"Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know -- that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives; and my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.

You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall -- you need me on that wall."

- Colonel Nathan R. Jessup, A Few Good Men (1992)

The allure of any good mystery is the twist and turns of the deductive process. Many people like an easy answer, but what good piece of mystery fiction would trade the bombast and spectacle for a quick solution? This is something The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles understands. Shu Takumi has fully embraced the theatrics of Arthur Conan Doyle's Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. In doing so, he has taken the Ace Attorney franchise to heights that could previously only be dreamed of. Through its period piece setting, wonderfully developed characters and elegant treatment of its criminal drama, The Great Ace Attorney duology firmly sits above its predecessors and sets a new standard for the series.

Taking place primarily in Victorian-era London, the devil is truly in the details for Great Ace Attorney. Beautiful background set pieces strongly accentuate Kazuya Nuri's character designs, which are in top form in this game. They incorporate the sleek design of the game's previous protagonists with tasteful period-appropriate attire, which allows for that crucial sense of normalcy when juxtaposed against the wilder character designs we have come to associate with Ace Attorney. Notably, you can see the incorporation of steampunk elements to highlight the fantastical nature of science at the turn of the 20th century. The curiosity of the time period underlines many of the characters' chief motivations. This embrace of the "weird" and the "strange" makes Great Ace Attorney a absolute joy to play.

Thematically, the game plays on the very same concepts that were central to the Sherlock Holmes canon- the political intrigue of the time period and the onset of scientific development that promised to shake the very foundations of our understanding of the world. The game tackles changing social and economic mores in a manner that the previous Ace Attorneys could not, owing to the central focus on corruption within the British judiciary. Throughout the duology, the game places a retributive concept of justice under the microscope, allowing the player to examine the ways in which we think about crime, its sources and how we must combat it. Its criticism of the legal system's tendency towards bias and personal convictions (shown through the summation examination sequences) is especially welcome- as it does not dismiss the need for jury trials out of hand, but offers a measured criticism that highlights boths its strength and weaknesses. It similarly refuses to avert its eyes from the structural implications that class, gender and race have within society.

The Herlock Sholmes of Ace Attorney is an eccentric loose cannon, a gamesman who reflects Shu Takumi's understanding of Doyle and detective fiction in general. Sholmes "Dances of Deduction" serve to highlight the theatrical nature in which Doyle approached solving mysteries. In understanding the importance of spectacle, the game adroitly turns mundane observations into thrilling endeavours. As spotlights shine on the characters, as if they are in a stage play, we understand that Sholmes relishes just logic and deduction, but the art of showmanship as well. Perfectly scored by Yasumasa Kitagawa and Hiromitsu Maeba, the games understanding of what makes detective stories "tick" serves to elevate the game itself in the very same way. Thanks to this emphasis on the detective throughline, the cases themselves are fantastic in much the same way, with some of the greatest red herrings I have ever seen in the series, and some ridiculously clever uses of evidence that go much further than simply being obscure stretches of logic.

Chronicles defies precedent in many ways, but what most strongly comes to mind is in how Takumi treats continuity between the two games. As a long time fan of the series, I have always cherished the Ace Attorney games as individual experiences. Every game has offered tightly constructed crime dramas with satisfying payoffs. The games' episodic format draws liberally from the "mystery of the week" of detective fiction. While this lends to well-paced and impactful storytelling, it has overall hurt the series' capacity for developing its characters in a way that shows meaningful growth. Phoenix Wright is clearly developed as a lawyer throughout the original trilogy of games, but by Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations (2004) it was apparent that Phoenix's personal genesis was concerned with his confidence and resolve as a lawyer and little else. In allowing for the mystery of the week, the games repeatedly ignore things that would entail more long-term character development: his relationships, the impact of specific trials, and most notably the passage of time.

The latter trilogy of Ace Attorney games- running from Apollo Justice through Spirit of Justice multiplies this problem exponentially. By this point in the series lifespan, the target audience wanted Phoenix Wright as the protagonist; so promising series newcomers Apollo Justice and Athena Cykes were given much less development as a result. Apollo's backstory was retconned multiple times to suit the current game's plotline, and Athena was all but completely sidelined with absolutely zero character growth after her most important story arc. This makes the games feel much stronger as individual entries than part of an overall continuity. By contrast; The Great Ace Attorney instead takes the opposite approach. Each case introduces important elements that pay off in the duology's climax; and Ryunosuke, Susato, Sholmes and Iris' development as characters during each case isn't only maintained through each case, but each game as well. Fans of the series will note this was something sorely lacking for Apollo Justice, for whom the most formative moments of his backstory were summarily ignored with each new sequel.

Naruhodo progressively unravels the web of conspiracy underpinning the British judicial system, each revelation shocking but also deeply personal to both himself and the people surrounding him. These revelations, however, are not kept in a vacuum to only inform the current case. They continually affect the characters and their perceptions through each subsequent case, building upon one another in a rich tapestry of interpersonal dynamics between the cast. Outside of the defense and prosecution, reccuring characters in the Ace Attorney series are normally minimally developed- serving singular purposes with perhaps the chance of a central focus in one or two cases. Great Ace Attorney bucks this trend by giving these characters skin in the game with regards to the overarching plot. Where they would traditionally return to simply give a clue or testimony for another case, they instead have significant ties with the long-term narrative and are given satisfying character arcs and resolutions. Every major character in this game proves to be consistently amazing.

This also creates a dynamic to the two Great Ace Attorney games that was never present for the first six titles. Whereas one can play any of the original Ace Attorney games in any order, Adventures and Resolve are meant to be played in order. They present as a "ten-case game" or a "70-hour Ace Attorney" where a understanding of the first game's events is crucial to the second's. This approach offers the coherency the series really needed after Apollo Justice While you technically do not need knowledge of the first game to play through the second, it is impossible to fully appreciate it. While this may be imposing to many, it is worth the heavy time investment. The payoffs are huge, worthy of the various pedigrees upon which this game built its foundation.

Sure, I know that the only winning move is not to play. The cycle of ultra violence is self perpetuating. You are your own worst enemy- a willing genocidal puppet, and the game wants to make that clear. Yet Hotline Miami undermines itself with its complete disrespect of the player's intelligence.

My eyes rolled into the back of my head when, after smashing in a guard dog's head like a wet pumpkin, Hotline Miami gives you an achievement called "Dog Lover."

This kind of wanton ultraviolence is presented as subversive critique, but it is toothless. You have no other way with which to complete the objective than murdering all these people and animals. There is no creative way with which to clear a level- you must kill, and kill brutally. You kill and kill and kill and kill, no other choice in the matter, and then return home to have the game preach to you about how you're super desensitized to violence cause its just a video game. The game maintains this same juvenile sense of superiority for the entire runtime. It seems to believe everyone who plays it is so stupid as to not really understand the weight of their actions.

"Do you like hurting people?" Snore.

The cult of hyper masculinity has been a disaster for the human race, so I can buy that some people will just see this the way they want to see it. Yet, most people with any sense of the concept of ethics will immediately understand this game's repudiation of violence. Thusly, the extremely overt messaging comes off as bitter pretention. It was 2012 when this game came out. It wasn't the first game to present us with the concept of violence against faceless enemies. None of this arrogance feels earned.

Released years later, 2019's Streets of Rogue plays extremely similar to Hotline Miami and it was similarly wont to mock the player for their brutality. In this case, the mockery has justification- for every time you run into a building, swing a knife or firing a machine gun indiscriminately, there were dozens of other ways to solve the problem at hand.

This game thinks it is very profound for playing as an assassin, being told to kill everybody in a building, and having no other recourse than to either kill everybody or not play the game. Even No Russian worked better as a critique, because it didn't make you shoot everyone in that airport. You had the choice to pull the trigger.

I guess Jacket also had the choice not to swing the bat on the 99th dog for that achievement. It would've been nice, in that case, if I actually had to go out of my way to do that, before being derisively branded a "dog lover" for doing what the game is forcing me to do.

Absolutely incredible soundtrack, though.

For the King is a very middle-of-the-road take on Dungeons & Dragons gameplay, because it is designed for small-scale campaigns and iterative replayability. Unfortunately, what these bite-sized game sessions offer is lackluster; and for less experienced players, likely frustration.

It doesn't do or say anything unique, with a completely threadbare narrative. Instead it hinges its focus on co-operative multiplayer, aiming to recreate the highly social atmosphere of traditional tabletop gaming. Yet, with offerings like Divinity Original Sin II that offer such an experience without compromising on other gameplay elements, For the King can't help but draw unflattering comparisons.

Through its dice-roll combat system, For the King evokes the spirit of Gary Gygax more as a mathematician than a storyteller. In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeon Masters Guide, Gygax extolled the die's potential for gameplay variance. In For the King, probability management is the epic tale you're telling. The combat boils down to a struggle against random number generation, due to the roguelike permadeath system and high costs of unit death.

Despite a large selection of gear and various combat mechanics, the depth is but an illusion when you realize the best way to overcome the difficulty curve is to simply remove the odds altogether. Once the player is aware the brunt of the game's difficulty comes from crippling status effects, curses and debuffs; it just becomes a matter of searching through the map for gear that nullifies as many of these things as possible. The end result is a very shallow combat system with very little depth outside of building certain stats to ensure good dice rolls.

This criticism on its own is not going to make or break a game for me, but For the King is roughly 80 percent combat for the runtime of its campaigns. The map events are simple stat checks that might grant an item or some gold. Towns just serve to heal you or sell you gear. Side quests are just more combat. DOS2, combat system notwithstanding, had plenty of other things to do within its world. For the King just treats exploration as a means to fight more enemies and roll more dice.

While For the King does not fail as a tabletop RPG, but it misses the mark of what makes a lot of them so entertaining to people. The assumption seems to be that all it takes to enthrall the player is to subject them to the odds of the dice rolls- reinforcing its "difficulty" in the roguelike sense (ignoring that the optimal way to play this game is just stacking as many nulls as possible, thereby trivializing most fights).

Yet, this strict adherence to the punishing law of probability isn't some ironclad law of Dungeons & Dragons, bringing me back once again to Gygax; and an oft-repeated (yet unsourced) quote of his, where he implies that a DM is never bound by such results:

"A DM only rolls the dice because of the noise they make." - Gary Gygax, unknown

This Giants in the Playground forum post from 2007 discusses the quote in detail; in which various people chime in on their stance of "fudging" rolls as a Dungeon Master. There are points for and against fudging, with solid points made by both parties. Two quotes stood out to me:

"What I think he means here is that while the dice may fall on a given number, they have no authority over the Story."

"I'm all about fudging. I've run entire adventures on nothing more than the clackety-clack of random dice and my sense of dramatic timing. Part of this comes from the fact that when I started DM'ing, I had no idea what the rules were. So I made it all up as I went along. No one noticed."

What For the King is missing is the opportunity to create experiences outside of random number generation- be it organic combat difficulty or player immersion. My hope is that the sequel addresses these flaws, allowing the basis for the game to develop into a more satisfying overall experience.

Caution: Review has spoilers.

RPG Maker has been a popular platform for indie horror games for north of 20 years at this point, a large open canvas for developers who grew up with titles like Silent Hill and Resident Evil. The body of work that has been produced on the engine has run the gamut from the deeply philosophical to blatantly exploitative- but it remains a constant in the world of indie game development. A testament to how important RPG Maker is as a tool for freeware is how the years go by and new game developers continue to choose at a platform by which to realize their ambitions.

It is a platform heavily constrained by limitations of the software, with developer ingenuity crucial to helping distinguish a title from a hundredfold similar. KADOKAWA has continually released updates to the software, notably 2015's RPG Maker MV and 2020's RPG Maker MZ, and thusly production value has risen greatly. Yet the desire remains to see people who are doing something new, and something with substance rather than retreading the footsteps of vapid horror games like Ao Oni.

RPG Maker horror has developed to a point where it has resulted in games considered seminal to indie gaming at large. Kikiyama's Yume Nikki heavily popularized a subgenre of RPG Maker titles in which unsettling pastiches of horror imagery meld with open-ended exploration gameplay. OMOCAT's OMORI is a recent brushfire hit, captivating a new generation of youths toward RPG Maker horror games with an emphasis on metanarrative and the human condition.

rpgmaker.net's Misao awards (aptly named after another seminal horror game by Sen) have long been a barometer for the trends and developments within the scene. They are user-run, maintained and elected awards across various categories for games released during the calendar year. 2022's Misaos are full of curiosities, as usual, but the star of this year was by Korean developer racheldrawsthis's Cold Front. It took home five nominations, and won the RMN Game of the Year award.

Cold Front is a short narrative of two childhood friends, Winnie and Augustine, finding themselves stranded in an intense blizzard in the middle of July. The story straddles between a coming-of-age melodrama and a supernatural horror thriller, with expository flashbacks doing most of the heavy lifting for the narrative. Augustine's pubescent inner turmoil is given form through a hideous monster that stalks and chases the two through the snowy landscape.

In this sense, the game is more of a visual novel than what we normally picture an RPG Maker horror title. It has a strong visual signature, with beautifuly rendered 2.5D pixel art. Yet the game is still an exercise of "tell, don't show" due to its short runtime, heavy exposition and lack of locale; with 2/3rds of its short runtime being spent on a snowy road, and the other 1/3rd being spent in a small hallway.

There are short "quick time event" sequences that can send you into a game over state, but the game liberally encourages you to save, so these are just incidental roadblocks. Cold Front just wants you to experience the story of these two boys, and it does not stress any degree of freedom or interactability.

Winnie and Augustine's relationship is the central focus of the narrative, and their exploration of unresolved issues represents the conflict and eventual resolution of the game's horror elements. Indeed, as an explicit "horror" game, I don't think people would find this game particularly frightening. Clumsy chase sequence aside, much of the horror is more subdued- couched in short psychotic breakdowns and hallucinations. This sort of psychological horror is well-tread ground in RPG Maker and indie horror at large, and its done to some degree of competence here, but it was not eliciting any explicit scares for me. The unsettling aspect of this game instead is supposed to lay within its rumination on Augustine's true feelings towards his friend.

I think it is pretty obvious these character are gay, though it is never explicitly stated. The game is rife with subtext that encourages such an analysis. Augustine blushes, flustered at Winnie's overt shows of emotion and closeness. There are signs of homoromanticism throughout every interaction the two share, notably in the game's "true ending." The monster is synthesized from the two stuffed animals the characters had as children: a stuffed elk and stuffed bear. It is a physical manifestation of the intense conflict Augustine feels toward his shared history with his friend- one in which the two were inseperable to the point it is described as "eerie." To me, it read as Augustine's inability to come to term with his romantic feelings towards his friend. The jealousy, self-loathing, and inability to be honest. It felt like such a poignant metaphor for the realities of young people who just repressed these feelings and consequently ruined deeply personal friendships.

Winnie and Augustine's conflict is explained as just a story of two boys who lacked communication, and even though they both cared about one another, this dishonesty snowballed into something far more toxic. But it is clear these two loved (and love) eachother. The specific character of this love is ultimately unimportant, but regardless, the content does not change if assigned a homoromantic meaning. The mores of toxic masculinity have long kept us from having honest conversations with one another; and our world is genuinely worse off for it. This is the real horror espoused in Cold Front, and the implication is frightening, because it is real.

Cold Front's message is one worth exploring, but it is unfortunately held back from a lack of character development and a rushed ending sequence. It is a linear storyline (with one major "bad ending") which I respect, but also feel is significantly lacking in deeper character development. The pacing is breakneck, and as such, many elements central to the breakdown in the protagonist's relationship are just vaguely gestured at and left unexplored.

Still, I found the presentation to be memorable enough,, and its content thought provoking enough to warrant healthy discussion. This game won the GOTY Misao with just 9 votes, but it represents more progressive thinking in a niche hobby space and this is always welcome. The game is overall a charming experience by a solo developer, and I am happy it got recognition from the Misaos.

The history of Asmik Ace's game development and publishing ventures is a curious one, their back catalogue consisting of games across numerous platforms and genres, but very few enjoying any international attention. There is scant English-language information on the actual behind-the-scenes at Asmik, but it is clear from their output that they were attempting a lot of different things to see what would stick. Just three years prior to Dokapon: Monster Hunter! was the release of LSD: Dream Emulator for the Playstation in 1998, a pastiche of Japanese cultural weirdness that would become the quintessential gateway for many Westerners into experimental video games.

Their in-house development team's main focus has been the Dokapon series, which were structured like a board game and utilized a literal rock-paper-scissors based combat system. Starting with Kessen! Dokapon Oukoku IV: Densetsu no Yuusha Tachi, the mainline games were released only in Japan until Atlus and BigBen Entertainment brought 2008's Dokapon Kingdom to international audiences. Yet the totality of the Dokapon series spans 9 main series games, 3 side games, and 6 mobile games. So Dokapon Kingdom wasn't actually the West's first introduction to the series- this honor actually belongs to the Game Boy Advance-only spinoff title Dokapon: Monster Hunter! released in 2001.

Monster Hunter! does not have the board game-style mechanics of its predecessors, and instead replaces it with a blatant copy of the Mystery Dungeon roguelike games. I would call it inexplicable, but Chunsoft was doing pretty well for itself at the time: 1999's Torneko: The Last Hope, 2000's Shiren the Wanderer 2: Oni Invasion! Shiren Castle! and 2001's Shiren the Wanderer GB2: Magic Castle of the Desert all enjoyed critical acclaim in Japan. So it is understandable that Asmik perhaps wished to cash in on the success of the formula by integrating into Dokapon. What really confuses me was their decision to bring it to North America through publisher AIA. Prior to Dokapon: Monster Hunter!, the West's only exposure to the formula was the Final Fantasy tie-in Chocobo's Dungeon 2 in 1998. Chocobo's Dungeon ended up being a critical failure in North America, so it is rather amusing that Monster Hunter! reached American audiences at all.

Unfortunately, this game does the legacy of Mystery Dungeon absolutely no favors in its thorough mediocrity. This can be mainly attributed to the Dokapon Rock-Paper-Scissors combat system. Imagine playing Shiren or Pokemon Mystery Dungeon but every combat interaction came down to a series of dice rolls rather than any strategy. That is what Monster Hunter! offers as combat. You assign a different combat effect to each "slot" on your weapon and shield corresponding to rock, paper and scissors.There are also "neutral" attack and defense options that operate according to different rules. The myriad of different interactions gives an illusion of depth, but what you do ultimately doesn't matter. You are still at the mercy of whatever the RNG decides the enemy will roll.

I haven't played Dokapon Kingdom, but I imagine the combat works in that setting specifically because of the board-game setting, wherein the combat isn't the central element of the overall experience. In a Mystery Dungeon styled roguelike, though, the combat is what is going to make or break a run. It adds another element of near-uncontrollable randomness to the notoriously fickle world of procedural generation, making this my least favorite implementation of Mystery Dungeon gameplay since Mystery Chronicles: One Way Hero.

Another thing I can't seem to get past in this game is the localization work done by AIA. It is some of the worst translation I have seen in an officially-licensed title on the Game Boy Advance. It reminds me of those early-2000s machine translations done by fans on romhacking.net, except somebody was actually paid for it. At best, it results in some amusing lines for you to screenshot ("I get so excited when you come.") At worst, it actively hinders you from understanding the game and what is going on. AIA seems to have gone inactive since 2003, but to me that is no big loss, as this feels like it was simply a rushed tax writeoff. Absolutely no care was put into the localization.

I dropped this game as it is just a completely unappealing mess that fails to emulate much better titles. Most of my playtime was spent getting stunlocked by a random enemy due to losing rock paper scissors 5 times in a row. Once I got to the boss; I lost one dice roll and was insta-killed, lost all my items in Mystery Dungeon fashion, and was sent back to the start. I highly recommend staying away from this and just sticking to either the mainline Dokapon titles or actual Chunsoft Mystery Dungeon titles.

The Game Boy port for Killer Instinct is among the worst ports of fighting games brought to early Nintendo handhelds. Ugly and unplayable, with none of the detail of Kevin Bayless' pre-rendered CGs translated to the bitcrushed blobs on screen. The controls are terrible, and it is probably one of the worst GB titles I have ever played.

I could probably make an excuse for the limitations here, but the GB port was released a year after Midway's Mortal Kombat II Game Boy port, which boasted solid readability and gameplay for the time. Mortal Kombat II wasn't the tightest to control, but it was far superior to Killer Instinct in terms of playability. Similarly, Takara released a port of Fatal Fury 2 in early 1994 that just blows KI out of the water in terms of quality. The Game Boy wasn't a spectacular platform for fighting games, but you can do far better than this one.

It is probably too high a bar to compare Turnip Boy to classic top-down Legend of Zelda, though that would feel like the obvious comparison. It never sticks the landing and the adventure game aspects feel distinctly half-baked.

Early LoZ adventures are well-known for their emphasis on both combat and puzzle sequences, but Turnip Boy does neither of these metrics competently. The puzzles are very simple to figure out, and completing the longer sequences is consequently more tedious than satisfying. The combat feels like a downright afterthought as well. Bosses usually incorporate the latest item and puzzle mechanics in Zelda fashion, but the enemy patterns are simple and the AI and pathing are absymal. All you have to do is just wait for a boss to stand still and then smack it a bunch of times rather than doing what the game actually wants you to do.

The game is really just a series of fetch quests in order to move forward the story and obtain collectables. You will mainly be interacting with various NPCs, reading through quirky dialogue, picking up an item, backtracking through the map and repeating that process to open up more parts of the overworld.

Unfortunately, the dialogue is the worst part about this game by far. It is hard to explain how excrutiating it is, but the best way I can describe it is as if the Borderlands 2 writing team was staffed by people who grew up on pre-2016 Tumblr and Undertale. I don't understand how, in 2021, the developer thought it would be funny to have just one of the NPCs do the entire Navy Seals copypasta. However, that seems to be the caliber of "humor" in this game.

Consequently, the closest Zelda title this actually resembles is Super Flash Bros' unofficial fangame The Legend of Zelda and the Lampshade of No Real Significance (2005). Lampshade was a Flash game where the aim was also focused on doing fetch quests to progress the game and followed the exact same formula. It also had the same focus on off-beat humor, but the dialogue of Lampshade was a product of early to mid-2000's Newgrounds culture. It is hard for me to determine if that is better or worse than the dialogue in this game, though.

Although the game has excellent pixel art, it appears to be following the trend of many modern indie titles that prioritize style over substance. Consequently, my overall impression of the game was poor.

Fire Emblem 7 is my personal favorite video game ever made.

I received it for Christmas of 2003 from my aunt along with my new Flame Red Gameboy SP from my mother. I don't know why she got it for me, nor will I ever question it. Cause it changed my life, for better or worse.

The original Fire Emblem games by Shouzou Kaga were smash hits in Japan. Kaga wanted a strategy game wherein "each character is a protagonist in their own right, and you can actually get attached to them, making it closer to an RPG[.]" I always wax poetic about "player expression" whenever I am reviewing games nowadays, and that was what Kaga wanted in his series. When asked about it in the same interview, he opines, "I think this is something people understand once they play the game, but most of the characters are usable. And characters who at first seem like crappy, throwaway characters–if you take the time to build them up and nurture them, they can become incredibly powerful. We made a lot of characters like that."

Fast forwarding to 2003, Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade follows the same design philosphy. Tohru Narihiro, a producer at Intelligent Systems states in a May 2003 interview that "The primary focus was to enable people do not play SRPGs to enjoy it." It is a simple game, released 6 years after Final Fantasy Tactics, the game most people (myself included) would credit as having popularized SRPGs in the west.

Firstly, I will get the obvious out of the way. This is an absolutely beautiful game with stunning pixel art and an incredible score. It is an absolute aesthetic masterpiece, with much of the groundwork laid out by its predecessor The Binding Blade. These two games are some the best looking and sounding titles in the entire Gameboy Advance library. That honor is owed to two veritable superwomen of the genre who do not get enough credit. There was Sachiko Wada, who did the character portraits as well as in-game CGs. Her art was the stuff of dreams for me, and it honestly still is. She can nail quiet beauty to war-weary stoicness; adorably cute to horrifically ugly and everything in between. Her art gives the game so much of its character- it wouldn't be FE7 without Wada's portraits. As much as I really like the art from the older entries, her work is the Fire Emblem platonic ideal. Her designs really do form the baseline by which I often compare other characters, even in other games. Wada has only worked on the Fire Emblem series to date and she is seriously incredible. She still does artwork for the Fire Emblem Heroes gacha and some commemorative pieces as well, all of which can be checked out on her Pixiv. Then there is the game's composer, Yuka Tsujiyoko. Tracks like “Wind across the Plains,” “Companions,” etc. have become iconic pieces within the series and that is all thanks to Tsujiyoko’s virtuosity. “Bern - A Mother’s Wish” deserved a real sound chip! As much as people hate the squeals and scratches of the hardware, she made it sound wonderful, particularly on the main theme, which to this day is my favorite rendition of such an iconic leitmotif.

Fire Emblem’s story is segmented into three different “modes,” one of which is a prologue and two of which exist as parallel timelines, each focusing on one of three central protagonists.

Lyndis, the first protagonist, acted as a model introduction for so many people into the world of Fire Emblem and strategy RPGs in general. It is comprised of ten simple maps and appropriately scaled narrative- a tight well constructed intro arc of a young woman of the plains discovering she is of royal birthright. Lyndis meets friends and foes alike who each introduce core concept of the games mechanics - the weapon triangle, siege maps, rout maps, terrain bonuses, party organization, enemy reinforcements, fog of war, etc.

Lyndis is a strong character, never a damsel in distress, neither beholden to expectations of her ethnicity nor her gender. Her journey through a war torn Caelin hints at far greater forces at work, but keeps things focused on her own personal odyssey and growth. Lyn Mode does have it’s fair share of criticism, particularly the forced tutorial aspects which has annoyed veteran players to the point that removing it has become a staple for ROM hackers. Lyn Mode is very easy too, but it is supposed to be, because it’s supposed to be an introduction to major gameplay concepts. It is a tutorial that has gone a step beyond, with a likable character arc and some of the most endearing playable units in the entire series. One of my main criticisms of the game is that Lyn ends up being less useful from a metagaming standpoint, because she is one of my favorite characters in any video game.

“The nomads of the plains do not abandon their fellow tribespeople. Eliwood and Hector are my dear friends… Their sorrow is my sorrow. Their anger is my anger.” - Lyndis in Chapter 31E/33H, Light

Then the world opens up to Eliwood’s story, the game begins a proper progression into an extensive and oftentimes challenging strategy game. Eliwood is a comparatively tame and even boring choice of protagonist compared to Lyn, sort of the picturesque shonen hero that we associate with earlier Fire Emblem. He even has the big sword to boot. Yet as the world opens up and we meet the cast, learn of the surrounding nations and their inhabitants, his story arc still maintains high quality. Eliwood mode, for better or worse, is the way we are introduced to the meat and potatoes of the game. You fight your way through sprawling maps with scores of enemy units, conveying a desperate struggle as the flames of war engulf the surrounding landscape. The political intrigue and stories of love, loss and betrayal convey great emotional weight; they serve as amazing backdrops to particularly difficult maps. The game oozes despair as armies of unfeeling humanoid killers descend on Prince Zephiel in the dead of night, or when Ostia lays under siege. The constant threat of the mercenary group The Black Fang, whom have sentenced you to death “softly, with grace.”

“In the name of the Fang, I sentence you to death. Do not blame me for your fate. It is your own doing.” - Lloyd Reed, in Chapter 23E/24H: Four-Fanged Offense

Of course the real star of the show is the game’s third protagonist, Hector, he of the blue-haired and brash Fire Emblem family. Hector Mode is considered Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade’s greatest triumph- specifically “Hector Hard Mode” (HHM) which is considerably more difficult than any of the other game modes. Hector was the proto-Ike, a gigantic presence on and off the battlefield. He feels much more magnetic than Eliwood, but their brotherhood is what serves as one of the best parts of the game’s narrative. Hector essentially abandons his post as a royal to help his friend and must deal with the consequences and his own regrets. Eliwood’s story is fully complemented and two’s stories intertwine in perfect harmony as both come to terms with the realities of the war. Hector’s path also opens up several different maps, all quite difficult; and also serves as the basis for unlocking all the hidden lore within the game. Once you have experience HHM, you really have experienced the full breadth of what this game can offer- it is an immensely satisfying and well balanced experience with a great trio of protagonists.

“Listen, Mark. You know how Eliwood is. Never wants to burden anyone else… Takes all responsibility on himself… Now, more than ever, we have to support him. Let’s go, Mark!” - Hector in Chapter 28E, Valorous Roland

Much of what we understand as the modern conception of the "SRPG" is owed to Kaga's production of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light; which on its own was produced to be a more accessible, character-driven answer to strategy games prior. Indeed, Fire Emblem throughout the years has relied on rather simple calculations for its different gameplay functions. Take the calculation in Blazing Blade for Attack Speed (which determines if you will attack twice during the fight, referred to a "doubling"):

AS = (Speed) - (Burden)
Burden = (Wt) - (Con); negative Burden values are set to 0
Wt = value of unit's equipped weapon's weight
Con = value of the given unit's constitution.

The calculation for whether or not you can "double" is as follows:

[(Unit's attack speed) − (target's attack speed)] ≥ 4

This is something that can very easily be calculated in a couple minutes just looking at a unit's stat spread and their weapon stats. Everything is simple to understand. You can tell just from looking at the Mani Katti weapon that is effective against infantry. What does that mean in the context of the game? It simply deals bonus damage; calculated as 3x the amount of damage you do (which has its own calculation.)

The best part? You don't even need to know this math in FE7. If you can double, it gives you a x2 indicator next to the might, which is calculated for you. Effective weapons will have glowing text. The weapon triangle is a relatively simple Rock Paper Scissors mechanic as well. This sort of simplicity is what makes the game’s combat intuitive for me to play even back in 2003. It has a high skill ceiling yet isn’t obtuse. The ultimate accessible strategy RPG, a direct descendant of the forefather of the genre itself.

Throughout the development of the series, Kaga noted that some people found the games too simple on a mechanical level; to this, he responded that "Well, that is an understandable response from the perspective of hardcore strategy buffs... [b]ut for Nintendo-made products, the baseline for the development is always that it be easy to play to the end, something “anyone can pick up and enjoy.” And I think that is a perfectly fine approach in its own right." Hironobu Sakaguchi, who had the very same design philosophy for Final Fantasy, would agree; and he was in fact a fan of the series himself.

I have great reverence for Final Fantasy Tactics and I think it is one of the greatest contributions to the entire corpus of strategy games. Just from playing the first few maps of Tactics I understood implicitly that this game had depth far and beyond anything produced during the SNES or GBA era of Fire Emblems. Tactics pushed the boundaries of the genre, both from a mechanical and storytelling perspective and I love the game. Yet I wouldn't recommend Tactics as an introduction to the genre to most people. Sure, it popularized the genre to people who didn't know anything about strategy RPGs prior, but I think Blazing Blade is in fact the real perfect introduction to the genre and works as a gateway into the wider world of the genre- which includes Final Fantasy Tactics in its unfiltered glory.

The units in Tactics are for the most part faceless generics, whom allow you complete freedom in how you shape you army. By contrast, every playable unit in Fire Emblem 7 has a face, a story and a unique role with stats to complement. These approaches both have merit. I love the generic soldier concept, especially in games without permadeath systems like the fantastic Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark. We have Final Fantasy Tactics to thank for that.

The strength of Blazing Blade's approach sacrifices individual unit freedom for the prospect of forming emotional bonds with the characters, whom have established backstories and personalities. I always enjoyed Serra’s love-hate relationship with Erk, even if both units were weaker and harder to train. I felt a strong connection to them as characters and had a vested interest in raising them within the army. As a kid, I simply wouldn't have been able to fully appreciate the gameplay freedom inherent in FFT’s generics in comparison versus the strong personalities of Erk and Serra. I certainly would not have felt as compelled to reset a map to save a generic, faceless unit if there was a permadeath mechanic.

The approach towards unit death in strategy games has always been traditionally one of the numbers game, especially in games that try to hew closer to realism. Julian Gollop taught the world with XCOM: UFO Defense that overconfidence invites disaster and we must learn to manage our losses- not everyone is going to make it out ok and sometimes your best soldiers have to be sacrificed to make it through the mission. Real-time strategy games are so often about throwing hordes at one another, because that is truly what war is.

Kaga took this approach with the initial games in the series because he "wanted to create a game where the player could get more emotionally invested in what’s happening." He wanted a refutation of the numbers game, and this is often highlighted by each character’s individual death quote if they are slain in battle. Any Fire Emblem player can tell you stories of the permadeath system and the psychological impetus it puts on your actions in this game. I remember running through Four-Fanged Offense in my first playthrough as a kid. Doing everything right, and I understood implicitly I had put in serious progress for my overall army's strength. All of that... just to lose my underleveled Guy to a terrifying guerilla attack from the boss. I was in tears of frustration. Then I reset the game and did it all again. I did that despite the fact I didn't even need Guy to continue on through the game. I did it because I was invested and I wanted him to be stronger and see it through to the end. I could've continued, replaced him in the army. But that wouldn't be Guy in my army. I couldn't just replace him with a identical, perhaps even stronger generic unit. He would be lost forever, and dead from a narrative standpoint. Lost as a casualty of war while the other characters pushed through to victory. I couldn't deal with that. This is something Fire Emblem really became famous for among gaming circles.

Permadeath is so contentious that the series itself changes its attitude towards it as it attempted to garner more mass appeal. Permadeath in the later entries like Three Houses is now locked behind “Classic” modes while consequences are far lighter in casual or normal gameplay difficulties. That feels like a poignant descriptor. The specter of permadeath and its affect on your gameplay is just quintessential Fire Emblem to me. There isn’t a better word to describe the experience of Fire Emblem 7 than “classic.”

"[Interviewer:] There is a scene where an important character dies along the way. What was the reason behind including this death scene?

[Tohru Narihiro:] This is a recurring theme throughout the series. The game is one with fighting, but is not just about fighting. The underlying theme of the series that we want people to feel is the foolishness and fickle nature of war and battle. This has been the continuous theme of the series."

Simply put, I don't think I would have been able to appreciate Final Fantasy Tactics as that kid back in 2003, and possibly not have forged the same relationship with strategy games (and games in general) as I did with Blazing Blade. I don't think that lessens Tactic’s impact as a seminal piece of art. I think it just speaks to why my connection to Fire Emblem 7 feels more significant.

Playing as an adult, the game hasn’t remotely lost its luster to me. I don’t even view this as a product of nostalgia- Fire Emblem 7 stands proud among its compatriots with a well designed ratio of difficulty, strong characterization, implicit depth, intuitive game design, and player expression. You can take the road of ruthless efficiency, sacrifice units if you have to, and achieve your low turn count mastery of the game. You can raise your favorite units and see them through to the end. You can do a little of both. The game is amazing regardless.

I love Fire Emblem, I love strategy RPGs and I have this game to thank for that.

The initial hour or two of Wolfsong has a promising hook- an adventure of a young woman who has rejected the traditional gender roles of her people, become a warrior and see the world. Midway through the game, however, it becomes clear this was TOO ambitious and the developer runs out of steam. This was a big disappointment to me, but I at least commend the effort- it is still offering a roughly 6 hour or so campaign for a dollar.

When it comes to something like Wolfsong, you have to stick the landing here if you want people to sit through hours of the same battle system you can find in hundreds of others. The art is rough, but there was clear effort: The custom spritework looks solid overall; and the hand-drawn art (which comprises portraits, some in-game CGs, and in-battle sprites) is inconsistent, but looks miles better than the generic stuff that comes bundled with the software. The characters themselves are endearing, and a significant reason as to why I wanted to see this whole thing through. There is the inkling, the roots, of character development for its cast that would certainly have been wonderful if the game had more time and more budget. I love Cinnacat especially, the game's "mascot" character. You can see the developer wanted to flesh him out to be more than just a cute face with a quirky personality. The same goes for many of the colorfully designed cast.

Unfortunately, much of the plot threads and stories these characters offer are left hanging. The entire world is explicitly described as "well-established" by the developer. You don't get much history, and the worldbuilding is mostly done through random lines in the dialogue. There are ton of exposition dumps, some flashbacks to tangential storylines, and references to a large and bustling world. This is supplanted by a huge overworld map remniscient of Final Fantasy VI. Yet the overworld map is largely window dressing, just like the stories I've mentioned. It is in reality a big open space with a sparse few point of interest you can actually visit- many of them only seen once, and many more just optional "dungeons" you can grind in. I cannot fault the developers for not being able to recreate Final Fantasy and its encyclopedic worldbuilding here. There is always the issue of budget and time. However, if you're looking for depth in this area, there is sadly none. Considering this game most likely won't have a sequel (despite some dialogue lines to the contrary), anything you would want further explanation for is mostly left to your imagination.

There is always the issue of budgetary limitations when you are trying to make a game look good and play well. Sadly, in Wolfsong's case, those limitations start to unravel the experience by the midpoint of the game. When there is no real weight to the story and the games story progresses at a breakneck pace, in the end, all that is left to rely on is the combat. There is no other gameplay element- no minigames or anything of the sort. Just stock standard RPGmaker gameplay. To be brutally honest, it isn't good. I have talked at length about how games like Theia and Ara Fell worked to incorporate more player expression into the core battle system of RPG Maker, but none of that is present here. There are so many glaring balance issues that make the progression badly paced. There is the inkling of potentially cool ideas, but as mentioned, it is mostly boilerplate RPG Maker combat. With that territory comes a lot of issues, especially when Hyptosis doesn't devote any time to addressing common pitfalls for games made with the software.

Like most RPG Maker titles, encounters are contained within roaming enemy sprites on a given map- most can be bypassed completely, though certain encounters are forced if you want to open a chest or pass to a new area. Upon leaving the current area, enemies automatically respawn. This allows you to grind as much as you want. This approach is pretty good from a design standpoint, allowing you to traverse an area with minimal encounters if needed or grind as much as you want. However, the implementation in Wolfsong is flawed. Oftentimes, there will be a cluster of enemies impeding your path, forcing you into multiple encounters. Unlike in Theia, enemies remain on the overworld map if you run from the encounter, which means you can easily just walk right into them. In the earlygame, this isn't so much of an issue, as the entire first 3 hours of the game are trivial.

Yet, the game soon falls into the cardinal sin of indie JRPGS wherein there is an unnatural difficulty spike midway through the game. Everything hits way harder and is much harder to kill in turn. It is RNG-based who gets targeted due to the lack of an "aggro" mechanic. At this point, nearly every enemy encounter is comprised of two giant tanky enemies who can heal themselves for several hundred a turn, surrounded by less bulky enemies who hit really, REALLY hard. Essentially, this formula never changes because each enemy encounter is static. I believe Hyptosis may have ran out of ideas at this juncture, so they copy-paste the same encounter to every enemy in a given area. This becomes a mind-numblingly boring slog that you are forced to go through because of forced encounters or high density enemy placement. You can run away, but it does not matter if the enemy is blocking your path to progressing the game. Because every encounter is the same, the battles NEVER change. And because of how inflated the enemy stats are, you must complete the same tedious actions everytime. This continues right up until the final boss fight.

It really isn't difficult, at least not in an organic fashion. It is just very tedious. Your main character can replenish the entire team's MP for no cost, so you just do that at the start of every turn, have your casters do their most damaging AoE skill, have your healer heal, repeat ad nauseum. This is how every single encounter goes from the mid to endgame.

The only time this formula switches is when you are forced to use a party without your main character. Yet this specific sequence in the game is where I came closest to just giving up and uninstalling. All you have to do is cast a certain characters' skill that makes your entire team dodge and counter everything, have the enemy kill themselves trying to hit you, use a MP replenishing skill ONLY this character has, rinse repeat ad nauseum.

You do this same song and dance until you are told the final battle has come, do the very same thing to kill the final boss, and the game finishes with some text on the screen and some setup for a potential sequel that will most likely never be realized. In the end, I was just disappointed there wasn't more to the game. For its asking price, I am appreciative of the effort that went into realizing Wolfsong. But it was clear that everything this developer wanted to do, wanted to set up, was held back by the resources they had. Beneath the charm and nostalgia for old-school SNES it wants to evoke, is a poorly balanced, repetitive mess that does nothing to fix core issues with the "template" provided by RPG Maker.

(This review was adapted from a Steam review I posted, with minor edits to make it flow better)

Hironobu Sakaguchi, one of the creative minds behind the Final Fantasy series, said in a [2016 interview with Creative Village](https://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/June_24,2016-_Creative_Village_Interview_with_Hironobu_Sakaguchi.html) that "[t]he goal I want to clear is important, but the most important thing in creating a game is to make the user happy.... The best thing is for people to enjoy playing the game."

The pièce de résistance of RPG Maker games modeled after Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger, Theia: The Crimson Eclipse is a high-quality remix of classic RPGs. While it reuses music and assets from several commercial games (Breath of Fire, Metal Slug,* Xenoblade, Final Fantasy itself, etc.), it also features charming hand-drawn art and a completely original story and cast of characters. The herculean effort it must have taken to produce the amount of content the game offers alone makes it notable, but I highly recommend Theia because I believe it is a success story; one about developing games that you want people to enjoy completely irrespective of things like profit motives.

Theia is an entirely free full-length RPG with comprehensive supporting lore; which alone is actually quite atypical of RPG Maker titles, as they are traditionally quite short to make up for lack of ideas or budget. This is in turn supplanted by hours of extra content; in addition to a robust set of side quests, there are multiple collect-a-thon mechanics artfully incorporated into the game. The game rewards progression through this content in a satisfying manner; and most importantly, exploration isn't punished as this game does not have a random encounter system.

Theia is set in a post-energy crisis world wherein the remaining world powers reverted to feudalism and banned technology for all but the upper echelons of government and nobility. The main character, Seth Sheridan, feels like a composite of several different 90's anime and JRPG protagonists, but he is supplanted by a strong cast of supporting characters. I grew to love the camraderie Seth develops with his party members, because things never felt one-dimensional. This is exemplified by the game's camping system, where you can have optional conversations with whoever is in your party and get some flavor lore (as well as specific rewards for doing so).

Seth is thrust into your typical story of political intrigue, betrayal, and a world-ending threat based on the presence of a potential new energy source. The story has some basic critiques of class society and the real-world energy crisis embedded within, but they're sadly kind of just incidental to the "save the world" plot. That wasn't really important to me though. What was important to me was things like Seth's old commanding officer, who feels inadequate because Seth returned out of nowhere to high regard and accolades. Or a spritely young soldier who is perceived as only getting her position through nepotism. Rudra, a wolf-man who lost his entire family and becomes a moral pillar for the conflicted Seth. There are a lot of compelling stories within Theia, and even the weaker-written characters have some satisfying lore. These character-driven moments help keep the player compelled as they go through the major story beats of the overarching plot. I don't want to harp too much on that central story; cause there are plenty of emotional moments there too, and its overall achieving what it sets out to do, even if there is a lot of tonal inconsistencies between chapters.

As for the gameplay itself, the lack of random encounters and variable difficulty settings really elevates this game from something that could be extremely repetitive and frustrating to something where you can invest just the level of commitment you want to a JRPG. As much as I have been enjoying Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, or Coromon, or any JRPG I've been playing lately; I have to give this one to the RPG Maker guys; their encounter system is vastly superior to what we often settle for in the genre.

The combat itself is worth discussing as it also feels similarly ambitious. It utilizes a Final Fantasy ATB system, but the game makes significant efforts to reward player expression through its gear upgrade systems, as well as additional combat mechanics such as the Mastery meter. The high degree of customizability helps you tailor the generic combat experience towards the win condition you desire. It is far more limited in its scope than a Final Fantasy X skill tree, but it is there and it was clearly a major focus for the developer. The game wants you to have fun with it, rather than just play by its rules and succeed the way it wants you to. The trade-off is there is a significant amount of undocumented complexity to the games system, and because this is a relatively unknown RPG Maker title you will have to basically figure out a lot of it by yourself.

I think Theia can sometimes the victim of its own over-ambition as it tries to do so many things at once. There are several scripted events that can only be likened to "mini-games" and they were by far the most frustrating aspect of the game for me. Again, it is likely a technical marvel that he got them to exist in the first place, but they ultimately serve to stop a lot of the momentum the game has built up to that point. Luckily, the game pivots right back on track after these sequences. I think for any bloat or overcomplication present in Theia's gameplay, I still prefer it to something that just blindly emulates the greats before it with no thought to creating any sort of unique identity. It is an ambitious game that is more than the sum of its parts.

While I'm sure from the outside looking in this would appear to be a generic JRPG using sprites from famous games, I implore people to give it a shot and try it for themselves. Even if you find it be trapped squarely within the limitations of that which it is trying to emulate, try and think of the cultural significance of a game of this scale being made entirely for free and for the love of the craft. We don't need to be beholden to boardroom execs to have good, fun games. Theia is testament to the unlimited potential of game development as its made accessible, and as such is a triumph of both RPG Maker development and as part of a corpus of freeware (Daniel Remar's Iji, Studio Pixel's Cave Story, Kikiyama's Yume Nikki, etc.) that posit that we can make games for fun and enjoyment, rather than just to sell as a product.

Sonic GT may be a dream come true for fans, but I was filtered by the unwieldly movement. The mainline 3D Sonic titles utilized linearity to prevent players from careening into obstacles and falling off edges, which helped maintain a decent pace of progress. However, in Sonic GT, the freeform movement can easily disorient players, causing them to run off cliffs or into walls due to difficulty controlling Sonic while processing their surroundings simultaneously. In particular, Sonic's wall jump makes collision with the level geometry result in violent camera movements. I am going to pass up on this one based on the movement alone.

I do like how they gave Sonic a nasally Bostonian accent in this one.

After Street Fighter 2's release in 1991, both the arcade and home consoles would see a flood of imitators hit the market. Alpha Denshi (later ADK) would bring us the World Heroes series, Konami had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters.... there was Body Blows, Power Move, Kaiser Knuckle, the list could go on forever. Most of these games were trash. When the dust finally settled, only one of them really stands out to me as worth revisiting. That honor goes to the Data East classic Fighter's History Dynamite, also known as Karnov's Revenge. Karnov's sets a golden standard for kusoge; a ridiculously broken game that remains entertaining by sheer spectacle. Objectively, we know this game is horrible but it doesn't matter when you can make Karnov turn into a balloon and spit fire. Nothing in Street Fighter 2 ever came close to the sheer exhilaration of Clown telling me to "pick a card." Matlok anti-airing by thrusting his entire body upwards in a strange leap-frog manuever. Marstorious setting up inescapable throws from full screen by sliding towards you with a blood-curdling screen. It is pure kino. No imitator will ever do it like Karnov did, and that is a good and bad thing at the same time.