Fantasy News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Bungie has released a new trailer for Destiny 2: The Final Shape.

Tucked away in the corner of this year's Day Of The Devs at GDC I discovered a lavish, strangely unattended action-RPG, in which austerely beautiful young women in elaborate skirts kick the bejazus out of each other on fields of whirling flowers. That game was Aikode, the work of Spanish solo developer Ace.

The European Medieval period has always been an era of fascination, especially in games. This age has inspired some of the best low fantasy romps and strategy games that have endured as classics for generations. With that in mind, we’ve made a list of our own, with samplings throughout the ages that may inspire you to pick up a title or two if you’re in want of something truly, medieval-y, immersive.

Wowhead's The War Within Talent Calculator is now updated for the latest Alpha build including Fire Mage, Windwalker Monk, Warlock, Fel-Scarred DH and more! Plan, theorycraft, and share your talent builds including all Hero specs! Wowhead's The War Within Talent Calculator

Despite being a very good game, Granblue Fantasy: Relink got a bit lost in what was a chaotic release schedule earlier this year — but developer Cygames will be hoping that the action RPG's first big update will get people's attention. Launching on the 26th April (that's tomorrow at the time of writing), patch 1.2.0 adds a bunch of new stuff to the game.

Atlus' upcoming RPG, Metaphor: ReFantazio, seems built around systems that wouldn't feel out of place in the developer's Persona series. It's got turn-based battles that hinge on striking enemy weaknesses, it's got warrior spirits that you can summon in combat, and — most crucially to this article — it's got a bonding system where you can hang out with key characters, learning more about them in the process.

The Tribeca Festival returns this June, and it will once again feature official games selections and even a game-focused panel. This year, the selections are all promising indie games, including a successor to 2021’s excellent Before Your Eyes. The show will also feature a talk on the making of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

Today the Tribeca Festival, which recognizes achievement across various entertainment mediums, announced their games lineup for 2024.

I watched the trailer for Tales of the Shire yesterday, and instantly decided it wasn’t going to be my thing. You know what it is? Exactly the kind of gaming adaptations we need.

A new Dragon's Dogma 2 patch is now live on PC and consoles, introducing some gameplay tweaks and fixes.

Okay, who remembers Project Awakening? First revealed way back in September 2018 — for PS4 — it's an action RPG from Granblue Fantasy developer Cygames. That initial trailer, which debuted during a PlayStation showcase, garnered a lot of attention because of how next-gen it looked. In fact, it looked so impressive that many people questioned its authenticity.

Blizzard is currently recruiting a dozen members of staff to work on an unannounced game.

Dark Souls, one of the most widely acclaimed video games of the last two decades - perhaps all time - and progenitor of one of modern video gaming’s most influential and oft-copied-rarely-bettered genres, the Soulslike, would’ve been a better game had it launched into early access. That’s the suggestion from the head of Ori and the Blind Forest developers Moon Studios in the wake of launching their own early access Soulslike, No Rest For The Wicked.

On paper, the PlayStation 5 Pro's 45% faster GPU should be enough to fix issues in GPU-limited scenarios, such as in games aggressively using dynamic resolution scaling.

Stellar Blade director Kim Hyung-tae was inspired to start making games by PS1 classics like Ridge Racer and Final Fantasy after being "too poor" to afford a gaming console as a child.

Final Fantasy 16 players are aghast as the action RPG's new chapter features what can only be described as 'dummy thicc Tonberries.'

League of Legends pro player Lu ‘Leyan’ Jue has been suspended for two matches and fined $6000 for his on-stream behavior.

The promotion of the Tower of Fantasy and Spy x Family kicks off on April 30th. Here’s the intel: Watch the Spy x Family movie trailer (specific locations to be confirmed). Enter a social media giveaway to win movie tickets and Spy x Family merchandise.

Elden Ring’s story is often attributed to two people: FromSoftware president and creative director Hidetaka Miyazaki, and A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin. This is only partially true. While Miyazaki is credited as the creative mind behind its dense lore and high-fantasy setting, a game as big as Elden Ring had a huge team working on it, and a lot of its story was crafted through gameplay and environmental world-building rather than through a more traditional narrative. Plus, there’s the whole Martin thing.

No Rest for the Wicked launched into early access as a bit of a fixer-upper, even by the standards of its 'buy now, play finished game later' model. The good news is that the grim action-RPG’s wonky performance is already being straightened out, with two of its three hotfixes thus far delivering a noticeable improvements, even on older graphics cards.

Alright! So the moment you’ve been keeping tabs on is finally here. Zenless Zone Zero pre-registration has officially begun, globally! The urban fantasy ARPG from HoYoverse is blazing towards a whopping 40 million eager sign-ups waiting in line at Google Play, App Store, PlayStation Store and Epic Store.

The Rising Tide is the second and final expansion for Final Fantasy 16, adding another worthwhile chapter to the tale of Clive Rosfield. Only accessible near the very end of the base game, this DLC is designed to be something of a sendoff for the action RPG, providing a new storyline that brings additional weight to the title's world building, while also giving players an opportunity to dive yet deeper into 16's slick combat system.

Atlus first teased that it was working on a new RPG with a fantasy setting in mid-2023 — it also said way back then that it will be available sometime this year. Now, the developer has revealed that the game, Metaphor: ReFantazio, will come out on October 11 at a special livestream event. Katsura Hashino, the director of the game, as well as of Persona 3, 4 and 5, also introduced a 30-minute hands-on gameplay that gives you quite a lengthy look at its story and combat mechanics. Similar to the Persona games, Metaphor: ReFantazio has a turn-based combat system with what Atlus says is a «blend of real-time action.»

Queer cinema has always been in a state of continual evolution, but the evolution of trans depiction has come slower, even during agreed-upon golden eras of queer cinema. But in 2024, we are in the midst of a potentially new movement in which three trans-authored films are reshaping the possibilities of what a trans film looks like, and how transness can be expressed in cinema.

As part of The Rising Tide DLC for , players finally have their chance to get a hold of The Warrior of Light's Curtana. The Curtana is one of the most well-known and iconic weapons in recent games. This includes being The Warrior of Light's Curtana in. After appearing in many games, it has finally been added to as part of the latest update for the game, which includes DLC.

Metaphor: ReFantazio, the new RPG by the team behind Persona 5 among other RPGs, officially has a release date. In a special showcase streamed Monday, Atlus revealed that Metaphor will be out October 11, putting it squarely in the holidays.

With Sunday here, the weekend is almost over—but there are so many great deals to check out before it ends. We've rounded up some of the best deals you can find this weekend, with everything games and technology included. The best deals for Sunday, April 21, include the Arctis Nova Pro Wireless Headset, HORI Split Pad Compact, Granblue Fantasy: Relink, Super Mario RPG, Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1, Persona 3 Reload, and more.

Final Fantasy XVI: The Rising Tide story expansion is out now, and as you’d expect, it includes some new gear, including the best weapons in the game thus far. One of these is the Tonberry Knife, which isn’t the most powerful in the game in terms of raw damage, but is the most best in terms of inflicting “Will” or stagger damage. For those familiar with FF16’s combat system, staggering enemies frequently is arguably more important than just dealing raw damage, so you’re going to want to get your hands on the Tonberry Knife. Here’s how to do so…

While Atlus has largely become synonymous with the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei series, their next big RPG is actually a new IP – Metaphor: ReFantazio. Developed by a team led by many of the minds that created Persona 3 through Persona 5, Metaphor looks to expand that trademark Atlus RPG style with a more expansive dark fantasy world. Well, today Atlus announced Metaphor: ReFantazio will be launching in October of this year. You can check out a fresh trailer for the game, below.

Metaphor: ReFantazio, the next RPG from Persona developer Atlus, now has a confirmed release date: the 11th October. And to properly kickstart our march towards launch, we've been treated to a 25-minute presentation, which features a load of fresh gameplay footage.

A side quest in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth reveals that Jessie was planning to make a love potion pizza for Cloud in Final Fantasy 7 Remake, or that she was at least aware of the ingredients.

Game Rant interviewed George Velev and Andrew De Sousa on Hero Talent and dungeons in The War Within, discussing the upcoming Dragonriding Escort Dungeon, the Dawnbreaker, and Hero Talents! Game Rant Interview We've briefly summarized some of the major points below, but please read the full interview for more interesting questions and full context!

Saturday is here, and that means the weekend has officially kicked off! We've rounded up some of the best deals you can find this weekend, with everything games and technology included. The best deals for Saturday, April 20, include the Arctis Nova Pro Wireless Headset, Granblue Fantasy: Relink, Super Mario RPG, Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1, and more.

No rest for No Rest For The Wicked's developers, it seems. The punishing action-RPG launched in Steam Early Access last week with performance issues, among other issues, and Moon Studios have now deployed their first hotfix.

Accompanied by strains of vocal-led orchestral music, the Moon Studios title rises into view. For many, this is reason enough to sit up and take notice of No Rest For The Wicked. For the studio behind the sublime Ori series, a visually arresting and emotional pair of platformers, this is the tricky third album: a new IP, a new direction, and a launch into Early Access along with it. Taking a swing at the action RPG genre, there’s echoes of From Software alongside Diablo here, and yet, Moon Studios’ enigmatic outlook shines through. On first impressions alone, there’s nothing to be worried about for fans of the studio – excusing the decadent horrors that lie within.

No Rest for the Wicked's first early access hotfix has been rolled out, and a second patch is «already in progress».

We've datamined numerous cosmetic armor sets from the War Within alpha that resemble civilians from a fantasy town would wear in their daily life. From merchants to scholars, there's a set for all walks of life. While we don't know how to acquire these sets quite yet, one of the «merchant» sets is fittingly available from completing a dungeon meta achievement. Check out all the different armor tints below, or preview them in our TWW Dressing Room by clicking on the links above each image.

In an interview with Hirumaredx, Lead Visual Development Artist Gabriel Gonzalez and Senior Narrative Designer Abigail Manuel discussed the art, story, world building, and zones coming in The World Within!

Last week, Square Enix revealed the benchmark trailer for Final Fantasy 14’s upcoming expansion, Dawntrail. While Dawntrail’s showcase of new in-game areas, enemies, and combat garnered positive feedback online, the lifeless eyes of its character creator left a lot to be desired, fans said. In response to the negative feedback, Director Naoki Yoshida has promised a graphical update that will fix its character creator’s soulless eyes.

The Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail benchmark is here, giving MMO fans a glimpse into what their characters will look like after the graphical update in patch 7.0. While plenty are rather pleased about their Warrior of Lights glow-ups, some have been left looking worse for wear.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth could have rolled credits much sooner in the story if the game's writer stuck to his original idea.

Snail Games has just launched one of its popular PC titles on Android. It’s Dark and Light Mobile, the mobile version of the original Dark and Light PC game that dropped in 2017. If you’re in the United States, Europe or Southeast Asia, you can get a sneak peek at this survival game on Android.

Lured like an unsatisfied sailor by the siren song of alleged performance woes, I’ve been giving No Rest for the Wicked a cursory benchmarkin’, and yes! The isometric ARPG does suffer from all the early access wonkiness you’ve likely heard about already today.

No Rest For the Wicked launched in early access yesterday, but has unfortunately hit a few bumps on its debut.

Final Fantasy is a long running series at this point — it's easily one of the most storied franchises in gaming. But when you're up to the sixteenth mainline entry, you must start wondering whether fresh installments still have the power to pull new players in. Indeed, audience growth will be an important metric for the suits upstairs at Square Enix.

For all the positive things players have to say about Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, one aspect of the game which we've seen nothing but ire directed towards is its confusingly worded retry screen, which players will be hit with in the event of a Game Over. Thankfully, this issue has been quietly addressed in the game's most recent patch, which fixed Platinum Trophy progression, making it at least slightly less confusing now.

It's fairly common knowledge that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth enjoyed a relatively smooth development cycle, owing to the fact that Final Fantasy 7 Remake's team was largely kept intact, and the first game had obviously laid the foundations in terms of visuals and gameplay systems. It took Square Enix around three years to craft Rebirth, and it expects the same kind of timeline when it comes to the third (and final) title in the trilogy.

Unless a game is breaking records, it's quite rare that we get direct sales data from publishers — and Square Enix in particular is somewhat notorious for this. As such, interested parties usually have little choice but to try and determine commercial success through other means.

Update: Final Fantasy 16 update 1.31 is available to download now on PS5, ahead of The Rising Tide's release on the 18th April. It weighs in at 2.8GB, and you can read the full patch notes below, in the original article.

The Rising Tide, the second and final expansion for Final Fantasy 16, is set to feature some of the game's most challenging combat scenarios. That's according to DLC director (and a lead combat designer for the base game) Takeo Kujiraoka, who, in an interview with Push Square, told us that the addition of DLC has allowed the development team to push the title's combat system.

Sony has today updated the Last Chance to Play section of its PS Plus service, revealing far and away the biggest batch of PS5 and PS4 titles leaving at once. On 21st May 2024, a whopping 25 games will be taken off PS Plus Extra and PS Plus Premium, including some quality Final Fantasy entries and indie hits. The complete list is as follows:

Square Enix is a famously hard master to please, and eagle-eyed fans interested in industry analytics will have noted that despite launching over a month ago on 29th February, exclusively on PS5, hard sales figures for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth are yet to be released. Considering it took just three days for the firm to trumpet Remake's success during a similar period and six days for Final Fantasy XVI, it should be no huge surprise that the sequel is underperforming in some sense.

Final Fantasy 16 was one of our favourite games of 2023, and so we wanted to find out more about The Rising Tide — the title's second and final expansion — ahead of its release on the 18th April. Fortunately, we were lucky enough to land an interview with Takeo Kujiraoka — the veteran Square Enix dev who's actually the director of Final Fantasy 16's DLC, having previously been a lead combat designer for the base game.

The release schedule is really slow right now, after a mad dash to the end of the fiscal year. It means this is a good opportunity to catch up on titles from your backlog, or revisit a favourite from yesteryear.

A recent analysis has revealed an interesting statistic about a pair of playable demos on PS5. According to Ampere, Stellar Blade's demo, at its peak, had almost twice the number of daily active players compared to the peak for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's demo.

The first quarter of 2024 has been crazy, especially if you're a fan of Japanese games. The release schedule has been pretty much non-stop since January, and so earlier in the week, we asked the Push Square community to vote on their favourite titles of the last four months.

The second and final expansion for Final Fantasy 16, titled The Rising Tide, is out now on PS5 — and if you can believe it, we're fast approaching the base game's first anniversary. But such a realisation has made us wonder… Are you returning to Final Fantasy 16 in order to play through this new DLC? Or could it be that the expansion is arriving too late for your tastes?

With the release of 's second DLC expansion,, the game received all of its planned content — but newer players may not get to experience the DLC until significantly later portions of the game. As a more story-oriented package than 's previous DLC, focuses heavily on under-explored aspects of the original game's story and lore, centering primarily around the mysteries of Leviathan, the only Eikon to be mentioned, but not seen, during the base game's main story.

Final Fantasy 16‘s base adventure is already a long and winding tale full of intrigue, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t more story to be told in its world. Like the Echoes of the Fallen DLC before it, The Rising Tide DLC serves as an additional journey for Clive and company to undertake, providing players the opportunity to discover various all-new enemies, locations, and characters. This fresh content even includes Leviathan as a new Eikon for Clive to encounter, making it a must-play for completionists hoping to experience everything in the game. If you’re wondering how to start The Rising Tide DLC, look no further — we’ll tell you how to do so below.

Isekai Dispatcher is a new title that’s a tad different on the horizon. It’s a Pixel art RPG created by Ignition M. In case you remember, I covered another quirky casual title dropped by them recently, PreCats! -Idle Cat Raising.

Thinking about Dragon’s Dogma 2’s interestingly scrappy combat recently took me back to another time when a major role-playing game series tried something very different with its combat mechanics. In this case, the designers’ goal was the same as Capcom’s with the first Dragon’s Dogma: a single-player RPG that felt like a massively multiplayer online game to play. But the resulting system couldn’t have been more different, and stands as one of the most fascinating dead ends in game design history.

Nowadays, I'm more than happy to sacrifice high frames and a big screen for the comforts of the Steam Deck. I like lounging on the couch, the light forearm workout, and heating my room in only a few minutes. So it's good news that Moon Studios' upcoming ARPG No Rest For The Wicked will be playable on launch for Deck, the ROG Ally and other handhelds. Minimum PC specs also don't look too taxing, but those after the shiniest-looking game on recommended hardware may be in for a shock.

GameSpot has released a writeup of their hands-on experience with The War Within, citing it as more of the same Warcraft, but in a good way! GameSpot Hands-on The War Within

Sega is delving deep into its enviable IP archive to bring the world an animated adaptation of its 1989 side-scrolling arcade beat-'em-up Golden Axe.

World of Warcraft will, in its 20th year of operation, implement an arachnophobia mode. It's been developed for the new War Within expansion, which heavily features the spider-like Nerubian race, but it won't be exclusive to it.

In the autumn of last year, Holly Longdale, the executive producer and vice president of World of Warcraft, made headlines by saying the team talks about putting WoW on console «all the time». It's a question the company has been asked repeatedly over the game's near 20-year lifetime, and it's an answer we've heard before, but it gained new momentum in light of Microsoft's recently completed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. When better to bring the game to Xbox than now?

We've datamined all the Warrior Tier Set appearances coming in Season 1 of The War Within. Season 1 Tier Sets will be available from the Nerub'ar Palace Raid featuring eight bosses, culminating in a showdown with Queen Ansurek, the Nerubian ruler who's leading her people down a dark path. First Look at the Nerub'ar Palace Raid Tier Set bonuses are still unavailable to be datamined but stay tuned for updates when they become available.

Microsoft has “let Blizzard be Blizzard” following its acquisition of the studio last year.

Blizzard has said that it still has discussions a console version of World of Warcraft.

Blizzard has revealed the World of Warcraft: The War Within 20th Anniversary Collector’s Edition.

Wowhead is happy to announce that our The War Within Talent Calculator is now live and updated for all classes & Hero Talents! Plan, theorycraft, and share your talent builds including all Hero specs! Wowhead's The War Within Talent Calculator

Blizzard has just given the wider public its first proper look at The War Within, the next expansion to World of Warcraft coming later this year and the start of its three-part, MCU-like Worldsoul Saga.

Public Alpha testing for The War Within, the tenth World of Warcraft expansion, is about to begin. Ahead of this important development milestone, Wccftech joined a roundtable Q&A session featuring Blizzard's Michael Bybee (Production Director on all World of Warcraft), Sean McCann (Senior Content Designer), and several colleagues from the press for an hour-long conversation.

Square Enix has deployed Final Fantasy XVI update 1.31 for PlayStation 5, packing various improvements alongside changes and bug fixes.

My Favorite Anime is a column dedicated to collecting the stories of the biggest celebrity anime fans in the world, charting a path from their earliest introductions to Japanese animation to the series and films they love today with two questions: What was your first favorite anime, and what’s your favorite anime now?

Video game subscription services are fantastic for those of us who are fed up with spending $70 on new games, not to mention the opportunity they provide to catch up on your backlog without having to buy even more games. The downside is relying on a service to have the games you want to play, and even worse, as PlayStation Plus has demonstrated this week, games leaving the service with little warning. PlayStation quietly confirmed 25 games will be leaving its PS Plus library next month, and a significant chunk of them are big Final Fantasy titles.

Square Enix tried really hard to make Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's mako vacuuming minigame more enjoyable than the painfully tedious practice in masochism that it is by all measures. In fact, it was originally a lot worse.

Helldivers 2 is a live service game, and that title comes with a lot of expectations. It seems like every constantly updated online game has to have a series of crossovers these days, whether it be Fortnite teaming up with Avatar: The Last Airbender, Sonic teaming up with Monster Hunter, or Final Fantasy 14 crossing over with itself. Helldivers 2 is an anomaly in the live service space though, and its opinions on crossovers are no exception.