Category: Tier Two

 

What’s better than a dating sim? FIVE DATING SIMS.

 

Have you ever seen this episode of Futurama? Agarest is kind of like that. Mix in a bit of Fire Emblem setting, sprite-based isometricism and all the young maidens throwing themselves at your feet that you could want and you’ve got Agarest: Generations of War. Plotwise, there’s this guy named Leonhardt who deserts from his army in order to protect an elf-chick. Turns out, Leonhardt sucks and he gets his butt kicked by the Dark Knight (their name, not mine). On the brink of death, some goddess pops up and is all like “Pledge your and every single one of your descendants souls to me if you want to live,” and Leonhardt’s all like “… mmmmk!”

 

Continue reading “Agarest: Generations of War” →

 

Hasn’t anyone learned to never put “part 1 of” anything on their game? I mean, seriously, if you aren’t Star Wars, how many times has that actually helped you make a sequel?

(Part 1 of 2 is up there in that pic. It’s just hard to see.)

 

So what is this first-half of Insecticide? Well, it’s a point-and-click adventure combined with platforming action adventure. Yeah. YEAH. How do those two even begin to mix? You play as Chrys, a rookie detective. She’s spunky, cool and driven to solve the case because she’s the only one who can. It’s not a new story, but then again it’s told in a new way–entirely with bugs. It feels a lot like a Double Fine game like Grimm Fandango or Psychonauts.

 

Continue reading “Insecticide Part 1” →

 

Okay, I’m getting a very Skyrim-y feel about all of this…

 

It’s no secret that I’m a sucker for survival crafting games that don’t start with “mine.” Savage Lands is just such a game with an apt savage theme. You are Jim McCave-man, some sort of viking-esque barbarian whose unlcothed butt just washed up on the icy shore of nowhere. You’ll craft all the general basics that you’d expect to find–weapons, tools, clothing, fire and shelter. Really, if that was it, there wouldn’t be anything special about this one. However…

 

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Well, the title pretty much sums it up. Occupation followed by desired acquisition.

 

Thief, conceptually is a simple game. Load level, steal stuff, get out. For the time period that this game came out, it made a lot of thief tools available to you that not every stealth game (not that there were an abundant of them) was necessarily providing at the time. You can avoid bloody messes by knocking people out. You can drag bodies to hide them. You can walk on soft surfaces to hide your footsteps. You can hide in the shadows. If being a thief is your role-playing thing, then this game is completely tailored to providing you that experience.

 

Continue reading “Thief Gold” →

 

Drrrriiiillllllllssssss…. *ahem* I’m sorry. What I meant to say was… Driiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllllllssss

 

Did you ever wish you were a kid again? You know, the whole “adults are boring, there are no kids to play with so I’m going to invent my own adventure” part of being a kid? Well that’s Gurumin and it’s done so well. You play as Parin, a young girl who moved in with her grandfather for the summer. The town her grandfather lives in is a miner’s town so with no kids at all to play with, Parin quickly finds herself bored out of her mind… that is, until she bumps into a monster.

 

Continue reading “Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure” →

 

Ah, it’s like what Drawn to Life was supposed to be but just sadly wasn’t.

 

The name “Cladun” is a portmanteau of the word “clan” and “dungeon” which describes the game rather well. In Cladun, you build a set of custom characters that congregate as a clan and go out dungeon raiding together. It has a sort of pleasant feel about it, sort of like creating a big  pixel-anime family. In a way its similar to the way one might setup a family in Sims except instead of managing their mundane daily life you handle their RPG adventures.

 

Continue reading “Cladun x2” →

 

Please, oh please let this be the last RPG Maker game I have.

 

One Way Heroics is a good game. It’s not a great game but it’s good. I’m finally okay with seeing assets in the game being default RPG Maker supplied. Why? Because I think for the first time, someone took the RPG Maker shell and made an actual game with it. They didn’t make some convoluted fan-fiction story that the world desperately needed. They didn’t make a “done-a-thousand-times-before RPG,” with a dozen talking heads that chitter back and forth and pretend like they have character traits. One Way Heroics isn’t an RPG Maker game, it’s a game that happens to wear the mantle of RPG Maker.

 

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╟╢║Σ│≥Θδ╚√╒╟╢║╞ φ

 

Here is a simple game with a neat idea. In Hieroglyphika, aside from the letters in the title, you’ll find not a single recognizable English alphabet character in the game. All the information that you’ll need to uncover on how to play the game, weapon stats, armor resistances, movement and actions are all communicated to the player via some symbol or another. It’s surprising how quickly you’ll pick up on it all once you start to figure it out and while concept isn’t mind blowing (or entirely the main focus of the game) it’s a neat little trick that adds some fun and uniqueness to this title.

 

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Trine 2. Okay, is that 3+3, 3(2), 3^2 or… I mean, I’m trying here.

 

I’m… not against Trine 2 but… it just feels like more of Trine 1. I simply don’t have anything interesting to say beyond that point. You still play as the same 3 from the first game; a thief with a grappling hook, a wizard that creates boxes and a warrior that smashes things. You still obtain exp potions to gain new abilities. You still solve well-made puzzles and fight simple battles.

 

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