Good morning, dear Patrons! A happy new year to you. I hope you all had a restful holiday season and, where applicable, aren't finding the return to work or school too traumatic. I am having a lot of trouble getting up in the morning at the moment, but aside from that all is well. With me, anyway; my wife has proper full-on 'flu but I have thankfully escaped that so far.

I'm going to try and make a bit more of an effort to make these Patron-Only updates a bit more regular in 2018, and one of the things I thought might be quite fun to do would be to look back on and revisit some of the games I've previously covered, particularly those that I find myself naturally wanting to return to.

Generally speaking, I'm someone who plays a single game to absolute death and then sets it aside, possibly permanently. I'll generally do my best to get all endings (and perhaps a Platinum trophy) on that original playthrough, but after that I'll set it aside and probably won't return to it for quite some time, if at all. I still keep all my games, however, since I will never rule out the possibility of wanting to replay or revisit something in the far future; I still enjoy revisiting old Atari, SNES, Mega Drive, PS1 and PS2 games, after all, so there's nothing to say I won't feel the same about PS4 and Vita games in 20 years time.

There are exceptions to this not particularly hard and fast rule, however; games that I refer to as "evergreen" games, that I always like to return to every so often, either because they're structured in such a way as to encourage replays or simply because I want to experience them again. Inti Creates' excellent Gal*Gun Double Peace, which I originally covered back in 2016, falls into the former of these two categories.

For the uninitiated, Gal*Gun is a curious hybrid of on-rails shooter and dating sim in which you guide protagonist Houdai through a day in which he has accidentally become afflicted with an angelic popularity aura that is 32x more powerful than it was supposed to be. As his clumsy guardian angel Ekoro — the source of said accident — helpfully informs him, the effect of such a high dosage of angelic power means that unless he finds his true love by the time the aura wears off, he will end up forever alone.

Thus begins an adventure in which Houdai has the opportunity to pursue several different girls, including one or both of his two childhood friends Shinobu and Maya (who just happen to be demon hunters), a demon named Kurona who was indirectly responsible for Ekoro messing up her shot in the first place, Ekoro herself, or indeed any of the other girls at Houdai's school, where he appears to be the only male person, student or teacher.

There are many reasons I enjoy Gal*Gun, but probably the chief reason is the fact that it's a game that has far more depth and replayability to it than its rather silly premise might suggest. There's a substantial metagame that involves collecting profile information on all the characters you see throughout the game, for example, and on top of that just getting the "true" endings for each of the main heroines is a challenge in itself, since doing so requires that you not only score enough points in the shooting sequences, but that you also make appropriate choices when you get a number of different dialogue options.

One of the things I like most about it is that there are no "generic" enemies. Every girl who "attacks" Houdai has a name, personality, voice, weak spot, unique appearance and, uh, set of measurements. The more you play the game, the more you'll come to recognise each girl by her appearance and name and know how to quickly deal with her. This helps you feel like you're getting to know the cast, even those members who don't play an active role in the main story.

And that story, as silly as it is, is endearing and compelling, too. Those who enjoyed the anime Gabriel Dropout will get a particular kick out of it, since the idea of inherently infallible and incompetent apprentice angels and demons is very similar to what we saw in that series. Shinobu and Maya are well-defined characters with some depth to their depictions, too, and there's even a surprising amount of non-verbal characterisation through things like their body language, the situations in which they find themselves and their responses to the various dialogue options.

Most of all, though, it's simply a really fun, well-designed game that I adore playing any time I boot it up. There are lots of different paths through it, lots of different ways to play — besides the main story routes, there's a "True Love" route in which you have to manipulate Houdai's stats to be appealing to the members of the extended cast you want to pursue, as well as a Score Attack mode — and a ton of longevity through the collectible profiles and numerous secrets to discover.

It's definitely a game that I will keep coming back to time and time again… and with a sequel on the horizon, well, you can count on more Gal*Gun on MoeGamer in the near future!

I've been looking at a lot more stuff from other reviewers and creators around the Internet over the course of the last year or so — a side effect of drifting away from the mainstream commercial press.

I've previously been quite resistant to looking into "YouTubers" in particular as I had the idea in my head that they were all Let's Players trying much too hard to have "hilarious" reactions to what they were doing, spoiling the shit out of games in the process. But I've been extremely pleased to discover a number of YouTube gaming channels that overlap very nicely with both my interests, my age and my preferred style of commentary and criticism. I've also found a lot of them genuinely inspiring in terms of the way they present their content. So I thought I'd spend today highlighting some of them and why I like them!

Most of these creators can also be supported here on Patreon; their channels have links to their Patreon pages if you want to fling them a dollar or two.

Classic Gaming Quarterly
This is where my "journey" began. Chris Alaimo's excellent channel updates fairly infrequently (hence the name), but when it does you can expect very well-produced videos about console launches, game libraries, game magazines, modern retro gaming hardware and a wide variety of things of interest to collectors and retro enthusiasts. Also Alaimo has a wonderfully soothing voice!

Gaming Historian
Norman Caruso's channel provides exhaustively researched, documentary-style featurettes about, as you might expect, the history of gaming and the games business. There are some absolutely fascinating stories among his videos, well worth exploring and spending some time digesting.

Lazy Game Reviews
A very long-running channel that has evolved and matured considerably since its early days, and presenter Clint Basinger is clearly very knowledgeable but friendly and approachable. This channel is a great resource for those particularly interested in the history of PC gaming, including both commercial and shareware releases from over the years.

Pixelmusement/Ancient DOS Games
Kris Asick's channel primarily focuses on, as its name suggests, old DOS games. The main series focuses on a variety of different games from over the years, while spinoff series Shovelware Diggers sees Kris and some of his Patrons trawling through an old CD-ROM collection of freeware and shareware titles looking for interesting games to explore.

Classic Game Room
The original Game Room was one of the first ever gaming-themed video shows on the Internet, and since that time has undergone a number of format changes. Today, frontman Mark Bussler treats the show more as a side project to his book, comic and art work rather than the central part of his business as it once was — you can blame the evolution of YouTube in part for that — but it's still a great watch and there is an enormous library of past episodes to watch, covering pretty much every system you can think of and a few others besides. Mark is particularly knowledgeable about very early game systems such as the Atari 2600, 5200 and 7800 along with the Colecovision, Intellivision and Magnavox Odyssey 2 (aka Philips G7000 in Europe).

MetalJesusRocks
Jason "Metal Jesus" Lindsey's enthusiasm for gaming and collecting is absolutely infectious, and his videos are always a good watch, whether they involve just him or are one of his frequent collaborations with other YouTubers. He has a stunning collection of computer and video games and a clear passion for the subject… though he is occasionally prone to slightly stereotypical clickbaity video titles. Don't let those put you off, however; his content is high-quality, well-produced, informative and entertaining.

Game Sack
Joe Redifer and Dave White's channel is another one that has been around for several years and which has considerably improved and matured over time. Their episodes cover a wide variety of gaming topics — primarily console-centric — ranging from magazines of the past through arcade ports of varying quality to favourite examples of obscure genres. Their current episodes are extremely well produced with a lot of research clearly going into them, and will particularly appeal to those who enjoy discussion of the technical aspects of retro systems and games. Plus each episode closes with an amusing (and similarly well-produced) skit.

Game Dave
Dave has seemingly been inactive for a while, but while you wait for him to produce something new (it's on the way, apparently!) he has a decent library of extremely high quality videos to enjoy, including some passionate exploration of obscure Famicom games and an interesting experiment in combining game reviews with an ongoing serialised narrative component. Dave clearly knows his stuff about games from many different eras, and his game room is to die for.

After widespread complaints from Patrons and creators alike, Patreon has thankfully seen sense and decided not to go with its proposed changes to how it charges fees.

Full details here: https://blog.patreon.com/not-rolling-out-fees-change/ 

This means your pledges will continue to work how they always have done, with no hidden fees or charges; pledge $1, you pay $1. And very welcome your $1 is too!

Thanks for those who have stuck by me during this turbulent period; it's very much appreciated. A more substantial Patrons-only update coming later this week! 🙂

Hello! Thought I'd share something a bit happier after the stuff over the fees. I've been meaning to provide an update on my collection for some time now, and I finally remembered to take some photos last night. So let's take a look!

In the header image, you can see my LE shelf (which is now full, so I need to find somewhere else to put any future limited edition titles, and absolutely definitely not stop buying LEs)

On the top two shelves, we have Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson, Shinovi Versus, Estival Versus, Valkyrie Drive and Peach Beach Splash.

Under that we have Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed, Superdimension Neptune vs Sega Hard Girls (which I'm yet to play, I must confess!), Cyberdimension Neptunia: 4 Goddesses Online and Megatagmension Blanc + Neptune vs Zombies.

Under that there's Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 3 and 2 (1 didn't come out physically over here), Hyperdevotion Noire and Megadimension Neptunia V-II.

And on the bottom shelf we have Dark Rose Valkyrie, Trillion God of Destruction, Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force and MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death.

My PS1 collection is pretty small, but I'm pleased with what it consists on. Vib-Ribbon, visible in the foreground, was a particular hit on my Extra Life stream a few weeks back. I'm also happy that I've re-acquired copies of Xenogears, Parasite Eve and Brave Fencer Musashi, three of my favourite PS1-era games that never got a European release. I have Lunar: Silver Star Story, too, and should probably try and track down Eternal Blue again at some point, but I anticipate that being fairly expensive.

The PS2 shelves are the most well-stocked at the moment because the PS2 is so gloriously cheap, easy and fun to collect for right now. I haven't played a whole bunch of these as yet, but I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into them — both the short-form arcadey titles and the more substantial RPGs such as the Atelier Iris series.

They go on and on and on! I think the PS2 is probably my favourite era of gaming, since it provides such a broad mix of different gaming experiences, ranging from sprawling RPGs to short-form shooters, party games and everything in between. There's something inherently pleasing about something like a shoot 'em up being a physical game on a disc with a manual; it makes it feel like a less "disposable" experience than many downloadable games do.

My PS3 collection is almost what I'd regard as "complete", since I own almost every JRPG on the platform. I'm only missing a few multiplatform games, or games in which there are enhanced versions available on other systems such as Dragon's Dogma and the Disgaea series.

I've recently started collecting for PSP. Like PS2, this is a very cheap, easy and fun platform to collect for at the moment, so I'm taking full advantage of this fact while I can. While you can indeed play PSP games on Vita in their downloadable incarnations, like I mentioned with the PS2, there's something inherently more satisfying about inserting a physical disc into the system rather than just firing it up from a menu.

The most valuable PSP title I own there is that copy of Fate/Extra towards the left. The outer box is slightly battered but it's otherwise in good condition, and I'm pleased I managed to pick it up for less than half the price I've seen copies go for on eBay. Having enjoyed the visual novel Fate/stay night, I'm interested to explore the extended Nasuverse!

My PS4 recently reached a notable milestone by filling a whole shelf! I'm going to have to rearrange things when I get any more PS4 titles. That or put the games I have LEs for back in their boxes, since I put the Blu-Ray cases on the shelf to make them more easily accessible and easier to show off.

Dear old Vita. Lots of great games here. I still need to expand this collection a fair bit — though a lot of Vita games have ended up either ported to or released simultaneously on PS4, so where that option exists, I've always gone for PS4 as it's usually a superior version. Portability is nice, but better graphics, load times and frame rates are better!

DS and 3DS are some of my least favourite platforms to collect for. I'm not really sure why, because it's not that I dislike the games on them per se, it's just that I tend to find stuff on other platforms more exciting and interesting. That said, I've still got a reasonable collection here; it just hasn't expanded very much over the course of the last couple of years.

I've also discovered that if you look outside of games with "Super Mario" in the name, the Wii is extremely cheap to collect for — and even better, it has an absolute ton of unknown, underappreciated games, thanks in part to the system's reputation as a shovelware, party game-centric device. I'm looking forward to exploring some of these unusual and interesting games on MoeGamer in the coming months. Like the PS2, there's a nice mix of long and short-form games to play with.

My Wii U collection is almost what I'd consider to be "complete", with only a few outstanding titles like the Kirby and Yoshi games. Here I've got all the games on the platform I'd consider to be essential purchases that are unique to the platform, or that at least have something noteworthy about them in their Wii U incarnation. Aside: I fired up my Wii U last night for the first time since Miiverse closed down, and it was oddly sad to see the main menu plaza without any Miiverse posts on it. End of an era, indeed.

Finally for the consoles, there's the Xbox 360. Like the Wii U, I consider this collection almost complete for my purposes; I have most of the JRPGs released for the platform, and a good number of the Japanese shmup releases from Cave and others.

Right now, my main collecting focus is on PSP and Wii, though I'm keeping an eye on Wii U games to see if I can pick up those final missing pieces. I'm also getting a Switch for Christmas, so those games will need somewhere to live when that happens! I'm really looking forward to this new system; it's a truly unique platform that promises to be a whole lot of fun.

Hello everyone. I think it's important to address Patreon's recent announcement that it will be changing its fee structure on the 18th of December. For those as yet unfamiliar with the upcoming plans, please check out the official announcement here.

Patreon's justification for adopting this new fee structure is to take the pressure off creators having to handle processing fees. Currently, what happens is people pledge a certain amount each month, but I don't get all of that; a certain proportion of it gets eaten by Patreon for their fees. It's simple, it's easy to understand and it means you only pay what you pledged.

The new approach will see Patrons paying more and Patreon making more money, but not a lot of real benefit to creators. There's a good Twitter thread by someone who actually understands economics here, so give it a read if you want to see how this affects everyone. I predict this has the potential to hurt small creators like me in particular, since I'm certainly not in favour of you having to pay more than I've asked for in my pledge tiers, and can't really afford Patrons to jump ship in protest.

A couple of other creators, including Space Quest Historian and Kris "Pixelmusement" Asick have decided, if Patreon goes ahead with its new fee plan, to adjust their reward tiers so Patrons don't end up paying any more. This means, in my case, that $1 pledges will "reduce" to $0.63 (but you'll still pay $1 with the new fees) and $5 pledges will "reduce" to $4.51 (but again, you'll still pay $5). This seems like a fair approach, so I will be following suit if these plans go ahead; that way, none of you will have to actually pay any more than you are now.

While there are no other real equivalents to Patreon out there — Kickstarter's upcoming Drip is looking like a convincing competitor, but hasn't launched yet — there's no sense jumping ship at the moment, not while I have a pleasingly solid base of regular (and in some cases longstanding!) Patrons.

Rest assured we as creators on Patreon are making our discontent with this matter known, and we'll do our best to ensure that you, as our generous Patrons, continue to be treated fairly. It sucks that this even has to be an issue at all, but, well, this is how things seem to go with businesses like this.

In the meantime, thank you to those of you who continue to support MoeGamer and my work, whether it's financially here on Patreon or simply through likes, shares, comments and suchlike on social media platforms and the site itself. We'll weather this storm together!

Hi folks! I see there have been a few new Patrons recently, so a huge thank you to those of you who have decided to pledge some money towards my efforts. Every little bit makes a difference — your money is mostly spent on new games and hardware to add to my collection, which I will subsequently write about, so you're directly benefiting the site with your ongoing donations. Plus you're just being awesome, which is even better.

I've been a bit lax on these Patron-only updates for a little while so I want to try and rectify that now, beginning with a bit of a chat about some broader aspects of Japanese culture that aren't directly gaming-related but which I still find interesting.

Specifically, today I want to talk about denpa music.

Dempagumi Inc, photographed by Christopher Woods – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46206160 

I have a subscription to Google Play Music — I switched over to it from Spotify and Apple's iTunes Match when I switched from iOS to Android, because as well as a good streaming service, it also allows you to upload your songs online and access them from other devices and the Web; this means you can do stuff like stream your library at work where you might not be able to install external software like iTunes.

Anyway, I've had a "J-Pop" playlist on Google Play Music for a while, initially consisting of just Babymetal and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (the latter of whom I can't remember how I became aware of, but enjoy a lot). Recently, I decided to explore things a little more broadly, making use of Play Music's recommendations to find related artists and just add them to the playlist and see what they were like. In the process I came across a group called Dempagumi, Inc. and the broader phenomenon of denpa music in general.

For the unfamiliar, denpa music is broadly defined as music that is intentionally incredibly catchy and memorable, but often nonsensical in nature, featuring off-key melodies, strange rhythms and other unconventional aspects. The term comes from "denpa", which means "electromagnetic waves", and stems from a derogatory term from people who appear to be out of touch with reality; the original form of denpa music was deliberately creepy rather than the energetic sense of excess now associated with the genre.

The otaku subculture, as many of us know, often embraces the fact it is "out of touch" with reality, deliberately eschewing reality in favour of a happy colourful world of 2D waifus and whatnot, and consequently denpa music found quite a following among the otaku of Akihabara, even while it was spurned by mainstream J-pop. There's also a certain amount of crossover between it and video game music — a number of denpa artists have either worked on video games or produced arrange albums of popular series like Touhou, for example, and many denpa tracks incorporate elements of chiptunes and synthesised sound effects. Several albums from artist IOSYS also sound like they were recorded from a late '90s wavetable synthesis sound card such as the AWE32, which is an audio aesthetic I very much approve of.

I've enjoyed my exploration of this peculiar genre so far; not every song or album has been what I'd describe as "good", but the same is true of any type of music. If you're interested, I'd particularly recommend checking out Dempagumi, Inc. as an introductory experience, since they're more of an idol group that draws inspiration from denpa song than an outright denpa outfit. Plus they have some really catchy songs and are a group of cute girls supposedly with otaku tendencies. What's not to like about that?

I must confess that outside of my 24-hour Extra Life stream from last Saturday — which you can see a summary of here, including unedited video archives — I haven't had a whole lot of time to actually play games recently! There's been a lot to do, both in "life" generally and on the site, and I've been ill, too. Twice. Tonsillitis sucks.

Now that what are probably the most challenging of the Rance articles to write are out of the way, I can concentrate on ploughing through the rest of Rance VI ahead of writing about it towards the end of the month; a Rance 5D writeup is coming next week, meanwhile. I've already written that one — I actually composed it immediately after beating the game as I wanted to get some thoughts on paper while they were fresh in my mind.

It's not an exaggeration to say that as a result of Rance 5D, what I've played of Rance VI so far (just under half of the main story, I believe) and what I learned while assembling the lore article, Rance has become one of my favourite series. I was ready for this possibility — I recall a former podcasting buddy enthusing about the fan translation of Sengoku Rance a few years back and his tastes have typically aligned rather nicely with mine — but I seriously wasn't expecting the setting of The Continent to have quite so much depth to it. I should know better by now that a game or series being "eroge" most certainly does not preclude it from having good writing or source material crafted with care, attention and love.

Aside from Rance, I've been continuing to pick up PSP games, as I mentioned in the last update, and got my hands on the original PSP version of Half-Minute Hero — produced and directed by Senran Kagura's Kenichiro Takaki, fact fans. I really enjoyed the Xbox 360 and PC versions of this game and its sequel, but there's something rather lovely about the PSP version. There's a bunch of additional content that was chopped out of the later ports, too, so it's nice to play the game as originally intended.

I'm pondering what to cover once Rance is over and done with. I have a heap of brand new stuff that is all worth talking about; presently I'm leaning towards Cyberdimension Neptunia: 4 Goddesses Online because I started it during the Extra Life stream and had a good time with the four hours I played. Plus it's been a long while since I covered something Neptunia-related!

Thank you all once again for your continued support of MoeGamer here on Patreon; it is massively appreciated. Every day I see clickbait nonsense from commercial sites trying desperately to squeeze some ad revenue out of their audience — sometimes even trying to shame them out of using adblockers — and I'm reminded that I always wanted to do something different.

Creators — and I'm not just talking about me here — deserve to get paid for their work, but the ad revenue-based model just isn't conducive to the production of thoughtful, well-crafted content. I'm glad there are people out there — like you! — willing to show their appreciation for and compensate those of us who want to produce something a bit different. You are the people who can help make a difference in the mess that is online media, so thank you, and please keep supporting those whose work you enjoy. <3

A lot of your generous Patreon donations go towards expanding my collection of Japanese games on a variety of platforms.

For the moment, I've been taking advantage of the fact that certain platforms have extremely cheap games in order to pick up as many as possible! For those of you who are also collectors, PS2 and PSP games are both dirt cheap right now, so jump in and grab some while you can.

The nice thing I've found is that the sort of thing I'm into — overlooked, underappreciated or otherwise niche-interest Japanese games — tend to be on the cheaper side, which is nice. Many of D3 Publisher's Simple Series titles on PS2 were around the 50p mark, for example, and most PSP games I've picked up recently have been no more than about £5 tops. Bargain.

There are a few exceptions, obviously, some of which are games I'm quite interested in grabbing. In particular, I'm quite up for snagging a copy of Fate/Extra on PSP after how much I enjoyed Fate/stay night — this is a game I've actually had my eye on for a long time, but had wanted to hold off until I was a bit more familiar with the series. At present, second hand copies of this seem to be around the £40-45 mark; still reasonable, but not quite in "impulse purchase" territory, particularly when there are a bunch of current games and VNs I want to pick up.

My latest batch of orders haven't arrived yet but I'll be sure to share them with you when they arrive. PSP is turning out to be a ton of fun to collect for, so I'm looking forward to expanding my library further!

I haven't spent as much time with this game as I'd like to in order to be able to give it the full "Cover Game" treatment on the main site, so I thought I'd provide some exclusive impressions to you, dear Patrons.

Well, uh, I've already spoiled my main impression in the headline, but it bears repeating again because holy crap this game is good. Like, really good. Crazy good.

My trouble is that the PSP that exists in my mind's eye and the actual capabilities of that dear little system don't quite correspond with one another. The PSP of my imagination languishes somewhere around the PS1 in terms of performance and graphical fidelity — and indeed, some developers barely get beyond this standard — but in fact, it's capable of a lot more. A lot more.

To put it another way, I was expecting Ridge Racer for the PSP to look and perform maybe as good as the admittedly still glorious Ridge Racer Type 4 on PS1. I would have been satisfied with that. But then I booted it up and the damn thing exceeded my expectations by a considerable margin.

We have a game that looks to be running at a super-slick 60fps, and consistently. We have a game that incorporates lovely fancy lighting effects such as realistic sun glare and sunlight reflecting off the road surface. We have a variety of different environments and times of day, helping each track and variation thereof to have its own distinct "feel" through vibrant colours and its overall atmosphere. We have a game that is, in other words, absolutely oozing with style and overwhelming technical competence.

Perhaps most exciting of all is that Ridge Racer for PSP treats itself as a kind of Ridge Racer's Greatest Hits, incorporating tracks from a bunch of the previous games including the original, Revolution, Rage Racer and Type 4 — there may be more, but these are what I've seen so far.

And it plays well, too. Adopting the style of drifting introduced in Ridge Racer V on the PS2, the game has a nice smooth feeling to its control, even when using the D-pad for steering. In fact, I'd probably go so far as to say that in contrast to the later Ridge Racers on console, the D-pad is actually preferable to the PSP's dodgy analogue nub; I might feel differently if I was playing with the Vita's sticks, but since I have a physical copy I'm playing on original hardware.

The music's great, too, covering a variety of different styles including one track that has some absolutely glorious saxophone work, which is something I'm always in favour of on a soundtrack. So far I've only played the game through the PSP's internal speakers while my wife was watching The Great British Bake-Off so I haven't quite had the full effect as yet, but I'm looking forward to breaking out the headphones and diving further in to what appears to be a lovely soundtrack later today.

In short, if you — like me, I'm ashamed to say — have ever passed up on the PSP version of Ridge Racer but are otherwise a fan of the series, I encourage you to rectify that immediately. You will not be disappointed!

There are so many great games that have either just come out, or that are coming out very soon. I have pre-ordered most of them, and in some cases they've already arrived; they're all games that I'm keen to write about in detail on MoeGamer, so I definitely have some interesting things lined up for the next few months!

Here are the games I'm planning on covering in the near future. Let me know if there are any you'd be particularly interested to hear about sooner rather than later!

Rance 5D and VI
I've already set this for next month. I've beaten Rance 5D and am about halfway through Rance VI at present, which means I should be done with it by this time next month, when I'd come to write about it.

Rance is a fascinating series of RPGs that gets pretty much no recognition outside of the existing eroge fanbase, so I'm keen to talk about it in detail and explore its history, its extensive lore and, of course, the games. Expect more Rance in the future, too, when MangaGamer finish working on Sengoku Rance and Rance Quest.

Eiyuu*Senki
This has been out on PS3 for a while, but JAST USA finally released the adults-only PC version today. I have a copy of the rather lovely looking physical edition on the way, so this is very much on the agenda at some point in the near future.

For those unfamiliar, Eiyuu*Senki is a strategy RPG featuring genderbent versions of numerous historical heroes. It sounds like a lot of fun, and is supposed to be a solid game, too. Looking forward to exploring it.

Ys VIII
I've already covered the Ys series up to Memories of Celceta in great detail, but the first completely brand-new Ys title (i.e. not a remake or reimagining of an earlier game) for years is definitely worth exploring as its own thing. I will probably wait until the whole translation controversy is done and dusted with this one, however, since I'm keen to have the best possible experience from the outset.

Nights of Azure 2
I absolutely adored the first Nights of Azure, and am very excited to play its sequel. Not a lot more to say about this at present as I've been deliberately avoiding reading too much about it so I can go in fresh. I hope the music is still in the Castlevania mould.

Blue Reflection
The very concept of this one sounds interesting and arty, so I'm fascinated to take a peek. You take on the role of a young ballet dancer whose career is cut short by an injury, but who obtains magical powers. There's a blend of slice-of-life school days action and supernatural monster fighting RPG action, and some absolutely gorgeous art, so I'm looking forward to this.

Senran Kagura Peach Beach Splash
I always have time for the Senrans, particularly when they're doing something new outside of their usual hack-and-slash remit. Peach Beach Splash sounds like a really fun game, and I'm sure it will be backed up by the same delightful blend of tones and strong characterisation that I've come to love the series for.

Mary Skelter: Nightmares
Dungeon crawlers seem to be having a bit of a renaissance recently, but this one looks particularly interesting with its fairy tale-inspired characters, blood-splattered aesthetic and intriguing-sounding mechanics. This is another title I don't know a lot about as I've been avoiding reading too much on it, so I'm excited to go in "blind" when the time comes.

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Then of course, alongside all these games I have numerous titles on various platforms going right back to the SNES era that are well worth exploring in depth. It's going to be a busy few… years, I think!