Beginning of the second act:
The quest “A Dark New World“, and then some individual companion quests before the party reunites.
The game changes after the dramatic first act ending. Monsters become “Malicious“, become tougher, and now have glowing green eyes. The world turns on its head with some seriously bold story-telling…
Continue reading Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age, PC [Part 2 – Second Act]
Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age is the eleventh – and reportedly final – game in the long-running Dragon Quest series, from Square Enix. With the passing of character designer Akira Toriyama in March 2024, and composer Koichi Sugiyama in September 2021, this will now likely to be the case. But what a stunning game to end on, because Dragon Quest XI is one of the best, most vibrant, and most rich JRPGs I’ve ever played…
Continue reading Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age, PC [Part 1 – First Act]
Developed and published by HAL Laboratory, Arcana is a fantasy Role-Playing Game that mixes card-battling with first-person dungeoneering, and it is a reasonably enjoyable experience overall. Also known as “Card Master” in Japan, Arcana was first published in 1992, exclusively for the Super Nintendo.
Golden Axe: Beast Rider was developed by Secret Level, Inc. and published for the PlayStation 3 and XBox 360 by Sega in 2008. What initially drew me to this game was the fact that it was 18-rated, in an age when few games are. I wondered why it was an 18. I also wondered if it was worthy of the Golden Axe name.
This is the expanded version of Diablo II, called Lord of Destruction, released by Blizzard in 2001.
Created by The Bitmap Brothers and published by Image Works in 1990, Cadaver is an isometric platform/action game with puzzle elements, but with Dan Malone‘s distinctive artwork adorning it. We’re looking at the Amiga version here today, but it also came out for the Atari ST and PC MS-DOS.
Considered by many to be a masterpiece of video game design, Dark Souls is an action-based fantasy role-playing game, and was developed by From Software and first published by Namco Bandai Games in 2011.
Dark Souls was so successful, in fact, that it created a succession of similar games, called ‘Souls-likes‘. Not many games can claim to have created a whole sub-genre on its own, but this game did.
Released in Japan only, by Sega, in 1992, Tōgi Ō: King Colossus is an obscure JRPG with real-time combat that has been fan-translated into English (and Spanish) and is therefore playable to gamers outside of Japan.
Sword of Mana on the Game Boy Advance is an enhanced remake of the first Seiken Densetsu game, which was released as Final Fantasy Adventure on the original black and white Game Boy in English-speaking territories. It was developed by Square Enix and Brownie Brown and was first released as “Shinyaku: Seiken Densetsu” in Japan in 2003.
Developed by NCS Corporation and published exclusively for the Sega Megadrive/Genesis in 1992, Sorcerer’s Kingdom is a relatively obscure JRPG with tactical, turn-based combat.
