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Lost Sphear (PS5) – Completed Review

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Lost Sphear by Tokyo RPG factory is a love letter to the SNES/PS1 era with a beautiful art style, no spoken dialogue but a ton of written probably more than the entire Harry Potter books and a familiar turn-based combat. Be warned there is no fast travel which can be annoying because certain dungeons do not have shortcuts and you won’t get the airship until much later in the game.

You play as Kanata a swordsman from the village Elgarthe who develops an ability to restore lost structures from memories. You are very quickly joined by Lumina a melee combat fighter and Locke a long range archer. The game slowly introduces other characters who will join your adventure along the way to a maximum of eight but you can only select four in your battle team.

The game introduces two new features, the first is Spritnite where you have to equip a skill to use in combat but you can then link a momentum effect to each skill like recover HP every time you use that skill in a battle. In combat each skill will have a cool down timer which will reset after a number of a turns. The second is Artefacts, there are various locations on the open world where you can build a structure to give you a boost. For example the Mystic Eye artefact will give you a world mini-map showing you to see locations of dungeons you have visited.

There is no random encounters in the game, all combat is within dungeons. During combat you build up a momentum meter by performing attacks, moving you character or using skills. Once you have built up a momentum charge you can use it in combat and it will usually rewards you a critical or double hit. With certain characters it can be an advantage to ensure they move around the battle area so you can line up a multiple hit attack. Equally you need to be careful to ensure your characters are not too close together so the enemies can’t get in an area attack. Make sure you especially pay attention to your movements during boss fights which are slightly more challenging.

I won’t spoil it in this review but later the game introduces a new combat mechanic which I did enjoy using quite a bit but I had to have constant supplies to recharge or regularly rest at inns. Overall Lost Sphear is a nostalgic trip back to the 90s JRPG formula but remember the game is not finished once the credits roll. I had no issues at all playing this game on the PS5, next for me is a small indie puzzler Gorogoa.





44: Destiny 2 is Basically In The Night Garden

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Well hello there 2021 fans! Episode 44 is here to blow away those January blues. Or provide more of them.

In this episode, deKay, Kendrick, Luffer and Toby have some Big Talks about the general lack of consoles on store shelves, Steve Jackson’s (no, not that one) plans for new old games, and probably the most important console release of 2020 (and actually available to buy), the Evercade. A lot about the Evercade. In fact, if you don’t want to hear about the Evercade then boy is this episode not for you. But there is other stuff, like the Analogue Mega Sg, and All These Games:

  • Yakuza Kiwami
  • Yakuza Like a Dragon
  • Among Us
  • Picross Luna 2
  • Pixel Puzzle
  • Destiny 2
  • Half Life Alyx
  • Monster Hunter Rise
  • Deadly Premonition 2
  • Animal Crossing
  • Shantae and the Seven Sirens
  • Syberia

Deviations come in the form of general Wayforward chat, whether China still has an emperor or not, and how to fix your broken sticks of RAM in an oven. No, really. Oh, and the lady who did the singings on River City Girls was very talented Megan McDuffee – deKay forgot it in the moment.

(Direct link here)

Music attribution: Intro is Rise and Shine Shantae – listen to the whole (very good!) album on Spotify.

Don’t forget, if you want to contact us with questions or comments for or about the show, you can email podcast@ugvm.org.uk or publicly shame us @ugvmpodcast on the Twittors.

James Bond 007: invisible oil rigs

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Loading up James Bond 007 on the Atari 5200, you see an exciting opening sequence, announcing you are about to play Diamonds are Forever.  This is, apparently, one of four films represented in the game.


Rather than controlling Bond, you control his car. It's unclear exactly which car it is, but best guesses are that it's the Lotus from The Spy Who Loved Me.  With an added jump function.

The game starts with you driving through the desert, with some odd craft dropping bombs in front of you.  You have to jump over the holes created, which is difficult because your car's jump isn't long enough to do so without swerving across the screen at the same time. You can fire, alternating between one bullet that goes up at a 30-degree angle and something that lands on the floor in front of you, but these don't seem to affect the green craft.


After a while you get to the sea, and you can dive under the waves or, somehow, jump above them. Here the second bullet makes sense, becoming a difficult-to-judge depth charge.  Frogmen fire bullets at you, and you have to avoid these, as well as the green craft's bombs, and try to sheet diamonds in the sky using your diagonal bullets.

As well as giving you points, shooting the diamonds makes the sky flash, which is crucial because it reveals the locations of oil platforms, which otherwise are black on a black background.  If you don't see them, you crash into them and die.  I successfully avoided five or six of these once, before getting worried I was missing something.

I was, indeed.  Reading the manual, I found out I was supposed to land on one of these oil platforms (a brief reminder that touching the platforms kills you in any other situation) to progress to the next level.  So, I worked through the first level again, and landed on the first oil platform.  Much easier.  This then took me to the second level - The Spy Who Loved Me.


Which wasn't much different to the first.  This time there were rockets that sometimes launched from the sea bed (and sometimes didn't), and boats you had to submerge under (and not land on).


Having read the manual, I knew the aim was to get to the end and rescue Anya Amasova.  To do this, it seems, you have to bomb the facility where she is hiding and pick up the escape pod.  Got that first time.

And then onto Moonraker, where the aim is apparently to shoot down three spinning satellites. These satellites move at about 57,291mph across the screen, and I didn't manage to shoot down a single one before being killed by odd green space shuttles and mines laid by submarines.  Had I paid £30 for this back in 1984, I may have persisted … but I now have better things to be doing.

James Bond 007: invisible oil rigs

Posted on Written by

Loading up James Bond 007 on the Atari 5200, you see an exciting opening sequence, announcing you are about to play Diamonds are Forever.  This is, apparently, one of four films represented in the game.


Rather than controlling Bond, you control his car. It's unclear exactly which car it is, but best guesses are that it's the Lotus from The Spy Who Loved Me.  With an added jump function.

The game starts with you driving through the desert, with some odd craft dropping bombs in front of you.  You have to jump over the holes created, which is difficult because your car's jump isn't long enough to do so without swerving across the screen at the same time. You can fire, alternating between one bullet that goes up at a 30-degree angle and something that lands on the floor in front of you, but these don't seem to affect the green craft.


After a while you get to the sea, and you can dive under the waves or, somehow, jump above them. Here the second bullet makes sense, becoming a difficult-to-judge depth charge.  Frogmen fire bullets at you, and you have to avoid these, as well as the green craft's bombs, and try to sheet diamonds in the sky using your diagonal bullets.

As well as giving you points, shooting the diamonds makes the sky flash, which is crucial because it reveals the locations of oil platforms, which otherwise are black on a black background.  If you don't see them, you crash into them and die.  I successfully avoided five or six of these once, before getting worried I was missing something.

I was, indeed.  Reading the manual, I found out I was supposed to land on one of these oil platforms (a brief reminder that touching the platforms kills you in any other situation) to progress to the next level.  So, I worked through the first level again, and landed on the first oil platform.  Much easier.  This then took me to the second level - The Spy Who Loved Me.


Which wasn't much different to the first.  This time there were rockets that sometimes launched from the sea bed (and sometimes didn't), and boats you had to submerge under (and not land on).


Having read the manual, I knew the aim was to get to the end and rescue Anya Amasova.  To do this, it seems, you have to bomb the facility where she is hiding and pick up the escape pod.  Got that first time.

And then onto Moonraker, where the aim is apparently to shoot down three spinning satellites. These satellites move at about 57,291mph across the screen, and I didn't manage to shoot down a single one before being killed by odd green space shuttles and mines laid by submarines.  Had I paid £30 for this back in 1984, I may have persisted … but I now have better things to be doing.

James Bond 007: invisible oil rigs

Posted on Written by

Loading up James Bond 007 on the Atari 5200, you see an exciting opening sequence, announcing you are about to play Diamonds are Forever.  This is, apparently, one of four films represented in the game.

Rather than controlling Bond, you control his car. It’s unclear exactly which car it is, but best guesses are that it’s the Lotus from The Spy Who Loved Me. With an added jump function.

The game starts with you driving through the desert, with some odd green craft dropping bombs in front of you. You have to jump over the holes created, which is difficult because your car’s jump isn’t long enough to do so without swerving across the screen at the same time. You can fire, alternating between one bullet that goes up at a 30-degree angle and something that lands on the floor in front of you, but these don’t seem to affect the green craft.

After a while you get to the sea, and you can dive under the waves or, somehow, jump above them. Here the second bullet makes sense, becoming a difficult-to-judge depth charge. Frogmen fire bullets at you, and you have to avoid these, as well as the green craft’s bombs, and try to shoot diamonds in the sky using your diagonal bullets.

As well as giving you points, shooting the diamonds makes the sky flash, which is crucial because it reveals the locations of oil platforms, which otherwise are black on a black background.  If you don’t see them, you crash into them and die.  I successfully avoided five or six of these once, before getting worried I was missing something.

I was, indeed.  Reading the manual, I found out I was supposed to land on one of these oil platforms (a brief reminder that touching the platforms kills you in any other situation) to progress to the next level.  So, I worked through the first level again, and landed on the first oil platform.  Much easier.  This then took me to the second level – The Spy Who Loved Me.

Which wasn’t much different to the first. This time there were rockets that sometimes launched from the sea bed (and sometimes didn’t), and boats you had to submerge under (and not land on).

Having read the manual, I knew the aim was to get to the end and rescue Anya Amasova. To do this, it seems, you have to bomb the facility where she is hiding and pick up the escape pod. Got that first time.

And then onto Moonraker, where the aim is apparently to shoot down three spinning satellites. These satellites move at about 57,291mph across the screen, and I didn’t manage to shoot down a single one before being killed by odd green space shuttles and mines laid by submarines.  Had I paid £30 for this back in 1984, I may have persisted … but I now have better things to be doing.