“Blasphemous 2” Review
After the success of Dark Souls and Bloodborne, the gaming world was rife with imitators. Many of them fell far short of the quality of those games, lacking the polish that made them so good in the first place. In…
Read moreAfter the success of Dark Souls and Bloodborne, the gaming world was rife with imitators. Many of them fell far short of the quality of those games, lacking the polish that made them so good in the first place. In…
Read moreBack when I first played Odin Sphere in 2007 (holy crap am I old), I was floored by the amazing visuals, challenging Action-RPG gameplay, and incredible writing. Sadly, that game was a niche hit at best and didn’t really get…
Read moreFor me, the year of 2022 (at least as far as gaming is concerned) was much like a chocolate chip bran muffin: sure, there were some nuggets of sweet goodness, but most of it was just kind of…meh. That’s not…
Read moreNo other series of JRPGs has the quality of characters, world-building and story-telling as Falcom’s decades-long saga, and the fact that they’ve been able to keep up that level of quality for this long is truly a testament to their work.
Read moreWay back in 2009, at the very tail end of the PS3’s lifecycle, Sony and Atlus USA decided to localize and publish a weird little action RPG called Demon’s Souls. Created by From Software, at that time a niche publisher…
Read moreWell…this year kinda sucked, huh? That’s actually what I said (more or less) last year, filled with hope and joy that the following year could only get better. Well…fuck me for believing any of that nonsense! Fortunately, we still had…
Read moreThe Tales series is one of the most long-running and storied franchises in the JRPG world, debuting back in 1995 with Tales of Phantasia on the Super Famicom. That particular game, based on an unpublished novel by one of the…
Read moreYou know… games like this are the reason I’ve grown to love the Switch. I mean, on top of Nintendo’s extensive game library, we also finally have a console who seems expressly made for older, niche visual novel games such…
Read moreThe Disgaea games are what got me into tactical RPGs before anything else. Before going all-in on the likes of Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics, it was this bizarre and slapstick-fueled series that made me understand how deep and…
Read moreThis was a remaster that was a long time coming. I first played the original Mass Effect back when it debuted in 2007. It was one of two games I had received that Christmas with my Xbox 360. I was,…
Read moreReplicant is really more than the sum of its parts. The overall experience, from the character development, the devastating and mind-reeling revelations that plot throws at you, and even the new bits of content specially made for this game make it worthwhile.
Read more“Mankind, be vigilant; We loved you.” This was not the first time I had played Disco Elysium. I first played DE back in 2019, when it originally was published for the PC. Back then, DE was a a cult classic…
Read more© 2023 Smashpad © 2023