This week on Axe of the Blood God, Kat has run off to do sailor junk on the high seas, so Nadia and Eric hold the rig together by themselves. Well, that's not entirely true. Kat joins them from SeaPhone™ to tackle this week's main topic: Why some games were picked for our updated Top 25 RPG list, while others were left to die in shallow puddles of rainwater. This discussion involves a lot of self-flagellation and even more furious denial, so look forward to drama and mayhem. Soap operas wish they had this explosive narrative impact.

 

Also in this episode:

 

• June is going to be all decked out in Final Fantasy (XVI? VII Remake pt 2?) news.
• What is even going on with Summer Games Fest? Do we know? Do we care? (Kinda.)
• One time, Nadia had to ask a bookstore clerk for porn manga. It was for work.
• The Luca Goers suck.

It's time at last to share our newly-revised list of the 25 best RPGs of all time! For much of 2022 we've been slowly collecting potential nominees for an update to the list that we made several years ago. Now it's time to share that list for all to see! 

To make this list we took the list of nominees plus the original list and made our own Top 25s, with the games that were on all three lists going straight into the Top 25. From there we embraced debate with discussions including:

• Whether or not Mass Effect should be included a trilogy
• Eric calling Skyrim the "McDonald's hamburger of RPGs."
• Multiple RPGs being rescued from the dead 
• Whether it's time to anoint brand-new #1!

For your convenience, we've shared time codes below.

Time Codes

4:40: We share our personal Top 25 RPG lists

21:35 - The Initial Cutdown + Wild Card Picks + Listener Poll

36:35: Games That Made At Least Two Lists

140:25: Finalizing the List

2:23:00: Ranking the Games

2:50:20: The Top 25 RPGs Of All Time

Thanks again for joining us in this very fun project! We'll probably be circling back and rebuilding given that there always amazing new RPGs being released. But in the meantime, we're excited to hear your thoughts!

This week on Axe of the Blood God, the gang takes a step into the fascinating and revolutionary (if jagged and polygonal) world of massive multiplayer online RPGs from the 2000's. Kat, Nadia, and Eric are joined by very special guest Amy Dunham, who worked on some of the most prominent '00s MMORPGs. (And more than a few other games, too!) Tune in as we talk about World of Warcraft, EverQuest, Eve Online, Elder Scrolls Online, and much more. Rest assured, Nadia reps Rangarok Online, too

Also in this episode:

Starfield is delayed, no Starfield for Kat
Final Fantasy XIV players are being sent to video game jail for using mods
Pokemon Home adds support for Brilliant Diamond, Shining Pearl, and Legends Arceus
Eric lords his Steam Deck over the rest of us plebes

On the Post Show: 

This week's Axe of the Blood God post show is a godless mess as usual. Master Chief is no longer a virgin, so let's all gather around in a circle, clap, and tell him "Congratulations!"  Also, there is a lot of Final Fantasy X discussion. Why don't people on Besaid island eat chocolate cake? Because it's SINfully delicious. Wakka Wakka Wakka! The Post Show and the live recording can be access through the Stars of Destiny tier and above on the Patreon. 

As a special thank you to our listeners for helping us reach $6000 two months in a row, we recently hosted a very special D&D 5e session with special guest DM Shivam Bhatt. Now it's available for everyone to listen! Tune in as our heroes embark on a quest for the Axe of the Blood God; bumble into some orcs; have a really hard time climbing a hill, and say hello to a very special badger named Orlando.

Here are the characters:

Kat plays Kara the Wanderer, a Paladin devoted to Selune the Moonmaiden.

Nadia plays Kalfor, a Red Dragonborn Ranger with motivations of their own (and a cool hat, apparently).

Eric plays Coronach, a Tiefling Warlock with a real Pixie problem.

If you enjoyed the adventure, let us know! It would be fun to do more of these if listeners are interested. Until then, thank you as always for your support and the opportunity to do fun and unique adventures like this one!

Tired of the same ol' RPGs? Why not try changing your perspective? 

This week by Patron request, Nadia, Kat, and Eric talk about isometric RPGs with some help from Leana Hafer of Three Moves Ahead. Topics of isometric discussion include "How good is Tunic?" (Very good.) "Does Dragon Age: Origins count as an isometric RPG?" (Yes.) "Which isometric RPG should Nadia play?" (Disco Elysium, CUNO.) And "How is 2022 looking for the sub-genre?" (Pretty neat!)

Other topics of discussion include:

• Kat's ensnared by a mobile gatcha RPG. SHAME. SHAME.
• Nadia hates Crumbling Farum Azula and everyone on it.
• The how, why, and "huh?" of Square Enix's IP fire sale.
• We pick our final four nominees for the rebuild of the Top 25 RPGs of all time list!

Enjoy the show? Check out our Patreon at https://patreon.com/bloodgodpod

The Blood God is back in full force after Eric and Nadia's trip out to Boston. We're continuing our unofficial Job Hunt with a discussion about White Mages and healers in RPGs! How has healing evolved over the years? Who's the best healer around? Is Kat going to start playing competitive Pokemon again? Answers to all these and more in this week's episode, plus:

• Eric gets bitten by the GBA Fire Emblem bug
• Kat gets an after-school gig, this Week in Gekkoukan
• Nadia sends a battery boy to Dura-Hell

Plus, four more picks for our soon-to-close nominations for the Top 25 RPG rankings!

This week's Axe of the Blood God is simple and clean. Friend of the show and Good Vibes Gaming host Ash Paulsen joins Kat, Nadia, and Eric to talk about Square Enix's surprise Kingdom Hearts 4 announcement. What, exactly, is going on in the game's mystifying trailer? How did Sora get doxxed? What happened to his Ronald McDonald shoes? Why did Goofy and Donald descend into hell to look for Sora instead of assuming he went to Heaven? The discourse is rich and flavorful. 

Also in this episode:

• Final Fantasy XIV 6.1 is here. Time to dust off your catboys.
• Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes pits Not-Byleth against Byleth.
• Kat beats up her first shadow in her Persona 3 day-by-day playthrough
• The "What is an RPG' discourse reaches new, depraved depths. But "If Bloodborne counts as an RPG, so does Actraiser! Tell 'em, Hawk!"
• Nadia once had a Cabbage Patch doll, and that ended poorly for everyone.

This week on Axe of the Blood God, the PC RPG Quest continues! The gang is joined by their friend Jeff Green, who was at the epicentre of the major shift PC gaming underwent in the 2000's. On the surface, it was a grim time for PC RPGs. MMOs were encroaching on single-player adventures, consoles were eating into the PC RPG space...and what the heck was this "Steam" thing Valve refused to shut up about? Pffft. It'll never catch on.

Also in this episode: 

• We introduce our characters for next week's D&D game! Be there or be square.
• Starscourge Radahn was un-nerfed in Elden Ring, but the important thing is he still rides on a tiny horse. (Or is it a tricycle?)
• Kat has started her Persona 3 playthrough, and she has some initial thoughts.
• Actraiser is an RPG. End of discussion.

This episode of Axe of the Blood God comes at the end of a discourse-heavy week. E3 is pretty much dead, which spurs Kat, Nadia, and Eric into sharing their best E3 memories (Nadia still has her Witcher press Trapper Keeper).

Moreover, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 has been bumped to spring 2023. Whatever will Nintendo do this holiday season?...Oh, right. Pokemon's coming.

Also in this episode:

• Nadia's playing Valkyrie Profile and keeps calling it "Valkyria Chronicles."
• March Madness is done! Who came out on top as the best RPG Hero or Champion?
• The new PlayStation Plus deal is "uhhhh." But at least we can play Tokyo Jungle again?
• A book fair ran over Nadia's cat.

We also have a post show available to our Stars of Destiny subscribers! This week we share our Stephen King starting recommendations and talk about being really bad at math. Stars of Destiny and above subscribers also get access to our live recording every Friday at 5pm PT, which is always a party. As always we appreciate your support!

This week's episode of Axe of the Blood God is utterly bewitching. True, Kat, Nadia, and Eric are enthralling company in every circumstance—but with the recent announcement of (not) Witcher 4, how could they resist talking about what CD Projekt has up its sleeve? The gang talks about the seemingly new direction for this beloved fantasy property, and what it entails for the still-troubled CD Projekt.

Also in this episode:

• It's letter time! It's letter time!
• Kat's getting into Triangle Strategy, as the prophecy foretold.
• Nadia stuck a twinblade up a dragon's grundle.
• Back in MY day, we had to print hentai and pass it around the school.

Enjoy the show? Check us out on Patreon: https://patreon.com/bloodgodpod

This week on the Axe of the Blood God RPG podcast, we're joined by USgamer alumni Mike Williams. Mike tells us all about the adventures he's had with a jolly man named Jack Garland. Jack is the very agreeable protagonist of the very normal, very down to earth Final Fantasy Origins: Stranger of Paradise. Listen to Mike talk about the game; we assure you Jack never uses foul language or flies off into disjointed rants. P.S., today is Opposite Day.

Also in this episode:

• Strategy fans are eatin' good with Triangle Strategy
• You should play Babylon's Fall just to remind yourself of how bad video games can get
• Warm memories of Toonami on its 20th anniversary
• Dicktochat

This week on Axe of the Blood God, we're spoiling for a fight. That's why we pushed Kat off her chair this week and offered it to Michael Higham, Fanbyte's fighting game expert extraordinaire. What do fighting games have to do with RPGs? Well heck, a good fighting game character can have a backstory to rival any RPG hero's tale—and anyway, now's a great time to talk about Persona 4 Arena Ultramax. So that's what we do. 

Also in this episode:

• Our hero-themed March Madness continues to be madness.
• We're here to talk about Stranger of Paradise and Chaos. That's our mission.
• Nadia's been fully absorbed by Elden Ring, RIP.
• Nadia also forgot to add music for her segment. It's all Blaidd's fault, somehow.

Enjoy the show? Support us on Patreon! 

The three co-hosts have been reunited after many weeks apart, and just in time to talk about a whole bunch of news! There's a new generation of Pokémon on the horizon, Triangle Strategy is out, and we're all still talking Elden Ring. It's quite a time for RPGs, even if they're all getting swallowed up by FromSoft's latest.  

Also on the show: 

- Eric becomes Wolverine Jesus

- Nadia discovers how to work a Nintendo

- Kat gears up for some old-school Pokémon catching

- We take a look at the first round of March Madness voting!

Links mentioned in the show:

- Eric's segment "Piplup Step": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm0nLJuRNbw

- Donate to Ukraine: https://www.icrc.org/en/donate/ukraine

- Equality Texas: https://www.equalitytexas.org/

- TENT: https://www.transtexas.org/

Greetings, disciples of the Blood God. Kat is not with us this week; she's going to try her hand at being a pirate on the open seas.

There's an excellent chance she'll be back next week, though. Despite what the Peter Pan song tells you, the pirate's life is not for everyone.

Nadia and Eric manage to scrounge together a great show anyway, because it's Elden Ring week! No worries—there are no spoilers on the show, but we did get Isla Hinck from Easy Allies and Jesse Vitelli of PrimaGames to talk about their reviews for this highly anticipated (and critically acclaimed) open world game from FromSoftware.

Also on this episode:

• No, seriously, Elden Ring's review scores are truly, truly, truly outrageous
• Nadia gives her impressions of Final Fantasy VI: Pixel Remaster
• Valve God Gabe Newell is confirmed Final Fantasy XIV trash
• The story of Ganon, the golden retriever that humped everything

• Eric learns to loathe the grind in Monark 
• Kat is figuring out her feelings on Horizon 
• Nadia isn't even here and the Nostalgia Nook still takes a dark turn

There are people out there who hang onto news about Nintendo Directs the way a religious person might fervently cling to signs of Jesus' return. Humanity is still waiting on the second coming of the Lord, but Nintendo offered a nice stop-gap last week. The February Nintendo Direct was bursting with incredible RPG news—and some of it was simply bananas. A 2D HD remake of Live A Live? Absolutely nobody had that on their Bingo card. Well, it's doubtful anyone had "Kirby inhales objects bigger than your mom in Kirby and the Forgotten Land" either. To reiterate a point made earlier, it was a strange Direct.

In addition to the Nintendo Direct RPG news, we talk about:

• Nadia is bad at Final Fantasy Tactics
• Waddle Dee broke the internet news machine wide open
• Lost Ark is already huge — can it keep up that momentum?
• More RPG nominations for the 25 Best RPGs of All Time Intergrade
• If we get to $8000 per month, Nadia and Eric's dads will fight each other
• $10,000, and we'll make it to the death

Kat's gone, so Eric and Nadia assemble an Elite 4 to review Pokemon Legends: Arceus. IGN's Rebekah Valentine and Fanbyte's Kenneth Shepard join the show to chat about how the new direction has panned out, its highs and lows, and how it embraces Poke-mythology. Will this be remembered as a trailblazer or an obscure side game? Either way, we never want to see Cherubi again.

Also in this episode:
- A Realm Reborn struggle is real
- We sing some Phantom of the Opera?
- Eric craves curling
- Nadia recounts crime
- New Top 25 entries and the reveal of a new tactic-ful February special!

Enjoy the show? Make sure to subscribe to our Patreon! 

We're in the throes of winter, but Pokemon discourse is hotter than ever. This week, Kat, Nadia, and Eric talk about the opening hours of Pokemon Legends Arceus, Game Freak's attempt to take the Pokemon franchise sort-of open world. Does it succeed? Does it fall flat on its face? We have things to say: We are chatty little Chatots.

Also in this episode:

- Bloodborne is still great.

- It's time to vote for a new Blood God Pantheon game! Here's why Valkyria Chronicles deserves the vote.

- Since voting for list stuff never goes out of style, we also have new picks for the Top 25 RPGs of All Time Integrade list!

- Eric nearly drove a teacher to insanity with a metronome.

- Nadia got hauled away by the Shakespeare Police.

We're going back to the '90s again here on Axe of the Blood God, but here's a twist: We're going back to '90s Japan. Yes, it's another PC Console Quest, and we've invited our good friend PC98 Audi back to the show for the occasion. We discuss the PC-98's legacy, and how it affected '90s RPG development. Why did the platform have so many visual novels? What's the deal with, ahem, all those hentai games? We have much wisdom contained here, so stay a while and listen.

Also in this episode:

• Oh God, Activision Blizzard and Microsoft. Oh God.
• We have new picks for the Top 25 RPG Remake 2022 Intergrade.
• Nadia plays Bloodborne like a dimwit.
• Space Jam DVD.

We may be in the dead of winter, but Axe of the Blood God is hotter than ever. So sayeth the show's fans, anyway. It's true! No word of a lie! Ahem. This week, Kat, Nadia, and Eric talk about a hodgepodge of lively topics, including:

• Some interesting new nominees for our new Best 25 RPGs of All Time list. Emphasis on "new"
• Final Fantasy XIV's producer tells the fanbase "Be good. For the love of God, please be good."
• RPGs – and games in general – are too long [INITIATING HUMOUR PROTOCOL: "That is what she said"]
• Square One, Mathman, and the trauma that accompanied them

Weekly episodes are available to both free and premium listeners on Mondays. For lots more bonus content, check out our Patreon: https://patreon.com/bloodgodpod

New year, new Axe of the Blood God! Our new Stars of Destiny tier has kicked off in earnest, and we had our first live taping of the podcast, followed by a special post-show discussion.

That's right, for 25 smackeroos you can listen to us flub our lines and then get into a fight about Super Mario World vs Super Mario Bros. 3. Very rated R stuff. See, the R stands for "rad."

This week's main show covers a bunch of stuff, including:

- The great indie RPG 2022 preview! Some gorgeous retro-style fare is coming up, like Sea of Stars, SacriFire, and Eiyuden Chronicles Rising.

- We're revisiting the Top 25 RPGs of All Time, and we want you to help us update our selection!

- Square Enix is having NFT FOMO, and the world must suffer for it.

- Eric is now a Final Fantasy XIV sicko. Ha ha…yes! Yessss!

If you weren't able to pop to the post-show, we've got that for you, too. We talk about Sony's drive to produce only "prestige" games, and how that new philosophy will affect RPGs. Then everything breaks down into Super Mario chaos. Mama mia.

We're already three days into 2022! No refunds on the year, suckers. Don't worry, the Axe of the Blood God will be around to pick you up whenever you need it…and going by recent trends, everyone is going to be due for a pick-me-up somewhere between the first three and six months.

Let's start the year strong with some spicy 2022 RPG predictions! Will we see anything to do with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 this year? Will we enjoy Elden Ring? Will Final Fantasy 16 make it out before year's end? (Funny you should ask…)

Also in this episode:

• Nadia remembers quality Nintendo literature
• Yuji Naka is still plying his trade in the corner, like an exiled shoe-elf who hopes to return to his cobbler kingdom someday
• We read your RPG 202 feelings

Here's to '22!