Samantha Lienhard's Blog, page 13

Top 5 Games I Played in 2024

It’s hard to believe, but 2024 is almost at an end. And you know what that means! It’s time for me to look back at the games I played this year (regardless of when they came out) and pick out the top 5 I enjoyed the most.

As always, I only count games I finished in 2024, which means I can’t count Metaphor: ReFantazio no matter how much I’m enjoying it. Maybe next year? We’ll see. For now, let’s focus on games I finished this year!

Honorable Mentions

I’d like to give two honorable mentions this year, first to Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. Fantastic game, and it’s an excellent shorter entry in the Yakuza series, but it just wasn’t enough to make my top 5. My other honorable mention goes to Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club. Although it didn’t get onto this list, I enjoyed it and really hope the series continues.

So, which are my top 5 games this year?

5. Jack Jeanne

Jack Jeanne got an honorable mention last year, and after finishing it this February, it remains one of my favorites.

It is a lengthy game and the definition of a slow burn, an otome game that took me 74 hours to finish (and I usually get through visual novels on the faster end of things) despite not seeing 100% of the optional content.

It’s a game so long and slow-paced that I took breaks for whole other games in between routes to avoid burning out. It’s certainly not for everyone. And yet… sometimes I still miss it.

There was so much content, such wonderful dynamics between the characters, and of course, the epic musical performances, all of which made it something truly special.

You can read my review for my full thoughts on Jack Jeanne, but suffice it to say that even though I played most of it last year, I had to include it on this list. It was a wonderful experience, and I’m eagerly awaiting news on the sequel.

4. Alan Wake II

Despite my criticisms of how Alan Wake II left me with even more questions despite making us wait so many years to get this much (which I discussed in my review), I did enjoy it quite a bit – enough for me to realize it’s one of my favorite games I played this year. The atmosphere, the survival horror gameplay, the little humorous moments… it really was great.

And reading theories about certain characters afterwards was entertaining enough to make me even more intrigued about where the series is going next.

It was a great game for October and a great game overall. Here’s hoping we’ll be talking about Alan Wake III eventually.

3. Ace Attorney Investigations 2 (official translation)

This is a magical moment.

Last year, the game I ranked third on my list was Ace Attorney Investigations 2 (fan translation). I then said, “Maybe this time next year, we’ll be eagerly anticipating an Ace Attorney Investigations collection.” I never imagined it would actually already be out.

Am I cheating by putting the same game among my top 5 two years in a row? Maybe. But I played Investigations 2 again through the collection and thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s an excellent game, and the official translation is wonderful.

Okay, let’s see if we can do it two years in a row! Ahem! Maybe this time next year, we’ll be eagerly anticipating The Great Ace Attorney Investigations!

(Don’t look at me like that. It’s possible!)

2. Lost Judgment

Even with Gaiden only getting an honorable mention and me not finishing Infinite Wealth in time for it to even qualify for the list, RGG Studio can’t help but make it into my top 5 anyway. This was the year I finally played Lost Judgment, and I loved it.

Although I have some criticisms of the story, it’s still so much fun and has so much good stuff that I’d recommend it to anyone without hesitation. Its story DLC is also great.

The humor, the side content, and yes, some aspects of the story all come together to make Lost Judgment one of the best games I played this year. Not the best, however. That honor goes to…

1. Trails in the Sky: Second Chapter

It took me long enough to finally resume progressing through the Trails series, but now that I’ve played Trails in the Sky: Second Chapter, I can’t praise it enough.

As you’ll see in my full review, it’s an excellent sequel that builds upon everything from the first game while also delivering so many more exciting moments.

Add in some fun gameplay additions, tons upon tons of NPC dialogue, and a few other neat aspects, and it really stood out.

Taking me around 90 hours to beat, it made up a significant chunk of my 2024 gaming, but it was worth it. I’m already gearing up to start the next game in the series. Will Trails make my list again next year? We’ll see, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it did.

Conclusion

I didn’t play as many games in 2024 as I usually do, but I did play quite a few excellent ones. Jack Jeanne, Alan Wake II, Ace Attorney Investigations 2, Lost Judgment, and Trails in the Sky SC ended up being my top 5, but what about you? What are the best games you played this year?

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Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed Was a Great Adventure

Two weeks ago, I finished Xenoblade Chronicles 3, with mixed feelings.

While I still enjoyed it, it ended up being my least favorite in the series and didn’t give me that same sense of joy that past Xenoblade games did.

But I was committed to following up with the story DLC, so I took a short break to play Ciel’s route of Tsukihime, realized I missed Arcueid too much (we’ll get to this someday in a Tsukihime review), and returned to Xenoblade instead to start up Future Redeemed!

You might recall that I greatly enjoyed Torna, Xenoblade Chronicles 2’s DLC, so I had high hopes for this one.

Future Redeemed is a prequel to the main Xenoblade Chronicles 3 story and follows a new character named Matthew as he searches for his missing sister and tries to find survivors from the destroyed City. It’s hard to say much about the story without spoilers, but it’s filled with nostalgia for Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2. In a way, it has the sort of callbacks and connections many people initially expected from 3.

Gameplay-wise, it’s quite similar to the main game, but it has some differences. You can’t change classes here, but instead you can customize which characters are paired together for combo attacks and equip accessories that change your Chain Attack effects. Every character also has a skill tree, with skills and passive upgrades you unlock by spending Affinity Points.

And here’s where it really hooked me. Remember how I criticized Torna for forcing you to do side quests to progress? Well, Future Redeemed found a much better way to compel me to do everything – gameplay rewards.

The proper Collectopaedia is back, which was already a treat for me (that alone made me happier with it over the main game; I really missed the Collectopaedia), and for every entry you complete, you get Affinity Points. There’s also a bestiary that tracks the monsters you’ve fought. Once you’ve fought enough of each type? You get Affinity Points! Find all the containers in an area? Affinity Points! Explore enough to discover all the landmarks? Affinity Points! Do a side quest for an NPC that completes their Community entry? You guessed it, more Affinity Points!

Future Redeemed basically rewards you for everything with Affinity Points, which you then can use to make your characters stronger, and this compelled me to do almost everything.

As you progress, you also gain a handful of field actions that let you access new areas, which makes exploration feel even more fun. While I dragged my feet on the main game, here I tore through the DLC because I just wanted to keep exploring more places and checking off more discoveries and earning more Affinity Points. Even ether cylinders became a valuable resource I wanted to seek out.

Although the story is short compared to a full game, it has some great scenes. I don’t have an entirely clear grasp on some aspects of the story even now, but that just ties back to my general feelings on Xenoblade Chronicles 3’s story and world. The important thing is that it didn’t annoy me the way 3’s story did.

Click for Future Redeemed spoilersAlthough to be honest, when I saw Z in Future Redeemed’s intro scene, I thought, “Whoa, are we actually getting Z lore that will make me appreciate him as a villain?” and that didn’t happen. At all. My one disappointment.

Anyway, while it’s still not my favorite Xenoblade world and the DLC can’t escape that since it’s part of the same history, I enjoyed the new cast of characters and their interactions, and the additional context it added to the world and backstory (even if it makes some parts more confusing).

It also had some intriguing references at one point that has left me playing “Cute easter egg or massive lore drop??” ever since.

Click for Future Redeemed spoilersYes, I’m talking about the radio broadcast. Project Exodus, I could see being just an easter egg rather than direct confirmation that Xenoblade Chronicles X is connected, because it’s not like it’s that strange of a name. Same with the other X references.

Mentioning Dmitri Yuriev, however, made me stop and go, “Wait, what, isn’t he from Xenosaga??”

Up until now, I’ve been adamant that X is completely separate from the numbered Xenoblade games and that they’d never actually tie in Xenosaga, but… now I’m questioning everything.

All in all, I had a lot of fun playing Future Redeemed. It’s a good DLC, and it brought back that Xenoblade joy. While it isn’t enough to change Xenoblade Chronicles 3 in my ranking, it made me happier about the game overall and excited for what the next Xenoblade game will bring.

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Everything We Know So Far About Project Century

One of the most exciting announcements for me from the Game Awards is also the most mysterious – Project Century.

A new game from RGG Studio, the developers of the Yakuza series, Project Century has received almost no information beyond the initial reveal trailer.

(Sega hasn’t even posted the trailer themselves.)

Most of what we know is the little we can glean from the trailer – it’s set in 1915, appears to take place in a Japanese city, and features brawler combat that looks even more brutal than that in the Yakuza series. At a couple points, we see the protagonist fighting with weapons; at another point, he attacks with a bottle and then performs another attack using the broken bottle as well.

In between the fighting, the trailer also has a short clip that shows him escorting a woman, although whether that hints at some sort of date mechanics or a story sequence or something else entirely is too much to guess from such a short section.

The protagonist wears a jacket (probably a happi coat, though I’m no expert) that features the logo and name of a company, “Yashima Boueki Kaisha,” or “Japan Trade Company,” which Sega recently filed trademarks for.

We got a closer look at the protagonist’s coat when RGG Studio tweeted a picture of Snoop Dogg wearing it, and studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama tweeted a picture of himself wearing it as well. This could imply Snoop Dogg will play a character in the game, although we don’t have enough information to say that for sure.

Finally, one thing that stands out to me from the trailer is that at the end when it shows the working title “Project Century” alongside the protagonist, we can see he has very vividly blue eyes. They almost glow, although it could be a stylistic effect, since we never get a look at his face during the trailer proper. Either way, the blue eyes still stand out to me. Is the protagonist only part Japanese, maybe?

Since the reveal, fans of come up with all sorts of theories. Some think it’s an entirely new IP, while others think it could be set in the same universe as the Yakuza series. (It’s worth remembering that Judgment was first revealed under the working title “Project Judge.”) People have guessed that it could show the origins of the Tojo Clan, or possibly the Omi Alliance, since 1915 would line up with the Omi Alliance’s origins. Others thought this could be a historical spin-off starring an ancestor of Yagami, from Judgment.

A handful of new details have now been shared online, the most important of which are that the protagonist is not based on a specific actor and that all our theories are wrong.

Yes, apparently Yokoyama said he’s seen the theories about Project Century and they’re wrong.

Considering the sheer number of theories people have suggested, it’s impossible for them all to be wrong (ex. it’s either connected to the Yakuza series or it isn’t; those can’t both be wrong), so it’s probably safe to interpret that as meaning the most popular theories bandied about since the trailer are incorrect.

It makes me wonder if it could be something entirely different from what we’ve been thinking. Maybe it’s an alternate history or another world, something wild that doesn’t fit with what we think we know.

Whatever the case may be, I’m looking forward to when we finally learn more about Project Century. What do you expect from this mysterious new game?

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Ys vs. Trails in the Sky Remaster Announced

When we talked about the Trails in the Sky remake, Ys X: Proud Nordics, and Memories of Celceta for the Switch on Friday, I figured we’d have Falcom news covered for a little while.

Little did I know that later that same day, a remaster of Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga would be announced for 2025, with a western release already confirmed.

Ys vs. Trails in the Sky is a fighting game originally released for the PSP only in Japan, featuring characters from the Ys and Trails games. It’s now being remastered for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and PC by publisher refint/games.

It will have remastered graphics, both local and online multiplayer, and an English dub.

And, like with the Crossbell games, the fan translation from Geofront has been licensed for this release.

One especially interesting thing about this is that Falcom is working with a variety of different publishers now. NISA is still handling the major new releases, but Aksys published the Switch version of Tokyo Xanadu, Xseed did Ys Memoire, GungHo has the Trails in the Sky remake, and now refint/games is here with Ys vs. Trails.

Now I’ve never been a big fan of fighting games, so I probably won’t end up playing this one. At the same time, however, I’m more tempted to try it than any other fighting game. So we’ll see. I certainly have plenty of games in both series to catch up on in the meantime.

Are you interested in Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga?

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Trails in the Sky Remake Set for Fall 2025

During the incredible Nintendo Direct back in August, we got the surprise reveal of Trails in the Sky the First, a full remake of the first game in the Trails series.

After that, things got a little confusing, as it seemed even Falcom themselves didn’t know what platforms it would be on or who would publish it in the west. But now, we finally have answers!

Now titled Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter for the west, the remake is being published by GungHo Online Entertainment, which no one saw coming.

They announced that it will be released in Fall 2025 for the Switch, PS5, and PC. Not only that, but it seems it will be a worldwide release.

Judging by the new trailer, it looks like it has the hybrid action/turn-based combat system introduced with Daybreak, along with other new features. It looks absolutely beautiful, too!

A standard edition will be sold through Amazon (or Clear River Games in Europe), and there will be a Collector’s Edition available only from Limited Run Games.

The announcement also says it has “brand-new English, German, and French localizations,” so that might mean it’s not using the original translation like we expected. (On the other hand, it could be just oddly worded, since it never had German and French localizations before at all.)

Now, I’m still in the middle of playing the original Trails in the Sky games, and I have many Trails games ahead of me, so who knows if I’ll be ready to play the remake when it comes out. Either way, though, it’s exciting to see. I’m sure this will make it easier for new fans to get into Sky, too.

Meanwhile, Ys X: Nordics is getting an enhanced edition next year in Japan, which feels strange for a game so new. Yes, it’s been out a year longer in Japan than it has here, but that’s still pretty soon for a new version of the game. Memories of Celceta is also coming to the Switch in Japan.

Are you planning to play the Trails in the Sky remake? How do you feel about Ys X getting an enhanced edition already?

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Capcom Will Revive Dormant IPs, Bandai Namco Plans “Consistent” Tales Remasters

The biggest surprise of the Game Awards for me was Capcom reviving both Onimusha and Okami, two series that looked like they’d never return.

Onimusha’s last full entry was in 2006, a whole 18 years ago. Only a browser game and a VR experience came out since then. The remaster of the first game was followed by rumors that subsequent remasters had been cancelled.

As for Okami, it also came out in 2006, with a spiritual successor called Okamiden coming out in 2010 and a remaster of the first game in 2012 (with ports in subsequent years).

So it’s been quite a while since Onimusha and Okami saw any love, much less a brand-new entry for each both being announced at the same even. We Ace Attorney fans think we’ve got it bad, but it’s only been 7 years since the last one – hardly any time at all in comparison.

But what makes this even more exciting is that an official press release from Capcom says they’re “focusing on re-activating dormant IPs that haven’t had a new title launch recently.” That opens up the doors for more than just Onimusha and Okami to return.

I’ve believed for a while now that a new Ace Attorney game is coming sooner rather than later, but what else could they revive? Dino Crisis has been dormant since 2003. Breath of Fire’s last entry was in 2002 (all right, technically Breath of Fire 6 came out in 2016, but let’s try not to think about that). Is it finally their time to shine again?

Moving aside from Capcom, this week also saw some interesting news from Bandai Namco. After Tales of Graces f Remastered was announced, we learned that they intended to remaster more Tales games as well. Now they’ve doubled down. In a new message translated here by Gematsu, producer Yusuke Tomizawa said there’s now a dedicated development line for Tales remasters and that they’re planned to be released “fairly consistently” and “as much as possible.”

This is exciting news, and it gives me hope that it will be more than just a handful of the newer games in the series. My hopes that we’ll get some of the untranslated games officially released are renewed!

In short, we could have a lot of good stuff coming. What dormant Capcom franchises do you hope to see revived, and what Tales remasters would you like to have follow Graces?

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I Finally Finished Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Main Game)

After all this time, I finally finished Xenoblade Chronicles 3.

Not under my own initiative, mind you – the contest winner from this year’s Celebrating All Things Spooky picked the review prize and chose Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed, so I sat down to finish the main game first.

So how did we reach a situation where a game I was extremely excited for all the way up to its release is one I had to be pushed into finishing over two years later?

It’s not nearly as straightforward as with Lost Judgment, where I had to catch up on the main Yakuza series first. No, with Xenoblade Chronicles 3 it’s harder to define.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a great game. I’ll say that right now. It’s a great game, and it has a lot of stuff in it that I enjoyed. I poured nearly 150 hours into it. But it’s probably my least favorite Xenoblade game.

I have been in love with the Xenoblade series from the start. I’ve been obsessed with every single one before now, to the point of playing the first game’s definitive edition and planning to do the same with X’s even though I almost never replay games, especially such long ones. But that didn’t happen this time. Last year, I even expressed my surprise that I kept putting 3 aside for other games instead of being addicted to it.

For a long time, I couldn’t figure out why, but now that I finally sat back down with it to play it to completion, I think I understand.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is set in a world fueled by constant war between two nations, whose people continually war with one another while being limited by 10-year lifespans. There are six main characters, three from each nation, who end up breaking free of this cycle and teaming up to learn the truth about their world. This means you have your full party of six very early in the game, and I think that took something away from it for me. Gradually meeting new party members is one of the things I love in JRPGs. It made it harder for me to grow attached to them when all six were already together so soon.

Now, you actually fight with an active battle party of seven, with the seventh being a Hero. Heroes are special characters you recruit, usually through side quests. This does add an element similar to building a party, since each Hero has their own quests, but it’s not quite the same since only a specific few play a role in the main plot.

Heroes also play into the class system used in combat. Instead of each character having a set role, every Hero you recruit unlocks a new class you can play as. Trying different classes is a lot of fun and one of the things I enjoyed.

Combat in general is great, too. There are some nice new features, like finally the ability to fight in water and indicators that show if you’re in front of, behind, or flanking an enemy. Chain attacks here are my favorite in the series, with different ways to connect characters’ attacks to try to do the most damage possible. I ended up pretty over-leveled due to side content, but in general I found combat fun.

Moving on to another part that made this game click less for me, however, I found the world less interesting to explore than in past Xenoblade games. The exploration gameplay itself is fantastic – lots of secret areas to discover, tons of side quests and new Heroes, and zones that just keep opening up more and more – and it reintroduced the concept of field skills without the tedious aspect from 2; here they’re just passive abilities you learn and then have forever. But exploration in every other game gave me a sense of wonder, excitement that came just from wanting to see what was around the next corner, that I didn’t feel here.

Part of that just comes from the nature of the world. A world trapped in constant war is bleak, and instead of regular towns and cities you have Colonies that aren’t as clearly distinct from one another. So they fit with the story, but that cut into my excitement despite having so much to explore.

And now let’s talk about the story. For the first few chapters, I was hooked. Everything seemed so mysterious and intriguing. I couldn’t wait to learn more. But… the longer it went on, the more my interest in the story started to fall apart. This is partly due to the villains, of whom there are a handful of interesting ones alongside an unfortunately large number of blander, almost cartoonishly evil villains who sucked away their sense of intimidation and mystery by just being annoying.

Click for Xenoblade Chronicles 3 spoilersI really, really could have done with a lot fewer Moebius. Beating a Consul almost every time I freed a colony made them stop feeling intimidating outside of maybe N. The regular ones just started feeling like they could be any generic bosses.

If it was just D, N, M, J, S, and maybe a couple others (and of course Z) instead of feeling like they were trying to fill out the whole alphabet, I think they would have felt more unique and dangerous.

The letters for names also made it hard for me to remember who was who, causing them to feel even more interchangeable for me.

(Speaking of which, the party members also tended to have backstories that all followed similar beats, which contributed to things feeling same-y, too.)

Note: none of my Moebius complaints apply to Triton, who is one of the best Heroes in the game and one of the parts in the second half of my gameplay that really delighted me. All these other Consuls are running around killing people for fun and twirling their metaphorical moustaches, and here’s Triton just having a grand old time as a pirate and fondly remembering his old mortal friends. He’s great.

It also felt like it didn’t capitalize on those early mysteries as much as I expected it to, and it was missing the sort of huge revelation past games had that turned everything on its head.

Some parts of the story were great, don’t get me wrong. It has one especially emotional moment that I just wish could have held its impact longer. But between feeling less attached to the main characters, not appreciating most of the villains, and not feeling the payoff of the early chapters as much as I expected, I had trouble staying invested in the plot.

All in all, what it comes down to is this: the other Xenoblade games are ones I’ll gush about as being exceptional JRPGs that blew me away. 1 and 2 each knocked it out of the park with their stories, and while X faltered there, it made up for it with incredible worldbuilding. In contrast, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was fun, but not one I put on that same level.

But I have yet to play Future Redeemed, so we’ll see how I feel about that! In the meantime, what did you think of Xenoblade Chronicles 3?

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The Game Awards Had Some Amazing and Unexpected Announcements

I was correct – my predictions of games that definitely wouldn’t be announced at the Game Awards weren’t announced.

On the other hand, some of the games that were announced feel even more improbable than those.

I’m just going to cover the highlights that stood out to me, so check out the full live stream if you want to see everything from the Game Awards. Here are the announcements I’m most interested in.

The first game shown during the pre-show was Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound. Now, I’ve never played the Ninja Gaiden games, so you might be wondering why I’m giving it a highlight. That’s because it’s being developed by The Game Kitchen.

The Game Kitchen developed a horror point-and-click adventure game that I really enjoyed, The Last Door, and then went on to make the dark metroidvania Blasphemous (which I’ll play one of these days). To see them now making a new game in an established series like Ninja Gaiden just feels impressive.

Speaking of platformers, one of the most bizarre surprises of the night was Shadow Labyrinth, a dark metroidvania… Pac-Man game??

What the heck?

I really don’t know how to feel about this. It does look kind of neat, so I might play it, but it seems like such a weird direction to take Pac-Man.

Moving on to the main show, The Witcher IV was officially announced. Right, so one of these days I’ll finally play 2 and 3 and be able to talk about this trailer in more detail (assuming the game isn’t out by then, which might be giving me too much credit). For now, all I can say is that it looks intriguing.

Now, a new game in the Elden Ring universe was also announced… but it’s a multiplayer co-op survival game in which you must try to survive for three days and nights… so in short, it doesn’t sound like my sort of thing. That’s fine, I need to finish Elden Ring anyway.

There also was a cat game that you’d think I’d be interested in, but it felt oddly uncanny to me while I was watching, and it turns out it’s an AI game with some other questionable details surrounding it. So no cat game for me.

You know what does look neat, though? The untitled new game from Fumito Ueda, the creator of Ico. I haven’t played his previous games, aside from briefly starting Ico once, but it looks interesting.

We also got a new trailer for The Outer Worlds 2, and while it wasn’t as entertaining as its announcement trailer, it has a similar style of humor. I enjoyed The Outer Worlds, although now that I think about it, I never played its DLC. Maybe I should do that before the new game comes out.

There was a trailer for Borderlands 4, too, and while I did play the first Borderlands and part of the second, I sort of fell away from the series. Who knows, maybe my interest will be reinvigorated by the time it comes out, but right now it’s not anywhere near the top of my list.

Okay, now let’s move on to some of the really unexpected announcements.

When I made that joke prediction of Judgment 3, the joke wasn’t so much that I didn’t think we’d ever get a new Judgment game (because I do), but that expecting RGG Studio to announce a new game when they already have Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii coming out next year and be big enough for it to be announced at the Game Awards was too much.

Well apparently not, because not only is RGG Studio developing the new Virtua Fighter game, they also announced a brand-new game using the codename Project Century, set in 1915.

I need to know what this is. It has somewhat of a Yakuza feel, but it also looks much more violent and visceral. Is it set in the Yakuza universe? Is it an entirely new IP? RGG Studio hasn’t even tweeted about it or anything, so it feels like a big mystery right now.

(Their ability to release amazing games so quickly is incredible. What are they feeding them over there??)

So, what could get me more excited than a surprise new RGG Studio game? How about the revival of a series that seemed all but dead? Even when I played the remaster of the first game in the series, the most I hoped for at the end was that the other games would be remastered too.

When the trailer started, I thought it had Onimusha vibes, but I figured I was being tricked again like when Kunitsu-Gami was announced. Then I saw the gauntlet and realized it was really happening. Onimusha is back with the first full new game since 2006.

(It’s a testament to Onimusha that I’ve only played a single game from the series yet immediately recognized it when they showed the gauntlet.)

Since it isn’t due out until 2026, I hope that means they’ll remaster the remaining games in the series before then.

Now, I also have a passing interest in Dungeon & Fighter: ARAD, except I’m not convinced it’s not a gacha game, so I’ll need to learn more about that before I can say one way or another.

Finally, we have perhaps the biggest shock of the night… Capcom is making a new Okami game. Not only that, but it’s being directed by Hideki Kamiya. He’s founded a new studio called Clovers, a definite reference to the original Clover Studio.

The tease for the Okami sequel, which is so early in development that it’s actually being called just Okami Sequel right now, is very short, but it’s so beautiful.

I never finished the original Okami. For years, I’ve been tempted to get the remaster on sale to give it another try, and when I saw this trailer, I told myself I finally would. And you know what? They put it on sale for $4.99, cheaper than it’s ever been before, so I can’t ignore it now. I’m ready to get Okami again and see if I should be excited for this new sequel.

So like I said, my “ridiculous” predictions almost feel too tame now. Sure, I can say they’d never announce two Ace Attorney games at the Game Awards, but Capcom reviving both Onimusha and Okami feels just as absurd. Anything is possible now.

These were the highlights from the Game Awards for me. What announcements stood out to you the most?

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Death Match Love Comedy Finally Coming West

PQube Asia’s showcase was today, and I decided to save my blog post so that I could cover any exciting news from it.

It was a fairly short showcase, so feel free to check out the entire thing since I’ll only be covering the major highlights for me.

They provided welcome updates on titles like Bustafellows 2 (still no release date, though) and Genso Manege, and then they also had some new announcements… including one I’ve been waiting for.

Back in 2021 when we discussed Raging Loop, I mentioned an unlocalized visual novel set in the same universe called Death Match Love Comedy.

Well, it’s happening. PQube is bringing DMLC west for PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, and Xbox in 2025.

Death Match Love Comedy is a visual novel about a boy who is cursed so that if someone confesses love to him, he explodes. Yes, it sounds ridiculous, and I expect it to be very different in tone from Raging Loop.

Nevertheless, I’m so happy that we’re finally getting it.

They also announced a new visual novel from Mages, Iwakura Aria, which also looks like one I should keep an eye on. It’ll be out in 2025 for PC and Switch, and the trailer has a very haunting atmosphere.

So while there weren’t any new otome announcements, I’m happy with what we got. Now all that remains is the Game Awards tomorrow, to see if any exciting news awaits us there…

What did you think of PQube’s announcements?

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PQube Asia Showcase Announced for December 11

It’s that time of year again… the time when showcases start clustering together despite not being part of a shared event.

In addition to the Game Awards on the 12th, there are some indie showcases happening this week as well, and now PQube has announced the first-ever PQube Asia Showcase for December 11.

The showcase will take place at 12 PM PT / 3 PM ET and focus on their 2025 lineup, as well as exclusive announcements.

According to Gematsu, it will include updates on Bustafellows Season 2, Genso Manege, Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate, and Him, the Smile & bloom, along with “no less than five first time announcements.”

I’ve been looking forward to Bustafellows and Genso Manege, and I have a mild interest in Him, the Smile & bloom. Outside of otome games, PQube has also stepped up as the publisher for a lot of niche titles lately, so I’m excited to see what new games they might announce.

(Does my backlog need more announcements? No, but my heart does.)

It’s shaping up to be an exciting week for video game announcements, at least for me. In unrelated news, RGG Studio has announced that there will be “various events” and announcements leading up to the 20th anniversary next December, so I’m excited for that as well.

What events and potential announcements are you looking forward to the most?

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