RPG talk with memory, criteria, and candor.
RPGFan's Retro Encounter gathers rotating voices for brisk, thoughtful conversations about role-playing games and adjacent adventure titles. Episodes move from personal play history into close readings of combat systems, story structure, genre expectations, and the strange standards fans use to judge beloved games.
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RPGFan's Retro Encounter is RPGFan's panel show for people who want game discussion with memory, friction, and actual criteria behind the opinions. It is not built like a quick review feed. The conversations usually start from recent play, old attachments, or a panelist's history with a series, then stretch into broader questions about what a game is trying to do. Persona 5 Royal leads to talk about the Persona series, Shin Megami Tensei experience, and the divide between earlier and later entries. Pentiment becomes a conversation about stories, inheritance, and why an adventure-game-shaped RPG can feel so affecting. Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade gets treated both as a historical entry point and as a game with missing comforts, uneven story access, and maps that can still provoke real feeling. The 13 Sentinels episodes show the show's strength with tangled narrative games: admiration, impatience, plot reconstruction, and design analysis all happening in the same exchange. The panel does not need to agree quickly. That is part of the appeal. A point may get qualified, corrected, narrowed, and rebuilt before anyone lands on the version they actually mean. The show also likes evaluative frameworks, from perfect scores to final bosses that overcome the genre's frequent disappointment problem. Those topics could become empty ranking exercises elsewhere. Here, they become arguments about artifice, linearity, combat feel, emotional payoff, and what players forgive when a game has enough force. The humor is casual and dry. The criticism can be blunt, but it usually comes from care rather than dismissal. RPGFan's Retro Encounter works best for listeners who have played the games, plan to play them, or simply enjoy hearing RPG fans test their own assumptions out loud.
Made for: For RPG and adventure-game fans who enjoy longform panel criticism, especially around older games, modern classics, and series history. It fits listeners who like spoilers, systems talk, story analysis, and opinionated but careful disagreement.
What sets it apart: The show stands out by treating fan conversation as serious criticism without sanding off the banter. Its rotating panels move naturally between recap, personal history, mechanical analysis, and broader arguments about taste.
Join the RPGFan crew as they play through and discuss classic RPGs and adventure games!
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Detailed panel conversations connect RPG nostalgia with clear criticism of mechanics, storytelling, and the standards behind lasting acclaim.
RPGFan's Retro Encounter turns role-playing games into lively roundtable criticism. Zach Wilkerson guides panels through single-game discussions, retrospective surveys, and broader questions about how games earn acclaim.
A perfect-score debate becomes the kind of Final Fantasy argument you happily prolong.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A thoughtful discussion of perfect scores, Final Fantasy X's combat, and how a bounded RPG world can still feel large.
Retro Encounter 478 takes up perfect scores as a tricky benchmark inside RPGFan's 100-point scale. Zach Wilkerson leads Matt, Alex, and Ben through a discussion of what could reasonably earn that mark, with Final Fantasy X becoming the main test case.
A focused panel review that uses one rescue to examine clones, originals, and the emotional shape of 13 Sentinels.
Retro Encounter's second-half look at 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim narrows in on the story after its opening stretch, moving through Karabe's ending, the original Izumi, Megumi, and the 2188 versions who sit behind the clones.
A focused Retro Encounter discussion on whether 13 Sentinels' keyword system clarifies adventure play or narrows player choice.
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim returns to Retro Encounter as a game newly framed as retro and still slippery by genre. Zach Wilkerson leads Ben and Alex through Vanillaware's mix of real-time strategy, visual novel, and adventure-game design, with the most useful stretch landing on its…
A loose, funny panel wrestles with Drakengard's endings, dragons, and controls without forcing the game into neat sense.
Drakengard Part II follows a panel trying to make sense of a game that seems almost built to resist tidy judgment. The discussion works best when frustration turns into criticism: the endings, the unsettling force of the dragons and watchers, and the odd logic tying the routes…
A relaxed 1995 RPG lookback finds its best focus in Game Gear Shining Force.
Retro Encounter's 475th episode looks back at 1995 through RPG releases, but its appeal comes less from completism than from the panel's lived relationship to the year.
Game Informer's editors review new releases and debrief hands-on previews from events like Summer Game Fest.
The RPGFan crew hosts a retrospective on RPGs released in 1995.
The RPGFan crew continues their playthrough of Drakengard, focusing on its disturbing companions and multiple bizarre endings.
The hosts introduce a special episode of their podcast featuring a quiz show with five previous champions competing to determine the ultimate winner.
A panel of RPG fans discusses the highly anticipated spiritual successor to Suikoden, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, covering its development, reception, and mixed reviews.
The Retro Encounter podcast panel discusses their backgrounds with Dark Souls and the game's impact on the action RPG genre.
Zach Wilkerson, Audra, Rob and Dom open episode 495 by explaining why they like sci-fi, citing Blade Runner 2049, Interstellar and Evangelion as stories that "hold up a mirror" to humanity.
The host introduces a podcast episode about Persona 5 Royal, with panelists sharing their history with the Persona series.
The hosts of Retro Encounter introduce a discussion about the Obsidian game Pentiment, praising its narrative and art style.
The host and panelists discuss the best final bosses in RPGs, acknowledging that many are often disappointing but highlighting those that stand out.
The host and guests discuss the second half of Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, focusing on its story, end-game maps, and comparisons to Sacred Stones.
The hosts introduce a discussion about the first Fire Emblem game localized to the West, The Blazing Blade, covering its basics and early chapters.
Retro Encounter 478, "RPGs That Deserve a Perfect Score," has Zach Wilkerson, Matt, Alex, and Ben comparing what RPGFan's 100-point scale should actually mean.
Retro Encounter episode 477 centers on the second half of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, with Zach Wilkerson and the panel unpacking the simulation, the growth pods, and the "300th cycle" idea.
Retro Encounter episode 476 has Zach Wilkerson, Ben, and Alex talking about 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, a Vanillaware game from around 2019 that mixes RTS, visual novel, and adventure-game elements.
The Retro Encounter podcast hosts discuss RPGs released in 1995, sharing their ages and memories from that year.
The Retro Encounter podcast introduces a series of episodes on short narrative games, starting with Firewatch, a 2016 indie walking simulator.