PixlBit

Its battle system is a lot like Sakura Wars, and that's partly because it was made by many of the same people. Unlike VC, Sakura Wars has a full overhead view instead of the over-the-shoulder views and limited perspective of VC (you won't see any of the action until it comes into one of your party members' field of vision.) For the actual combat, it seemed to me like they were trying to adapt the cover system of Gears of War into a turn-based RPG.

Valkyria Chronicles was my favorite game of the 7th generation. Beautiful graphics and fun SRPG gameplay. 

My most recent purchases were Trails Through Daybreak and Princess Maker 2 on Switch. I also put in a preoder on Atari 50 Expanded, which supposedly will feature a "deep dive" into Berzerk.

It would probably get some generic name like "Crusades" or "War for the Crown." 

 The cover art would show the main character as a big, oily bodybuilder type drawn by Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell. Only Working Designs and a handful of other companies felt comfortable putting the game's original anime art on covers, and we owe them a debt of graittude for that.

When I got rid of my 360, Microsoft made it a pain in the ass to cancel my Live sub.

My game of the year so far is Unicorn Overlord. A great homage to Ogre Battle 64 with Vanillaware visuals. I also enjoyed Paper Mario. Right now I'm playing Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak, which is the latest arc in the series.

Most anticipated games later this eyar are Zelda: EoW and Dragon Quest III HD.

Microsoft did pay Japanese companies for limited excusivity. The companies that took the deal ended up regretting it when the fans didn't show up on Xbox 360 in either Japan or the United States. Microsoft did a lot of damage to by doing that.  That's why I dislike that they won't take the hint that Xbox is never going to be a thing in Japan (it isn't doing well anywhere these days). 

I don't back Kickstarters because it's basically investment without return and without any of the fiduciary laws that govern businesses and protect investors. After the initial wave of Kickstarter games was kicked off by Double Fine, it's kind of petered out with too many disappointments. There have been some decent ones. Bloodstained and Eiyuden Chronicles were follow-ups to Konami games that the company doesn't seem to be interested in making anymore. I think Yooka-Laylee was a KS game, too. Tesla Effect was the sixth game in the Tex Murphy series, which was a series of PC adventure games that I loved. They even brought back the original Leisure Suit Larry with the intent of remastering the whole series, except that the development process didn't go smoothly and Al Lowe decided to back out and go back into retirement. Another company makes LSL games these days. Shenmue III was interesting, but it was also criticized for largely being stuck in the 2000s as far as game design. I think Bloodstained probably got the best reception of any KS game I can think of.

And then there was the Ouya...

Kicikstarter seems to have done better for board games than for video games.

At this point, I'm going to say that the 360 was a lucky fluke on Microsoft's part whose success owed more to Playstation's mistakes than to any good planning on Microsoft's part. My 360 E74'd, and by that time, games like Valkyria Chronicles that were more my taste were starting to show up on PS3. So I dipped out on Xbox. I just wish they would stop buying up other game companies, because they're only leaving more wreckage behind. Hopefully the board of directors is going to tell Nadella and Spencer to STOP at some point. To borrow a phrase from Better Call Saul, Xbox is like a chimp with a machine gun.

I think with Kickstarters, the excitement was over games and genres being made through crowdfunding that major publishers wouldn't touch anymore by game designers who had made their names at big publishers. Unfortunately, it's been hit or miss. A few of them turned out okay. I've been playing Eiyuden Chronicles, which was made by the creators of Suikoden. It's good, but probably needed more time in the oven. Mighty no. 9 was pretty much a disaster.Some of those guys really needed a publisher to be the adults in the room and ride herd on them.  Chris Roberts comes to mind here. Star Citizen has raised a half-billion dollars and is still in alpha.

My two favorite games out of this era were Valkyria Chronicles, Fallout 3, Super Mario Galaxy, and Tales of Vesperia. I bought VC on PC, PS4, and Switch. I own Tales of Vesperia Definitive Edition on Switch. Demon's Souls also came out around this time. Among some hidden gems of the era were Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn and the DS re-releases of Dragon Quest 4 and 5. It's really a shame we didn't get Dragon Quest 5 in particular, it's easily as good as any of the SNES-era Final Fantasy games.

The last E3 I really enjoyed was seeing Microsoft get torched by Sony and everyone else at E3 2013 over the myriad poor decisions they made for the Xbox One, decisions which are still dragging them down eleven years later. 

I guess I also sort of enjoyed the reveals of the crowdfunded games at E3 2015 like Shenmue III. Pity so many Kickstarter video games turned out to be complete busts. Nintendo shadow-dropping Earthbound Beginnings was kind of cool, too, even if they were doing it to try to tide themselves over until they could get the Switch out the door. 

Other than that, though, E3 was a product of its time, and that time passed long before E3 itself closed up show. Even Geoff Keighley's Kojima-fest... I mean, Game Awards doesn't quite attract the same interest as E3 in its heyday.