Time Extend: Dark Chronicle

Edge: It’s often hard to draw a line between being captivated by an RPG and just plain being made a captive of one. They are games which reel out all manner of demands for progress, some petulant, some repetitive and some ludicrously illogical. Yet even by the standards of this tradition, Dark Chronicle’s opening acts dropped an unusually hefty ransom note into the lap of the player, for while most RPGs ask you to save the world, Dark Chronicle asks you to rebuild it, brick by brick, century by century, random dungeon by random dungeon. It is an onerous task, but the candy-coated world you forge is as atypical as it is a typical, a mixture of norms and fresh ambitions – some sparkling and some monotone – but an intricate mixture nonetheless.