Last Epoch is an amazing action RPG, combining mechanics and systems that satisfyingly come together to create an experience where you just want to keep playing, creating new characters, trying more builds and finding out how things work out. The story is nothing to write home about - especially after the twenieth time through - but I’m just playing it nonstop since it came out of early acccess, and boy is it great.
SoP:FFO is a really cool game on paper, a cheesy final fantasy-infused action game having you punch, slash and blast your way through some semblance of the story of Final Fantasy 1 with just enough going slightly differently to really catch your attention. With a neat class system and the ability to customize your combos, special skills and gear, it could’ve been a slam dunk. That being said, I was eventually ground down by the difficulty, the overabundance of gear and the absence of ways, for me, to overcome the challenges the game placed in my way.
The bar was incredibly high for Diablo 4, the expectations were probably impossible to meet and the realities of game development in the year of our lord 2023 for a company like Blizzard seemingly was writing on the wall that it would embrace the “live service” moniker in ways Diablo 3 hadn’t in the past. I love action RPGs, they’re probably up there as my favorite genre of game, I also have a lot of fond memories of Diablo 1, had a ton of fun with Diablo 2 and played Diablo 3 to hell and back. How does 4 fare against the legacy of its predecessors? Not perfectly, but pretty well, I’d say!
Forager is a pretty neat game where you collect resources, build things, fight monsters, level up and go through an upgrade tree for your various tools, buy more land to explore, complete quests, unlock plenty of skills and complete challenges. My experience with it was a rollercoaster of mixed feelings - at first it was pretty slow and the upgrades were incomprehensible, but then progression became too fast and the upgrades didn’t come quick enough. I had a good time with it, but it lost focus too rapidly for me.
I couldn’t get very far in Diablo Immortal because I don’t have any mobile devices with sufficient storage space to download all the required stuff, and that’s all right. While a mobile version of a popular action RPG franchise is certainly something that could be fine and not something I would be opposed to in principle, I still am staunchly opposed to free to play games that blur the design line between playing for fun, playing as a replacement to paying money and playing as a vehicle to extract money from players. You’ll understand that Diablo Immortal is one of these games.
Torchlight 3 didn’t grab me at all like Torchlight 2 did. I tried to enjoy it, I gave it time, but it ultimately felt like a pretty bland by-the-numbers action rpg experience that I probably won’t play again, which is a damned shame. It doesn’t really do anything new or different, and what slight deviations from the genre it does do not bring anything really fun to the genre. I still went through the game once, but couldn’t even do that a second time.
Action RPGs are my favorite kind of games. I could play them forever if unstopped. I have over 3000 hours easily in ‘recent’ ARPGs and I’m always willing to try new ones. When I heard about Wolcen, I really wanted to dive in, but reports of bugs, weird balance issues and other wonkiness kept me at bay… for about a week. After 45 hours I can safely report that Wolcen needs some more work before it gets to a point where I could easily recommend it to everyone, but they clearly had a running start, being inspired by other ARPGs as it is while making interesting design decisions on their own, so they’ll probably get there. Regardless, I still had a good time with it!
Hyper Light Drifter is a more action-oriented zelda-like where you explore a large world, fighting through difficult challenges in order to figure out the secrets of the place you are in. With a really kickass visual style and a good mix of challenges with rewarding exploration, I thought I’d be way more into it than I was in the end. I had some trouble with the controls and the difficulty of some segments of the game that ultimately left me frustrated. It’s a shame because I managed to tough it out for about a quarter of the game.
Moon Hunters is a neat story-focused roguelike action RPG where you investigate the mysterious disappearance of the moon, potentially with three of your friends, by battling monsters, buying upgrades and making decisions by talking to NPCs and increasing certain traits that allow you different actions later on. The core of the game is fairly short - I could finish most runs in an hour - but I kinda wish it could’ve went by quicker. The good bits were really everything related to NPC interactions - and the upgrades and RPG mechanics were quite nice as well - but the battle and exploration of the world was a bit tedious (and made up the bulk of the game, so it kinda became a problem after a while).
Pokemon Rumble Rush is a neat little action RPG where you explore different islands with different sets of Pokemon in order to meet the requirements to get to the next fight and win it in a set time. Your critter mostly moves on its own, but you can dodge and attack by tapping the screen and you get special moves and gear that you can upgrade after a while. I had a good time with it, although it was pretty grindy after a while and I didn’t have much time or patience for that. The upgrade system was a bit meaningless as well, but it’s probably because I couldn’t get too much of the grind.
I don’t usually do this (console game reviews), but I feel like I have something to say about TSA:NMH, a game that I was anticipating greatly. A game that meant so much to me as a Suda51 fan that I had bought the special deluxe collector edition from europe and I planned on buying the normal edition to have it at launch as well. I knew this wasn’t going to be No More Heroes 3, but controlling Travis Touchdown as you went through a bunch of different game worlds seemed like a cool proposition. Ultimately, TSA is a deeply disappointing title, both gameplay and story-wise and playing it frustrates me to no end. This review can’t be spoiler free, so beware.
The Executive is a really neat idea of a beat them up/RPG where you play an office worker with martial arts powers fighting against werewolves, skeletons and other demons in a series of increasingly difficult levels while idly accumulating wealth from different divisions of your company that you upgrade alongside your stats and special abilities. Although I was disappointed by the endgame and some of the mechanics felt obtuse to me, I had a lot of fun with it!
Battle Chef Brigade is the combination of a light 2D monster hunting game and a match-3-like puzzle system where you collect food in order to cook great dishes in Iron Chef style competitions. It’s oozing with great style and characters and the mechanics are really interesting. I had a ton of fun with it and wish I could’ve spent even more time with the game. I have to say that it was a bit too stressful for me.
Severed is one of these grand gaming experiences that could be enjoyed on consoles - and it is on Switch after all - but available on your iPad. This is a double edged sword. On one hand, it’s a fully featured -hardcore- game with enough content to last you a long while, deep enough mechanics, an interesting style and a cool soundtrack to boot, on the other hand, it’s not exactly the kind of experience you’re used to on your iDevices. If you only get a few minutes of play here and there during your commute you might have a weird time but if you manage to give this game the time it deserves, it’s just great! After catastrophe strikes your family, you set to find them in strange locales armed with a sword, fighting in first-person encounters by swiping at enemies and solving puzzles.
Livelock is a neat Action RPG set in a destroyed world where you play one of three robots with a small range of skills and weapons in order to overthrow evil robots at the order of an AI overlord. I had fun with it, going through the whole thing almost with each class. I didn't try to go for high scores or find every collectible, but I still had a good time shooting tons of robots regardless.
It was a weird surprise to see a new version of Titan Quest rise from the ashes of the series after all this time and the announcement of a new expansion sure was even more of a surprise to me. Titan Quest: Ragnarok continues the main story into the Nordic lands, adds a new class and probably reworks balance for a great number of skills and items. Is it the expansion I've been waiting for? Probably not. Is it a great reason to go back into Titan Quest? Absolutely.
The latest Grim Dawn expansion didn't fix everything that bothered me about the action RPG; I still don't like how skills and masteries synergize with each other and the two new classes - Necromancer and Inquisitor - don't fix that much. They add some interesting mechanics to the game, but otherwise it still feels like a slog to play. I managed to get through the new story content, but I'm not chomping at the bits to go back to more Grim Dawn.
While Diablo 3 remains one of my favorite games right now, the Necromancer pack wasn't the greatest thing in the history of the universe. It adds a new class and a bunch of other cosmetic things for other blizzard games, a few new areas and some items and quality-of-life fixes to go with all of that. We're very far from Reaper Of Souls, an expansion that brought a ton of new gameplay systems, fixed itemization and made the game endlessly enjoyable, alongside a new act of story content.
Starward Rogue is a bullet hell action RPG roguelike where you move in procedurally generated levels, fighting enemies, gathering keys, power-ups, money and items all in service of getting to the final boss, defeating complex foes with hellish projectile patterns, and get stronger in the process. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I feel like the roguelike elements have been wasted for a game that feels completed when you finish it for the first time.
Grim Dawn was released a little while ago, but before it came Titan Quest, an action RPG that I've spent countless hours playing, both the normal game and expansion that came after that. In some ways, it was better than other ARPGs, some ways that even stand true today, regardless of the progress in the genre. I was delighted to hear that some bizarre version of THQ was re-releasing it, with updates. Engine changes, of course, but balance changes on items, skills and enemies as well! TQAE definitely feels like the old game that it is, but I would rather play it than many other available ARPGs.