RPGs Coming This Week, 9/22/24

Beyond Galaxyland – September 24th (PS5, XSX, PS4, XB1, Switch, Windows)

Folks with a taste for the cinematic will find a lot to like about Beyond Galaxyland, a sprawling sci-fi RPG from solo developer Sam Enright. Taking cues from the likes of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Chrono Trigger, the game follows a high school kid named Doug as he voyages through space and time to undo the devouring of Earth by a shadowy cosmic entity.

Gameplay-wise, Beyond Galaxyland is a turn-based affair that promises to be light on the grinding. There’s strategy to be sure—you steadily recruit party members with different combat specialties—but the game’s primary focus seems to be the story and exploration. Check out the rich and varied environments the latest trailer showed; that and the galaxy-spanning adventure are the real draws here. Plus, there are a ton of side quests, including hoverbike racing and wildlife photography. Here’s hoping all these elements coalesce into a satisfying adventure.

by Gio Castillo

Bloomtown: A Different Story – September 24th (PS5, XSX, PS4, XB1, Switch, Windows)

One of the indie RPGs I’ve been highly anticipating this year is Bloomtown: A Different Story. I mean, it has a distinct pixel-art style, Persona-esque monster-taming and social link gameplay, adventurous kids bravely working to save a town, and a 1960s American setting that’s eerie and full of mysteries to unravel. Everything about it fascinates me, and Audra’s demo impressions seem to fit with mine.

Even more good news is that it supports controllers, which is great if you’re like me who would rather avoid using a mouse and keyboard for RPGs. The Steam demo immediately hooked me with all its stuff to do, so I can’t wait to see what else Bloomtown has in store for us!

by Tin Manuel

Dark Sky – September 24th (Windows)

Sometimes, nothing scratches that itch for big-brained strategy like a good card battler, and Dark Sky looks to blend exactly that with some good old RPG mechanics. Ever want to upgrade your cards via a branching skill tree? Ever wish you had a tailored party of characters to go with your tailored deck? Do you enjoy building a range of decks to be ready for any situation? This game should have all of those features and more.

by Gio Castillo

GreedFall 2: The Dying World (Entering Early Access) – September 24th (Windows)

Here’s a pretty major game taking the Early Access route. GreedFall 2: The Dying World is Spiders’ follow-up to 2019’s GreedFall, an action RPG that became a bit of a sleeper hit, especially for those looking outside of the AAA sphere. Our own Audra singled out the narrative as a highlight and gave additional positives to the combat and world-building. It wasn’t a perfect game, but it was a more-than-respectable effort, and it seems Nacon also thought so.

GreedFall 2 picks up three years after the first game, this time taking place in a never-before-seen part of the world. You play as a native Teer Fradeean snatched and taken to the “Old Continent,” which, yeah I’m surprised and impressed that they went there. Here’s hoping EA provide Spiders ample opportunity to work out the kinks because this could be something special.

by Gio Castillo

9th Dawn Remake – September 25th (Windows)

The 2012 top-down, open-world action RPG 9th Dawn is being remade. You have one guess as to what it’s called.

9th Dawn Remake looks to be a faithful one, but developer Valorware has taken the time to upgrade the graphics from 2D to “2.5D”, as well as (smartly) introduce a first-person mode. Quests, combat — all these things and more have been improved in some way so players can dungeon crawl solo or as a group to their hearts’ content.

by Gio Castillo

Dragonero: The Rise of Draquir – September 26th (Windows, macOS)

Dragonero: The Rise of Draquir is a turn-based dungeon side-crawling RPG from Operaludica, an Italian indie studio. The setting for Dragonero is based on an Italian Sword and Sorcery comic book series from publisher Sergio Bonelli Editori.

Five characters are available to start the game, first in individual stories then, as the game progresses, a party of adventurers questing for treasure, glory and to fulfill their mission to protect the troubled lands of Erondàr.

Depending on the reader and perhaps the developer’s influences, it may be an insult to state this but, Dragonero: The Rise of Draguir immediately reminded me of the long-running browser-based MMORPG Adventure Quest.

by Claton Stevenson

Flowstone Saga – September 26th (Windows, macOS, Linux)

NOTE: Steam listing issues have led to Flowstone Saga getting pushed from last week to this week. We’re reposting a little bit of our original write-up, but you can consult last week’s column for the full thing.

If you’re like me, you know Flowstone Saga from it being a frequent sponsor of JRPG YouTubers. At this point, many of us just tune out games with “ad-core” vibes automatically, but I’m here to tell you this game is far from generic, dime-a-dozen shovelware. Flowstone Saga‘s an honest-to-god RPG that combines turn-based and real-time combat with Tetris, and it’s got plenty of life sim DNA to round it all out.

by Gio Castillo

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom – September 26th (Switch)

If there was a single element of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom that not only elevated the game and made it a fascinating experience — not to mention guaranteeing its longevity online, as people continue to experiment — it was the Ultrahand and other tools. TotK was designed to be open, not only in terms of exploration but also in allowing players to try all kinds of builds simply to see if they would work. This openness meant everyone’s gameplay experience was unique.

On the surface, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom looks very reminiscent of 2019’s excellent Link’s Awakening remake, but the powers bestowed upon her by the Tri Rod give Princess Zelda a new flavor of experimental powers. As you can see above, building a tower of “water bricks” is a perfectly reasonable way to scale a cliff. You can save and recall all manner of objects, create a staircase of beds if it suits you, copy enemies to have them fight for you, and more.

Echoes of Wisdom is most notable for answering Zelda fans’ many, many, many years-long requests for a game in which the titular princess is the protagonist (a desire only strengthened by her prominent roles in Breath of the Wild and TotK). That this is finally happening alone is cause for excitement. But the blend of the toy box-style visuals with a different kind of adaptable and experimental gameplay is novel, carrying TotK‘s DNA — but in a new way — to a classic top-down Zelda.

As you can tell, I am excite.

by Mike Salbato

The Nameless: Slay Dragon – September 26th (Windows)

The Nameless: Slay Dragon is a turn-based JRPG from solo developer Nameless Sword Studio. The visual style is quite interesting, appearing to be hand-sketched and coloured, giving the game a unique style. Gameplay-wise, The Nameless: Slay Dragon is on its surface fairly standard fare, but the developer promises that exploration will feel meaningful, choices weighty, and progression complex and customizable.

In terms of story, The Nameless: Slay Dragon has very little detail available other than this poem from the game’s Steam page.

Once upon a time, there was a great hero
He swore a covenant to rid the world of all evil
Wielding a holy sword He slayed the dragon
His deeds were etched into the fabric of this land
Yet His figure, faded from memory
And His name, was never celebrated…

This is your hero’s story!

by Claton Stevenson

Reynatis – September 27th (PS5, PS4, Switch, Windows)

My favorite thing about FuRyu games is that they always aim high, even if their budgets don’t quite match that level. They tend to settle into hidden gem or diamond in the rough territory as time goes on, and I’m curious to see if the new action RPG Reynatis will “suffer” (I prefer “enjoy”) the same fate. It’s certainly one of the studio’s more interesting concepts to date: what if modern Japan, but magic exists and it’s a problem? It’s a long story involving drugs, oppressive laws, and magical cops, but two young people representing opposing ideas eventually cross paths in Shibuya Crossing. The thesis meets its antithesis. Synthesis? Reynatis.

Worthy of note here is an extremely apt crossover with NEO: The World Ends With You, as well as the involvement of the legendary Kazushige Nojima as scenario writer and Yoko Shimomura as composer. You know, just in case you didn’t already know Reynatis has two of the best to ever do it, uh, doing it. In which case, are you interested now? Because if you are, the next step is probably to check out the demo for this flashy hack-and-slasher on your platform of choice.

By the way, FuRyu says it runs rather smoothly on Steam Deck.

by Gio Castillo