Anno 1404 – Beautiful and highly addictive

Anno-1404-cover-imagesI had a blast playing Anno 1404 (a.k.a. Dawn of Discovery) this Easter. I spent so much time on it that I’m limiting myself to no more than 10 hours of gameplay a week for the rest of April. I know I’ve played well over 10 hoursof this game by now, because I got the achievement for 10 hours of gameplay a while back. I’m probably closer to 15 hours and I’ve barely gotten started.

Lovely game. Love, love, love the soundtrack. The voice acting is great too. The dialog can be seriously cheesy sometimes, but that just adds to the medieval mood. I’ve been playing Campaign Mode, and it was most fun for me when I got to grow my little town and make my little peasants and nomads happy without worrying too much about the threat of war.

I’m quitting Campaign Mode now, though, because I went and made Kardinal Lucius mad, and he’s promised to hunt me down with a fleet of ships and wreck my bottom. I can’t deal with all that war stuff. Why must we fight? I was sitting in my harbor all happy as can be and then Guy Forcas came and burned all my ships! And my trading ships too! If not for the harbor defense towers and my one Oriental warship, I would’ve been sunk. I barely made it through that stage alive and you want me to come back for more? No thank you! Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Dramatic Dungeon Sakura Taisen – A roguelike for people who don’t like roguelikes

dramatic dungeon sakura taisen_frontOf which I am not one, mind you. But the reason why I’ve tried many rogue-likes and finished none is that I quickly get tired of starting over from level 1 every time I die or warp out. Despite that, I’d always accepted that as a standard feature of the genre and never really considered alternative ways of playing. In fact I was even insulted when Zettai Hero Project let you keep scraps of the stats you’d earned so far. But now I know that ZHP’s real problem was that it didn’t go far enough. If you’re going to nerf a roguelike, either go all the way and nerf it good and proper or don’t even bother. That’s what Sega is trying to teach the world through Dramatic Dungeon Sakura Taisen.

The five main nerfs are as follows:
1. You keep your level between dungeons – most other roguelikes start you over from level 1
2. You keep your level even if you die – most other roguelikes start you over from level 1
3. You keep whatever items have equipped when you die – most other roguelikes take everything from you, though they may give you a courtesy weak weapon when you revive
4. Warp-home scrolls are sold in stores for only 300g a piece, and money is plentiful – Other games may have similar items, but they are rarely as common or as affordable.
5. You’re accompanied by up to three highly competent companions – Shiren 4 does this, but that’s about it. In other games either you’re alone or your companies just exist to get killed so they can power monsters up. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Elvandia Story – So much wasted potential

Elvandia_Story_CoverartShould’ve been called El-blandia Story instead. -_- Well at least it was short, clocking in at just under 20 hours for the first playthrough. The soundtrack was very finely composed, far too good for a game like this. The voice acting was decent and battles went by very speedily once animations were turned off.

Of course, all games go by quickly when your characters are almost invincible. On top of all its other crimes, Elvandia Story introduced cheap doping agents near the end (costing 3,000 each when I had about 60,000 to my name) that allowed me to max out my MC’s stats and take both final bosses out within 5 turns. Game, set and match.

Story: Ashley is the son of the ruler of Kastol, part of the Elvandia continental alliance thingy. Only not really, actually he’s the secret twin brother of the prince of all Elvandia. Once the king and the prince both meet conveniently messy ends, it’s up to Ashley to unite the continent against Magdaf, the invading king of…I already forgot what his country is called. Anyway, Magdaf has a magic ‘Glaesum’ staff from the gods so it’s up to our troops to collect other legendary ‘Glaesum’ weapons so they can fight against him. I got the Glaesum sword after about 10 stages. A few stages later, I got an accessory that prevents weapon uses from going down. Top that off with a legendary shield on my MC and I could easily have soloed the rest of the game with him. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Glory of Heracles finished. Spoiling everything I can think of.

glory of heraclesIt’s not exactly 10/10 material, but Glory of Heracles did get much better after 15 hours or so. I liked the story and characters to begin with, and the battle system got a lot more interesting once I learned and began to make use of all kinds of interesting skills, spells and passives. In far too many games it doesn’t take long before you settle on one or two good moves per character and just use them over and over again. Here there were a few constants like casting buffs in the first turn and using Focus for massive damage, but there’s still plenty of variety in the moves and specials each characters uses.

Actions change not only depending on the needs of the situation but also on the equipment they’re wearing, the amount of ether available, enemy weaknesses and one or two other factors. I mean, I still auto-battled my way through 90% of the game (the AI is terrible, btw) and battle speed was still a little slow even with animations set to ‘Brief’, but it was an interesting auto-battle fest and the battles I did fight on my own were very enjoyable. I would happily endorse a version of this game which cut encounters by 50%, sped up battles 75% and made boss battles at least 30% harder. Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Elvandia Story – A poor man’s Fire Emblem

elvandia01Elvandia Story is an SRPG developed and published by Spike for the PS2 in 2007. Most descriptions you read of it will mention the game system’s striking similarity to Fire Emblem‘s. I have FE7 in mind because I watched my brother play it recently (between my brothers and I, we’ve finished that game at least 15 times) but the resemblance applies just as well to most of the other FE games. Game design is a conscious and deliberate act that can take years, so there’s no doubt that Spike set out to copy FE as much as possible. In my book that’s not a bad thing. It’s a good thing.

After all, I love SRPGs in general and Fire Emblem in particular. If anything the world needs more FE clones and fewer clunky, slow 3D isometric FF Tactics/Tactics Ogre-inspired copies. In fact, where Elvandia goes wrong isn’t in ripping Fire Emblem off but rather in trying to diverge from the standard FE formula in several places, with less than optimum results. This is not to say that all rip-offs should be perfect clones, if that were even legally possible. I’m just pointing out that a lot of thought and care needs to be exercised whenever you adopt a tried-and-tested template and then try to add new elements. A few examples from Elvandia Story must suffice. Do please go on, this is most interesting →