My favorite games 2025

Apparently 2025 was a good year for gaming, I wouldn't know that though because I barely touched any modern games this year. I play so few games at launch that I couldn't even write a top 5 if I restricted this list to just the games that came out this year, and so just like last year, this is not a list of the best games released in 2025, it's merely the best games I played last year. 

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All the games listed here are something I've already talked about on Bluesky, so if you follow me there this list might not surprise you very much but I still had a lot of fun looking back on everything I played this year, and I hope you have fun reading what I've written.

#10 Dragon Ruins (2024, PC)

 

Dragon Ruins is a dungeon crawling microgame for tired people, it is not a complex game nor is it long. It strips dungeon crawler gameplay to its bare essentials: there is no story, the dungeon is only one floor, battles are all automated and the graphics are black and white wireframe. But it is strangely compelling in its simplicity.

Dragon Ruins plays like a typical DRPG: you make a party of 4 characters from different classes and you move through the dungeon with grid based movement in first person perspective. Random encounters happen as you're exploring the dungeon but they all happen automatically in the background as you're walking around the dungeon, there is no strategy involved in the battles as they are simply about whoever has the highest numbers.

As a big fan of complex CBT RPGs Dragon Ruins is not a game that appeals to me on paper, yet I must commend it for how well it manages to capture the appeal of dungeon crawler RPGs with its simple gameplay and short runtime. Obviously it is nowhere near the level of something like Etrian Odyssey, and if I had played any real DRPGs this year Dragon Ruins would only get an honorable mention. But Dragon Ruins gave me a quick scratch for the DRPG itch I had been feeling, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is also feeling the same without wanting to dedicate 50 hours to hardcore dungeon crawling.

Though I wish the game had some kind of results screen at the end telling you how many in-game days it took you to defeat the dragon, how many times you died and other such fun stats. Instead the game immediately loops to NG+ and because of that I think beating the game doesn't give you the feeling of satisfaction it should.

#9 Sakura Wars (1996, Sega Saturn) 

 

I already wrote a lengthy blog post about Sakura Wars earlier this year and you should read that to understand my full thoughts on the game and why I rate it so highly despite its apparent issues. But in short Sakura Wars is a hybrid strategy game and a dating simulator with impeccable style. Its gameplay is a very basic SRPG and though I enjoyed the story, it is nothing revolutionary either. But that gameplay and story are presented with such style that I can't help but be impressed by it. Its presentation for even minor scenes is incredible, and as soon as I started the game I was in love with it just from how good this game looks.

Sakura Wars is a spectacle, it commits to its theater aesthetic so hard that its presentation alone is enough to carry it even through some of its weaker aspects. It's a game that appeals to me on a personal level and left an unforgettable impression on me.

 

#8 Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin (2022, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/Series X and PC)

 

This following segment is copy pasted straight from the Backloggd review I wrote so you should skip it if you've already read it there 

Stranger of Paradise is one of the most insane games I've ever played. Gameplay-wise I believe it's a straightforward Nioh clone (I have not played Nioh though so I could be wrong), which is a lot like Dark Souls except much more fast paced and encourages a more aggressive playstyle. The gameplay is fun and I don't have many complaints about it. I only played its main story though so I have no idea what the higher difficulties or the post game are like. But while the gameplay is fun, it is not the reason you should play Stranger of Paradise. The real reason you should play it is the story.

On the surface SoP is a strange reimagining of Final Fantasy 1 that replaces the silent Heroes of Light with an angry man who seemingly has no personality other than wanting to kill Chaos. And if there is one thing you likely know about SoP it's all the memes about Jack and Chaos. Jack is a baffling main character who has no interest in anything other than killing Chaos. He is brash, over confident, rude and violent, he feels like an 80s American action movie protagonist thrown into a JRPG and the sheer contrast between Jack and everything else in the story is hilarious.

And yet, Stranger of Paradise does not feel like a parody. Despite its absurdity the story is sincere. I do not wish say more than this because Stranger of Paradise is something you should experience as blind as possible, but the story goes far beyond being just Final Fantasy 1 with a funny protagonist. And because Jack refuses to listen to any characters explaining the story, the player instead has to seek out the story through log books hidden throughout the world (and occasional flashbacks shown after boss battles). And through these log books the player will see Square and Team Ninja have cooked up something truly insane with this plot. A story so insane it would never work as a new IP and only as this strange reimagining of the first Final Fantasy.

Stranger of Paradise is a game I can't believe even exists, I don't think any fan would ask for a game like this nor do I understand how anyone at Square greenlit it. But I am so glad this game exists because it gave the kind of insanity I could've never even imagined myself.

Though if you want your Final Fantasy stories to be less insane you might not find as much enjoyment from this story as I did.

 

#7 Breath of Fire III (1997, PlayStation and PSP)

  

I played Breath of Fire 2 back in January. I had heard many good things about BoF2 over the years so I was very excited finally experience it myself. But while it certainly had a lot of interesting ideas and was an improvement over the first game, BoF2 never really grabbed me nor did it have much of an impact on me. After how much praise I had heard for it over the years, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed with it, even though it was by no means a bad game. But even if I found BoF2 disappointing, I decided to give BoF3 a try 6 months later with modest expectations.

Breath of Fire 3 is a very unusual sequel, after BoF 1 and 2 had you travel across the whole world fighting evil empires and churches, as is often the case in JRPGs, BoF3 feels very unambitious and is instead a very small scale adventure that only takes place within a single country with no world ending threats to be found. The focus on BoF3's story is almost entirely on making the player endeared on the main cast rather than telling some epic narrative. 

Breath of Fire 3 feels very much like Grandia or Trails in the Sky (both games I love dearly) with the way it takes a long time for the plot to get going in favor of the game being about kids going on fun adventures until they eventually get tangled up in something more serious. Even as the story gets serious, the scale doesn't go beyond a single country's borders. The villains you meet throughout the story do not matter on a worldwide scale, even in the endgame the story isn't about saving the world from some great evil, it's about finding closure to the protagonist's arc. 

If you're looking for hype moments or epic battles in your RPGs then BoF3 is not the game for you, but if you're like me and have already played 100 RPGs that are all about saving the world from a great evil, BoF3 is a refreshing change of pace. Its colorful visuals and smooth music create a comfortable atmosphere that had me hooked from the very beginning in ways BoF1 or 2 never did and it's a game I'm going to be thinking of for a long time.

What holds BoF3 back from being one of my all time favorites though is that its gameplay isn't particularly good. It's mostly just standard turn based fare that doesn't have anything outright wrong with it, but it is also not exciting in the slightest. Combine that with a high encounter rate and dungeon design that has you running back and forth for puzzles, and you have a game that often feels tedious rather than challenging.

 

#6 The Adventure of Little Ralph (1999, PlayStation) 

 

 

Little Ralph was the biggest surprise of the year for me. It is a 2D platformer I picked on a whim because I wanted something short and sweet between bigger RPGs, but it blew me away. It is an incredibly well polished platformer with combat mechanics that feel like an evolution of Zelda 2, just with a much bigger focus on platforming. The game is extremely easy to pick up and play for a quick session, while being difficult without feeling unfair. 

Besides being a platformer Little Ralph also has a side mode that turns it into a fighting game, and a surprisingly well made fighting game at that. This mode is used for certain boss battles and is also available as a 2 player versus mode after you beat the game. I don't know why the developers would put such a mode into a platformer, but I do respect the effort.

The only real negative I have about Little Ralph is its story, which is just nonsense. Of course a 2D platformer doesn't need a story to be good but I think having no story at all might have been better than Little Ralph's weird attempts at humour that didn't land for me (or maybe the fan translation is bad). 

But if you have even a slight interest in combat focused 2D platformers you ought to give Little Ralph a try, you can't go wrong with it. 

 

#5 Octopath Traveler 0 (2025, every modern platform and PC) 

 

 

Octopath 2 was my favorite game I played in 2024, so I had very high expectations for 0. In fact I originally wanted to write this blog post in December so I could've published it before the year ended, but I had to delay writing this post until 2026 purely because Octopath 0 took me almost 100 hours and I couldn't finish it before January. But even early in the game I knew I wouldn't be satisfied with this list if I didn't get to include the latest Octopath here, so I had to wait until finishing OT0 before writing this list.  

0 feels familiar to anyone who's played the first two games but it brings big changes to Octopath's formula. There are no longer 8 protagonists with 8 distinct stories, instead you play as a customisable player avatar. There are still multiple stories you can do in a (mostly) nonlinear order, but instead of your avatar being the protagonist in any of these stories, it feels like you're simply observing other people's stories from the side. 

The battle system has also been reworked so you now have 8 characters during combat: 4 in the front and 4 in the back, and you can freely swap between the rows whenever you want. The increase in character roster means your characters are no longer as versatile as the ones from 1 and 2 (sub classes are also no longer a thing) but the increased party size allows you to pull off techniques that would've never been possible before, and with over 30 playable characters you have so many different party compositions you can use to deal with any situation. The possibilities with OT0's battle system feel endless.

Unfortunately however this has a disastrous effect on the game's difficulty and balance. Unless you're intentionally holding back, the game simply has no challenge whatsoever once you get far enough and have access to all the broken skills, equipment and characters. There are many ways to break the game but the boss the battles never feel like they are designed around the player's broken abilities. And though it is really fun to find the most broken skill combinations in a game, when you're doing that for 100 hours the lack of challenge simply starts to feel stale and I started to wish the game would throw some real CBT at me, but even in the final story it never delivered on that.

Still outside of combat, 0 offers everything I loved about Octopath 1 and 2. The nonlinear exploration is great and the bite sized stories are still good. The stories of 0 also have a stronger continuity than the ones from 1 and 2, and the way they tie into Octopath 1's story feels natural and not like cheap fanservice (though the inclusion of Octopath 1's cast as recruitable characters does feel like cheap fanservice even if they do not play any role in the story)

But I think the best part of 0's story is its central theme: greed. A lot of RPGs depict greed as simply a desire to have money, but Octopath 0 goes further than that by presenting greed as the greatest source of all human evil and dividing it into three aspects: wealth, power and fame. All of the stories in in Octopath 0 feature villains motivated by a desire for either wealth, power or fame, and it is also the ordinary people's desire for wealth, power and fame why these villains' evil is not questioned. It feels the most prominent with the initial three villains: Herminia, Tytos and Auguste, as any one of them could have been heroes but their greed for more wealth, more power and more fame is what lead them to a path of evil where they're willing to commit any number of atrocities to satiate their greed.

 

#4 Fate/Hollow Ataraxia (2005, PC, Vita and Switch)

I'm not very vocal about being a Fate fan but it is a franchise that's been dear to me ever since I watched Studio Deen's adaptation of Fate/Stay Night as a teenager. Over the years I have fallen off from actively following Fate because the franchise is so big, but ever since I was a teenager there was one Fate story I wanted to experience more than any other: Stay Night's direct sequel Hollow Ataraxia, which never received an anime adaptation of any kind.

There was a fan translation for the VN but I had heard it was low quality and so I had given up hope that I'd ever get to experience Hollow Ataraxia. Until one day an official localisation for both Stay Night and Hollow Ataraxia was announced out of nowhere. I skipped on reading Stay Night's official localisation as I had already read its fan translation (although I bought it on Steam just to support the official release) but when Hollow Ataraxia was dropped on Steam I bought it immediately and proceeded to do nothing but read it until I had reached 100% completion.

Yet Hollow Ataraxia is not some epic sequel to Stay Night that doubles down on all of Stay Nights hype and chuuni moments to resolve all the loose threads of Stay Night's plot. Instead Hollow Ataraxia is almost entirely slice of life and takes place in an alternative timeline where nobody died during Stay Night's events and everyone is friends now. There's even fun mini games you can play with all your favorite characters. 

It is an extremely bizarre direction to take Stay Night's sequel, but even in this peaceful alternative world Hollow Ataraxia brings closure to Stay Night's events and also develops its cast in ways they never could've been developed when they were enemies. But this peaceful world is too perfect. Though the story is mostly slice of life, there is a constant darkness behind this peace. You know this peace is unnatural, you know this perfect world shouldn't exist. 

And I think that is Hollow Ataraxia's beauty. It gives you this perfect world that you wish could go on forever, that you wish was how Stay Night's story had ended. But no matter how much fun you have here, you know you need to let go of this perfect world eventually because this is not how the story should go...

 

#3 Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 (1999, Super Nintendo Entertainment System) 

I don't remember if I've ever played another game that made me suffer like Thracia 776 did. It is a game that feels like a cruel joke, every aspect of it designed to make the player suffer as much as possible. It is not simply a difficult game, it is a relentlessly difficult game that never pulls back its punches and keeps beating you no matter how much you beg for mercy. It is a game made for insane people who do not want to have fun when playing video games.

Yet no matter how much Thracia 776 made me suffer, it also gave me a catharsis that's unlike any other game I've ever played. Overcoming Thracia 776's challenges requires you to be flexible with your strategies and use every resource at your disposal, you can not approach it like a standard Fire Emblem game and instead you often need to think outside of the box to find the optimal strategy.

There are three key ways in which Thracia 776 is different from every other Fire Emblem game.

1: Your units all have a fatigue level. Using one unit too many times makes them fatigued and you can't deploy them for the next mission.
2: Staves have an unlimited range for all spells. Whether its healing your own units or causing ailments such as sleep or silence on your enemies, there is no limit to where and how you're using staves. 
3: You can capture enemies instead of killing them, which lets you steal all the items in their inventory. 

None of these three mechanics were brought back in future Fire Emblem games, but these three mechanics are Thracia 776's cornerstone. When you need to worry about fatigue you can't simply rely on your favorite units for every situation. With staves having unlimited range you can actually build your strategies around status ailments. And you always need to consider if an enemy should be killed or if it's worth trying to capture them and steal their gear, especially since this is not just a way to stock up on items for free, it is often the only way for you to get new items and weapons because money is extremely scarce in Thracia 776 and shops are few and far between.

But what truly makes Thracia 776 such a special game is its story, or rather how its story and gameplay intertwine. Thracia 776 is a game where you are the underdog. You lead a band of guerillas against a powerful empire with far greater armies and resources than your small band of rebels, and the game's intense difficulty makes it feel like you truly are going against impossible odds in this war. But each time the protagonist celebrates his small victories, you are celebrating alongside him because you had to work hard to earn even the smallest victories. That is the catharsis Thracia 776 offers to it players.

It is a difficult game, a very very difficult game. But there really is no other game like Thracia 776 and after finishing it I've been left yearning for another game that could give me the same feeling. 

#2 Dragon Quest VII (2000, PlayStation) 

 

It's been about 4 years since I played Dragon Quest VI and during those 4 years I've often thought about playing Dragon Quest VII, but the one thing I always hear about it is how unbearably long it is and that's what kept me from giving it a try. But in 2025 I finally stopped being afraid of its length and started Dragon Quest VII.

The stories about Dragon Quest VII's length are not exaggerated, it is so long that when I was halfway through the game Square Enix announced a remake of the game where one of the main selling points was that they've made it shorter. But despite also being 100 hours long Dragon Quest VII never gave me that same feeling I got from Octopath 0 where I started to feel bored with the game near the end. That's not to say every hour of Dragon Quest VII is meaningful (I spent quite a lot of time grinding job levels) but it was constantly offering something new and I never started to feel fatigued with the gameplay despite how simple it was.

However despite its length Dragon Quest VII is surprisingly light on story. 

Hundreds of years ago god and the demon lord fought a great war that ended in their mutual defeat and the destruction of the whole world. Now the people have forgotten all about god and the demon lord, and all the remaining humans live on a small peaceful island. One day the protagonist and his friends discover a portal to the era when god and the demon lord fought, the era when the world was still more than just one island. And from there they start helping the people of the past overcome the demon lord's terror. Each time you help a town in the past, that part of the world gets restored in the present world as well. 

The past world is full of misery but each time you save a town in the past, you get to see how it now thrives in the present. Even when you can't save everyone in the past and a town's story has a tragic ending, you get to see how the town's inhabitants have moved on from their past tragedy in the present and now embrace a more hopeful future. Other times the present is the tragic one instead, as you worked so hard to save everyone in the past, yet in the present the people have twisted the truth of the past for selfish reasons.

This is what Dragon Quest VII is about. There is very little "main story" in the game and instead each town you save is a small story arc of its own. The arcs vary greatly in length and tone, and though almost none of them contribute anything to any wider narrative I would not remove a single one of them, each town is an important part of the journey.

Playing Dragon Quest VII very much feels like you're watching a long running anime with the way its arcs are structured. Because of the arc structure it's also easy to take a break from the game for a while without being afraid you end up getting lost with the story. And with how long this game is, you should take at least a few breaks from it. This is not a game you should try to rush or marathon. 

DQ7 is a game about stopping to smell the roses. Take your time and speak with every NPC you see, also go backtrack and talk to NPCs you don't see. It is always worth it to hear what people have to say about each situation because like other DQ games, VII expects you to talk to NPCs to get hints on where you should go next. But that's not the only reason you should talk to everyone you see. Nearly every hint of the overarching story is hidden in NPC dialogue, bookshelves or signs. If you want to get invested in the overarching story connecting the arcs together, you're going to have to look for that story yourself, it is not handed out to you.

And once you eventually reach the endgame where the story is finally about god and the demon lord instead of self contained arcs, it isn't actually anything particularly amazing. If you go into Dragon Quest VII expecting an amazing story, you will be disappointed. The main story does not go much deeper than god is good and demon lord is bad. But it doesn't need to go deeper than that because Dragon Quest VII is not about its main story, it is entirely about the journey. And it is one of the best journeys I've ever had. 

DQ7 is about all the places you see and all the people you meet. The more you take your time exploring the world and talking to people, the more invested you get in this world on a human level. In the end you do not want to defeat the demon lord because because god is good and the demon lord is bad, you want to defeat the demon lord because this game has made you truly care about its world and people. No matter how long Dragon Quest VII is, if you engage with everything it has to offer the game will reward your time commitment. And that is why Dragon Quest VII is a beautiful game.

 

Honorable mentions

If I wanted to, I could've filled this entire list with Fire Emblem games. I got really into Fire Emblem in 2025 and playing old Fire Emblem games was one of my favorite things in 2025. But the list would've felt really repetitive if I had featured several Fire Emblem games so I decided to limit it to only Thracia 776, because it was the Fire Emblem game that had the biggest impact on me. In addition to Fire Emblem I'd also like to shout out TearRing Saga and Vestaria Saga, Shouzou Kaga's two Fire Emblem-like games that I also left out of the list because it would be no different than having multiple Fire Emblem games here. But while both of those games are very derivative of Fire Emblem's style and do not have much identity of their own, both of them are incredible games that every Fire Emblem fan should play.

Another game I would like to highlight is 2025's new mobile game Stella Sora. I don't actually want to recommend a gacha game no matter how much I enjoy it, which is why Stella Sora is only getting an honorable mention and not a full spot. But Stella Sora is a game that has quickly endeared me with its strange world. It is a world where fantasy mixes with modern technology and corporations mix with churches. It looks utopian with its colorful visuals and cute girls, yet under the surface it is no doubt dystopian. Its story is still in its early phases as the game is only 2 months old, but I can't wait to see how it develops after the main story's most recent cliffhanger.

 

#1 Berwick Saga: Lazberia Chronicle Chapter 174 (2005, PlayStation 2)

This should not come as a surprise to anyone who follows me as I have been raving about Berwick Saga throughout the year. I declared it one of the top 5 best games I've ever played, and just like Sakura Wars, I wrote a lengthy blog post explaining my love towards the game. I do not think anything I write here can effectively convey just how good Berwick Saga is, nor do I think even my dedicated blog post can explain just how much of an impact it had on me. 

Berwick Saga is another game created by Shouzou Kaga. But unlike TearRing or Vestaria, which are straightforward Fire Emblem clones, Berwick Saga is a full evolution of Fire Emblem that not even real Fire Emblem games have managed to accomplish. Berwick Saga not only stands proud next to all the real Fire Emblem games, it surpasses every one of them.

Berwick Saga tells the story of a grand war between two nations that has lasted for centuries, yet the story's focus is not on the war or great heroics. Instead Berwick Saga is a grounded and personal story of a commander who gives everything he has for a country that does not value his efforts. It is a story that's as frustrating as it is beautiful as you struggle against impossible odds, yet those with the power to make a difference in this war only worry about their own political gain.

And much like Thracia 776, Berwick Saga has a difficulty level that matches the stakes of its story. Though not as hard as Thracia 776 thanks to the ability to save in the middle of stages, Berwick Saga will frequently push the player's strategic skills to their absolute limit to convey just how overwhelmingly powerful the opposing army is, to convey just how hopeless this war is. But just like Thracia, you must keep pushing on no matter how difficult it gets. 

Berwick Saga is without a doubt one of the very best games I've played, even after 6 months it is a game I am thinking about constantly and a game I want to replay so I can see more of what it has to offer. Whatever problems I have with the game are incredibly minor compared to how good the rest of the game is.

Sakura Wars is the Coolest Game I've Ever Played

 

When I was around 16 years old I bought Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love for the Wii. I had heard it was a strategy RPG and because I was a big fan of those, I was very excited to check the game out. When I started the game however, what I got was not a cool strategy RPG but rather a visual novel/dating sim with very light SRPG elements. I quickly decided that the game was not good and sold my copy for a cheap price.

Over the years I've started to really regret that decision, not because the game is actually rather expensive now and I could've made a lot more money selling it, but because as I've gotten older I've become really interested in the Sakura Wars series specifically for the visual novel/dating sim aspect that I once dismissed, rather than the SRPG aspect that attracted my younger self. But to this day I have not been able to get another copy of So Long, My Love and thus I have not been able to re-evaluate this game I foolishly dismissed as a teenager.

However fast forward 14 years and I've finally gotten a taste of Sakura Wars again after all these years thanks to the fan translation of the first Sakura Wars on Sega Saturn. I already wanted to play it as soon as the translation was first released, but I kept putting it off with the excuse of "I don't know how to emulate Sega Saturn games". But with the encouragement of friends who also wanted to play Sakura Wars alongside me, I finally looked into how emulating Saturn works and turns out it's not hard at all (even if there wasn't any Saturn Emulator as nice and convenient as DuckStation) and now that I'm done with Sakura Wars I should probably play a bunch of other Saturn games I'm interested in, such as Panzer Dragoon Saga.

But that's enough about my personal history, it's time to talk about the game itself.

 

Imperial Floral Assault Troupe

Sakura Wars has a rather simple story. The year is 1923 and the main character Ichiro Ogami is a young ensign in the Japanese navy who has been assigned as the commander of the military's newly established Floral Assault Troop. However upon arriving in the Floral Assault Troop's headquarters, Ogami finds out there has been a misunderstanding and he was not assigned to Floral Assault Troop, but rather Floral Assault Troupe: a theater group run by the navy's former lieutenant general Ikki Yoneda.

But after Ogami has spent enough time working in the theater, the evil Hive of Darkness attacks Tokyo and the Troupe reveals their true identity as warriors of justice who defend Tokyo using giant robots. And this is also when Ogami receives his own robot and starts fighting the Hive of Darkness alongside the rest of the Troupe's members as their new commander.

But while the theater may simply be a ruse the Troupe uses to hide from the public, it is a legitimate theater and many of the game's non-combat sections revolve around Ogami working at the theater alongside its many employees and actors (all of whom are beautiful women for dating sim reasons). As you're playing Ogami's daily life at the theater you will become endeared to every part of his life, you will become attached to both the theater and its employees and you will want to protect this precious theater (and Tokyo itself) from the Hive of Darkness.

Sakura Wars' morality never goes beyond "Floral Assault Troupe good, Hive of Darkness evil", yet I don't think it needs to. In each episode Hive of Darkness sends a new minion against Tokyo, and while the individual minions get barely any characterisation, the fights against them feel meaningful because they always happen during moments of personal drama for the main cast. It's a bit contrived at times, but I think it works because the game makes you so attached to its cast you want to see them succeed in their personal struggles, and defeating the Hive of Darkness is just one step in that personal struggle.

It's a very classical hero tale of good vs evil, you could even say it's very cliched. Yet it is cliched in a very refreshing way. Sakura Wars plays all of its cliches straight and no matter how ridiculous it gets, it does not try to lampshade those cliches nor subvert your expectations at any point. You have heroes yelling about justice and the power of friendship as they fight demons who boast how great the power of evil is. It is incredibly ridiculous and in my opinion that's damn awesome.

I think Sakura Wars' cliched nature also pairs well with its theater motif. For a story that revolves around all the characters playing roles in a theater, it's fitting that the narrative also feels like a classical tale in its simplicity. 

 

A dating sim and a strategy RPG

Sakura Wars' gameplay is split into two distinct sections: there's the SRPG parts, which happen at the end of each episode and then there's the dating sim parts that are the rest of the game. However while these two different styles are very different, they complement each other more than you would assume at first glance. 

Dating sim is often seen as a dirty word among western players, but I think this is mostly because people do not understand what dating sims actually are. A lot of harem visual novels have you make choices that eventually lead to an ending with one of the heroines, and this is what a lot of people think of as dating sims. But these are not dating simulators, they are standard visual novels with a route structure where the route is simply tied to different girls. 

A true dating simulator makes you put real effort into getting the girl you want, you are presented with much more choices than in a standard visual novel, choices that do not impact the plot in any way but instead affect the affection each girl has for you. You need to consider your choices carefully as you might lower the affection of the girl you like or unintentionally raise another girl's affection higher than your favorite's. I'm no expert on true dating sims so I don't want to say more than that to avoid potential misinformation, but as you might have guessed, Sakura Wars is a proper dating simulator and everything I just said applies to it.

Sakura Wars presents you with tons of choices in each episode, and in many situations there is no correct answer. Some answers will please one heroine while upsetting another one, there are very few situations where you can actually please everyone, so you need to make your choices carefully in order to maintain balanced relationships with all of the girls.

However there is one additional mechanic to Sakura Wars' dating element besides simply saying the right things. Nearly every dialogue choice in the game has a timer, if you don't pick your answer fast enough you will instead be seen as a flustered mess and no one will be pleased. But there are also some situations where staying quiet by letting the timer run out is the right choice, as anything you say could simply worsen a situation. Likewise there are also moments where the timer runs extremely quickly and you simply need to say something before it runs out.

Sakura Wars also has moments when you get to wander around the theater through a point and click section. Nearly everything that happens in these sections is optional, but this is a core part of the dating sim sections. As you wander around the theater you can find hidden character events, some of which not only give a lot of affection for a character but also backstory that is never told during the main story. Some of these events also lead to unique mini games that are only playable in one specific moment, and if you miss them there you won't have another chance to play it. It's actually insane how much effort Sakura Wars puts into optional events that the average player might never see, but I think it's very respectable how the game doesn't try to shove these events to your face just because they put effort into them. 

You might be tempted to check a guide to see which rooms you should visit, especially since these sections often have a hidden time limit for how many rooms you can visit in one day. However I think part of the charm of these sections is simply checking what rooms you want. You most certainly won't find every hidden event without a guide, but you are bound to find something when you're checking whatever rooms you want, and when you stumble on something hidden on your own it feels much more special than if the game (or a guide) told you there's events in a specific room. 

I also think if the player knew what events are in what rooms, it could lead to the player only doing the events tied to their favorite character. Not knowing who is where made me do events from every character somewhat equally, compared to if I had the knowledge that would allow me to always freely pick and choose who I spend my time with.

Of course without a guide you might not get the girl you wanted, that's what happened to me after all. I wanted to get Kohran but by the time the game locked an ending, Kanna was the character with the highest affection. Was I disappointed? Id be lying if I said I wasn't. But I think each of the heroines is very fun in their own way, and in the end I was very happy to have ended up with Kanna instead. I really don't think you can pick wrong no matter who you end up with.

 

The strategy side of things

I'm going to be brutally honest, the combat is Sakura Wars' weakest aspect by a long shot and it's the main thing holding it back from being a true masterpiece. The combat's flow is sluggish and the interface is very clunky. Even SNES had strategy RPGs with smoother gameplay than Sakura Wars, despite being on the significantly more powerful Sega Saturn. 

There are some unique ideas in Sakura Wars' gameplay though, it's certainly not all bad. The most unique mechanic is that each unit (whether player controlled or enemy controlled) can perform two actions per turn. At first this doesn't sound too special, as movement and attack are both one action each and that's how all strategy RPGs work. Except you don't have to move if you don't want to. If your unit is already next to the enemy at the start of their turn, you can have them perform an attack and a block for example. But because this applies to the enemy too, maybe it's best for you to retreat after attacking, after all if you're next to the enemy at the start of their turn then they can spend their second action blocking or healing after attacking you, making it much harder for you to kill the enemy. 

Sakura Wars isn't a very hard game though and this dynamic of two actions per turn doesn't get explored very far because it's not something you have to consider too often. But it is a mechanic that makes Sakura Wars stand out among other SRPGs and I hope it's something you get to play with more in the following games in the series.

Another thing that makes Sakura Wars unique is that despite me calling it an SRPG all this time, it doesn't actually have standard RPG mechanics like level ups or equipment. Instead your characters' stats are determined entirely by their mood, and this mood is affected by the choices you make during the dating sim sections. As such instead of simply putting everything you have into getting together with your favorite girl, you should try to treat everyone well. A bad mood during combat can lead to the game being much harder for you, so you shouldn't neglect any of the heroines.

This is both a good and a bad thing as it means you don't ever have to grind, nor do you have to defeat every enemy on the map just because you fear you might miss out on valuable exp otherwise. On the other hand though, it does encourage you to simply rush past every enemy and go straight for the boss. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is up to you, but personally I do feel it's a shame engaging with some enemies feels like you're wasting a turn.  

It's also worth noting that while the game doesn't have anything like Fire Emblem's permanent death, any heroine whose HP drops to 0 in a map will lose a significant amount of affection, so if you're aiming for a specific heroine's ending you should not let her be defeated no matter what (also Ogami's death is instant game over so you should keep him protected too) 

However I think whatever praise I give to the game's unique mechanics are made moot by how unpleasantly sluggish the actual combat sections are. Every battle feels like they go on for 2x longer than they should, and that makes getting game overs an especially unpleasant experience because you have to start the fight all over again. The game is also not hard at all, so in addition to being slow, the battles are just kinda boring because they don't require you to actually think about strategies much. Because of these reasons I can't say I was having much fun at any point during the combat sections.

The battle segments are so unpolished it's pretty clear all of the game's budget went into the visual presentation instead of the gameplay. And normally I would criticise any game that puts its focus on its visuals instead of the gameplay but I forgive Sakura Wars for one simple reason: it makes up for the lacking gameplay by taking its presentation so far I believe it's one of the coolest game I've ever played. 

 

It's like playing a TV series 

The first thing you see when starting Sakura Wars is its iconic opening, and if there's one thing people know about Sakura Wars, it's this song. I too had already heard it years ago, but no matter how many times I'd heard it before, actually seeing the opening myself upon booting the game still filled me with awe. It is a powerful and triumphant song, one that is sure to grab your attention and create a strong first impression. The animation that goes with it isn't as impressive as the song itself, as it's mostly just showing off the main girls in different ways but I still like the way it introduces its main cast and shows off their personalities.

But its not just the opening that gives Sakura Wars a good first impression, everything about Sakura Wars is incredibly stylish. The moment I started the game I was instantly in love with it and it was all thanks to its presentation.

Sakura Wars presents itself like an interactive TV series. Every episode starts with a title card, there's an eye catch between every major scene and at the end there's a fully animated preview of the next episode's events. Each episode also follows a set formula where every episode starts with casual moments at the Imperial Theater until eventually Ogami's daily life is interrupted by the Hive of Darknesss like in a monster of the week anime, and after the episode's villain is defeated the status quo is restored so the next episode can once again start from a clean slate with the casual daily life.

At the end of disc 1 you even have two episodes that are presented like a two parter episode, with the first part ending in a cliffhanger and the second starting with a recap of what happened in the previous episode, followed by getting straight into the action without any of casual moments you normally see at the start of episodes. None of this was necessary, they could've easily just had one longer episode instead, but the way they split them as if it's a two parter episode reinforces the feeling of playing an interactive TV series even further by having the end of disc 1 be like the season finale that leads into the second season (disc 2). 

But if that's all Sakura Wars did to make itself feel like a TV series it would only be superficial. Despite being a visual novel it still makes its presentation feel like an actual anime. There's loads of unique character sprites, CGs and even fully animated cutscenes. When characters talk not only are they voiced, but the sprites are also very expressive to match the tone of the voice acting and have their lips synced with the voices. Each theater scene, no matter how short, still gives the cast unique sprites and costumes to match the characters they are playing.

Nearly every scene, whether it's a major story moment or something more casual, has a completely unique CG artwork accompanying it. One of my favorite examples of this is how every episode has the troupe celebrate their victory after each fight against Hive of Darkness by doing a victory pose, and every single one of these victory poses has a unique CG. Seeing the troupe celebrate like that at the end of each fight really makes your victories against the Hive feel like a major event. 

Even the fully animated cutscenes aren't reserved only for the biggest story moments, plenty of them are used for less important moments like the various theater scenes. These could've just been one or two CGs with some narration explaining what's happening, that's what most visual novels would have done. But Sakura Wars really went all out with the presentation, and if you didn't know any better you might think Sakura Wars is a licensed game based on an anime, and all these unique artworks and cutscenes are taken straight from said TV series, but that is simply another part of the illusion Sakura Wars creates to make itself feel like an interactive TV series.

And this is a game from 1996. Even most modern visual novels do not have the kind of variety in their visuals that Sakura Wars does, it is simply that impressive.

 

The coolest game I've ever played

I don't know if I've been able to properly convey just how hard Sakura Wars' unique vibes and presentation resonated with me, but it really did resonate with me incredibly hard. Sakura Wars is by no means the best game I played in 2025 and calling it the coolest game I've ever played is a hyperbole, yet it is what I was constantly thinking throughout the game. And I can say for certain that no other game I played this year has hit me in quite the same way Sakura Wars did. No matter how flawed its gameplay might have been, I can forgive it all because Sakura Wars felt special to me, it felt personal to me. 

Of course not everyone will feel as strongly about Sakura Wars' theatrics and presentation as I do, the weak combat sections might be a deal breaker for some and no amount of cool presentation will redeem it for them. But if you don't mind its weak combat sections, I promise you will find something special if you play Sakura Wars.

There really is nothing else I've played that's like Sakura Wars and I'm really looking forward to seeing how the following games in the series will push its ideas further, after all playing the first game has only scratched the surface of what this series has to offer. Sakura Wars is pretty much a dead franchise nowadays (even more so in the west, as only two games in the series have received an official English release) but in Japan Sakura Wars was a massive series in the 90s and early 2000s. In addition to the 5 mainline games (and the unsuccessful reboot from 2019), there's loads of different spinoffs and anime adaptations. I can't wait wait to delve deeper into this franchise and see everything it has to offer.

SaGa Frontier: Designing a Mechanic Around Narrative Restrictions

 

 

Video games, especially RPGs, often have a problem with finding the right balance between what the player can do during gameplay and what the character can do during the game's narrative. For example, no matter how people try to justify it, it is silly Cloud and his friends can be hit during battles with swords, bullets, explosions, poisons and anything else that would kill a normal person instantly, but a single strike from Sephiroth in a cutscene results in instant death for the character. And why do gangsters and terrorists challenge 10 year olds to honorable pokémon battles when their evil plans are threatened? They are grown adults who could easily overpower a child, but that wouldn't be what people want to see in a Pokémon game.

Gameplay and narrative often exist in completely separate bubbles, and you're expected to simply accept things like this don't make sense. Something like this isn't enough to break my immersion of course, and it is probably a lot easier for a game's writers to make the story if they don't have to take into account everything the player character can do during battle. Similarly, if a game's designers just want to make a fun game they shouldn't try to limit the player's actions just because the writers want something more grounded. 

You can take this too far of course, for example, if the story makes the main character killing a single person into a big deal, maybe the designers shouldn't have the player frequently fight against humans with lethal weapons. But generally I think it's fine, writers and designers should just focus on making their own parts of the game as good as they can.

But because gameplay and story so often do not have any kind of consistency, it feels very special when you do find a game where the story and gameplay complement each other. In this post I want to tell you about one such game: SaGa Frontier, and how its Alkaiser is one of the coolest examples I've seen of story and gameplay complementing each other.

 

What is SaGa?

SaGa is a series of RPGs by Square that started on the original Game Boy in 1989 (back then it was localised as The Final Fantasy Legend though, as Square USA had no faith in releasing a new IP). SaGa has never been as famous as Square's other long running franchises, but the games are successful enough that the series has had over a dozen games released in 35 years (with the latest game being SaGa Emerald Beyond in 2024)

SaGa ignores a lot of the conventions people associate with Japanese role playing games, such as there being no traditional level up system and having a non-linear structure, nor do they put much focus on characters or story. The series is always trying something new with each game, and very rarely does the next game follow up on any ideas established by its predecessor.

A recurring feature in SaGa is the choice between several protagonists, although the protagonist you choose usually won't have a big impact on how the game plays out. Each protagonist has their own playstyle and some unique scenes, but for a casual player the difference between characters is so small that there isn't really a reason to play more than one character's storyline. However, if you are someone who likes to replay games and experiment with different playstyles, this system of multiple protagonists ensures your playthroughs are always a little different, as each protagonist has completely different stats and skills.

SaGa Frontier, the seventh game in the series, is no different in this regard and gives you a choice between 7 different protagonists. But whereas in other SaGa games your chosen protagonist has very little impact, in SaGa Frontier each protagonist's campaign is wildly different from each other. Not only do they all have completely different stories from each other, all protagonists also have a unique gimmick in their gameplay that makes each playthrough significantly different compared to how the protagonists play in other SaGa games.

I could talk extensively about each of these characters, their stories and their gimmicks, but for this post's topic I only want to talk about the character Red and how his story manages to find a balance between gameplay and story in a way that's unlike anything else I've seen in an RPG

 

The superhero Alkaiser 

 

Red's campaign begins like any other superhero story would: Red and his father are attacked by the terrorist organisation BlackX, but just as Red is about to die, he is saved by the masked hero Alkarl. Alkarl then gives Red a portion of his power to save his life and Red becomes the superhero Alkaiser.

But Red is given one condition for his power: he is not allowed to reveal his secret identity to anyone under any circumstance. 

Naturally the player assumes this is just something the writers threw in as a reference to other superhero stories and it won't actually matter at all. And as you're starting out it seems like this is indeed the case, Red can freely transform into Alkaiser during combat to receive significant buffs.

But this changes when you recruit someone into your party. The reason you've been able to freely transform into Alkaiser in every fight was because Red was alone, no one was there to see Red's transformation. Now that you have other people in the party, Red has to fight in his regular civilian form in order to not expose his identity.

In other words; the rule given to Red about never being allowed to reveal his identity is not just a meaningless callback to superhero stories, it is the gimmick of his campaign. However I wouldn't be writing this post if that was all there was to Alkaiser's transformation, because it gets much deeper and much cooler than that.

When you realise you can't transform if you have other characters in your party, you might start thinking the Alkaiser transformation is intended for solo challenge runs. Having a unique buff that can only be used when alone certainly sounds like it's there to encourage solo runs of the game, why else would it be designed like that after all?

But SaGa Frontier is a rather difficult game, and even with a full party of 5 characters you will eventually run into a battle so hard your party is almost wiped out and only Red is standing. And that's when you see the Alkaiser transformation is available in your battle commands once again.

No one can find out Red's secret identity if no one in your party is conscious after all. 

This is Alkaiser's true purpose. It's not there for challenge runs, it's there to save you in your most desperate moments. However it gets deeper than this, there are more ways to prevent your party from knowing Red's identity than simply having everyone knocked out. Your party being asleep, paralysed or even blinded will have the same effect as unconsciousness. As long as your party is prevented from seeing Red transform into Alkaiser, the option will be available to you. If you know a boss or an enemy is capable of inflicting those ailments, it might be worthwhile to only give Red resistance to those so that you have easier access to Alkaiser as the rest of the party is hit by the ailments.

However those are still pretty niche scenarios and not something you can count on reliably. However there is one way you can have permanent access to Alkaiser besides playing solo: just have a party that only consists of entities who can't tell anyone even if they do see Red's transformation.

SaGa Frontier has many many different characters you can recruit, and among those characters are robots and monsters. Robots and monsters can't speak however, so if your party only consists of them, there will be no restrictions to using Alkaiser. Although nothing is stopping you from mixing and matching humans, monsters and robots. You could keep one or two humans in your party, and if something happens to them, that'll be your cue to activate Alkaiser.

Unfortunately Red isn't available for recruiting in any other character's campaigns, and as each campaign is rather short, you're quite limited in how much you're able to experiment with parties involving Alkaiser. It's my one big gripe with the system, as I'm sure it could be expanded further if the player was just allowed to use Red in more scenarios than just his own (though the HD Remaster from 2021 allows you to recruit Red in its brand new Fuse campaign) 

 

Ludonarrative harmony

 

Video games are a unique medium of storytelling because of their interactivity, yet very few video games actually try to build their interactive elements around the story. The reason for this is very simple of course, because as I said at the start: limiting the gameplay by what the story allows the characters to do will almost always result in a "worse" gameplay experience. Games are meant to be played, and if you're constantly limiting the fun for story reasons, players might not want to play your game.

Yet I have a lot of respect for any game that builds its gameplay around the story, even if it makes the gameplay "worse". Making the audience feel the restrictions the story places on you is something only video games can accomplish, it makes the audience relate to the characters in ways no other form of storytelling can do, and I believe that is what makes video games such a wonderful form of art.  

Alkaiser isn't a particularly egregious example of gameplay being "worse" in order to make the story more memorable, it is ultimately a small part of much bigger game and this post's purpose was just me wanting to gush about how cool and unique I think Alkaiser is.

I think a lesser game would've ignored Alkarl's warning at the beginning of the game and allowed you to use Alkaiser as much as you want. Yet if Alkaiser could be freely activated whenever you want, it would be no different from any other buff you have access to in RPGs, just with a superhero coat of paint. But by giving Alkaiser such a restriction it becomes an organic part of the story, it becomes more than a simple buff and it becomes much more memorable than it would otherwise be. It's because of its narrative restrictions that I think it is one of the coolest mechanics I've ever seen in an RPG.

I have plans to write about this topic again on a much larger scale some day in the future, but for now I'll leave it at this.

Permanent Failstate: The Appeal of Time Limits, Permanent Death and Resource Management

 

I like being challenged in video games. But the older I get, the more tired I get of the typical "git gud" challenge presented by so many video games. Of course I enjoy a good arcade-like challenge every once in a while, but I no longer have the patience to constantly play games where every stage and boss requires you to spend a significant amount of time learning layouts and attack patterns in order to progress. 

Instead the kind of challenge I've grown to love in my games is resource management. Games where the challenge is not for the player to grow skilled enough to beat any boss without taking damage, but rather for the player to deal with any situation using a limited set of resources they're given. These are games that might not immediately strike as challenging when you're starting out, but as you play further you start to realise the limitations the game has placed upon. Limitations that, if exceeded, might force you into a permanent failstate that forces you to restart the entire game. 

At first glance it seems like it's simply bad game design. Who would actually want to play a game (especially a long RPG) where you genuinely can't progress in the game anymore and have to restart the whole thing if you've played poorly enough? It sounds extremely stressful, and the average player will likely resort to constantly using a guide in order to make sure they won't end up in a permanent failstate. 

However, I think it's actually a wonderful design choice. It is indeed extremely stressful, but I think that stress is the whole appeal of these kind of games. The constant anxiety of  trying to optimise your playthrough in order to not play the game wrong gives weight to every choice you make in the game. Knowing its possible to fail your entire playthrough will make you play much more carefully, but every risky action you take feels so much more rewarding.

And as an example of what I'm talking about I have decided to write about the following games and how they incorporate permanent failstates as their core design philosophy:

Persona (3-5)
Atelier
Fire Emblem
Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter

All of these are games where it is very much possible to end up in a situation where you have no choice but to reset your whole playthrough, and all of these games are often criticised for this design. People say their design is hostile to the player and their punishment for mistakes is too harsh. But all of these games are also close to my heart specifically because they have this constant fear of playing wrong, and I will now tell you why this anxiety inducing player hostility is wonderful.

 

Living a whole year one day at a time

 

Persona 3, PlayStation 2, 2006

In Persona 3, 4 and 5 you live out one year in the life of a high schooler, and to reflect this, the games have a hard time limit of about one year. This year is presented in gameplay by having a calendar present in the game's HUD. Most days do not have anything story related happening, so you're allowed to spend your days however you want, doing things any normal high schooler would (such as hanging out with friends, working at a part time job or fighting monsters in a dungeon). Any major actions you take will consume one day from the year you are given though, and each day begins and ends with a scripted sequence to make you feel the passage of time with each day.

A year is a lot of time though, and if you spend your time wisely it is very much possible to max out all your social stats and clear every single optional task the game has to offer in just that one year. Even if you aren't interested in a completionist playthrough, you are given so much time that a casual player can finish the main story without fear of time running out.

But on the flip side, if you play the game carelessly you might end up in an unwinnable situation. Perhaps you spent all your time hanging out with friends and once a mandatory fight happens you aren't strong enough to deal with the enemy. Or maybe you spent all your time just grinding and grinding battles, neglecting all your social obligations and missing out on all the story you get from hanging out with your friends.

The key to Persona's gameplay loop is balance. You need to fight monsters to make yourself physically stronger but you also need to befriend all the people you can and raise their friendship level as high possible. And because there is a limited number of days in the game, every single day presents you with a choice: what would be the most optimal way to spend this day?

It is honestly very hard to end up in a truly unwinnable situation in Persona, especially in 5. The games aren't designed to be constantly replayed, and the games expect you to be able to clear its main story in one playthrough. In fact, Persona is so lenient with its time limit that many often say the time limit might as well not exist.

But I believe the time limit is an essential part of the games' design. Because even if the time limit is very lenient and failure is unlikely, even the faintest possibility of a permanent failstate forces the player to carefully consider every action they take. Add on top of that the fact that certain activities are only available on specific days, and you have a gameplay loop that gives the player anxiety about every choice they make. If there was no time limit and the player would be allowed to do anything at their own pace, the result would be game that's a lot more relaxing, a game that would be much more appealing to a casual mainstream audience and a game that I would find very boring. 

 

When the time limit is removed

 

Atelier Totori, PlayStation 3, 2010

People who have never played Atelier often assume it's a comfy casual series because it's about a cute girl doing casual things like running an alchemy shop, instead of more ordinary activities like traveling across the world and killing gods. But much like Persona, this seemingly casual series of cute girl RPGs is centered entirely around a hard time limit, and this time limit is much harsher than the one in Persona.

Atelier games usually present you with a single goal like becoming a top level alchemist in the time the game gives you. It might sound simple, but to reach your goal you must do a lot of alchemy, and to do a lot of alchemy you must explore the world and fight enemies to find the materials you need for said alchemy. You synthesise materials that make you stronger, so you can fight stronger enemies that drop stronger materials that you can eventually use for your ultimate synthesis. And I find this gameplay loop very fun and satisfying, but there is one more key element to it: the constantly looming time limit.

Every single action you take will consume your time limit. In Persona only actions that end your day will consume the time limit, but in Atelier there are no safe actions. Everything you do will consume time. Each monster you fight, each item you craft, moving between areas, even gathering materials from the ground will all consume a day from your calendar.

And unlike Persona where every day starts and ends with a scripted sequence to ease you on the passing time, Atelier's time flows at a much more free pace. No action in Persona ever takes more than one day, but in Atelier a single action can take several days. You might spend days synthesising one item and moving long distances on the map might take several weeks at once. 

Naturally the time limit in Atelier is also higher than Persona to compensate how quickly time flows (Atelier games often have a limit of 3-5 years), but it is much more stressful with the timer than Persona ever is. Time passes so quickly from even simple actions that you can waste your precious time really easily. But this also forces you to put great consideration into every action you take. The best materials and strongest enemies are located very far away from your atelier, and traveling such long distances will take many of your precious days. So you can't constantly travel back and forth every time you need a specific material. Every long distance trip you take must be planned carefully, and once you've arrived you must accomplish as much as you can before returning to your atelier. Your inventory size is also limited so you can't pick every material you see, you need to carefully consider what items are worth taking with you. 

That said, while Atelier's time limit is stricter than Persona's, even in Atelier you likely won't run into a permanent failstate unless you play very carelessly. If you put careful consideration into your actions, you'll do just fine. The games aren't impossibly difficult, but the time limit is there to ensure you're always moving forward instead of spending time grinding and crafting before every strong enemy. Because of the time limit you have to challenge every boss with the resources you have access to at the moment and can't afford to take the time to grind.

Unsurprisingly most people hate this. If you look up any conversation about Atelier you will see loads of people repeat the same sentiment: I really want to like these games but the time limit makes these games too stressful.

Fortunately for these people, Gust and Koei Tecmo listened to these criticisms, and none of the recent games have had a time limit. The casuals rejoiced and now Atelier is more popular than ever before. You can do whatever you want without consequences, you will never feel stressed at any choice you make, if a boss is too hard, you can take your time grinding your stats without worrying you're playing the game wrong. And most importantly: you will feel comfy playing as a cute girl. 

And yet despite how popular and acclaimed Atelier is now, I find it all so very boring. Atelier used to be one of my all time favorite video games series, but now I no longer even feel any desire to buy the latest games in the series. The games being designed entirely around managing the time limit was what made the games so fun for me, and I think Atelier moving to a more casual direction is what made me realise how much I love this kind of stress and anxiety inducing game design. 

The removal of the time limit isn't the only significant change Atelier has had in recent years, but because everything in Atelier used to be designed around the time limit, its removal is the easiest to point out. With no time limit there is no longer any weight in the player's actions. With no time limit the player can take their time grinding and crafting as much as they want. With no time limit the games's challenge stops being about effective resource management, and instead it is simply about making your numbers go up.

It's not my place to dictate how others play their games. A lot of people are having fun with the modern Atelier games so maybe I'm just a toxic elitist for thinking it's boring. But I wish the games would at least include the time limit as an optional hard mode instead of removing it entirely, especially since it is something the Atelier Marie remake did a few years ago. But it's a remake of a game that already had a time limit, and they never brought back the time limited hard mode after it, so I don't think it's any indication of the series' future direction.

 

Making the casualisation optional

 

Fire Emblem: Thracia 776, Super Famicom, 1999

For a long time Fire Emblem was a series everyone was aware of but very few people actually played, and the reason for this was simple: in Fire Emblem any unit that loses a fight will not simply be knocked out and then revived when the battle is over like in other RPGs. In Fire Emblem if a unit loses in battle, they will die. They are gone forever and they won't return unless you reload your save file.

Just like with Persona and Atelier, it is possible to end in an unwinnable scenario. Except whereas Persona's and Atelier's time limits only exist to put pressure on you instead of actually being a real threat, in Fire Emblem the fear of ruining your save file is very real. If you don't play strategically enough and lose too many characters, it is very likely you simply can not beat the game as you are lacking characters. 

I think this is great design though. In so many other strategy RPGs you can take risks without consequence, if your strategy requires sacrificing a character, you can simply sacrifice them and they'll be back in your party in the next fight. But this is not possible in Fire Emblem. In Fire Emblem the challenge does not come from defeating all the enemies, the challenge lies in finding a way to defeat all the enemies without losing any of your characters. 

But just like with Atelier, Nintendo and Intelligent Systems listened to the people who said they hate the idea of permanent death. They saw how many people said they would love to play Fire Emblem if only the permanent death was removed, and so, starting with Fire Emblem Awakening the series moved to a more casual direction where permanent death was no longer mandatory. And much like Atelier, Fire Emblem became more popular than it had ever been after this barrier was removed and casuals could finally play the games without worry.

Unlike Atelier however, playing Fire Emblem without the permanent death was entirely optional. For those who still wanted the classic challenge of permanent death, that option was still available. Fire Emblem had found a middle ground that pleased both casuals and hardcore players.

Except not really.

The permanent death may be the most obvious part of Fire Emblem's challenge, but there is one other aspect that makes Fire Emblem so challenging: you can not grind at all. There is only a limited amount of enemies you can fight in a stage, and since you can't replay stages there is technically only a limited amount of experience you can obtain in the game. 

And so every battle presents a choice: will you take certain victory and fight with your strong characters who don't benefit much from the exp those enemies give, or will you take a risk using your weaker units to fight, and ensure they receive experience from these enemies and be stronger for future fights?

I believe this is Fire Emblem's real challenge. Of course the permanent death also makes the games difficult, but the permanent death is something you will actively try to avoid, and it is easy to simply restart a stage if you lose a character. The limited availability of exp on the other hand is not something you can actively look out for, it is out of your control. Much like the time limits of Persona and Atelier, this will haunt you across your entire playthrough and make you question every action you take. 

Even if you successfully keep all your units alive, if you've only been relying on a handful of your strongest characters it is entirely possible you don't have enough strong characters by the end of the game. And because exp is so scarce, it makes the permanent death hurt so much more. You're not just losing that unit, but you're also losing everything you invested into them. 

But when Fire Emblem moved to a more casual direction, they also added the ability to grind optional battles as much as you want. But whereas removing permanent death is a toggle that can be ignored, once grinding was introduced to the series it was something the games were designed around. Sure you don't have to grind in the optional battles if you don't want to, but then you aren't playing the game like you're expected. If grinding is an option then clearly the game expects you to simply grind before hard battles instead of utilising every tool at your disposal to overcome overwhelming odds.

Even if permanent death is still an option, I think it loses a lot of weight because you are now able to grind. Why wouldn't you only use your strong characters for hard story fights when you can level up your weaker characters in an optional fight with significantly lower risks but all the same rewards?

Though to be fair to Awakening, while it may have made the series more casual friendly in general, grindable optional fights weren't introduced there as they were already featured in Sacred Stones and TearRing Saga before it.

EDIT: After publishing this post I have been informed Fire Emblem Engage removes the ability to grind on higher difficulties. I have not played Engage so I did not know it does that, but the point that not being able to grind is a huge part of Fire Emblem's appeal to me still holds true so I will keep the rest of the post unchanged.

 

 

 

When the casual game goes hardcore

 

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, PlayStation 2, 2002

Breath of Fire is a series of 5 RPGs released between 1993 and 2002 (technically there was a 6th game released for mobile in 2016 but people like to pretend it doesn't exist). I have not played the 4th game yet so I can't speak about it, but the first three are fairly basic RPGs of their era, but with a small twist in the gameplay being the protagonist's ability to transform into a dragon (hence the series' name). But despite calling them basic, they are well made games and the series still has a large following among JRPG fans.

However the fifth game in the series, Dragon Quarter, is anything but basic and continues to be divisive among fans to this day. Dragon Quarter abandons everything the series is known for, replacing its RPG traditions for a dungeon crawler that feels closer to Resident Evil than any JRPG.

Gone is the colorful world seen in the previous games, instead the game takes place entirely within a single underground dungeon. And much like Resident Evil, your resources within this dungeon are very limited. You can not go back to a nearby town to simply buy any items you need once you've run out, every item you obtain is valuable because of its scarcity. Even saving your game is done via an item that is in limited supply.

That alone would already make Dragon Quarter too stressful for most people, but Dragon Quarter goes a step further in making sure the player is as anxious as possible: the infamous D-Counter.

The D-Counter is a gauge in the player's HUD that starts from 0% and slowly rises towards 100%. Different actions you take will raise it by different amounts, but even simply walking around will raise it by 0,01% every ~20 steps and each turn you spend in battle also raises it by 0,01%. 

But it gets worse; like in other Breath of Fire games your protagonist can transform into a dragon and receives significant stat boosts in that form, but this time the dragon form penalises you by raising the D-Counter by significant amounts. Each turn you spend as a dragon raises the counter by 2% and each attack you make raises it by at least 1% (stronger attacks raise it even more).

There is no way to lower the counter, and if it ever reaches 100%, you die instantly. That means if you've saved your game when your counter is too high, you might have to restart the entire game.

Dragon Quarter is significantly shorter than any Persona, Atelier or Fire Emblem though, and the game kind of expects you to fail on your first playthrough. There's also a lot of secrets (including brand new story scenes) you can only see on subsequent playthroughs. So not only are further playthroughs expected, they are encouraged. 

You might have guessed this already, but I love this. Dragon Quarter is an incredibly stressful game and it is extremely easy to end up in a permanent failstate. 

Your limited resources and the slowly rising D-Counter make the game hard, but like Persona's time limit those are there to encourage careful play, it's unlikely you run into a permanent failstate simply from running out of items or walking in circles so much your D-Counter goes to 100%.

Dragon Quarter is actually about resisting temptation. Once you obtain the dragon transformation, you can use it to kill any enemy and boss without trouble. It is absurdly strong and even during the endgame nothing can stop your dragon form. But every time you turn into a dragon, you get so much closer to the permanent failstate.

And so Dragon Quarter's challenge lies in finding ways to defeat enemies in your human form using your limited resources. But any time you face a challenge that seems too hard, you ask yourself "can I defeat this on my own or should I give in to the temptation?"

This dynamic is what makes Dragon Quarter such a brilliant game. 

The point of all this

When it comes to Dragon Quarter I am sympathetic to the people who hate it. It is a sequel that abandons its previous target audience to instead appeal to insane people like me. Indeed, this game has no reason to be called Breath of Fire, and fans of the previous four games have a right to be disappointed at its more hardcore direction.

But the reason I wanted to talk about Dragon Quarter is because I think I also have a right to be disappointed when a game loses its challenge in order to appeal to a wider audience. Yes, everyone who complains about Dragon Quarter being too stressful is in their right to do so, but similarly I want to complain when a game loses its hardcore edge for the sake of a wider audience.

Atelier is a series where the risks (and the anxiety of their consequences) were a large part of their appeal to me, and when those risks are removed, the games have lost their appeal. Same with Fire Emblem, when the anxiety of not being able to grind is removed, the games start feeling a lot less strategic to me.

It is ironic then that Persona, the most popular and mainstream game I talked about, hasn't lost its time limit. Though Persona keeps introducing new ways to make the games easier, they have stuck to their guns regarding the time limit, no matter how much players complain about the anxiety they feel because of it. I think that's admirable.

I do not want to come across like I am telling people they can't enjoy modern Atelier or modern Fire Emblem, I am not telling people that the way I enjoy these games is the only right way. Most people do not enjoy time limits, permanent deaths and resource management. That's fine, you can enjoy games however you want and I am not trying to take options away from you.

What I actually wanted to say with this essay is that these stressful games have an audience. It may be a niche audience, but people like me do exist and we enjoy this kind of challenge. Most people will think permanent failstates are the result of poor game design, but these games are intentionally designed this way. I am tired of people who act like Atelier was fixed by removing the time limit, I am tired of seeing people call old fans toxic elitists for wanting these games to bring back the challenge from the older games and I am tired of feeling comfortable in RPGs that used to make me stressed.