This Week in Games

Laboring LaDS

Welcome back, folks! Our Power Rangers charity stream last weekend was a success! It was such a blast to roleplay with the folks, fun times all around. I also took the opportunity to join some folks for an anime trivia night at a local manga café. For one thing, I didn't know we had any of those in my city. For another, it was very fun! My team even won first place, although I'm very disappointed in myself for getting an Android Kikaider answer wrong. Also, I forgot a character's name from Kimagure Orange Road (come on, I even covered the show with our late friend Nick on This Week in Anime!).

We touched on this last week, but I think this merits a proper go-around. The SaGa series has gotten a bit of love lately, from the original Scarlet Grace and Emerald Beyond titles to last year's Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven remake. While Akitoshi Kawazu's brand of RPG trappings is far more inscrutable than what you'd expect from a Square Enix joint, the SaGa games have nevertheless endured, from the Final Fantasy Legend titles on Game Boy onward. And while the SNES/Super Famicom SaGa titles didn't necessarily become as big or beloved as the Final Fantasy titles of the era, they're still some of the best games of their time.

Thus, we arrive at 1993's Romancing SaGa. The game takes place in the land of Mardias, where an ancient hero saved the land from three evil gods by using the ten Fate Stones. A millennium has passed; the Fate Stones are scattered, and the forces of evil are regrouping once more. You play as one of eight characters setting out on a journey of their own. While the base story remains identical, each character has their own unique path through the game, along with their own potential relationships with the various people throughout the land of Mardias. Through it all, your chosen hero grows as only a character in a Kawazu game does: randomly.

The SaGa series (and by extension, Romancing SaGa) has a bit more in common with something like The Elder Scrolls than other RPGs: characters gain proficiency with weapons by using them over time, as do their stats. Skills are learned at random through a mechanic called "Glimmers," where they'll have an epiphany in the middle of battle and learn new attacks—for that specific weapon. This incentivizes keeping old equipment, as you must weigh the value of improved stats against the loss of your old skills. Additionally, characters have Life Points: if a character's health is depleted during battle, they lose one Life Point. Once their Life Points are used up, the character in question is dead for good. There are also various schools of magic with their own rules (schools of magic are opposed, and you can't learn both opposing schools at the same time), plus the many Fate Stones...

Romancing SaGa also had a lot of twists with exploration. Much like a Tales of... title, there were countless optional quests you could undertake, many of which were unique to each of the eight main characters. But you get no hints or signs as to where they are or how to trigger them. You might not even get any hints as to where the next part of the quest is. And if you're not careful with how you play, you might trigger a flag that renders the rest of the quest unplayable, if not an outright failure. Similarly, you also need to watch how often you level-grind: getting too strong means there's a good chance the rest of the monsters in the world might also grow stronger to compensate, risking the game being too hard to continue.

Romancing SaGa saw a remake on the PlayStation 2, sub-titled Minstrel Song. This not only remade the entire game with series regular Tomomi Kobayashi's art style (she had originally designed the characters for the SNES original), but also added extra playable characters, such as the titular Minstrel (formerly just an enigmatic NPC who'd pop in and out of the story). Minstrel Song even saw release in the US, though it was a bit too weird for many. The SaGa games aren't the most approachable RPGs out there, especially not when folks can play Final Fantasy X. To wit: I've never played Romancing SaGa. But! Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song saw a remaster in 2022 for PS4, Switch, and Steam. The remaster added numerous much-needed quality-of-life features, including speed multipliers, a mini-map, extra playable characters, and various options for New Game+.

More recently, Square Enix is now working on a second remaster of Minstrel Song, Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song Remastered International. As implied by the title, this version is primarily intended for PEGI regions, hence the inclusion of French, German, Italian, and Spanish language tracks. But this version of the game will also be available in the United States, and for good reason: it features more recruitable characters and even more extra bosses. This version will release on December 9 for PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch. There is no word on whether the new content will be made available for the non-International version, Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song Remastered; hopefully, it will be patched into previous versions.

Turn-based RPGs got a bit of discourse, courtesy of the release of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I'd like to think that discourse would lead to folks checking out Dragon Quest I&II HD-2D Remake. While I genuinely believe Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song is a good game that folks should check out, especially if they're RPG fans, I do concede it might be a bit too spicy for folks coming off of Clair Obscur. Still, it's worth a look, if only for Tomomi Kobayashi's art.

Folks who've followed me for ages know that Silvervale is my favorite VTuber. I don't make much mention of it, but one of my other favorites is her old friend, Mira Pink. She doesn't stream quite as often, but she knows what's good (she's a Sega-girlie at heart, she's a Phantasy Star Online lifer, and she's way more passionate about Sonic the Hedgehog than I'll ever be). And something she's madly obsessed with, to the point where even she chides herself for it, is how much she loves Love and Deepspace. The vampiric Sylus is her personal favorite (though I'm pretty sure she's also big on Zayne). Just a few days ago, she invested in a very fancy statue of the man.

Mira is one of many, many, many women who are very deep in the hole when it comes to Love and Deepspace, a female-oriented mobile game from Infold. This Chinese studio also made the massively successful Nikki series. Yes, that's the same Nikki as Infinity Nikki, the recent dress-up-themed mobile game that took the world by storm, where the protagonist openly wished that no woman would ever have to suffer menstrual cramps ever again. You can say a lot about Infold, but they know their audience. And they know it so well that Love and Deepspace has become a tremendous hit; even the recent Gamescom had to give Love and Deepspace props, awarding it as 2025's Mobile Game of the Year. It's well-deserved, too; while many of miHoYo's mobile games get a lot of attention (Zenless Zone Zero, Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail), Love and Deepspace isn't too far behind, boasting 50 million users as of this past January.

You've likely heard about some of the sillier aspects of Love and Deepspace—I know I have. The game can track the user's period, for example, and even has a mode where a player can introduce their favorite love interest to their real-life parents. And that's before you go into the many, many scandalous outfits and scenarios you can explore with the cast. Additionally, the story takes unexpected turns—there are apparently murder mysteries in the base game, according to what I've heard from Mira.

The thing is, you rarely hear anyone talk about Love and Deepspace. By all accounts, it's big enough to rival Genshin Impact, which is just about inescapable. And I'm not implying that Love and Deepspace somehow deserves it more than Genshin—but there's still startlingly little discussion about the game, even while it's completely dominating in its (extremely underserved) niche. It was the same with Infinity Nikki, too, once that game dropped (granted, Infinity Nikki eventually lost its audience due to the poor quality of its gacha mechanics).

I've always been open with recognizing that I'm part of the problem; as much as I try to give otome games the time of day, there's very little that I know about them. These games deserve a lot more attention. It boggles my mind to think that none of the Angelique games have ever been released in the United States—and Angelique is as positively foundational to "villainess" isekai as Dragon Quest III is to male-oriented isekai. It's a failure of the medium to properly discuss or contextualize entire genres because they're simply not popular. You see this a lot with tokusatsu; the likes of UItraman are incredibly foundational to anime at large, but so much of Ultraman's influence goes completely undiscussed by so many pundits because a guy in a red-and-silver suit wrestling with a rubber suit monster makes nerds blush.

I'm not saying this to pretend Love and Deepspace is some insanely-underappreciated gem; I do think there's plenty worth criticizing about it regarding its gacha mechanics, especially since LaD's home studio could just as easily apply Infinity Nikki's outrageous rates into Love and Deepspace—talk about strangling the goose that lays golden eggs. There's a lot of room for discussing otome games, and the world needs more people going out and chronicling this stuff, especially with how quickly games can vanish from the Internet. I'd hope one of the 50 million Love and Deepspace players share their experiences with Love and Deepspace, because we'd all benefit from it. I don't need to be obsessed with a smexy vampire dude to be interested in what makes a game so compelling to such a massive audience. Mira Pink can't do it alone!

Big news for longtime CAPCOM fans—some of their biggest names have struck it on their own. Hideaki Itsuno, best known as the series director for Dragon's Dogma, left the house that Mega Man built to form LightSpeed Japan Studio. Alongside him are two other major names formerly from CAPCOM: artist Daigo Ikeno, whom you likely remember from Street Fighter III 3rd Strike and Street Fighter IV, and Bengus, best known for his work on the Marvel Vs CAPCOM games.

So far, LightSpeed reports a team of approximately 40 developers, with the goal of merging art direction with narrative to create a compelling "AAA action title." They're also aiming for this new title to be a cross-platform game on "next-generation" consoles. Woof, I don't even want to think about next-gen consoles—can't we just stick to the consoles we have now? That aside, props to LightSpeed's ambition. Launching a new franchise is not easy. We have absolutely no idea what this new game is going to be like, so let's wish the studio the best as they get crackin'.

I watch a lot of Khodok on YouTube. While Khodok's wisdom usually revolves around the business of card games, there's a lot in there that also applies to other live services (like video games). He usually speaks of what he dubs "The Two-Year Curse," referring to the fact that many games fail to survive past two years. For him, a game that lasts five years has a decent run. A game that lasts ten years had a great thing going and might have even been an evergreen title. By that logic: man, what a shame that Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius is shutting down.

Developed by studio Alim and published by Square Enix in 2015, Brave Exvius is notable for being a Final Fantasy mobile game that didn't suck (that was Final Fantasy: All the Bravest, which was quite maligned for its predatory monetization). Brave Exvius hit all the right notes, from its world-spanning story about heroes protecting the world's Crystals to the game's turn-based battles to the positively gorgeous spritework for characters and enemies alike. Players could also summon "Visions" of other Final Fantasy characters to aid in battle. These included Ariana Grande. So clearly, the game is biting Granblue Fantasy's apple rather hard, but Granblue Fantasy was already quite heavily inspired by Final Fantasy anyway, so turnabout is fair play.

While Brave Exvius already ended its service worldwide, the Japanese version of the game is set to shut down this October 31. Until then, the game will be running a "Grand Finale Campaign" to wrap up the story. There are also plans for a "Memorial" version of the game to be released after the end of service, allowing players to continue exploring all the units and visions in the game. Hey, that's way more than what World Flipper and Dragalia Lost got—and it's a great gift for the folks who invested years of their time (and money) to the title. I hope more games offer "memorial" versions after shutdown, it's way better than a "Thank you for playing!" prompt.

Considering Square Enix's issues with live service titles, I can only wonder why Brave Exvius ended. I hadn't ever played the game, so I can't quite speak to its qualities. But not a lot of games last a decade, and I feel like if a game had enough juice to last a decade, it could have probably lasted a bit longer with some decent maintenance, maybe some good management, and aw crap, I just explained why it died, didn't I? Spoot.

At any rate, we can celebrate Brave Exvius for what it was. I hope that its longtime players can look fondly upon their time playing it—with relief that the game wasn't All the Bravest.

Do I have any Melon Parker fans in my audience? A group of singing male VTubers on YouTube is developing their own otome game. Titled Melon Parker: Kimi ga Nandemo Bu no Buchou-san!, you play as a childhood friend of the quintet as your group, the Everything Club, organizes a performance for a local music festival at Melon Pan Private High School. It'll release on PS4, Switch, Steam, iOS, and Android this November, in Japanese and English!

There is a lot of hemming and haww-ing about Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater, but we can at least appreciate one thing: the game's beloved Guy Savage minigame (wherein Naked Snake has a nightmare about bloody fights against vampires) is back, and Platinum Studios contributed to the sequence. That's way too awesome not to give props.

In the wake of Mario Paint's release, Nintendo has now updated all compatible SNES games on the Nintendo Switch Online service to function with mouse controls. This'll mostly be for games like Picross, mind, not across-the-board. What is widespread is the new option to remap controls for all SNES titles!

That'll do it for this week! With Labor Day Weekend upon us, I hope everyone can enjoy the official end to summer. Grab a hot dog, eat a burger, what have you. I, unfortunately, will have to spend my Labor Day Weekend doing work—but I'm sure you'll all be quite surprised at what I bring forth after! In the meantime, enjoy your Labor Day Labuh Day with some prime meats and some fruity juice. Heat that grill, and be good to each other! I'll see you in seven.

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This Week In Games! is written from idyllic Portland by Jean-Karlo Lemus. When not collaborating with Anime News Network, Jean-Karlo can be found playing Japanese RPGs, eating popcorn, watching v-tubers, and tokusatsu. You can keep up with him at @ventcard.bsky.social.

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