Premise: Second Cold Steel game. Time to get the band back together and defeat someone!

Graphics: 3D Vita

Battle System: Awesome Trails placement & AOE turn-based

Personal Rating: 9/10

RPG Backtrack about this game: https://rpgamer.com/2022/03/rpg-backtrack-253-gundam-rean/ 

Premise: Remake of the old Pokemon Pearl. Collect 8 gym badges, beat the Elite Four, become the Champion. This felt dated, bad mix of Pokemon in battles: bats & Bidoof & Geodudes = 90% of encounters. Too many trainers, they had Gen 1 far too often.

Graphics: 3D Pokemon, kinda Funko Pop-y

Battle System: 1 vs 1

Personal Rating: 6/10

Premise: Second Crossbell game. I started it in January, but had Trails'd myself out in late 2020. Great Crossbell cast and location. Picked back up, played a ton! This game has had my mouth hang open multiple times with plot twists, reveals, and tons of other plot points that just come out of nowhere and are amazing. The endgames is a lot of super-long dungeons and it spoils the heck out of Cold Steel 1 & 2, but otherwise perfect.

Graphics: PSP-era 3D/sprites

Battle System: Awesome Trails placement & AOE turn-based

Personal Rating: 9.5/10

Premise: You're a guy opening a shop in a small town. Go into dungeons, get loot, sell loot. You have to set prices and stand around while people browse and buy. Catch shoplifters! It was fun to basically grind money and win that way.

Graphics: Pretty nice pixels

Battle System: ARPG, hack/slash/shoot arrow, barrel roll, I do enjoy it.

Personal Rating: 7.5/10

Premise: Orphan recruits a harem to help the god of light that's stuck in the body of a cat. Town to town adventure, crosses into a new world. Could be mistaken for a vanilla mid-90s SNES or early PS1 JRPG, but it has its charm. About 8 hours too long though

Graphics: Pretty nice pixels, PS1 era?

Battle System: Turn-based

Personal Rating: 6.5/10

Premise: You're steambots, you need water. Water is scare in space. Find water on space ships. A SRPG where you move around like a platformer and shoot at enemies.

Graphics: Pretty 2D

Battle System: strategic movement on platformer screens

Personal Rating: meh

Premise: You're a guy helping a noble find some dude.

Graphics: modern anime

Battle System: ARPG, hack/slash/magic. Not a fan of it. Seems stunted somehow

Personal Rating: 

Premise: I'm a monster rider helping figure out what's going on with the local monsters. Kinda started feeling too repetative and exactly like the first game.

Graphics: modern 3D

Battle System: Turn-based, monster collecting

Personal Rating: 

Premise: It's straight up GBA Pokemon, but with better graphics and Nexomon. Fewer types, simple gameplay. Fun though!

Graphics: pixel art, like GBA, but a little 3D

Battle System: Turn-based, monster collecting

Personal Rating: 7/10 I reviewed it!

Premise: Glitchy, empty piece of shit. Half the stuff didn't work and the battle system was ass! Monster collecting plus farming kinda works, but broken & battles suck.

Graphics: pixel art, people look like ass, everything else looks good

Battle System: Turn-based, monster collecting

Personal Rating: 4/10 I reviewed it!

Premise: Girl in a floating island kingdom must figure out how to save the world. It seemed pretty neat, but I played it during a gaming funk and it didn't strike me as neat enough to continue at the time.

Graphics: really beautiful pixel art

Battle System: Turn-based

Personal Rating: hard to say this early

Premise: Play golf, win tournaments, upgrade your character. Finished the Beginner Rank, halfway through Amateur Rank tournaments. Fun game, much like Mario Golf.

Graphics: Good Vita 3D

Battle System: golf

Personal Rating: 6.5/10

Premise: Play golf, win tournaments, beat a monster by hitting golf balls at it. Far too short, little to do. Waste of money TBH, but it came out when the kids were hanging out with cousins, and the multiplayer saw a ton of time the first week. They kept releasing free content for a good while, but as an RPG, it's trash.

Graphics: modern 3D

Battle System: golf

Personal Rating: 5/10

Premise: Play soccer, win tournament. It's a soccer RPG. You can train to raise stats. Random encounters are little 60-second matches. It's hard!! Some match restrictions are very hard and required up to 10 retries. Soccer was less about skill (which I had, I did great), but more about stats and overcoming always being at the disadvantage.

Graphics: 3DS era 3D

Battle System: soccer

Personal Rating: 6/10

Premise: It's a Dragon Quest Monsters game. So much added fun stuff to the Joker 3 game here: monster fusing, color changes, online fun. Awesome addition to the DQM franchise, loved the Pro post-game. Cool that it wraps up Joker 1 & 2 as well.

Graphics: 3DS era 3D

Battle System: DQM turn-based battles

Personal Rating: 8/10

DQ Slime Time with fan translators of this game: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/bkTxbnFlTzb 

RPG Backtrack on DQM games: https://rpgamer.com/2022/07/rpg-backtrack-262-goo-tta-catch-em-all/ 

Premise: You're trying to climb a tower aka, a spire. You select one of a few characters and start climbing. You bring some cards and make decisions about pathways to take while climbing. Battle, find new cards & items and go as far as you can. Die, earn EXP, and repeat.

Graphics: Nice 2D with minimal animation, nice lighting

Battle System: Card-based

Personal Rating: 7/10

Premise: You're a Mii trying to defeat the evil bad lord dude. You build 3 parties of other Mii people to battle this guy stealing everyone's faces and putting them on enemies. Just when you think you've won & halfway through... nope, do it all again and again! Was fun, but twice the length it needed to be.

Graphics: 3DS-era 3D, but a bit nicer on Switch

Battle System: Turn-based, but you only control 1 character

Personal Rating: 6/10

My RPGamer Review: https://rpgamer.com/review/miitopia-switch-review/ 

Premise: Battle through all the DQ games 1-10 by playing various songs from the games to beat enemies from those games. Fun pachisi tracks mode, free play, battle song by song through games. Get a bunch of points and battle the Dragon Lord!

Graphics: 3DS-era 3D, but more cartoony

Battle System: Rhythm game

Personal Rating: 7/10

DQ Slime Time about DQ Music (and a bit about this game): https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/eJnQedzlTzb 

Premise: Yo-kai as a actiony dungeon crawler through all the areas in the first couple games. Got too repetitive too fast, and really wasn't better than the Blasters content in Yo-Kai Watch 3. It was worse.

Graphics: Cartoony 3DS 3D

Battle System: Actiony mission-based dungeon crawler 

Personal Rating: 6/10

Premise: A fishing RPG! Fun, but incredibly repetitive/grindy. Catch fish to raise the EXP of a monster you have with you to clear a path to the next area, rinse & repeat. Catching fish is fast. Sister is in a coma, you save the game by talking to her & telling her about your journey. The goal is to catch the River King to save the sister.

Graphics: 3Dish DS

Battle System: catch fish

Personal Rating: 6/10

Premise: You're a pervert. Monster girls need help. You help by rubbing. Other than that it's hard-type Etrian Odyssey DRPG, just not that good. Classes (outfits) to unlock and lots of party members, but you can only bring a few.

Graphics: modern

Battle System: Turn-based

Personal Rating: 6/10

Premise: Why did think SaGa wouldn't be SaGa? This series is not for me. Too obtuse, abstract, weird, odd, iffy, whatever.

Graphics: PS1 era 3D

Battle System: Turn-based

Personal Rating: 3/10

Premise: The last of OG Final Fantasy?

Graphics: PS1 era 3D

Battle System: Turn-based,  but ATB = I quit quickly

Personal Rating: 5/10

Premise: It's a Dragon Quest Monsters game. So many upgrades from the original GBC games, and now twice as long with a full post-game. Combining and playing online is great. 

Graphics: 3DS era 3D

Battle System: DQM turn-based battles

Personal Rating: 8/10

DQ Slime Time with fan translators of this game: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/bkTxbnFlTzb 

RPG Backtrack on DQM games: https://rpgamer.com/2022/07/rpg-backtrack-262-goo-tta-catch-em-all/ 

Premise: Take 4 people and go across the world to defeat evil. Tons of jobs/asterisks to obtain and level up. Lots of strategy based on the job dynamic in the party. Pretty good stories at each of the towns. 

Graphics: Chibified 3D, looks nice on Switch 

Battle System: Turn-based battles with turn manipulation 

Personal Rating: 7/10

Premise: Beat up a bunch of Link & Zelda enemies & save something or beat something. Never got into Zelda games or Breath of the Wild, so this didn't connect with me much, but Plattym4 & Plattym5 enjoyed it, so we played through until the end!

Graphics: 3D, didn't like the style

Battle System: musou 

Personal Rating: 6/10

Premise: Framed Japanese mafia duffus that loves Dragon Quest gets sent to jail. Now it's time for revenge! Really enjoyed the gameplay, but I can't PS4 game anymore. Found myself falling asleep at night while playing, too many cutscenes.

Graphics: modern 3D

Battle System: Almost DQ/Persona 5 blend turn-based

Personal Rating: 7.5/10

Premise: Go to town with a big flying island above it. Farm and battle. Went ahead and bought this and a controller for my Wii this year just to give it a go. The world just seemed so empty, NPCs barely anywhere, and the runies were a horrible system to manage. Glad I tried it, but I gave in about a third of the way through, just too long, too much management, too sloggy to play on a TV console.

Graphics: Wii 3D

Battle System: ARPG

Personal Rating: 6/10

Premise: You're a kid RPGing around a Western.

Graphics: Nice 2D pixel art

Battle System: I quit it a few hours in because I didn't like it.

Personal Rating: 4/10