You're the grandkid of "Red", a famous Monster Rider from long ago. Shit's going down around the world with weird lights and monsters going crazy. Go village to village, solving their problems, fighting & recruiting monsters, which gets a little repetitive after a while.

Graphics: Nice 3D

Battle System: turn-based

Personal Rating: 7/10 

RPG Backtrack on this game

Shipwrecked Adol and crew on a mysterious island. 

Graphics: Vita 3D, reminds me of Cold Steel

Battle System: ARPG

Personal Rating: too soon 

RPG Backtrack on this game

Zagreus, the Prince of the Underworld and the rebellious son of Hades and Persephone, wants to get the hell out of..., well, Hades. You just keep going as far up to the surface as you can battling room by room in roguelike fashion. When you die, you come back and do a little upgrading and do it over and over until you escape.

Graphics: Cool isometric little colorful people & environments

Battle System: ARPG

Personal Rating: 6/10 - it was pretty good, but I'm not down for the learning curve and repetition to win

8 awesome, sometimes tropey, sometimes deeply disturbing stories that converge into a world-saving tale. Great JRPG, the best I've played since Dragon Quest XI years ago. The battle system is absolutely amazing.

Graphics: Beautiful 2D-HD

Battle System: Turn-based 

Personal Rating: 10/10

My RPGamer review of this game

It's a musou game. Fun fun, kill kill, ignore the story!

Graphics: Switch 3D, looks nice

Battle System: Musou

Personal Rating: 7/10

Sadly, it's not Golf Story. Graphical glitches and many of the sports were undercooked. Absolutely zero competition in the game. You're in some "tournaments" but you auto-win no matter how bad it is. The story is a convoluted hot mess. I quit for 3 months to allow for updates, finally powered through. Tennis Academy 

Graphics: Beautiful, modern, bright pixel art

Battle System: Golf & Tennis

Personal Rating: 5/10

Premise: You're a king. A god comes to you and tells you the next kingdom over is up to no good. You get a party of 6 monsters together and go see what's up. It's monster collecting and combining, but boring. Battles are barely anything strategic, just attack. You can set Macros to automatically do stuff, tons of buffs and debuffs and status ailment stuff. It gets rediculously complicated when monsters have 15 status effects each in 6-v-6 grindfests. All random item collection and such. Even combining isn't fun.

Graphics: pixels, looks old

Battle System: turn-based 6-v-6

Personal Rating: 4/10

Premise: Rean is a year older, so of course he's now a teacher. All the girls love him! Recreating the vibe of the first game with a new Class VII. Interesting new fishing, battle mechanics, and other things. Battles seemed harder a dozen hours in, got better farther on (because i dropped to "easy" haha).

Graphics: 3D, looks great

Battle System: Legend of Heroes, turn-based

Personal Rating: 8.5/10

RPG Backtrack on this game 

Premise: You get washed up on an island out of time where you can use cassette tapes to turn into monsters. Enjoyed the 2v2 battles, but all the puzzles on the overworld were just too much for my simple brain.

Graphics: 2D sprites, 3D overworld

Battle System: turn-based 2v2

Personal Rating: 7/10

My RPGamer review of the game

Dungeon-crawling, but in 3D and bare-bones graphics. Walk around, make sure to step on all spaces. Memorize what numbers mean what. Get to the bottom.

Graphics: Very little

Battle System: ATB with pause

Personal Rating: 7/10

Slime Time Sidequest episode all about this game

You're the new girl in school and get the popular card game banned in school. Oops. There's also something Sci-Fi going on that you need to investigate. Build a deck and get going!

Graphics: Odd, 2D art, looks like cutouts moving around

Battle System: Card battles

Personal Rating: 7/10

You're the new kid in town. Cartman recruits you to his D&D army. Fight to regain The Stick of Truth. As vulgar as the TV show, and even more so!

Graphics: Looks like South Park

Battle System: Turn based with timed button clicks

Personal Rating: 7/10

Political stuff and the world on the brink of war. Unfortunately the story really wasn't grabbing me, and gimmicky push and pull of the battle system didn't interest me at all; luckily I could shut that thing off. 

Graphics: Great pixel art

Battle System: Turn based 

Personal Rating: 6/10

Musou Madness!

Graphics: Nice Switch 3D.

Battle System: Hack and Slash

Personal Rating: too early to say

It's the original Etrian Odyssey, but now in HD!

Graphics: Upgraded 2D 

Battle System: Turn-based

Personal Rating: 7/10 all fun!

It's Etrian Odyssey II, but now in HD!

Graphics: Upgraded 2D 

Battle System: Turn-based

Personal Rating: 8/10

It's Etrian Odyssey III, but now in HD!

Graphics: Upgraded 2D 

Battle System: Turn-based

Personal Rating: 8/10

Rune Factory, but made by Squeenix. Was very invested in all the sidequests/side-stories and did about 90% of them. The farming was great, the battle system was easily side-stepped (but crappy), but everything else, including the story was simply amazing!

Graphics: Final Fantasy-y 3D

Battle System: Actiony, but sucky

Personal Rating: 9/10

Basically it's just a continuation of the buddy buddy game of Persona 5, but instead of "palaces" there are "jails".

Graphics: 3D, much like Persona 5 

Battle System: Musou, but in smaller battles.

Personal Rating: too soon to say

Fun exploratory platformer with turn-based battles, plus monster collecting. Really had a bunch of fun with this

Graphics: 3D, much like Persona 5 

Battle System: Turn-based

Personal Rating: 8/10

Nightfly's updated version of the original Dragon Quest.

Graphics: Pixel art, SNES-style

Battle System: Turn-based

Personal Rating: 8/10, really enjoying it

Slime Time Episode about this game

You're a half-wooly, half-human who takes over a farm and befriends all the humans in town and local monster settlement people. The characters are the best in the Rune Factory series. There are tiny little things that date the game to the DS era, but overall it's amazing.

Graphics: Nicely updated 2D & DS-era 3D

Battle System: Action combat

Personal Rating: 9/10

My RPGamer review of this game

You're a dude home from school on summer break. Solve mysteries and complete requests around the island. 3D ARPG with platforming challenges. Replay levels for rewards. Level up by eating food! It was quite fun, a bit on the easier side (I mean, if I could beat it...) which was nice. 

Graphics: PSP-era 3D

Battle System: Action combat, pretty simple

Personal Rating: 7/10

Silent old guy in a vest adopts young magical girl. The world is a mess, but they keep moving from city to city

Graphics: Pixel art

Battle System: Action combat

Personal Rating: too soon

Your sibling is abducted on Halloween. Trick or Treat and battle your way through a neighborood, mall, and subburbs until you get her back. Wear different costumes to change classes. Quite fun, beat it in one long sitting. I don't like button presses and the configuration and Xbox default lettering was always confusing, but did OK.

Graphics: 3D, looks a bit polygonal, but nice stylized 

Battle System: Turn-based with timed button presses

Personal Rating: 8/10

Gotta stop a war.  Gotta find Rean.  Gotta collect a million characters.

Graphics: 3D, very nice Falcom presentation  

Battle System: Turn-based 

Personal Rating: too soon

The bra of darkness has been stolen. It's turning monster girls everywhere bad. The panties of light can save them, but the set must be rejoined together to save the world from earthquakes and such. Good dungeon-crawling, but beware of NSFW content in image and gameplay. The dungeons, battles, and gameplay loop is compelling enough to keep going on this.

Graphics: 3D, Vita-era

Battle System: Turn-based 

Personal Rating: 7/10

Loaded this back up this year, I'd played maybe 10 hours a few years back. It's 85% the same as the updated Crystal, but frustratingly bare in some places. Very few, if any, AOE attacks make random battles take forever. Gave it a few more hours, but not nearly as fun as the newer one. 

Graphics: 3D, Vita-era

Battle System: Turn-based 

Personal Rating: 5/10

Couldn't wait for DQM3, loaded 1 back up before the WiFi servers go down next Spring. WiFi is a blast with so few people still playing. Grabbing tons of S & SS monsters and blowing through OP. These 3DS DQM games are great. Playing the fan translation.

Graphics: 3DS 3D

Battle System: Turn-based 

Personal Rating: 9/10

Excellent, excellent, excellent gameplay. Really disappointed in the story and lack of player agency. Stupid mute Psaro & it flat out tells me I'm a liar if I choose what it determines is not the right answer. Don't ask! Most of my enjoyment comes from catching over and over and synthesis. Nice reverse synthesis lookup and all the DLC has had me hooked and barely doing the story.

Graphics: Average Switch 3D

Battle System: Turn-based 

Personal Rating: 8/10

Stuck on a cruise ship witout WiFi for Switch, I turned to Vita and this game. I'm hooked, 100%. The story is OK and I enjoy all the character interaction. The best is the 5x5 grid of tasks to complete every 3 months. The time limit sucks for grinding, but it's been fine, I've completed 22-25 tasks every period, and finished the main task multiple times the first few days. Hooked on the alchemy system, making the best items I can make with awesome stat bonus and skills.

Graphics: 3D Vita age, looks bright & nice

Battle System: Turn-based 

Personal Rating: 9/10