RPG

I was just going to play Final Fantasy XIV long enough to get a picture with a dwarf to illustrate how Final Fantasy themes crop up again and again… and I did that… but then I started working on the main story quest again… and… well, maybe later. Right now, we have to deal with a certain evil critter named Astos. A witch walks into a bar. One of her eyes is shut tight, and a trickle of blood leaks from it. The other is red with rage. A broomstick follows her closely, trying to help, but she snarls at it until it puts itself into a corner. “What happened???” asks the barmaid. “Astos happened,” spits the witch. “He took my crystal eye, and now I cannot see!” The barmaid quickly mixes up a strong drink; fumes pour from the mug. The witch drinks it in one gulp and falls silent. ...

Rise Eterna claims to be a modern successor to the legendary tactical rpgs of the past. Can Rise Eterna really wear Final Fantasy Tactics’ crown?

What are a couple of post-apocalyptic psionic kids gonna do when all the extraterrestrial invaders in the world try to tear them apart?

Square Enix’s new co-op third person shooter RPG, “Outriders”, doesn’t have anything to do with the Marvel heroes. Just, the last demo I played of this sort was Marvel’s Avengers, and I didn’t have a great experience with the co-op features, and this title was just there, for some reason. So, what is “Outriders” if not Marvel’s Avengers? I hadn’t even heard of this game before a couple days ago, when it exploded all over my Twitter timeline. I (being at work at the time) demanded someone patiently explain to me what kind of game it was so that I could join in the fun. ...

Unsung Story, by Little Orbit, is the game I never thought I would see. It was due to be released five and a half years ago, but is only hitting early access on Steam now with a lot of work ahead of it. I had written it off. But, here it is – mostly. When the Kickstarter campaign for Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians launched, it pretty much promised to make exactly the game I wanted to play. A tactical adventure crafted by the master Yasumi Matsuno, legendary designer of Final Fantasy Tactics, Ogre Battle Let Us Cling Together, Ogre Battle March of the Black Queen and Vandal Hearts, among others. This is a genre he created – and now he was back with a game that moved a step beyond his earlier triumphs. Square grids? Unsung Story would use a hexagonal grid. Job tree? Unsung Story would use a job decagon, with ten different qualities coming together to form a unique job. ...

In a more consistent world, I’d have played Persona 4 before I played Persona 5. Not because the plots or characters of the two games are at all connected; they are not. It’s because I am continually seeing the P4 characters and plot through a P5 lens. And, I think this is maybe spoiling some plot twists for me, twists that P5 players were supposed to have been expecting. All Persona games share a similar theme. A series of supernatural events ensnares a high school student, who finds he can travel to a parallel world where people’s subconscious desires – their Shadows – are causing havoc in the real world. He finds he can summon a manifestation of his own inner self – a Persona – to battle these Shadows and free people caught in this parallel world. Other high school students join him and discover their own Personas. ...

I came into this series cold: I haven’t played more than a couple hours of any Assassin’s Creed game. One, I played a portion of the tutorial of when I was seeing if PlayStation Now, Sony’s game streaming service, would work with my connection (no). The other, Black Flag, I played until they went back to the “real world” for the first time – also another game I got free somehow. So, I can’t compare this to other Assassin’s Creed games. ...

I am done with the early access content in Solasta: Crown of the Magister. I think Solasta did what it set out to do. It made a statement about how it would approach the modern era of D&D computer RPGs and how it sets itself apart from other modern offerings such as Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin and Baldur’s Gate 3. And it made me eager to see what comes next. ...

While writing up yesterday’s post about my first experiences with Solasta, the D&D 5e-compatible RPG released to Steam early access a couple days ago, I found that I’d actually made the most boring adventuring party possible. Tank, healer, nuker, melee dps – those rules are enshrined in D&D legend as the minimum basis for any successful group. All on my own, I’d duplicated the pre-rolled party that Tactical Adventures had provided. I had verified that I was the most boring player in the known gaming universe. ...

This game flew entirely under my radar, but maybe it’s the Dungeons & Dragons 5e-compliant tactical RPG we need right now. Coming out at almost the same time the Baldur’s Gate 3 D&D 5e-compliant game was released to Steam early access, you can’t help but compare them. Like when “Volcano!” and “Dante’s Inferno” came out at the same time, or “Armageddon” and “That Other Giant Asteroid Hitting the Earth Movie” I can’t remember. (“Deep Impact”. Thanks, Google.) ...