RPGFan's Retro Encounter

Boys and girls of every age / Wouldn't you like to see something strange? Halloween is a time to experience scares, eat candy, and also celebrate fandom through costumes. Costume changes in RPGs can take the form of in-game bonuses, clever references, or expensive DLC, but it's undeniable that a classy costume change can enhance the video game experience. Today, three panelists talk about their fa...

Could you imagine? A puppet seeing another puppet- and then making it work? Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure is... cute. Energetic. Pleasant. But also sort of twisted? Is Cornet an earnest puppeteer or an unsuspecting necromancer? Do we want to play the rest of the trilogy now? In today's episode of Retro Encounter we explore these topics and more, from sad pirates to frog centaurs. Featuring: Michae...

In Marl's Kingdom, the girl saves the handsome prince. Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure is remarkable for a 1998 RPG, in that it subverts a few traditional fantasy tropes, has multiple character-specific side quests, and punctuates it plot points with musical numbers. It also kicked off a trilogy of RPGs with multiple spinoffs, which received worldwide releases in 2022 and 2023. But how does it hold...

Through the Fire and Flames of Fate Dragon Quest hasn't had a main series release since 2018, but in the last five years we've had spinoffs, adaptations, and announcements galore. Three Retro Encounter panelists are joined by special guest Matt from the Dragon Quest Slime Time!  podcast to discuss the past, present, and future of Dragon Quest . Bring on Dragon Quest XII ! Featuring: Michael Sollos...

Mr. Blue Sky, please tell us why you had to hide away for so long. Where did we go wrong? Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter is a bleak, unforgiving game that grants players tremendous highs when they emerge victorious from a boss battle on the brink of death, and threatens brutal lows if you lose all your progress far away from one of its limited save points. Three panelists played Dragon Quarter for...

Don't be a D-Ratio. Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter doesn't want you to have an easy time. A remarkable blend of PS2 visuals, tactical combat, rogue-like elements, and horror atmosphere set to a Hitoshi Sakimoto soundtrack, the fifth game in Capcom's signature turn-based RPG series is as unique as it is challenging. Three RPGFan staff of various experience levels tackled Breath of Fire: Dragon Quar...

The only podcast here is ours. And you can be its early witness! Final Fantasy XVI, one of the most-anticipated Square-Enix games of the 2020s, finally launched worldwide in June. And now, almost three months later, at least four RPGFan staff have finished playing and want to start talking. From favorite characters and fights to the future of Final Fantasy XVI DLC, this podcast delves deep into th...

She'll take you for a ride on a wagon train to Zoombiniville It's back to school week here at Retro Encounter, where we stay retro but mostly avoid RPGs in a discussion of classic edutainment games, from The Oregon Trail to Sim City 2000. Who among our illustrious panel dreamed of being on the Carmen Sandiego PBS show? Which educational game most deserves a Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio adaptation? Listen...

Time to go work on Retro Encounter! We're back with our discussion of the second half of Disco Elysium . This week we dive into some of our favorite late-game side quests, go over our favorite conversations with our neckties, and discuss the fabulously strange ending. Did we get Kim to like us? Do we continue to be a disaster cop? Are Phasmids real? Listen in to find out! Featuring: Zach Wilkerson...

This is the face of a late-stage Retro Encounter enthusiast. This week we get together to discuss a game inspired by Dungeons & Dragons , despite a complete lack of any dungeons or dragons: Disco Elysium . Listen in as we discuss the wild humor and politics of this strange, amazing video game, and find out just how many bad choices we can make while still solving a murder case. Featuring: Zach...

Off my podcast, jester. The commissioner sits there. It's fantasy draft season! And, well, it's been a while since our last draft episode, and even longer since we've drafted characters from the biggest RPG series around. So, we decided to pull a new panel together to engage in some Retro Encounter rules-based discussion nonsense with a supersized episode where we draft all our Final Fantasy chara...

Life... Dreams... Hope... Where do they come from? A new episode of Retro Encounter of course, that's where! We're back this week to dive into the second, more ruinous half of Final Fantasy VI . After the relatively structured and straightforward pacing of the first half, the latter portions of Final Fantasy VI are certainly much more open, and quite a revelation when the game released. Is the sec...

Think a "podcast" like ours could help you out in your quest? In honor of the recent release of Final Fantasy XVI , we got a few of our panelists together to play through the SNES classic Final Fantasy VI . Some of us have played it a million times, some of us are just running through it for the first, and we chat about everything from the story to the combat to that music . Who is the best charac...

What the hell, Yoko Taro? After our recently published "25 Years, 25 RPG Moments" feature, we decided to get the crew at Retro Encounter together to talk about some of the moments that made us laugh, made us happy, and most importantly, the ones that wrecked us. What moments did we choose? Which ones did we miss? Who got too emotional to talk for a little while? Listen in to find out! (Note: there...

Its gifts were mixed with good and evil both. This week we bring our panelists back together to discuss to discuss the second half of Lost Odyssey . While were were all pretty positive on the first half, some of us really like the latter portions, and some of us really don't. Did we do all the sidequests? Do the excellent short stories make up for the middling narrative? Are the environments still...

Okay it might not be called Final Fantasy XIII , but... This week on Retro Encounter, three first-timers get together to discuss Mistwalker's Xbox 360 cult classic Lost Odyssey . It certainly has some big names behind it, and we want to find out if it lives up to the previous works of the masters. How does it hold up? How brown can one game get? Does the turn-based combat work this time around? Li...

Thou shalleth listenen to thisen episode. Luckily, you won't hear any conversations about broken Early Modern English, because this time we're not talking about the original. Instead, we have a spoiler filled chat about Octopath Traveler II , a sequel that our panel loved even more than the first game. How does the game look? What about that combat? Oh, the music has to be good. What about any fun...

It's time to make history! This week, we're revisiting one of our favorites: Persona 4 Golden . After all, with the new release on modern consoles and Wes' glowing review for us at RPGFan, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to revisit some of our old friends. But there's an even better reason we're revisiting this classic! We're also joined by special guest, and friend of the podcast, Alex fro...

More brutal murders than John Wick and more mistaken identities than Twelfth Night.  Ryu Ga Gotoku: Ishin! plays fast and loose with the events of Bakumatsu Japan, with multiple historical figures assuming second personas, a legendary alliance forged through a drunken brawl instead of careful diplomacy, and much more than can be contained in a mere podcast description. Today's Retro Encounter is a...

Kamurocho has nothing on the mean streets of 1860s Kyo.  Ryu Ga Gotoku: Ishin! was probably a lost cause to most fans of the Like A Dragon / Yakuza series, but Sega shocked everyone last year with the announcement of a full remake of the 2014 historical fiction samurai drama to arrive in February of 2023. RPGFan had at least four panelists eager to play it, so they gathered here to form their own...

All RPGs and no fighting games makes Jack a dull boy. We don't *solely* play RPGs here at RPGFan, and today is exactly the podcast to express that. Four RPGFan panelists discuss a few of their favorite games that can't be classified as RPGs with even the most liberal interpretation of the term, from crossover fighters to atmospheric horror to block puzzles to epic bug sagas. Featuring: Michael Sol...

Today we enter the realm of video game fantasies, but not Final Fantasies. Remakes are a regular part of the video game release schedule in the 2020s, and here at Retro Encounter we have a few ideas on a few that should come soon. A PS2 rogue-like, a Squaresoft RPG never released in Japan, and some Game Boy Color classics are only a small sample of what's in store in this episode of Retro Encounte...

E-I-E-I-oh boy I almost went to bed without watering the corn. Oh, hello. On today's Retro Encounter, we're breaking out the farm equipment and digging into the ever-growing farm simulation genre. Many of them overlap with RPGs, especially as modern games have expanded their systems beyond crops, animals, and relationships, offering combat systems and more. Of course we talked about Harvest Moon /...

You would expect that first-party game releases for a system would dry up three years after its successor is released. But that certainly wasn’t the case with Zoda’s Revenge: StarTropics II !  Released in 1994 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, StarTropics II was a bit of an anomaly. Developed by the legendary Nintendo division R&D3, this time-traveling sequel to StarTropics was, much like...

There are some first-party Nintendo games that became legendary franchises. This… is not one of those games. Released in 1990 for the NES, StarTropics   was specifically designed by Nintendo R&D3 with Western audiences in mind. In fact, it was never even released in Japan until 2008 on the Wii Virtual Console! This stylish and innovative game, featuring a genre mash-up with Dragon Quest -style...