Reviews on The Afterimage

Review : Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake [2025]

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Uh oh, here comes Grandpa Mike again to blabber about some ancient game from the Paleolithic Age. Sit down kids, and let me tell you about that classic JRPG series, Dragon Quest… Well back in my day it was called Dragon Warrior, because that’s what Enix chose to localize it as, and — oh yeah, did you know that Square and Enix used to be completely separate companies — hey, come back, where are you going?

Putting the bit aside, Dragon Warrior II was a formative game in my youth. I played it when I was about 6 or 7 years old and man, what an awful introduction to JRPGs that was. That last sentence might come as a surprise. Truth is, the first third of the game is totally fine, but sometime around acquiring the ship the difficulty spikes like crazy and random enemies start to drown you in status effects, use instant kill spells on you, or just straight-up oneshot your characters with basic attacks. The game is infamous for this; a rushed development cycle led to the back half of the game barely being tested before release and as a result, was unbalanced to a truly comedic degree. People did manage to finish it, but it was often an exercise in frustration (or excessive level grinding). I certainly never finished it; the fact that I was an impatient kid with undiagnosed ADHD meant that I chose to flee from a lot of fights and thus got my underleveled ass handed to me, frequently.

Fortunately, SquareEnix saw saw fit to release an HD-2D Remake of Dragon Quest I & II late last year, and it is a considerable glow-up from its ancestors. I opted not to play the original Dragon Quest and jumped right into the sequel; from everything I’ve heard the original game just largely hasn’t held up as well since the party consists of only the hero, severely limiting the developer’s options for making combat interesting. Jumping right into Dragon Quest II felt immediately familiar though; the world, music, and aesthetic were immediately recognizable even with the fresh coat of paint. Akira Toriyama’s iconic art shines in this high-res spritework, and the orchestral remixes of the soundtrack are largely a delight. The Dragon Quest series has always been a little goofy and whimsical, so although a handful of the re-orchestrations sound a bit too stiff and fancy, the vast majority of the tracks are excellent (the remix of the overworld theme “Travelling With Friends” gets a special shoutout for being the best version of it).

So let’s talk about the main cast of your party members and how they work in combat; because this is a classic JRPG you’re going to be spending a lot of time with them in random encounters. All of the characters are the descendants of Erdrick, hero of the original game, whose children founded the kingdoms of Midenhall, Cannock, and Moonbrooke. This makes your characters the up-and-coming royals of these kingdoms and cousins to one another.

First up is the Prince of Midenhall. He’s the main character and the one you name at the start of the game, and plays the role of your classic bruiser. He can’t use magic and is not very impressive in the early game, but he quickly learns a lot of specialized abilities and attacks that do extra damage to certain types of enemies, and in the mid to late game he is an absolute wrecking ball (especially when buffed by his allies). The Prince of Cannock is second to join the crew, and he strikes a balance between physical and magical power. He has some seriously useful and devastating spells such as Omniheal and Kazap, but they are very MP hungry and he’ll drain his reserves fast if you’re not careful. The Princess of Moonbrooke rounds out the original trio; she is your classic spellcaster and features a wide array of spells that cause or heal negative statuses, a smattering of healing spells, and of course a buffet of powerful attack spells of varying elements. Newly playable in the HD-2D remake is the Princess of Cannock, younger sister to the Prince and somewhat of a jack-of-all-trades, but she serves as an excellent buffer/debuffer and extra attacker in a pinch.

I found the ability and spell spread between the characters to be generally well-thought-out, making for some interesting and strong synergies between them. Combat is frequent, but fortunately the game lets you choose from a set of AI tactics for any or all of your controlled characters, lightening the load and making combat flow much faster. New since the release of the remake of Dragon Quest III (which actually released before this title) is the ability to prohibit your characters from using certain abilities when being run by AI tactics, which is incredibly useful for preventing them from wasting a turn on sub-par spells or inversely, spamming their most expensive spells until they’re out of MP. There were times when the regular encounters got tedious (especially when exploring the larger dungeons), but the late game encounters and most of the boss fights are very engaging, encouraging you to take manual control and carefully plan out your turns. True to the Dragon Quest formula, you can also use many weapons and armor in combat to cast a specific spell at no cost, adding an extra incentive for you to carefully comb through dungeons for the really good unique loot. This makes gear feel much less disposable and itemization choices more meaningful.

The story itself is also greatly expanded, featuring a much larger script, voice acting for most of the important scenes, and also a handful of brand-new dungeons and encounters to overcome. I wouldn’t say that the story is groundbreaking, but it has some twists and turns, lots of great character moments, and so much of that unique, charming personality that the series is known for. This is capped off by the addition of a brand-new extra ending, culminating in an additional boss fight at the end and an epilogue that serves to tie together the entire Erdrick Saga in a fantastic, and honestly, touching way. The first three games in this series are connected but not in the way you might expect, and so I won’t spoil how if you aren’t already familiar with it. If you’ve previously played this trilogy though, I can wholeheartedly recommend seeing Dragon Quest II through to the true ending. I can, without a doubt, say that this is the definitive version of the origins of this classic series.

It feels great to have finally seen the end of this story, albeit almost 35 years later. Now, I’ll patiently wait for the inevitable HD-2D Remake of Dragon Quest (Warrior) IV, my personal favorite of the series and one that I actually did finish as a kid. Until then…

Great

★ ★

Highly Recommended

Review : Unbeatable [2025]

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

After playing Rhythm Doctor in April and being kind of disappointed with it, I was looking for another rhythm game that would satiate my craving for a good game in the genre. After a quick perusal of my Steam wishlist I invited D-Cell’s Unbeatable to step up to the challenge. Did it rise to meet my expectations? The answer to that question is… complicated. The core of the rhythm gameplay is enjoyable enough and it has a lot of poignant things to say about our innate drive toward creativity, but is hampered by some significant storytelling missteps and rampant technical issues.

I definitely feel like I was primed to enjoy Unbeatable. I had originally heard about it from (personal favorite) YouTuber Julian “Noodle” Morley, who voices Treble, one of the main protagonists in the game. It honestly makes a great first impression, asking a series of questions about how you feel about music and rhythm games and then adjusts the difficulty based on your responses. Then you’re dropped right into the thick of things and assume the role of Eve, vocalist for famous rock band One More Final, which is about to perform one last show before they break up permanently. As Eve you can freely walk around the backstage area talking to people and getting a sense for how she relates to her bandmates Rest and Grace (guitarist and drummer, respectively). After taking the lay of the land and perhaps saying hello to some starstruck fans, you lead Eve onto the arena’s stage for one last show.

It really does start out with a bang. The cutscene depicting the band’s performance is animated with tons of expressivity, and the original music for the game is great and fits the vibe it’s trying to invoke. This is a trend that remains throughout; in terms of presentation Unbeatable is, well, exactly that.

When it hard cuts from the concert to the present day and you take control of the main protagonist Beat, however, is where the cracks start to show. Your time between the rhythm game sections are spent in a directed adventure game type of gameplay where you can freely wander the immediate area and interact with people and points of interest, and this is how it tells most of its story. The first few chapters of the game struggle with pacing and establishing character motives; Beat is a down-on-her-luck singer and guitarist who links up with Eve’s 12 year-old daughter Quaver with the intention of starting a band. We get vague hints and gestures toward what happened at her mother’s concert 7 years ago - apparently a malevolent force called the Silence appeared during the concert and caused a disaster but the details are mostly murky. There’s also a paramilitary police force called HARM put into place to prevent the Silence from returning, music is now illegal and instruments are confiscated as contraband. Aside from those facts, frustratingly little is elaborated upon in regards to the state of the world the characters exist in. More is explained (much) later in the story, but in my opinion the game keeps its critical plot cards too close to the vest for too long.

Because of this, the relationship between cause and effect gets iffy when it comes to the characters’ actions. Supporting characters Treble and Clef get arrested by HARM in Chapter 2 supposedly because law enforcement thought they were connected to a chase that Beat and Quaver lead the cops on in the prior chapter, even though this doesn’t make any sense; at least fifty HARM officers would have gotten a clear view of their faces before or during the chase. Beat and Quaver decide they can’t let them take the fall for what they did and supposedly hatch a rescue plan… off-camera. The game smash cuts from one scene in a restaurant directly to them being in prison no more than a minute later after having botched said plan. This is played up for laughs somewhat but it still feels disjointed, as if I’d accidentally skipped a crucial scene somehow. This kind of thing happens constantly, with important development happening off-screen that changes character relationships and lurches the plot forward whenever the writers seem to have decided that they’ve lingered too long in one place. It happens enough to make me wonder if the development of this game was troubled and if a lot of material was cut, which at least would account for these notable gaps in storytelling.

Speaking of troubled development, remember how I mentioned technical issues? Well, Unbeatable has its fair share and then some. It was developed in the Unity engine but I can’t fault the toolset for the issues I see here; the game often feels tangibly janky, like a Jenga tower precariously wobbling back and forth in the wind. A rapid-fire list of some of my grievances follows:

The characters are 2D sprites that don’t always translate well to its 3D environments; area boundaries are often poorly-defined and there are some transitions between height levels that make the character sprites glitch out when passing over them. During dialogue sequences characters will often talk over each other and text boxes will overlap. Sometimes this appears to be intended but other instances are clearly not. I failed one puzzle in the sewers area because Quaver’s sprite popped into the foreground and I could no longer see what I was doing (frustrating, but also kinda funny). The jail pool minigame is just straight-up awful. For some reason there are two offset adjustments (why??) for the rhythm game portions but it still took me a lot of trial and error before I was satisfied with the visual and audio sync, despite the game having a (not so great) sync wizard. I could list a lot more issues and nitpicks but I think you get the picture. Between the technical issues and the baffling storytelling decisions, there were a few occasions where I nearly put the game down and resigned myself to not finishing it.

But then the funniest thing happened. Somewhere around Chapter 4 there’s a noticeable improvement in the quality of the dialogue and the coherence of the storytelling. I was chuckling more often than not at the characters’ quippy dialogue. It finally starts to answer some of the fundamental questions you’ve had since the start of the game, and character relationships evolve to become more fleshed-out and meaningful. What you’re playing no longer feels like disjointed filler, and honestly it seems like the developers hit their stride here and finally got their shit together.

What follows is an incredibly insightful and affecting exploration of why people feel the drive to be creative and the process involved in getting to the point where your art truly reflects your own, authentic voice. In a flashback scene, Beat performs a song she wrote to her mother (who is also a musician) who gives her the valuable feedback that she’s “hitting all the right notes but performing like she can’t wait to be done with it.” This is essentially her character arc: her doing the incredibly difficult work involved in finding out how one expresses one’s true self in their art rather than imitating an ideal. At times the game is practically monologuing at you and it veers awfully close to being self-indulgent, but fortunately not to the extent where it didn’t land for me. I was captivated through the whole ending sequence, and the story finale was deeply memorable and left me with a warm feeling afterwards. After finishing it, I had the opening guitar riff from the game’s original song “Bookend” stuck in my head for days.

You’ll notice that I haven’t talked much about what is ostensibly the main point of the game, the rhythm action gameplay sections, and that is because… It’s OK. It’s fine, maybe even good. You’re basically hitting enemies on the beat when they overlap with either a high or low attack depending on their position. It shares a lot of the same elements with Dance Dance Revolution except with half the buttons, a different perspective, and of course without using your feet (though if you want to hook up a dance pad and try, be my guest). There’s an arcade mode alongside the story section which I’ve sunk a few hours into and yeah, overall it’s not bad. I certainly enjoyed its gameplay more than Rhythm Doctor’s.

So in the end, would I recommend Unbeatable to others? I’m not so sure. The game certainly has some lofty highs with its rocking soundtrack and excellent visual presentation — some of the setpiece moments of the story have some breathtaking animation and staging. Unfortunately the technical issues and the story’s dramatic early faceplant dampen my enthusiasm and make it hard for me to recommend. I’m glad I stuck with it in the end, but recommending a short game in which the first 70% is tedious but the back 30% is great is difficult for me to do. I think if you’ve read this far through you will have a good idea if this is your kind of game. It’s got deep flaws but also some very bright points. I’m still on the hunt for a rhythm game I’ll love; I think I’ll try Sayonara Wild Hearts next to see if that can finally scratch the itch for a game that’s the total package. If you have any other suggestions, feel free to share them.

Good

∅

No Recommendation

Review : The Hundred Line - Last Defense Academy [2025]

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve always been enamoured with the idea of a story that has multiple outcomes, one that allows the reader to be a participant and actively guide it onto a different track. Video games seem like a natural home for this type of narrative since player choice is a primary element of them, but in practice this is often a far more thorny proposition than it would seem due to the sheer amount of writing, art, programming, and sound design that needs to be coordinated to bring the vision to life. Many games try this, few truly succeed, and the vast majority end up making major compromises to end up with a shippable title.

The Hundred Line - Last Defense Academy is a game that takes this ambition and runs as far as it possibly can with it, resulting in a work that is one of the most impressive pieces of interactive fiction I’ve ever seen. Though it is far from perfect, the sheer variety of stories told based on the choices of the player make it a unique gem, and something well worth playing if this is your type of story. The developer, Too Kyo games (founded by Danganronpa’s Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Ushikoshi of Zero Escape fame) by all accounts bet the entire farm on this game’s success, and fortunately it has resonated with both critics and players.

The Hundred Line bears a resemblance to some familiar japanese RPG narratives such as Persona, but many of these similarities are only skin deep; it truly does feel like a fusion of the chief creatives’ prior works. The player takes the role of Takumi Sumino, a high-schooler whisked away from his peaceful life in the dome-like Tokyo Residential Complex and alongside a cast of delightfully weird characters, is tasked with defeating mysterious invaders in order to defend a secret inside the titular Last Defense Academy that could spell salvation or doom for all of humanity. The game primarily presents its story in a traditional visual novel format, but also features grid-based tactical battles where you command the Special Defense Unit members in protecting the school.

In all the media promotions I saw for The Hundred Line, the branching narrative and importance of player choice was often touted as a major factor. This could easily lead to some confusion though, as the first part of the story (“Route 0”) acts as an extended onboarding to the game and its large cast of characters and will take somewhere around 20 to 25 hours to complete. That’s not to say that it’s at all boring; it’s a fully-fledged narrative with lots of interesting twists and turns. Sacrifices will be made and truths will be revealed, culminating in the end of the route at Day 100. In the end, Takumi is left with a feeling of emptiness, having lost several of his comrades and wondering what he could do differently if he were able to do it all over again.

The Special Defense Unit members fight their battles using a power called Hemoanima, basically blood magic, which has mysterious properties that manifest differently in every user. It is also cannibalistic, meaning that it becomes stronger when the user drains the blood from another Hemoanima user. After reluctantly draining several other users, Takumi’s innate power to rewind individual turns in battle becomes supercharged and he is able to wind back the clock all the way to the beginning of the 100-day cycle at the school. He does so, and so begins the real meat of the game. Welcome to The Hundred Line - Last Defense Academy 2!

Takumi returns to the past with full knowledge of the events to come and immediately sets out to change history for the better. Almost immediately you’ll be confronted with heavy decisions that will drastically alter the timeline and thus the fate of the members of the unit. Some of these decisions lead to very unexpected places, but fortunately in the second portion of the game you’ll have access to a timeline map that allows you to jump back and forth between any branch or go back to any individual decision and see the alternative, all while keeping your progress. This is very welcome, because these diverging storylines can be so radically different that it’s inevitable that you’ll end up living through consequences you didn’t foresee. There is a proper “second scenario” written by Kodaka (and many excellent story branches off of this mainline) that culminates in an excellent-if-bittersweet ending, but also timelines that dip into almost any genre you could imagine. There is a route where there is a serial killer offing the unit members one by one, a slapstick comedy route, a sci-fi story (written by Ushikoshi), a horror/zombie tale, and even a route where Takumi unwittingly becomes a cult leader.

There are 22 main branches in all, and 100 unique endings split between them. These feature tons of unique pieces of art and are interspersed with voice acting to bring the characters to life. I cannot imagine how much of a task it was to coordinate all of these different timelines; even though they go in radically different directions they all share a central core of facts between them, and Ushikoshi’s sci-fi route even expands upon the time-travelling narrative and Takumi’s knowledge of other parallel realities. All of these are canon according to the devs, so players are free to pick which ending they prefer the most as their own personal canon.

So I’ve talked quite a bit about the story so far - what about the battles? Well, as a turn-based tactics fan I’m pleased to report that they are quite solid. I found the battles to be an enjoyable, almost puzzle-like experience; all characters have a set of 3 standard moves that can be upgraded with materials found through battles and exploration sequences, and all are completely different in terms of what they excel at i.e. clearing weak chaff enemies, focusing down elites, buffing allies, building up armor and tanking hits from large foes, etc. Furthermore each character has an ultimate attack used by consuming portions of the voltage meter, which is built up by damaging enemies or taking other defensive actions. These attacks are powerful and can wipe out a massive group of enemies all at once, and can even be used as a desperation attack at low health, which uses zero voltage but kills that character for the rest of the wave (slain allies revive between waves). Clearing medium and large enemies give back AP, which you can use to take additional actions on your turn. This makes for an interesting dynamic where you can smartly use your voltage to clear a big group of heavies, refunding enough AP to chain action after action, wiping out the majority of enemies in a single turn. This is where the puzzle-like element comes in, and it’s very satisfying to work out a sequence of actions that clears the board of the majority of enemies in one fell swoop.

Alas, for all the strengths of this game it is still far from perfect. As enjoyable as the battles are, they start to become repetitive in the second portion of the game. You’ll often see repeats of the same battles or minor variations thereof, and the vast majority of them (but not all) are defensive battles at the school. Fortunately you can skip any battle you’ve seen previously and keep most of the rewards from winning, but despite this being a necessary quality-of-life feature, it makes the battles feel somewhat superfluous once you’re deep enough into the game. The branching story route structure is wildly creative but is also uneven in places. The sheer amount of writing that needed to go into this game necessitated splitting up the authorship duties between Kodaka, Ushikoshi, and several other support staff and guest writers. Characterization is not always totally consistent and certain routes feel like they were truncated due to a lack of time (see that article I linked above). This may be controversial but I do think seeking out a “skip list” in order to avoid the weakest storylines is totally reasonable, because the best storylines in the game are in fact VERY good. Certain routes such as Second Scenario, Retsnom, S.F., and Killing Game are widely regarded as some of the best material these devs have ever written and should be sought-out. I’d still recommend playing the game and picking whichever options seem right for your first couple of runs, however. Some of these twists are just too good to risk spoiling.

The Hundred Line - Last Defense Academy may not always be banging on all cylinders, but when it’s good it’s among the best video game storylines I’ve ever experienced. Its characters can lean into tropes but also show a level of depth at times that will surprise you. If you appreciate the art of interactive storytelling, it’s an ambitious experiment that is well-worth experiencing.

Great

★

Recommended

Read about my rating methodology here.

Review : Death Howl [2025]

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve never fully been able to put my finger on why, but using the term “deckbuilder” when describing a game has historically been a surefire way to make me immediately lose interest in it. Despite having several friends that were into Magic the Gathering and other collectible card games, I never personally got into them. I think primary hangup on these types of games might have something to do with the mental effort necessary to craft a cohesive deck out of so many options, but also from needing to juggle the mental load within a game, running the mental probabilities of getting a card from my draw pile that might make a specific tactic work. Maybe that’s not strictly necessary for casual play, but I have the type of personality where when I commit to a new hobby or game I have a deep need to be good at it.

Death Howl is one of the rare games that has been able to push past my reluctance to engage with deckbuilding games and even ended up being one I truly loved. It describes itself as a “soulslike deckbuilder,” a combination of genres that I can’t say that I’ve seen before. I’d personally describe it as a grid-based tactical deckbuilder game with soulslike elements; sometimes I do feel as if the soulslike label is simply overused as shorthand for a difficult game but I do see other parallels that I’ll touch on later.

The biggest element that got me to ignore my initial reservations is the fantastic pixel art and dark vibes of the setting. Death Howl is a story set in 6000BC Scandinavia where a mother (and budding shaman) named Ro journeys into the spirit world to bring back the soul of her deceased son Olvi, who suffered an untimely death under circumstances that are initially unclear to the player. The spirit world is beautiful but harsh, and she is beset on all sides by spirits of wild beasts and other twisted beings, hellbent on preventing her from disrupting the natural order of life and death. It effectively mixes magical elements with the grounded reality of human emotion, and is a highly affecting contemplation on death, grieving, and guilt. The aesthetic is truly excellent, with the aforementioned pixel art featuring strong character design, vibrant colors and grotesquely beautiful creature art. The sound and music is worth shouting out as well; most of the tracks are understated but thrum with latent tension and dread, kicking up the drums, shakers, and other percussive instruments when combat begins.

Death Howl’s card interactions and deckbuilding mechanics are also incredibly well designed. One very smart thing that does is that it limits the maximum size of the player’s deck to a slim 20 cards, which helped to make the mental load of calculating probabilities far more manageable for me. It also limits you to a maximum of 5 exhaust cards, which are powerful but are discarded for the remainder of the battle and will not recycle back to your draw pile. When it comes time to create your deck, you will start with Realmless cards as a base and will gradually unlock cards specific to the region you are in which synergize with its central mechanics. There are 4 main regions in the spirit world and each will ask you to play in a drastically different way and build your deck to suit one of a few playstyles specific to it.

Ro has 5 mana at the start of the battle and this recharges every on player turn. Cards have a mana cost associated with them, and playing them in various ways will charge Ro’s Overwhelmed special meter which has a different effect per region such as healing Ro, restoring her mana, et cetera. Importantly, cards from a realm different from the one you’re currently in are hit with an additional +1 mana cost. This makes it so that realm-specific cards still can be played in different realms, but you’re encouraged to create decks specifically tailored for certain zones that primarily feature cards unlocked there. This keeps the deckbuilding element fresh and interesting. In games with this many options there is a natural tendency for players to try to find one approach that works well and use it like a skeleton key to crack open the rest of the game; fortunately Death Howl avoids this pitfall and is all the better for it.

Each region has a set of central mechanics that the decks naturally synergize with. All are very engaging, and it’s hard for me to pick a favorite region because the synergies are all so strong and satisfying to use, whether that be the emphasis on high mobility and backstabbing enemies in the Realm of Hostile Plains region, or the complete opposite in the Realm of Piercing Winds which rewards you for moving as little as possible, dragging enemies to you, and tanking their hits by building up your block stat (which also fills your Overwhelmed gauge). Winning battles and acquiring crafting materials expands the array of cards available to you, and it was both delightful and agonizing to see great new cards appear and wondering what I’m going to drop from my deck to make room for them.

So as to why the developers describe this as soulslike – the game definitely brings the difficulty and intimately learning its core systems and enemy attack patterns are crucial to survival. You’ll take a lot of damage and barely scrape through battles early on in new regions, before you begin to unlock realm-specific cards. Enemies also respawn whenever you rest at a ritual circle, this game’s equivalent of bonfires. Fortunately the game does let you roam freely from realm to realm and perhaps encourages you to do so, because each area has its own specific progression tree featuring a unique buff trinket and allows you to unlock an additional trinket slot that is a permanent character upgrade. You can also freely experiment with deck creation; there are 15 unique save slots for decks that you can freely swap between and tweak between battles. Often you’ll be tasked with getting through several difficult battles in a row; tailoring your deck to the challenge, playing cautiously, and preserving your health becomes very important in these instances. Each area also features a fully unique boss encounter where the puzzle-like design of the encounters really shines. In the game’s best encounters, you may find yourself chaining together a golden set of actions that lets you rip through the enemies and end your turn with all enemies dead or otherwise unable to harm you, and these instances are so incredibly satisfying and reward strategic play. Build your deck right and you will almost never find yourself saying “I got screwed by a bad draw.” Although this is not a genre I frequently engage with, I still found the level of challenge to be well-balanced and rarely frustrating.

It’s a testament to Death Howl’s solid design and unique aesthetic that it got even an avowed deckbuilder hater like me to not just play it, but play it to 100% completion. If any of this has sounded even slightly appealing I encourage you to at least give its demo a try. It’s a triumph on so many levels, with fantastic system design and a somber, affecting atmosphere and story.

Incredible

★ ★

Highly Recommended

Read about my rating methodology here.