Author Archive

Review – Phantasy Star 2

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 by chris

The layer of pipes obscures your vision in dungeons. At least it looks stupid.

A little over a year ago, I attempted to play through the original Phantasy Star. It was a trying experience, considering there is little in the way of direction or newbie-friendliness in the …

Review – Gain Ground

Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 by chris

When Virtual Console was first announced, I have to admit I was really optimistic. I was looking forward to playing several of my favorite classics without having to hook up a half-dozen consoles. For those who hadn’t played them, well, they’d get to enjoy what I did. I am still a big …

Random Old Game – Drakkhen

Friday, March 14th, 2008 by chris

There are few games that can inspire a sense of true exploration – a feeling of awe at how large or detailed they are. Fewer still are the games that can bring out that feeling even after you’ve beaten them. For some reason, despite being only a so-so game in nearly every other …

The Trouble with Tactics

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 by chris

As I’m sure you can tell by my previous articles, I love RPGs and strategy games. It should follow, then, that I love the Strategy RPG genre. Just like peanut butter and pizza. Although I like some SRPGs, I have some issues with the genre, particularly the Tactical subgenre. By “Tactical”, I mean finer-scale …

Review – Growlanser: Heritage of War

Monday, January 21st, 2008 by chris

The third Growlanser game we’ve received stateside, Heritage of War, is actually the fifth in the series. We received Growlansers 2 and 3 as the last games of the late Working Designs (what is Gaijinworks up to, anyways?) in the Generations package. This game is a more than adequate successor.

Similar to the …

Two years down, too many to go

Monday, January 7th, 2008 by chris

In the past two years I have learned, among other things, how much more there is to learn.

First, from meeting and talking with Jay and co. here at videolamer, I learned about all the great RPG, strategy, action and adventure games on the various Sega systems I …

Revelation of Arcadia

Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 by chris

It’s not often that a single game has changed my outlook on games so much – especially in the RPG genre, which seems to see only occasional innovation. Usually it’s in the form of a plot twist here or a stylistic change there that is incorporated into a group of cliches. While some …

Review update – Mount&Blade

Friday, December 7th, 2007 by chris

It’s been over a year since my first article here on videolamer, in which I reviewed the PC Action/Strategy/RPG hybrid Mount & Blade. I didn’t mention it in the original review, but good old M&B is still under development. The version I reviewed was somewhere about 0.75; the current version, released just a few …

Destiny of a Fan

Monday, November 12th, 2007 by chris

Everyone has a couple of games they particularly like, regardless of how good they are, because of the memories they have of them. Unless, of course, they don’t like video games, in which case they must be card-carrying communists. For me, one of those games is Capcom’s greatest RPG: Destiny of an Emperor for NES….

Review – Wild Arms 5

Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 by chris

Let me start off this review by telling a little story I think everyone here knows.

There’s this kid, see – well, maybe I should call him a young man, he’s around 15 or 16. He lives in a small village far from civilization, where he lives on his own (his parents are dead or missing). …