Marvelous (XSEED) Game Reviews
Review Rune Factory: Guardians Of Azuma (Switch) - A Bold Reinvention That Pays Off
It'd be rune not to
Rune Factory’s first entry arrived to a welcoming fanbase almost 20 years ago, and players have signed on for the adventures of a string of amnesiac protagonists, equal parts fighter and farmer, ever since. Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma delivers on the promise of the series with another hero mysteriously connected to the...
Sirei-iously good
Back in 2018, a new studio called Too Kyo Games was formed, with the main creatives behind it being Kazutaka Kodaka (the creator of Danganronpa) and Kotaro Uchikoshi, the director of the Zero Escape games. Four projects were unveiled as part of the studio’s reveal, and while three of them saw release over the following years,...
The long-awaited remaster of the remake
Way back in 1989, Nihon Falcom released Ys III: Wanderers from Ys for various PC-based platforms and eventually consoles like the Genesis and SNES. This 2D side-scroller was well-respected in the community and eventually acted as the basis for 2005's 3D reimagining, Ys: The Oath in Felghana, though this...
Review Farmagia (Switch) - A Lighthearted Anime-Style Romp With Monster Crops
Guess how many days take to grow a dragon in your farm?
When Marvelous revealed Farmagia during the June 2024 Nintendo Direct, we saw a familiar concept wrapped in an intriguing package: an action RPG with farm sim elements, like those so fundamental in two of the publisher's biggest series, Rune Factory and Story of Seasons, but wrapped up in a...
Review Fashion Dreamer (Switch) - Some Decent Dress-Up, But Lacks Style Savvy's Depth
Flashy façade
Fashion Dreamer, the newest release from the developer (Syn Sophia) of the cult classic Style Savvy games, garnered high expectations from fans hoping to find a spiritual successor to the series. While Fashion Dreamer is not technically part of the Style Savvy family (known as 'Style Boutique' in Europe), it offers fans of those DS...
Review Rune Factory 3 Special (Switch) - The Same Great Farm Sim/RPG, Though 'Special' Is A Stretch
Another day of sun
Being a Rune Factory fan has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride for the past several years. After Rune Factory 4 launched in 2013, the games went on hiatus for nearly a decade, with the fate of the series itself being pretty up in the air for most of that wait. Against all odds, and after a change in development teams and rights...
Review Story Of Seasons: A Wonderful Life (Switch) - Slow, Old-Fashioned Yet Fulfilling Farming
A Wonderful Life, or A Terrible Remake?
What is the value of a remake? That's something we found ourselves asking as we played Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, a remake of the 2003 Harvest Moon game on GameCube, and a surprising addition to Marvelous/XSEED's catalogue of games. Should a remake of a game bring it up to today's standards, with...
Review Loop8: Summer Of Gods (Switch) - Feels More Like A Laborious Summer Job
Let’s get to know each other, over and over again
There are plenty of roguelike games on Nintendo Switch, but Loop8: Summer of Gods takes an interesting twist to the formula: a classic turn-based Japanese RPG that has roguelike elements. More specifically, the game is similar to something like Persona. However, Loop8 implements neither Persona’s...
Review Trinity Trigger (Switch) - A Blast From The Past For Secret Of Mana Fans
Pull my (Trinity) Trigger
Fans of '90s JRPGs, particularly those released for the SNES, will have been watching Trinity Trigger closely. The game boasts a veritable dream team from some of the best JRPGs of the past 30 years, including those who worked on Xenoblade Chronicles, Octopath Traveler, and, of course, Secret of Mana. There is a lot for...
Review Rune Factory 5 (Switch) - A Dependable Old Farmhand That Could Use A Spruce Up
Finally back in season
Farm sim games are rather difficult to mess up. Give players a welcoming town full of friendly residents, a field that they can till to make ridiculous sums of money, and a few side activities like fishing or mining to fill in any gaps, and you’ve pretty much got the basics covered. Rune Factory games have always nailed all...
Review Shadowverse: Champion's Battle (Switch) - Switch's Best Card Battling RPG Yet
The game based on the anime based on the game!
It’s rather shocking to consider how few card games there are on the Switch today. Sure, there are quite a few deck-building roguelites that incorporate elements of card games into their design, but these don’t quite manage to scratch that same itch. Luckily, Cygames has seen fit to bring over its...
Review Story Of Seasons: Pioneers Of Olive Town (Switch) - Enjoyable, But Unremarkable
Is POOT a fart in the wind, or a glorious trumpet?
Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town might not bear the Harvest Moon title that would identify it as a continuation of the beloved series, but that's all down to copyright, Japanese-to-English translation, and a schism between XSEED and Natsume. It's not very interesting, so to summarise: Story...
Rice, Rice, Baby
As comedian Mitch Hedberg once said: "Rice is great when you're hungry and you want 2,000 of something." You can buy it anywhere. Everywhere. But those grains don't come from nowhere – they are grown in huge flooded paddy fields, filled with workers who painstakingly harvest the stalks, dry them on racks, hull them, and process...
No, MORE Heroes!
Bigger. Better. More. Not exactly the watchwords of the original, shockingly audacious No More Heroes, with its minimal content stretched out across the sweeping, empty landscape of Santa Destroy, memorable for its sheer desolation and entirely in keeping with its satirical take on the “open-world game”. But, as Grasshopper’s...
Review No More Heroes (Switch) - A Crude And Madcap Anime Nightmare That Deserves Your Attention
I, I will be king
No More Heroes is gross. It’s a sleazy, grimy, ugly game with an indefensible moral vacuum of a protagonist in leering otaku Travis Touchdown. And it’s absolutely brilliant. Essentially a hack n’ slash title with some open-world elements, No More Heroes rises above its often-pedestrian gameplay with an overflowing reservoir...
Old friends, new console
Nearly two decades ago, the Nintendo fanbase was graced with Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, the first entry in the series for the Game Boy Advance. Offering up a low-key and easily accessible gateway into the farm sim genre, it quickly garnered a following and earned itself the reputation of being one of the better...
Mini Review Heroland (Switch) - A Fun Twist On The RPG Genre Which Loses Its Novelty Too Quickly
See you on Monday. Bring a sword
Video games really are magical. In a mundane world, they’re a wonderful form of escapism where anyone and everyone can be a hero. This is particularly true in the legendary resort known as Heroland, where folks from all walks of life are encouraged to visit and live out their best hero life. Except, you’re not...
Bloodcurdlingly inconsistent
If you thought the '90s action flick Face/Off had an identity crisis, wait until you meet Corpse Party: Blood Drive. Part visual novel, part survival horror, Blood Drive is the third game in the Corpse Party series and features the surviving cast of the prior two games. While the original Corpse Party – originally...
Review Senran Kagura: Peach Ball (Switch) - A Shiny Casing Full Of Used Pinball Machine Parts
Pinball X jiggle
In the annals of video game history there have been a great many iterations of the classic arcade game of pinball, whether traditional 'realistic' recreations of tables or fresh digital spins on the genre. Pokémon Pinball, for example, built on the foundation of Kirby’s Pinball Land and added an addictive ‘catch ‘em all’...
Review Gal Metal (Switch) - Wild, Weird And Cool, And Worth A Look For Music Fans
Beat it
It's tempting (if not inevitable) to start this review with an anecdote about that infamous E3 (which will be a decade ago by the time this year's event rolls around), and in particular, the oblivious flailing exploits of one Ravi the drummer. While maestro Tak Fujii's own meme-farming antics over the years live long in seasoned gamers...
