While most of the heavy hitters of April, like Returnal and the Total War remaster, won’t drop until late April, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a swag of interesting games to dig into.
That’s especially the case if you like JRPGs, because there’s plenty to dig into. SaGa Frontier Remastered, Square’s re-release of the 1998 classic with a new main character, cutscenes and the usual improvements you’d expect in 2021, is the standout release this week. SaGa Frontier was groundbreaking in that you had multiple lead characters and stories that all took place in the same world. It was one of the few games of that late ’90s era that you could really class as non-linear, and it was wild to replay through the game and have different conversations and references depending on what stories and events unfolded in your playthrough first.
SaGa is a solid 50+ hours if you really want to burn a couple of weeks, and it’s definitely a game worth bingeing. Outside of that, another classic returns this week: Shadow Man Remastered. I remember this game getting panned a bit when it first launched, so it’ll be interesting to see if that was just local media taking a bit of a dump on the game, or whether it was actually a bit naff.
Night Dive Studios has a pretty good track record with what it remasters, though. I enjoyed SiN, even though there were better shooters at the time (particularly Shogo), and that got a similar critical reception in the late ’90s. So we’ll see how that goes. There’s also some cracking indies: Emily is Away <3‘s sequel, which has its own fake version of OG YouTube with Chocolate Rain,
Here’s the leaderboard for the week:
- SaGa Frontier Remastered | PC, PS4, Switch, iOS, Android
- Godstrike | PC, Switch
- Shadow Man Remastered | PC
- Knight Squad 2 | PC, Xbox, Switch
- Talespire | PC
- Rain on Your Parade | Xbox Game Pass, PC (Steam), Switch
- MLB The Show 21 | Xbox, Xbox Series X, PS4, PS5
- MotoGP 21 | Xbox, Xbox Series X, PS4, PS5
- Trails of Cold Steel IV | Switch
- Tribal Pass | Switch
- Poison Control | PC, Switch, PS4
- Dragon Audit | Switch
- Team Troopers | Switch
- Voxel Tycoon | PC
- The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark | PC
- isolomus | Switch
- Ravensword: Shadowlands | Switch
- Reactor X | Switch
- Park Inc. | Switch
- Kingdom of Arcadia | Switch
- Ashwalkers | PC
- Forgotten Fields | PC
- Tasomachi: Behind the Twilight | PC
- Nigate Tale | PC
- Emily is Away <3 | PC, Mac
Right. Let’s begin the trailers by reviewing what Night Dive has done with Shadow Man, and then we’ll kick on with the JRPGs.
Real nice mix of games to dig into there. But there’s always a massive backlog of games to work through as well, so fair play if you’re doing that instead. Still, see anything you like this week?
Leave a Reply