RPG Reviews Archive

Dark Delve: A New Grid-Based Dungeon Crawler RPG

By
Lawrence
 – October 2, 2011Posted in: Role Playing Games, RPG Reviews
Dark Delve

Dark Delve -- a new indie RPG from Checkmark Games

About a year ago, I posted an article to this blog lamenting the dearth of grid-based dungeon-crawlers. Well, Mark Harvey of Checkmark Games actually decided to do something about it. Basically a one-man development team, Harvey recently launched Dark Delve as an Xbox Live Indie Game. This game is exactly what I was pining for.

In the spirit of games like the original Bard’s Tale and Might & Magic series, Dark Delve finds you creating a party of four adventurers to explore a massive, grid-based dungeon. If, like me, you are over the age of thirty with fond memories of looting dungeons on an Apple IIc (or if you are a youngster with a taste for classic CRPGs), you owe it to yourself to at least download the free demo of this game. (The full version is a steal at 80 Microsoft Points / one U.S. dollar.)

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Fable 3 – Review

By
Lawrence
 – April 7, 2011Posted in: Role Playing Games, RPG Reviews
Fable 3 Throne

Fable 3 pretends to be RPG royalty, but is actually just the Fool.

Fable 3 streamlines the RPG to the point of absurdity, retaining almost all of the annoyances of its predecessors, and introducing a laughably broken kingdom management simulation.  But damn if Albion isn’t fun to explore.

Universal ammo in Mass Effect 2.  Linear paths in Final Fantasy XIII.  Streamlining the RPG may be all the rage these days, but when a developer feels the need to dumb-down the pause menu, you know you’re in for a rocky ride.  Enter Fable 3, the latest edition to Peter Molyneux’s action RPG franchise.

Apparently, Lionhead discovered that the reason more people don’t buy Fable games is that menus are too befuddling for your average Joe.  Mainstream gamers are confused by convoluted menu choices such as Map, Inventory, and Skills.   These concepts are so complex that they must be illuminated through the use of metaphor.  A virtual room with a map table, a wardrobe closet, and an armory.  A road lined with treasure chests, each of which contains a skill, and each of which can only be unlocked with experience points.

Wait … there’s skills … you unlock…. Hey, now I get it!  Thanks, Lionhead!

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Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes – Review

By
Lawrence
 – December 27, 2010Posted in: Role Playing Games, RPG Reviews
Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes

It's not Might & Magic 10, but it is fun!

Don’t let the faux-anime art style or puzzle-based gameplay put you off – Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes is a great handheld role-playing game that should be in every RPG collection.

Faithful readers may be scratching their heads right now, given my attack of this game in my October 11, 2010 post titled Ultima, The Bard’s Tale, and Might & Magic – Where are the Real Sequels, in which I summarized it as “a shallow, JRPG-style story with zero original Might & Magic lore, and a match-three-colors puzzle game” and compared its visuals to Space Invaders.  (In my defense, I also called it “incredibly fun and addictive.”)  Readers may also be wondering why I am reviewing a game from 2009 on the eve of 2011.

The answer to the second question is that it took me a long time to finish this game.  Since picking it up over a year ago, Clash of Heroes has entertained me through jury duty, several train rides and doctors’ waiting rooms, and visits to my in-laws, and recently has been the game I chose to play instead of PC and console games while at home.  As my appreciation for the game grew, I decided to post a review despite the game’s age.  Regarding the first question – regardless of its quality, I don’t consider this game to be a true Might & Magic RPG.  Therefore, I stand behind most of my original statements.

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Infinity Blade – Review

By
Lawrence
 – December 15, 2010Posted in: Role Playing Games, RPG Reviews
Infinity Blade Title Screen

Infinity Blade -- an Unreal Engine-powered action RPG for iPhone

Infinity Blade is the first of its kind – an on-rails role-playing game.  And it’s good!

Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter recently predicted the imminent demise of handheld game systems as gamers migrate to smart phones.  Infinity Blade, the new action RPG from Epic and Chair released last week for iOS devices, is beautiful and wildly fun.  It also perfectly demonstrates why Michael Pachter is wrong.

The greatest strength of the iOS platform is its processing power.  Infinity Blade looks and animates better than any game on any other handheld (including the iPhone), and even outshines many full retail console and PC releases.  But the platform’s weakness is its controls, a shortcoming especially evident in a game in which console-quality graphics and art stand in stark contrast to gameplay restrictions, necessitated by touch-only controls, that would never be tolerated on any other gaming system, handheld or otherwise.  Will I play and enjoy Infinity Blade?  Definitely – but I won’t surrender my Nintendo DS anytime soon.

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ArcaniA: Gothic 4 – Review

By
Lawrence
 – October 31, 2010Posted in: Role Playing Games, RPG Reviews
ArcaniA: Gothic 4

ArcaniA: Gothic 4 -- Here you see the hero, fetching something.

ArcaniA?  More like Obviouso.

The best thing that can be said of ArcaniA: Gothic 4, the new RPG from developer Spellbound and publisher JoWooD, is that it makes a good first impression.  You are dropped into the prologue as an interesting character – a tortured king – in a unique setting – the cavernous tunnels of his own demon-infested mind.  You spend the first twenty minutes of the game learning the combat system, which is pretty good for an action RPG.  The blocking, rolling, and striking controls are responsive and permit for tactical and fun battles.  The graphics are crisp and detailed.  The monsters are frightening and move with lively and brutal grace.  The sounds of the cavern are subtle and ominous, a nice change from the rousing music that greets you at the title screen and menus.

But as soon as the prologue ends, so does the fun.

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Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale: Thoughts on the Japanese Indie JRPG

By
Lawrence
 – September 13, 2010Posted in: Role Playing Games, RPG Reviews
Recettear main menu

Recettear: A Surprisingly Fresh and Enjoyable Indie JRPG

Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale is a Japanese indie RPG developed by EasyGameStation for Windows in 2007 and localized into English by Carpe Fulgur LLC in 2010.  The game is an anime-style JRPG with a twist – instead of playing the role of the hero, you play the role of the proprietor of the ubiquitous “item shop” that appears in 99% of RPGs (western and Japanese).  While this may sound tedious, it is actually a lot of fun.

Recettear is reminiscent of Torneko’s quest line in Dragon Quest 4, in that you are a merchant who can enter dungeons to find rare items to sell in your store.  However, unlike in Dragon Quest 4, in which Torneko himself entered the dungeons, in Recettear you hire a variety of adventurers to do the dirty dungeon crawling work for you (although as the player, you control the adventurer – see more details after the jump).  As the game progresses, your adventurers-for-hire level up.

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Lair of the Shadow Broker: Thoughts on the latest Mass Effect 2 DLC

By
Lawrence
 – September 8, 2010Posted in: Role Playing Games, RPG Reviews
Lair of the Shadow Broker Mass Effect 2 Liara

Lair of the Shadow Broker brings Liara back to the fight -- temporarily, at least

I remember the days of expansion packs with pleasant nostalgia, so the concept of a self-contained mini-adventure downloaded straight into my game appeals to me – the chance to take my party out on one more quest from which I can triumphantly emerge with experience points and loot (and, on the Xbox 360, achievement points).  This ideal DLC isn’t exactly what Bioware delivers in Lair of the Shadow Broker.  For one thing, there’s minimal loot and only one level’s worth of XP.  But what the episode does deliver is pretty damn good.

For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, Lair of the Shadow Broker is the latest downloadable content pack for Mass Effect 2.  The plot involves helping former crew member (and, depending on your actions in the first Mass Effect, love interest) Liara T’Soni track down an evil power monger called the Shadow Broker and rescue some dude he kidnapped.  (I have not confirmed this, but I suspect the origin of this lore can be found in the Mass Effect comic books that came out around the same time as Mass Effect 2 and starred Liara as their central protagonist.)

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