Asura’s Wrath (PS3)
I remember when this game first came out, everyone just ragged on it for having QTEs instead of actual gameplay. This was the peak of the “QTE era” of gaming, when everyone started to be concerned with “cinematic presentation” and “set pieces” instead of good gameplay, and Asura’s Wrath seemed to be another symptom… It turns out though that it’s an example of how anything can be good if it’s done right. It’s true Asura’s Wrath is mostly QTE sequences sandwiched in between some slightly balls brawler gameplay, but what it does with those QTE sequences is so good, so over-the-top, and so imaginative that it still ends up being one of the most fun games you’ve ever played. The boss fight on the Moon, which results in the Moon being literally cut in half, while the 4th movement of Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony plays, is one of the most spectacular sequences in any game I’ve played and I don’t even care that it’s mostly hitting circle and cross in time with a cutscene. If you come at Asura on its own terms and think of it as more of a sort of visual novel of sorts, it’s a total blast.
Inscryption (partially completed) (PS5)
With the whole indie movement in, well, motion, I downloaded this when I saw it pop up on PS Plus. I’d heard good things about it and, even though I am a certified roguelite hater at this point, I knew Inscryption dealt with a linear plot and had a concrete ending, so I was willing to give it a shot. The first third of the game, the part everyone knows where you are playing the haunted card game in the dark shack with the guy, is great. Solving puzzles in the environment that unlock things in the card game is fun, and it’s not too tough to beat the final boss of the run after a few attempts. If that had been the whole game I would have loved it, but then it becomes a faux 8-bit RPG deckbuilder instead? This part was weaker than the first, but had some fun gimmicks and the deckbuilding let you build some broken shit to exploit your way through it easily. The third and final part was where it lost me; it’s actually possible to somewhat brick your run through it because deck choices are permanent and the run doesn’t reset. I didn’t realize this, thinking we had just returned to roguelike gameplay like the first part, so when I realized I would have to do a bunch of grinding to fix my deck, I just dropped the game. Overall maybe a little too ambitious for its own good trying to be three games in one; from what I gather everyone likes the first part the best, to the point that they added in an endless mode that just lets you play the first part forever instead.
Donut County (PS4)
I originally saw this game in a Dunkey video, I’m pretty sure. It originally struck me as a sort of Katamari-like, where instead of rolling objects up you drop them into a hole. In spirit it is, I guess, but it’s more like a simple puzzle game than Katamari‘s brand of action. What really puts this game over is its great sense of humor. You play as an asshole raccoon who has dropped the entire town he lives in into progressively larger holes through a “donut delivery app” which delivers not donuts, but holes that open to hell that suck everything into them instead of donuts. It’s written in this really irreverent Tumblr funnyman style of dialogue, which would be cringe if it wasn’t pulled off right, but I found it really charming. Pretty short and by no means challenging, but a memorable little experience nonetheless.
Mana-Khemia ~Gakuen no Renkinjutsushi-tachi~ (PS2)
I have an unpublished, several-thousand word article about this game in my drafts, but suffice it to say that Mana-Khemia has always been a very important game to me. In fact, it was the game that got me into Japanese RPGs in the first place. I played an undubbed version on my PSP back in the day when I had no cash, and almost overnight discovered my new favorite genre of games, but for some reason I never actually finished it. I don’t know if I just put it down 80% of the way into the game or if my PSP actually died, but ever since then eventually playing through Mana-Khemia properly has been a constant fixture on my “soon(TM)” list. I owned an English copy of the PS2 version, which I eventually decided not to play because I had learned Japanese well enough to play the original. I got a FreeMcBoot memory card to play the Japanese version on my PS2, but ended up playing Iris no Atelier 2 instead. This year I finally put Mana-Khemia on my Retroid Pocket 5 and got around to playing it. I was nervous that my memory of the game wouldn’t live up to the experience, but nope, the game is still brilliant, and still my favorite Gust game even now. The combat is some of the best ever conceived for a turn-based RPG, the Grow Book is one of the most brilliant progression systems ever, the writing has a great late-nite comedy anime tone, and the music absolutely slaps. I was very happy to reconfirm that is this indeed one of my favorite games of all time.
The Last Campfire (PS4)
The indie movement next brought me to this little game, which hooked me with a cute artstyle, an exceptionally low price, and a pedigree of being from Hello Games, better known for critical-flop-turned-darling No Man’s Sky. It’s a puzzle adventure game that never advances to the level of being actually, like, puzzling, but it has this great sombre tone combined with cute visuals, exemplified by the adorable player-character who bops around the environments like a little kitten with his hat-ears flopping all over the place. This was my wife’s favorite game I played this year because all his little animations were so cute. The story doesn’t hit in the feels quite as hard as the creators probably thought it was, but it was still one of the more memorable little experiences I had this year.
Magic Knight Rayearth (Saturn)
This game has actually been on my list since my last gaming kick back in 2020, but at some point I lost my copy of it and had to acquire a new one here in Japan. Even though the original Magic Knight Rayearth is from just a bit before my time, the 90’s anime aesthetics captured perfectly in this video game adaptation by Sega are delicious. Dialogue is fully-voiced, character portraits are animated extracts from actual cels from the show, and there are even full motion video clips from the anime at important story beats, crunchy as they may be in the Saturn’s video codec. The pixel work is lovely as well and the game is a pleasure to look at. It’s just a shame that the actual game isn’t so great. It’s a very simplistic top-down action game with little-to-nothing in the way of role-playing elements. The game is also very easy, and though I’m a staunch W*rking D*signs hater, you can kind of see their thought process in making the game harder when they localized it back in the day. If you love 90’s anime vibes it might be worth a look, but it’s hard to recommend this just for the sake of the game. It does, though, get the auspicious title of being the very first Sega Saturn game I’ve ever played to completion, so there’s that.
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