“This is the world of the downloaders,” says one of the characters early on in Shin Megami Tensei: Liberation Dx2, Sega’s mobile adaptation of the Atlas JRPG series. That was the moment I started to like this game, despite the fact that it’s free-to-play, chuck full of microtransactions, and limited to Android and iOS.

Where some other smartphone adaptations of beloved games have gotten mired in the grindy frustration of Gacha-style gambling, Dx2 does a good job of keeping that stuff separate. The game uses its well-written story to keep you hooked, not cheap tricks.

There’s finally a new Star Ocean game after 2016's barebones Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness. Unfortunately, free-to-play Star Ocean: Anamnesis, the latest entry, is only on smartphones, and a gacha game to boot.

The first of those would be forgivable if not for the second, but as a slot machine for collecting characters from Star Oceans past it turns the series’ once absurd fusion of medieval fantasy and Star Trek sci-fi into something that just feels mundane.

Fate: Grand Order is a mobile game about amassing an army of ridiculous heroes based on historical figures such as King Arthur and Thomas Alva Edison. Powering up these heroes takes countless hours of grinding for experience and rare materials. This might seem like busy work, but it has a meditative appeal if approached with the right mindset.

I've been playing Nintendo's latest free mobile game, Fire Emblem Heroes, for the last few days, and I'm struck by how subtly sexual it is.