Worst RPG Second Place Third Place

There are a number of cases where games initially created for a thriving adult-only market in Japan prove strong enough to stand up when their initial raison d'être is removed so the game can be provided to a wider audience. However, Eiyuu Senki: The World Conquest is not one of these cases. As part of that ever-expanding group of titles where a solitary male character finds himself inexplicably surrounded by adoring females, these games can live or die on their main characters. Unfortunately, the main heroine in Eiyuu Senki is just the right mixture of incompetent, naïve, and needy to really grate through the seemingly endless scenes of meaningless events that try to make her cutesy, and the supporting cast isn't much of an improvement.

The battle system and premise have some interesting ideas but just don't provide anything to grab the player, and it all becomes dull very quickly, especially when the narrative is so focused on pointless side events that add nothing to the plot and just make the characters seem like idiots. The whole world conquest aspect looks geared to those who fancy a bit of grand strategy, but it's a very weak imitation of the genre. In the end, Eiyuu Senki may do enough for those with a one-track mind, but for everyone else it's guaranteed to be an instant turn-off.

There are ways to put RPGs and beat-em-ups together. Swords & Darkness ignores all the fun ones and decides to emulate the most monotonous aspects of the beat-em-up while pasting a clunky RPG veneer over the mess. Forget having interesting adversaries or landscapes to occupy the time. Who would ever want a reason to use different moves consistently when wailing away with one attack button over and over is much easier to program? It's indicative of this game's failure that it couldn't even make pausing work right, unless people around the world were puzzled and confused until an onscreen voice shouting 'Pause!' came along to spell it out.

We were disappointed by Dragon Fin Soup. It was a game that looked great, but when it released completely fell apart. Bugs, awkward controls, and tiny text plague this roguelike to levels where it's unplayable at times. In fact, it is next to impossible to see what you are attacking on the Vita version, so much so that after a few hours of feeling disoriented by the game, staff members promptly deleted it. Dragon Fin Soup was too ambitious for its own good, and has nothing to offer roguelike fans outside of clunky controls and a pissed off Little Red Riding Hood.

by Alex Fuller, Mike Moehnke, Sam Wachter