Wombat's Corner

Unicorn Overlord is not just one of the best games I’ve played in recent memory, or one of the best strategy RPGs I’ve ever experienced. It is one of the best games I have ever had the pleasure to enjoy, a game that consumed my mind even when I was not playing, that begged me to return and continue freeing the world of Fevrith. It engrossed me in a way that no game has in years (the last time was probably Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which I played close to release), and in a way which rarely occurs regardless. It would be easy to make this a game about revenge, about Alain reclaiming the throne that is rightfully his and following his path towards that. And while that is something that happens in the game, the story is more fully one of liberation, of making each place you go better than you found it, of forgiving those who trespass against you. This is made clear in the early hours of the game- you can unlock the final battle within the first 10 hours, before you’ve even stepped foot wit...

A recent gameplay element I’ve found myself particularly attached to in a couple of games, namely Okami and Unicorn Overlord , is the effect the player has on the world around them, represented in a very visual and impactful way. These games excel at making you feel as though not only are you on a grand quest to save the world, but part of that quest is improving the lives of the souls that inhabit that world. Take Okami , as my first example. At the beginning of that game, the world is shrouded in darkness, nature is decaying, and people and wildlife alike suffer greatly. But as Amaterasu regains her abilities, she is able not only to defeat the imps that serve Orochi, but bring life back to the landscape, both in massive waves of regrowth when she revives a guardian tree sapling and in minor ways as she revives small groves of flowers and individual cherry blossoms. What really caught my wonder, however, were the animals. As you revive nature, animals will return to roam the world. D...

You don’t have to keep dancing with the one what brung ya. Final Fantasy X means a lot to me; I named my dog after the game’s heroine. Shortly after I received my first Playstation 2, a friend moved away and gifted me three games for the system (I only had Kingdom Hearts 2, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 , and a couple others lost to time). Final Fantasy X was one of those games, and I poured hundreds of hours into a number of playthroughs. My parents didn’t often buy me games, so I wore through what I had. There’s this idea in Final Fantasy communities that generally, someone’s favorite Final Fantasy is the first one they played. I’ve never personally believed in that, partially because while Final Fantasy X brought me to the party, when I finally got my hands on a copy of XII a couple years later (worth noting my gaming years were as a teenager; I got that Playstation 2 when I was 12 in 2006, the same years the console’s successor released, so all games I played had also been...

Going forward, when discussing games that are “mid”, Terra Memoria will live at the front of my mind. This game is exceedingly average in every way. The narrative is acceptable, the characters are fine, and the combat is there. That doesn’t mean the game does nothing interesting. I like the overworld exploration and how new skills for characters are hidden behind interesting puzzles, though at the same time I do feel that as a result skills are drip-fed to the player and thus players will spend a majority of their time using the same skills. Tying skills to each other in duos and forcing you to choose one or the other is also a novel idea, though of the duos I found there was usually one that was simply more useful. Most novel was the idea of having three active party members and three supporters that change how their partner’s skills work with the press of a button. The three supporters are randomly assigned at the start of each battle and can massively aid (or sometimes hinder) i...

A sequel to Okami was announced recently, which was as good a reason as any to finally pull the game off the shelf and pop it in my PS2’s disc tray after having left it untouched for likely close to a decade (my backlog of games is extensive and only grows larger). I was not inexperienced with the game, as even longer ago I had seen a Let’s Play of the title, but this is the first time I’ve put hands on it personally. It’s good. That goes without saying, right? It’s a classic game, one people remember fondly to this day. The announcement of its sequel led to dozens if not hundreds of screaming reaction videos, so it has to be good. But I do mean it’s just good. Don’t get me wrong, parts of the game are mind-blowingly fantastic. The animation and art style are absolutely stunning, and the soundtrack is a wondrous accompaniment, especially in the moments where you heal a Guardian Sapling and the camera pans over the entire field as the land is renewed and the music swells and yo...

  This article spoils the entirety of a major subplot in Dragon Quest 3 I’ve never had a strong relationship with my own father. We’d be sent off to his house for between two weeks to a month over the summer, and that was about it. He never made an effort to really be around, something that has carried on into my adulthood (though, for various reasons, I’m glad he keeps his distance). And I’ve never had the best of relationships with stepfathers. They’ve been bad for the stereotypical reason stepfathers are usually bad. This is all to say, I don’t relate easily to strong father-child bonds or extremely present fathers in the media. Dragon Quest 3 doesn’t give me a present father. My father, Ortega, left when I was a newborn, leaving my mother to raise me all on her own. Immediately, this is a situation I can relate with. Ortega isn’t around, and a void is left in his absence, felt by both me and my mother, a void that is desperate to be filled but, in the likely scenario of Ort...

       A great game is a great game, no matter when it’s released. And Dragon Quest 3 is a great game. I had never played any version of this game, nor have I ever beaten any Dragon Quest game, despite certainly pouring hundreds of hours into Dragon Quests 7, 8, and 11. Dragon Quest 3 is precisely the game I needed to resolve this.      Freedom. That’s really the greatest draw of Dragon Quest 3. The opening hours, as you’re first finding your feet, are (helpfully) fairly linear, with a couple of side paths to get distracted down like the fantastic sidestory involving Norvik and the Faerie Village. But help out enough people, find yourself in enough new cities, and you will eventually be rewarded with a ship. And that ship is freedom.      The game truly opens up in an extraordinary new fashion, and this was my favorite part of the game. You start on the western side of the westernmost continent, and you can go either north or south. ...