Recent reviews by DairunCates

Good, solid Action RPG faire with a rocking soundtrack and 2 out of 3 likeable protagonists.

With Ys VII hitting cult status on the Switch and Ys VIII coming out later this year, there's never been a better time to get into Ys, and there's arguably no better starting point than Ys Origin. True. Ys 1 and 2 came first and this game directly references their plots, but this is the first Ys game to play like the modern action RPGs. The oldest Ys games used a weird bump combat system (ala Hylide). This can make the first 2 a bit difficult to go back to. This one is still great even 9 years later though.

The game itself is pretty short. You can finish a runthrough in a little under 10-15 hours. This is a good thing though as, in order to get all the plot and the true ending, you will need to play the game through 3 times from 3 different protagonist perspectives. Unfortunately, one of these protagonists is Hugo Fact... who is mostly an unlikeable jerk. Yunica and the secret unlockable third protagonist are genuinely likeable characters that are fun to play though.

Like all Ys games, the soundtrack here is a real banger. You will have some of the tunes of this game stuck in your head for year.

Unfortunately, also like all Ys games. This one can get a bit difficult. Not fun difficult. "I need to either learn this boss' pattern perfect or grind 5 more levels" difficult. As you get farther and farther into your first runthrough, this will get worse and worse until you inevitably got to grind a bit. However, on later playtrhoughs, you will understand the boss patterns better and be able to beat them in subsequent runthroughs with almost no grinding.

Overall, the game is an excellent little bite of action RPG goodness. Perfect while you wait for Monstrum Nox's English release.

One of the OG Gems of Indie games.

While it's true that Doujin games were popular years before Carpe Fulgur started translating their works over here, Recettear was one of the first real indie game to show that PC could be a legitimate publishing platform for more than just AAA devs. Since then, Recettear has been mimicked by many sources. There have been tons of weird Shop RPGs since then. Everything from the critical acclaimed Moonlighter to weird obscure stuff like Bar Story.

Nothing still quite beats the original even to this day.

What Recettear lacks in polish and complexity, it more than makes up for in Charm. Recette is a fun and funny character and you want to see her succeed. The game is exceedingly easy to break (especially once you get to the point where you can stock vending machines in vending machines), and the dungeon action RPG isn't the best, but it's impossible to deny this game's evergreen feel-good vibes.

If you like other simulation RPGs, do yourself a favor and play this classic.

I usually like to put long reviews up detailing the list of pros and cons of a game, but...

1. It's been like 7 years since I played this.

2. There's not much to say.

It's a VERY solid Tower Defense game with RPG and leveling aspects. You make a character and level up stats. Kill hundreds of minions. Lather, rinse, repeat. Good dumb fun for a weekend. Probably wait for a sale. 15 is a bit much to ask for this game nowadays.

Dumb, goofy, nerdy fun.

The jokes may not land very well (especially since the D&D cartoon jokes were dated when the game launched almost a decade ago), but this little meta RPG gem is a good quick bit of fun. There's tons of unlockables and builds you can work on and the game can be completed quickly so you can dive back in and try the game with a different set of classes. The game isn't super easy, but it's simple enough that just about any build combination can work. So, it can be fun to just go through with randomized parties or whatever you feel like. Good for a long weekend alone if you want to just have some good old school turn-based RPG fun.

This game was originally pitched as Metal Slug meets Monster Hunter. That's a pretty apt description. It's a lot of grinding for gear on missions, but the grind is half the fun. It's can be great to learn bosses patterns and master them with friends. I doubt there's anyone still online playing. You might be able to find a niche discord community, but this is DEFINITELY one to only get if you can summon some friends together to play. Still, in the middle of a time when everyone is stuck at home gaming online, you can do worse than Mercenary Kings, and at 20 bucks, the package is complete. Other than maybe Castle Crashers, you won't find a much better dumb pick-up-and-play multiplayer game from this era.

Fun old tower defense game. I played quite a bit back in the day, but I dropped off as DLCs kept releasing over and over for this game. Eventually, the sequel came out, but didn't do nearly as well.

Nowadays, even the 15 bucks for the base game is a hard ask for what you're getting. That's definitely not to bring up the MASSIVE amounts of content DLC. 50 bucks for the complete edition can buy you Celeste, Hollow Knight, and one of many other 15 buck gems out there.

MAYBE you can get something out of this if you can get a group of 4 friends together, but I doubt there's any real community left to speak of. There's better FREE options for goofy multiplayer gaming with friends out there.

A hidden gem for Tactics RPG enthusiasts.

This game is rough. VERY rough.

It doesn't explain most of its mechanics. It's translation is trash garbage. It has a weird level select screen that belongs in a 2-D platofrmer. It looks like the CHEAPEST of Cheap PS2 shovelware.

...But I loved my time with it.

There's a lot of goofy stuff to experiment with and the game is super easy to break, but that's the fun of it for me. In an age where everything about every game is handed to you in thousands of youtube videos in a week. It's nice to have a fun little mystery to crack. It's fun to experiment with builds without knowing ahead which ones will be broken by hundreds of game journalism articles. It's fun to just play around and see what works without a lot of high pressure.

Basically, if you love Tactics RPGs for the sake of just playing Tactics RPGs whether they have a good plot or not. If you are the kind of person that does weird class combinations on Final Fantasy Tactics. If you've ever even PLAYED an Ogre Battle or Tactics Ogre game. I think you'll like this.

It's short. It's cheap. It's fun. It's Tactics RPG's equivalent of Cheetos. Dive in. Gorge yourself. Level some ♥♥♥♥ up just for the sake of seeing some numbers go up and see what spells you learn.

Team Fortress 2 was MINDBLOWING when it came out... 14 years ago.

Since then, better F2P team shooters have come out for you to choose from, and those shooters (usually) don't come with TF2's community. Don't get me wrong. There's plenty of great content creators out there for TF2 (most of which posted their content years ago), but this is still the same steam community that replaced a reward for non-cheating with a slur, whined their way into getting said reward for everyone anyway, crashed the steam market place multiple times, and popularized cosmetic lootboxes.

A good portion of what you likely dislike about modern F2P games can trace some of its roots back to TF2 at this point. Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed my 80 hours on this game, but there is NO reason to be getting into this game in 2021.

Polish the dirt off enough and you'll find a diamond in the rough.

Last Dream looks and feels like the cheapest of the cheap RPG Maker games, but despite the very bare bones assets and plot, there's genuinely a mechanically complex homage to classic NES RPGs to be had here. This game plays like Final Fantasy 1 on steroids. If you're even bothering to look at this game. Odds are you're probably just looking to see if it's any good.

If you're willing to put up with weird RPG Maker jank, this is arguably one of the best of this genre you can play.

Normally I like to type out a nice long review detailing all of the positives and negatives of a title... but this is Xenoverse.

DUMB FUN, SCREAM GOOD, DROP EVERYTHING INTO SPECIAL ATTACK FOR MAXIMUM DAMAGE!