Takeshi Yamamoto

8+ years covering Japanese gaming, former localisation consultant, bilingual coverage of Eastern and Western game markets

Takeshi Yamamoto bridges two gaming cultures that have been borrowing from each other for decades without always acknowledging it. He writes about JRPGs not just as games but as cultural artefacts — explaining why turn-based combat persists, how visual novel storytelling conventions influence global game design, and what Western studios consistently get wrong when they try to make 'Japanese-style' games. Takeshi grew up playing Dragon Quest on a hand-me-down Famicom and later worked as a localisation consultant before moving into journalism. His reviews give equal weight to mechanical depth and cultural context, and he maintains that the Persona series' social-link system is the most important RPG innovation of the last 20 years.