This Week in Games

Another Turn With The Turn-Based "Debate"?

Welcome back, folks! I've mentioned before how I've been running a Mage: The Ascension campaign for some buddies over Discord. They know I like tokusatsu, but they've never watched anything like Ultraman. So when I have them fighting off an invasion of bizarre extra-dimensional lifeforms from within a Technocratic base, I can throw up a picture of the Alien Baltan and they won't even flinch. (As I've mentioned, I already have a character who is essentially Robot Detective K.) But that also means that I can let their own imaginations take the reins. So when one of my players uses Mind magick to peer into the mind of a trapped lifeform, he's understandably unsettled when I describe to him a craggy landscape under a sunless sky, shadowed by a red-and-silver giant hanging limply on a crucifix, instead of...

Folks who find tokusatsu "cheesy" are a lot more open to it when it's funded by the limitless television budget afforded by their imagination. That's what tokusatsu's all about, Charlie Brown.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been doing really well. Lots of love to its team; a gaggle of 30 ionate developers who love turn-based RPGs were able to make their own game while showing a ton of love and iration for the RPGs that came before them. Any RPG lover that namedrops the Shadow Hearts games and Suikoden in the same breath is a real one. And none of that "we wanna fix the genre" nonsense either: these guys love turn-based RPG, and fully explored the concept with a beautiful art style and a unique twist with the Parry system. (I'm genuinely curious how the devs feel about Eternal Sonata...)

There's been discourse about Clair Obscur. You've got the usual suspects from the peanut gallery talking about how it proves that AAA game development is "in trouble" from the Indie world (ignoring that for every Clair Obscur there are hundreds of indie teams that fail to keep the lights on). I'm not interested in that argument. What does interest me is the reaction folks have towards some of the discussions that have been brewing in response to Clair Obscur's turn-based nature. Specifically, the claims that Clair Obscur represents a "comeback" for turn-based RPG.

This would be a great place for me to talk about the many great turn-based RPGs we've seen in the past four years alone: from major AAA titles like Metaphor: ReFantazio to Like A Dragon 8 to Persona 3: Reload. Moreover, people seem to forget that Pokémon—one of the biggest gaming franchises alive—has been a turn-based RPG since 1996 while others bemoan that Final Fantasy has become an action game series and ignore all of Square Enix's other turn-based properties like Bravely Default, SaGa, Live-A-Live, Triangle Strategy or Fantasian Neo Dimension.

But I'm not gonna do that (anymore than I just did). Because if you've read my column for any length of time (and if you have: thank you, kindly), you'd know that I do that literally every week. I'm never not speaking out in favor of Breath of Fire or Suikoden or the many rogue-likes that pepper consoles (like Izuna). I wanna reframe this issue, because as frustrating as this phenomenon might be—the rehashing of this old, dead-horse of a claim that turn-based RPGs are "é"—there's a good reason why it happens.

Regardless of how you look at game communication, be it from traditional journalism or independent content creators on YouTube, there's only so much air in the room. So obviously, bigger games are likely to get attention.

That's not the extent of it, and it's a disservice to only look at things from the perspective of popularity. Many people who inspired me to pursue writing don't really work in the industry anymore, either because they've been laid off one too many times or have just flat-out left for greener pastures. Jeremy Parish (and the subject of my Masters' degree thesis) has a thriving career as a game historian (as well as working with Limited Run Games). These are all folks I hold in high esteem and are definitely way more educated about games than I am. My view on things is still quite limited; as much as I appreciate the fighting game community, my predecessor Heidi Kemps has far more experience with fighting game culture than I do. Isaiah Colbert, whom you might was nice enough to fill in for me while I was recovering from an accident two years ago, has plenty of expertise that I don't.

All this to say that a lot of people working on mainstream platforms might lack historical perspective regarding certain genres (either because they're too young or because they never got into certain genres)—or might not even have the opportunity to write about certain titles because the machine demands engagement. That's before you get into how blatantly transitory gaming as an industry is! Ignoring how terrifyingly quickly certain games can vanish from availability, gaming discussion is hampered by the ephemeral nature of the platforms it's hosted on. Websites go under. Social media s get deleted (and most are horrible at any archival).

If you're tired of the discourse, it's because existing platforms emphasize engagement, even if it's trotting out the same dog-and-pony you saw last week. YouTube isn't any better; making in-depth media about games takes time (and, in many cases, money). In the time it takes you to research, edit and release a single video charting the evolution of the rogue-like series and its many permutations in today's industry, you could've made a whole week's worth of screeds about any one game you've decided is going to cause the fall of Western civilization. This kind of setup means that even games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 can slip between the floorboards unless it does that well—and even that's not guaranteed.

It's here that I display a bit of honesty: if I didn't have the opportunity to write This Week in Games for this website, I likely wouldn't be writing anywhere. My range of interests in gaming is too narrow. I'm lucky to have the opportunity to write about games—but also, I'm in a position where my 9-5 job covers my expenses enough to where I can afford to spend a few hours four nights out of the week to write about Xenoblade Chronicles. (And the pay helps me afford doujinshi and vtuber merch.) A lot of people don't have that opportunity! There are a lot of people out there with an encyclopedic knowledge of the DOS gaming era or are super-ionate about the Halo 1 era of console shooters. That's a wealth of history they have to share, but the industry just isn't set up for those people to be able to participate, be it because the pay is crap, the workload is worse, and the algorithm would hose you over. And that's before you get into the very real possibility of a hate mob getting sicced on you. Is it any wonder that someone at a major publication or a YouTuber isn't specifically clued into a specific (and not at all mainstream) section of the gaming industry?

I'm not interested in pointing fingers, and I don't mean to imply incompetence on anyone's behalf. Hell, I've made plenty of mistakes of my own when it comes to discussing games. I don't know how many seasons Fortnite is up to right now, nor do I know anything about the Call of Duty—those are pretty big omissions on my behalf. And I've gotten all manner of minutiae wrong, with many more mistakes that'll likely happen in the future. "Pobody's nerfect," as I like to say. But if you're tired of the discourse, know that it's not because people are dumb—it's because we live in late-stage capitalism, and the kind of work needed to deliver quality writing and coverage is neither appreciated nor properly compensated. In the same way that any developer currently suffers from absurd working hours and the looming threat of layoffs dangling over their head like some sick sword of Damocles, most writers have a hard time doing what we do. At a during the latest Kumoricon where I talked about my experiences writing about games, I had a con-goer approach me for tips about where they might be hiring in the industry (he had just gotten laid off from another site). It's a crappy industry out there, and things are gonna get worse before they get better.

All this to say, give folks a break. Not everyone's played Metaphor: ReFantazio, the same way that I've never actually played Bloodborne. We'd all much rather be playing video games right now.

... Cripes, we'd all much rather be playing video games right now.

Good Old Games' Dreamlist has been a phenomenal opportunity; a repository where s can submit games to be considered for release on GOG's storefront, wherein other s can vote for games while also submitting their own stories about these games and how much they care about them. We saw this service grant us CAPCOM well for this new tiny miracle. Put another one on the board!

After all crashes have been fixed." This is the way to play Breath of Fire IV.

I've spoken of the Breath of Fire series in the past. CAPCOM's home-grown RPG series told throughout several millennia. The games oversee the various efforts of the Dragon Clan to protect the world from evil threats; invariably, these efforts are spearheaded by a blue-haired Dragon Clan member named Ryu and a bird-winged woman named Nina. Because the Breath of Fire games take place in a fantasy world circa the 1990s, they work with a variety of colorful animal peoples of all stripes. Breath of Fire IV takes place in a curious place in the series' timeline, either taking place in the distant past or distant future. Unique to Breath of Fire IV is also the two-sided story, pausing Ryu's adventure to fill players in on the story of the mysterious Fou-Lu. And while folks might the heavy metal-inspired music of the first two Breath of Fire games, IV transitioned to a more evocative soundtrack with heavy Arabic inspirations. It's a real treat.

Also unique to Breath of Fire IV is the Combo system, wherein using specific attacks in sequence can cause them to trigger unique effects. While the battles are still turn-based, there is a Tales of...-esque combo readout at the top of the screens where your total hits and total damage are tracked, encouraging players to experiment with more attacks and find stronger and stronger combos.

The Breath of Fire games have been given seriously short thrift for a long time; about the most anyone has been able to expect are the occasional Street Fighter outfit based on a Katt/Rinpoo Chuan. Breath of Fire IV getting a port (plus its major crashes repaired) is truly a gift that players are encouraged to check out as soon as they can. Many long-time fans likely hope the remaining Breath of Fire games get ported too; I'm right there along with you! I encourage folks to not pay too much attention to the votes on GOG's Dreamlist—don't start thinking, "If [x] game got [y] votes, then [y] votes is the threshold!". There are very clearly a lot of backroom negotiations that have to take place for games to get added to the service. I don't want to see competition between fandoms—rising tides raise all ships. But we can take a moment to celebrate this one lost game getting brought back to a wider audience after so long. After all, emulation can only do so much: the one thing guaranteed to ensure people play old games is getting them on newer platforms. Who knows, this might light a fire under CAPCOM's pants to release a Breath of Fire legacy collection...

On that note, GOG has also released some numbers regarding their Dreamlist—and it turns out, that people are very invested in getting a lot of older games brought back on GOG. Ten million votes, 600,000 s, and over 200,000 stories are some wild numbers and show that a significant part of the gaming community cares about these older games being released on new platforms. The system isn't perfect; there are way more votes for something like Devil May Cry (what, are the HD collections not good enough anymore?) or The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion Remastered (that literally just came out last week) than for something obscure like Red Ninja: End of Honor—which we've covered before. I'm not a fan of this approach! Preservation shouldn't be a matter of appealing to popularity—failures deserve preservation, too. Nobody was thinking of Ninja Five-O (out now on Steam!) in 2024, but it was still a fun game even if it didn't have YouTubers clamoring over each other to talk about its merits. It shouldn't be a matter of "people asked for this," it should be a matter of "people worked on this, and their work deserves better than to be forgotten." But hey: this is a better system than the one we had before (read: nothing). We can appreciate the limited resources GOG puts towards preserving these older titles.

A mobile game I don't see discussed very often is Gungho's Puzzle & Dragons. Maybe it's not as immediately eye-catching as Granblue Fantasy or Fate Grand Order, but in its time it was still incredibly popular; it not only had a port on the 3DS, it even gained a Super Mario Bros-themed port! Also, yeah: that's "Gungho" as in "the people that publish the recent Grandia and Lunar games." When you own a successful gacha game, you can make a lot of weird RPGs.

Anyway, Puzzle & Dragons is a widely successful match-three gacha game, earning over US$1 billion since its launch in 2012 (for a while, it was the highest-grossing mobile game). In the years since its launch, it's also seen countless cross-overs with multiple franchises, from Fate/stay night to Samurai Shodown. It's even featured some American franchises like the DC superheroes. Even if the game isn't everywhere anymore, it's widely beloved and ed enough by its whales to keep on plugging. But of course, after 13 years, your game needs a bit of an overhaul—and one that goes a bit further than just fixing up some menu interfaces. So here we are, on the verge of a new Puzzle & Dragons getting released: Puzzle & Dragons 0!

The set-up for Puzzle & Dragons 0 is largely the same as the original; players will assemble teams of up to five monsters to venture into dungeons. "Battles" play out as match-3 puzzles: players will slide s on a board around to trigger attacks from monsters in your party of the corresponding element (so matching fire symbols makes your Fire monsters attack, matching heart symbols triggers your healing monsters, and so on). The wrinkle is that you can move any given around the board for a given amount of time, giving you a chance to form chains and multi-block combos by arranging s before their triggering causes them to vanish. Doing so can trigger multiple attacks from your monsters, in addition to certain buffs or other skills. You're encouraged to make as many of these combos as you can, lest enemy monsters start taking swings at your party. It's a simple system, but it works well for a mobile game: not too complicated for short bursts, not too simple as to be a total skinner box. There's a lot of genuine skill involved with maximizing your combos, in addition to modifiers like dungeons featuring boards with limited colors or extra rows and columns.

Beating dungeons earns you in-game currency, which you can use to roll for new monsters. Beating stages can also earn you monsters to round out your party. However, the true way to earn stronger monsters is to combine certain monsters to trigger their evolution into stronger forms. And, of course, rarer monsters have stronger forms, requiring more exotic components for evolution. There are all kinds of monsters, from a vast variety of elemental dragons to cutesy anime takes on known mythological figures.

In addition to all of these features, Puzzle & Dragons 0 features some much-needed improvements. For starters, evolving your monsters is now displayed as a branching tree, not as some obtuse menu. Given how many forms certain monsters have gained over the years of Puzzle & Dragons' existence, plus all of the needed components for evolution, this helps with planning your monster evolutions and figuring out how much of which component you need. Making a new iteration of the game this way might also help with curbing some of the rampant power creep in Puzzle & Dragons. It's only natural that a game gets rather unbalanced after 13 years.

Puzzle & Dragons 0 is already up for pre-registration on both the App store and Google Play, with a release date of sometime in late May.

It's been a bit since we last talked about Sting! Best known for the off-beat Sega Saturn rogue-like Baroque (you likely played the PS2 port back in the day) or the Dept. Heaven series (two of which, Yggdra Union and Riviera: The Promised Land, having been re-released recently), they've mostly stayed out of the way as a secret handshake among enthusiasts of genre-blending RPGs. Earlier this week, they announced their newest project, and it's a doozy: VIractal.

At first blush, VIractalia might remind you of Sting's own Dokapon games mixed with Crimson Shroud's tabletop minifigure aesthetic—and there are some similarities, though VIractalia isn't quite as focused on the back-stabbing multiplayer dynamic (though it will feature multiplayer action). Instead, it's a procedurally generated rogue-lite; players will use dice rolls to move around a randomized world, collecting cards to buff up their character and gain new abilities. Landing on the right square can initiate randomized events. Players also have the option of turning portions of their dice rolls every turn into "DP," a resource for buffing or initiating other actions.

According to the game's Steam page, Sting plans to release VIractal in Early Access, where it'll remain for a period between six months to a year. Sting will use the time to listen to player comments on balance and the like while adding in new features like new randomized events, new playable characters, new boards, and new multiplayer scenarios. Best of all: the game will be released with an English language option, so it'll be playable in both Japan and the United States (it'll also be available in Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, and Korean).

So far, there isn't any word on a proper release date for VIractal, though Sting's Twitter post promises it'll release "soon." We don't have any word of it releasing on consoles yet, though I'll go on a limb and assume that the Switch 2 will be a safe bet for the game. In the meantime, if you'd like to whet your appetite you can try out Dokapon Kingdom: Connect on Steam and Nintendo eShop—though I warn you, if Mario Kart or Mario Party tilt you, Dokapon Kingdom might drive you to unspeakable violence. Consult your doctor before playing Dokapon Kingdom with your friends.

Hiroshi Kawaguchi, a longtime composer for many of Sega's classic titles, retired from Sega earlier this week. At 60 years old, Kawaguchi was until now the oldest working employee at Sega, responsible for composing music for such beloved titles as OutRun, Hang On, and Afterburner. Sega commemorated his career with a special letter.

There's a new trailer for the ToHeart remake, introducing the main cast of romanceable characters: Akari, Multi, Shiho, Lemmy, Tomoko, Kotone, Serika, and Aoi. The ToHeart remake comes out June 26th; it's set to release with an English language translation.

Famed visual novel Dokyusei: Bangin' Summer – Home Edition is out in English on American home consoles! You can pick it up on the Nintendo eShop, but for whatever reason I can only find it on the European eShop. Note that because this is the console release, this version doesn't feature any adult content.

That'll do it for this week. As I write this, I realize that it's Golden Week in Japan. Be sure to give your favorite Japanese artists some love as they draw characters in golden swimwear for the occasion. Soon it'll be the time for ice cream and cook-outs and crickets in tall grass. to get a bit of sun while the weather's good! If you've never gone to a convention before, this Spring or Summer is a great time to change that—especially if there's a good local one in your area. Be good to each other, I'll see you in seven.

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This Week In Games! is written from idyllic Portland by Jean-Karlo Lemus. When not collaborating with Anime News Network, Jean-Karlo can be found playing Japanese RPGs, eating popcorn, watching v-tubers, and tokusatsu. You can keep up with him at @ventcard.bsky.social.

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