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Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars
Spike Chunsoft/Atlus
Reviewed on: 3DS
Spike Chunsoft/Atlus
Reviewed on: 3DS
Also on: PS Vita
Street: 04.15
Japanese RPGs are their own breed of game for a reason—they go off in directions that tend to be considered a little weird. This one is a bit of an extreme example. It’s a nice little dungeon-crawler with some extra party members—your children. It looks like a family roaming a dungeon because it’s their bonding exercise for the week. You start off the game as a normal disciple to fight the aforementioned baddies, but you quickly ascend to being God’s gift (not kidding) and the prized stud on the “classmating” farm. Classmating with special female disciples produces star children which join you in Dusk Circle labyrinths where the monsters originate from. Of course, having a better bond with the female means stronger children so you’ll need to woo some women. Don’t worry, there’s a tutorial on that you’ll need to read through, along with many, many others—so many mind-numbing pages of learning. Once you cut through all of that, you’re golden. The dungeons are full of color, graphics are great, and the battles have turn-based combat that you’d expect from RPGs. It may be a little weird, but it’s still fun. –Ashley Lippert
Japanese RPGs are their own breed of game for a reason—they go off in directions that tend to be considered a little weird. This one is a bit of an extreme example. It’s a nice little dungeon-crawler with some extra party members—your children. It looks like a family roaming a dungeon because it’s their bonding exercise for the week. You start off the game as a normal disciple to fight the aforementioned baddies, but you quickly ascend to being God’s gift (not kidding) and the prized stud on the “classmating” farm. Classmating with special female disciples produces star children which join you in Dusk Circle labyrinths where the monsters originate from. Of course, having a better bond with the female means stronger children so you’ll need to woo some women. Don’t worry, there’s a tutorial on that you’ll need to read through, along with many, many others—so many mind-numbing pages of learning. Once you cut through all of that, you’re golden. The dungeons are full of color, graphics are great, and the battles have turn-based combat that you’d expect from RPGs. It may be a little weird, but it’s still fun. –Ashley Lippert
Daylight
Zombie Studios/Atlus
Zombie Studios/Atlus
Reviewed on: PC
Street: 04.29
Why wouldn’t you want to be a young woman dropped in the middle of a hospital/insane asylum with only a smart phone, glow sticks and road flares to guide you? This game is perfection when it comes to horror, and had me literally on the edge of my seat from the get-go. I was so tense at points that I had to take breaks to calm down before continuing my “adventure.” The heads-up display is absolute genius—with your smart phone (that has no service, of course) being the “map” of the area, and (of course) your only source of light. When you have to run from a shadow, it becomes even more chaotic because the map you’ve been so heavily attached to is now flailing in front of you, nearly unreadable. The lore behind the game is interesting, the scares are absolutely 100-percent real, and the game looks and sounds stunning. Hats off to the audio engineer, because they have mixed the perfect horror soundtrack that is constantly warning you of something happening even when it isn’t—this leads to a huge panic attack when something is actually around the corner. Don’t play this game alone, and turn all the lights on—horror fans cannot miss this. –Thomas Winkley
Diablo III: Reaper of Souls
Blizzard Entertainment
Reviewed on: PC
Also on: OSX, PS4, Xbox One
Street: 03.25
Reaper of Souls takes us past its predecessor into the destroyed city of Westmarch and then into the lands of Pandemonium where the eternal struggle between angel and demon never ends. The loot system is greatly improved from the original Diablo III and playing through the campaign will have you quickly replacing your gear from the previous. The new adventure mode that unlocks upon completion also adds a new level of depth to the game that the previous title didn’t quite get. While it is unfortunate the expansion had to fix some of the complaints about the original title, the story, soundtrack and characters are as interesting and intense as the previous parts of the series and are well worth your time. The new Crusader class is much more tanky and a lot of fun to level, while the end game problems from the Diablo III truly do get fixed with the expansion. This is a dungeon crawler fanatics must; you won’t be disappointed in picking this up. –Thomas Winkley