Even if they’re not anywhere near as important as they used to be, you can’t beat a good gaming convention. Playing games in a giant hall populated by likeminded people is fun, and we were lucky enough to attend the Taipei Game Show for the second successive year.
Loud and proud
Attended by over 370,000 people over the span of four days, this year’s show seemed lighter in terms of content than 2024, even if the actual floorspace filled was generally larger.
Here are some of the things we saw and played over the course of the event.
The problem with attending events like Taipei Game Show is that it’s predominantly aimed at Mandarin speakers, but having backed Ratatan on Kickstarter, we were delighted to see the Patapon spiritual successor occupy an enormous booth.
Queues were long to play, but despite being able to switch the demo’s language to English, we struggled to get to grips with this demo at all. There was no tutorial, so while we obviously understand Patapon’s general gameplay concept – hammer out rhythms to control your troops – we were unable to deduce the prompts needed to make any progress.
The art looks amazing, but looking around at other attendees, we don’t think anyone really figured out how to actually play the game. A poor choice of demo, then, considering the clear investment that had gone into the booth.
Exactly what is going on with Koei Tecmo right now and why is it having such a good year? Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & The Envisioned Land seems like a fantastic RPG, with vibrant visuals and great character designs.
We were dropped into a large world map with very little context and setup, but we immediately got to grips with the fun Final Fantasy 7 Remake-esque combat and rewarding material gathering. The cast looks great, and we love how they gather together when you hit the pause screen. The only strange thing we noticed is that tree stumps simply disappear when you strike them for wood; a more satisfying animation would be
Read more on pushsquare.com