Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja – Hurray for easy rogue-likes!

izuna front coverIzuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja was developed and published by Success and Ninja Studio, the same publisher-developer team that brought us the wonderful must-play title Tactical Guild. Luckily for us all, the two games don’t have anything else in common. For one thing Izuna is actually pretty good. I’m going to borrow the plot description from Wikipedia to save myself some time:

Izuna and her ninja clan are looking for a place to settle down after their old master Mugen decided that ninjas were obsolete, and booted them from his castle. Upon arriving at a village that’s suitably out of the way for their “Grandboss”, Gen-An, they decide to stay at an inn when Grandboss wanders off. While trying to find Grandboss, Izuna manages to offend the gods of the village, and everyone in the area starts behaving strangely. Now Izuna has to descend into the various shrines for the gods in order to set things right.

And that’s all the plot any rogue-like ever needs. Izuna is similar to other rogue-likes in most ways: randomly generated dungeons, enemies make a move when you make a move, item drops galore in the dungeons, lose all items and money when you die. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Atelier Marie, Elie & Anis: Message on the Gentle Breeze – Quick review + screenshots

atelier marie, elie and anisAll right, there’s still time before the interesting matches start, so time for a quick post. And it’s double quick in this case because I’ve already played Atelier Marie, Elie & Anis Message on the Gentle Breeze (Soyokaze kara no Dengon) before, long long ago. I played it quite a while before tackling Atelier Marie, Elie and Lilie, which was bit of a mistake because this is more or less a direct sequel to Elie. That doesn’t necessarily mean the Elie+Marie endings are the only canon ones in that game, though. They could easily have gotten together again later down the line after whatever end Elie picked.

So much for the introduction. What is Atelier Marie, Elie & Anis about? A new library is going to be built in Salburg and Ingrid has asked Marie and Elie to write new alchemy books for the library. The two ladies have kindly donated all the alchemy tools and books they already had to the library, which is why you have to start collecting everything all over again.

To produce books featuring brand-new recipes, Marie and Elie turn to a new method, Image Synthesis. This means they imagine the kind of item they want to make, e.g. a toy, a fragrance, an accessory, see what they already have in those categories and combine them to make new things. There are only about 250 items in Marie, Elie & Anis, but quite a lot of them are unique to this game because of the new method. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Record of Agarest War Mariage – 50% grinding, 50% fanservice

I haven’t played any of the ‘regular’ Agarest Senki SRPGs, but I heard this was a standalone game so I approached it accordingly. Record of Agarest War Mariage fits into a long tradition of what I call “harem RPGS.” This genre mainly covers RPGs that feature one clueless male protagonist with a party full of beautiful, economically-dressed ladies who are falling all over themselves to win his affections. If you’ve played Shining Hearts/Blade or any of the Ar Tonelico games, you’ve played one of these.

While some harem RPGs introduce one or two other male party members for those gamers who like an extra sausage with their eggs, the most brazen ones (Tactics Layer and Motto Nuga-cel come to mind) don’t even bother letting the main guy take part in battle at all. Sometimes they don’t even show his face. He just functions as a “tactical adviser” or supervisor or something. Either way he’s still the leader of the pack and everyone else exists to please him. Now that I’ve said all that, you should know what to expect from a game like Agarest Senki Mariage. If you still don’t, a picture speaks a thousand words: Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Infinite Loop: Kojou ga Miseta Yume – Fun, but could have been better

infinite loop kojou ga miseta yume_frontStory: Kojou ga Miseta Yume = “The Dream the Old Castle Showed Me.” This visual novel from Nippon Ichi Software tells the tale of a prince who dies right before his crowning ceremony and finds himself cursed (or blessed) to relive the next few days over and over again as a ghost. By silently haunting the remaining inhabitants of the castle, Will hopes to solve the mystery of his own death and prevent multiple tragedies from befalling his family, his friends and the rest of the country at large.

Gameplay: Prince Will can only haunt people, he can’t actually possess their bodies and force them to do anything. But by following them on their daily routines over the next 28 days, he can learn their plans and problems and gather certain “keywords” from their conversations that can be shown to them as dreams, influencing their actions. Will can also jump from body to body using the L/R buttons, thus moving around to various places in the castle. This is essential because some people almost never interact. Princess Vanessa (Veene for short) never talks to Chancellor Nells in the next 28 days, for example. So if you want to get from Veene to Nells, you might have to jump from Veene to Jimmy the palace guard and then to Nells. Or Veene -> Mary the Maid -> Nells. That sort of thing.

Since the game really does loop infinitely as per the title Infinite Loop, permanent failure is impossible. If you do something wrong and get someone killed or fail to stop the tragedies on Day 4/10/16/22, you just get sent back to day 1 to start afresh. That said, it is all too easy, especially for people like me who are terrible at this logic thing, to get stuck in a pattern where you know what is wrong, but you don’t know how to stop it. That’s where a FAQ comes in handy: http://gamepukka.com/guide/g165_infiniteloop/il02-chart.html If you can’t read enough Japanese to follow the FAQ, you can’t read enough Japanese to follow the game either, so nothing of any value will be lost. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Last Ranker review (spoilers, unfortunately)

last ranker_frontHave you ever played an RPG and for the first half it was so much fun you couldn’t stop playing, then the last half was pretty meh and draggy, so much so that you didn’t feel like finishing it and had to force yourself, but then when you finally finished it you were glad you did? Long lead-in sentence, but I’m sure anyone who’s been playing RPGs for a while knows what I’m talking about. I’m still a fan of Last Ranker and I would still recommend it to any fan of action RPGs, but it didn’t quite live up to the promise of the first 15 hours or so.

But first, all the great things about Last Ranker. The graphics are awesome. Bright, happy colors! Varied locations, interesting character designs, a little heavy on the palette-swaps but still within acceptable limits. I posted lots of screenshots last time and will do the same this time, just in case you still don’t believe me. Basically Last Ranker has some of the best graphics on the PSP, all without having to cover most of their outdoor locations with fog (shame on you, FF Type-0). In keeping with the colorful palette, the mood of the game is also… not quite light, but never too dark and heavy either, even towards the end. It’s actually pretty funny sometimes.

The soundtrack is excellent as well. Like, I don’t normally notice soundtracks in RPGs, but this time I had to stop and google who did the soundtrack. Yoko Shimomura, the google told me. She’s good. Not that every tune was 10/10, but everything gets an above-average mark and the best themes were really, really good. The voice acting was great as well, but some of the later-game dialogue was just so cheesy that it didn’t matter. The pacing of the speech also felt a little ‘off’ somehow, with people taking unnaturally long pauses between sentences. Overall it was quite good, though. Do please go on, this is most interesting →