[2018 Video Game Cull] Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past (3DS)

The entire world is a single tiny island with a castle and a small fishing village, until a bunch of kids discover strange ruins and a series of tablet fragments that let them revisit the worlds of the past and revive the lost continents.

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Overall: This remains the only main-series Dragon Quest game to defeat me in all incarnations. I suppose I’ll see how 11 does.

[2018 Video Game Cull] Skies of Arcadia Legends (Gamecube)

Sky pirates in airships! Fighting an evil empire! Discovering awesome magic powers!

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Overall: I had hopes for this and borrowed it from Bigscary on the possibility it would be something I’d enjoy. It wasn’t, unfortunately.

[2018 Video Game Cull] Final Fantasy Dimensions (Android)

Two kingdoms are vying for control of a magical crystal, but it shatters and sunders their world into two halves. The mix-and-matched teams on either side of the rift must unlock the power of the crystal shards and restore their world.

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Overall: I love some Final Fantasy nostalgia, but this was a combination of too much nostalgia (the plot feels like a romhack) and nostalgia for the wrong things (FF5’s job system with the brokenness removed). I enjoyed it for a while, but I have better things to do than force myself to finish it.

[2018 Video Game Cull] Magical Vacation (GBA)

The students of the Will-O-Wisp school are sent away to a summer school by the Valencia seaside despite warnings that several students from other schools had gone missing on the beach in the past. One afternoon, a strange monster called an Enigma appears on the beach, abducting some of the students. The hero must find the missing students and uncover the mysteries of the Enigma and war that occurred in the kingdom.

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Overall: In retrospect, I think now that I've played pretty much their entire catalog, my love affair with Brownie Brown has waned. Sword of Mana won my heart with a burst of nostalgia that disguised the fact that, yes, it was a very flawed game. Without that, it's clear that most of their work is an exercise in "how much stuff can we cram into this?" without real regard for "how can we make this game genuinely fun?"