Like the wide ocean, it’s not about what appears on the surface. A tempest could be accompanied by a placid underwater, a calm stands above fierce undercurrents. It’s about what is below all of that, the true depth, the almost magical, unknown world of the seabed, where the idiosyncratic and unconstrained sprouts and lies. It can’t be conveyed all at once, you scoop some water but just so much can be held in your hands, so you look for ways to show more without spilling any. These vessels can be a glass, a bucket, a word, a music, a picture, they are all manifestations of the seabed in the real world. There is nothing overly dramatic about it, it’s just how nature works, and in all its simplicity it is such a beautiful place.

I think it is impossible to discuss the value of Little Busters! without focusing on how it achieves to be a successful emotional ride. Did I cry or was I moved? Yeah, I did, something like seven years ago when I first read it. This time around, after the Steam release, I found myself much less impressed by some portions of drama which, admittedly, oftentimes feel just thrown around for the sake of exasperating the melodrama. Also, the plot is mostly goofy and juvenile, some nice spins are given here and there, while the prose does its job it is largely mediocre, and if you won’t find the humour and the chemistry between the characters compelling you’re in for a tour de force rather than a pleasant tale about friendships.

However, the thing about the power of Little Busters! is how being aware of all of its shortcomings doesn’t affect my appreciation of the work Visual Art’s did here, at all. Maybe Little Busters! wouldn’t work magnificently as a story, but it sure is impressive as a visual novel: whilst many similar works would limit themselves to introduce characters and let you focus on a fixated path following which one interested you the most, Little Busters! add far more branch and choices, sometimes seemingly pointless, to let the player experience a bountiful of side contents, comedic or lore-related vignettes, and secrets hidden all over the place that just ask to be found. There’s also the gameplay, in the form of several quick mini-games which range from baseball practice to a fighting tournament, from hunting down mysterious creatures (which give a pretty hilarious insight on the character of Kyousuke) to serving in a cafeteria. And the impressive thing is how all of these are plot related, not because how the gameplay fits into the story but how because how much they reciprocally influence each other. I can’t emphasize enough how I adore the way this novel build around its theme by slightly changing, after each playthrough, some minor bits of it to give a more concrete idea of the characters changing and developing after major events, and the more obvious way to notice this would be, in fact, to check the protagonists’ stats at the beginning of each tournament.

As the story is in its surface state, I wouldn’t think much of it beside it being a heart-warming bildungsroman focused on friendship, but the care put into its every detail, from the immense content hidden in it to the game direction heavily helping the narrative with a pretty fitting musical score and spot-on CG events, raised it to being of my favourite product of its medium.

A game where a guild self-regulates the colonization of new lands, whilst both promoting scientific development and managing environmental balance as an independent, economic entity. Truly the capitalistic dream fully realized. Also, you whack dinosaurs with a big f- sword, or hammer or whatever.

What I appreciate the most about Monster Hunter World is that it is perfectly adequate to satisfy my every moods whenever I want to play: if I want an adrenaline rush through hunts and varied gameplay mechanics I can put myself against a Savage Deviljho and curse its’ and the Lord’s name; if I just want to progress I can almost always count on online help to dump– cough to carry me during harder fights; if I need to relax I can walk around the main hubs and talk to colourful, funny characters, or doing expeditions to fetch rare materials, discover rare or unique interactions in the wildlife (the sexual habits of lynians are so fascinating and they don’t even mind you recording every second of it), or simply walk around and soak in the beauty of the maps.

Of course, the vast majority of those who will play the game (and those who won’t the c•ckblocked by its godawful optimization and manage some workarounds, thanks nexusmod and steamforums) will mainly be interested in the ‘hunter’ part rather than the ‘world’ part, and it certainly does deliver. Every hunt is a glorious boss fight in and on itself. They are exciting, tense, fast paced, even strategic as you have to manage your resources, your positioning, the condition of your prey and the environments around you. Every new monster is a series of discoveries, to assimilate the monster moveset and work your reflexes on countermeasures, while also adjusting your playstyle to something that may very well be completely different from every fight you have had before. It is certainly difficult, yet the game does not gatekeep its progress, you can almost always find ways to ease the challenge by adequately equipping your palico companion (just give him paralysis or poison gear), other aids such as traps, lynians and minor monsters in the map, or calling for other players to join you. There are plenty of hunters out there always willing to lend a hand.

Crafting always offers new ways to play the game. Today you might see a particular weapon or armour and you will hunt the same monster multiple times, praying the random number god that it will drop the materials you need before the date of your wedding or of your grandchildren’s college diploma. There is a grand total of 14 different weapons to try out, I myself haven’t tried a couple of them yet, surely haven’t mastered more than two or three, and each play so differently it is like trying a new game every time you pick a different one. They all offer complex but accessible mechanics, various way to approach a challenge and a long list of moves and combo to learn. The game actively incentives to not button mash through your fights but carefully weight the timing and damage of each blow, the reaction times of the monsters and how best to utilize your knowledge to balance offence and defence. Of course, not that I am any good at it myself, I keep panicking and just spam heavy blows many times. The best suggestion one could receive upon beginning the game is to play it as a turn-based action game, rather than a real-time one.

Minor grips with the game, aside from the status of the actual PC port, include: 1. the time limit on missions, it sure adds tension but come on, despite having plenty of time to kill the same monster thrice I’d still like to not have a mental pressure if I want to explore the map a little during a hunt; 2. after every faint your stats reverse back to before you ate to gain the bonuses, which means if you have real troubles with a particular monster you’d have to wait every ten minute mark to buff again or waste a lot of consumables to regain those buffs (ancient potions are expensive to make, bloody hell); 3. as much as it is fun to witness monsters fighting each other (and it sure simplifies some of the hunts as they bite hundreds if not thousands of HP out of each other), some monsters such as the bazelgeuse could get a clue and stop intruding every second, attacking your prey but also, always, unavoidably hitting your character as well; 4. the monsters have presence, they sure feel like living dinosaurs walking around, and oftentimes they are so big the camera will commit seppuku altogether and a monster will occupy the full screen, while you won’t be able to figure out for many seconds where you are or what (or if) you are hitting; 5. hitboxes are not, uh, perfect: sometimes, many monsters are clearly coded so that the air they move around can still halve you HP while others can move around and, as long as you aren’t precisely where they are targeting, you won’t get hit. This last one may very well be intentional, but if it is so then it’s a weird design choice to artificially inflate difficulty, in a game that otherwise teaches you to value every space you and the monsters occupy.

MHW looks and sounds beautifully. Just like games such as the witcher 3, the souls series, MGSV and so on, there is an almost surreal and gripping ambience in every map, an absurd amount of secrets, trails and areas to discover, a rich palette of colours. It is just so satisfying to walk around, crawling in caves and climbing rock walls, and end up in a place where flying glowing jellyfishes abound, surrounded by rainbow-tinted corals, and you’d just be there for minutes and stare at this fantastically magnificent atmosphere, while immersing in the sounds of nature.

All in all, MHW is an experience I thoroughly recommend, as long as your computer specs allow it and it doesn’t systematically burn your CPU like, as I understand it, was a clear intentional joke on the behalf of capcom, undoubtedly in cahoots with the CPU manufactures industry. There is potentially endless fun to be had in the game, one of the best modern-day multiplayer experience to have with friends or newly met strangers online (just don’t accept any cough herbal remedy candy they offer you) and certainly a landmark for future looting-based action games. (Editor’s note: it’s been almost three years since MHW released and almost no game learned a thing from it. Game industry, what is wrong with you, you absolute fuc–

“Well… We’ve been through a lot together. […] But for you, it’s just the start of an even greater adventure.”

For sure, this journey was a memorable one.

Okami is the quintessential old school adventure videogame: a large world made of multiple interconnected maps, subsequently opened to the players by precedingly unlocking new unique abilities. The different scenarios also offer a wide variety of side activities, quests and collectible, without choking the game full of time-consuming nothingness or making the players deviate much from the main quest: moreover, even the apparently most trivial side mission ultimately brings the player to unlock a new weapon, helpful accessories or ability upgrades, so there will never be a minute of gameplay lost just to achieve an empty 100% competition rate.

Certainly, there is not a tight world building behind every encounter, or interesting written stories for all the characters, like for example in the Witcher and Souls series, yet what Clover studio achieved by blending the Zelda formula with Japanese folklore resulted in a most unique product, even amid the vast catalogue of niche games for the Playstation2. No surprises Okami achieved a strong cult status among past generations of video gamers, other than receiving various porting and remaster.

The story itself sets the game as a niche product right from the beginning, as it explores themes and events reimagined from Shinto mythology, and as such it has many details and references that may be understood uniquely by a Japanese audience, or well versed in this particular cultural background. The whole premise of Okami reinvents the legend of the slaying of Yamata-no-Orochi, an 8-headed and 8-tailed dragon serpent, by the hand of the gods Susanoo and Amaterasu, with slightly differences such as Amaterasu, while still being the Sun goddess, as well as the players’ character, is represented as a mute wolf (Okami is a word play that while being written as ‘great god’ could be read as ‘wolf god’).

Other characters coming from different myths are Issun, Okami’s Navi although arguably more talkative and amusingly obnoxious, who serves as a narrator and as Amaterasu only mean to communicate with the world, aside from barking and headbutting; Urashima Tarou, Otohime and the Dragon Palace on the bottom of the sea, the shapeshifting fox spirit with nine tails, Fusehime and her eight dog warriors, Kaguyahime from the tale of the bamboo cutter, as well as actual historical figures such as Himiko, a real queen from the early days of Japan. The vast assortment of characters gives a pantheistic feeling to Okami’s otherwise primarily light-hearted and goofy plot, making the players immerse in a scenario akin to an Olympus, where the deities intertwine with each other to serve the purpose of a greater story.

What immediately strikes about Okami is certainly its visuals, the peculiar art design with broad black outlines and a soft colour palette that heavily borrows from various Japanese traditional art, such as ukiyo-e, sumi-e (ink painting) and even calligraphy on some degree. The end result is a less rough and more glistening rural world immerse in nature, with sparkling of true beauty but with the simple recognizable designs of a children story book. The gameplay also fits with the artwork of the videogame: Amaterasu can use her tail, the Celestial Brush, to enter a sort of otherworldly dimension from where she can utilize different strokes to unleash various effects on the game world: these effects range from manipulating the elements to fix broken or missing artefacts, slow time, evoke explosives and cut through most objects.

The Celestial Brush also heavily plays in the combat system, as aside from Amaterasu’s quick fighting style mix of Divine Instruments (beads whips, greatswords and mirrors) the brush techniques can also be implemented with various effects on the enemies to facilitate crowd controls or hit weak points. Despite the fast-paced combat, the use of the Celestial Brush also serves as a pace breaker, stopping the frenetic action and putting the players in a dimension of stillness from where strategies can be elaborated and executed with ease and calm.

The last impressive factor about Okami is its soundtrack: over five hours (if one were to listen to it from start to end) of classical Japanese music inspirations that range from soothing and atmospheric pieces played with relaxing woodwind instruments, to more rhythmic, frenetic and bombastic percussions fighting themes. The ambience is probably the most sublime aspect of this game, since the first opening of the main menu the players are hit with the slow tempo of traditional flutes and almost immaterial and echoing drumming, that immediately stages the Eastern opera that Okami sets out to be; a relaxing fantasy journey in a fairy tale land.

The beautiful thing about video games is that they offer such a wide array of possible experiences and stimulations for players. Some games require fast, immediate decision making and reflexes to overcome tense challenges, other rewards a calmer approach to tricky, complicated puzzle that must be solved using logic, wits and environmental awareness. In any case, each video game has to recognize its identity to decide what challenge to offer.

Then there’s Catherine, a game where there are two, maybe three correct solutions to its puzzles yet there is a constant time limit ticking on and urging the player to choose what moves to make, and subsequently fail, then try again from the beginning until one has figured out and memorized the one correct solution and is perfectly able to execute it for two to six minutes straight. This is a chimp-brained form of training, or Chinese torture. What the gameplay of Catherine means in actual display is that you have to hurry but also carefully consider your options, weight every possibility but then again there are just a handful of correct answers that never changes because the puzzles are strictly scripted (except for some of the bonus ones), you need perfect control over your character but the buttons are mapped so that many inputs overlap. I can appreciate Atlus effort to try something new and unique, but the challenge Catherine offers to the players is borderline asinine.

It is also a heavily narrative game; the main drive is always advertised being the storyline which branches out slowly depending on the players’ choices. That is not entirely untrue, yet the plot moves at a snail pace despite making many decisions and every vignette about the characters life tells to the audience the same things over and over and over again until you get to the resolution. There is hardly any satisfaction having to deal with vincent’s daily life when he’s only described as an indecisive waste of meat and blood. It is interesting to have as a main character such an egregiously flawed character, but he also provides no reason to care about his struggles: he is in his thirties, he has a job that gives him no joy and has trouble with his girlfriend (because he’s indecisive) and also a kind of flirt with a cutie he kind of met and cannot reject no matter how hardly he wants to (because he’s indecisive). That’s about it for vincent’s characters, being indecisive is his main trait, not what motivation drives him to being indecisive or what goal he has set in mind, he’s almost post-modern in his utter lack of any ambition but holden caulfield he is not.

Catherine is still a unique experience among video games, but also a frustrating one, with a bland story and bland characters and despite its efforts manages to give an average experience at best in everything it has to offer.

William Gibson wrote Neuromancer on a typing machine, kickstarting the cyberpunk genre as we know it and imagining how computers and virtual reality would actually work decades later. Years after, he claimed to have been disappointed by the real thing, probably because he played this game and found out how some people imagined virtual reality as a good place to play incest with your sister.

So, Baldr Sky, one of the most legendary visual novels, teased for years and arrived on the English scene just last december. This game is all in all massive, it takes over a hundred hours to even complete the main story and the scope of the game shoots to achieve the matrix-levels of thought-provoking insights on virtual reality and the role of men in a world of rising AIs. Sounds terrific on paper, but the plot is at best very cool and poignant and at worst (and more commonly) barely serviceable. Despite beginning in medias res in a futuristic battlefield where mecha pilots are gutting unmanned wardrones, which is how most of the game will play out, the average time spent on the story of Baldr Sky will deal with teenagers and young adults going around, talking about sci-fi jargon and interesting concept but without much charisma to deliver a compelling narrative. Tens of hours of explanations grow tiring in a story which is also riddled with repetitions, stereotypical dialogues made by stereotypical characters, and where many sections just drag on and on, seemingly forever.

I get the sentiment that long flashbacks segments and info-dumping were needed to create a connection with the cast and understanding the core concepts, I really do, it’s fundamental to feel invested in the emotional climaxes and to appreciate the thematic answers at the end of each route. Yet, was it really necessary to stretch the story over so much with so many plodding bits? As an ulterior testament to how mind-numbingly slow this is, despite its length and scope Baldr Sky only has around twenty recurring characters, and not even all of them receive an in-depth arc or development to fully understand their personality or motivations. Almost all of the villains for example have their share of reasoning behind, but that doesn’t make them less repetitive and annoying when they are mostly just the same stereotypically evil caricatures (fat greedy rapists, arrogant violent psychos, narcissistic monomaniacal churchmen, etc.) in every route, furthermore never providing a satisfying counterbalance to the obvious ‘good’ of the main characters.

A huge portion of the game isn’t limited by its story restrictions, thankfully, sometimes actions calls in and the gameplay starts. The gameplay is the meat of the game, and it’s worth the entry price: structured as an isometric beat ‘em up, Baldr Sky offers a wide arrange of progressively unlocking weapons (for a grand total of just about 130 different weapons), which can be developed and chained in combos for massive style and damage. The weapons cover every possible playstyle, from long to short range, bullet vs explosive weapons, light vs heavy, slash vs smash, there are tons of finisher and other stuff to try out, but the game doesn’t want the player to just choose a category and roll with it. A long-range stagger can be combined with a dash move to close the gap and then immediately go to an air launch, followed by a high kick, a sword stun, heavy smash, a drop and close with an explosive punch. This is just one possible combination, not even a full one, out of thousands viable approaches to dispatch single enemies or crowd control hordes. It looks like a very retro take on modern action games on the vein of devil may cry, or bayonetta, and the adrenaline rushes are just as strong. There are videos out there showing people one-shotting the final boss in a single, two-minutes long combo on the hardest difficulty and it is just pure video games aesthetic.

Of course, it doesn’t always work perfectly. One major complaint regards how chains and weapons can be decided only before every fighting sections and never be changed midway until it’s over and story resumes. Meaning that if the players poorly planned a combo, either they have to start all over again (which can mean even half or a full hour of gameplay) or stick with it and hope there isn’t a boss encounter. This can happen quite often because, and here’s the other great issue, before every section the player is given a simulation where to choose weapons and try them out, yet a combo working ten times in a row in a simulation can still fail during the actual combat or on actual enemies, for some reasons. Moreover, same as for the story, many battle sessions just last far too long: for example, closing almost every major route there is a gigantic rush of enemies that kills the pacing and makes the final boss seems a beath of fresh air after so much repetition, rather than the climax one should be expecting.

Art style and sound design are competent, the characters likability requires having some degree of appreciation for anime and the likes, even in the voice department which is pretty good regardless but riddled with typical onomatopoeic clichés. The soundtrack is a banger while the mech designs, despite being small sprites, are very varied and a pleasure to look at.

All in all, Baldr Sky is a hard one to recommend, it is certainly worth if one felt invested in anime on a similar vein of fullmetal alchemist, attack on titan or code geass, but it also presents many of the limits of the genre. The gameplay may seem tiring at first to someone just interested in the story, but it grows on the player, and it is also one of the rare cases where the normal to hard difficulties are recommended to fully experience the investment throughout the highpoints of the story. If one can afford the tens of hours needed to reach even a single ending, the tens more needed to form a somewhat complete understanding of the story’s stakes, and can digest standard anime-tier writing, this game can prove to be absolutely amazing.

Spoilers in the review because who even cares anymore

Steins;Gate is one of the most successful mess ever written. It is a confused, overlong slog devoid of characters, pacing and meaning. A walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

It presents itself as a comedic, thriller-themed, sci-fi-ish slice of life piece about a group of wacky nerdy friends, as aware and believable in their roles as the big bang theory’s cast, which spends the first half of the game concluding nothing of relevance and the latter half of the game undoing the former. There is a significant attempt to deliver a message about the importance of free will in humanity, about our own limits, to face and accept the choices and consequences of our own free will and actions, establishing that we cannot have an ideal, easy, cotton-candy life because there is always a part of the world beyond our control, that we do have an impact on the world, and then the message is sent down the flush because we need an happy ending so here’s the resolution done off-screen for the main characters and believe in yourself, coincidence and improvisation will solve every conflict. Hours after reading through the misery of characters you are supposed to like, the game just gives you the comfortable solution that none of that matters, people will still be happy and you have to pretend those conflict never existed.

The protagonist, okabe, is a useless slab of wasted air, he fancies himself a science genius when he has no theoretical expertise aside from googling and reading stuff on Wikipedia and online boards, no technical skill, if it were not for the clear instructions others give him. Every major important concept in the story is introduced, theorized, discussed, solved and then engineered by someone else, he just uses them with barely knowing how any of those work. He also behaves like a daft twat for half of the game toward anyone, yet people still stick around him and act like he’s a dear friend despite being showered in his chauvinism, arrogance and terrible, terrible manners. When at the midpoint of the story he’s supposed to grow and start act like a caring individual, as said before he just undoes and forgets gradually every conflict his ‘friends’ have, and when he has to face the consequences of his actions, once again someone else hands him the deus ex machina, without him having to do any effort except crying and be sad about it for a bit. You aren’t even given the time to assimilate and feel the weight of the events, as you already expect a convenient solution to be on the way by that point.

The pacing is all over the place: many chapters that should be focused on progressing the story just digress and forget any sense of urgency despite time being the central idea of the story. A whole chapter is dedicated to having someone win a yu-gi-oh tournament, which isn’t even the main conflict of the arc’s protagonist, and then the real issue is presented and quickly dealt with in ten minutes before undoing it again and moving on to someone else’s life to ruin. This is gorilla-tier writing, how do you spend over half of your chapters’ length like this, with no editor to cut out the unnecessary bits, is beyond me.

The side cast is a mix of unfunny, clichéd anime tropes, with the major actors being a dumb happy-go-lucky girl whose major defining traits are being dumb and happy-go-lucky, a supposedly genius engineer and hacker constantly acting like a dangerous sexual molester, a psychotic super soldier so stupid she’d forget to eat or breath if you didn’t tell her to, another psychotic super soldier which should solve all the plot within minutes of playing start but there’s another idiot I guess, the genius tough but shy girl that should sound conflicted but actually has an emotional disorder and is just made fun of by everyone else, writer included. I didn’t even touch upon the token moe stereotype with no growth because, let’s face it, all the female characters can easily apply for the role.

The CGI and character design are hideous, poorly drawn, with terrible proportions and depth, weird colouring, unnatural and unhuman faces, body proportions and expressions (those eyes will hunt me in my sleep), that make the story seem like it takes place in alternate universe where everyone is the creature from the movie ‘the fly’. Credit where credit is due, the voice acting work and sound is pretty impressive, there are some really powerful tracks in the background music and most of the voice actors, from miyano mamoru to seki tomokazu, from tamura yukari to googling imai asami, each of them play their roles and the emotions they should convey very well.

That being said, even as a sound novel steins;gate is still overlong and riddled with dumb twists and nonsense to serve shock value rather than compelling, meaningful progression and satisfying conclusions based on its own terms, development and themes. If you want a visual novel dealing with sci-fi and thriller there’s plenty of dumb fun to be had with the nonary games, as bad as those can get, or just read chaos;child and experience the better sci;adv novel.

Chaos;Child is already five years old and yet its social commentary is still as relevant and real as ever. Cleverly subverting the trend of teenagers solving with their youthful confidence conflicts greater far than them (de facto rendering steins;gate, from the same series, far more stupid than it already was), the story of chaos;child revolves around a chain of horrifying murders and the shocking truths that supposedly hide beneath the surface of a modern day media sensation.

Yet, that is indeed just the surface. Chaos;Child ventures into many different territories but at the core it is a work on the excessive power of mass media, internet noise, information wars and the terrifying coldness and the feeling of lack of purpose in modern times. While maintaining a coherent flow, sometimes slowing its pacing by giving the readers many moments of characters interactions, insight and respite to breath in and assimilate the many events transpiring, the plot always moves forward, asking relevant questions about the contemporary world and letting its characters answer them as they see fit. Are those the right answers? The wrong ones? It is hard to say. Living through difficult times is such an idiosyncratic experience that it is tempting to judge and impose our external views upon them, but even though we can express judgment is it really more important to understand and explain than to just simply understand?

Chaos;Child looks upon its characters, their struggles, their decisions, their successes and failures and, like an indifferent, omniscient eye, witnesses the worst inhumanities and never relents. When something bad happens there ain’t no silver lining or positive angle; characters might suffer and then have to deal with the consequences, even accepting their own mistakes, recognize their own flaws and act upon them, trying to better themselves or keep on running away. The underlying heroism in chaos;child does not equates to saving the world, sometimes it is just enough to accept our own limitations and do the best we can to make things slightly less worse for those we care about. As said before, there are no easy answers about what can be done to solve every problem; a tragedy is the misfortune brought upon oneself as a result of one’s own action. Oedipus was a tragic character because he killed his own father and married his mother as a result of his beliefs; Milton’s Satan was a tragic character because he decided to rebel against God due to his own hubris; Miyashiro Takuru is a tragic character because… well, that is the story to be found in Chaos;Child.

The production values in the visual novel are also amazing. The characters’ sprites are expressive, well-acted, Matsuoka Yoshitsugu probably gave his performance of a lifetime as Takuru. The sound design and soundtrack are eerie, creepy, haunting at times; there are many genuinely tense and scary moments, where the tension is so fully realized by combining sounds, writing and acting performances, reading on for too long in those moments might prove painful, yet one can hardly stop as long as the rhythm doesn’t relent.

Chaos;Child should be on everyone’s read-list for the sheer importance of the story, for how well it understands what is fundamentally nonsensical about the culture in 21st century and for how, rightfully so, it has proven to be the heir we were waiting for to the likes of serial experiments lain or kon satoshi’s works.

The indisputable thing about Trails in the Sky is that no matter where you are or how thought of a battle you are facing, it never gives up its light-heartiness. It may sound ridiculous considering some twists and events undeniably dramatic, but overall the charm it displays comes from a deep sense of familiarity you perceive from the world and its characters. Being the first chapter in a trilogy of the Legend of Heroes series you start having little to no clue regarding who is who, what is what, how things work and what kind of monster will come at you in every dungeon. But here’s the thing, all of the answers to these points are either pretty standard fare or predictable: you have kind of slimes, kind of insectoids, kind of monster birds, and the whole grid combat system and quartz equipment are pretty easy to catch up and recognize after few tries. The characters are the kind of broody gary stu, the kind of energetic female lead, the kind of cute little girl, the kind of uptight aristocratic, the kind of funny pervert, the kind of reliable jokester and so on.

From what I’ve been saying up to now it may sound as if I am dissing the game for being boring and uninspired, which is undeniable for me considering the average JRPG, and initially this was a big point behind the disappointment in my first playthrough. Yet there was something charming about the game, something not really flashy or amazing or memorable, but it just drew me in it again, and in its sequels. What it was, was the familiarity.

Playing Trails in the sky is returning to a game you have always played when turning on a JRPG: it makes the players discover a world where there are problems and stuff to solve (after all it would be an Atelier game otherwise, wouldn’t it) but rarely puts them are put into a spot where there isn’t a handful of warm, good feelings, where the people living in this world won’t smile and help the characters, give some nice trivia, or just crack a light, unfunny joke. All of these set up the mood for the heroes to feel the need to save the day and beat the bad guys, because they are concretely showed what is so important to protect, not just generically preventing the world to burn but an everyday worth of living made of significant people and hopes and dreams and children and all the kind of saccharine stuff edgy guy won’t relate to. To me, at least, this is a remarkable achievement.

Albeit, one may argue that this is by no mean something new, something unique, something that make the game stand out from many other similar JRPGs. I won’t deny this because I think so as well, I just think it’s more a part of Trails in the Sky’s charm than of its let-downs. Then again, if one wants still to immerse in an enthralling and challenging game you could always crank up the difficulty and let Lorence obliterate you time and time again without a specific quartz build to counter his one-hit kill attacks. Not that it will really matter if one spends just the tiniest amount of time exploring, looting and levelling up, strategizing is very intuitive and easy to master. Moreover, the grind in this game is really light and I’ve never been put into a spot where I wouldn’t be able to collect all the weapons and abilities compared to other games. Or, you could also just spam Joshua’s black fang and make every random encounter trivial.

If one just came for the story though, what they’ll get is a classic reinvention of the “the princess is in another castle” formula, where the player is given an episodic format of reaching a new city, meeting new people, investigating their own matters and finishing involved in something else entirely to solve. The nice thing about ending a chapter and leaving everything that the player explored or met behind is this is the kind of game that won’t forget to make everyone come back and fulfil their roles by the endgame, so that not one major quest will ever feel unnecessary or too gratuitous to alienate the player from the main objective. The game also ends on a quite nice cliff-hanger, which was subtlety built and hinted to thorough the whole story, but without leaving anything relevant presented up to that point unresolved: the bad guys are defeated, the princess was indeed in one castle, the world is save (for now), everything noteworthy was achieved, you are just presented the prologue to the next story in the epilogue to build the will to keep on playing the series. And admittedly, it works like a charm.

I wouldn’t recommend this game if one was searching for an innovative game, or a game which takes stereotypes and does something completely new and inspired with them (if you want a better “princess in another castle” game just go to The Witcher 3), rather Trails in the Sky was made for those people who unconditionally love JRPGs for the feeling the genre mastered, the feel of live inside a warm fable.