Gaming off the Beaten Path

  It's been a big year for indie RPGs. Not going to lie, I was thinking I might skip this one. But with all the hype around Sea of Stars, coupled with the fact that I really liked Chain of Echoes earlier in the year, I decided I had to give it a shot. Not to be confused with Star Ocean, the other game with a maritime metaphor for space in its title, Sea of Stars is the latest heavily hyped, 2D RPG designed as a callback to the classic golden age RPGs that many of us grew up with. It was developed by and published by Sabotage Studios, a Quebec-based indie developer best known for their 2018 action platformer The Messenger. For the record, the two games allegedly take place in the same universe but have nothing else really to do with each other. Sea of Stars began its life in 2020 as a kickstarter campaign, with the studio wanting to produce a title that had more depth than its previous offering. It was heavily influenced by games like Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, Final Fantasy V...

  Last week, we looked at Yakuza: Like a Dragon, a refreshing modern take on a JRPG based on a series more known for third person action. The story and presentation, while not perfect and often long winded, was outstanding. It was backed up by an all time great cast of characters and some of the best voice acting around. But how did the gameplay fare? Much like last week, we have the best and worst of both modern and old school gaming on display. RPG veterans will feel right at home with the combat system, which is a callback to the old-fashioned turn based battles they are used to. That coupled with the polish typical of modern games makes the combat incredibly fun, if a little repetitive. Encounters are all touch based, any potential enemies will have red arrows over their head and a field of vision cone on the map. Cross this field of vision and stay there too long an it will trigger an encounter. Battles are fought in an incredibly traditional turn-based style, where characters...

  I don't play a whole lot of modern games, they generally don't interest me. But every once in a while, something new catches my eye. I do occasionally review newer games, but it's usually because they fall into my lap rather than because I seek them out. Typically, the ones that I do play are from the 7th gen. I guess I should back up and talk about what I consider modern. To me, anything from the 7th gen on is considered modern. The PS3, 360 and Wii kind of start what I consider the modern era. Even those games are 15 years old at this point, pushing 20. I'm also not talking about games that are done in an old school style, stuff like Chained Echoes or Mega Man 10. Those games are modern, but they exist on a completely different plane than the stuff I'm talking about. Which brings me to Yakuza: Like a Dragon. A lot of people were really excited about this game when it came out...and I wasn't one of them. The announcement of a new game in a franchise known for...

 Whenever something is successful, there are going to be imitators. That's especially true of video games. I think just about everyone that has ever picked up a video game controller has played or at least heard of Super Smash Bros. Honestly, I'm surprised it took someone until 1998 to think of the concept. A company takes the characters from its most famous IPs and shoehorns them into a fighting game, what's not to like? Smash Bros. was an instant success when it landed on the N64 and every time a new version of the game comes out, it's a major deal. One of the major factors that sets Smash appart from other fighting games is its accessibility. It's so incredibly easy to learn, each character's special moves are all performed the same way and they all get similar effects from their buttons. But it's tough to master, players have spent countless hours studying frame data and perfecting strategies for the strongest characters. Super Smash Bros. Melee for the ...

Last week, we started our look at Chained Echoes, an Indie RPG for the current gen consoles. While its story had some ups and downs, the game provided an overall strong experience, with excellent atmosphere, likable characters and fantastic music. But how was the actual gameplay? Well, pretty good. It's not without its flaws, but Chained Echoes does a very good job of blending classic JRPG gameplay notes with more modern amenities in a way that largely works. Let's start with the combat, which offers a turn-based system that will feel very familiar to most old-school RPG fans. Up to four characters can actively participate in battle with four more backing them up, for a total of eight. You can switch at any time, so basically you have eight characters fighting. Like Final Fantasy X, you can see the order in which characters and enemies will attack. Characters can attack, defend, use items or use skills, which require the use of TP. This leads to one of the biggest gameplay di...

Earlier this year, I did a preview of indie RPG Chained Echoes , a title that has garnered tons of attention in the gaming community. Now it's finally time for a proper review. I don't usually do "initial thoughts" or anything like that, but there was so much buzz surrounding Chained Echoes I had to strike when the iron was hot. It takes me a while to complete games nowadays, especially long RPGs, but I'm finally done and ready for a proper review. I like to make sure I beat games, at least the main stories, before I write anything up because you never know what could happen.  I feel like a lot of reviews are just based on an hour or two of gameplay and while that is okay for some genres, I don't think that's the case for RPGs. By now I think the story around Chained Echoes is pretty common knowledge. It was created by a single developer, Matthias Linda, over the course of seven years. Linda, a German national, grew up creating fan games in RPG Maker. He w...

  I complain about modern games a lot, but I can't say I don't love all the pseudo-classic games that are seemingly everywhere nowadays. Most of these seem to be indie games, titles made by a hand-full of developers, or maybe even just one. It could just be me, but I feel like a lot of these are Metroidvania games, I've already covered Hollow Knight which would certainly fit into this category. Anodyne and Cosmic Star Heroine definitely fit too. In addition to being made in the old-school style, these games also have something very important in common: they are all indie games. This week's game is no different, even if it does carry the one of the biggest licenses of all time. They may not be as popular as they were in the 80's and 90's, but the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are still hugely relevant. And yet, it had been a long time since they've received a new game. That changed in 2022 with the release of 2022's Shredder's Revenge. Shredder'...

  Going to take a little break from reviews to talk a little bit about something I've been thinking about a lot. It seems like streaming services are taking over the gaming industry and it kind of feels like it happened over night. I don't like it, but I always kind of knew that digital games would overtake physical media sooner rather than later. But I'm not sure I ever saw XBox GamePass or PlayStation Plus Premium coming. Hell, I remember seeing Gamefly for the first time and being blown away, but also unsure it would ever work. I was also unsure I would ever get into any of these services, largely because I prefer retro games and physical media, but now that I've experienced them firsthand, I wanted to give some thoughts as to the positives, negatives and whether these things are worth it at the end of the day.   To me, one of the biggest positives here are the sheer selection of games. There are hundreds and hundreds of games on these from newer AAA releases to old ...