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<p><img loading="lazy" src="https://ift.tt/ZysmrUg" width="800" height="450" alt="Embark Studios The Finals Release Date December 7 Surprise Launch The Game Awards 2023" typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-body-default" /></p>
Reviewed on: PC Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Publisher: Embark Studios Developer: Embark Studios Rating: Teen
<p>The Finals offers rare novelty in the competitive multiplayer genre, encouraging creative strategies impossible in other titles because of its immense environmental destruction, physics-based hazards, and armory of whimsical gadgets. This first-person shooter occurs amid a digital game show where varying counts of three-person teams fight over money caches in an objective-focused format. The Finals is unpredictable in the best way: gameshow events like meteor showers or orbital lasers remap previously memorized paths, map variants like moving platforms or suspended structures can obfuscate objectives, and your team’s best-laid defensive plans are often interrupted as explosives obliterate the buildings around you. </p> <p style="margin-top:16px; margin-bottom:16px">Developer Embark Studios showcases its mastery of Unreal Engine with gorgeously lit, fully destructible level designs that are incredibly fun to maneuver. Monaco, Las Vegas, Seoul, and Skyway Stadium – the four maps present at release – require distinct strategies and feature randomized elements that make every match impressively dynamic. You might load a map and find it under construction or unrecognizable, such as when sandstorms cover Vegas with enormous dunes.</p> <img loading="lazy" src="https://ift.tt/H2WESj9" typeof="foaf:Image" alt="" class="image-style-body-default" /> <p style="margin-top:16px; margin-bottom:16px">The game features three unique classes: Heavy, Medium, and Light. Heavies can equip a rocket-propelled grenade, flamethrower, energy shield, a massive sledgehammer, or a glue gun that allows the user to create makeshift walls and cover. Mediums most closely resemble a support role, featuring the option to equip a healing beam, automated turret, zipline systems, jump pads, and defibrillators for quick revives. Lastly, the Light class specializes in grappling hook traversal and multiple invisibility gadgets. Each role is satisfying to explore, offering numerous possibilities for emergent play. Witnessing brilliant synergies like propelling the Cashout – an ATM-like objective – toward the opposite side of the arena by using the Heavy’s rocket to bounce the object atop a Medium’s well-placed jump pad leaves me energized and curious. Ultimately, team collaboration is crucial in finding success in The Finals since the skill ceiling becomes much higher with these potent equipment combinations.</p> <p style="margin-top:16px; margin-bottom:16px">It’s incredibly satisfying to interrupt an enemy team’s attempt at stealing the objective (an ATM-like device) by blowing the floor from beneath them with an RPG or C4 pack and ambushing them as they unexpectedly fall to a lower level. On the flip side, you can avoid a perilous fall with a well-timed goo grenade, creating a makeshift floor or bridge where one didn’t exist before. The reactive, high-stakes strategies the physics system facilitates remind me of the breakneck decisions that define the best fighting games.</p> <img loading="lazy" src="https://ift.tt/o5Q7CYf" typeof="foaf:Image" alt="" class="image-style-body-default" /> <p style="margin-top:16px; margin-bottom:16px">Ignoring current multiplayer trends, The Finals features sturdy health bars, long respawn times, the exclusion of multiple weapon slots, and a lack of scopes on most guns. While using the iron sights on larger weapons like the M60 light machine gun is sometimes tricky because the optic’s alignment markers obscure my view, I admire Embark’s commitment to novelty through these choices, as they reinforce a focus on gadgets, environmental destruction, and the creative strategies that emerge from the intersection of those features.</p> <p style="margin-top:16px; margin-bottom:16px">However, in a game with many well-designed characteristics, Embark’s use of generative A.I. text-to-speech voicework is unappealing. The gameshow’s characters sound believable at best but broadly fall flat due to one-note performances and mediocre writing. Additionally, I’ve heard duplicate voice lines multiple times, making the developer’s use of generative art largely pointless.</p> <p style="margin-top:16px; margin-bottom:16px">Notably, the cosmetic microtransactions are fairly priced and offer robust character customization. Whether earning a new skin via the battle pass or purchasing it from the in-game shop, you can equip various parts of the outfit and pair them with others. Despite the slow progression of the battle pass, which I hope is adjusted in the future, the mix-and-match nature of its rewards makes them exciting to unlock.</p> <p style="margin-top:16px; margin-bottom:16px">The Finals has given me some of my favorite multiplayer moments in 2023. Whether actively engaging in vertical combat or excitedly scaling rooftops on the way to the next objective, navigating the environments feels incredible, and the thrill of watching the ground disappear from below my feet never gets old. In a year of groundbreaking video game releases, The Finals is yet another highlight.</p> <section class='type:slideshow'><figure><img src='https://ift.tt/GJQWIOf src='https://ift.tt/grIfa5A src='https://ift.tt/USIZnf0 src='https://ift.tt/8W14BID src='https://ift.tt/ubRgKBz src='https://ift.tt/1zur0Hw src='https://ift.tt/0CDFbU6>
Dragon Quest possesses so much history that any new game carries a degree of raised expectation. Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince delivers many of the conventions I’ve come to expect from the series: the vibrant opening song, the charismatic Slime, and the emotional storytelling I already associate with the franchise. But this game goes beyond those well-treaded territories, offering an intelligent and elegant yet simple approach to combat and dungeon design that makes it a solid spin-off experience.
In The Dark Prince, you play as Psaro, a half-human, half-monster boy who becomes a powerful monster wrangler because of a curse that makes fighting them with his own hands impossible. Wrangling is all about capturing monsters and controlling them during turn-based battles. As I progressed throughout the boy’s journey, I found stronger creatures to add to my roster. The game also has an online mode that lets you fight other players, which is a good way to test different group compositions. In my case, it took so long to find a match that my time was better spent adventuring solo.
Synthesizing new monsters by fusing two parent creatures is the best method to obtain a better team, and this system makes all your effort in previously maximizing weaker monsters worth it. Whenever you create a new monster, it’s possible to keep some of the skill points spent in the creatures you’re fusing. Through this system, I crafted some extremely powerful monsters, surpassing their regular versions found in the wild. This system pushes you towards excessive grinding, though. Whenever you fuse a new creature, it comes at level 1, regardless of its parents' levels. In the final sections of the game, fusing a new monster at the wrong moment means spending a lot of time leveling up before getting back on track and trying to defeat a boss.
With the vast number of possible monster combinations you can create in The Dark Prince, I was surprised by how streamlined combat is. The game allows you to set up tactics that define whether a party member will focus on attacking enemies or healing other party members, for example. At the same time, it’s possible to order specific actions for each monster. However, outside of boss fights, engaging more strategically in battles rarely felt necessary. The system waters down so much of each encounter that I usually entered automatic mode and let the A.I. do the thinking.
As the boy works on his craft, we learn about Psaro’s past and his journey alongside his friends, Rose and Toilen, to become strong enough to challenge his father. This is a classic, almost too familiar, premise, but even with the absence of heavily foreshadowed surprises or plot twists, The Dark Prince captivated me, making for a cozy adventure with the charm of an old-fashioned fairy tale.
The game presents the same slow-paced introduction other Dragon Quest games have, making the first few hours a slog. However, I became slowly entangled in the story. Initially, I was progressing only to unlock new monsters, but I realized I was as excited about learning more about Psaro’s tale as I was about finding new creatures. Unfortunately, very few situations offer even a glimpse of what he’s thinking, and it never gave me a chance to understand the reasoning behind his acts better. In this aspect, the game’s respect for its roots hinders its capacity to develop an intriguing character with no option besides nodding or saying yes or no.
While perfectly capable as a standalone title, The Dark Prince is directly connected to Dragon Quest IV. It gives us a chance to learn more about Psaro, a crucial figure in the older title, and also to look over some events related to the previous game from a different perspective.
Psaro’s journey takes us through areas in Nadiria, a magical dimension with different regions called circles. Each circle splits into three tiers, with one final dungeon. Sadly, this structure makes for a repetitive and predictable pattern; after completing the first four circles, I knew exactly what to expect from every new region. These areas are made worse by noticeable dips in performance, as the framerate suffers considerably. While I could easily ignore these minor performance issues, the circles’ recursive design became more tiresome whenever I went for long gameplay sessions.
On the other hand, the dungeons are the most surprising element of each circle. They all share a similar structure: many floors, a traversal gimmick, and a teleport before the boss room. While they might feel as repetitive as the circles, the puzzles inside each dungeon make them fun and varied. The developers found a solid balance between difficulty and enjoyment when designing them. The Dark Prince veers more toward traditional dungeon design, with treadmills you need to activate to advance or ladders and holes in the ground to get to the top of the building. Though most dungeons are forgettable, they offer a refreshing intellectual experience even without leaning on any design extravaganza.
By rigidly following Dragon Quest traditions, we end up with flat, cartoonish characters who inhabit a repetitive, cyclical world. But The Dark Prince plays to its strengths to deliver a solid RPG experience with a cozy narrative seasoned by a long list of charismatic creatures and entertaining dungeons.
Reviewed on: PC Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Publisher: Ubisoft Developer: Ubisoft Massive
The Avatar films are great fun but have never blown me away with original storytelling. Instead, the translation of familiar formulas into a vibrant and visually arresting alien world elevates the films. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora follows that same tack, featuring first-person exploration and combat that borrows liberally from franchises like Far Cry. But here, an enormous and detailed fantasy world breathes life into the experience, making it both more engaging and sometimes needlessly obtuse – but always with a flair for the source material.
While concurrent with the movies, Frontiers of Pandora tells a separate standalone story about a small group of young Na’vi raised by the villainous and ecologically reckless RDA, and one individual Na’vi’s gradual rediscovery of their heritage and connection to nature. The overt environmental themes of the franchise are accentuated by a pointed indictment of child separation and forced re-education among indigenous populations. Developer Massive Entertainment has done a phenomenal job capturing the unique fictional nuances of the Na’vi, adding several fresh wrinkles in the form of new clans and individuals. It’s a genuine treat for franchise fans that adds substantially to the lore.
Gameplay is all about running and leaping through dense jungles, plains, and caves, while simultaneously learning the many secrets of Pandora’s flora and fauna. The richness of the ecosystems is unmatched in any game I’ve encountered. I had fun learning the properties and potential of the many strange living things along my path. As I did, new skills and gear enhanced my Na’vi’s potential, and I steadily climbed to mastery.
The visual presentation is gorgeous and does justice to the many colors and majestic natural backdrops from the films. Surprisingly, the lush and detailed world was both a joy and hindrance. Sometimes, the onscreen visuals are so overgrown and hard to parse that the game becomes visually confusing. I frequently became lost in the overwhelming stimuli, often missing key objects or clues amid the clutter.
Moving through these richly presented landscapes is great fun, thanks to a generous traversal system of climbing, jumping, sliding, and environmental objects (like plants that bounce you high into the air) that combine to memorable effect and lead to smooth and parkour-like navigation. Enhancing exploration is your dragon-like Ikran mount, allowing you to fly across the vast map easily and quickly.
Along the way, combat using bows and assault rifles adds punch to the action, often accompanied by the chance to take an alternate stealthy route instead. I found both experiences good but not great. Too few tools and abilities allow for stealth approaches, so taking my chances with a fast and direct approach was usually more expeditious. The battles themselves are intense and lethal but rarely elevated above an attempt to peek from behind cover points for pot shots at bad guys. Active close-range melees align more with the expectations established by the movies, but that approach is usually not viable.
Hunting, gathering, crafting, and cooking are central features. There’s a lot to experiment with, and creating that great new chest piece or fish dish can sometimes be thrilling. But I eventually found the breadth of options overwhelming. Dozens of different tree barks, mosses, animal hides, and pine cones – many of which can only be optimally gathered at certain times of day or weather conditions – eventually began to swim together in my mind. The game virtually demands that you engage with these mechanics to make meaningful progress, and I frequently found it got in the way of narrative pacing, or it became too frustrating to track down the things I wanted.
In between the action and exploration, Frontiers of Pandora puts a wealth of more minor mechanics and systems in your way. Again, these often hamper the fun as frequently as adding to it. Hacking constant power systems and doors, tedious investigations for forensic clues in a scene, tracking multiple currencies and favor with the clans – there’s so much here that it sometimes distracts from what’s genuinely fun: the action and discovery of a breathtaking alien landscape.
Even so, I found a lot to love in Frontiers of Pandora, including the welcome addition of two-player online cooperative play, which lets players enjoy the game with a friend. With time, the many interlocking features started to make sense, and I pushed past any frustrations to find a remarkably large and rewarding game. Enter Pandora’s vast wilderness with patience and a willingness for a measured march to understanding, and I suspect you’ll uncover what I did – a flawed but still praiseworthy addition to this growing science fiction universe.
Reviewed on: PC Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC Publisher: Thunderful Publishing Developer: Thunderful Development Rating: Everyone 10+
The most endearing aspect of the SteamWorld series is how each of its games relates to one another despite their disparate genres. From tower defense to turn-based RPG, each title offers a unique spin on a specific gameplay experience while adhering to a shared mythos, resulting in a fun collection of games that coalesce thematically. SteamWorld Build, Thunderful's city-builder/RTS hybrid, serves as the latest iteration of this formula. Sporting streamlined genre mechanics, intuitive controls, and charming visuals, many essential parts are in place. Unfortunately, despite a solid foundation, SteamWorld Build struggles to maintain an engaging experience throughout its campaign.
Like most of the SteamWorld series, Build doesn't directly connect to any of the previous games. Instead, it tries to provide a unique perspective on critical events that feed into the series' overarching narrative. This familiar setup works in parts. The plight of a group of travelers settling near an abandoned mine at the behest of a mysterious robot companion is initially attractive. Fans will especially enjoy the nods to past happenings and some extra lore surrounding an established planetary threat. That said, it won't take long for players to realize that SteamWorld Build's campaign is paper thin.
While the SteamWorld series isn't known for its character-driven stories, each new release offers more meaningful reasons to dive into its steampunk universe. SteamWorld Build's nearly nonexistent story is a step backward in this regard. There aren't any notable characters, worthwhile encounters, or imaginative events to speak of. Essentially, the why of it all doesn't matter, as the campaign's few cutscenes offer just enough exposition for it to be considered a means to an end.
Story woes aside, SteamWorld Build is entertaining. This is partially due to the streamlined approach to city-building and solid tutorial prompts. There are some genre staples, especially when it comes to building placement. You'll be told, for instance, to place Foresters (a giant tree-chopping machine) and lumber mills next to wooded areas to acquire logs. But most of the finer details involving the inner workings of a town/city – tax rates, zoning, population density in relation to the neighboring structures – are either handled automatically or simplified to a large degree.
There's no urban decay or adverse environmental issues to worry about. As long as your buildings are connected to their corresponding facilities and the central train station by road, they'll function as expected. And since the game's intuitive controls (whether using a gamepad or keyboard and mouse) do most of the heavy lifting, nearly every action can be carried out with just a few button presses. SteamWorld Build is more arcade than sim, offering a welcoming experience for newcomers.
Despite its simplified mechanics, SteamWorld Build appeals to genre vets thanks to its puzzling play. Instead of fixating on every minor detail linked to actual urban planning, the game emphasizes keeping your steambots happy by placing key structures. Your workers, who start economically at the bottom of the totem pole, are usually satiated by a general store and service shop. They don't need much to stay productive. Once you hit certain milestones, usually tied to the town's number of employable steambots, you can upgrade them into engineers. This next tier of citizens requires more service buildings and attractions to stay in good spirits. They also pay more in taxes.
Your main goal is to develop your town to the point where its citizens can mine specific relics (namely rocket parts) needed to escape a seemingly dying planet. This makes the continual growth of your town important as each tier of citizen is responsible for specific branches of productivity. This process can prove tricky as the requirements needed to satisfy them all are weighed against your town's overall needs. Creating too many workers means spending less money on new construction projects. Too few, and you won't have enough steambots to gather the basic materials (wood, coal, etc.) needed to keep the town functioning. The same goes for higher-tiered citizens; their larger financial contributions are offset by the cost of keeping them content.
Learning to juggle these different factors is vital when playing SteamWorld Build early on. Some of it comes down to properly positioning certain services and attractions. Plopping a general store at the corner of an intersection makes it accessible to more workers. You can also use stat-boosting items, tradable resources, improved roads, and more. Your management duties double once you gain access to the mines. These underground areas feature RTS mechanics requiring a more hands-on approach. Instead of buildings, you place miner, prospector, mechanic, and guard quarters needed to spawn the corresponding steambots around the map. Aside from the guards and mechanics – who are there to protect and heal bots/build machines, respectively – these bots aren't autonomous. They must be assigned jobs like mining gold deposits, knocking down walls, placing turrets to repel pests, and building machines to harvest important materials.
Most of my time playing SteamWorld Build was spent hopping between my town's surface and subterranean areas. Watching the tiny steambots carry out their tasks as I slowly upgraded my residential areas was fun. I also enjoyed overseeing the developments underground; micromanaging these steambots offered a nice contrast to the above-ground activities.
All of that changed during the game's last few hours due to a combination of competing systems. To collect the final component needed to leave the planet, I had to turn a few of my bots into scientists and make sure they were content for a set duration of time. The problem is that this directive has no wiggle room. When the other steambots weren't at 100 percent, and their collective numbers started to dwindle, the few that remained still pitched in. That wasn't the case here, as it was an all-or-nothing situation.
The other issue was that the scientist was the highest citizen level, meaning it takes a lot to keep them happy. Since my town had grown, it was easy for a given resource – water, food, etc. – to occasionally dip below a certain threshold. During those moments, my scientists became unhappy. I tried to mitigate some of this by improving all my roads, trading for the needed items, relocating attractions, buffing facilities, and so on. Nothing worked. The only thing I could do was wait for my steambots to produce enough of whatever was missing to meet my scientists' needs briefly.
Many sim-based games have this point where the player has seemingly optimized themselves into a corner. Their final objective is within reach, but because its strict parameters don't allow for alternative completion options, they can only wait as the game plays. That's what happens with SteamWorld Build. It's a shame, considering how enjoyable the core gameplay loop initially is. Things fare a little better once you've finished the campaign, though. Since each of the five maps offers rewards like free roads or faster miners upon completion, starting a new campaign with these unlocked bonuses is possible. You can also sidestep the story and focus on building the best town you can, which might be the ideal scenario.
SteamWorld Build is a unique hybrid that entertains for a time. Its early hours are fun, thanks to how well it uses simplified genre staples to create a more arcade-friendly gameplay loop, a sentiment bolstered by a solid tutorial and intuitive control scheme. Regrettably, SteamWorld Build's campaign overstays its welcome. The lackluster story and rigid final objectives turn what was initially an engaging experience into a tedious grind.
Reviewed on: PC Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Publisher: Devolver Digital Developer: Croteam Rating: Teen
The Talos Principle II often left me staring at my screen in awe. Sometimes, from sheer intimidation in the face of a seemingly formidable puzzle. Other times, from my incredulous pride after unraveling said problem. But most of all, the experience regularly gave me pause as I pondered a philosophical idea or argument that challenged my viewpoints on the nature of existence and humanity’s place in the cosmos. These moments spurred me to solve the game’s 100+ puzzles in search of answers, and I’m largely satisfied with what I discovered.
Set hundreds of years after its 2014 predecessor, The Talos Principle, you awaken in a utopian civilization as its 1000th – and final – sentient robot resident. Following mankind’s extinction due to a global virus centuries prior, intelligent machines designed by a brilliant scientist have inherited the Earth. As the sum of all human knowledge, these machines have resigned themselves to living within a single, modest city with strict population, exploration, and consumption limits to avoid repeating humanity’s mistakes. However, these beliefs are flipped on their heads when a mysterious entity taking the form of the Greek titan Prometheus beckons the machines towards a mysterious island with a pyramid-like megastructure, towers, and, of course, puzzles. You join a small expedition to discover the island’s origin and purpose.
Despite the puzzles being the stars, I enjoyed The Talos Principle II’s focus on storytelling and character development, highlighted by choice-driven conversations that do a great job of emphasizing the machines’ inherited sense of humanity. I became invested in getting to know my crew, such as two close friends with opposing yet valid viewpoints on how society should advance or having more lighthearted chats with a resident unsure of whether or not to keep its surfer-style speech pattern. Decisions influence the city’s direction and your standing in ways you won’t see for hours, and while I found the outcomes to be adequately satisfying, some optional threads, such as choosing whether or not to join an Illuminati-style secret group, don’t always lead to an impactful payoff.
Regardless, The Talos Principle II presents many angles on important topics and leaves it up to its cast and players to decide what they believe. Fascinating philosophical concepts on the morality and responsibility of being an intelligent entity in a chaotic universe, numerous lore notes and audio logs, and even the city’s social media feed had me reconsidering my biases and beliefs in enriching and enlightening ways, even if I didn’t always agree. I’m still mulling over a log’s musings over humanity’s puzzling attitudes on natural extinction versus human-made extinction.
I like that the game doesn’t prop any viewpoint as the “correct” one, and it doesn’t need to; the point is that you should ask such questions to see things from as many angles as possible, and players will draw their own conclusions to determine one of the story’s several endings. A plethora of dialogue choices does an admirable job of letting players express several potential perspectives, while the plot is an engaging and insightful mystery boasting neat twists and heavy revelations.
Like the first game, placing crystal refractors to direct light beams around obstacles to the correct lock(s) to open the exit is the core puzzle-solving experience. New mechanics add exciting and creative layers while eliminating the annoying death-dealing hazards, such as bombs and turrets, from the last game. New tools include a device that creates portals on certain surfaces, an anti-gravity machine that lets players (and objects) stand on walls and ceilings, and a refractor that inverts light colors, among others. Each tool is a treat to work with alone, but the game soars highest when challenging you to use several in concert.
Puzzle-solving is still a tricky exercise of placing, moving, and/or stacking objects in the correct spots or sequence, a process thankfully expedited by speedy player movement. Still, lengthier puzzles require a lot of running around to rearrange things, which sometimes wore on me. The final puzzle is the worst offender, as it requires a tedious amount of back-and-forth trekking to execute such a precise order of operations that slipping up often meant restarting the whole thing from scratch. Despite these headaches, I was consistently impressed with how developer Croteam managed to concoct so many well-thought-out puzzle rooms, and solving them never stopped feeling like a well-earned achievement.
Unlike the last game, there’s no hint system, but you can skip puzzles entirely by spending a collectible resource. The catch is that finding these helpful tokens is a task in itself, as they’re hidden throughout the open areas. I don’t mind this as someone too stubborn to skip unless a puzzle is truly mind-boggling, and it gave me another excuse to explore, but it does create more work for those eager to move on and see the rest of the narrative.
The biodiverse island is broken up into four cardinal regions composed of three smaller open hubs, each sporting eight primary puzzles plus optional riddles and collectibles. I enjoyed roaming these expansive regions between puzzles in search of smaller rewards such as lore notes, ancient human tech, or secret laboratories containing tantalizing secrets. The worlds also look quite nice despite frequent geometry pop-in. Though an overhead compass provides some guidance on how to find points of interest, the lack of a proper map made relocating some destinations more of a chore than I would have liked. Environmental puzzles, such as rerouting an island-wide light beam or chasing hidden particle clouds to statues, offer neat side diversions and welcomed breaks from the critical path. The other major recurring puzzle comes in the form of assembling bridges by correctly rotating and connecting giant Tetrinomo pieces, though this exercise lost its luster after a few hours.
The Talos Principle II is a long game, perhaps to a fault. I clocked in around 34 hours, and despite my generally consistent enthusiasm, I was ready to see the end before it hit me with another round of puzzles or a story-focused exploration segment. It’s an ambitious and ultimately well-made package with many social, artistic, and scientific ideas that I’ll be thinking about for the foreseeable future, long after the solution to its final riddle has faded from memory. That enlightenment makes The Talos Principle II’s challenges worth the effort.
Reviewed on: Switch Platform: Switch Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Nintendo Rating: Everyone
The original Super Mario RPG, released for Super Nintendo in 1996, felt like it was meant to be your first RPG. In an era when Final Fantasy tried its best to tell mature stories within the medium's limitations and Dragon Quest demanded hours and hours of your time, Mario’s adventure felt much brighter and more manageable. Familiar characters, a lighthearted story, a reasonable length, and timed button-pressing during combat made it stand out against the competition. Revisiting the game more than 25 years later in this new remade shape shows the original formula did not need much tweaking to deliver an engaging and enjoyable journey. Super Mario RPG is not entirely innocent of the sins of video games past, but old fans will relish the chance to see the game in a new light, and I’m confident newcomers will find something to love.
Beyond the fun combat, visuals, and story, the best part of Super Mario RPG is that it is incredibly bizarre. The Nintendo of 1996 was still figuring out the rules of Mario’s universe, and as a result, developer Square (not yet Square Enix) was able to create characters and put Mario in positions his parent company would likely never agree to today. The remake, thankfully, maintains all of that weirdness. I didn’t find anything salacious or offensive, but there are entire races of characters that we have never seen again in the Mario universe, Shy Guys have full conversations, and some dialogue choices make Mario come off as a jerk. In one scene, a party member has to hold Mario back from punching a child Toad who casually insulted him. I am grateful the game has not been sanitized and is still full of admittedly inconsequential references to other franchises and Nintendo games.
The story is also still quite funny. It never reaches the comedic heights of its spiritual successors like Paper Mario or Mario & Luigi, but I chuckled often. Mario’s primary means of communication is jumping to prove he is actually Mario, and every time I pressed the jump button to move the conversation forward; I appreciated the commitment to the bit. Outside of the comedic moments, the actual plot is perfunctory, with few, if any, emotional moments, but I was still eager to see where I was going and who I was going to meet next. Added in-engine character introduction moments and the occasional pre-rendered cutscene help deliver the story in new ways, but I am disappointed that the whole game doesn’t feature the same visual fidelity.
As it was in the past, combat is a highlight, and the additions for the remake improve the action without detracting from what made it fun to begin with. A new Action Gauge fills as you successfully pull off Action Commands (the timed button-pressing) across battles, and when full, you can pull off powerful and flashy Triple Moves. I went out of my way to try every party combination to see all of them and enjoyed tracking how high I could get my Action Command Chain across battles. One shortcoming, however, is pulling off Action Commands isn’t always clear beyond seeing your chain number ticked up. Subsequent games inspired by Mario RPG’s combat, like 2023’s Sea of Stars, have done a better job at iterating on this system and offering better feedback.
Much of what has changed about Super Mario RPG for the remake beyond the visuals is behind the scenes. The pace is brisker, and my hour count (even after beating the big optional boss) came in lower than the average playtime of the original. The game has been tweaked only slightly to add some new mechanics and make the adventure even more welcoming than it already was. The result is an experience that only shows its age slightly and rewards longtime fans and newcomers alike.
Reviewed on: PlayStation 5 Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC Publisher: Sega Developer: Atlus Rating: Teen
Persona 5 has become its own sort of mini-franchise within the Persona series. With many spin-off titles released over the years, such as Persona 5 Strikers, Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight, and Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth, Atlus seems to love using Persona 5’s popularity to explore new stories and gameplay ideas. However, I applaud Atlus for making all of these spin-offs in completely different genres from each other. The latest, Persona 5 Tactica, delivers an entertaining story, a colorful cast of characters, and fun combat mechanics within the context of a strategy RPG. Longtime Phantom Thieves can look forward to an enjoyable side adventure, but its uneven pacing and low enemy variety hold it back from being a true revolution.
Persona 5 Tactica’s story follows the core roster of characters from the original RPG. After finding themselves sucked into an alternate dimension, the group teams up with Erina, the local leader of the Rebel Corps, who wants to liberate citizens from the oppressive rule of the Legionnaires. Toshiro Kusakabe, an amnesiac politician from the real world, also somehow gets swept into the conflict. Their unknown connections to this alternate dimension have enough mystery to keep them interesting throughout the game. As the Phantom Thieves search for a way back home, the antagonists’ motivations intertwine with the origins of these newly introduced characters.
The camaraderie between the cast members can be seen through optional conversations that naturally unlock as you progress through the story. Scenes like these are fun side conversations that allow characters’ personalities to shine, such as Erina’s natural leadership skills after a scene where she feels like a liability, or Ryuji’s role as the comic relief character when a treasure chest he’s seeking turns out to be useless villain-branded merchandise. Viewing these talks also gives the party members GP, which are skill points to be allocated to learn new abilities, so there’s a useful gameplay incentive too.
These conversations are bright and fun to listen to, thanks to the game’s excellent voice acting and art direction. The presentation style is more in line with an exaggerated cartoon style like Persona Q2’s rather than the more realistic proportions like in the original game and Strikers. This helps give Tactica a more lighthearted feel to balance out its darker themes, including illness, death, and trauma. The Persona series is also well known for its music, and Tactica’s soundtrack doesn’t disappoint. The soaring vocals and electrifying guitars will have your head bumping as the Phantom Thieves and Rebel Corp overthrow dictators in battle.
Tactica’s combat is more similar to XCOM than Fire Emblem in terms of strategic battles. Your team of three characters can hide behind cover and gain either partial cover, which drastically decreases incoming enemy damage, or full cover, which provides complete immunity. Tactica cleverly utilizes Persona 5’s main battle mechanics to fit the strategy genre. The most impressive implementation is the franchise’s signature “1 More” mechanic. In Tactica, instead of hitting enemy weaknesses or scoring a critical hit to trigger an additional turn, any unit on the field that isn’t behind cover becomes vulnerable. Being able to chain multiple 1 More turns and extending my movement range each time replicates the same sense of accomplishment that I felt when triggering multiple 1 More turns in the main game.
The 1 More mechanic is even more important when it comes to the game’s side quests. These side quests have restrictions, such as only being allowed to use certain characters or having to complete the battle under a fixed number of turns. I found these to be challenging but also incredibly fun, as they commanded me to think much more strategically than standard story missions. The side missions where I was required to beat them in only one turn were exhilarating.
I had to activate as many 1 More turns as I possibly could while also trying to keep my teammates in a triangle formation. Triangulating on a downed enemy activates Triple Threat, which is Tactica’s version of the RPG’s All-Out-Attacks, where enemies caught in the blast receive massive damage. Mastering these techniques to come out on top of these challenging side missions is rewarding, and they come with an equally amazing prize: Completing them nets you 20 GP as opposed to 2 or 3 when viewing conversations.
However, the gameplay suffers from uneven pacing when it comes to introducing new mechanics. This is especially true during the first 10 hours; you don’t receive the powerful follow-up mechanic until the second chapter. I’m confused as to why these highly effective attacks, which let teammates attack an extra time if you knock an enemy off a higher place, weren’t introduced earlier, as that would’ve kept the early hours fresh.
Enemy variety is also sorely lacking. Much of the time, you end up facing regular enemies with guns that don’t have any special traits to them. There’s also a bigger enemy that can only be downed if you hit it twice. Aside from some unique boss mechanics towards the end of a chapter, new enemy types are introduced sparingly. Enemy variety does improve later on, but not quick enough; it’s usually only a single new one per chapter. As a result, it’s boring to simply go through the motions when you’re repeatedly fighting the same kind of enemies.
Persona 5 Tactica is a fun time for someone who’s looking for a more casual strategy game. The Phantom Thieves are just as charming as ever, and the newly introduced characters mesh well with them. It’s not an essential experience in the same way that Persona 5 Strikers was, but fans who aren’t tired of Persona 5 yet will find plenty to like with Tactica.
