Fantasian: Neo Dimension is a game filled with contrasts. Its turn-based gameplay systems are conventional but are nonetheless polished through the encounter design. Its story features intriguing setups but underwhelming payoffs. It echoes classic RPGs of decades past while including innovative features that many similar games would benefit from. And its combat starts out pitifully…
Welcome to Newsbytes, our semi-regular series of posts at AH that covers the quicker pieces of news from around the arcade industry. Quite a few things have bubbled up outside of IAAPA, although we still have a lot to cover from that show – so stay tuned this next week, as we’ll finally be catching…
Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail was a challenging expansion to review. It featured some of the best gameplay the MMO has had in years, but after the narrative payoff of Endwalker, the new story arc had some growing pains. Since the first three patches after an expansion have traditionally wrapped up lingering plot threads, I was…
Japan’s Amusement Expo – formerly known as JAEPO – is going to begin on Friday in Japan, while IAAPA Expo 2024 starts less than a week from now in Orlando. In the instance of both events, exA-Arcadia will be there with a booth, and they will be showing off brand new games for their cartridge-based…
We all have origin stories about how we got into RPGs (several of us shared them almost six years ago in this feature!), so today our panel discusses music origins — what RPGs attuned us to the RPG music scene or otherwise elevated our senses and made us take notice. For some of us, this…
In Japan, last year saw both the final edition of JAEPO, the country’s main arcade show that had been held each February since 2013, and their new Amusement Expo – a reworked and reformatted trade event for November, to address concerns in the post-COVID reality of the business. That event was only done on one…
In this edition of RPGs Coming This Week, a major JRPG finally breaks out of its smartphone confines, plus we get a bunch of Steam Early Access comers and goers. December is usually a slow period for releases, but that is not so in 2024. So let’s get a move on, shall we? Caves of…
If you thought that Raw Thrills’ Angry Birds Boom! would be the only Angry Birds video game to grace arcades this year, then it would have been a safe bet. That makes this news a bit of a surprise, especially given who is making this new game. Let’s read about DOF Robotics and their first…
Among the plethora of top-tier RPGs in the last five years or so, Disco Elysium stands as one of the more innovative and unexpected critical and commercial hits. It drew a huge range of industry and critical accolades, and the immersive graphics, exceptional narrative and voice-acting, and meaningful decision systems still resonate as strongly today…
Things have been quiet on the site, but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t been busy. IAAPA 2024 was a successful trade show by all accounts (including mine), and the amount of video that I shot from the event has taken a bit of time to edit – between other responsibilities. Let’s begin to unravel…
