This article is based on play of an in-development build of FINAL FANTASY XIV: Dawntrail, and content in the final version is subject to change.

“What we want to bring to all of you Warriors of Light is the very best summer vacation a hero could possibly have. I realize this is like a sudden change from the feeling of Endwalker. But I mean, you did save not only all of Hydaelyn, but kind of the whole universe, so we thought maybe we’d give you just a little break.

So, the site of this vacation, and a brand-new adventure, will be what you know as the ‘New World’…what we know as ‘Tural’.”

~Naoki Yoshida (FINAL FANTASY XIV FAN FESTIVAL 2023-2024 Keynote Address)

In my hands-on demo of Dawntrail as part the Dawntrail Media Tour, my mind kept going back to those statements made in Las Vegas. I am veteran of Eorzea. I’ve played since alpha of 1.0, and I have completed every storyline and explored every new region as the story drove itself towards its almost inevitable conclusion that (perfectly, in my opinion) bookended the story that started so long ago for me in the Sixth Astral Era.

Personally, I am incredibly ready for something new and different. And yes, that includes even a summer vacation.

My hands-on Dawntrail demo was not the full expansion, unfortunately. I was limited to exploring the city of Tuliyollal, the field areas of Urqopacha and Kozama’uka, and a new dungeon that comes fairly early on called Ihuykatumu. I did that dungeon both as part of a media group as the Pictomancer job, and I attempted it later on both new jobs solo with Duty Support.

I won’t spoil what little of the storyline I saw in Ihuykatumu other than to say that the division of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn into different competing camps to determine the new Tural king that was teased in the Growing Light patches is not a pre-expansion gimmick, but it actually looks to be genuine. I am glad about this, as I hate it when intriguing storylines are set up and then immediately discarded afterwards. And honestly, what can be more interesting than having dear friends turned into competitive foes as a narrative hook?

But let’s talk the landscape and cities of Tural, because what little I got to see of Dawntrail is unlike anything we have seen so far in FINAL FANTASY XIV Online. Dawntrail is FINAL FANTASY XIV’s most beautiful expansion to date, and one that I never stopped discovering new things in during my demo. The place I kept coming back to during my Dawntrail demo, even to just watch the sun rise and eventually set, was Tuliyollal. This city is drenched in vibrant colors and was laid out in such a natural way that I did not feel like I was being bottle-necked into one part or another like I was by the bridges in Stormblood‘s Kugane.

A Day in the city of Tuliyollal. © SQUARE ENIX

Tuliyollal is built on a hill, with the dock and markets at the foot and the Royal Palace at the top, and the entire cityscape exists out in the open air. Tuliyollal did not feel excessively stretched out over a large map for the sake of making it appear ‘big’ or needlessly complex for the sake of looking complex, and there was something quite magical about being able to look down from a higher elevation and see the city (and a few other members of the media!) bustling down below. There is one certain spot, near the top, that I think will be an extremely popular spot to just people-watch from when Dawntrail launches because you can see so much of the city below it against the backdrop of the sky and ocean.

True to Dawntrail’s cultural inclusivity lore in Tural, Tuliyollal has a lot of NPCs of different races chatting with each other, sitting at a table, or even demonstrating combat for an adoring crowd. While we were warned there are quite a few NPCs missing in the city to talk to (and all they could say anyway was ‘Welcome to Tural!’), Tuliyollal feels like a real, lived-in city that was built up around the environment it inhabits instead of a place built to spite the environment like Rhalgar’s Reach does.

The two outside areas I could visit, Kozama’uka and Urqopacha, could not possibly be more different and they both were gorgeous in their own ways. Kozama’uka is a colorful, forested area with giant waterfalls that dwarf everything around you, while Urqopacha is mountainous with volcanoes with glowing lava cracked across the surface. While not everywhere in both areas was accessible to us, I was incredibly impressed with how much there was to discover. These photos below really only give a glimpse of everything there is to find there.

There is so much to see and visit in Kozama’uka and Urqopacha. © SQUARE ENIX

Both of these areas, and the tiny towns that exist inside both of them, are places you’re going to want to explore in depth while flying on a mount, as they are clearly geared towards that. To show just how much there is to find in these areas: it was only towards the end of my hands-on demo that I found a small, out of the way, pathway that had mysterious paintings inside across the walls.

I believe that I was part of the first non-SQUARE ENIX-employed North American group to clear the Ihuykatumu dungeon, and I did so as the new Pictomancer job. While my thoughts on the job can be seen here, I just want to say briefly that Pictomancer is incredibly versatile, and you will be utilizing both Aetherhue Actions and Motif/Muse Magicks quite a bit. As for Viper, you can see my full thoughts here about that job, but it will be the most complicated job in FINAL FANTASY XIV Online when Dawntrail is released. This is because there are multiple combos you need to execute in different ways in order to maximize your damage output. Once you try it out, you’ll get the hang of it. Trust me.

“Dawntrail is FINAL FANTASY XIV’s most beautiful expansion to date, and one that I never stopped discovering new things in during my demo.”

Ihuykatumu is a level 91 dungeon, and my character was level capped down to level 92 from 100 for it. Presumably, this sets Ihuykatumu as a fairly early dungeon in Dawntrail. One of my biggest questions coming into this expansion, especially with all the new Xbox Series S and X players, and the ability to buy scenario skip items in the online shop for a large discount at the moment, was if Dawntrail would be a good jumping on spot for brand new players.

Based solely upon my experience raiding in the dungeon, the answer is ‘no.’ The boss mechanics at each of the three major fights of that dungeon have Areas of Effect that crisscross the battle area in large patterns, and the enemies have special attack moves and patterns that clearly expect the players to know what to do based upon prior dungeon experience in prior expansions. In other words, this is a strong continuation of the gameplay style and degree of difficulty from Endwalker. If you’ve completed maybe only A Realm Reborn’s basic storyline and you want to jump into Dawntrail, then (based solely upon this dungeon) you’re going to have a hard time as the difficulty level is far higher than even the final ARR fights.

Something else that I wondered about would be if there was going to be a return of dungeon gimmicks/mechanics. I was curious about if this was going to make a resurgence due to another SQUARE ENIX-published title, BABYLON’S FALL, actually introducing the concept of dungeon mechanics during the Tale of Two Ziggurats substory that was released in May 2022.

Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P), however, stated that they want to introduce fresh mechanics back into the gameplay during the Dawntrail Day 1 Q&A. Unfortunately, Ihuykatumu did not have that. Ihuykatumu was the fairly standard ‘fight enemies, kill enemies, get to a miniboss, kill that, and repeat two more times’ type gameplay that has been around since the Stormblood expansion.

Personally, I am of a split opinion of this: while the dungeon mechanics do get annoying when you’re running the dungeon for the umpteenth time to try to get the latest Tomes, they do break up the standard dungeon format into something new. I am hopeful that with Yoshi-P’s comments, we can get more dungeon mechanics like firing cannons at Cuca Fera during Heavensward’s The Stone Vigil (Hard) dungeon. Therefore, I am hopeful that Ihuykatumu will not be indicative of the entire expansion.

There is a lot of enemy variety in Dawntrail. The enemies throughout the overworld and inside the Ihuykatumu dungeon are both unique and were not barely reskinned from elsewhere in Eorzea with a higher level and a different name (well, except for possibly the Malboros). Whether I am running away from Mountain Bears or even a reimagined Cactuar (yes, they are there, and I need that plush now on the SQUARE ENIX Store for purchase!), I kept gawking at them before dispatching them. I even ganged up with my fellow media Warriors of Light to take down a Rank A hunt, Queen Bee, that had fun new mechanics that required us to work together as a group to kill.

The new race option coming to Dawntrail is the female Hrothgar. I spent my entire demo playing as one, and I was more than pleased with how the character model looks. I don’t think it is a big secret that there aren’t a ton of male Hrothgar characters out fighting in Eorzea, but I would be absolutely shocked if we don’t get a lot more female Hrothgars long-term in the game. Everything from the character face to the fur looked detailed and amazing, and I was quite pleased with how the female Hrothgar looked in various job gear.

There is one more thing that I want to talk about, and this takes place back in Tuliyollal. Towards the end of my Dawntrail demo, I visited what I assumed will be the in-game market area in the city for tomes trade ins, NPC item sellers, and such. If you’ve played FINAL FANTASY XIV from A Realm Reborn through the Endwalker expansion, then there is one thing that you can count on when you visit any NPC shops: they will all be bare-bones cut and paste graphic images of each other’s stalls, no matter where you go in the world. There will be large, stacked bags, generic armor suits, and a few baubles here and there on display. Even at the most lavish lore-wise shop locations in-world, such as the Steps of Nald in Ul’dah and the East/West Balshahn Bazaar in Radz-at-Han, suffer from this generic sameness.

Yet, Tuliyollal’s shops could not be any more different. When started as a quick run through turned into a long, lengthy walk as I kept stopping to gawk at all of the small details the developers placed in. There are so many shops with jewels, individual books, different fish on display, and none of it – even the bookshelves – look to be a copy and paste job between shops. This part of Tuliyollal feels like an actual marketplace that has real, unique, shops in it that is absolutely stuffed to the proverbial Namazu gills with items.

What I presume to be the NPC shops in Tuliyollal are the most detailed ever in this game.

If you’ve read the past two paragraphs, then you’re probably wondering why in Etheirys I am talking about something like basic NPC shops in such detail. Basic service NPC shop background graphics are the kind of thing that no player ever really has talked about for the past decade-plus of FINAL FANTASY XIV Online. In fact, the development team could have probably just done the same bare bones basic work for it for Dawntrail that was put into every other prior expansion, and no one would have noticed or likely cared.

Yet, the fact that the details of NPC shops is something that’s been changed, that this is something SQUARE ENIX has taken the undoubtedly precious time to improve on, speaks volumes about the care and attention to detail the development team is bringing to Dawntrail. After all, if the development team cares this much about improving such a tiny detail of the game, which also haven’t been talked about at a Fan Festival or in a Producer Live Letter so far, then what other improvements and surprises await all of us Warriors of Light in Tural?

I, for one, cannot wait to find out.

There is a large variety of new enemies in Tural. 

If you cannot tell just from reading all of this so far, I was seriously impressed by my hands-on time with Dawntrail. This expansion’s hands-on demo, especially coming off of Endwalker, pulled off the equivalent of a Four Kan or Thirteen Orphans hand in Doman Mahjong for me. Tural feels truly like a fresh break from all of the prior expansions, and this expansion has real promise to be the best expansion yet. This opinion comes from having tried out the two new jobs, seeing the care and attention being given to the graphics and intimate, small details of Tural, and just how simply new everything feels.

Oh, and the music.

You cannot forget the music. Masayoshi Soken has composed music that sounds wildly different than anything that has come before in FINAL FANTASY XIV Online while also feeling appropriate to the atmosphere and the summer vacation goal Naoki Yoshida laid out in Las Vegas. I cannot wait to hear Tuliyollal’s theme at a future Distant Worlds: Music from FINAL FANTASY, A New World: intimate music from FINAL FANTASY, or Eorzean Symphony- FINAL FANTASY XIV Orchestra performance.

All of this is very high praise, considering how much I have loved this critically-acclaimed MMORPG. I spent almost ten hours in just a handful of areas, and yet I feel like I have yet to see everything there is out there. Tural feels like a giant, colorful, beautiful world with so much potential present to be the best expansion yet. And so I am just counting down the days until Dawntrail enters early access on June 28 and is fully released on July 2.

Please check out my thoughts on the new Viper job, on the new Pictomancer job, and about Naoki Yoshida’s Media Q&A from Day 1!

If you want more FINAL FANTASY XIV Online-themed content, then be sure to check out my ongoing cooking series, Cooking Eorzea!

Also, check out what eleven FINAL FANTASY XI Online enemies that I think need to be part of the upcoming Echoes of Vana’diel raid series in Dawntrail.

What do you think of Tuliyollal, Urqopacha, and Kozama’uka?

Did you preorder Dawntrail so you can get in during the June 28 early access period?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post Dawntrail Media Tour: Dawntrail Shows Promise to be the Best Expansion Yet appeared first on oprainfall.

You can check out more about Arzette at the game’s official website.

Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore is available for purchase NOW: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC

Finally, you can check out my impressions of a hands-on demo here.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: My name is Quentin H. with oprainfall, and you are?

Seth Fulkerson: Seth Fulkerson, developer and creator of Arzette from Seedy Eye Software.

OR: Can you tell us a bit about Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore?

SF: It is a spiritual successor to a pair of infamous fantasy-adventure games from the early 90s, like CD-ROM era. The game has full motion cutscenes, is full of crazy animation, hand-painted backgrounds, and it is done in a familiar [and] beloved style.

OR: What is your personal history with the Phillips CD-i?

SF: So, a few years ago, I made a fan remaster of Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: Wand of Gamelon. I did that to fulfill an in-joke with friends, but also to explore the potential of ‘Well, what if those games were cleaned up a little bit, they might be a little better?’. The response to that was a lot better than what I thought. I was lucky enough that I had a lot of animators and artists that are my close friends. So, we were always sort of kicking around doing our own take on those games. And the time was right, so yeah, it was where the genesis of Arzette started. My producer, Audun Sørlie, got in contact with me and we started working together to make Arzette to what it is.

“I know a lot of people looked at Arzette and thought ‘Why is he making this? Is he making this as a joke?’

No, I wouldn’t spend three to four years of my life making a joke- I want to make a good game.”

OR: You mentioned a little bit ago, and in a prior interview in a January 2024 interview with Game Developer, you said that you took on the challenge of remastering two CD-i Zelda games: Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon as an in-joke. What kind of in-joke makes you want to develop a game for four years?

SF: So, in 2016, that’s around the time that Twilight Princess HD came out, me and some friends were literally joking ‘What if that, but The Faces of Evil?’. And so, I started trying to scope it out, and I’ve been making games for a long time – mostly really small stuff like game jam type stuff. But I had a hard time finishing projects – especially that were not bigger scope, but along the lines of that.

So, it was a dual purpose: ‘Hey, I’ll finish the joke but also finish a game.’ And in the course of developing those [remastered CD-i The Legend of Zelda games], I learned how to make a game for real and I also learned the development history behind the games and the circumstances that lead to them being the way they were. I found it really inspiring, and it really had a profound effect on me and how I wanted to approach future projects and also what I wanted to do with Arzette.

OR: CD-i aficionados will tell you that there is a third CD-i title out there – Zelda’s Adventure. Why did you not take on remastering [that] game as well? Did you use that particular third game any when creating Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore?

SF: Basically, the duology of games – The Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon – they share the same engine, they are almost the same game. Zelda’s Adventure is a lot different; it is a top-down game. But personally, it is going to sound controversial, but I do not care for Zelda’s Adventure. I know it has a lot of its fans, but for a game, basically The Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon, for all their flaws, had a pretty solid gameplay loop – especially for Western games released in 1993.

It’s very prototypical Metroidvania – multilayer levels – you collect items through people or collect powerups, you go back through levels with new powerups. Zelda’s Adventure does not really have that at all. In fact, there are lots of items that are red herrings – it’s a very mean game to the player. I do not like it.

OR: Let’s follow up on the gameplay loop. You’re taking gameplay from games published in 1993, and putting it into a 2024 gaming atmosphere. We have had at least two generations of gamers come up during that time period. How do you take that and make that relevant to a modern-day audience while still staying true to the original 1993 releases?

SF: So, right away, when I was prototyping, I identified a lot of elements that I knew I would include in Arzette. The gamefeel, how it looks – a lot of things. For instance, if someone were to look at Arzette from a distance, they would say ‘Oh, I know what that is’ or ‘That looks familiar’ and pick it up. Maybe they will get the feeling that this is like a CD-i like game, but they aren’t aware that they are getting the five-star hotel treatment of CD-i. There’s a lot of lives, there’s generous checkpointing, the gameplay’s a lot faster, there’s certain design elements that are intended to be more player friendly.

For instance, keys are always found in the same area if there is a locked door. But in the original game, keys could open whatever door they wanted across the entire world, [and so] it was a lot more obtuse. So, take the essence of those original games and apply a lot of modern sensibilities – ‘cause I don’t want to frustrate the player, I don’t want them to want to give up or think this is poorly designed on purpose.

I know a lot of people looked at Arzette and thought ‘Why is he making this? Is he making this as a joke?’ No, I wouldn’t spend three to four years of my life making a joke – I want to make a good game. It is a delicate balance of jumping, how you attack – it has to feel a certain way and [I] sort of dial it in. Because if I give too many lives, then I can go too far in the opposite direction. But, if you try to stay true to what those games were while polishing off the rough edges, then that is the sweet spot.

“Part of me being sincere and serious about making this a spiritual successor was to get some of the legacy staff on board.”

OR: How did you develop Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore‘s story, and keep the game from falling into an awful parody of the classic CD-i games instead of paying an earnest homage to it?

SF: From the beginning, I knew that I didn’t want to make a wink wink, nudge nudge meme game that was mean-spirited. This was an earnest homage to those games. I wanted to make sure the writing was sincere – it is a strange world with strange characters, but they don’t know that. They are just kind of living their lives. It was important to me and my co-writer to make sure that the atmosphere was Saturday morning cartoons. Sometimes the humor didn’t land, but for the most part, it was a good-spirited world with a good-spirited antagonist.

To me, Arzette would never work if it was mean to itself. It’s a loving homage, and everyone that worked on the game – they all knew what we were doing, they all have the same sort of strange fondness for the [CD-i] games.

OR: About how many minutes of cutscenes are there in this game?

SF: There are 45 minutes of animation in the game.

OR: How do you decide when to use an animation to tell the story and when not to use animation in developing your story?

SF: The original games, for all their flaws, they had a really clever way of delivering player information – and that was through the cutscenes. A lot of the scenes in Arzette deliver gameplay information, like it might seem nonsensical at first, but the drunk guy at the bar is actually telling you that you can reflect projectiles by stabbing them, even though it seems like he is just going on a drunk rant. We added a few minor quests in the game that don’t have animation, but for the most part, I wanted to make sure that the entire thing was fully voice acted and animated.

OR: Did you direct the voice acting?

SF: I had a professional voice director that worked alongside me while voice casting for the game.

OR: And I think you brought back some classic voice actors from the CD-i era. Can you tell us about that?

SF: Part of me being sincere and serious about making this a spiritual successor was to get some of the legacy staff on board. I managed to network and find contact info for some of the original voice actors and one of the original artists that worked on The Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon, Rob Dunlavey – he did the world map for Arzette and one of her levels. He was one of the background painters for Faces of Evil and he did the world map for the game as well.

Jeffrey Rath, who voiced Link in the original games and Bonniejean Wilbur who voiced Zelda – I explained the project, and that yes, it’s been 30 years [but] I promise I’m not crazy. I outlined that it’s an homage, right? They understood, because they’re fully aware of the reputation that the games have. I think for them, it’s really rewarding to see people wanting to revisit their work. They were very receptive [to this], and a joy to work with.

OR: Can you tell us about your partnership with Limited Run Games to publish this title?

SF: After I decided that I wanted to do this game, I started pitching it to various publishers. I sat down with Josh Fairhurst, the CEO of Limited Run, to pitch a physical version of the game. He saw approximately 30 seconds of an early version of the shopkeeper scene, and he decided this was a game they wanted to do. Limited Run seems to want to take risks on games that nobody else would, because Zelda CD-i spiritual successor is certainly a risk. But I think he knew exactly what I wanted to do and how it would be a special game. The game has been a success, so it certainly has been a wonderful relationship with Limited Run Games.

OR: In a 2020 interview with Eurogamer, you mentioned that it took you about four years to develop the remasters of Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon. Did any of that experience play into developing Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore?

SF: Absolutely. I learned a lot more about programming, project management, and how to structure a game from those. They also share the game engine – Gamemaker Studio 2 – I’ve been using Gamemaker since I was 12 years-old, so a fairly long time and I’m fairly familiar [with it].

But it’s learning lessons from those games as well. Even remastering those games – I learned what works and what doesn’t for Arzette to give a modern gameplay experience for players.

OR: There is also a new CD-i controller that was released through Limited Run Games. Can you tell us about that and why would you want to do that yourself?

SF: That was one of the things that we had a discussion about, was doing that controller. It’s just one of those silly, fun things that Limited Run loves to do. For the authentic homage, you can pick up one of those retro controllers. It’ll work on any Switch game. I would not recommend players playing through Arzette the first time with the controller, but it is certainly playable. I’ve played through the whole game with that.

OR: And how was that experience playing with the CD-i controller?

SF: I will say…interesting. I will say, interesting.

OR: That is a loaded statement.

SF: Yes, it is.

OR: Now with Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore released, what’s next? More CD-i inspired titles? Are you going in a different direction entirely? Or what are you planning on doing in the future?

SF: I would love to keep exploring lesser-loved games and everything else. But really, a lot of it depends on the success of Arzette for where I would go next. But yeah, I’m pretty much up for anything.

OR:  Thank you.

Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore is available for purchase NOW: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC

Have you ever played either of the classic The Legend of Zelda CD-i titles?

What do you think about the new retro-style controller?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post PAX EAST 2024 INTERVIEW: Seth Fulkerson on Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore appeared first on oprainfall.

I’ve made little secret about my love of the Yakuza games (and their spin-offs). It’s one of my favorite series, so I was ecstatic to have the chance to review Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, the second of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s RPG offerings and a continuation of Ichiban Kasuga’s story. Joined by new friends and in a completely new setting, will this adventure charm me as much as Ichiban’s first?

Infinite Wealth Story

We pick up three years after the events of Like a Dragon and the Yokohama crew have settled back into society as productive, working adults. Kasuga Ichiban is at Hello Work trying to find jobs for the displaced yakuza following the Great Dissolution of the Tojo Clan and Omi Alliance. Masumi Arakawa’s dream for the yakuza was for them to reintegrate into proper society, and Ichiban has made it his dream to make sure Arakawa’s vision comes to fruition. Yu Nanba found a job working in a medical warehouse, and Koichi Adachi is starting up his own security business. Saeko Mukoda is running her own club. Everything is going well, but it’s about to go downhill fast. Ichiban finally builds up the courage to take Saeko out on a date, and it ends disastrously – so much so that we skip one year into the future and she’s left the poor man on read. Not only that, but a VTuber released a hit piece on Ichiban that went viral, leading to him being canned from Hello Work. Adachi and Nanba get the ax, as well.

Freshly unemployed once again, the gang learn all the ex-yakuza Ichiban spent years trying to help were also targeted by this VTuber. Hisoka Tatara has it out for the yakuza in general and Ichiban in particular, it seems, dedicating multiple live streams to our hero. With nowhere to go, the yakuza turn to the Seiryu Clan in Yokohama, which has been filling its ranks in recent months. Acting captain Masataka Ebina claims he’s recruiting the former yakuza to work at his legitimate waste disposal business as he plans to enact the Second Great Dissolution. To gain legitimacy among veteran yakuza and prove his commitment to Arakawa’s vision, Ebina pulls strings to get Jo Sawashiro out of jail early, drawing in more former Tojo and Omi in the process.

It’s here Sawashiro drops a bombshell: Ichiban’s mother, Akane, is still alive, and she lives in Hawaii. Would Ichiban like to go meet her? Ichiban of course takes Sawashiro up on his offer, though unfortunately his bad luck follows him across the Pacific. Ichiban arrives on American soil and is immediately held up at gunpoint, then drugged and left naked on the beach. He’s arrested for indecent exposure and used as a scapegoat for multiple cold cases, until he escapes and runs into Kazuma Kiryu, who is coincidentally in Hawaii on a job for the Daidoji. The two eventually make their way back to Akane’s house, encounter a local yakuza named Yutaka Yamai – who is also looking for Akane – and make a new friend in Eric Tomizawa, one of Yamai’s men and also the man who held Ichiban up the day before. Ichiban is nothing if not forgiving to a fault, after all. Once the trio are safe, Kiryu then drops the games’s second bombshell: He’s dying of cancer.

So begins Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. In true RGG fashion, the game takes tons of twists and turns, bringing together an eclectic cast of misfits in a story that tackles finding a new beginning in life, closure in the life you’ve lived, and atonement for the mistakes you’ve made. The game takes aim at a number of issues, not the least of which include police corruption, overly burdensome and retributive laws, online dogpiling and how easily someone’s life can be destroyed by rumors, religious faith versus zealotry, economic disparity, homelessness, balancing urbanization and environmentalism, and bodily autonomy with regards to illness.

Ryu Ga Gotoku narratives have always had go big or go home energy, and that’s no different here, for good and for ill. Staging the majority of the story in Hawaii was a big hit, using this new location to explore themes that have been ever-present in this series, but to also highlight unique issues to Hawaii itself, as well as adding an international bent.

Ichiban and the gang from Like a Dragon return, and this time they’ve made some friends. The newest additions to the cast are Eric Tomizawa, a Hawaiian cabby caught up with local gangster Yutaka Yamai; and Chitose Fujinomiya, the daughter of a powerful Japanese magnate who is attending school in Hawaii. Old friends Adachi, Nanba, Zhao and Han Joongi join newly playable Seonhee and the Dragon of Dojima himself to round out the playable cast for this sprawling, dual protagonist story.

Let’s break it down a little more, as unlike previous games in this series, both Ichiban and Kiryu take top billing here. Infinite Wealth is as much a story about the search for Ichiban’s mother as it is closure for Kiryu, and the way the game handles each is at least partially reflected in their supporting casts.

Ichiban’s story takes up the bulk of the game, with the front half devoted entirely to his time in Hawaii. One of the first people he meets is Tomizawa, a down-on-his-luck cabby who holds Ichiban up at gunpoint just hours after our hero touches down on American soil. The son of an Hawaiian native and a Japanese national, Tomizawa straddles two cultures and acts as Ichiban’s liaison and interpreter as one of the few bilingual characters in the game. (This is, unfortunately, an aspect of the game that gets dropped pretty quickly, but I’ll discuss that later.) Chitose is the daughter of a big time Japanese business magnate and has been attending school in Hawaii. Stifled by her upbringing, she’s an interesting civilian foil to the yakuza families of older games. She’s also the most tech savvy of the crew, and ends up helping Ichiban widen the search for his mother by utilizing her ‘Net know-how to gather information. Ichiban’s crew is eventually rounded out by Adachi and Han Joongi, who bring with them familiarity but also new perspectives on life in Hawaii. Having old friends and new mingle was a nice reflection of Ichiban’s relentless optimism and drive to expand his world.

Kiryu’s party is made up entirely of familiar faces from Like a Dragon (which I’ll also refer to as RGG7), which feels appropriate as his story focuses more on the past. What’s new is who is playable, though. Seonhee joins the fray this time around, stepping out from her web of shadows in the Geomujul to take to the streets alongside her hero. Despite her connections to the underworld, she does not have immediate access to information the way the Florist did in previous games, instead helping Kiryu unravel the mysteries surrounding the Seiryu Clan’s connections with Hawaii and how VTuber Hisoka Tatara plays into everything. Nanba comes along as Kiryu’s physical and mental support, with Saeko and Zhao rounding out the crew. Having Ichiban’s friends pal around with Kiryu gives the cast a chance to discuss Ichiban in ways they could not when he’s present, as well as contrast the differences between both former yakuza – in particular, addressing Kiryu’s insistence on doing everything himself. Ichiban has always been a proponent of the Power of Friendship, and that is on full display here, demonstrating how he’s impacted those around him and how they, in turn, are lending their strength to Kiryu when he needs it the most.

Gameplay

Like a Dragon‘s turn-based combat returns here with some welcome tweaks. The battle system still relies heavily on exploiting weapon type and elemental weaknesses in your enemies, but has now added a free-moving aspect that allows for back attacks and team combos. In RGG7, your characters would run across the field to attack whatever enemy you chose, but you had no free range of movement. In Infinite Wealth, you now have a small area in which you can reposition your characters to either hit enemies on the back for added damage, or line up attacks to shove enemies into your friends for a bonus follow-up attack. You can also position your character near an ally and trigger a combo attack, where both will attack the enemy at once. It’s a small change with a big impact since it introduces some strategy, especially when dealing with enemies who use shields or are otherwise heavily armored. The higher the bond with a character, the more damage these combo attacks will do, and the more often follow-up damage will trigger.

Ichiban and Kiryu can also do Tag Team attacks with their crew once they build up their Hype Meter. This is represented by an infinity symbol next to each character’s combat portrait, and the more damage a character takes, the faster the gauge fills. Once it’s fully charged, Ichiban and Kiryu can then “tag” that character to perform a special combo. For instance, Ichiban and Kiryu’s Tag Team is the two of them rushing an enemy and punching them in the face; Tomizawa and his partner hurl wheel wrenches through the air; and Chitose ballroom dances with her partner to hit multiple bad guys in a line attack. Each of them are pretty interesting in their own ways. Ichiban can also use an Ultimate Tag Team that depletes all party member’s gauges but does massive damage to every enemy.

Characters have access to various jobs, which must be bought by taking part in vacation packages at Alo-Happy Tours. Each job can learn skills up through level 30, after which point levels only increase stats. These skills can be “inherited” by other jobs, giving you the opportunity to mix and match and craft your favorite possible job. Do you want your Samurai to also spray bubbly in your enemy’s faces the same way a Host can? Well, now that’s possible. Even ultimate abilities can be inherited, though you only have five total inheritance slots, one of which is for an ultimate ability. You earn inheritance slots as you increase your bond with other characters, and these inheritances will carry over to every subsequent job until you manually change which skills you’re sharing. This ends up being an excellent way to equip characters to exploit the weakness system and ensure you’ve got versatility.

Infinite Wealth has a wide assortment of jobs available. Host, Breaker, Chef, Idol, and Night Queen return from RGG7, so I want to focus briefly on the newcomer jobs: Action Star, Aquanaut, Desperado, Pyrodancer, Samurai, Geodancer, Housekeeper, and Kunoichi. Action Star is a heavy damage focused job with mostly single-target skills. Aquanaut is a magic-focused job with a decent mix of ranged attacks and healing. Desperado is a ranged attack job that mixes elemental-based damage between single and group attacks. Pyrodancer is a magic job with an emphasis on support and debuffing. Samurai is a strong physical job with a mix of single target and AOE skills. Geodancer, like Pyrodancer, focuses on magic support and debuffs. Housekeeper has a mix of physical and debuff attacks. And Kunoichi is a strong physical job. Ichiban can also access the Sujimancer job, which lets him call forth Sujimon to perform an assortment of magic-based attacks. Much like in RGG7, your unique jobs tend to be the most well-rounded, though it doesn’t matter as much here since you can mix and match skills with inheritance, so it’s really just going with the aesthetic you like the most. I would say the only exception is Sujimancer, which felt underwhelming even with high-level Sujimon.

As the Dragon of Dojima, Kiryu’s combat comes with its own flourish. He fists are his weapons, and his ability list is a what’s what of classic Komaki-style attacks. He can also access three different fighting stances at will throughout a fight: Brawler, Rush, and Beast. Much like in his own titles, each of these styles comes with its own pros and cons. Brawler is Kiryu’s default stance, and the only one in which he can use Heat Actions. You can also counter enemy attacks if you perfect guard. In Rush mode, Kiryu’s attacks deal less damage, but he has a wider range of motion, and he gets two turns, which makes this ideal for cleaning up low HP enemies or capitalizing on back attacks. Beast mode is Kiryu’s defensive stance, offering an increase in attack power, but at a significant hit to speed and range. While in Beast mode, Kiryu can break enemy guard stances without using special abilities, which makes this style invaluable against large groups of heavy types and enemies with shields.

When the going gets tough, Kiryu can also dig deep and harness the dragon within, unleashing the full strength of the legendary yakuza by literally breaking free of the game’s turn-based combat to wail on enemies freestyle. Rather than performing a Tag Team attack, by holding R2 when his Hype Meter is full, Kiryu can access Dragon’s Resurgence, giving him free range to pummel any enemy regardless of distance. Once the Resurgence meter runs out, Kiryu will rejoin his teammates in turn-based combat. Deciding between Resurgence and Tag Team can be the difference between winning or losing a battle, and I liked the versatility this offered.

Like every other character in the cast, Kiryu can also use the generic jobs (I quite liked him as a samurai, myself). But the Dragon of Dojima is honestly the strongest job in the game – absurdly so at times – and is a nice gameplay reminder that, despite the events of the story that have Kiryu significantly weaker than during his own standalone titles, he earned his Legendary Yakuza title for a reason.

Poundmates return with some enhancements this time around. Like in RGG7, you can call in support from a variety of colorful characters, many of whom you unlock through subquests. They range from the hard-hitting Chitose Holmes (not to be confused with Chitose Fujinomiya), to mainstay Nancy and her new friend Olivia, the lead singer of a visual kei band, one half of a manzai group who serves coffee, and even the Bartender from Survive. New this time around is the fact that most Poundmates you obtain will fight alongside you for three turns, rather than one-and-done moves. Those are reserved for the highest level Poundmates, most of which you won’t see until nearing endgame. For instance, Chitose will follow up all of Ichiban’s attacks with her own flurry of furious blows, sticking around the battlefield for three turns until she finally bids farewell. Having this bonus damage or healing can make or break early fights, and was a nice addition to the Poundmates system. The more money you spend on Poundmates, the higher your rank with the service, and once you max out your contributions you can unlock With Benefits options, which double the cost of a Poundmate, but also exponentially increases their base attack power. This addition was indispensable during endgame.

Along with Poundmates, Sujimon return, this time bigger than ever. Rather than just being a glorified bestiary, Sujimon now have an entire mini-game devoted to their capture and subsequent battles. Infinite Wealth makes no real effort to hide the Pokémon influence here, and if you’re at all familiar with those games, capturing Sujimon will feel old hat. After battle, Ichiban has the chance to “recruit” one of his enemies. To do so, you need to offer a gift (think Pokéballs) and then prostrate yourself to demonstrate your resolve. The sincerity of your attempt to woo the enemy is represented by a scale at the bottom of the screen, and the further along you time your button press the better your chances (though I highly recommend checking out the low sincerity). If you’re successful, the Sujimon will join you and can be used by Ichiban’s Sujimancer unique job, or fight in Sujimon Battles. They can also take part in Dondoko Island. I’ll touch on both of these aspects a little later.

Read on for Dondoko Island, Sujimon Battles and more! ->

The post REVIEW: Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth appeared first on oprainfall.

This interview about Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution was originally supposed to go live during the time window while you could still pre-order a physical Game Boy Advance copy of the game from Limited Run Games. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, this interview ended up being delayed into May for publication. However, Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution will be coming to home consoles, and so you can still definitely pick up a copy of the game then.

You can find out more about WayForward and Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution on the official website, on Discord, on Facebook and Instagram, on X, on TikTok, on YouTube, and on Twitch. 

You can also check out my impressions of a hands-on demo of Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution here.

Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution is set to release in 2024 on Game Boy Advance, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: My name is Quentin H. with oprainfall, and could you two introduce yourselves?

Matt Bozon: I’m Matt Bozon, I’m the director of the Shantae series — but specifically here, Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution.

Erin Bozon: And I am Erin Bozon, the creator of Shantae.

OR: Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution started at a Game Boy Advance title in 2002. What can you tell us about this title, and why was it never released?

MB: Well, it is a sequel to the original Shantae game — early, early ideas for this game started in November of 2000, which was when we got our dev kits. Shantae 1 was still in development, so we were starting to think about what a sequel might be. I actually started to have some of its early, early framework — or I guess design ideas, I should say — getting worked on even while the first game was not quite done.

You asked why it was not released. So, Game Boy Advance was very difficult at retail. It was very license driven, toy aisle, movie tie-ins, TV show tie-ins. It was very challenging. And prices of those cartridges were very expensive, so it was very hard to get publishers to want to take a gamble on an expensive cartridge for a completely unknown property. [And] the first game hadn’t even come out yet. And by the time it did come out, it had proven to not be a great seller. It was a fan favorite-

EB: -it only sold 10,000 copies.

MB: So yeah, it got cult [classic] status.

EB: It had a limited release.

MB: Yeah, it had a fan following, but not really a lot. Not enough to prove it would be successful as a Game Boy Advance game. Which, as I mentioned, was so much more expensive to manufacture and produce. Margins were very slim, and so, ultimately, there were a couple of places that looked at it and went ‘Maybe we could do something with this if you can get it on the cheapest cartridge and you can cut the content down.’ Really nice people who tried their best. But we’re like ‘We can’t even fit the demo on one of these tiny cartridges, much less the whole game — there’s just no way.’

EB: We [had] maxed out all the features, so to cut it down wouldn’t have worked.

MB: So, it just got put away and Shantae didn’t really come back again until digital distribution, which was like a rebirth — that was Shantae: Risky’s Revenge, which was a completely different game. This one just kind of went away and stayed away.

EB: And waited for more updated technology.

MB: For us, Risky’s Revenge was the third game we developed. But it’s the second game anyone ever saw.

“We’re always trying to do the next Shantae game, always. It’s always on the forefront.”

OR: How much progress was actually made in Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution before the project was shelved? How much of what WayForward did back in 2002 was actually still usable for this upcoming release?

EB: I think 50 percent?

MB: Fifty percent of the game’s systems, all of the player mobility, transformations, animations, big ideas that had already been built — engine, all that kind of stuff. What it didn’t have was the Golden Path adventure. You could only do 25 percent of it. So, if you’re speaking purely of game development, that is about halfway through the development process. Usually, the back half is a lot of ‘Now you’ve got to mass produce your content.’ We had done all the legwork, but we hadn’t done all the other stuff where you build out the full game experience.

This was really, really important at the beginning of the project: ‘Were we going to just resume work?’ And we ended up doing that. It’s just the same work, same code, same tools — tried to put our computers in the state they were in 20 years ago, back when resolutions of 1024 by 768 was as big as your computer monitor could possibly display. We had to go back in time and actually work in those constraints. Stuff and tools that were not even Windows-compatible yet, they were in DOS. Animations were made in DOS. A lot of this stuff — we’re working on stuff that is old, even back then. In the early ’90s, we were working on tools from the ’80s.

EB: Dpaint! [OR Note: Also known as Deluxe Paint.]

MB: Dpaint, yeah!

EB: DPaint was our go-to for the first game and the second one.

MB: All that stuff was still the same stuff. While we made improvements, we didn’t ditch the old things. We just continued. And that’s kind of like having one or two hands tied behind your back, honestly. So, you get none of the advantages of modern game development, other than being able to communicate with Teams and talking and chatting on a video call. But not the game.

EB: You were saying that there was no ‘undo’, right?

MB: There’s no undo! *laughs* We didn’t have that kind of technology yet! It’s Game Boy Advance, through and through. That’s what it is.

OR: Why look to the past to bring Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution back now instead of working on the next ‘big thing’ after Shantae: Seven Sirens and after the re-release of the first two Shantae games?

MB: That’s the best question ever.

EB: We’re always trying to do the next Shantae game, always. It’s always on the forefront. But you have to find someone to help fund it, you have to find the time and the staff and a slot — because a lot of times, you have to work on other titles in order to afford to do something that’s an indie game. So we came to a point where’s it’s like ‘Okay, we can afford to work on another Shantae game because he had just finished working on — I’m not sure we can say it-‘

MB: *laughs* I help out a lot at the studio! I was between projects I was helping out on.

EB: Yeah, we can’t say exactly what he was working on, but he had been on something for a year, and then he was going to have a time where he could actually work on maybe a Shantae game. So, we did talk about doing the next one in the series. But there was this one that had never been released, and it told us a little more of the story. It’s like — it’s there, and when can we release it? And retro stuff is really on the rise right now. So, it’s like ‘Yes, we could do a new one, but when are we ever going to go back to finish this one?’ And so, it just seemed like a good time.

And we did ask different companies if they could help fund it, and we did show them different games. And they were like ‘Yes! Let’s do this!’ and we were so thankful that someone will help fund it so we can get another Shantae game out.

So things lined up — Michael Stragey was available, and he did the engine for the first game, and Matt was available, and we had a lot of the art already done. So instead of maybe taking a year or two to do the whole new game, this one could fit into a slot that was less than a year. So timewise too, for Shantae fans, you don’t want them to go too long before a new game comes out. So to know that it had already been since 2020 or 2019 since the last Shantae game came out, we were like ‘Ahhh, if we can just get another one to play while we work on the next one, that would be great!’

MB: Completely along with that — Limited Run Games had been doing more reproduction cartridges — like that great thing with Shantae on Game Boy Color. It was like everything aligned nicely.

EB: Josh [Fairhurst] is such a fan that he was all for it, and that they would come on board and help us make another game. We can’t do it ourselves.

MB: He totally believed in us and in the preservation mission that he has. ‘Yeah, we’re finding an old game — here is an old copy laying around on a hard drive, and it should have existed but it didn’t.’ And so, he gave it another shot.

And like you said — Mike Stragey — we weren’t working together anymore. He had gone on to do other things, and it had been 20 years. So, he was between projects, and the timing was right. He’s like ‘I could do it, is it real?’ and we were like ‘Maybe it’s real! I don’t know!’ And then all the pieces fell into place. Super cool, also kind of a now-or-never thing. I feel if this was five years later, I’m not sure it would have made any sense — I feel like it would have gone away again.

EB: Especially as we continue to make more and more advancements with the Shantae series, I feel like now is a good time because we’re still [re]-releasing some of the older ones.

MB: Definitely.

OR: You streamed Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution demo as part of the Kickstarter campaign for Shantae: Half-Genie Hero in 2013. During that demo, you mentioned “I’m playing this game with an analog stick — this game was not designed for an analog stick” — and obviously, platforming with a D-Pad is way different than platforming with a Switch [Joy-Con] or PS4/PS5 controller, and this game has been announced for modern consoles.

How difficult was it to adapt the game’s GBA controls to modern console controllers?

MB: So, I guess I’ll say that that is a work in progress. The closest thing to this game, and I know it’s very strange — once this game is done, it will be as though it was done 20 years ago. Pretend that it was remembered fondly by people who played it — even though they didn’t — and now pretend that it is now time for the port by Carbon Engine team to modern consoles. It will be very similar to how they did the port for Shantae Game Boy Color. And since we’re working on it together — WayForward and Limited Run — it’ll also be very similar to when we ported Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse from the Nintendo 3DS with that upscaler kind of look to it. Not upscaling the pixels, the pixels are clean — I don’t like blurry pixels, it’s a thing of mine I can’t stand that, I like clean pixels — but the illustrations.

Erin’s group has artists redrawing everything at 4k resolution, and it will be beautiful. Your Carbon Engine port will have your Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse­-like, if you’re playing that game on a modern console, similar. You have your pixel art in the middle, your beautiful portrait art on the edges, your illustrations. And if you want, you can still play the cartridge version on [modern consoles], too.

So, if you are like ‘I want the way it really looked without all the high-res art’ — same with the controls. Just like on Pirate’s Curse, you can use the control stick to move around. If that’s what is comfortable for you, you can do that. But for, I think a lot of players, they are going to reach down lower on the controller and get the control pad and use that for the more traditional controls. So you can use both.

For me? I actually tend to play it both ways. When I’m getting into the precision-type fighting moments, I go down on my control pad. When I’m starting to wonder about, I’m taking a little rest and using my analog stick for my thumb. So, you can do both. But traditionally though, people are gonna wanna use the control pad.

Or I’ll plug in my Super Nintendo controller — I use that all the time for Switch stuff. I love plugging that thing in — any device that will support my SNES controller. I love it.

OR: Something interesting for a Game Boy Advance game — you can’t really patch it after release. We saw that when Nintendo tried to Berry patch Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. How does it feel knowing that you have to get it right now?

MB: I’m nervously laughing. The reason I’m nervously laughing is — okay, Erin and I have done so many games. We have a Sabrina game that got 25 percent of the game deleted the day before the game shipped. Not the day before — at midnight, it was shipping in the morning to manufacturing. You really made 25 percent of the games, between midnight and 6 a.m.? Does that sound familiar?

EB: And I was pregnant — I was eight- or nine-months in.

MB: So, you’re making levels and people at the same time? *laughs* That’s crazy. It is a completely different mindset that I think is kind of gone from the world today. You have to live with everything that’s going out there. When it’s done, it’s not done. You have people who play it — as many people as can get hands on it.

EB: That’s why, after beta, we have a playtesting phase that goes for a month or something. You have as many people get their hands on it to try to find as many bugs. Our son was a play tester for years, and now he animated some of the Shantae characters. But he was a play tester since he was 15, until a couple of years ago.

MB: He’s good with the glitch theory-type stuff.

EB: He tries to break it.

MB: He’s like ‘If this is a game that is built on these types of things, then theoretically, they will probably do these things.’ And then he goes checks it.

EB: He’s a genius — he is like ‘I can break it, I know I can!’

MB: So there’s ‘Yeah, we’re gonna do the traditional Q&A looking for bugs’, and we’re also more like the quality — is it fun? And then there’s a whole other thing that Limited Run is going to do — and I had never heard of such a thing, and I thought it was actually crazy when I heard this. They have a fairly involved manufacturing process, because they are creating a specific chip set to make sure this thing runs just right on the card. And then they are going to individually test each individual cart by hand. I have never heard of such crazy stuff before.

EB: Just such quality assurance.

MB: I guess what that means is — and back in the day, old school development, you always shipped knowing there was a bug. Not one you knew of, but you knew. Once this thing expands out into the hands of [the public], something will be found. When it’s found, it will probably have to be like ‘Yeah, that’s part of the game’ and you hope it isn’t some egregious thing.

And yeah, you’re right, you cannot patch it. The only thing that can happen is you could — in this case, there is something a little slightly different because there is a Carbon Engine port coming [and] you could patch that original game. And then include it — that would be the fixed or patched version of the game. But even that is even a little bit unusual, because we’ve done re-releases of games in the past — like Shantae 1. Shantae 1 has some well-known bugs or weird exploits.

EB: We’ve seen people do run-throughs where they could skip stuff because they went through a wall. But it’s kind of fun to see people break the game.

MB: And if they like it, we want to leave it in. It’s only the things that would spoil the experience — we don’t want to spoil the experience for anyone. If there are some things that are kind of fun to break, then it probably is best that it be left in there. But you’re right, you can’t patch it, so you gotta check it and check it and check it again. But from the beginning of time, until only around not so long ago, you couldn’t patch anything anyway.

So, all we’re doing is going back to how you had to do things before, when you had to be absolutely sure before you hit that submit button — that you were absolutely done.

OR: Something else mentioned during the livestream was that [Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution] would be 20+ hours, which would make it the lengthiest Shantae game by far. Has that length been retained for this coming release?

MB: No, no. I think that would have been based on everything we had come up with to that point. Now that we’ve actually made the game, and it’s full quest line, I can say, I think with a fair amount of confidence, that that would have been a fairly drawn out 20 hours. This clocks in with much better pacing right around…I would say a little longer than, considerably longer than, Risky’s Revenge and a little shorter than Pirate’s Curse. Not as long as Half-Genie Hero with all of its DLC options. Right around in that sweet spot is where it lands. I think it’s going to be a satisfying length and move at a good pace for most of the people who are going to be into it.

EB: Not including the speedrunners.

MB: Yeah, without overstaying its welcome. Another way to put it is that every Shantae game has a ‘How fast can you beat it time?’ seems to be clocking in at about all of the other Shantae games. What you don’t want is a 20-hour game where it’s 10 hours of backtracking. A nice, clean, streamlined, respect-your-time game. As a result, shorter, but I think, more dense. Less watered-down flavor.

“And so, what happens, of course, with all of the Shantae games is when something finally doesn’t happen, all of those animations don’t get thrown away because I don’t like to waste anything.”

OR: Let’s talk about some other Shantae cancelled projects.

In an April 2021 interview with Nintendo World Report, you said that “CAPCOM did entrust us with a Dolphin development unit sometime around 2002 in hopes that we could come up with a Shantae GameCube sequel” and that “[w]e did some very early exploration into this idea, but ended up focusing on Shantae Advance instead ‘because that was where the work-for-hire jobs are and you have to keep the lights on’.”

Can you talk any about that early exploration with the GameCube? How far along did you get, and what was the concept behind the title? What was it like to essentially tell CAPCOM ‘thank you, but no’?

EB: GameCube is like my favorite console.

MB: This one is tricky. The reason it’s tricky is because I don’t know all of the facts. So, [CAPCOM was] very happy with Shantae Game Boy Color. That was excellent, they weren’t worried that it didn’t sell well. They were just happy with the quality — for them, it was very high. I was aware of a whole CAPCOM thing, they were trying to greenlight five CAPCOM games at the time. What was it? Viewtiful Joe, P.N.03, Resident Evil 4, and a mystery cancelled game. [OR Note: The cancelled title was ‘Dead Phoenix’, and the fifth unmentioned title was ‘Killer7’.]

So, we found out about that too. We didn’t know if we were one of those five, or not. I always wondered if we were supposed to be, but the timing was always the same — ‘oh, that’s why they gave us a kit.’ But we were new to 3D [and] we were trying to figure it out. And so we didn’t have a ton of confidence — there was a lot of R&D and experimentation phase during that time.

So, what ended up happening there was ‘Well, Shantae shouldn’t probably be the experiment — we should go straight into the thing that’s working that at the time was our core business.’ Which was the handheld team. So that’s why I went in that direction, and just let some of the — handheld was a small part of the studio at the time. About six out of the 20 or 30 people. So, I was like ‘Okay, we’re going to huddle up, focus on this, get really good at handheld’ — which is what evolved from Game Boy Advance into the DS.

Other parts of the company were going more 3D, PC — trying out various things on console, testing our reach as a studio. And those early, I guess, experiments, just kind of kept shifting from one thing into the next. So, while it was Shantae, I can tell you that the theme of the [GameCube] game was river rafting. The concept was revisited for Nintendo DS, which would have been Risky Waters.

There was concept art, there were some test videos made using really crude 3D. Not anything that was put through an actual art team — just ‘Hey, let’s make some basic geometric shapes and try moving a raft through it.’ And the concept of that was ‘What can the controller do, and what’s that like?’. And it’s like ‘oh, it’s fun to squeeze those analog triggers, it could feel like paddling through the water. Maybe this is what we do. Put all four characters on a raft, have four inputs, you’ll paddle paddle paddle, you’ll smack monsters, you’ll pull over off onto the shore, go into a dungeon, do traditional Shantae gameplay, pop out of the dungeon, get back onto the raft.’

That was the concept, and in that era, a lot of games were doing sort of strange and unusual things. It felt like experimentation was in the air, and it was a fun time.

OR:  You mentioned in a 2007 interview with MTV that you assembled a treatment for Shantae: Risky Waters on the DS after the console was announced, but you couldn’t find a publisher for it. Can you tell us more about that treatment? How close was it to the GameCube version?

MB: Okay, I can talk about that! No one’s ever asked about this as far as I know — this is a really funny one.

So, it was very similar. Our early test kits for Nintendo DS did show that you could do things that were very similar to GameCube. Like, ‘that’s very similar — let’s get this design out and bring it back in!’. So, what I had for that was — it was dual screen, which we didn’t end up doing until Contra 4 — I designed and directed Contra 4, so a lot of those same designs and ideas — I was like ‘I want to play with this and that for Shantae’ — did get experimented with. It was dual screen gameplay, so what you had gameplay on the top and bottom, and you had to manage both.

So, when you’re on the bottom, rafting in 3D, on the top, you had Sky on her bird. I don’t recall what the task was, but you were doing flyby things. You could target and drop powerups onto the crew below on the raft. When you pull over to a place to go into a battle area or a labyrinth or a dungeon, then you would have the action on the bottom. You’d be exploring, and your team members would be on the top. And you could manage them also just using L and R buttons. It’s like, ‘Can you play two games at once? Can you do platforming while managing some light gameplay on the top?’.

And the way that worked was that you had Uncle up top mixing potions and health items, and then he would throw them down into the dungeon for you. And each character had its own sort of thing. Rottytops would play almost like a tower defense thing where a bad guy would would come in, and she would be ripping off her leg and beating up the bad guys as they’re trying to get in — which would keep the number of bad guys down in the labyrinth in the bottom of the screen from getting overwhelming.

And so, what happens, of course, with all of the Shantae games is when something finally doesn’t happen, all of those animations don’t get thrown away because I don’t like to waste anything. Those animations got all put into Risky’s Revenge. So, the reason that you fight Uncle Mimic in that game is — you get to a point where you’re like ‘What’s the boss of this area going to be?’. Well, we had this full animation set of Uncle Mimic fighting and mixing potions, throwing bombs, all of this stuff. That was him as a helper character from what would have been the Shantae dual screen game. But instead, it’s like ‘Well, we’ll make up a new guy, he’s the Hypno Baron, he is making Shantae think she is fighting her uncle.’ There, I’ve got all the animations and I don’t have to throw them out and I can use them. And that’s what that was.

That’s about as much as I can get into without going back and re-reading that document.

OR: You were also the first e-Reader licensed in the United States.

MB: I think we were the only one, at least Nintendo told us at one point that we were the only person to ever ask for e-Reader.

OR: What was the process like to become a licensed e-Reader developer, and can you talk about that from the developer side? It’s a Nintendo product that really fell on the wayside.

MB: I love, I love the e-Reader, or Card e-Reader, or the e-Card Reader, depending on what region. We ran to the Celebi movie [OR Note: ‘Pokémon 4ever’] to get the cards to watch the little cartoon in the e-Reader. Totally loved that device. I was pushing really hard for a Shantae game on the cover of Nintendo Power — ‘I want to print the code, have people swipe their e-Reader cards through the Nintendo Power cover and get a little game.’

Because of that, I asked our CEO: ‘Can someone at Nintendo get us that dev kit?’. His response after awhile was ‘No one has ever asked for that dev kit, because who would want that?’ And I was like, ‘I want that!’. So, they sent us a dev kit, and I’m sure there is a lot of NDA stuff that is like ‘Don’t talk about what’s on the thing’, but it was a development kit with an e-Reader where you could look inside and see the guts of it, see what it was capable of doing.

We did some experiments. The experiments were Shantae battle cards, and you couldn’t physically do this, in theory what you would have done — is you’d swipe your move through. ‘I want fireball, I want hair whip, I want a high kick’, and you’d swipe them through. And there was just enough space to have really simple, tiny, tiny, I think the animations had to be down to 14k or something — like barely anything — but we did make a tiny animation set of Shantae. She looked just like the Game Boy Color Shantae for all practical purposes, but she could just do one of a few actions. And you’d just swipe in a bad guy card and swipe in up to, I think, three Shantae moves, and you’d be able to combat a thing and see if you would win or lose.

Not sure why it never went anywhere — I think it was because, honestly, that era ended so quickly. We had those Super Mario Bros. 3 cards come out, and then it very quickly became Pokémon Battle-e, and then they were kinda gone. So, it had its really cool moment, and there was just no catching up to it and getting into the card manufacturing. Man, if we could do that today? Because we do card manufacturing. I mean, actual trading cards- cards. We can do Shantae cards now. But no one had those anymore.

EB: We love all that old school stuff — Pogs, etc.

MB: The Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution game is only available until April 7th, but there is no preorder. In the future, you can’t get it anymore. So, when the preorder closes-

EB: -You can get it on other systems, but if you want a cartridge, it’s the only time you can get it. They aren’t going to reprint it. So, the collectors who really want to play it on the system, you really have to get the cartridge before April 7th when its gone.

MB: Yeah, after that, you’re just waiting on the Carbon Engine. Which I have a lot of confidence that will be a great port, but the port is not the same as the game. Even if the port has all these cool bells and whistles.

EB: I think a lot of Shantae fans are collectors, and sometimes they will get upset: ‘Oh, you need to re-release this thing!’, so if they can hop on when its actually pre-orderable, that’s the best.

OR: Lastly — there is a four-player mode announced for Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution. Can you tell us briefly about it?

MB: Yeah, the four-player battle mode is for two to four players. You only need one cartridge, so you don’t need to go buy four. You can plug in anywhere up to four Link Cables. Once you do that, it transmits the game to all the empty devices, and then you’ve got four people playing in a combat arena. It’s a constantly rotating play field, where if you don’t grab onto the fence, you will fall off and land on some spikes and die. It’s kind of last-man-standing, like Bomberman.

Everyone has a different animation, but you basically have a punch attack, a character-up-and-release attack that will clobber a guy and send him bouncing all around, and then you’ve got to watch out for when that arena is about to rotate. Then you grab a fence, or you’re going to fall and get knocked out. It’s just fun, light-hearted Link Cable stuff [that] the world hasn’t seen in a long time.

OR: Thank you very much.

Are you excited for Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution? What is your favorite Shantae title?

Did you ever play with the e-Reader?

Let us know in the comments below!

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Teatopia is one of those games that feels absolutely peaceful and a bit like a slice of life game. The basic premise is that you inherited land from your grandfather, and you have to build your own farm up and integrate your life into the community at large. While the demo I played was a bit limited in content, I really enjoyed what I found and it made me want to see everything Teatopia has to offer.

The graphic art style is absolutely gorgeous. Quite frequently, Chinese-inspired slice-of-life games will go for a paint-and-brush art style that seeks to invoke calligraphy in the gamer’s mind. Teatopia instead uses vibrant colors that pop off of the screen with clearly defined art to bring its world to life — and I kept commenting on how beautiful everything was during my demo. The character models are 3D and the world itself is 2D, which helps to really make the NPCs stand out among everything else going on. Teatopia is truly a very cozy world to exist in.

Of course, gameplay is what makes or breaks a game. Thankfully, I was able to try out a handful of activities in Teatopia ranging from fishing, breaking rocks, and planting crops.  The gameplay mechanics for farming and clearing land thankfully aren’t out of the ordinary. I also was able to try out the fishing mechanics — and while they were a bit rough (it is a minigame experience!), I was pleased with that too. After GDC 2024, I popped over onto the official Teatopia account, and I saw there are other gameplay mechanics such as building a waterwheel connecting the local stream to your crops to help irrigate them. This game simply oozes creative potential for gameplay and exploration.

Teatopia, which has a Kickstarter that will eventually be launching, honestly has a lot of potential. During my demo, there was a lot of talk about being able to cook all sorts of dishes, raise animals, make tea, play gambling games like Cee-lo, and more in the world. I checked out all of the videos the development team has put out, and I was more than a little impressed with how they are committed to making sure even tiny details like having the plants sway when you walk past them are included in Teatopia. We unfortunately do not have an officially confirmed date for the Kickstarter to go up. However, just from my brief time with the game? I think it is something worth keeping an eye on as it heads ultimately towards release.

Are you excited to make tea and raise animals? What about gamble and fish?

Let us know in the comments below what you want to see in Teatopia!

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When I played a demo of Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore at PAX East 2024, the biggest impression I walked away with was that Seedy Eye Software had done the impossible: they created a game that invoked the heart and soul of the CD-i console platform and made it into a quality gaming product for 2024. Set in the land of Faramore, Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore has the titular hero go out on a quest to stop the evil Daimur.

The creator behind the game, Seth Fulkerson, has repeatedly stated that Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore is inspired by The Legend of Zelda CD-i games, and I certainly believe that. The gameplay is a 2D adventure where you jump and slash your way through enemies towards the end of the level. The gameplay itself fits well in 2024, and I was happy to find out that the enemy hitboxes were on point, and the platforming controls worked well. Even as I killed enemies and fought a boss at the end of the demo, I found myself becoming thoroughly engrossed by the gameplay itself. The game bills itself as Arzette being able to unlock more abilities as it progresses, and I am personally curious to see what all she can do when she is fully unleashed. During my demo, I was able to try out the bombs, and I ended up using them to great effect to help destroy the stage-end boss.

Of course, the hallmark of the CD-i was the animated cutscenes, and Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore does not disappoint. The distinct, low quality art style of the CD-i games has been lovingly recreated for Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore. The voice acting is over the top, and the cutscenes pop up to tell the story more frequently than what you would expect. The world levels themselves are beautifully done, and you can tell that a lot of care went into them. The more I kept playing, the more it reminded me of Working Designs’ Popful Mail in terms of gameplay quality and charm.

There is one other important note to mention: I tried the game with both the 2024 controller option and the remade CD-i controller option that was released through Limited Run Games. Unfortunately, that CD-i controller is awful, and I found it difficult to control Arzette with it. Using that controller really made me appreciate joysticks and other video game innovations in the past 20-plus years.

Ultimately, the PAX East 2024 demo I played of Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore takes inspiration and heart from a long-dead, barely remembered home console, while simultaneously transcending it into a final product that is far better than its inspiration. The final product was released back in February, and I think it is well-worth trying it out if the demo is any indication of the final game…and thankfully, it is out now!

Did you ever play any CD-i titles? Are you planning on picking up Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore?

Let us know in the comments below!

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Renaine is a Kickstarter-originated title that bills itself as “a game about overcoming failure.” The protagonist, Aine, is able to come back to life an infinite number of times, but also has to defeat a Dragon as an act of revenge while traveling across the Kingdom of Lineria. You jump, roll, and attack with your sword in order to move across the 2D map in an action-adventure, platforming, adventure with very busy pixelated graphics.

I am going to just open with my favorite two parts of my Renaine demo: the writing and the music. The NPC dialogue is frequently snarky and fantastic, and I kept wanting to laugh while playing. For example, when you enter the dojo at the start of the demo to learn how to play the game, one of the NPCs gives the cliché statement that how anyone can become a pro with enough hard work and determination. Immediately to the right, another NPC states a more realistic answer of how SOME can become a pro with enough hard work and determination. After training and learning basic combat, a different NPC explains that advanced lessons are for the full game, and you’ll even run into an NPC with an upside-down head who talks about it and tries to get you to relate to him. This style of snarky and fourth-wall break humor was peppered throughout the demo without wearing out its welcome. The music, which is a very jazzy set of tunes, is incredible as well and is a fairly unique aspect for a platforming title. I actually found myself wanting to buy a copy of Renaine’s soundtrack to just put on in the background while I am living my day-to-day life. If you listen to the above linked trailer, you’ll see what I mean!

Of course, Renaine is more than just music and humor, and thankfully it also delivers in gameplay. The platforming and combat controls were pretty tight, and I felt like I could accurately judge where Aine was going to land when he jumped, and that if I was fast enough, I could hit what I was aiming at with my weapon. The real surprise though was that there is a fairly unique powerup gameplay loop. Whenever you kill enemies, you get money to collect. And fairly frequently, you run across an NPC shop that gives you different weapons or abilities to buy for a price — and you could get one at a time. You’re making choices between a fire rod that shoots flames, bombs that walk around, and so much more. There are even more surreal items such as different mushroom powerups that…well…turn you into an actual mushroom. All of this actually incentivized me to kill all the enemies I could find in order to get more money to keep trying out new powers as I would come across them. In the second half of the demo, I actually was partnered up with another, much larger, NPC, who helped me to fight enemies all throughout a sand area and I loved how it mixed up the gameplay.

Overall, Renaine was a blast to play and to experience. I was not expecting such sharp humor and writing while demoing it, but that, along with the constant powerups gameplay loop, really drew me into wanting to see more and more of the kingdom of Lineria and its inhabitants when it eventually releases for PC and for Nintendo Switch.

Are you excited for Renaine? What powerups are you hoping to find and use in the game?

Let us know below!

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The longer I kept playing The World of Kungfu: Dragon and Eagle, the more I kept thinking “this is so cool!” and the more I wanted to keep playing and wanting to get it when it is released. The World of Kungfu: Dragon and Eagle bills itself as “an old-school wuxia turn-based RPG set in the chaotic times of ancient China,” and it has you start off as a no-named individual who has to learn martial arts as you shape the fate of Wulin.

While the game’s website claims it is a turn-based RPG, the demo I played at GDC 2024 was more like a grid-based tactical RPG game with up to five combatants on your side at once instead. During battle, you can move your characters a certain number of squares around, and you can also attack only within a certain number of highlighted squares too. This isn’t a knock against The World of Kungfu: Dragon and Eagle whatsoever, but I do think it is important to be clear what this game is and is not.

What sets The World of Kungfu: Dragon and Eagle apart from any other RPG of its genre is the combat move pool itself. Every attack is drawn from a pool of over 200 styles of martial arts, and so you will get to experience a lot of different moves. As you use moves over and over again, they will get stronger and level up over time. In other words: you’re literally practicing martial arts in the game and getting stronger and better for it. You can also learn new moves through manuals you collect throughout the world. I hardcore geeked out over all the ingenuity in combat, as I practice kendo in my spare time and it honestly reminded me of walking along the Avenue of the Stars by the Victoria Harbour waterfront in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong.

The enemy AI felt fairly fleshed out and intelligent, and I was impressed that I had to use tactical thinking in order to win my fights (bouts?). While I did not get to experience much of the storyline, as I had to skip a lot of the dialogue to fit the whole demo into my timeslot, I was entertained by what I saw of the wuxia and historically-based atmosphere. Finally, the graphics are detailed pixel-art with vibrant colors. While I was playing my demo, the developer told me that The World of Kungfu: Dragon and Eagle is supposed to be 30-plus hours and it has multiple storylines for you to complete. I am honestly excited for when this game comes out, as I want to play it, and I think you should consider picking it up too if you like the demo/early access that is currently out on Steam.

What martial arts style do you hope makes it into The World of Kungfu: Dragon and Eagle?

Do you plan on picking the game up?

Let us know in the comments below!

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Bread & Fred is deceptively simple: two people, each controlling a penguin, have to work together to climb higher and higher in the snowy mountain environment until you reach the top and finish the game. Oh, and you’re tied to each other by a rope. However, Bread & Fred is anything but simple in practice. During my hands-on demo during PAX East 2024 with one of the developers as my co-penguin, I found a brutally difficult — yet incredibly fun — game that required us to count in unison to time jumps, swings, and wall grabs.

The pixel art is beautiful, and I loved how the colors popped off of the screen. The controls were also incredibly fair, and every time we fell down, it was absolutely deserved. The gameplay though? Brutal. A lot of the jumps and rope swings have almost no room for error, and everything has to be perfectly timed in order to climb further upwards. If you and your partner do not have excellent communication and a willingness to plot the next several jumps ahead of time, then you won’t get far in Bread & Fred. This game is incredibly challenging in gameplay execution versus mechanics, and I think that really works to show off Bread & Fred’s strengths to force people to cooperate to succeed. As you climb higher and higher, the terrain can get more and more difficult with environmental hazards, such as the blowing wind, that can derail even the most calculated of jumps.

As a side note, I did not try the single player mode — Bread & Fred is clearly meant to be a co-op experience.

During my PAX East 2024 Bread & Fred demo, I also was able to try out the new race content. In this, you and your partner penguins are competing against a polar bear in a closed map environment to see who can get to the end first. During the race I tried out, it felt like it was more complicated than the gameplay environment I was previously in, and it was less forgiving with how far you ‘drop’ if you miss a jump. The polar bear also repeatedly fell, surprisingly, and so it did not make me feel like the race was over the moment I or my partner miscued a jump or swing from platform to platform. Ultimately, I think it is a nice little add-on to Bread & Fred.

New content for Bread & Fred includes competitive races on new maps!
They are harder than they look. (Images courtesy of Apogee Entertainment.)

So, I’ll be honest: I loved Bread & Fred and the new race content, but it definitely isn’t for those who cannot communicate with their partner penguin well. It took me and one of the developers (who made the game!) time to connect well enough to get our penguins partway up the mountain and to try to (but fail at) crushing the polar bear during the race. Bread & Fred’s already out now, so definitely give it a try!

What do you think of difficult co-op games? Have you tried out Bread & Fred?

Let us know in the comments below!

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One of the most exciting things for me to try out at PAX East 2024 was an early hands-on build of Turbo Overkill on PlayStation 5. Developed by Trigger Happy Interactive and inspired by classics such as Doom, Quake, and Duke Nukem 3D, Turbo Overkill has you play as Johnny Turbo as he returns to his hometown and finds everyone possessed by a rogue AI and its associated army.

The biggest difference between the PC version and the upcoming console build is just how slick everything feels, and how it is clear Trigger Happy Interactive really wanted to plus all the gameplay by making this the best possible version of the Turbo Overkill. The original PC build was designed to have you go as fast as you can through each area while solving combat puzzles and killing enemies, and they have tweaked the PlayStation 5 build to remove any potential slowdown spots in the game. I slid around a lot on my chainsaw leg (it is a weapon too!) and I ended up relying on that ability to repeatedly kill as many enemies as possible in areas where I had to kill everyone to proceed. Combat flowed so incredibly well, whether I was shooting or attacking through movement, and I had the biggest silly grin on my face during the entire demo.

As I alluded to, Turbo Overkill is a game designed to have you move fast, and that was perfectly showcased on the PlayStation 5. I was throwing myself from ledge to ledge, rooftop to the ground, and through tunnels and everywhere you could imagine as I tried to go as fast as I could while slaughtering anything that got in my way. It felt a lot like a 2024 version of Mirror’s Edge at times with how fluid and satisfying it felt to platform and move my way around the level while running and gunning.

Something that not every PC-to-console port does well is setting up converting a PC/mouse control scheme over to a controller without sacrificing any of the gameplay quality in the process. Thankfully, there was no such issue here for Turbo Overkill. The controller controls felt incredibly natural, and I would have been hard-pressed to tell you that this was not a game designed from the ground-up for the PlayStation 5 by the time I was done with my demo.

Did you play Turbo Overkill on PC? Are you excited for the upcoming console release?

Let us know in the comments below!

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Publisher(s): Toge Productions
Platform(s): PC
Release Date: January 17, 2024

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TEST TEST TEST is probably one of the wildest, most unique and thought provoking games I played throughout all of my time at PAX East 2024. The concept is simple: you are an office employee who has to finish different tasks within 15 minutes or be executed and have your day start over again. The art style is hand-drawn pixel-art that I think is meant to invoke the 32-bit era, and it frankly looks gorgeous.

Where TTT really shines though is the puzzle solving. As you go through more and more time loops, carrying over real life-knowledge of what you’re experiencing, you will start to get quicker and quicker at doing things that lead up to where you inevitably failed (and you will repeatedly fail) during the prior time loop. Each time I did a time loop, I felt myself uncovering more and more of the story — and the Alternate Reality Game (“ARG”) elements kept surprising me in more and more ways.

You will have to think incredibly creatively in order to beat TTT and make it through to the end. I am being purposefully vague about the ARG elements, as I do not want to rob any player from figuring it out and experiencing it for themselves. I promise you there will be multiple moments when it will all click together in your head of what you need to do next, as TTT does a brilliant job giving you just enough to figure out what to do if you think about it while not being purposefully obtuse like 2007’s Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure. Fascinatingly, the game also peels back the underlying storyline during each loop you play through — and you will want to figure out what the heck is going on.

If you’ve got several hours to set aside to play a game, and you want to really work your brain in a great way, TEST TEST TEST is the perfect game for you. I will say that I got pretty far in it with my hands-on demo (with some help from the developer sitting next to me!), and I loved how well-crafted this game is. It was released back in January of this year, and I think it is worth picking up — especially because it is free on Steam.

What do you think of ARG games?

Are you going to give TEST TEST TEST a try?

Let us know in the comments below!

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SNK have revealed a new character for the upcoming Fatal Fury game titled Fatal Fury City of The Wolves. Here we can see Marco Rodrigues in action.

MARCO RODRIGUES (Voice Actor: Earl Baylon) A Kyokugen karateka whose hefty, hot-blooded nature has earned him a reputation for being a beast in battle. With his dojo sign stolen by forces unknown, he has no choice but to hone his karate skills elsewhere in the interim—namely, at Yuri’s fitness club. Upon learning of a new KOF tournament on the horizon, Marco steels himself for what lies ahead: an opportunity to spread word about his beloved dojo, a chance to get its sign back, and (of course) a turbulent test of his Kyokugen Karate might.

Fatal Fury: City of The Wolves is scheduled to release in 2025. Platforms have not been revealed yet.

SOURCE

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I have to say that the Rose & Camellia Collection is probably one of the oddest games I’ve played in a long time. This collection of five different titles has you battling it out in epic slap fights with a variety of opponents. The game is almost completely motion controlled with a single Joy-Con, and has some of the most over the top stories I’ve seen in a long time. The real question is, was it any fun? Let’s dig in and find out.

There are five different stories here to slap your way through. The first follows Reiko as she tries to take over the Tsubakikoji family after the death of her husband. She will have to pummel the other ladies in the house to make this happen! The next story follows Saori as she seeks to get revenge on Reiko for taking over the family, but things do not go as planned. The third story sends a young maid in training, Rightie Mita, to complete a fierce competition, The Death Queen Circuit. This is like Street Fighter for slap fights. The next story has us taking control of Shizuka Tsubakikoji as she keeps getting some unwelcomed house guest. There is only one way to handle them of course, pummel them with slaps! Lastly, there is the La-Mulana bonus episode. This follows Mulbruk as she proves she is the true heroine of the game, by slapping down all the other girls that oppose her.

All of the stories here are well written and presented in a very nice visual novel style. Each story is more more over the top than the last. Some of the stories try to present themselves as serious, but you will be laughing too hard at just how ridiculous it all is. The voice actors really drive this home as well, they go full ham on these characters, and I loved it! Their performances with the era fitting music just really make all the storytelling here top notch and a pure joy.

Graphically, Rose & Camellia Collection is nicely done. All of the 24 characters found in the game are nicely detailed and vary in style. You have the La-Mulana characters, maids, boxers, a giant robot and much more. The battle effects here are all great as well, along with great sound effects that really seem to give your slaps a lot of weight, especially when you land a critical hit or get a nice counter attack.

Now let’s dig into the gameplay of this one, and this is where things fall apart some. There are two different controls schemes to choose from. Most players will opt for the motion controls because the touch screen controls are completely unusable. I tried them for a couple of battles and had nothing but problems. The motion controls do work for the most part, players will hold down A and swing the Joy-Con in order to smack their opponents. There is a timing mechanic here in order to get critical hits, and after completing all 24 fights here, I never did quite figure it out. I kinda got the timing on the double slap you unlock late in the game, but there is another strike called a Palm Strike which I wasn’t able to pull off even once. When you’re not on the attack, you can hold down the R button and swing the controller at the right time to dodge enemy attacks. These characters have some tells that let you know when they are about to strike at you. This is sorta like those you would find in a Punch-Out!! title. If you successfully dodge an attack and time it just right, you can even counter attack your foe, but be warned, they can do this to you the same way if your attack is poor.

Overall, the Rose & Camellia Collection isn’t a terrible experience, it’s just not a great one. While the controls sound good on paper, they are inconsistent in execution. Throw in some crazy difficulty spikes on top of this and things can get frustrating very quickly. I had a blast with over the top stories and the campy but fitting voice acting, but I think this package might be a bit overpriced at $20 for around 3 hours of gameplay. That said, if you catch this one on sale, and want a fun story with some unique controls, this might just fit the bill.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review.

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Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution has been billed by WayForward as the ‘lost chapter of the Shantae saga’ that went into development for the Game Boy Advance in the early 2000s, but was shelved indefinitely until now. Set between the original Shantae game and Shantae: Risky’s Revenge, Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution has the half-genie Shantae protecting Sequin Land from another evil plot by Risky Boots, and I found myself loving a retro – yet incredibly modern-styled game – that fit right in with 2024.

I grew up playing Game Boy Advance games, and so I was extremely happy to be able to go hands-on with Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution on an authentic Game Boy Advance console before shifting to a modern-era handheld replica device. Even though the GBA uses a D-Pad, I was surprised at how well Shantae’s controls worked, and it did not feel like a step backwards from Shantae And The Seven Sirens with the quality of gameplay. Fighting with the hair whip, jumping and dodging, and even the dive mechanics all are beautifully done – and most crucially, when I died, I knew that it was clearly my fault and not the game or the console’s fault. The enemies were also challenging, and while I did die on the one boss fight I had available in the demo, it was absolutely a blast to figure out the combat pattern and then absolutely obliterate it. There are even gravity-based mechanics in this game for diving into the water in order to get deep enough to glide to the next area through a water-filled tunnel.

The graphics are also gorgeous. The Shantae team clearly pushed the Game Boy Advance hardware to its limits to make Sequin Land pop off of the screen as much as possible. During the demo, I was able to check out one of the towns, and I was impressed with how active the character models were and how detailed even minor NPCs were. The game’s colors are also incredibly vibrant, and I was just impressed with how much attention went even into the background graphics of each area.

The detailed background art is incredibly necessary to have, thanks to the gimmick for Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution. In this adventure, Shantae can go through portals and jump between the background or foreground of each area ala Virtual Boy Wario Land. Jumping between the background and foreground effectively doubles the amount to explore in each area and makes you think about how to get to your goal. It also meant that sometimes I would see something in the distance on the other layer, and I wanted to get to it. I unfortunately did not get to experience the full potential of how this would play out in a variety of levels, but I loved what potential I could imagine for it. The other gimmick that Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution has, where Risky Boots can flip the gameplay world upside down, was unfortunately not something I was able to see during my demo.

Ultimately, would modern-day Shantae fans be pleased with Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution? I think the answer is absolutely ‘Yes.’ While this does feel like a throwback game, it controlled neatly and precisely like a modern-day title. It also had that fun gameplay the Shantae series is known for. While preorders through Limited Run Games are closed for the Game Boy Advance version, this game will still make its launch on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, and on Steam later this year.

Are you excited for Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution? Did you pre-order the Limited Run Games version in time?

Let us know in the comments below!

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During my hands-off showcase of Flint – Treasure of Oblivion, the part that stuck with me the most was how unique the Savage Level development team tells the game’s story of searching for a legendary treasure that promises freedom and fortune for Captain Flint, his second-in-command Billy Bones, and his crew. Inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel Treasure Island and set during the golden age of piracy, Flint – Treasure of Oblivion tells its story through comic book panels that will pop on and off the screen in the Franco-Belgian bande dessinée style. These comic book panels help to bring life and attitude to the different characters in a way that mere pixels on the screen cannot, and they are used for everything from opening a treasure chest to major story beats. If there is one thing that separates Flint – Treasure of Oblivion from every other tactical RPG game on the market, it is that story telling mechanic because it truly is that stunning.

The gameplay for Flint – Treasure of Oblivion was fun to watch as well. You can have up to 15-on-15 pirate battles, and there are over 50 different weapons that all have different effects on the battle and have their own durability. The battle system itself reminded me a lot of Dungeons & Dragons. When you take an action in battle, you spend points. When you attack, you will then roll in-game dice that determine the amount of damage you can do – and it can be influenced by weapon effects and other things. Additionally, you can have multiple weapon attacks to use at once – meaning you don’t fall into the ‘one weapon’ archetype, but instead can make each of your pirates more flexible for combat. Additionally, each pirate has their own attribute cards that allow them to affect combat and gain an advantage over opponents. If all of that complexity already wasn’t enough, there are environmental factors such as being able to roll a barrel across the ground to damage whatever is in your pirate’s way. All of these elements, including the sheer number of potential fighters, really makes the gameplay more than just a one-tone effort with a high degree of customization.

I know that I’ve talked about the story telling mechanics already, but what I glimpsed of the story was enjoyable. During my demo, the story was set up that I needed to build my own pirate crew and there were multiple goals gradually set for me to accomplish it. The writing was both enjoyable and witty – especially with the accompanying comic panels. From what I saw, I was drawn into the world of Flint – Treasure of Oblivion, and I wanted to see where this story was going to go over the 15 to 20 hour gameplay time.

It says something about an off-hands presentation of a video game that it makes me want to pick it up and try it for myself as soon as the developer was finished. And with Flint – Treasure of Oblivion, that is absolutely true. I wanted to build out the pirate crew, and I wanted to try out a variety of weapons and try out the isometric battle mechanics itself. Personally, I cannot wait until Flint – Treasure of Oblivion is released later on this year.

Are you excited for Flint- Treasure of Oblivion?

What kind of pirates would you want on your crew?

Let us know in the comments below!

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Ninetail is back with some fandiscs in the VenusBlood series. This time we have three discs from VenusBlood HOLLOW featuring the dragon sisters, Liese and Julia. A couple of these are on the lighter side of things in the AfterDays stories, but just like last time there is one Chaos route story in the DarkChronicles tale. Let’s dig into these and see if they are something fans would want to spend their coin on, shall we?

Our first story begins as the war ends and Leonhardt keeps his promise with Julia, reuniting with her after the war as her subordinate. After some of the brainwashing he did to her during the war, she is completely obsessed with him and wants to jump his bones at every opportunity, as well as rid the world of all the Black Hellbeasts that still plague the world. To get her to calm down a bit, he enlists her sister Liese to use any means necessary to get her to back off the marriage, and things get out of hand from there.

The next story focuses on Liese, Leonhardt marries her after the war and they live on the surface. It’s been one month and he has been welcomed to Archlond as commander. Despite this, he frequents pubs and brothels, always getting into fights with authority he didn’t like as well. This was overlooked since he was such an asset to the kingdom in military manners. The main problem here is Liese is not tending to Leonhardt’s needs as a man, and if you know him this is not going to stand. This leads him to some extreme measures to show her exactly what a “Man’s” needs are. This tale takes some twists and turns from here and ends up not where I expected.

Lastly we have the DarkChronicles story. Here the war rages on with the Dark Angels led by Nachtu. Having subjugated all of the dark lords in the land, Leonhardt prepares his army to fight off their invasion. His tactics have become very cruel at this point, and he doesn’t care who dies so long as it meets his ends. He is currently training both Julia and Liese with his usual tentacle method, but he goes to the point where he actually breaks their minds. As their kingdom collapses, this will show just how far Leonhardt will go when he delves into chaos!

Overall I enjoyed all three stories, and it was great to see the dragon sisters on my screen once again. Like last time, I enjoyed the AfterDays stories more than the DarkChronicles one. I’m more of a law route guy than chaos. These are pretty short at a couple hours each, but each disc has three or four fantastic H-scenes with some very high quality artwork. These are well worth the coin for VenusBlood HOLLOW fans and if the sisters were your favorite, this a must buy at the $4.99 price tag for each.

Review Score
Overall

Games were provided by the publisher for review.

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Rose & Camellia Collection, and the five games contained within it, was probably one of the craziest and funniest games I played at PAX East 2024, and it presented a surprising amount of actual gameplay depth for you to figure out that I can see people loving. The gameplay is simple enough to grasp: get hit enough — or hit your opponent enough — and they will lose hit points that are symbolized by icons beneath their names. Whoever loses all their points first is the bout’s loser.

In my hands-on demo, I played story content from the never-before-seen Rose & Camellia 4 and Rose & Camellia vs. La-Mulana. The voice acting and writing is absurdist and frequently over-the-top, but not in a way that descends into awfulness. Instead, the story for both games kept building up in a way that takes itself (somewhat) seriously and I found myself both quite amused and wondering what was going to come out of these characters’ mouths next. The story is also told in what reminds me a bit of a visual novel — with character cutouts changing expressions and poses as new text appears on the screen, but it isn’t nearly as wordy or complicated as that genre usually is. If you are a fan of La-Mulana, you will see plenty of returning series’ characters, and you will enjoy the story content for it too.

Where Rose & Camellia Collection truly shines though is the gameplay, complete with Joy-Con controls. And the controls are fairly simple: You press A and move the Joy-Con to slap, and you press R1 and move the Joy-Con back to dodge the return hit. Where the complexity comes from is knowing how — and when — to dodge. Each opponent you face has one or more ‘tells’ of when they are about to attack, and you have to figure out that secret and then be quick enough on the reflexes to avoid the hit. If you manage to dodge, you can then counter and get a surprise hit in while your opponent’s guard is down. Sometimes, you can even manage to daze your opponent enough to then grab them and make multiple slaps (done by swinging the Joy-Con back and forth wildly) to drain as much health as possible. In a lot of ways, the motion controls and the combat style remind me — in the best possible way — of Punch-Out!! on the Nintendo Wii.

Even though the game and the slapping combat style seems absurdist and isn’t something to take seriously, the combat itself is not a joke. The fights in each game start out fairly easy, but quickly get harder and harder. I found myself starting to lose multiple slap fights until I could figure out my opponent’s tell and then react quickly enough to dodge. And even then, I still lost sometimes — but each loss felt incredibly fair, and I never felt like I wanted to blame anything other than myself for not being quick enough. This incredibly fair combat system also resulted in me feeling a great deal of satisfaction when I WAS able to win that incredibly hard fight, and I was able to move on in the storyline.

So, is Rose & Camellia Collection worth picking up? Just from my brief PAX East demo — unequivocally ‘yes’. If you think this is just a silly slap game, then you are wrong because the gameplay mechanics have so much more depth than what you’d expect just looking at the story from first glance. And with a two-player mode, Rose & Camellia Collection sounds like a great way to solve any disagreements on where to go out to eat in the future!

Are you a fan of motion control games?

Which game in the Rose & Camellia Collection are you most excited to play through?

Let us know in the comments below!

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It’s time once again to check out a port of Neptunia: Sisters Vs. Sisters. This time I’m taking a look at the Xbox release of the game. Yes I know, it’s very odd seeing a game from this franchise on the Xbox and with the swimsuits included in base game no less, but here we are. I’ve spent about 25 hours with this one and completed the game, so it’s time to share my thoughts on this port. Does this port perform as well as its PlayStation and PC counterparts? Let’s find out!

This review is going to focus more on the quality of the port rather than details of the game itself. If you want to know more about the inner workings of Neptunia: Sisters Vs. Sisters, check out my PlayStation 4 review, or if you want to know about the Switch version you can check out that review as well. That being said, I do want to do a short story recap for those not up to speed on what this one is all about.

The story begins as Neptune and the other Goddesses receive a distress call from the PC Continent. They depart to handle this emergency while the CPU Candidates are sent to a nearby abandoned lab to investigate its contents. There they discover a sleeping Goddess, the Ashen Goddess, and as she awakens she traps the sisters in capsules for two years! When they are awakened, they find the world is not how they left it. The latest smartphone, “rPhone” dominates all of Gamindustri markets, and Planeptune was lost due to Trendi attacks while both Neptune and Nepgear have been away. Nepgear finds herself in a state of depression having lost both her sister and her home; however, new friends Maho and Anri help Nepgear get back on her feet, and they begin to try to get things back in order. Nepgear’s struggle will be great in the face of this new enemy. Can she overcome it and take back her home and save Gamindustri?

Graphically, I would say the Xbox port is on par with its PlayStation counterpart. The framerate on the Xbox One is very steady and while there are some load times, none of them are out of the realm of reason. The character models are nicely detailed and the environments look great here as well. The game would very likely have better load times on either of the next gen Xbox consoles and a better resolution, but it runs just fine Xbox One.

The action based combat here runs smoothly with no frame dips. Everything is done in real time with no major frame dips, even when the action on screen is full of crazy effects. You can freely switch to any character during combat, and when the time is right you can chain combos together this way as well. Players can also have the girls do some Tactical Skills. These are well known special moves in the franchise, such as Ex Multi Blaster, Cross Combination and other fan favorites in the series. When the Tactical Gauge is full, these can be pulled off with the use of just one button, or using the same button and up or down on the D-Pad for access to up to three moves with each girl. It is good to keep in mind that the Tactical Gauge will also have to be full if you use an item, but sometimes using it for an item rather than a skill, may give you a better benefit.

In the end, you get around 30 hours of a great Neptunia adventure for Xbox One or Series X|S for a great price of $39.99. Neptunia: Sisters Vs. Sisters looks great, runs at a consistent framerate and has the swimsuit DLC that was previously exclusive to the Digital Deluxe Edition, included in the base game. While this may not be a reason to pick it up for current owners, it’s a great addition for those jumping in with the Xbox release. I hope this helps the series find some new fans being its first adventure on the platform.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review.

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PC Demo

SunnySide has a special charm to it that is honestly hard to describe, despite me having an opportunity to go hands-on with it at GDC 2024, but I found myself wanting to spend more and more time in this world. The plot setup is straight forward: you purchase a plot of land in the Japanese countryside, and you have to build your own life in it. You can use technology to build up a farm, you can participate in local community life by falling in love, buying from businesses, and meeting people in the world around you.

During my hands-on time with the game, my biggest surprise was that I didn’t feel ‘pressured’ to go do anything. Sure, I had goals set up for me to do, but if I wanted to not bother doing all that and instead run off into the SunnySide countryside to see what I could find, then I felt like it was perfectly okay to do so. The graphic style is fairly unique here, too. Your fully customizable character exists in a 3D world that really pops with color, and it had a solid anime feel to it, too. A lot of the more well-known farming sim games rely upon throwback pixel graphics, and it was nice to see that SunnySide took a different approach to it. The music was also very relaxing and charming, and I was surprised to find out that you can access the playlist on your in-game phone to play what you want.

As for the farming itself? Planting takes place on a grid. You select the spot you want to plant, you dig, and then you plant. It is surprisingly simple to do, and it didn’t require me to select the type of soil I wanted to use, or to water the plant, or do anything else if I did not want to — though I assume it is certainly an option if you want. Additionally, setting up structures also took place in the grid system and you can shape it however you want it to look. To assist with your own master farm layout, SunnySide has a drone feature available that you can activate through your phone in order to see your plot of land overhead. It was a surprisingly helpful tool, and it was a clever way to naturally integrate an overhead viewpoint when you need to have a ‘big picture’ view of the world.

During my demo, I unfortunately did not get the in-game combat or visit the nearby big city. However, I was told that the combat is a turn-based, card-based combat system and that there is a lot to do in the cities. I was also told there are around five years of in-game story content to complete, that there are 28 days in a season, and there are 20 real-life minutes in a day.

So what does all this say about SunnySide? Even though I was only able to play it for a brief time, SunnySide is clearly meant to be a cozy, gentle, farming simulator title that wants you to just lose yourself in that world. I’m curious to see what SunnySide looks like when the full game is available on May 24 for PC and for Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 on June 10. If you cannot wait until then, there is a PC-only demo currently available for download, and I would recommend you check it out!

Are you excited for SunnySide? What would you want to grow in your garden?

Let us know in the comments below!

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Steam Wishlist

Empire of the Ants, based upon a novel written by Bernard Werber, is a photorealistic real-time-strategy game where you play the role of a general in your own personal army of ants as you direct them over a battlefield comprised of leaves, fallen branches, water, and more. Empire of the Ants also has one of the most satisfying RTS gameplay loops I have encountered yet, and I honestly struggled to believe that was not a finished product being presented to me at GDC instead of an early version of the game. My demo was a PC build played via a regular home console controller.

Instead of a top-down god-eye view of the entire environment, you are in the thick of the effort as an ant who can jump, run, and cling to any and all surfaces on the environment as you run around. Interestingly, you can only direct your troops around to where you can see it in your area. This ended up making me constantly run around to check on all the different war efforts I had going on in order to make sure the different efforts were going well.

I started off with a single ant hill to summon from, and I ended up summoning regular warrior ants. As I marched to war against other ant hills and directed my ants to subsequently conquer them, I would summon additional worker ants that I would send off to collect materials to supplement my war effort. As I conquered more and more ant hills, slowly spreading my Empire of the Ants (the name makes sense!) across the map, I gradually summoned aphids to help heal up my units and even ants that would shoot from a distance! And all the while, the worker ants became the backbone of my war effort by helping me summon additional units faster and faster through their material gathering. This all felt extremely intuitive to figure out, and I did not really need the (extremely kind!) development team to hold my hand in figuring out how to build up my forces appropriately. Ultimately, I took on the final boss in the area, termites, and I CRUSHED them using all the attacking forces, defensive forces, and assisting forces that I had built up in my demo playthrough. If anything, it made me hunger for more, larger, and harder foes to defeat.

I used a controller to play my Empire of the Ants demo, and I was surprised at how well the game worked with it once I got the hang of it. I am used to using a mouse for RTS games, and so I was curious how it all would work. You can split and combine different units into two (or more, presumably) larger battalions with a couple button presses, and then direct each battalion off to do a different task — as long as that end goal is within eyesight of the ant you control. The wedged circle design of selecting each unit was slightly clumsy, as I found myself wishing I had a way to ‘snap’ between wedges more easily than what I had. With Empire of the Ants coming to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S later this year, it is honestly important that these controls work for more than just PC — and honestly? I like how Tower Five made it work.

If I had only one kind-of complaint, it would be that this game is sometimes too photorealistic. More than once at the beginning of the demo, a cutscene would end and I would just be…standing around…because I was not aware the cutscene had ended, since graphics looked just that good and the game transitioned that seamlessly from the story back to the gameplay. More than once, the development team would have to gently tell me that I could start playing again. I will also say that if you have Entomophobia – fear of insects — then Empire of the Ants would not be a good game for you, because the graphics are just that real in Unreal Engine 5. There is also a day/night cycle, but I unfortunately did not get to see it in my demo.

So, what’s the verdict on my GDC demo of Empire of the Ants? One of the biggest keys to making an RTS game fun to play is figuring out how to balance encouraging players to build troops and gather resources while also making sure players can figure out how to expend those resources in a way that keeps the gameplay going instead of being just a resource building sim. And frankly, Empire of the Ants absolutely succeeds in that. I genuinely want to play this game when it is released later in 2024, and you should too.

Are you excited for Empire of the Ants? What kind of natural creatures would you want to fight with your own ant army?

Let us know in the comments below!

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