Originally a doujin adult visual novel released near the end of the year 2000 created by less than a handful of people, Tsukihime finally witnessed the release of its professional grade remake in August 2021.
Samus Returns on the 3DS wasn't exactly to my liking. Still the game was popular and considered a success, so it didn't exactly surprise me to learn that Metroid Dread had come out of the same developer hands. But it also surprised me that the new game improved on almost all flaws that I saw in Samus Returns.
Before getting into Astral Chain I had only seen the reveal trailer which made it look like a sci-fi action game. I was pleasantly surprised when I realized I was playing a game with a mix of cyberpunk and sci-fi with a speck of fantasy.
Not sure I cared much when this game was announced in 2015. Playing Final Fantasy XV also didn't help restoring my faith into Square-Enix. To be honest I originally hadn't planned on playing this one at all. Well, until the news got out that it wasn't a remake after all. I mean at least no matter its quality it wouldn't invalidate the original Final Fantasy VII, and people would still have to play that so they could say they had played and witnessed the story of this classic of Playstation history.
So I got to play Final Fantasy VII Remake after all. I was curious about the new direction the story would go in, and how well they translated the original's atmosphere into a 3D world with HD visuals. Still cautious I went in with low expecations. And still found myself disappointed.
It may not be as flashy and cinematic as other Playstation era RPGs, but Breath of Fire III has a unique charm to it that I haven't found in any other game to date.
It's now been more than 10 years after I played this for the first time when it just came out in europe and my opinion on Persona 3 has barely changed. The japanese school-life sim aspect was truely novel at the time, and it was only that novelty that allowed me to look past the game's glaring pacing issues. Ironically Atlus remedied these somewhat in the original release of Persona 4 a couple years later, only to backtrack and make them even worse in the most recent Persona 5. I honestly don't know what the developers at Atlus are thinking here.
You can tell this one came out only a year after its predecessor, as Breath of Fire II is very similar to the series originator from 1993. This game improves on the first one in many ways: Better visuals, better music, better story and writing. And yet it doesn't quite reach for the top of its genre. A horrid encounter rate unfortunately drags this one down to another exercise in patience.
It's april 2019 and a Sega Saturn controller fresh from the manufacture line makes it onto the market. Not an april fools joke. Disregarding that I may be wasting my money on a subpar junk controller I actually preordered this one. Just in case it's good, making sure I don't miss out. Now having tested this piece of modern retro hardware for a good hour there's nothing in the way of the me giving this a seal of approval.
For a 1993 release on the Super Nintendo the original Breath of Fire plays surprisingly archaic. The plot is simple to the point - the game's silent protagonist embarks on a journey to rescue his sister and save the world from evil emperor Zorgon. The journey itself consists mostly of sub plots. To be honest I forgot about Ryu's sister halfway through the game because it never mentions her again until the last act. Dialogue and character developments are kept to a minimum, and while the game's story elements have some neat moments it's hard to stay interested in the shallow story as a whole.