Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness

02.11.10 / Harvest Moon, Marvelous, Romance game, Simulation game, Video game / Author: / Comments: (0)
Tags: , , ,

I’m doing  a replay of this game, ever since I gave up on it back when it first came out, out of boredom. I’ve made it to Winter 1 and now I’m rediscovering why I quit the first time. Winter is boring! I’d forgotten how boring because the most recent HM games I played, RF2 and 3, had winter farming and lots of other stuff to do. In IoH it’s wake up, feed animals, wrangle wonderfuls out of Chen, mine if I want, sleep. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

Mining is kinda fun though, and this time round I definitely want to get married so I’m toughing things out. My goal now is to make a ton of money in the mines this season, buy as many town upgrades as I can in spring, get married, have a kid and then put at end to the game. I hate having unfinished business.

You might be wondering what’s happening with the more recent games I’ve been playing (Saga 2 DS, DQIX) and why I’m playing old stuff over them. Well, I’m wondering that myself. I guess it’s just the case that sometimes the old, familiar game is more fun to play than the newer, drier ones. But I’ll get back to them eventually.

New Year’s game resolutions

02.11.10 / Namco, PS2, RPG, Video game / Author: / Comments Off
Tags: , , , , , , ,

[Obviously an old post (3rd January 2010), now appearing here because of site crash and recovery. Happily enough I managed to play every single one of these games]

Finally finished Xenosaga III, and with it the whole series. I thoroughly enjoyed the gameplay in all three games, even the undoubtedly inferior II. I also liked most of the characters, except that stubborn, idiotic, moronic Shion. People talk about how fresh it is to have a female character as the lead, but Shion only makes girls look bad, being dumb, weak-willed, dishonest, helpless, only finding meaning in and being redeemed by the males in her life (Kevin, Allen, Jin). But apart from her I enjoyed all the other characters, especially chaos. Throughout the series I was hoping he had a really unique backstory and interesting powers, but we find out everything about him in the last 30 minutes of the entire series and it’s not that interesting either, so…yeah. I learned a lot more about him from reading wikis than I ever did from the game itself. That’s the sure sign of bad writing and an overly-complicated plot.

Real life kept me from playing a lot of games last year, so I’m going to be much less ambitious in my gaming plans this year. There are only a few major games I want to finish, and then I’ll leave the rest to chance, or to whenever something I just *have* to play comes out. Here’s what I want to get done, ASAP:

1. Saga 2. I just killed Apollo, I think I have just one more boss to go.

2. Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey – I’ve had it for a while but I haven’t even started it yet.

3. Harvest Moon: Twin Villages. When it comes out, I’m gonna be all over it!

4. Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2: Almost done with 1, I just went back to kill a few side-bosses and now they’re kicking my ass.

5. Angelique Special 2: Old game for PSX, but it’s been on my mind lately.

6. Dragon Quest 9: I’m a few levels into this. It’s interesting, but not especially gripping. But I’ll get to it sometime.

7. Atelier Lina: Lise and Annie were pretty much fail as far as I’m concerned, so I haven’t been in a hurry to get to this one. I wish they’d go back to the pure alchemy-centrism of the older games.

If I manage to finish just these by the end of the year, it’ll be enough for me. Yeah, I’m that busy.

Dragon Quest IV – Chapters of the Chosen

02.11.10 / Nintendo DS, RPG, Square-Enix, Video game / Author: / Comments: (0)
Tags: , , , , , ,

Everyone must have played this by now, so I won’t bother writing too much about it. I killed both Psaro the Manslayer and the bonus boss yesterday and had a great time too. Take that, Pstupid Psaro! That’ll teach you to wipe out the heroine’s village! I was really quite annoyed that the entire bonus chapter consisted of helping him get his girlfriend back so he could be happy. What about my village? Or Maya and Meena’s dad, why couldn’t we resurrect him instead?

The bonus dungeon was kind of fun though. Not the killing Platinum King Jewels part (which is easy enough with Psaro’s Hatchet Man attack and the Sands of Time) but the fighting Chow Mein and Foo Yung part so you can strip the picture naked and get Psaro’s best equipment. I lol’ed my head off when they ripped off the Yggdrasil leaf and left the pic standing there naked, heheh.

Apart from that, I don’t have too much to say about this game. I never played the original NES or the PS remake, and this is only the second DQ game I’m playing after Dragon Quest 9, so I went in with an open mind. And you know, I quite enjoyed it. I’ve played other games where you control different parties and bring them together at the end (most notably Suikoden III and FE: Radiant Dawn) and this was one of the better-executed versions. The overall story with the “chosen heroine” is old school (duh) and overdone, but the different short-term objectives in the early chapters stopped me from getting bored too soon.

Running around the world collecting the Zenithian items didn’t bother me, and neither did the fetchquests. I don’t mind such things in principle, it’s only when they’re boring, or there are too many of them that I start to complain. Something I really liked in this game, though, chests! I love RPGs with lots and lots of chests to open. I honestly think putting just enough treasures and chests in an RPG must be a science. Too few and dungeon-crawling becomes a painful chore and a tedious crawl. Too many and the player doesn’t appreciate the rewards, especially if half the rewards are potions and the like. I think DQIV got the balance just right.

What didn’t I like? Not much, I thought it was a pretty good game. Not too long, the music was okay, the remade graphics were nice, the difficulty was just right, and grinding was easy if you felt weak (hello 8 liquid metal slimes in a row), once you were strong enough you could cast the ‘Holy Protection’ spell to eliminate weak random encounters, etc etc. It’s a well thought-out system. The three main things that bothered me were:

1. Helping Psaro at the end – I only did it because I felt sorry for Rose, really. Oh, and you know, you never do get to see Rose die or anything. One moment you hear she’s been captured, the next moment she’s in a grave. What happened? Who killed her? Why? That didn’t make any sense. **speaking of which, what happened to the people in Zamoskva castle? They’re all back during the ending sequences (funny thing, they’re back at the end of C5, gone again in C6, and back again in C6 end), but where were they all this while? Mystery!

2. The fact that your party members join and instantly lose all thought and personality. There’s the ‘Talk’ button but you always get the “There’s no one to talk to” response even if there are 3 people directly behind you. I couldn’t figure out why they had the Talk button there, then, so I went investigating. It turns out you are supposed to be able to talk to your party members, but that option was cut out completely in the localization process and all their dialogue erased! Seriously! I read a thread blaming the localizers (Plus Alpha or something) for it, but I’m about 99% sure the decision was made by Square-Enix themselves, either to cut costs or to shorten the localization time. I’m really disappointed though, I wanted to hear more of Alena, Borya and Kiryl’s ‘English’ haha.

3. On the topic of broken English, some of the ‘English’ accents were a bit much. It wasn’t too hard to figure out what townspeople were saying most of the time, but sometimes it was just an annoyance. Especially since most of them have nothing important to say, so essentially they’re just wasting your time with semi-undecipherable text. I hear it’s been toned down in subsequent games, so I probably wasn’t the only one who didn’t like it.

So! Since DQIV went so well, I’m thinking of trying DQV next. My brother has it and is always talking about his brides and stuff, so I might borrow it and give it a shot. Right now, though, I’ve gone back to Tokimeki Memorial 3 and am working on the Junpei route. You’ll hear from me when I’m done.

Summon Night X ~Tears Crown~

02.11.10 / Banpresto, Japanese, Nintendo DS, RPG, Summon Night, Video game / Author: / Comments: (0)
Tags: , , , , ,

I’ve gotten into a bad habit of starting a new game right as I’m about to finish an old one, and then getting into it so much that I forget to finish the previous one. In fact I started the Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth game right before I reached the final boss in this game, but luckily the last dungeon was so pain-free that I ended up finishing it anyway.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. This was my very first game in the Summon Night series, as well as the only traditional turn-based RPG in the whole series, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect going on. What I expected: just an ordinary RPG to kill the time. What I got: just an ordinary RPG to kill the time, but with a fun battle system and really charming characters, well worth the time I spent playing it.

I don’t know if I want to write a full review of this. I mean, it really was ordinary. The twist at the beginning where the main character [spoiler ahead, stop now] ‘s dad [stop now, really] turns out to be evil and sends the brainwashed Prince Noin to kill the king was unexpected because I hadn’t read a synopsis, but after that everything followed automatically with almost no other surprises. Fight, conquer X place, take it back from the Evil Empire, move on to the next place, fight Empire over macguffin, lose somehow, fight some more…you get the drift. It’s a very linear game with your hand held every step of the way: Go to Tower X, it’s north of the Y plains, after that go to Cave V, it’s north of plains Z, etc. But I wasn’t looking for surprises, so I just relaxed and enjoyed the trip. The trick to enjoying this game is low expectations, after all.

Low expectations should also apply to the music, which is rather bland, and the graphics, which are quite hideous by DS standards. Don’t get me wrong, the characters designs and character portraits are cute and lovely (a little baby-faced, but in a good way), but the actual sprites on the screen are horrible. Muddled, blurry messes with obscured features. They’re almost SNES-level bad, but not quite. It took a lot of getting used to, but as I said, I wasn’t looking for anything special, so I took it in stride.

So, ordinary cliched story, bland movie, bad sprites…what haven’t I mentioned? Oh yeah, the battle system. This wasn’t quite so ordinary. I mean, it’s definitely turn-based, active time battle system where the faster person goes first (this will almost always be the enemy, especially in the case of bosses). Some of your party members can fly, so they’ll be on the top screen, the others will be standing on land on the bottom screen. Same with enemies, though the number of flying bosses is disappointingly small. What’s the point of that? Well a lot of attacks target a specific group of enemies/members, so if you have at least one member in the sky, you can survive a lot of things that would wipe out the party. Also the one in the sky can score critical hits on flying enemies, which most land-based party members can’t do. On the minus side, a lot of buffs will hit only those in the buffer’s zone, something to take into account. Overall I liked that the battle system used the whole DS, it made the same-old system feel a little fresh and different.

See that red-yellow-green gauge near the top? It’s a burst-gauge of sorts, and for each bar that fills up, the main character (Dylan or Fara) gets to unleash a co-op attack with one of your party-members. One attack for one bar and an ultimate attack for the full three bars. Maybe this is just me but I think Elnardita’s is the most useful because at just level one it heals all party members for huge amount and raises attack, all without using MP. That’s probably only on Dylan’s path though (you can choose one of two mains). Your choice of fighting characters will probably depend to an extent on what co-ops they offer, so do some research before you start blowing too much money on equipment.

Last thing about the battle system, you see that big yellow creature on the right of the top-screen? That’s a summon beast (duh, it’s called Summon Night), and you get them by…usually by finding them in chests.  You equip them to a character much like you did with GFs in FF8, and they provide all your magic attacks in the form of buffs, debuffs, healing and offensive magic. As you use them, they “level up” and learn new skills. And to power up these skills, you need special red Mana stones which are really (annoyingly) rare and must be used with care because they can’t be reused. A tip: don’t power up any offensive magic or debuffs, pour your stones into buffing and support magic. And be stingy with those stones until the latter half of the game when you get the good summons.

Phew…I said I wasn’t going to review it, but I got carried away. I really did enjoy it, much more than I liked DQ9, at least. As proof, I actually finished it. And I did all the “parliament” sidequests too, as soon as I unlocked them. What’s “parliament”, you ask? It’s a really whack system where your party members propose quests to do, e.g. a little boy’s gone missing, let’s go find him, then you and your party members debate over it, then in the end they vote on whether to do it or not. Sorry, I actually made that sound like fun, but it’s not. Because the debate consists of them throwing questions at you that you have no idea how to answer, and they don’t give you any hints/ideas, and if they vote you down you can’t do that quest for the rest of the game. Hit restart and start all over again. The worst offender is Muumuu ‘cos all he says is “Muu muu!” then you have to pick

-You want to boil the fish, huh?

-You want to fry the fish, huh?

How the hell would I know!? What’s worse, apart from the last few ones, most of them give you crappy items as rewards, stuff you don’t want or need and won’t ever use. Crap! But I did it anyway! And I liked it! Because despite everything, I really did care about the characters and I really did enjoy spending more time with them during those quests. Some of them were really funny, and a few gave really good experience.

Okay, that’s enough for one day. I wanted to talk about the “Brave” part of the battles, or about the great voice-acting, but all you really need to know is that it’s a pretty good game, in an ordinary way. It won’t be the best game you ever played, but you won’t regret getting it if it ever comes out in English. I hope they make more in the same vein!

Playing so many games!

01.11.10 / Video game / Author: / Comments: (0)
Tags: , , , , ,

I haven’t posted in a while, have I? I’ve been busy actually playing the wealth of games that have come out recently: Dragon Quest 9, Saga 2, Love Plus (a disappointment), Mana-Khemia 2, etc. I’m also looking forward to the new Ar Tonelico 3 just announced, and Rune Factory 3 is coming out next week, woo-hoo! So that’s why I haven’t been posting, though I’ll be getting round to writing up those things soon enough.

But first I want to migrate this blog to my own domain so I’m investigating hosting right now. I’m thinking of bluehost or something, but we’ll see how it works out. Anyway, no new posts until I move, but look forward to the new domain! Ja ne!

Dragon Quest 9 – Sentinels of the Boring Skies

01.11.10 / Japanese, Nintendo DS, RPG, Square-Enix, Video game / Author: / Comments: (0)
Tags: , , ,

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!