11.02.12 / Japanese, Namco, Nintendo DS, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (6)
Tags: Dearly Stars, music game, The Idolm@ster
I wanted something with absolutely no random battles in it, and I haven’t started a new raising sim in a while so… here we are.
Dearly Stars has you playing as a wannabe idol singer who grows from a nobody into a famous id0l. I picked Hidaka Ai, the one in the middle, and I’ve currently got her up to a Rank D idol (over 100,000 fans).
The gameplay is simple enough. You have three stats, Vocal, Dance and Visual (looks), and you raise them through lessons that take the form of annoying touchscreen mini-games. Additionally you pick a song and an outfit depending on which one of the three stats is trending that week, then you carry out promotions that help you build up “memories.” After a few of these, you qualify to take part in an audition where you use those “memories” to hold the judges’ interest long enough to pass. Pass, rank up, next audition, pass rank up, etc.
I haven’t watched the Idolm@ster anime, and this is the first game I’m playing but I hear they’re all quite similar. While this isn’t quite the experience I was hoping for, I can (sort of) see what the attraction of this game would be. It’s like the anti-Princess Maker, made for people who find “regular” raising sims long, tiring and/or confusing. They just want to play with a cute girl and they already know what they want her to be. No need to mess with all those stats and jobs and lessons and multiple endings and stress and time limits and stuff like that. Just a linear story, simple mini-games and lots of anime girls to ogle. Makes sense.
It’s not really for me though. I’m going to finish it and everything, but it’s not really doing anything for me. The foregone conclusion (Ai wins “Idol Ultimate” and becomes a top star like her bitchy mother) is painful enough without adding the repetitive gameplay and the vaguely irritating story to the mix. At each stage they try to throw an obstacle in Ai’s way, but with the player at the helm and the auditions so easy to win, they just end up looking ridiculous. For example right now I have to beat an idol named Hoshii Miki in an audition. There’s no way I’m going to lose as long as I take lessons and follow the trends, but the game is acting like it’s this insurmountable obstacle that I could never overcome in a million years, blah blah blah. Pathetic.
Anyway, I’m going to finish it. Apart from being piss-easy and highly repetitive, it’s not exactly bad, and it shouldn’t take too long at the rate I’m going. After this I still won’t be ready to take on any random battles, so… hmm… I’ll probably pick up an otome game.
08.02.12 / Nintendo DS, Strategy RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: Hero's Saga Laevatein Tactics, review
After blathering on about my “gamer’s pride” in the previous post, I felt a bit silly walking away from the Immortal King without a fight, so I went back and killed him. The King himself wasn’t all that tough. It was those zombie magicians with the crazy range and the filled Valhalla gauges that decimated my party last time. This time I got a little lucky and two of them came down early to their doom. The troublesome one in the middle I took out with a Valhalla attack from one cleric and the rest weren’t much trouble. Victoly!
After all that, it turned out the Immortal King wasn’t even the final boss. It was Ahriman, who was more like Yu Yevon to IK’s Jecht than any credible threat. I rubbed him out quickly, thinking the game would be over then, but nooo. Not even a credit roll. My hero Ernesto promised IK that he’d gather up all the Vaettir Arms on the continent and return them to him, so I’m supposed to help out with that. In the meantime the NPC that started everything got herself frozen in a time crystal and I have to find out a way to undo that and get her back.
…Or not. I ain’t gonna do it. Even if the credits haven’t rolled, I still consider the game over. If there’s anything else the game wants me to do, it should be short and to the point. Instead, right now I have 50% of the Arms and no clue how many more battles I have to fight to get the number I need to return. I also have no idea how I’m supposed to rescue Valerie. Most likely I’m supposed to fight and fight and fight and every couple of fights they’ll give me another clue until the chapter is over. DO NOT LIKE. So that’s it for me and Hero’s Saga, for real this time.
Overall impressions: the story was shallow. Like, really really shallow. It lacked most of the twists that SRPGs usually have, and character motivations rarely made any sense at all. This bad guy developed all these weapons that hurt people on all sides and wasn’t even sorry for it, but because he’s an NPC’s father, he’s magically forgiven. Stuff like that. Character interaction is rare and usually pointless. There were only about 5 or 6 story characters, so they have no real excuse. They seemed to be building a nice love-triangle between our MC Ernesto, his brother Claudio and his fiancee Diana, but then they chickened out and paired Ernesto with Valerie at the end, entirely unconvincingly. Boo, hiss.
Story and characters aside, everything else was pretty good. The battle music was okay, the graphics were okay, the character designs were meh, but passable. The battle system needed a little more balancing though. Higher-level enemies dodge like crazy, especially in the post-game chapter. No matter how high your morale is, once the enemies gets to more than one or two levels above you, prepare to miss just about every hit. You can use Phalanx for a guaranteed hit, but then prepare to do piss-all damage.
Magicians decimate your parties with ease. In most games, magicians are strong against other magicians, but in this game they’re weak against everything when it comes to being hit and strong against everything when it comes to dealing damage. And somehow enemy mages always do more damage to you than vice-versa. Some elements seem to be far stronger and more useful than others. Lightning and Earth especially, even though all four elements are supposed to be even. Valhalla Breaks are just evil. Yet somehow the enemy seems to have very good survivability against them lately.
Etc, etc. It needed a bit of tweaking in all regards and doesn’t stand out in any one aspect. If you like SRPGs you won’t regret playing it, but you won’t miss anything if you don’t get it either.
25.01.12 / Japanese, Nintendo DS, RPG, Strategy RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (6)
Tags: Hero's Saga Laevatein Tactics, wiZman's world
They were blocking my path to gaming pleasure. For the past few days I’ve been in a state of not wanting to play these games and at the same time not wanting to start anything else until they were done. Obviously something had to give.
Hero’s Saga: Made it to the last boss and fought him once. He’s a cheating bastard, but I outwaited him and he came down to fight me around turn 10. I beat him fair and square, and what did he do? He came back to life with his skills returned and his Valhalla Gauge refilled. Cheater! Cheater! I’d already lost a number of troops to his cheating ways, so I decided to grind a little, strategize a little better, and take him on again. That’s what I thought four days ago, and I haven’t been able to muster up the interest since. The last boss was kind enough to blab the rest of the story before recovering, and I don’t really care what happens to everyone at the end, so… *toss*
WiZman’s World: I don’t really want to drop this. I like it a lot. Sadly it’s time to admit to myself that I don’t have the energy to finish it. I’m about halfway through the last dungeon, and it’s one of those warp dungeons. The map is all but useless and it pains me to realize that I’m putting in all this trouble to go face the final boss just to get killed. Because I just know I’m going to be killed the first time no matter how much preparation I do. Get killed, waste several more hours re-preparing, possibly get killed again, finally kill the boss… I’m tired. I want to finish it, but not at the expense of that much time and effort.
I could put them merely on “hiatus” but then they’d still be there as a mental stumbling block, begging me to come back. No, we can’t just be friends. A clean break is best for us all. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with Persona 2.
18.01.12 / Nintendo DS, Strategy RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (2)
Tags: Hero's Saga Laevatein Tactics
I’m at it again. SRPG No. 2893. I don’t know what it is about me and SRPGs, but no matter how badly they treat me I keep coming back for more.
I’m supposed to be finishing up WiZman’s World right about now so I can put 2011′s games behind me. Unfortunately I came down with a case of Last Dungeon Syndrome and can’t bring myself to continue, which is where this new game comes in.
Hero’s Saga is as generic as generic SRPGS come. The main character is a prince of a small country threatened by an empire, he wields a sword, there are mysterious legendary weapons, the Empire has the super-powerful (in name only) generals, you recruit NPCs as you go, storyline characters join you from time to time, etc etc.
The story: some undead attack the hero’s friend. Some mysterious girl gives him a sword that can beat them. The evil Empire wants the sword. The hero decides that not only is he not going to hand it over, but he’s also going slash and burn his way to the Empire’s capital and give them what’s for. Bloodthirsty little bugger. And that’s how far I’ve gotten.
The only thing slightly unusual about the story is that it seems to be based on real-life Spain (Valencia) and France (Galia). This leads to the heroes and villains throwing gratuitous French and Spanish around like a lost episode of ‘Allo ‘Allo: hermano, señor, merde (my understanding is that ‘merde’ is considered extremely rude in French, but luckily no one at the ESRB can speak French), diable, that sort of thing. Right now it’s the Valencia vs. Galia, but the threat of the undead hasn’t been addressed yet, so I’m sure they’ll band together to take down the real bad guys before too long.
Gameplay-wise, while you can see your characters as individuals on the map, once you get into battle every “hero” has troops under them that help with attacking and defending. Archaic Sealed Heat tried to implement a similar thing, but the game itself was such a cluster**** that I never got deep into the system.
There’s the normal Attack and Defend, then there’s Charge, a high-powered low accuracy volley, and Phalanx, which is a low-powered attack that never misses and raises accuracy. Some troops may also have the Defend and Evade command, depending on their classes. I’m still exploring the advantages and disadvantages of each class. Magic-users are the strongest so far, but very frail. Melee units are meh. Archers are the worst ever. This is the first tactics game I’ve ever played where the archer class was the most useless, so that’s new. Changing class is as simple as changing weapons, so I’ll keep experimenting for a while.
Hero’s Saga also has bases scattered over the map that you can take control of. It’s a bit like in Advance Wars, but without that charming little ‘boing-boing’ thing they do. Standing on top of one of these refills your life and adds troops if you’re missing any. Characters in range also gain a boost to their Morale, which improves their accuracy.
As of 9:38h in, there are four main things that are bothering me about this game.
1. The enemies are way too passive. Most of them won’t move unless you come into range, and sometimes not even then.
2. 99% of all stages have the same “Eradicate enemy or take over castle” goal as their victory condition. Taking over the castle is almost impossible without first eradicating the enemy anyway.
3. You can only take 6 allies max into battle. I’ve got so many good characters and interesting weapons I want to try out but the game won’t give me the chance.
4. Valhalla Gauge attacks (this game’s equivalent of limit breaks) are too broken. One hit will wipe out most parties or leave them barely alive. It’s painful when they do it to you and dull when you do it to them.
On the plus side:
1. All NPCs have their own little bios, a nice touch.
2. Battles don’t take too long. Maps aren’t that big and don’t take that long to cross
3. Characters have skills and innate talents that range from moderately useful to WTF BROKEN. Makes a lot of difference when putting together a party.
4. Not too much blathering about morality. As far as I can tell both sides are wrong and Might makes Right. I hope it stays that way.
5. I appreciate attempts to shake up the same old SRPG formula. Something tells me I’m going to tire of watching the animations soon, but for now I’m enjoying.
I’m sure a couple more plusses and minuses will pop up before it’s over. An above average game so far.
14.01.12 / Nintendo DS, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (6)
Tags: review, virtual villagers
Your villagers look nothing like these
Since Konami won’t release another Lost in Blue game, I’ve been forced to look for acceptable substitutes. Candidate number one: Virtual Villagers: A New Home for the Nintendo DS.
A group of villagers from an island destroyed by a volcano settle on a new island. It’s up to you to make sure they can survive.
Controls are usually done via the touchscreen+stylus. Drag and drop villagers next to an item and they’ll carry out a related item. E.g. drop them next to the ocean and they’ll start fishing. Drop them next to a hut that needs repair and they’ll start fixing it. And drop a male and female on top of each other (under the right conditions) and they’ll head off to a hut to make babies.
It’s a simple game, with two major flaws that made me quit after two days. The first one is its very simplicity. There simply aren’t that many actions your characters can take. Fish, farm, build, research, breed, worship, take care of kids, that’s pretty much it. While they require “food”, they don’t actually eat or sleep.
That lying cover on the right shows a guy offering a girl a fish. That doesn’t happen. It shows a boy lighting a fire. That hasn’t happened in my game so far. Nobody has picked up a monkey either. Nobody’s blonde or red-haired or tanned either. About the only accurate thing in that picture is the woman carrying a basket of berries. That’s what my villagers have subsisted on for 53 years: berries and fish. Nutrition? Wat dat?
Almost all the things you’d need to worry about on a desert island are ignored in this game.
A Safe source of water? Your villagers don’t drink.
A Balanced diet? Safe sources of food? Like I said, berries and fish and later bananas. Presumably eaten raw.
Shelter? They build huts, but they don’t live in them, even in bad weather. Sunstroke? Wat dat?
Fire? Light? They hang around outside even through the middle of the night. Presumably they can see in the dark.
Dangerous animals? None.
Sanitation? Nobody poops or pees. Or showers, for that matter.
Inbreeding? You start out with 6 villagers. It’s a necessary evil. They’re prudish enough not to mate before 18, but fathers, mothers, brothers, uncles, everything that moves is fair game.
Seriously, my villagers have got things good. Which is good for them and bad for me, because they’re not very exciting to manage.
The second, and main flaw of the game is the time lapse system coupled with the sheer stupidity of the AI. Building huts, making babies, researching technology all takes so long that it’s pointless to just sit there and watch them. Since time passes even when the game is turned off, in an ideal world you could set everyone a task, leave for a bit and come back to find them completed. That’s in the ideal world. On Planet Earth, when you turn Virtual Villagers on the next morning, you’re far more likely discover half your villagers dead and the other half deadly sick. Anyone who isn’t sick will either be goofing off or doing a task you never asked them to do anyway. Even if you train a couple of healers, they’ll just stand by and let the others die. Builders will hang around while the huts fall into disrepair. Men and women will laze about when they should be breeding. So that’s where all the challenge went: keeping your moronic populace from dying of idiotus nobrainus syndrome.
The killing blow for me was the arbitrary set of “puzzles” you had to solve to progress. If “progress” is indeed the word. For one of them, I needed an expert builder to knock down a door so I could explore the rest of the island. Btw, the game never tells you this. You have to drag characters of various occupations all over the island until somebody triggers something somehow. Or, more sensibly, read a FAQ. So I set my adept builder to work on a hut, turned the game off, and then I came back he’d reached expert builder and died almost immediately after just to spite me.
Anyway, I stuck it out for a little longer. Got that door open eventually, explored a bit, got 16 villagers now, but all the fun is gone. In fact it was never there to begin with, and I was just deceiving myself. I have a lot of other games to play this year, and there are some great games coming out on PSP in the next few weeks (Suikoden Hyakunen, Atelier Elkrone(!!), Tales of the Heroes, Shining Blade) so I can’t afford to waste time here. Good luck on the island, folks!
13.01.12 / Japanese, Konami, Nintendo DS, Romance game, Video game, Visual novel / Author: Kina / Comments: (20)
Tags: anime, Boku ga Romeo de Romeo ga Boku de, Hayate no Gotoku
Yes, even monkeys fall from trees. And even normally careful gamers forget to keep backup saves and accidentally overwrite precious New Game+ data with an actual new game save.
In most games this wouldn’t be a problem because each route would be (mostly) separate. But in Hayate no Gotoku, the only way to unlock Maria as a romantic partner is to clear all the other girls. No cleared save data = No Maria. No Maria = No point in continuing. And I just had Isumi to go before getting her, what a pity.
On to the next game!
10.01.12 / Japanese, Konami, Nintendo DS, Simulation game, Video game, Visual novel / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: anime, Gokujou!! Mecha Mote Iinchou: Mecha Mote Days, review
Konami is the company responsible for some of my favorite games on the DS: Tokimemo GS 1-3, Lost in Blue 1-3 (moaaarr), and more. Even monkeys fall from trees, as the Japanese saying goes. And even good companies make bad games every once in a while. It’s when it’s every time that it becomes a problem (*cough* Nippon Ichi *cough*).
That being the case, I see no need to go on at length about Gokujou! Mecha Iinchou, the dress up game based on the popular shoujo manga/anime of the same name. It’s aimed at pre- and early teen girls, and I’m old enough to have kids that fit that description, so I’m not even the target demographic in the first place.
Plus the general rule of anime-based games is that they’re not for people who aren’t fans of the original. I couldn’t be arsed to check out the show, and even if I had I’m not sure I would have enjoyed it. It’s only natural that I couldn’t follow along, then.
The game: Your character is the class rep, and at the end of the year there’s a beauty contest of sorts for class reps. Your job is to shape her up over the course of the year so she can win that competition. I’ve been playing this on and off since around August, waiting for the big payoff, but when I think of all the other games I could be playing instead, it’s hard to justify spending time on this silliness. *toss*
It could have been good, if the game had given you a certain amount of freedom to shape your character as you saw fit. Since what we got in the end is a kiddy, pedestrian affair where you spend 90% of your time playing mini-games and listening to heavy-handed beauty lectures from your so-called rival while trying to fulfill easy monthly objectives, it’s barely even worth writing about.
A typical month goes like this: you have a trip to the beach planned. You go to school in the mornings (nothing much happens there). You do a few mini-games to earn cash, buy some beach-appropriate clothes, everyone gushes over how lovely you look, the end. Repeat with a different challenge the next month. If the graphics were any good, maaaaybe dressing up the main character would have been fun, but since everything is jagged,small and garishly colored, and the outfit designs are uniformly hideous… *toss*.
The description of the anime also says something about a “bad boy trio” your character has to deal with, but either they don’t exist in the game or they were all given lobotomies, because everyone fawns slavishly over you no matter what you do or wear. Your rival wants to, nay, insists on helping you achieve your goals every month, so you don’t even have the joy of sticking it to the usual snooty rival.
Summary: Good premise poorly executed. Story only fans care about. Dull gameplay. No autonomy. Servile characters. Awful graphics.
Conclusion: Bad game. Avoid like cancer. If you want to play a dress-up game on the DS, try something like the Oshare Princess games instead.
08.01.12 / Japanese, Konami, Nintendo DS, Romance game, Video game, Visual novel / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: anime, Boku ga Romeo de Romeo ga Boku de, Hayate no Gotoku, review
It’s been a while since my DS saw any action. And I’m a little disgusted with my PSP after that Blade Dancer experience, so for a change of mood I decided to play something lighter and funnier.
Hayate no Gotoku – Romeo ga Boku de, Boku ga Romeo is the first of three handheld games based on a shonen manga about a debt-ridden butler named Ayasaki Hayate. If you haven’t read it, I’m in two minds as to whether to recommend it or not. On one hand it’s a very funny, charming series with a great cast of characters, but on the other hand the story hasn’t gone anywhere in ages and even I have stopped reading it, so… Eh. The game is for fans only, so if you don’t know the series you can skip the rest of this post.
Since this game came out in 2007 before anything really earth-shattering happened in the manga (Greece arc, A-tan), it still has that silly, gag-filled atmosphere that drew me in in the first place. As such Romeo ga Boku is the kind of story that would work well as a filler episode in the anime. Hakuo Academy is going to stage a play, and one way or another Hayate is going to be cast as one of the leads together with one of his many, many love interests. You have your choice of Nagi, Hinagiku, Ayumu, Sakuya, Isumi, Maria and a “secret character” (I’ll let you find out who that is).
The game is a visual novel 95% of the time, with the occasional save break that allows you to play mini-games to earn Pathos points. Pathos points can be used to unlock special outfits for the girls and also to unlock alternative answer choices during the main game. Apart from that you pick your girl, watch the scenes play out, pick an answer when given the option, hope you get a bad ending because those are hilarious and generally just make your way to the end of the game. Along the way you will also unlock voice clips and CGs that unfortunately I can’t show you because unlike the PSP, the DS does not have a screenshot plugin (I stole these ones from the internet).
Now then, although I normally dislike visual novels, the fact that the game features characters I already know and like, and the fact that each route is short and frequently funny has lead to me pouring more effort into this than I normally do with this kind of game. Right now I’ve gotten Nagi, Hinagiku and Ayumu’s endings. I just started Sakuya’s route and I’m kinda regretting it because I don’t like. But after her I’ll get Isumi, then finally Maria.
Hinagiku: Her play is “Snow White” and nothing much happens on her route until the end, where you have to battle your way up an RPG-style tower to rescue a puppy. She spends the whole play agonizing over what will happen during the kissing scene at the end, but then she panics so much that she sits up before Hayate can kiss her and the play ends there. Bummer. Hinagiku is as twitchy as ever, so her route has quite a few bad endings. That’s all part of the fun, of course.
Ayumu: She’s boring, so her route is boring too. At least she only has one Bad End. Her play is “Romeo and Juliet.” The “climax” of her story occurs when her father spots her practicing in the park at night with Hayate and sets his zombie coworkers on them. You might be wondering how Ayumu got to star in a Hakuo Academy play when she doesn’t even attend that school… well, don’t sweat the small stuff.
Yes, elephantiasis is a horrible disease.
Nagi: The most romantic of the three routes so far, because a magical statue actively tries to bring them together. Nagi’s play is “Cinderella.” Or more like Cinderella mixed with Dance Dance Revolution mixed with Fist of the North Star. Come on, it’s Nagi. The crisis on her route involves Nagi being kidnapped and held for ransom by the same guys that tried to hijack Sakuya’s ship way back when.
It’s been a while since I saw Nagi’s old mansion and bedroom, so this route was a nice trip down memory lane. Speaking of Nagi and her mansion, the realization Hayate would be a dick to end up with anyone else but the girl who loved him enough to throw away her zillion-dollar fortune is part of the reason why I stopped reading the manga. Foregone conclusions are no fun at all.
So that’s how far I’ve gotten. Graphically and musically this game isn’t much to write home about, but it’s cute and it’s funny and it helps pass the time, so that’s good enough for me. I am getting a leeetle bit tired though, especially of the “Tiger’s Den” scenes where Hayate has to try desperately to please these overly-sensitive girls. I might take a little break before continuing with the rest of the characters.
01.01.12 / Nintendo DS, PS2, PSX, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (12)
Tags: 7th dragon, atelier elie, disgaea, dragon quest vi, innocent sin, ni no kuni, persona 2, phantasy star portable, shining hearts, suikoden 2, summon night 3, tales of innocence, wild arms 2
Happy New Year! This was the quietest New Year’s Eve I’d ever spent in my life, thousands of miles away from friends and family. I didn’t even notice when the clock struck twelve because I was too busy reading morbid articles about pythons swallowing people. Don’t ask.
Still, yay, 2012! There’s something nice and round about that number that makes it seem like it’ll be a good year, right? So happy new year to everyone!
Now, back to the important stuff. For the past couple of days I’ve been playing Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light, which like TOLUCT, is not quite bad enough to quit playing over. I’ll write something about it when I either finish it or give up, whichever one comes first.
Since I don’t plan to buy a 3DS, Vita, 360 or PS3 any time soon, the games I plan to play this year are mostly games from my massive backlog dating back at least 10 years. Twelve games should be reasonable enough.
1. Persona 2: Innocent Sin (PSP) – I started it last year and didn’t get far. I’ll try and finish it once and for all in 2012. No news of an Eternal Punishment remake so far, so I might jump straight into the PSX version of that when I’m done.
2. Summon Night 3 (PS2) – First PS2 troubles then TV-unavailability problems kept me from playing this last year, but this time I’ll try to make it happen. I’d like to play SN4 too, but first things first.
3. Dragon Quest VI (NDS) – On Feb 14th it’ll have been exactly one year since I finished Dragon Quest V, making it as good a time as any to move on to the next one. I’ll probably be desperate for a good, old-school RPG by that point anyway.
4. Tales of Innocence (NDS) – I played this very briefly after finishing Tales of the Tempest. To be honest I thought it was even worse, all the flaws of ToTT but with some reincarnation bullshit thrown in on top. But I only played an hour, so I’m going to restart and give it a proper chance later this year.
5. Wild Arms 2 (PSX) – I haven’t touched my PSOne in years. I think it’s still working, but I’m not going to risk it, so I’ll just play this on an emulator. I played WA1 almost 10 years ago and liked it. Now I’ll get to see if the rest of the series is worth bothering with.
6. Suikoden 2 (PSX) – Same deal as with Wild Arms 2, except I skipped S2 and played S3 and it was really kinda bad. Still, Suikoden 2 is one of those legendary “OMG you have to play this, I can’t believe you haven’t played it yet” games. It should be playable, at the very least.
7. Atelier Elie (PSX) – Also to be emulated. It’s the only “main” Atelier game I have yet to play, apart from Lilie, which I dropped after a few hours because it was frustrating. Atelier Marie was my favorite one of the “real” Atelier games, and Elie is supposed to be a much-improved sequel, so this should be good.
8. Disgaea (PS2) – I’ve had this game for years. I’ve tried to play it several times, but I always quit before too long. Too much stuff to think about, not enough excitement. This year I’m going to give it the mother of all college tries to find out once and for all whether the game is just not for me or whether it’s really as bad as I’ve felt it to be so far.
9. 7th Dragon (NDS) – My love/hate affair with ImageEpoch continues. Luminous Arc 3 was amazing, Criminal Girls was fantastic, Sands of Destruction was so-so, Final Promise Story made me want to nuke Tokyo. What will 7th Dragon be like? I’m quite excited about this game, tbh. There’s a PSP sequel, so if I like this I’ll order that as well.
10. Ni no Kuni: Shikkoku no Madoushi (NDS) – I’ve been waiting and waiting for this to come out in the West. That’s obviously not going to happen any more so I’ll have to import it. And when it’s time to import something, I always ask myself, “Okay, do I really want this game that badly?” Thus far the answer’s been “No” but I think this is the year I’ll finally take the plunge. Maybe.
11. Shining Hearts (PSP) – It looks nice. The heart-collection system sounds…different, I guess? And I haven’t played anything Shining since Shining Force Feather in 2008, so I might as well.
12. Phantasy Star Portable (PSP) – Phantasy Star, this, Phantasy Star, that. I’ve been hearing about you for years. Bring it on, let’s see what you’ve got.
Aaand that’s it. Of course I’m being super-optimistic and just taking it for granted that I’ll have the life, health, time and resources to play all these, but if you can’t be over-optimistic on the first day of the year, when can you be? As for life resolutions, I only have three. One, go to church more often (I only went twice in 2011, for shame), Two, buy more and pirate less, and Three, spend less time playing video games! One hour less a month still counts as less, right? ;-D
24.10.11 / Japanese, Nintendo DS, RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: jaleco, review, wiZman's world
I’ve been posting mainly about PSP games lately, but my DS Lite is still around and in action. For a few days back in August or so, I played the heck out of WiZman’s World, a dungeon-crawler from Jaleco, but it’s been on hiatus ever since for reasons I will explain later below.
Story: A tribe of wizards have been imprisoned in a small town, surrounded on all sides by labyrinthine dungeons. They explore the dungeons constantly, but have yet to find a way out. You play the part of a no-name orphan who was found in the dungeons and taken in by a witch who has since gone missing. Explore the dungeons to try and find your way out while looking for clues about what happened to your mentor.
Simple, right? Simple stories are always the best when it comes to dungeon crawlers. There’s a little bit of mystery in there about where you came from and what the wizards did to deserve imprisonment, which is enough to keep you interested without possibly leaving you going “Huh?” at end of the game. Final Promise Story, are you listening?
You are accompanied on your travels by the three fairy-like homunculi shown on the front cover. Strangely enough they look nothing like that in the actual game. None of them have blue hair, for one thing, and they’re wearing rather fewer clothes. They have no names, so in my infinite wisdom I dubbed them Foxy, Frisky and Booksy (my kids are so gonna hate me). You the MC are a wizard yourself with some very powerful magic, but these homunculi will form the bulk of your offense in-game. The battle system is pretty simple when it comes to playing it, but it’ll take a while to explain in writing, so bear with me here.
The battle system is the regular active time turn-based system, where you attack according to speed. If you’ve played Garnet Chronicle, a.k.a. Crimson Gem Saga, the screen layout looks almost identical to that. Using magic and special attacks delays your next turn, but can be more powerful. Chaining attacks from your party members leads to damage bonuses and multipliers, but there are no combo attacks.
You can see monsters in the field and get the jump on them or vice versa, which gives you an advantage or a disadvantage. The system also has shades of Saga 2 and 3, in that you can get into chain battles with more than one set of enemies. The EXP reward is slightly higher for such battles, but it’s usually not worth the aggravation.
There is also an element system with Earth, Wind, Water and Fire. Earth > Water >Fire> Wind > Earth. This is the basis of your entire strategy: hit the enemies with what they’re weak against while avoiding attacks you’re weak against. If you’re both Earth-element, you don’t do much damage, but you don’t take much damage either. It sounds like a lose-lose situation, but for bosses it can be life-saving. Tch, those damned bosses. I’ll get to them in a minute. But first, how do you make sure you’re one element or another?
Answer: by fusing your homunculi with monsters. WiZman’s World has a monster fusion system where defeated monsters frequently drop “souls”, which your homunculi can combine with for stat boosts, new element alignments and new moves. And not just that, but their appearances change as well into some sexified hybrid furry version of fairy and monster, and that’s what you actually take into battle with you. I suppose SMT & Persona players will be familiar with the concept of fusing monsters together to create new ones, except here it’s the same party member in a different form.
The homunculi level up as well, but fusion is really the only way to make sure they don’t fall hopelessly behind as the game progresses. What’s even better and even more important is that you can take two moves along with you when you fuse. Remember how I said Earth doesn’t damage Earth? Now you can have an Earth monster with Wind moves so she can damage the Earth boss without being hurt in return. If you go into battle and your strategy isn’t working, you can go home, fuse again, get some new moves and come back and try again. In theory, anyway. In practice this doesn’t work so well because the bosses are cheating bastards, but…we’ll get to them.
On top of everything else, the enemies also drop stat-boosting items that you can add when fusing. So if you switch from Monster A to Monster B and your HP goes up but your MP takes a hit, you can just supplement the fusion with an MP+20 item or whatever and then you’re right back where you started. It’s all kinds of awesome. I love this system, and I’d love to see it again in another game somewhere. I’d never heard of Jaleco before this, but I’ll be looking out for whatever they make from now on.
Unfortunately, despite how wonderful it was, something major got in the way of my enjoyment and led to me putting this game on ice. Those damned cheating dungeon bosses! They were created to keep the wizards trapped and boy do they take their jobs seriously! Long ago on 4chan, I remember seeing an MS Paint image that sums up what it’s like to play WiZman’s World. In fact this post was delayed by a few days because I was looking for it. Picture speaks a thousand words and all that. I still haven’t found it, but I did come across something close enough and even simpler, so:
That’s right. You spend your time in the dungeon fighting, beating enemies, you level up quite rapidly at first then you cap off, you fuse your homunculi a couple of times, give them great abilities, everything’s hunky-dory. After a while you start feeling pretty good about yourself, and you think: “Okay, I should be ready to take on the boss now.” Hahahaha, LOLNO.
Well actually, LOLYES. The levels are usually fine, it’s just that the bosses have so much HP and so many annoying attacks that you’re screwed no matter what you do! You need some really good planning, some serious stamina and quite a bit of luck before you can take them down. They’re like Megaten bosses: the first attempt is usually just information-gathering, you don’t actually think you stand a chance of winning. I’ve fought four bosses so far, and each one has taken me between 2 and 4 tries.
You need to damage the boss, but at the same time you need to hold back on the SP for when it inevitably goes berserk as its life runs low. And what I said about using special attacks the boss is weak against? That’ll drop your speed enough that when the boss goes crazy, he’ll be doubling and tripling you, i.e. KILLING you. And he might even start using attacks both of you are weak against, i.e. KILLING you. Oh, I finally found the image I was looking for:
Same thing. Anyway, basically the boss battles are a massive chore. I killed the first four (I think?), so it’s not like they can’t be done. It feels REALLY good when you finally kill one, but at this point I’m just bossed out. I made it to a desert stage which had a real boss that followed a false boss that was tough enough to waste your MP and deplete your HP, and I was just like “No más.” But it’s still an awesomely enjoyable game that I’d like to finish at some point in time, so I’ll be back eventually.
Moving on, I’m about 20 hours into UnchainBlades Rexx. It’s been fun, but the fun is rapidly turning to pain, so I’ll try and write something about it while we’re still on good terms.