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.
This enhanced edition of the classic sci-fi RPG, System Shock, was developed by Nightdive Studios and first released in 2023. What Nightdive has done is bring the original 1994 classic into the modern age, with high definition graphics and a boatload of quality-of-life features.
This is the original VGA/SVGA* version of System Shock, first released in 1994. The game was developed by Looking Glass Technologies and published by Origin Systems in North America and Electronic Arts in Europe.
*= System Shock was originally released in VGA (320×200 resolution), but was soon upgraded to SVGA (640×480 resolution) via patches and re-releases. I’m showing both the VGA and SVGA versions here.
This is the expanded version of Diablo II, called Lord of Destruction, released by Blizzard in 2001.
Phantasy Star Online was developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega in 2000 for the Dreamcast. The game is an online/offline JRPG in the style of the previous Phantasy Star games, and is much-celebrated. We’re looking at PSO “Version 2” here, which came out in 2001, with expanded content.
Persona 5 was developed by “P-Studio” and was published by Atlus in Japan and North America, Deep Silver in PAL territories, and Sega everywhere else, in 2016. It is a Role-Playing Game set in contemporary Japan, featuring monsters, the occult, and the supernatural. Oh, and turn-based combat (but don’t let that put you off).
Developed by Quintet and published by Enix in Japan in 1993, and by Nintendo, everywhere else, in 1994 and ’95. The later ‘Westernised‘ version was censored in places, but there are some good fan-patches of the uncut Japanese version available in English.
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.
