RPGFan's Retro Encounter

Five Retro Encounter panelists rolled credits on Dragon Quest IV, and the feeling on the 1990 classic are unanimous: Dragon Quest IV is ahead of its time. From the villain's motivations to the quest …

Five chosen panelists meet a chosen hero (or heroine) and his (or her) seven companions in today's podcast on 1990's Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen, making today's Retro Encounter one of the…

Four Dragon Quest aficionados who haven't attended live sporting events in over a year celebrate their love of the seminal Japanese RPG by pretending it's fake sports! Retro Encounter is doing anothe…

Four panelists recruited twenty-seven times as many heroes in playing Suikoden III over April 2021, and have plenty to say about it! Suikoden III's complex politics, different motivations between its…

Suikoden III evokes the halcyon days of the PlayStation 2, when RPGs were many, UI conveniences were few, and Konami actually made video games. Suikoden III's politically-charged story and army of na…

What RPG uses dice-roll physics, requires rare drops from Skeleton Mages, and is exclusive to the 3DS Shop? Crimson Shroud and absolutely nothing else! Yasumi Matsuno (Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy XII…

Final Fantasy XIV's 2017 expansion had players visit the highlands of Gyr Abania and the steppes of Othard, but not as a tourist. Stormblood is a game about casting the light of liberation unto an op…

One of the most common reader or listener comments that RPGFan social media receives is "not an RPG," and we take some umbrage at that. RPGFan prides itself on covering a diverse array of games, whic…

Two Retro Encounter panelists played through four Muramasa: The Demon Blade endings and still can't stop gushing over the 2D action RPG's gorgeous backgrounds. But those backdrops aren't the only shi…

Before 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (but after Odin Sphere) the art-focused JRPG developer Vanillaware made Muramasa: The Demon Blade, an action RPG steeped in Japanese folklore and following a long tradi…

It was early in 1996 when a couple of modest, lightly-janky Gameboy games were released in Japan, beginning a phenomenon that is persisting (and thriving) to this day. Those games were Pokemon Red an…

In 2015, Final Fantasy XIV players trekked to the north and looked to the sky in Heavensward, the fan-favorite expansion game that raised character levels to 60 and introduced Eorzeans to Ishgard.  T…

Retro Encounter's panel finished Radiant Historia earlier this month, and dissects the endgame of Stocke and his companions.  The time traveling, turn-stealing, wheelin' and dealin' son of a king has…

Radiant Historia found many RPG fans in the last days of the Nintendo DS, and today Retro Encounter celebrates it on the 10th anniversary of its North American release. Parallel timelines, shoving en…

In advance of the 2021 release of Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, Retro Encounter is recording four Final Fantasy XIV episodes in 2021! Each will feature a different panel and focus on the panelists' p…

The worldwide release of Ryu Ga Gotoku 7 made a big splash in 2020, as the first Yakuza game with turn-based combat, the first Yakuza game not to star Kazuma Kiryu, and the first Yakuza game in 15 ye…

Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean ramps up the drama on disc 2! In part 2 of our deep dive into Monolith Soft's forgotten classic, the three panelists return to talk about that now-famou…

Only the second game to be released by Monolith Soft, Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean swaps space and mechs for a card game, but keeps the dead gods. Three panelists explore disc one o…

Retro Encounter's episode on Hades marks the fourth SuperGiant Games episode of the podcast in six weeks, but we discussed the Hell out of this roguelike RPG of gods and monsters.  Our favorite Zagre…

What happens when you cross NBA Jam, Oregon Trail, and SuperGiant Games' distinct style and flavor?  The 2017 indie narrative game Pyre, which is hard to describe in just a few sentences, so we recor…