Category: Game reviews

Circus Electrique is a new RPG from Saber Interactive and they were gracious enough to toss me a review code for this one.

The game takes place, you won’t believe this,at a place called Circus Electrique. You play as the niece (Amelia) of the owner and noted journalist. As always I won’t waste too much time on the story because I don’t want to risk spoiling anything. It is safe to say it is full of twists and turns and well worth a play though.

The combat is a lot like Darkest Dungeon but replaces the dark stuff with strongmen and fire breathers. In total there are 15 different archetypes of characters. One of my favorites are the clowns. They have a mood that increases the morale of everyone and snacks people with hammers.

The game takes place over the course of days. First pick a circus act to earn money and items. They all have different sets of attributes you need to reach to be allowed to use them. They all have different requirements and each character has things they are better at and people they get along with.

Really the only thing left to cover is the graphics and sound, both of which are solid. Neither one is anything to write home about but they don’t disappoint. I also never ran across any glitches or crashing and in the era of gaming it is hard to come by. The difficulty is fantastic. It starts off simple enough but it does spike later on. It is a great 8/10 and I definitely recommend RPG fans, especially if the Darkest Dungeon sort checks this one out. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Giraffe and Annika is a game NIS America gave me a long time ago and I never got around to reviewing, but hey no day like the present right?

This game is short, you could probably blow through this in five to 7 hours without trying very hard. The game does have two endings to give it some replay value.

The story itself is pretty basic. Annika wakes up with no memory and searches the island of Spica and will eventually meet Giraffe. Giraffe will need Annika to enter dungeons, five of them to be exact since he can not. I won’t spoil why for you but it is all explained to you.

The best part of the game is the looks and sound, however. Seriously if you like studio ghibli movies this is something you might enjoy. The sound most notably feels like it. Graphically it has the same feeling though admittedly it isn’t quite as good.

The game has some big downsides for me, unfortunately. The game for example has no real combat. Even the boss battles are basically just a rhythm game. I know it is technically possible to die in this game, but even if you do restart a short way back and don’t lose any real progress. There just isn’t any real incentive to worry about it. The game is actually kind of just walking around and exploring. It is not a bad game, it just isn’t a great game. It is at best a 7/10. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

As always with these I’d like to give a Huge shout out to NIS America for tossing me a copy of this one. As always it is greatly appreciated.

The Prinny Presents games always feature two classic games, this time we played La Pucelle: Ragnarok and Rhapsody: A musical adventure. Both are pretty niche titles with huge fan bases within the tactical RPG realm but outside of that most people will never have heard of them.

La Pucelle is a pretty straightforward story of a journey to battle a dark prince. You battle through various levels and attempt to recruit or “purify” enemies to increase your ranks.

There are different ways for each chapter to play out that I won’t spoil,but it is worth exploring each one. It is also worth noting if you only played the earliest versions of this, it is based on the PSP version with all of the extra content such as missions and many quality of life improvements that never made it to our side of the ocean.

Rhapsody is probably one of the easiest NIS America games ever made. I don’t say this as a bad thing, the story is cute there are some cheap laughs to be had and honestly it’s a nice history lesson.

The games however do feel their age. Both are well over 20 years old and play like it. While I enjoyed my time with them, they could have used a bit more touching up. I definitely recommend playing them though. They are a solid 7/10. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

As always I would like to thank the people over at Plan of Attack for hooking me up with a review copy of this one.

Cursed Golf is as the name implies, a golf game. You will start out learning how to play during a golf tournament where your character is attempting to prove he is the best there ever was. A lightning storm takes care of that possibility however.

After this untimely death, our golfer finds himself in purgatory. This is where golfers go and play golf until they can win 18 holes and return to the world of the living. Admittedly I Couldn’t do it,my golfer is still in purgatory.

The story is simple just like the graphics, which work just fine for what the game is. The game is first and foremost a rogue like. A very frustrating one at times. You must beat 18 holes in one go, these holes will change each time you try.

There are also an assortment of bosses to play against every few holes that are broken up by assorted other spots such as treasure or cards that can be used for bonuses. These bonuses can include anything from splitting the ball into multiple and choosing which one you will keep playing with. Other abilities include making the ball change directions, not bounce at all etc

This game can be hard though and very unforgiving. A few reviewers made it to the last stage and lost and had to start all over again. I never made it that far however. I don’t admit this lightly, I greatly enjoyed the game and still do.

In fact I will even give you my score now, 8/10 highly recommend it. The game is fantastic the graphics are cute and serve their purpose very well. At the price this game is sold for,it can’t be beat. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

As always I like to thank Ratalaika Games games for tossing me a copy of this one. I always love working with these guys and gals.

Long Live the Queen is a strange combination of RPG, simulation game almost like a virtual novel. You will make decisions that will play with your mood.

  Each mood can be changed I’m various ways depending on choices you make and places you choose to visit. This can be anywhere from the dungeon to the courts or gardens. Your mood is important because it will give you a bonus (or a debuff) to certain abilities when you train them.

These stats are important to the story. Every decision you make will have to be run past these skill checks sort of speak,and these can end anywhere from simply upsetting people because you can’t dance or straight out getting your princess killed.

The story is actually quite interesting and branches in numerous ways. It also isn’t very long which is nice because it gives you the chance to explore plenty of the options without feeling overwhelmed with how long it takes. The graphics are honestly quite cute and the sounds are nice.

I greatly enjoyed this game,and I still haven’t seen everything it has to offer. I’ve died a few times in unexpected ways and even become queen. This is definitely a solid 7/10. It won’t be for everyone, but for those that like this sort of game it should not be missed. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

As always I would like to take a moment to thank the great people over at Curve Games for hooking me up with a review copy of this game. It is always appreciated.

Now let me start by saying this,I’m not sure a game has ever made me this mad and kept me coming back without being made by FromSoftware in a very long time. And I mean this as a compliment in every way possible.

You will start as a lone traveler setting down on a planet that you will need to set up shop on. The tutorial will set you up with a solid foundation on how to get started with building your first few robots and how to get them chopping down trees, replanting them and how to build tools and such. It will also show you how to get people and research going.

This however as they say is only the tip of the iceberg. My first run I thought I was doing well,but it never occured to me I could have my robots break down the logs into poles and such for me and then store them. So I did a lot of that myself while also making tools for my robots as they broke. This is a very viable option. But it is time consuming,as far as I can tell you can’t truly lose this game so much as you can back yourself into a corner that makes the game harder than it needs to be.

So after fiddling with very easy to use and intuitive not programer that essentially boils down to show the robots what you want them to do and change a few commands to how often and when you want them to do it. I finally had everything going smoothly on my second attempt. At least that is what I thought. I had trees being chopped, tools being made and stored and as they broke my bots were coming for new tools,I thought. Then I noticed it all fell to pieces. When I wasn’t looking all it took was 1 robot to run out of materials,in this case sticks. Tools stopped being made trees stopped coming down sticks ran out and it just went from there.

That is when I learned in this beautiful little game things don’t all move at the same speed. Trees come down faster than they can be planted for example,so you need multiple bots working on some things and fewer working on others. The graphics are cute,and I loved watching my little person and bots especially stomp things into existence. Outside of a few minor camera issues where things would be annoyingly stuck behind trees I had no complaints. If you love games like Factorio but need your fix on console, this is your game. It is definitely a 9/10 and gets my full recommendation. This is one of those games I will be playing for a long time to come. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

As we all know, I truly love working with NIS America. They tossed me a review copy of Disgaea 6 for the Nintendo Switch when it came out and they were awesome enough to give me one for the PS5 as well. A huge shout out and thank you to them for that.

I will tell you this right out the gate, having played both versions of the game the complete version is truly complete. Right from the start, it is possible to go and get a ton of DLC characters from the older titles. I won’t spoil the who, but the list is pretty solid and had some of my favorites. That being said, while one of the more fun things to do in the Disgaea series to do is more or less breaking the game with insane character levels and damage output this specific version is by far the easiest.

If you don’t want to walk through the game with ease I suggest going into the settings and turning off using the bonus tickets the game gives you. Within a few fights, my character levels were in the hundreds, and even cranking up the enemy levels to the highest never really did much for the challenge. There is a challenge dungeon to unlock and an extra difficulty setting where the big challenge begins, and you will be leveling your characters up into the literal millions.

With all that aside Disgaea 6 is the usual Disgaea. You will start out as Zed, an angry little zombie trying to destroy the God of Destruction. You will eventually find out exactly why he is going through Super Reincarnaction to do this but to be honest you will probably figure it out before then anyway. The story is solid enough and is good for a laugh, in fact, I rather enjoyed it.

The graphics and sound are also great, I don’t ask much from a tactical RPG besides looking nice and this one certainly accomplishes that and all the special attacks and spells are up to par as well. Nothing here is pushing the performance abilities of the PS5, but I wouldn’t really want it to. The voice acting is also well done.

All in all, I have to recommend this one to any fan of tactical RPGs or the series. Easily an 8/10. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

As always I want to thank the fine folks at RoomcGames and Versus Evil for tossing me a review copy of this one. It is always appreciated and definitely doesn’t go unnoticed.

Hand of Merlin plays like a lot of other RPGs. You create a party of three heroes then move around a map to individual places ( think Slay the Spire) and make decisions. Maybe it’s to help some poor folks find a wagon wheel or save them from bandits. Solving these will many times get you money, or fame. Fame is used to level up all of your characters at once.

Battles themselves play out in a tactics style and won’t win any awards for creativity. If you are a fan of them there is nothing new here to enjoy. The usual hit points and armor are present with hit points not coming back between battles outside of certain ways of healing and armor completely replenishing.

I don’t say this is a bad thing, the battle system is a lot of fun and I greatly enjoyed it. I just don’t want anyone to go into this thinking the wheel has been reinvented so to speak.

The story itself is quite basic but it serves its purpose. Inspired by Arthurian legends, Merlin is attempting to save the world from a terrible event. That is where the rouge-lite experience comes into play. Each time you fail, and by the way, losing the Holy Grail also results in a game over. I discovered that when I sold it. Anyway, if you fail Merlin will simply take off to a new part of the multiverse where you will start all over again. You pretty much lose all of the progress you made except for any heroes you unlocked or spells you unlocked.

Oddly, I don’t really have anything bad to say about this game. It is essentially average in every way I can think of. The sound, the graphics, the gameplay. It is all good. Just that, good. It isn’t in any way special or unremarkable. It is a solid 7/10 and great for any fan of rogue-lites.