RPGFan's Retro Encounter

On the last day of 2020, Retro Encounter celebrates the year's video games while offering good riddance to essentially everything else.  From roguelikes that play like Diablo to open worlds that play…

Retro Encounter examines another entry in the Supergiant Games catalog in an episode all about Transistor, the 2014 action RPG that rewards careful planning with swift execution of its customizable a…

Retro Encounter loves Tales Of RPGs, and Retro Encounter's host loves ludicrous fantasy drafts.  Naturally those two passions collided in a podcast, in which five Retro Encounter panelists discuss th…

Retro Encounter kicks off Supergiant Games Month with a podcast all about Bastion, SG's breakout 2011 title in which a Kid wakes up in a mysterious broken city with only a voice to guide him and a ha…

Final Fantasy X-2. Great job system, great battle system, well-made pop songs.  But how about the rest of the game? Our panel has some criticisms about the side quests, main story, and overall presen…

Crowdfunding services like Kickstarter, IndieGogo, and Fig have disrupted traditional game production and become an inescapable part of how video game consumers and developers interact, but the crowd…

The sequel to the 2nd game ever covered by Retro Encounter finally gets its own journal episodes over five years later!  We revisit the world of Spira and its new dueling factions, critique Dresspher…

Retro Encounter 261 - Finding Paradise

Kan Gao and Freebird Games deliver the fourth game in the SIgmund Corp. Saga later this year, so in anticipation of Impostor Factory Retro Encounter is playing F…

Retro 260 - RPG Vampires: Fangs for the Memories

Vampires are a staple of horror, and to celebrate Halloween Retro Encounter is celebrating the vampires of RPGs.  From the psychic vampires of Mass Eff…

Phantasy Star IV is the culmination of a four-game saga that puts the 2,000-year struggle of the Algol System into a context, and in today's Retro Encounter episode we dive deep into its final battle…

Retro Encounter visits a faraway galaxy in a game from a long time ago (don't @ me Disney) in Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium, one of the most acclaimed RPGs for the Sega Genesis, or Mega…

Presently (October 2020), RPGFan is publishing a feature on the best RPG of each year, from the dawn of Dragon Quest to the last full calendar year.  As a podcast side dish to the website's main cour…

Even in a video game, humans are too trusting.  Many of the most storied plot twists in RPGs have a central character performing an unexpected turn or betraying the player's trust.  In today's episod…

In the final episode of Persona Month, we gather again to discuss the end of Persona 2: Innocent Sin. Discussion topics include the continuously terrible dungeons, childhood trauma, Adolf Hitler, and…

This week on Retro Encounter, four panelists get together to talk about Persona 2: Innocent Sin, the PS1 RPG that we never saw until its PSP remake over 10 years later. Topics include the engaging ch…

Rhythm Encounter is back for the first time since 2017!  (This is an different podcast entirely).  But in a Grand Cross of a cosmic coincidence, Rhythm Encounter's return occurs during Retro Encounte…

Persona 4 stars a group of meddling teenagers (and one bear) determined to bring a serial killer to justice, but what makes that killer tick?  Retro Encounter jumps into the TV World and journeys int…

This. Is. RPGeopardy! RPGFan is hosting a third quiz show in which four RPGFan staff compete for absolutely nothing at all in a trivia competition where the clues are (mostly) all about RPGs. Retro E…

Retro Encounter just hit a new milestone, and that means another self-congratulatory gimmick episode.  Retro Encounter solicited listener emails all summer, and today we read and react to all that we…

Retro Encounter draws their shared adventure in the Beanbean to a close in this podcast episode, discussing Luigi's solo missions, the collection of the Beanstar pieces, the brothers' journey through…