I am Setsuna places you in the role of Endir, a masked mercenary who finds himself accompanying Setsuna, a girl on a pilgrimage whom he was originally hired to kill.. In their world of eternal winter and constant snow, you see, a girl possessed of outstanding magical energy must be sacrificed every decade in order to quell the tide of monsters. As you might imagine, Endir and Setsuna wind up rolling with a ragtag band of would-be guardians, trekking through dungeons and slaying monsters by the caveful. This could just as easily describe nearly any 16-bit JRPG, so where does Chrono Trigger fit in?

Well, one of Chrono Trigger’s defining features was its battle system, in which two or three characters could combine their standard Techs into more powerful Combo Techs; for example, “Delta Force” requires combined use of lightning, fire, and ice magic to conjure an omni-elemental blast. I am Setsuna cribs this system and then overcomplicates it. Once a character’s ATB gauge has filled, meaning they’re ready to act, they begin to fill an SP gauge until an action is taken. Each character can store up to three points of SP, which can then be expended to use a Tech in “Momentum mode”, granting additional effects or increased power. By itself, I actually think this is a pretty brilliant addition; a simple system that offers satisfying risk-versus-reward decision making. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stay so simple.

To start with, your characters don’t learn Techs, but instead equip stones known as “Spritnite” to gain access to them. Each combatant can only equip a limited number of Spritnite, although that limit increases both by leveling up and equipping talismans. You’ll quickly find, however, that you have far more Spritnite for each character than they have room for. Here begins a balancing act between:

1. Choosing Techs you actually want to use
2. Choosing Techs that allow for Combo Techs you actually want to use
3. Choosing Techs without prohibitively high MP costs
4. Leaving enough slots open for support Spritnite, which grant passive effects

Knowing which Techs to use can be a pain, because the descriptions give little suggestion of the relative power of each one. Most Techs are listed as affecting “all enemies (or allies) near the target,” but there’s no indication of how far it actually extends. If you want to know what effects Momentum mode adds to each Tech, you’ll need to drill into the extended descriptions found in the in-game “Snow Chronicles” journal. Then you have to factor in that each Tech is a component in at least two or three Combo Techs, and those decisions depend on which of the game’s seven characters you’re using in your party of three.

As if that weren’t enough, each party member’s equipped talisman grants the possibility of permanently adding “fluxes” to their Spritnite any time they trigger Momentum mode for a Tech. These fluxes range in effect from less MP consumption, to higher damage, to greater SP accumulation, and so on. Although the idea of gradually customizing Techs in this way sounds great, it doesn’t quite pan out. Many encounters can be ended before there’s even a chance to use Momentum mode, and many Techs cost so much MP that it’s unlikely you’ll ever use them in standard encounters, making the entire flux mechanic feel woefully tacked-on.

My other issue lies with the acquisition of the Spritnite themselves. The stones don’t cost money, but require certain combinations of enemy loot to be sold in varying quantities. Again, an idea I like in theory! The problem is, enemies drop different loot depending on how they’re killed, and there are a lot of different drops for each foe. Using a fire-elemental attack to land the finishing blow offers different loot than a water-elemental attack, there’s loot specifically for Momentum mode kills, or Combo Tech kills… and so on. In fact, each enemy type can have as many as twelve potential drops. The game blessedly takes into account the possibility of kills that satisfy more than one condition, allowing you to obtain several pieces of loot from a single foe, but it doesn’t keep this mechanic from feeling bloated. Several of my characters ended the game with missing Techs that were available much earlier, simply because I never got the right kills on the right foes.

Honestly, I spent most of my time with I am Setsuna feeling like I had somehow broken the combat system. I ignored so many of the Techs, and so rarely had cause to change my party, that I can’t imagine I played the game the “right way.” If there’s a way to play that is more “correct,” I have no idea what that way is, nor how one would be expected to know it. Of all the things lifted from Chrono Trigger, the most important has been neglected: elegance. I am Setsuna feels devoted less to being classic and more to being archaic. The obtuse menu design makes inventory management a hassle, too much information is sequestered away in the Snow Chronicles, and the game can only be saved on the world map or at save points, with no retry feature for battles – a fact that can really sting when the difficulty spikes, in that delightfully obnoxious old-school way.

In spite of its overwrought systems, I am Setsuna quickly took hold of me. Sure, the plot’s nothing out of the ordinary if you’ve been round the JRPG block before, but there’s a satisfying air of mystery that pulls it all together. The pacing is as brisk as the weather, with the game clocking in around the 20 hour mark (although oddly enough, there’s no in-game timer). Contrary to the considerable Chrono Trigger influence elsewhere, the “protect a girl on a pilgrimage” setup mirrors Final Fantasy X’s in some noticeable ways, and that includes the part where most of the side content is locked away until you get an airship in the third act. I’m an outspoken fan of this brand of pacing and linearity in JRPGs, but if you’re the sort who needs a sprawling world to sink dozens of hours into, I am Setsuna is definitely not your huckleberry.

Small though the world may be, it’s beautifully realized. There’s a nigh-painterly flair to the vistas, accompanied by some appropriately melancholic melodies. Once I hit a stride with the combat, I could feel my frustrations melt away as I soaked in the charm of I am Setsuna’s devastatingly somber ambience. The wintry setting fits perfectly, and though it does make for a lack of visual variety, the game flies by fast enough that this never bothered me. Everything feels coherent in a way most video game worlds fail to achieve. There’s no neatly-wrapped happy ending; the atmosphere remains downtrodden and enigmatic through the bitter end, and I can’t help but love it for that.

I Am Setsuna is a commitment to everything you love about SNES-era JRPGs, and to everything you hate about them too. It’s a love letter to Chrono Trigger given polygonal flesh. It’s a hot mess of a game with too many ideas for its own good. On one of the several unoccupied islands accessible only by airship, there is a portal to a 16-bit village where the game devs live as character sprites. They all have little messages for you, ranging from the standard “Thank you very much for buying this game,” to more personal messages like “The composer felt so sorrowful, he cried while writing the music…” But one of these messages stood out to me above all others: “The more you try to make something perfect, the less perfect it becomes. This game definitely isn’t perfect… but it’s definitely not bad, either!”

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Indeed, TMS#FE is exactly as ludicrous as the name would imply. Not content to settle for an SMT sundae with FE sauce, Nintendo and Atlus decided that throwing in a healthy dose of Japanese idol culture would be the perfect cherry on top. The result is a remarkably stylish, completely absurd JRPG about ghosts who sustain themselves on the soul-energy of those in the entertainment industry. Also those ghosts are Fire Emblem characters. Sure, I’m on board so far.

Our hero – a dense teen boy named Itsuki Aoi – finds himself almost immediately haunted by a Mirage, which he quickly purifies with his Performa and then uses as a Carnage to kill some other, more wicked Mirages. Or in layman’s terms: Itsuki uses his latent performative abilities as means to turn a spectral Chrom (of Fire Emblem: Awakening fame) into a cool sword, and then kill ghosts with it. Before long, Itsuki finds himself surrounded by other Mirage Masters – that is to say, teens who can turn FE characters into weapons – and tasked with saving Tokyo from the besieging Mirages. Oh, and rising to idol stardom in the process, because that makes you better at fighting of course!

Even if you don’t find the ridiculous premise as charming as I do, there’s a remarkably deep game behind it all. The turn-based battles, set in packed arenas pumping with kickin’ tunes, differentiate themselves from the pack through a mechanic known as Session Attacks. Essentially, any skill that hits a foe’s weakness will trigger other members of your party to press the advantage with their own attacks, completely free of charge. After a certain point in the game, this includes even characters outside the active battle party. As if that wasn’t enough, you can eventually extend these Sessions even further through overpowered-but-infrequent Duo Arts. The further you progress, the more combat starts to look like a complete bed of chaos. However, there is order here, and the game makes absolutely sure you know it. TMS#FE employs a slow, steady drip of battle mechanics; every time you feel like you’re starting to reach the limits of what’s possible, some new game-changer is introduced. For instance, I didn’t obtain my first Duo Art until over thirty hours in. Every JRPG worth its salt gives consideration to the progression of power – the player should not only become stronger over time, but feel that increase intrinsically. TMS#FE not only displays a sound grasp of this concept, but executes on it flawlessly.

In keeping with that slow-drip methodology, character abilities are learned quite gradually as well. Each weapon (sorry, Carnage), forged with enemy loot, has four skills to offer. These are learned one at a time by accruing Mastery points through battle. At least, this is true until you gain the ability to reforge mastered weapons, adding a fifth learnable skill to each one. Character stats are increased through standard leveling, but each Mirage Master also has a Stage Rank that will increase via combat, unlocking both passive Radiant Skills and sidequests that offer powerful combat techniques as rewards. TMS#FE bears the sign of any good JRPG: it has almost as much content as it does proper nouns.

Be warned though: this is a Shin Megami Tensei game at heart, which means you should expect some resistance. Although far more forgiving than most SMT games, you will still absolutely get wrecked if you just try to mash the Attack command. Don’t expect to shoot through the Idolasphere dungeons in one go, either – you’ll likely find yourself warping out regularly, whether to heal or forge new Carnages. Personally, I don’t mind this structure; each area has its own puzzle gimmicks to keep things from getting stale, as well as convenient teleporters interspersed throughout. Still, it runs counter to most modern RPG design, so your mileage may vary.

Of course, TMS#FE shares another trait with its demonic cousin series: it’s stylish as all get-out. Barring some occasional odd-looking facial animation, the entire game is absolutely gorgeous. Color and vibrancy is the order of the day in Atlus’ vision of Tokyo. From Shibuya streets to Idolasphere depths, submenu screens to battle arenas, everything pops. Heck, the loading screen when entering combat is a Jumbotron-esque display of your party, all suited up for scufflin’. The music keeps pace with the visuals, offering up plenty of catchy numbers, and of course a few J-pop performances as well. I do wish they’d gone a bit wackier with the soundtrack, as it feels almost tame for a game like this, but what’s there doesn’t fail to impress.

Unfortunately, the plot and its characters never manage to be quite as interesting as the bizarro pop-idol window dressing. What’s here instead is a pretty standard “plucky teens save the world” situation, only this time the teens are making pop hits and TV shows on the side. The cast comprises pretty one-dimensional anime archetypes, running the gamut from “creepy otaku,” to “bull-headed hero wannabe,” to “rich boy with empathy problems.” Their personal sidequests attempt to shake out a little personality, but the dialogue (voiced only in Japanese) rarely manages to offer more than some dumb laughs. I don’t think that’s necessarily bad – in fact, one quest in which Itsuki offers friendly advice on doing food reviews had me quite amused – but it is a little disappointing. After all, these are characters you’ll be spending fifty-odd hours with.

Regardless, with its hyper-colorful quasi-Persona aesthetic and gratuitous Fire Emblem fanservice (it does the little fanfare for level ups!), Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE seems like a perfect entry point to Shin Megami Tensei – a franchise often talked up as being impenetrable. But its greatest accomplishment is that, even for a veteran of both SMT and FE such as myself, what’s here is so much more than just fanservice. It is uniquely its own game, and a master class at that.

The post Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Review appeared first on Gamesline.

I’d like to start off by saying that TMNT looks fine. Its art is apparently based on that of the original comics, and it shows. Although the game suffers from uninspired level design and a dearth of enemy types, it’s at least got some style to it. That said, the game got hitchy during in-game cutscenes even on Medium settings, despite my PC far exceeding the recommended system specs. This was noticeable as early as the game’s optional (and fairly unhelpful) tutorial sequence. Not a great sign.

The game’s first level finds the Turtles navigating a small portion of Manhattan in an attempt to… I dunno, fight the Foot clan, I guess. There’s not a lot of time wasted on narrative here, nor on instruction. There’s an Eagle Vision-esque mechanic called “T-Glass” in which your objectives are highlighted, but only when the game decides you’re worthy of having an objective. You see, the general level structure of TMNT is like so: Your Turtles wander around the level until a pop-up tells you to “Find the enemies!” or “Defuse four bombs!” or what have you. Then, you activate T-Glass and pan the camera around until something gets highlighted. After you take care of your menial task, a little meter fills up to show you how close you are to being able to access the boss. There are no real consequences for failing an objective, either – the meter just doesn’t fill up. Either way, you end up wandering around for another 45 seconds until an objective pops up again.

That’s right, this so-called character action game doesn’t have linear, structured levels, but instead opts for semi-open world areas with very little to actually do. Almost all of the game’s nine levels follow this setup, and you can feel it – every one of them feels like a Sisyphean assault on the senses. The combat feels less “character action” and more “MMORPG,” as you activate each Turtle’s four special attacks, only to wait for their cooldowns to end so you can do it all again. Although you can switch which Turtle you’re playing as on the fly, there’s little differentiation between them, with the game’s meager, Dynasty Warriors-esque combos. Mutants in Manhattan offers dozens of unlockable special attacks to replace the four each special boy starts with, but there’s hardly reason to bother. The game is too short and the attacks are too interchangeable for customization to make a difference. Same goes for the equippable charms, which feature simplistic crafting mechanics that I finished the game without ever touching.

Beating TMNT, by the way, takes maybe five hours max. This is unmistakably a blessing – a boon bestowed by Platinum that says, “We know, poor soul. We know.” Granted, it doesn’t make up for the fact that two of the levels – again, this is out of nine – are set in the exact same place. Enemy encounters are altered slightly between the two, but the only real difference is which boss you fight. Of course, every boss fight in TMNT plays out the same: mash out your specials, get knocked out, let one of your AI-controlled brothers pick you back up, repeat. This is made particularly heinous by the fact that every boss has seven health bars – except Wingnut, who gets a whopping fourteen. Yeah, Wingnut. Not even Shredder or Krang break the mold.

In fact, every combat encounter feels like that. Wise man say, “It’s about the Turtles you don’t play.” This is absolutely true, because your big bad teen bros’ AI will seek out and kill many enemies before you’re even aware they exist. Or rather, this is the case early on, when most enemies fall in one or two combos. Towards the game’s unsatisfying end, every brawl feels straight up constipated, a mind-numbing three-second synth loop blaring in the background as you and your three beautiful reptile boys beat helplessly against a bunch of big dudes made out of rocks.

Besides “Foot clan lackey with no HP” and “big stone man with too much HP,” there’s also such lovable enemy types as “Krang UFO that inflicts wildly annoying status effects” and “Foot clan lackey with a sword who will parry almost every normal attack.” The key to beating each of TMNT’s relatively few varieties of bad boy is the same: spam those special attacks, baby. Seriously. There’s a dodge mechanic that lets you hop on an enemy’s back if timed perfectly, but all you can do from there is mash out low-damage punches. Avoiding damage isn’t worth it anyway, since the other Turtles can (and will) revive you quite quickly. Supposedly, a fallen Turtle can stuff their face with some greasy pies in the “Pizza Room” to recover in the event that they don’t get helped up, but this mechanic seems to be completely broken. Most of the time, the game would show me the Pizza Room for a couple seconds and then hit me with a continue screen. In one boss battle, however, it did seem to work as intended… sort of. The game tells you to mash a button in order to slide some pizza down that gullet, but if you do this, your big dumb boy will just burn his mouth and slow the entire process down. Leave the buttons alone, and your HP refills quite rapidly. Brilliant.

At no point playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan did I have fun. Well, unless you count when I discovered an infinite-jumping glitch in one of the levels. That made me chuckle. But mostly, my time with this game was spent feeling frustrated, exhausted, or just outright mad. I can’t think of a single good thing to say about it. Before I made the mistake of tinkering with the broken machine that is Mutants in Manhattan, I had an indifference to the TMNT brand, but that has since been replaced with revilement. During the game’s ending, after an unbelievably anti-climactic final showdown with Shredder, there is a cutscene in which the Turtles appear for a moment – one beautiful, shining moment! – to have perished in an explosion. I wish I had turned the game off, right then and there. The Turtles are dead to me.

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Although nothing has been formally announced, Urquhart has said that crowdfunding is a likely option for the sequel to 2015’s Kickstarter success story, claiming “people would support us again, because they trust us.”

The original Pillars brought in close to $4 million through Kickstarter – almost quadruple its funding goal. It holds a score of 89 on Metacritic, making it one of 2015’s most acclaimed RPGs.

I never had the chance to spend much time with Pillars of Eternity, but as a role-playing fan, I’m always excited to hear about new RPGs doing well. It’s refreshing to see a CRPG using a unique setting and ruleset too, rather than Dungeons & Dragons-based games.

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Kimishima cites the commercial failure of the 1993 masterpiece of cinema Super Mario Bros. as the primary reason they’re opting not to try live-action movies this time.

Although he makes no mention of which Nintendo properties we’ll be seeing on the silver screen, a Legend of Zelda film seems like a likely candidate to me, especially given what we know about Nintendo’s upcoming E3 presence.

The post Nintendo Feature Films Are On The Way appeared first on Gamesline.

Much like its predecessor, Bravely Second is a turn-based RPG with a twist; your characters can take an advance on future turns with the Brave command, allowing them to act several times in one round. However, this leaves them unable to act until they recuperate their Brave Points, or BP. Alternatively, they can defend with the Default command and save up BP to use later. This deceptively simple system provides a great foundation for some fun and creative fights, especially when you consider that your enemies are bound by this same system.

Though the core mechanics have gone unchanged, there are some new job classes to help spice things up. Some of these seem a little bland – Bishop, for example, is kind of just a modified White Mage – while some are absolutely bonkers. Charioteer is a personal favorite, allowing characters to equip additional weapons in place of armor. Job classes from the first game are still available as well, obtained through sidequests (which the game mercifully points out on the map) in which you must take up arms against one of the first game’s returning job-masters while siding with another. Although you only acquire the jobs of those you choose to fight, the other half are eventually obtainable as well.

Honestly though, calling them “sidequests” seems a little disingenuous. Bravely Second all but requires you to jump through their hoops, going so far as to show a tutorial pop-up noting that you’ll likely not be leveling up enough to progress the story without them. I wouldn’t mind this so much if the quests felt even tangentially important, but despite efforts to contextualize them with “ambiguous moral choices,” they fall flat. Your choices never have any genuine consequences, but are often accompanied by brutally steep mountains of dialogue with characters unimportant to the already-thin story. The so-called sidequests are supposed to make the player feel stronger, but they only ever left me exhausted.

The old job-masters aren’t the only thing returning from Default either. Many of the towns and dungeons are carbon-copies, and the same goes for enemies. Sure, Second does take place only two years later, it makes sense that the world of Luxendarc hasn’t changed much, but the first game didn’t even have enough content to fill itself out! In what almost feels like a direct insult, two of the three protagonists Second begins with pull a heel turn within the first hour, then get replaced by returning heroes Tiz and Edea.

Rounding out the cast are leading-man Yew Geneolgia and the Moon-hailing “Ba’al Buster” Magnolia Arch. Do you get it? His name is Yew, as in you, the player! Ba’al is pronounced ‘ball,’ like a testicle! It’s funny! I hope you think it’s funny, because Bravely Second really wants you to think that it’s funny. It wants it so much, in fact, that pesky things like plot and characterization are thrown out the window. The writing is some of the most absolute groan-worthy garbage in recent memory – and there’s a lot of it. Cutscenes come far too often and advance the plot far too little. Most of the time they’re devoted to Yew shoehorning the word ‘gravy’ into idioms, or Edea jabbering endlessly about food and/or swordsmanship.

To its credit, Bravely Second’s monkey cheese writing is at least voice-acted with aplomb. Of course, that just made me feel worse about mashing A through most of the dialogue. I wish that the game would take itself as seriously as it takes its jokes and their delivery. After all, what impetus is there to press on in an RPG with so little pathos, so little gravitas to what few plot developments do occasionally trickle into the well of absurdity, so little respect for the player and their time? Perhaps a short-form game could sustain itself in such a way, but to ask for dozens of hours supping this foul stuff as you trek through familiar land with familiar faces – it just seems absurd.

Then again, maybe it’s not so absurd. After all, Bravely Default was about nothing more than lighting the four crystals, at least until it decided to throw a wrench into things over halfway through. Bravely Second’s story beats aren’t identical, but their structure may as well be. “Let’s save the Pope” might be a proper propelling force for Yew and co., but there’s so little flavor or flair introduced until well past the point of caring. Presentation and mechanical grace can only carry an RPG so far, and Bravely Second seems unwilling to acknowledge it.

There are people this game is made for, and for them it’s been made very well. If you were thinking of replaying Bravely Default, or if you never played it but wanted to, or if you went somehow unperturbed by its abysmal second half, check this game out. The battle system is solid, the boss fights are cleverly fun affairs, and there’s certainly a lot of time to be spent in Luxendarc. But if, like me, the first game left you weary and wanting for something with a bit more substance, then I just can’t let myself recommend Bravely Second.

The post Bravely Second: End Layer Review appeared first on Gamesline.

It may only be April, but I would bet money that Dodge Roll Games’ first release has the best title screen of 2016. Between gorgeous pixel art and a jaw-dropping theme song by doseone, Enter the Gungeon makes one hell of a first impression. The first time I booted up the game, I spent several minutes just soaking it in.

The excellent presentation doesn’t end there. Colorful, cutesy, chunky pixels are put to good use in both the playable characters’ sprites and the dreadful Gundead – yes, that’s really what they’re called – you’re tasked with taking down. Meanwhile, the Gungeon’s five chambers themselves are given a darker, surprisingly atmospheric treatment, each with its own distinct aesthetic. doseone’s background tracks skillfully tread the line between grim dirge and sick beat, keeping you equal parts amped and terrified to see what lies ahead.

The game offers four characters to traverse the Gungeon with, each with a different starting loadout of guns, usable items, and passive upgrades. There’s an additional fifth character playable only by P2 in the local-only co-op mode, with a suitably co-op-specific loadout. Of course, you’ll also come across a multitude of chests, shops, and other ways to bolster your tiny adventurer as they seek out the legendary Gun That Can Kill the Past. Like most modern roguelikes, Enter the Gungeon features a way to make progress even after character permadeath, in the form of Hegemony Credits – a currency that carries over between runs, slowly earned from killing the bosses that lurk at the end of each chamber. These can then be traded to a duo of shopkeepers (whom you must first rescue from a cell in Chamber Two) for weapon and item unlocks. If you have the wherewithal to fulfill some difficult requests for a friendly repairman, you’ll even be able to begin from deeper chambers of the Gungeon.

As you might expect from a developer called Dodge Roll Games, this game has a dodge roll in it. Indeed, one of the most satisfying aspects of the Gungeon’s shootouts is the on-the-fly decision-making about whether to commit to a roll – potentially leaving you vulnerable when your character comes back to their feet – or to attempt to stay calm enough to simply weave between bullets. To complicate matters, you begin every chamber with two (or more) “blanks” – essentially, smart bombs that clear the screen of bullets and blow your Gundead foes outward. “Do I use my blanks now to preserve my health, or do I save them for the boss? Will I even make it to the boss if I don’t use them now?” Be prepared to answer questions like these at a moment’s notice if you dare to Enter the Gungeon.

In almost every respect, Enter the Gungeon seems to know what it’s doing. Enemy designs are distinct, making the art of memorizing which enemy fires which bullet pattern a breeze. The bullets themselves never fail to stand out from the environment, either, which is an immeasurable boon in a self-styled “bullet hell dungeon crawler.” Interactable objects outline themselves in white when your character is within interaction range, so you’re never left wondering whether you’re actually close enough to flip over that table for cover. The minimap fades out until the room is clear of enemies, limiting unnecessary distractions. Several rooms have fast-travel teleporters that can be accessed from anywhere in the chamber, limiting backtracking. Accessing your gun quick-switch menu slows time to a crawl, limiting accidental “I was trying to pick the right gun” deaths. There’s even a speedrun mode, if you’re into that kind of thing. From toe to tip, Enter the Gungeon is chock-full of smart design.

All is not as golden as the Gun That Can Kill the Past, unfortunately. In fact, it’s Enter the Gungeon’s otherwise-tight bullet hell design that makes some of the less-stellar choices especially egregious. For example, guns won’t reload on their own when their clip empties – you have to do it manually. If the Gungeon were a place of patience, this might not be an issue, but it is a place of punishment; the time it takes to realize you need to press the ‘reload’ button is often time enough to lose your rhythm navigating a hail of bullets, and every (bullet-shaped) heart piece counts. Powerups often feel like they come too infrequently – particularly the guns themselves, which is a shame, because the guns are impressively varied and well-designed.

But the only problem that I really find unforgivable is the camera. There’s nothing that says “artificial difficulty” quite like being killed by enemies from offscreen. The options menu even offers a slider in which you can adjust how far the camera shifts in the direction you’re aiming, but it’s a no-win scenario: if you want to see the enemies behind you better, you’ll have to see the enemies in front of you worse. Boss arenas present a different problem, in that the intricacies of bullet-dodging often necessitate getting so far away from the boss as to leave them offscreen. I can think of no other way to put it than this: they need to zoom the dang camera out.

I’m mad about these problems because I care about Enter the Gungeon. I’m mad about them because I still want to recommend it to both dungeon crawler and bullet hell fans alike. I’m mad about them because I’m still having a lot of fun with this silly, beautiful game. I’m mad about them because I’m still going to be entering this Gungeon until I’ve well and truly plumbed its depths.

The post Enter the Gungeon (PC) Review appeared first on Gamesline.

World of Warcraft is a beloved game, as one might expect – it has, after all, garnered several million players in the nearly-twelve years it’s been running. But it would appear that many players miss the feel of the classic WoW experience, often termed “vanilla.”

Nostalrius offered a chance to revisit that vanilla gameplay, and people loved it; according to their website, they had accrued “hundreds of thousands” of players. Needless to say, fans of the server are not taking this lying down.

According to a NeoGAF post, retail WoW servers have fallen victim to DDoS attacks. Meanwhile, Blizzard’s official forums are aflame with threads begging Blizzard for an official way to get the vanilla experience they crave.

NeoGAF user Timeless states in the aforementioned thread that this is akin to “robbery of history” on Blizzard’s part, while Giant Bomb user utamaru suggests that the server exists “in the same sort of grey area as video game emulation does,” as well as questioning if Blizzard is “considering their own legacy servers.”

While WoW never got its hooks into me personally, I certainly understand the desire for a way to revisit old times in such an influential game. One could even argue that Nostalrius wasn’t ‘stealing players’ from the official servers – and hence, not stealing money from Blizzard – since there are no official vanilla servers to ‘steal’ from. That said, the fact remains that World of Warcraft is Blizzard’s intellectual property, and what it gets used for is ultimately up to their discretion.

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The game’s Day One Edition features five equippable accessories, as well as battle themes from the Valkyrie Profile games. If nothing else, it’s hard to deny tri-Ace’s track record of kickass music, so this seems like a fitting addition.

Meanwhile, the game has just launched today in Japan, and has a PS3 version that won’t be released overseas coming on April 28.

I wasn’t so hot on the last game in the series – Star Ocean: The Last Hope – but tri-Ace has enough goodwill with me that I’ll definitely be giving this one a shot. Although if you ask me, the real news here is that the game’s pretty-boy protagonist is named Fidel. Here’s hoping history will absolve this game.

The post Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness Comes Stateside June 28 appeared first on Gamesline.

My fondest memories of childhood include watching my mom play Chrono Trigger, watching my dad play Suikoden II, and watching my own crinkled little fingers work their way around a Game Boy to play Pokemon Red – my very first video game. I’ve been immersed in games (and games media) my entire life. I guess you could say I’ve been a… Gamer Since Birth™. As you may have deduced already, I have an especial fondness for JRPGs, but I try to keep my interests as diverse as 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand and Petz Horsez 2.

I have a twitter where you can stay up-to-date with my mundane personal life and read the occasional bad joke. I write fiction that I am too much of a shy loser to display publicly. I yelled “Hail Satan” at John Darnielle. I once calculated how many hours of my life I had spent watching King of the Hill. (It wasn’t a small number.) I am the Criss Angel of gender. I’m excited and honored to be a part of Chooch, and I look forward to producing some #Good #Ass #Content for the betterment of us all.

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