beautifully rendered, from piles of construction materials near the unfinished tramlines and sewers to washing lines hanging over the muddy streets. The use of a day/night cycle and some pretty shadow casting and texture details add to this ambiance. The feeling of a broken city at the turn of the twentieth century is captured well, in all its dark, brooding glory through the relatively fixed camera view. Maps are not as open as they might first appear, and most accessible areas are a series of smaller connected zones. The game switches smoothly to a third-person view for both dialogue and combat and these are generally well-directed and evocative. Whilst character models are not as sharp as the heavyweights of the genre, lip-syncing and facial expressions are quite effective as are some nice period touches on clothing and accessories.

All dialogue in the game is fully voiced. However, voice inflection and tone feel flat and sombre throughout, and whilst this matches the tone and themes of the game, it makes it difficult to discern character personalities or keep them memorable. A few, such as Wiktor’s boyhood friend Abaurycy and fellow thaumaturge Ariel Rofe do stand out, but this is more because they push the writing outside of paranoid brooding than it is the performance of the voice-over. I would consider it a few steps above its Eurozone cousins (looking at you Elex, Risen), but not in all character cases. The musical score is quite minimal: lots of strained violin, isolated piano and ambient, droning cellos during exploration. Again, this matches the dour tone and theme, but when it does shift in gear, such as in battle, it draws on Slavic themes and local traditions which adds a rare energy and balletic quality to the combat.

In keeping with its sharp focus on narrative and place, The Thaumaturge offers very little in the way of further progression systems. There is no usable inventory and the game does not feature any equipment systems or weapon upgrades. This keeps the combat system lean, but it also exacerbates the invariable combat: Wiktor punches and shoots his way around from the first to the final combat. It’s not a long game either, depending on difficulty selected and if the main story path is prioritized. There are plenty of sidequests to find though, and these are the main ways to generate additional experience as well as explore the different factions and locations. Some sidequests lead to additional salutors to expand Wiktor’s combat arsenal, whilst others have an impact on the overall direction of the story if completed. There are also sketch pictures and period-appropriate musical tracks to find throughout the city, which add a little whimsy and variety to the bleak journey.

The Thaumaturge is an unsettling RPG, offering a branching story set in an early twentieth-century Warsaw from the perspective of a flawed, supernatural warrior. It is a dark and harrowing journey, fully committed to exploring the conflicting desires of the people in the city of Warsaw; there is little whimsy, less humor, and no distraction from this goal. This requires an equal commitment from the gamer to this flavour of the genre — there is no grinding, karaoke mini-games or creature-collecting distractions here: your prince is in another castle. The game narrative and combat systems build on these dark themes, cleverly framing them in how Wiktor uses his abilities as a thaumaturge. Even if the multiple story paths sometimes buckle under their ambitious weight, and combat can become a little too lacking in variety, this is a person, a city and a time worth visiting and learning from for those it ensnares. Just remember to bring pizza, a drink (or two), and turn the lights down low. Very low.

As someone who greatly enjoys Metroidvanias as a whole despite the recent massive oversaturation of the genre, the details of every release keep me from getting burned out. While the broad strokes of every title might follow a common blueprint, it’s the individual flourishes that keep releases fresh and players hooked.

Afterimage is, unfortunately, a bit of a flat affair in this regard.

Set in the aftermath of “The Razing” which destroyed much of the world of Engardin, you take on the role of the (predictably) amnesiac heroine Renee as she strives to regain her memories and fix the broken state of the world. Although a story is being told and twists unwound, the presentation is undercooked. Attempts to incorporate an environmental, minimalistic narrative while simultaneously telling a moment-to-moment plot result in a story that is more confusing than it is intriguing. The voice acting only furthered my frustrations, as the half-baked delivery for most lines was immensely distracting from the story told on screen. This was especially true for Renee’s companion, Ifrit, who has something to say in almost every dialogue scene in the game (not unlike a certain other flying companion from Genshin Impact).

If you can tolerate the middling story, it’s clear that Engardin is an absolutely gorgeous world to explore from top to bottom. From towering ivory peaks to subterranean hellscapes, Afterimage’s scenery is as detailed as it is varied and makes for an inspiring playthrough based on the eye candy alone. However, the flow of the levels leaves something to be desired mainly due to the absurdly large size of every single one of them.

Indeed, Afterimage’s levels are so large that they feel detrimental to the overall experience. While getting lost in an area for an hour or so before stumbling upon an exit is part of the Metroidvania charm, Afterimage’s map size easily doubles or triples this time into tedium. This only becomes more pronounced once you begin backtracking to get all the previously ability-locked secrets. The scenic route back quickly became an absolute slog, and I was eventually forced to look up guides to see if the secret room I was tracking back to was worth the effort.

This design philosophy of “too much for its own good” extends into the skill tree as well. While the vast, sprawling menu seems impressive at first glance, minute, passive percentage increases make up about 90% of the skill tree, with a handful of weapon skill unlocks comprising the rest. Spending your hard-earned leveling currency to increase one stat by 0.5% per level feels outdated, to say the least. Having weapon skills locked behind this system also feels strange, as it discourages experimentation in the early game when currency is sparse.

Meaningful variety, however, exists with the gear you find scattered throughout the world. Six main weapon classes (of which you can equip two at a time) allow ample room for experimentation later on in Afterimage. The abundance of upgrade materials and the relatively low upgrade cap of three levels also help combat any hoarding sensibilities you might have from other RPGs. The only caveat to this is the low scaling of the weapons themselves. Any interesting effect found on an early-game weapon quickly becomes obsolete within a couple of zones. Coupled with no meaningful way to scale the damage, you often have no choice but to discard in favor of a new weapon that simply overpowers in sheer numbers alone.

Accessories are also often questionably balanced despite the more interesting design approach of having both positive and negative effects. In practice, however, the negative effects often felt overpowering compared to the boons offered, and the presence of generalist accessories with only boons ended up heavily undermining build variety.

Thankfully, the combat itself is usually satisfying enough that these issues don’t become too glaring until the midgame or so. Each hit comes with some very satisfying hit lag, which becomes especially prominent with weapons like the scythe that boast powerful multi-hit moves. Comboing between your two equipped weapons is a seamless affair thanks to the individual attack buttons for each weapon. A healthy roster of enemies to sink your teeth into makes sure the encounters never feel too rote while watching bosses melt after refining your combo game is an highly satisfying payoff for mastering your weapons of choice.

My only real complaint here lies with the ridiculous contact damage and its extremely steep scaling as you level up. Even with all the precautions of upgraded armor, contact damage reduction skill nodes, and heavily upgraded HP, a late-game mishap into a spike pit or an unfortunate bump into an enemy will easily wipe over a third of your health bar. Combined with some extremely tight (borderline pixel-perfect) precision required for some of the parkouring sections later on and so-so rewards, choosing to skip these sections in the late game could be best for non-completionists out there.

Afterimage is a valiant effort in the Metroidvania genre by the developers over at Aurogon Shanghai. Built upon a solid foundation for combat and world design, unfortunately, it is still noticeably rough around the edges. It sorely needed a couple more passes in the editing board for overall level flow and story presentation, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s still an enjoyable experience.

Eastward was a real standout title in 2021—yes, it’s been that long—and was one of my favorite games that year. When asked to review the DLC I didn’t yet know was releasing, I conjured up wild scenarios for John and Sam to find themselves in: daring conflicts with big bads, colorful characters to help survive in this strange world, and of course, sassy refrigerators to help me save my game. I did not expect a fully fleshed out farming simulator with a roughly twenty-hour runtime. Even after completion, I still find myself playing. Eastward: Octopia, much like Eastward itself, was a very pleasant surprise.

Eastward: Octopia takes place in a parallel universe, away from the original game. In this universe, Sam and John set out on the train to Octopia, a city built near and around an abandoned theme park. They find and buy a fairly large plot of land with a field, and that’s about it. Off you go; do some farming. The game starts slow but immediately ramps up as familiar faces begin joining you in Octopia. Since this is a parallel universe, the faces might be familiar to you, but they’re not to John and Sam.

Since you can play the DLC without actually playing the main game, they might also be new to you. If you’re familiar with the base game, the very first person you run into might be a particularly surprising and unexpected person to run into. Your friendly, sweet, and little-bit-of-a-doorman realtor is none other than Solomon, the antagonist from the main game, seemingly given this role to emphasize that this is not the same universe.

While there are a few differences from the original Eastward universe, one thing remains the same: John loves to cook. While Octopia centers around collection and completion, creating dishes is the primary focus. There are more recipes than anything else in the game. You can fish, harvest, and gather to your heart’s content, but if John’s not cooking, he’s not living. Food primarily acts as a vessel for restoring energy, as you might expect. Dishes have a stamina recovery value that typically exceeds that of sleeping or, regrettably, using the bathroom. As you progress through the story, there is a point where you can invite folks around Octopia to John and Sam’s house for dinner. Depending on how many people you invite, you need to hit a certain stamina recovery number. If you succeed, you get a perk the next day.

This comes in handy if you’re trying to speed up construction, buy items for a cheaper price, or spur innovation at Alva’s lab. I loved having construction projects going on around town. It felt like I was breathing more life into the town than simply farming within town limits. Unfortunately, there aren’t very many construction projects to finish. However, when you do finish them, it’s a marked improvement in the ramshackle town. When you arrive, everything’s boarded up, there are lots of strange octopuses around related to the abandoned theme park, and the town’s a mess. Getting the opportunity to clean up the town, build new structures, and improve existing ones gave a nice lil’ dopamine bump. Despite the small number of construction projects overall, it’s still very satisfying once the town shines perhaps beyond its former glory.

Along with farming and cooking, you collect and fish. Pretty standard stuff, but the fishing in Octopia is fairly unique. It takes place in a circle field where you press the shoulder buttons to have your lure rotate around the circle left or right. When you cast your lure into the body of water, a fish will come over and grab the line. With the shoulder buttons, you control the lure to catch the fish. As you catch up to the fish, you hit a button to, for lack of a better word, “damage” the fish. “Damage” the fish enough, and it’s caught! If the fish pulls too far from the lure, it gets away. I absolutely love fishing in video games and I haven’t seen anything quite like this style of fishing before. It works, and it was a lot of fun.

As people filter into town, they start requesting things from John and Sam. While construction projects are ongoing, they ask for wood, stone, and salt. Salt is the currency in Eastward for both universes, apparently. Generally, requests took no time whatsoever. I was able to gather construction materials and salt immediately, and almost all construction projects got set up and underway on the same day. The slightly more difficult ask was for dishes. Ingredients, seeds, what have you, become available as the general shop upgrades. Octopia gets a lot of visitors, though, and you don’t always have the necessary ingredients at the ready. Luckily, Octopia tracks when you need to deliver food to someone. For example, Little Bun is traveling the world looking for the most delicious dishes and will send John recipes she’d like to try. Luckily, food doesn’t expire in this universe, so if you’ve got the materials, you can make and forget it.

There is absolutely no combat in Eastward: Octopia, despite a heavy combat focus in the main game. The closest thing, aside from maybe fishing, is when Alva and Izzy move into town and let John explore the mines with Sonic Punk. If you played Eastward, Sonic Punk was Alva’s lab assistant robot, and he’s repurposed in Octopia as a mining robot. Sonic Punk is controlled through an arcade-style cabinet, similar to how Eastward had the Earth Born arcade game. Sonic Punk can drop bombs, and that’s about it. He automatically collects materials such as rocks, salt, and ore. Collecting materials fills up a bar at the bottom of the screen and, as the bar fills, the bombs increase their blast radius. Increasing it to max gives a huge blast radius but causes the bar to drain. Once it does, you’re back to tiny baby blasts.

Eastward: Octopia wasn’t something I was looking forward to playing because I didn’t even know it was coming! And even though I wasn’t aware of its existence until a week ago, I couldn’t put the game down. While there is a narrative to Eastward: Octopia, it takes a backseat to the excellent farming sim gameplay that captivated me for many hours. Pixpil does an incredible job with gameplay and feel. While farming sim might seem like a far cry from action-adventure gameplay, they intersect really well. If I was disappointed by anything, it’s that there wasn’t any combat in Octopia, as it was quite fun in Eastward. Still, the finished package was better than I thought possible. The Octopia DLC is a must if you enjoyed Eastward or have any connection to the characters.