Octopath Traveler’s battle music has all of the zest you could want, brimming with quick drumbeats and arpeggiated chords. One simple trick ties together the game’s story and boss battles, creating amazing musical cues that make each new encounter even more exciting.
Octopath Traveler assigns each character an…
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is pretty long name for a game with a straightforward pitch: what if XCOM but with animorphs? While it’s based off of a pen and paper role-playing game popular in Sweden during the 80s, developer The Bearded Ladies have made it their own by injecting the inspiration’s DNA into a…
I sat down with Anthem, BioWare’s upcoming shared-world third-person shooter, for 30 minutes today. I came away surprised at just how good it feels to move around in the game’s fantasy sci-fi world. Flying through its gorgeous environments on my way to kill some bad guys, fix an ancient relic, or take out a giant…
Settling a bet with Rock, Paper, Scissors is nice but it’s even better when you can read the future. In Fortune 499, you use fortune-telling cards to predict your opponent’s move and win battles against the demons attacking the human resources department. Fun combat and a unique twist on magical bureaucracy make it a…
In the mid-nineties, at the approach of the millennium, the creators of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest combined their considerable talents in the hopes of creating the ultimate Japanese role-playing game. What resulted was Chrono Trigger, considered not only one of the best games of the era but also one of the…
I love video game item shops. Even when I can’t afford the curios on display it’s always fun to examine them, read the flavor text, and plan a wishlist of future acquisitions. Item shops also often act as respites from a long and tiring video game journey. In the PC game Roulette Knight, though, they’re where you go…
Every console has had amazing RPGs.
The Witcher 3 is a sprawling single-player RPG with so much to do it can be overwhelming. The game world is huge. Points of interest litter the map. Dialogue trees mean you can play through pivotal scenes in different ways. I can think of far worse games to be stuck on a desert island with for the rest of my life.…
Long Gone Days is an RPG (still in Early Access) set in a modern-day war, and is as much about the relationships you form with your colleagues as it is the actual combat.
Tabletop role-playing game Pathfinder recently announced its second edition ten years after Paizo published its first. “We can do a much better job now than we did 10 years ago,” Paizo said. Paizo hopes to make the Core Rulebook more approachable, streamline combat and include more art. Playtesting begins August 2nd.
Yesterday one of the regular members of my Dungeons & Dragons group had to cancel, so the rest of us decided to roll some new characters for a one-off campaign. Shortly before our gathering, one of them texted to ask if it was alright if we all played as bards. “We’ll be like a traveling pop punk band!” they said. As…
Slay the Spire, a roguelike where you try to deckbuild your way out of brutal dungeons, went into Early Access on Steam last November and has since been slowly winning over unsuspecting players who go into it with low expectations. I am one of those recent converts.
Mass Effect: Andromeda was met with disappointment, and, in the worst parts of the internet, harassment campaigns. The game had Mass Effect in the title but it didn’t quite feel one. But Mass Effect: Andromeda deserves to be remembered as more than just another hyped AAA game that failed to meet fan expectations and…
Rxcovery is an RPG about a hospital patient with only 30 minutes left on life support. Players explore a hospital full of monsters in order to raise enough money to save their character’s life. It’s a tense combination of turn-based combat and maze-like level design and this week’s Indie Pick.
Elex is a terribly constructed video game full of glitches, lag, eye-sores, and confusing mechanics. I would not recommend most people go through the pain of playing this RPG. And yet, despite all of this, I am obsessed with Elex. I can’t stop playing it. In a year of incredible releases, Elex manages to be one of…
Child of Light is a beautiful game and a mesmerizing experience that crafts a perfect fusion between RPGs and platforming. In many ways, it encapsulates what I love most about JRPGs, which are wondrous worlds with engrossing mechanics and a charming cast.
Beamdog, a studio made up of many ex-Bioware developers, are releasing an “enhanced” version of classic 2002 RPG Neverwinter Nights.
After dabbling with ocean exploration and a traversable overworld in the previous two entries, Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth takes Atlus’ first-person dungeon crawler back to its roots. It’s five player-created characters adventuring their asses off.
In 2001, after a mere nine issues ending with an unresolved cliffhanger, popular fantasy comic series Battle Chasers was put on hold so creator Joe Madureira could pursue game development. If recently-released turn-based RPG Battle Chasers: Nightwar is any indication, it was a good move.
