Story

Move over, Mickey! The initial hero of Grail is Ratagnan, a mouse-ketier on a quest to find the titular Grail. This journey takes our anthropomorphic rodent protagonist through villages, farmlands, and forests, where he encounters a wide array of animal allies… and enemies! Beyond its basic setup, Grail mostly opts for a non-traditional way of fleshing out its story, with lore primarily featured on individual card unlocks. This makes it so that the basic premise remains clear and accessible enough for anyone to understand, and those that want to dig deeper into Ratagnan’s story can do so without the narrative getting in the way of gameplay. Eventually, other characters will join your roster too, each adding their own perspective on the hunt for the Grail.

Graphics

Visually, Grail sits somewhere between hand-drawn illustrations and pixel art, with an art style that feels reminiscent of early ‘90s PC games. The anthropomorphic woodland animal characters are expressive and the background art, which covers a wide range of locations, is stunning. Combat features fluid animations and dynamic particle effects, with colourful visual feedback bringing the cascading cart interactions to life. Grail’s visual performance is great as well, with no notable graphical bugs, frame drops or performance stutters during our playthrough.

Sound

The background music that plays throughout Grail fits with the game’s overall cosy tone. Sound effects serve as a way to punctuate card plays, status effects and hits. Occasional chatter sounds, like a character chuckling or reacting to something, are present, but Grail doesn’t feature fully fleshed-out voice acting. Not that the game needs this, mind you, since the narrative takes a backseat and most of the focus is on gameplay.

Gameplay

The main gameplay gimmick of Grail is that it is a roguelike PVP card battler where the deck plays itself. You set up deck synergies, energy management, and card order outside of combat, and during battles, cards draw and play on their own using energy generation. While card battles are resolved automatically, that doesn’t mean that the entirety of Grail plays itself. A run of the game is structured around daily events. During the day, you can choose from a multitude of non-combat events, whether it’s training against NPCs, taking on side quests, or even selling cards. A day culminates in an asynchronous battle against the “ghost” deck of another real-life player, which is where those automatic battles come on. Winning six battles against other players yields a full run victory.

There is quite a steep initial learning curve here, due to dense card text, complex status interplay, and overwhelming keywords. Cards feature not only energy costs but status effects and different card types as well. And that’s before even getting into the stickers that can be used to modify cards to further customise your deck. Because the battles play out automatically, Grail is all about deck building, and once you get past that initial information dump and start to see synergies between different cards, you’ll find that there is both a ridiculous amount of freedom and a plethora of possible strategies here. Time will tell whether or not a ‘meta’ built around deck archetypes will eventually shape itself. This is still an asynchronous PVP game after all.

That inevitably translates into a game with extremely high replay value. There are multiple playable characters, hundreds of cards, and dozens of passive traits. Run wins unlock new character classes, card lore, and trophies. We found Grail to be far more forgiving of defeat than more traditional roguelikes too, and with short, snappy runs ranging from 15 to 45 minutes, it’s very easy to get in that “one more run” mindset. You’re looking at easily dozens, if not hundreds of hours of gameplay here. For just under €10, that’s a hell of a bargain in our books, and Grail should definitely be on your radar if you like card battlers.

Conclusion

With its wide array of strategies, seamless auto-battler framework and deep card customisation, Grail is a fantastic little game. While its steep learning curve may deter players, especially genre newcomers, we wholeheartedly recommend you give Grail a chance if you’ve been looking to dip your toes in deck building. The game’s charming presentation is the icing on the cake.

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Story

The story of Disgaea Mayhem is actually quite simple. You are hired by Overlord Tichelle to round up her six Psychalmates, who have revolted after the passing of Tichelle’s father, Overlord Margraf. It seems the kingdom is known for its ‘flan,’ and the six retainers have stolen all of it. You, N.A., are a hired mercenary who has to defeat all of the Psychalmates to retrieve the stolen flan. It’s a silly premise, but it works for a spin-off Disgaea title. We did find the story to be a bit shallow, and after the first few chapters it also felt like it took a backseat for most of the experience. Even so, the offset was fun, and that’s what counts here.

Graphics

Graphically, Disgaea Mayhem is not a bad-looking game. As always, the franchise seems to be a bit stuck in the past, as everything looks a bit more appropriate for a last-gen title rather than a current-gen one. Even so, the character designs always look amazingly whimsical, and even with the genre shift, everything still oozes that typical Disgaea atmosphere. The stages themselves look a bit simplistic and feel a bit empty at times, but this is also typical for the ‘musou’ genre. Overall, everything looked quite good, and even in handheld mode we didn’t encounter any stutters or frame drops on our Switch 2.

Sound

As always, Disgaea never fails to entertain when it comes to its sound design. The music is catchy, and the soundtrack is varied enough to remain entertaining throughout the entire experience. The SFX also provide great audio feedback for the on-screen action here. That being said, it’s the voice acting that always steals the show in Disgaea games. The cheesy English voice acting is back, and we loved every second of it. Almost all key dialogues are fully voiced, but smaller NPC interactions are not. We did notice that the story took more of a backseat in this spin-off adventure, however.

Gameplay

Disgaea Mayhem is a Disgaea spin-off title that trades its turn-based combat for Musou-like battlegrounds. In the game, you’ll play through short stages where you’ll kill small groups of enemies before ultimately facing the stage’s boss. The game also offers wave-based missions for weapon upgrades and free play missions in which you have to kill specific enemies. For the most part, the goal remains the same: kill enemies, kill the boss, and get rewards.

The combat here is quite simple. You choose a weapon type, and you’ll have normal and heavy attacks, as well as skills that come with your chosen weapon. The game keeps things simple, and you can just perform different combos and activate your skills, which go on cooldown after use. The controls are quite clunky though, as the camera doesn’t automatically follow your character, and locking onto bosses doesn’t even mean your attacks will be aimed at them. This kind of annoyed us, as we missed a lot of attacks after dodging incoming attacks, because our character then would not face the boss again. This is only a minor annoyance, but it felt like something from a game two decades ago, rather than a modern interpretation of a Musou-like title.

All in all, the game isn’t that long. You’ll see most of what it has to offer in about 10 hours. There are some artificial blocks in place to stretch out that time a little, via the reincarnation system and the Item World. The reincarnation system isn’t necessarily new to the series, as you can basically start from level one again, albeit with higher base stats, making the game easier as you go. The Item World is a system where you can level your items by completing wave-based battles. The further you get in the Item World of your chosen item, the higher it will raise its stats. It’s a fun way of leveling your gear. Even so, the game lacks a bit of variation, and in many cases you just pick the weapon of your choice and probably don’t swap to other ones after the first few stages. There’s also the Chara World to use your Battle Buddies, but like many other things in the game, it feels a bit basic. Don’t get us wrong, we enjoyed the inclusion of buddies that join you in combat, the option to actively use them to gain buffs in the Chara World, as well as the aforementioned Item World where you can level items. Our main problem is that everything feels very shallow and simplistic.

Conclusion

Disgaea Mayhem is a decent attempt at a spin-off title, but it falls short in some areas. The combat ended up being entertaining but a bit too basic, and the controls also didn’t always make things feel ‘smooth’. The story, while enjoyable, was a bit undercooked compared to mainline entries in the series. The visuals looked fine, but the world was very limited in size. Even so, if you’re looking for a bite-sized action title with typical Disgaea vibes, then you could do far worse than this one. If you’re looking for a fully fleshed-out Musou title, then you will not find it here.

Story

It isn’t exactly surprising, given both Mate’Morphosis’ theming and its gameplay, but there are no narrative elements or even characters present in the game. It’s a bit of a shame, because the world of chess is rich with imagery and iconography, and you’re not even playing regular chess here, so even something as little as a blurb could have gone a long way here, but alas, you’ll just have to come up with your own lore… or take Mate’Morphosis at face value and accept that the game has no story whatsoever. 

Graphics

Opting for readability over visual splendor, Mate’Morphosis features a minimalist 2D pixel art presentation. Levels consist of chessboards, featuring unique tilesets. These include terrain elements, such as gaps, breakaway tiles, and special arrowed tiles. Green tiles add moves and orange tiles deduct them. The game’s pixel art presentation is colourful and feels retro-inspired. The overall simplicity of Mate’Morphosis’ aesthetics belies the deeper puzzle design. The minimalist presentation also isn’t too taxing, and we didn’t run into any performance issues as a result.

Sound

Minimalism is something that permeates Mate’Morphosis’ soundscape as well. While you could describe the audio as barebones, we’d say that this approach fits with the overall design philosophy of the game itself. Music is present but forgettable, and sound effects do what they need to do without standing out. Voice acting is, of course, completely absent. It’s not a huge miss, and given that sound is irrelevant to the gameplay, we found ourselves simply shutting it off altogether and listening to podcasts as we made our way through the game. 

Gameplay

The main focus of Mate’Morphosis is gameplay, rather than immersion. Although the core mechanics are based on chess, you don’t need to be a grandmaster to find your footing here. Taking control of a single chess piece, your task is to navigate across a grid-based board to capture enemy pieces and reach the opposing king. Upon capturing an enemy piece, your own piece immediately transforms into the captured piece, adopting its unique chess movement rules. It’s important to note that this is still a puzzle game, rather than a turn-based strategy title, and the puzzles are tightly designed. You have a fixed move allowance, and taking too many moves results in failing the level and restarting. 

As we mentioned earlier, terrain plays a part in solving the puzzles, with arrowed tiles altering move counts, for example. Enemy pieces remain stationary and do not actively attack you. The game makes use of a tile-by-tile play control style, where your hand icon snaps to individual tiles rather than moving freely like with a standard cursor. This results in controls that feel precise and snappy, where every move you make feels deliberate, and where it’s difficult to blame level failure on misclicking. And trust us: you will fail levels, if only because of Mate’Morphosis’ poor onboarding. There are no upfront explanations or tutorials. Your only help is a brief “how to” menu screen illustrating movesets, so having at least basic chess knowledge is recommended. To Mate’Morphosis’ credit, in-game visual move indicators assist you with where you CAN move; it’s HOW that this knowledge helps you solve a level that is up to you. 

There are over 60 levels to complete here, though it’s worth pointing out that progression is strictly linear, and that you can’t skip a level you’re stuck in to come back to it later. This might have to do with the way new mechanics are gradually introduced, but the difficulty of the puzzles is uneven, so you might hit a frustrating wall before breezing through the next three or four levels. Not that Mate’Morphosis is a particularly long game, though how quickly you’ll finish it depends on your puzzle-solving skills. We were able to complete it in an afternoon. Like most of EastAsiaSoft’s budget puzzle titles, Mate’Morphosis has little to no replay value, but for the €4.99 price tag, it’s a fun little distraction. 

Conclusion

We’ve reviewed quite a few of these budget puzzle games by this point, and although they are rarely disappointing, they won’t set your world on fire either. Mate’Morphosis fits perfectly in the same lineup as Avenue Escape or Tiny Biomes, and that’s perfectly fine. It’s a budget-friendly “snack” in video game terms, and if you liked any of EastAsiaSoft’s previous puzzle titles, you’ll enjoy what Mate’Morphosis has to offer.

Story

There is no story present in Nitro City Racing. You pretty much get thrown into the experience with your first car, and then you can choose to drive around freely or dig into the career mode. As this is a basic lanesplitting game, there was also no need to actually have any story value. It’s all about the gameplay here, and that’s perfectly fine.

Graphics

Graphically, Nitro City Racing left us with mixed feelings. The game itself doesn’t look extremely bad, as it does have some charm thanks to its colorful visuals, it does look very basic and perhaps a bit cheap, giving it more the look of a mobile game. The maps are also very limited, and the game doesn’t have that many cars. That being said, there are options to tune the vehicles with spoilers and different color palettes, providing the player with some form of customization. We did appreciate that each of the available rides has a cockpit view with different details. While these still looked very simplistic, it added some charm to the experience.

Sound

The sound design of Nitro City Racing is not great. The soundtrack consists of tunes that are only a few seconds long and keep looping over and over again. Eventually, we simply had to turn the sound off and put on our own music in the background. The SFX are adequate for the onscreen action, but they also sound very cheap and generic. We did appreciate the effort of making all the cars sound different with fairly ‘realistic’ engine noises that could match the cars’ real-life counterparts. Of course, Nitro City Racing does not have any licensed cars, but a lot of the models resemble real car models.

Gameplay

Nitro City Racing is an arcade-like game that’s all about lanesplitting. It’s a more basic version of LANESPLIT, which we recently reviewed, and we would even dare say that Nitro City Racing feels more like a mobile game. That being said, it’s all about completing small missions in the career mode, getting a high score in the trial mode, or driving as long as possible in the other modes. You start with one car, and you have to earn money to unlock others and purchase upgrades for them as well. The offset is extremely simple here.

Truth be told, there is not much more to the game. You’ll always play on maps that have four lanes. You either have four lanes of traffic that go in the same direction or two lanes with traffic that comes in the opposite direction and two lanes that go in the same direction. You have to avoid cars, because it’s instantly game over when you hit another car. Only in the time trial mode will you just have a ‘penalty’ by coming to a complete stop when hitting another car. In the game, you basically grind money to unlock new cars and buy upgrades. You can also buy a few new maps, but they still offer the same four-lane setup. There’s truly not that much content here, which is also one of the game’s biggest issues. If you grind for an evening, you’ll probably be able to unlock most of the cars, and you’ll have played through the 54 missions in the career mode. These missions often just involve traveling a specific distance, avoiding oncoming traffic, scoring points with near misses, and so on. It’s a simple formula that works to a certain extent.

Conclusion

Nitro City Racing is not a great title, but it’s fun for what it is. The biggest issues here are the lackluster sound design and the severe lack of content. We still enjoyed our time with this one, but there are probably many other better games out there. If you want to zone out and just want to do some lanesplitting at high speeds, this one can be entertaining in short bursts. If you go in expecting a fully fleshed-out game, however, you’ll most certainly end up disappointed.

Story

Lunarium starts you out with the main character, Ave, a knight. As is befitting of the title, Ave faces monsters of all shapes and sizes who threaten the commoners. But during a fight, the creature Ave is fighting seems to get possessed by a dark energy that doubles its power, and Ave loses. She wakes up later in the home of a young woman named Lune. Not only did Lune use her mysterious powers to nurse Ave back to health, but she also seems to know more about the evil power that has slipped through the cracks of the world. The pair decides to venture forth together.

It’s a pretty typical setup for an adventure game, though it’s clear the writing of Lunarium has heart. While it might not be the most original plot, the focus is on the friendship between Lune and Ave, and this develops naturally throughout the game with many scenes of casual conversation and quiet moments the women spend together, in a way that made us invested in how their journey would end.

Graphics

We personally loved the painterly, hand-drawn art style of this game. Clearly Lunarium gets its inspiration from classic anime and JRPGs, both in terms of character designs and its overall aesthetic. There seems to be no line art, with all the gorgeous colors blending into each other to make the environments. The game also has a very minimalistic UI, compared to the more cluttered interfaces we’re used to from some other RPGs that constantly remind the player of the controls. It greatly enhanced the immersive vibes that the devs were obviously going for.

Sound

Again, in line with other JRPGs, Lunarium has a very ethereal and pleasant soundtrack. Special attention was devoted to the combat music, with plenty of different tracks and unique boss music for those epic battles that form the highlights of the game. It’s not a soundtrack we will play over and over again, but it’s good music all the same, and it fits the general fantasy setting more than fine. The game does not have any voice acting, aside from a few exclamations that the characters make during combat.

Gameplay

Lunarium is an action RPG with a focus on combat. All the expected moves are present: light attacks, heavy attacks, a defensive stance to catch blows, and dodging to evade an enemy attack. The game also uses the classic parry mechanic, where if you click the defend button with the right timing, an enemy’s attack isn’t only blocked but it also temporarily stuns them. Ave is the offensive team member and the character you play, but that doesn’t mean Lune doesn’t carry her weight. Like a typical support class, her magic charges up over time and can help you during combat, like healing you at the right moment.

Another thing that can aid you is the right equipment. Aside from the typical skill tree you can expect to find in most RPGs, where defeating monsters can unlock new abilities for you, there is also the cloak system. You can imagine your cloak is your armor, and there are various options that change the mechanics of combat just slightly, allowing you to pick one that fits your playstyle. In addition to that, the embroidery system allows you to equip passive bonuses to your cape. There are a handful of combinations, and we personally liked it, though it’s not the super elaborate customizations we’re used to from other RPGs.

Overall, Lunarium has an enjoyable gameplay loop, and the combat rewards patience and skill over mashing buttons. The combat segments are fun, and the world isn’t entirely linear, so you can go off exploring and find items within one larger area before getting back on track for the plot, which will unlock a new part of the map. The game is thus semi-linear.

Conclusion

Lunarium is a pretty good action RPG. We can’t say the game has anything outstanding we’ve never seen before, but if you’re looking for good combat mechanics, beautiful graphics, and a heartwarming story about friendship and hope, this is sure to keep you satisfied for a while.

We immediately jump in, with our character knocked out after being ambushed. Luckily, a few survivors of Camp Ashfield rescued us and kept us locked in a room, just in case we were secretly bitten. Once a few days have passed and we are still human, we get to meet all fourteen other survivors of the camp. Not everyone is as welcoming, thinking we will loot the place and leave when we get the chance, but the mutual consensus is that more hands to help are necessary. We are assigned a small outpost right outside the camp’s main area and are free to use it as we like. We get a ‘nice’ cottage and greenhouse, and are told to get to work.

The setup of the story feels very typical for an apocalypse setting, but that’s what makes the game so charming. It doesn’t try to deviate from the usual horror recipe, as it utilizes every aspect of the worldbuilding whenever possible. Not being friendly with the other survivors from the get-go feels uber-realistic, and being left to fend for yourself whilst also being part of the group gives the player just enough freedom whilst still being part of a community. All this makes it so that the recipe of a cozy farming simulator works well with the zombie setting we play in.

Ashfield Hollow uses the well-known 2D pixelated art style we’ve come to love with games such as Stardew Valley. The game plays in a 3/4 top-down angle, leaving players to see the world and characters move around freely. What caught our eye the first time was how toned-down the colours are in this game. Unlike other cozy games, everything the eye can see just looks rather bleak and dilapidated. In any other setting, this would be unappealing, but given we’re ten years into a zombie outbreak, it just fits and clicks. The game isn’t pretty, and it doesn’t need to be. The city is trashed, your cottage looks like it might break down any second, everything is one cohesive picture.

At the time of writing, Ashfield Hollow’s soundtrack isn’t its main selling point. The game plays the same two songs when you’re wandering around your own outpost or the campsite. The songs are alright, but without guidance, players will tire of them very quickly. We couldn’t help but notice a continuous tone in one of the songs as well, giving us a headache the first time around. When going into the city area, where the real danger lurks, the music luckily changes to a more ominous tune. The change was noticeable almost immediately and very welcome.

Furthermore, the game itself feels alive, ironically enough. Zombies will growl and grunt on the map, and interacting with items will make a matching sound effect. Another fun element that BitQuest Studio has implemented is the weather sounds. When it is windy outside, the player will be greeted with an occasional gust of wind going through their ears, adding to the immersion. This is a tiny, yet fun detail that makes the game all the more fun to play.

As mentioned earlier, Ashfield Hollow is a post-apocalyptic farming simulator. Though the initial premise is different, the gameplay isn’t. You have a plot that is your own, seeds to plant, and a crafting table. By looting abandoned buildings, the player can complete quests or sell items to gather more resources for both themselves and Camp Ashfield. By doing so, the player progresses the story and gets the chance to upgrade their outpost into something bigger. Eventually, there’s also the option to keep animals and set up traps for wild animals. The player can utilize all of these options however they please to survive.

When going outside Camp Ashfield, the player can go into abandoned buildings and loot cabinets. This is at first sight a simple task, until they run into a building with zombies. Upon seeing you, these creeps will slowly follow you and lunge at you to attack. You can shoot or hack at them, or simply choose to outrun them if you please. A health bar atop their heads will indicate how close they are to their second demise. On occasion, these zombies will persist in their chase and follow you outside their initial building, leaving you no choice but to engage with them. This adds personality to what would otherwise be a copy-paste NPC sprawled around the map, leaving us giggling and screaming at the same time.

Conclusion 

Even though farming simulators are a bit overdone at this point, Ashfield Hollow manages to change things up enough to differentiate itself from its competitors. The game might not have the same coziness factor as many other farming simulators, but that’s part of the charm here. This, along with the struggle to survive in a harsh environment, makes the game a unique experience for players to enjoy, and we do recommend giving this one a go. It isn’t necessarily a cozy farming sim, but definitely a pleasant one.

Story

Set in the world of Aleria, Din’s Champion tells the tale of a war between the goddess Valta and the god Din. Valta seeks to raze Aleria and rebuild it in her dark image. As the chosen champion of Din, you step in to halt her destruction. The task at hand may sound simple in theory, but in practice it is anything but so. You’ll need to make your way across Aleria’s different regions, where the story unfolds through dynamically evolving crises, world events and quests issued by randomised regional nemeses and NPCs. The divine war serves as the overarching premise for a dynamic regional structure, resulting in a non-linear narrative. Although this approach does mean that there isn’t a whole lot of room for narrative depth, it also means that no two playthroughs will play out in the exact same way. It’s also worth noting that most of that same backstory isn’t handed to you on a silver platter in-game, and we had to piece together context from the game’s Steam description and what little in-game info was spoon-fed to us.

Graphics

The classic 2D side-scrolling visuals are the first aspect of Din’s Champion to bring to mind Terraria, but as you’ll see when we get to the gameplay, the similarities don’t end there. If we were to outright compare the newer game to Re-Logic’s classic title, then Terraria definitely comes out on top. Din’s Champion simply looks plain and outdated. This is in part due to the world’s biomes being procedurally generated rather than designed by hand. Foreground and background elements in the layered 2D environments can occasionally be difficult to distinguish. The game’s UI is cluttered and readability of text is often hard as a result. Character and enemy animations are basic, janky, and stiff. To make matters worse, the game’s visual performance simply isn’t up to snuff either, with inconsistent frame rates, UI bugs and general visual clunkiness.

Sound

Like its visuals, Din’s Champion’s soundscape doesn’t quite deliver. Music is present but quite forgettable, and voice acting is very limited, although we were kind of surprised to hear an enemy declare that he had stolen our gold. The most notable feature about Din’s Champion’s audio is perhaps how the game features persistent audio cues for major gameplay occurrences, such as a distinct, repetitive alarm that triggers during town attacks. Other than that, ambience and sound effects are functional but not otherwise noteworthy.

Gameplay

With a title like Din’s Champion and a premise involving a literal war between deities, we almost expected an action-packed title akin to Dark Souls or Elden Ring. That’s not what we got. While there is combat in the game (and we’ll get to that), the main focus is on digging and mining for resources, crafting equipment, and building and expanding your town base. To Din’s Champion’s credit, the game handles these aspects exceptionally well. Terrain is fully interactive with destructible blocks, fluid physics and spontaneous Cataclysm events that reshape the landscape even without your direct input. A robust class system lets you pick and mix from dozens of starting classes with expansive skill trees and the ability to combine up to three classes per character. This ties into the game’s extensive crafting system, where you can create items across specialized stations and modify them through socketing and enchanting.

By comparison, combat is a shallow affair, relying on standard hack-and-slash action with weapon attacks and cooldown abilities as you make your way through Din’s Champion’s side-scrolling platforming segments. Exploring Aleria involves making your way through different overworld biomes and underground caverns to gather resources and complete quests. As you might expect, these areas are infested with enemies. Killing them is how you level up, so you can’t exactly ignore them, as much as we would’ve wanted. If Din’s Champion had completely focused on its world simulation mechanics, it probably would have been a much better game. Unfortunately, the undercooked combat and janky platforming mechanics drag down the experience as a whole. It doesn’t help that the game’s tutorials are lacking, to say the least. We often felt confused, not because of what we had to do, as the on-screen prompts tell you, but because of why you had to do certain things.

That’s not to say that Din’s Champion doesn’t have potential at all. The game’s unpredictable world simulation is nothing short of fantastic, with dynamic events, evolving quests and those aforementioned region-altering Cataclysms. The game has an unprecedented replay value for the genre too, thanks to that random map generation and over 50.000 (yes, really!) class/skill combinations. The campaign is highly customisable too, and we’re not just talking about cranking up the difficulty. There are options for permadeath as well as vitality penalties. This is the kind of game that gives you a lot of freedom to shape it to fit your playstyle, even reducing the amount of combat encounters, though an option to get rid of platforming altogether is missing. Still, for a mere €19.50, you’re getting a good little game here, even if it doesn’t entirely live up to that potential.

Conclusion

A surprisingly deep crafting loop and impressively dynamic living sandbox world make Din’s Champion a game that is well worth checking out if you’re a fan of games like Terraria. While the game’s replay value and character build customisation reach elite levels, the game’s overall appeal is tempered by its lack of visual polish, awkward 2D platforming, and basic combat mechanics, though.

Story

The story is pretty much a classic rags-to-riches story for your custom player joining Tsubasa’s team. The new storyline is set several years after the first game, where Tsubasa won the Junior Youth World Challenge, and you’ll start your new journey in Brazil. You, an unknown player, often blend into the background while the franchise’s main characters interact with each other. Most of the story is presented via dialogues with the occasional action-packed cutscene thrown in for good measure. While our vague description here absolutely doesn’t do the story any justice, we are sure that fans of the series will love what’s on offer here. You’ll learn a lot more about the different characters; there is a lot of side content, and it’s all just good old-fashioned fun. If you are new to the series, however, we doubt that the game can manage to properly pull you in.

Graphics

Graphically, WORLD FIGHTERS looks quite good. The franchise’s style looks great in 3D, and many iconic characters have never looked better. The gameplay looks smooth, and animations are fluid, which is important for a sports game such as this. Even so, we noticed quite a few frame drops during short cinematics, and the loading times are absolutely abhorrent at times. The latter often takes away from the otherwise fast pace of the actual matches. We reckon this is a case of not properly optimizing the game, as the graphics should not push our PS5 to its limits.

Sound

All in all, the sound design of CAPTAIN TSUBASA 2 isn’t bad at all. There is loads of voice acting in the story mode, and even the match commentary is quite nice. The Japanese dialogue and the English commentator create a fairly jarring contrast, however, as we would have preferred it all to just be in Japanese then. The supporting sound effects are decent, and the soundtrack was also quite nice. While playing, you’re focused on the action instead of paying attention to the sound design though.

Gameplay

Unsurprisingly, CAPTAIN TSUBASA 2: WORLD FIGHTERS is all about soccer. You’ll take on other teams, be it in the story mode, via local versus, or online pvp, and that’s pretty much all there is to the experience. There are hardly any modes to choose from, and the story seems to be the focal point of the game here. Obviously, the game isn’t a realistic simulator but more of an arcade-like experience. The matches are quick and have a few quirky mechanics that make it stand out from the competition. Sadly, some parts felt a bit too basic to be truly memorable.

While local and online versus options are nice, the meat and potatoes of the experience can be found in the story mode. Here you’ll play through many scenes that involve iconic characters from the franchise while you insert your own created avatar into the mix. Some portions of the story mode are purely dialogue, while others require you to play full matches. The mechanics here are quite simple, but accessible enough for those who aren’t used to playing sports simulators. It’s all about passing, tackling, and timing, to be honest. When you have possession of the ball, you’ll have to time your dribbles right, while when you want to steal the ball from your opponent, you’ll have to estimate your tackle distance correctly. One thing that’s extremely frustrating about tackling is that when you’re on the offense and another player tackles you mid-pass, the tackle will redirect itself to the target of the pass. So mid-tackle, the direction is changed, making passing a useless way of keeping possession at times.

The game’s twist on the standard formula, except for obvious ‘special’ moves, is that your players on the field all have an HP bar. If you want to score, you’ll have to whittle down the HP of the opposing team’s goalie. When shooting at the goal, you’ll have to choose a direction. The defending player will have to do the same, and when he guesses poorly, he’ll lose more and more HP. When normal players lose HP, they’ll stay down much longer when tackled. It’s a fun spin on the classic formula of soccer games, and it kind of reminded us of 1990’s Nintendo World Cup, where players would eventually not get up anymore after being tackled too many times.

Conclusion

CAPTAIN TSUBASA 2: WORLD FIGHTERS is a decent game for the fans of the series, but it didn’t captivate us as much as we would have liked. The arcade-like soccer mechanics were engaging enough to play through the story mode, but we were quite done with the game the moment we started playing online. The narrative was fairly entertaining, but newcomers to the series will not find anything here to truly draw them in. In short, if you’re a fan of the series and love your favorite characters coming to life with flashy visuals, then this game will entertain you for a while. If you’re just looking for a casual arcade-like soccer game, then this one might not be the best pick.

Story

Our story begins with a short sequence where our protagonist, the aptly named Miss Friendly, dreams about her childhood dog, Polka. When she spots a French bulldog who looks identical to Polka, Miss Friendly and her current canine companion Jazz give chase. It’s a simple premise, but Finding Polka is a game that is more about the journey than the destination, and what a journey it is. Our dynamic duo finds themselves pursuing Polka (or his lookalike) across increasingly surreal and imaginative scenarios, including a farm overrun by moles, a jungle, the insides of a whale, and even outer space. The story is told completely without words or traditional dialogue, relying instead on character expressions, gestures, and visual encounters. It explores themes of loss, remembrance, and the bond between human and dog using surreal and supernatural elements. It’s surprisingly effective at this too. Without spoiling anything, consider this your warning: Finding Polka will tug at your heartstrings. 

Graphics

The hand-drawn visuals are easily the standout feature here. Everything you see in the game started out as a ballpoint drawing, resulting in an intentionally imperfect line-art style. The aesthetic of the game brings to mind picture search books in the vein of Where’s Waldo. For the most part, the game is in black-and-white, with interactive objects highlighted in yellow. Since there is nothing forcing you forward, it’s worth it to take your time and breathe in the plethora of visual gags and tiny details, as this is where Finding Polka’s biggest strength lies. 

Sound

As we mentioned, there is no traditional dialogue present in the game, and the only voice acting you’ll hear is Miss Friendly herself calling out to either Polka or Jazz, with the way she pronounces the dog names indicating how she feels. The game’s music is Finding Polka’s other main way of conveying emotion. For the most part, the tunes are gentle but they evolve and adjust depending on the on-screen action. That said, we didn’t find any of the music particularly memorable, unlike the game’s visuals. Highly expressive sound effects and ambience are used effectively in place of speech to communicate the thoughts and reactions of other characters. 

Gameplay

It’s not just the aesthetics of Finding Polka that are reminiscent of picture search books, although there is more to the gameplay than simply playing “spot the dog”. Across its various levels and chapters, you’re tasked with guiding Miss Friendly towards Polka. This is easier said than done, as the environments are maze-like, and the path forward often involves solving environmental puzzles or helping out NPCs with simple requests. Some of those requests involve completing standalone minigames, ranging from the likes of whack-a-mole to vertical shoot-’em-ups. Not every minigame is mandatory, but even the ones that aren’t are fun little distractions. 

In fact, we’d go as far as to say that Finding Polka itself is little more than a fun little distraction, if that wouldn’t sound so dismissive. The game is designed to be approachable to everyone, and there are no strict fail states or harsh time limits present. The control scheme is also extremely simple, resulting in a cosy and stress-free experience. There is only one thing that irked us about Finding Polka’s gameplay: it isn’t always clear where to go or what to do next. You could argue that finding your way is the entire point of the game (and you’d be right), but missing an interaction point can occasionally turn the game into a mildly frustrating pixel hunt instead. 

It took us around three hours to complete Finding Polka, and to be quite frank, that runtime works to the game’s benefit. It’s enjoyable while it lasts and never overstays its welcome. That said, it has very low replay value, with post-game content limited to collecting real photos of the developer’s dog as bonus items. For €9.99, this is a matter of quality over quantity, and we’d say it’s well worth picking this one up as a low-friction way to unwind after a stressful day, rather than a deep or demanding game. In fact, it’s that same lack of depth that makes it difficult to really go into detail about the gameplay from a mechanical perspective. This truly is the kind of game where we need to outright say “trust us, just give it a chance” because of how well everything works together, even if individually the ingredients that make up Finding Polka aren’t all that impressive. 

Conclusion

We can definitely see why Finding Polka won Most Wholesome at gamescom 2026. While the gameplay isn’t going to set anyone’s world on fire, the game itself is a perfect storm of hand-drawn charm, absurd humour and heartfelt sincerity. We wouldn’t go as far as to say it is a masterpiece, but if any game is going to be able to put a smile on your face this fall, it’s going to be Finding Polka.