04.05.11 / Atlus, Japanese, Nintendo DS, RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (2)
Tags: atelier lina, atelier series, nora to toki no koubou
There is still life in the DS! Hallelujah!
*ahem*
Atlus and a team of developers that previously worked on Etrian Odyssey and the Atelier series are working on an RPG for the DS, Nora to Toki no Koubou. It’s due out in Japan on 21st July 2011, which should give me enough time to get Rondo of Swords out of the way and possibly play a little something else. Will it come to the US? Should I wait to play it? (hell no) Only time will tell!
Nora sounds like an Atelier kind of game: fulfilling quests and making items in order to make the villagers like you. According to Famitsu there’s a time-related component to making the items, so it’s not like the usual alchemy system we’re used to. What Nora does is described as “導刻術”, using the characters for “guide”, “time/engrave” and “technique.” It allows her to manipulate time, but we’ll have to wait for more details on exactly what that entails.
The story sounds simple enough: a little girl named Nora goes on a training trip, finds herself accused of being a witch and has to prove her innocence. Like most recent Atelier games (yes yes, I know it’s not an Atelier game), this one has a time limit of three years, during which she has to build up the trust of the villagers while keeping her skills hidden from them. I’m not saying they copied it or anything, but remember how in Atelier Lina Lina is accused of burning down the forest and is forced to help the fairies rebuild it? Just saying.
Btw, the romanization of Nora’s full name is given on the official Atlus website as “Noora Brandor”, but seeing as that same page misspells “character” as “charactor”, I think we’re safe going with Nora for now.
It sound like there are multiple endings depending on how you related to your companions in the course of your adventure. No Saga 3 style hidden requirements, please!
From the sole battle screenshot I saw, the battle system is a regular turn-based one. Probably nothing too complicated either. As long as the quests and the item creation system is rich and complex enough, I don’t really care what they do to the battle system. As for the cutesy-wutesy character designs, I’ll get used to them eventually.
Btw, is it just me or does the world map look an awful lot like the world map from Atelier Lina?
Anyway, massive props to Atlus for continuing to develop games for the Nintendo DS at a time when other companies are shifting their loyalty to the 3DS. Between this and Devil Survivor 2, Atlus is my new favorite company! Three cheers for Atlus!
After all, I don’t have money for a 3DS right now, and if I did have that money I’d spend it on a PSP and a couple of games. I’ve had a DS since 2006 and I must have played at least a hundred (whoa… but yeah, I think so) games on it, but I’m not quite ready to move on yet.
So, looking forward to move details being added to the Official Site and Official Development Blog soon!
24.02.11 / Japanese, Nintendo DS, Romance game, Strategy RPG, Video game, Visual novel / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: atelier lina, dimension travel, litinagard senki, review, tactics layer
Once again I have learned the importance of not writing a review too early, especially if the game is from a genre you like. Atelier Lina taught me that sometimes a game might seem to suck at first, but then once you get the hang of it it can be excellent. There are also games that suck in the beginning but then get better as you go along. And then there are games like Tactics Layer, which has taught me that sometimes a game does actually suck, but then once you stop expecting it not to suck and throw away your expectations, you’ll come into a new appreciation of the game and its features.
So yeah, I’m actually loving the game now at about 15 hours in, but if I’d written this review just a few days earlier it would have been all about “OMG this game is awful! Someone fire the developers! This is horrible!” etc, etc. I haven’t finished the game yet so my opinion might change yet again. I’ll blog with my final, overall impressions of the game once it’s all over. For today what I’ll do is to list the main reasons why I would have criticized it, and how I learned to enjoy the game.
It’s not really a Tactics game
“But it says Tactics in the title…” Exactly! That’s why I tried it, because I was looking forward to something along the lines of Luminous Arc or Summon Night. And when you do get to fight it does play out like an ordinary strategy RPG. Unfortunately these moments are few and far between. The gameplay is more like 70% visual novel, 20% dress-up game and beauty pageant and 10% actual fighting. If I’d done a little bit of research into the game before trying it I would have found that out, but dammit it had “Tactics” in the name. What did they expect me to think?!
So it was really hard for me in the beginning. There was just sooo much reading to do! Talk for an hour, fight one battle, talk for another three hours…ugh. It was driving me crazy! Plus you couldn’t save anywhere except on the world map, so if you wanted to interrupt a conversation you’d either have to fastforward it, thus missing the whole event, or just turn the DS off and revert back to your last save. And they weren’t even important conversations, most of it was just girls bossing Takumi around left and right, or bickering among each other, or some other petty random events you just selected, bleeeh.
Even when it’s a Tactics game, it’s not that good
Well, it’s not that bad either. It’s just that battles feel really, really slow for some reason. Think Luminous Arc 1 slowness levels. There’s no way to speed up battle, so you just have to get used to it. Of course I’ve never let slowness stop me from enjoying an SRPG and I’m not about to start now. No, my main problem is the lack of challenge. First off, the storyline enemies show up only once a week and they’re at fixed levels. This means if you do even the tiniest bit of training in the dojo before show up, you’ll vastly outlevel and overpower them. Plus you’ll quickly learn all kinds of abilities that are outright broken, like Shark or Order! which can do massive amounts of damage very easily. Then there’s the enemy AI, which is outright terrible. I’ve lost count of the number of times an enemy will be right next to me and it just won’t move. It won’t attack, it won’t use a spell, it won’t run, it will just sit there and let me kill it. Just like that. Some enemies will move forward a little, move back and little, move forward a little, until you go kill them. Of course since I’m going to kill them with my broken attacks anyway, I can see why they decide not to bother. 
Some of the character designs are extremely ugly
Horribly ugly girls are horribly ugly. Don’t be fooled by the nice-looking cover and promotional art. Look at the CG on the right. The 
squashed up faces. Those droopy pancake-like boobs. Ugh! Doesn’t it just make you gag? And CGs are supposed to be nice, so what about the rest of the art that isn’t supposed to be? Looking at it will make you shudder! Again, though, it’s all about getting used to it. In the beginning it really bothered me. I’d be thinking “eww” in my head the whole time I was playing reading the game because the main girls were so fugly. Later on I got used to it and cuter characters like Mimiko-sensei and Nana joined my party and then it wasn’t so bad after all.
The characters are annoying at first
If you’ve watched any harem or romance anime at all within the past 10 years, you’ve seen the entire cast of Tactics Layer. The childhood friend, the student council president, the older-sister type, the lesbian, the main character’s loser best friend, the main character who complains non-stop about the girls pushing him around but who lets them do it anyway, etc etc. I found them all extremely irritating at first, but again I got used to them little by little. After reading their little stories and helping them through their problems I started to feel some affinity for them, an almost paternal feeling. Not to mention we dealt with the story of the evil bitch Kiriko (ol’ pancake boobs up there) really early. Once I didn’t have to see her so much any more the game got 10000x better.
Apart from the 5 main girls Yuu, Yuka, Kiriko, Emiko and Risa, there are some other, very interesting optional characters you can get. Nue (mai waifu), Nana (mai loli), etc, etc. The sad things is that because they’re optional they have absolutely no relation to the plot whatsover. They join you for the flimsiest of reasons (I want to paint weird scenery! I want to keep stalking you!) and then completely vanish. They don’t take part in conversations, you can’t hang out with them, you rarely run into them in town, etc. And that’s really sad because for the most part I preferred them to the main cast. Oh well.
…And so on and so forth. Once I got over the disappointment of this not being a “proper” Tactics game, and once I got over the shock of how hideous some of the characters were, I was able to put my expectations aside and to start enjoying Tactics Layer for what it really was. I’ve put my complaints down for now, next time I’ll tell you why I’m having a real blast with the game right now.
02.11.10 / imageepoch, Japanese, Marvelous, Nintendo DS, Strategy RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: atelier lina, luminous arc 3, yasunori mitsuda
Finished it! With 45% completion! I got both [spoiler character] and [spoiler character] to survive, and went for Inaluna’s ending, which was both blah and bittersweet at the same time. My percentage would have been higher if I’d chosen to view the Kopin theatre, but I hate kopins, so screw that. I probably should have done more of the hot spring battles as well. Popuri (yes, that same Popuri from Luminous Arc 2) creamed me good when I got to her, but I think with the use of those 100% status-effect items, I could take out her kopins and take her down in no time at all. Will try on my next playthrough.
Anyway, it was fun! Easier and more fun than LA2, and the story was just as bad as the previous two so no complaints there. The girls get less and less pretty with every game but the gameplay gets better and better so no complaints there. I also liked the soundtrack, so all in all it was a good experience. I liked it so much I went to look up who composed it, and found out it was Yasunori Mitsuda. Aha, no wonder! I don’t always swoon over his soundtracks (Sands of Destruction’s was meh, for example), but when he’s on top of his game, he’s one of the best.
MVP: Yuu. You HAVE to use Yuu! His magic stat is phenomenal and hits a very wide area, though you really have to watch his HP.
First runner up: Eruru. Her healing saved the battle for me at least 50% of the time, especially once you can improve her speed with a lapis. Also she struck the final blow on the boss for me, which was awesome.
Second runner up: Inaluna. By herself she’s a rather mediocre unit, but her Haste spell makes it possible to get really good use out of Yuu and Eruru in the second half of the game, so banzai!
Honorable mentions: Refy (post class change), Ashley (in the first half before being overshadowed) and a certain spoiler character who joins your party and has reasonably good AOE magic.
Fun game, I think I’m going to play it again in a bit. But first I got a bad ending in Lina no Atelier (which isn’t as bad as I thought) so I need to replay it for a better ending.
02.11.10 / Atlus, PS2, RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: atelier lina, digital devil saga, lina no atelier, nocturne, persona, shin megami tensei
I finally finished Digital Devil Saga 2, and it was a complete disappointment (more on the whole game if and when I can ever be bothered). Also finished one round of Lina no Atelier, though I didn’t get a good ending it wasn’t that bad after all. More on that as well later.
However, I just picked up SMT: Nocturne, I’m only 2 hours in and I’m having a great time! I missed fusing personas/demons from the later games, and the Magatama system looks remarkably fun. It’s not that hard either, so far anyway. I’m guessing part of the legendary difficulty comes from the fact that it was the first SMT game for a lot of people. That, and if you throw a skill away it’s gone forever. I’ll have to be careful about that, but Fire Emblem Path of Radiance was kinda like that and I managed it just fine, so I think I’ll be okay.
But I like the post-apocalyptic landscape so far, and the relative lack of NPCs is fun too, especially the lack of dumbass party members slowing you down, whining, bitching, moaning, leaving your party at the worst time. This game is awesome! Well, 2 hours of it is awesome anyway. So if you don’t see any posts for a while, you know what I’m getting up to.
02.11.10 / Gust, Japanese, RPG, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: alchemy, atelier lina, atelier series, lina no atelier, review
[Note, this is not my real opinion of Atelier Lina. This was published before I'd played the game properly, and my final conclusion can be found here, helpfully titled "Lina no Atelier is Awesome!" As for why this post appears out of order, I really don't want to talk about it.]
*sigh* I think Gust is losing their touch. Whoever they’re farming the DS Atelier games out to is making a royal mess of them. First there was Atelier Lise, which was horrible in every way, shape and form. Then there was Atelier Annie, which wasn’t a bad game but had a really kiddy story and too much talking. Third time’s the charm, right? That’s what I was expecting when I started Lina, but nooo, it’s just as bad as the others.
I haven’t gotten that far in, but this game could turn out to be the one Atelier game I don’t finish. Two things bother me. One, it’s brought back the crazy money requirement from Lise. I HATED that thing, and you know with a money requirement like that there’s almost no way to make that kind of money in one playthrough unless you have a FAQ. That’s highly unpleasant and totally unfair.
Secondly, and more importantly, it seems that buying and selling will be a more important part of this game than alchemy will. I already made a few items in my atelier and it was awful: even simple items take forever to make with a low, low chance of success. You don’t have time to waste, so I don’t see myself spending much time on alchemy. DAMMIT. What’s the point of an Atelier game if you don’t get to synthesize?
You know how else I can tell the focus isn’t on alchemy? Because even though you need money in this game, when you suffer and suffer and complete a store request, they don’t give you money. They give you scavenger items! If you spend time on synthesis, you’ll be BROKE! When you waste 10 cole to check rumors, they tell you about item prices, not about the latest forage areas. Arrgh, I hate this.
Oh, and the incessant talking from Atelier Annie is back. The talking that made that game the bane of my existence, that made coming back to my lab torture every single time. Yes, that talking. I knew I should have written a protest letter to Gust when that happened.
Phew, anyway. Guess I’ll keep plodding away at it. I’m also slowly plodding towards the end of Saga 2, and starting to really get under way with Dragon Quest 9, so it’s not like I’m trapped with this awful game alone. Time to play!
01.11.10 / Japanese, Nintendo DS, RPG, Square-Enix, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: atelier lina, dragon quest 9, review, tokimeki memorial
I’ve been playing this for a while, but after the example of Atelier Lina where I judged it too quickly, I decided to hold off on my opinion till I’d gotten a bit further. Well now I’m way further into it, in the last dungeon to be precise, and my judgment: BORING. (spoilers to follow)
The good things: Being able to control how your main character looks, being able to control skills and weapon growths, being able to change classes eventually, simple gameplay and controls, nice graphics for the Nintendo DS, seeing your equipment changes reflected on the field, nice sound track.
Everything else: I’m not finishing this game because I don’t care about the last boss. That’s because I didn’t care about the whole story. So you’re an angel who lost his powers, so bloody what? That’s the sad thing about having a silent protagonist: the other characters have to pick up the slack to make you care about the story and the game, and in this case they all failed miserably. First off, your other party members are generics so they never talk either. Everyone else is an NPC with minor roles to play in your quest-of-the-day, but nothing major to contribute. Sandy the fairy is a moron, so she’s out. The angels in “heaven” are bland so they’re out. And…nobody else counts.
And it’s not just that the story is plain (angels in this day and age? seriously) but that it plays out in a very traditional way with no unexpected twists or turns. If you’ve played more than a few RPGs, you’ll know from the start that making the tree bear fruit will only lead to disaster. After that you have to run around helping people (slay this monster, deliver this item, slay this other monster) in order to regain your angel powers. Then you have another series of fetchquests: find the 7 fruits. And then the last bit of the game is a bit interesting ‘cos first you get to ride on a dragon for a while, and then you get captured by the bad guys and have to break out of jail. That part was fun. And then after you defeat the ‘bad’ guy, ZOMG the real boss was an evil angel. Yeah, I saw that coming a while back as soon as you showed me Elgios in the flashback dudes, thanks a lot dudes. So now you know.
Gameplay, as I said, is nice and simple, but when you have a boring story and weak characters, you need to ramp *something* up to make it worth playing, so this would have been their chance to pour some effort into the battles, or maybe the sidequests. But no, fight-defend-item-special, you just buff, attack, heal, buff, attack, etc. Bleh. And it’s not challenging either, because I avoided a lot of the field battles and still never had any trouble with the bosses except one or two. Well, I guess being able to see the enemies on the field was a nice touch though.
The less said about the sidequests the better, it’s just a series of fetch quests and unreasonable demands thrown at you: go fight enemy X wearing a pink hat and using only attack Y so I can give you this crappy item as your reward. Oh, and forget about getting any good classes unless you do our stupid quests. Zzz…
One thing I was hoping to get into, given my love of Atelier games, was the alchemy system. Unlike in DQ8, you don’t have to run around for hours to get the item, the alchemy is instantaneous. BUT! The problem was ingredients. To get good materials to grind with, you’ll have to do a bit of grinding, both by fighting and by scrounging around on the world map. And then it seems like you won’t get most of the good raw materials and recipes until after the game is over, because – get this – YOU CAN’T FLY UNTIL AFTER THE GAME! No way. No flying for you, man, you’d better get in that boat and go to the few places the game will allow you. And be grateful for it. So anyway, I was only able to create a few items through alchemy, some of which were useful, many of which were not, so forgive me if I wasn’t exactly enthused by that part of the game.
So you see, it’s not a bad game. I mean, it was enough for me to make it to the end, but it’s not a good game either. The howls and bad reviews from 2chan were definitely exaggerated, but it DEFINITELY doesn’t deserve that 40/40 Famitsu gave it either. 20/40 (5/10) at most for being technically sound but completely lacking in charm and excitement. Square-Enix has been laying on the bribes thick at Famitsu lately, don’t you think? Anyway, that’s enough DQ for me, now to eagerly await the release of Tokimemo Girls’ Side 3 next month! Whee!
01.11.10 / Gust, Japanese, Nintendo DS, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (1)
Tags: alchemy, atelier lina, atelier series, felsen, hengst, lina no atelier, pesca, review, ryuon, strange journey
Yeah, I know I made a post a while back calling it terrible, but that was long ago when I hadn’t played very far into it. Having played it some more and, in fact finished it 4 times for 4 different endings, I must say it’s far and away the best DS Atelier so far.
Let’s take my complaints again one at a time. First off, the money requirement isn’t as high this time as it was in Lise. Somehow I misread “hyakuman” as 100 million instead of 1 million, which is why I flew off the handle. And in fact I was more than halfway there when I realized my error.
More than halfway, you ask? You mean it’s that easy to earn 50 million cole in this game? Yup! Remember my second complaint that buying and selling is more important that alchemy in this game? Well it’s true if you want to make money, though you won’t need that much. The fastest way is to buy and sell weapons between Hengst and Felsen and Pesca, buying what isn’t sold in one town and selling it in another, back and forth. Weapons sell for most in summer, but you can spend spring, fall and winter buying and then sell in one swoop. Once you unlock the higher level weapons you can apparently make 500,000 in one trip! So yeah, you probably still need to spend one playthrough getting enough money and enough synthesis raw materials, and then you can spend the following runs getting a proper ending.
I also complained about the talking, didn’t I? Well it’s not half as bad in this one as in Atelier Annie. I think I was still traumatized by all the blabbing there and ended up overreacting. There’s still a bit of talk, but apart from Ryuon your party members don’t waylay you inside your atelier, in fact they never show up there. Even when your friendship with them is at maximum they don’t talk too much, and they don’t bug you endlessly with requests like they did in Annie. Plus they’re really likeable too, each and every one of them. Even the storekeepers!
What else did I say? Oh yeah, I said something about alchemy taking forever to produce even simple items. Unfortunately that’s true, but only in the beginning when the level of your alchemy tools is low. Once you have the right tool for the job and have levelled it up enough, you can make massive quantities of items in very little time, some of which sell like crazy (but not as much as the right weapons). Also almost all drops are fairly easy to come by, which means you can make just about every item you have a recipe for instead of grinding for hours for an item with a 1 in 2000 chance of dropping. Cool, right?
Oh, oh, and they brought back the fairy hiring system from early Atelier games, though you’ll need to fix the forest a bit more before that option becomes available. In the beginning you can only hire incompetent black fairies (come on Gust, why is black still the worst?) but by the end of the game you’ll get fairies that might be even better than you at alchemy. Sweet! They cost a pretty penny, but what’s a little money to a multi-millionaire like me?
And even better, all six endings are quite easy to get, including the best one. I’ll do a post about how to get each ending if you’d like. But that’ll have to be later because right now I’ve got some SMT: Strange Journey (oh god it’s boring, but I just learned not to judge a game by the first 2 hours) to play. Yay!
