Monday 31 March 2014

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

I've been wanting to play the new XCOM games since they were released, but until very recently I haven't had a good enough PC to run them at anything even close to playable. I now have a decent GPU, however, and The Bureau happened to be the game I chose when I got to the X section of my A-Z backlog challenge. I knew full well what to expect from the game, and given it was a 3rd-person shooter with RPG-lite elements ala Mass Effect I figured it suited me perfect, though now having finished it I'm left with mixed feelings.


Story:

The Bureau follows William Carter and an organization known as 'The Bureau' as they attempt to repel an alien invasion of Earth sometime in the 1962, at the height of the Cold War. The plot moves about how you'd expect just by reading that one line, with no real surprises until literally the very last mission of the game.

I thought the setting was fairly unique and neat, and I did enjoy wandering around the base/quest hub listening to all of the filler dialogue and looking for notes and such with bits of lore in them. Sadly, most of the characters were generally unrelatable or just plain unlikeable, with the one big exception essentially getting killed off early on in the game. The main character himself starts out reasonable, but due to a plot bit that I won't spoil turns out to be the worst character in the game.

 

Gameplay:

Gameplay in The Bureau handles quite similarly to Mass Effect, with the player splitting their time between cover based action sequences and exploring a central hub with NPCs who all have dialogue wheels to go through between missions. As I said, the combat and mission structure is downright identical to Mass Effect: Pick your team, get dropped off, move from setpiece to setpiece while engaging groups of enemies at points between that are conveniently peppered with chest-high walls for cover. This isn't bad, mind you, I had a good deal of fun with the missions until they startted throwing shielded-armored-super enemies at me in groups at the end.

However! There were waaay too few optional missions considering how short they are. I think there were maybe 5 or 6 in total, when there should have been at -least- twice as many. The game felt short, really short. Add on to this that the dialogue segments did little more than flesh out the lore (whereas in Mass Effect or Dragon Age they may have opened up new side missions, etc.) and I had reached the final mission and the aliens were leaving Earth before I knew it.



Summary:

Given how much this game apes one of my favourite franchises in gaming history (Mass Effect), I should have adored it. It ended up being only average due to the strange pacing of the game and the fact that I didn't really like any of the characters at all. If you, like me, enjoy a good 3rd Person Action RPG, there's no reason not to at least give it a try, just don't expect it to be up to snuff when compared to some of the better ones.
 

Friday 28 March 2014

Gaming Progress Report - March 28, 2014

First, let me apologize for the lack of updates recently. I'd been having issues with my extracted teeth and then I landed a new job that's kept me busy and also exhausted. That said, I'm going to at least make an effort to keep this thing alive, just don't be surprised if updates stay slower during the week.
 


World of Warcraft:

Yes, I know. I only decided to reinstall this because an acquaintance gave me 30 days free he had laying around, but even so. I'm looking forward to the new expansion and even though it's not coming out for quite some time, it's not as if there are any other MMOs out right now that I'd rather be playing at this point. I'm really just messing around with leveling, anyway, no major commitments like raiding.

If anyone is interested in chatting me up, the characters I spend most of my time on right now are Magicpierre on Wyrmrest Accord Horde, and Milhaust and Aihm on Wyrmrest Accord Alliance.


Yakuza: Black Panther:

Honestly, I've never given the Yakuza series a second glance over the years. Not necessarily because the games don't suit me, they've just never done anything to catch my eye. I picked this oneup because I was looking for an import title that was different that my youtube viewers might enjoy, and I'll be darned if the game isn't growing on me.

I only had a basic idea of what the series was like, and was surprised when this particular entry turned out to be something like God Hand crossed with a JRPG in a modern day setting. The cutscene art style is also excellent, and I'm finding myself excited to see more of them. I expect to post a full review of this when I finish it up.

Saturday 22 March 2014

Valkyria Chronicles 3

When I'd heard that Valkyria Chronicles 3 was almost finished being fan translated I was stoked as all get out. I've never had a chance to play the first one, and the second felt like more of an anime high school drama than a war epic, so this promised to be something truly excellent. Thankfully it lived up to almost all of my expectations, and more than made up for the lukewarm entry into the series that was VC2.


Story:

Valkyria Chronicles 3 takes place during the same war as the first game in the series, though this time you're not following a celebrated group of soldiers, instead taking the role of the captain of a penal unit that takes on impossible missions in exchange for pardons. The tone is a bit darker than the previous games, with the story emphasizing the corruption on either side of the war and the lengths to which some people will go to do what in their minds is the right thing. This brings us to one of my two complaints on the game.

 As much as I liked the story and the setting I felt as if the game started to drag on after a while, with some of the plot points being needlessly stretched out, at least in my opinion. If the game had been maybe five chapters shorter it would have been damn near perfect. Up until the halfway point I had been doing all the missions, optional or otherwise, but at that point it all felt so filler-y I stopped and just rushed through the rest of the game. There's even a whole bunch of post-game stuff with even more story that I've yet to touch.




Gameplay:

Having played Valkyria Chronicles 2, I had a good idea of what to expect from this before even picking it up. The player gets a certain number of moves per turn to maneuver squad members across the battlefield, putting them into cover and firing on enemies or capturing points. While you're moving you're constantly being shot at by the enemy, so you need to minimize time spent out in the open and be as quick as you can.

Now, here's where my second complaint about the (and really the series as a whole) comes in, because despite really enjoying the gameplay style, I always felt as if I was playing the game "wrong". I'll be the first guy to admit that I'm not the pro gamer I was when I was younger, I prefer to take my time in games, play defensively and deliberately. Unfortunately, you get punished for doing just that in the VC series.

See, the ranking you get at the end of each mission (and by extension how much money you get because it's directly tied to your rank) is based on how many turns it took you to complete it in. What this means is that if you don't rush rush rush through every mission, you get ranked very low, and thus end up starved for war funds. It's frustrating, and it honestly doesn't make sense for soldiers to be dashing right past lines of enemy soldiers, tanks and turrets as fast as they can instead of slowly advancing and taking advantage of cover. Maybe it's just me, but I just found it hard to feel immersed because of this.


Summary:

Those two issues aside, I had fun with Valkyria Chronicles 3 and am thankful for the team who fan translated it for going to the trouble. If you liked either of the other games and are hungry for more, there's honestly no reason not to try this out now, and even if you're new to the series the game is isolated enough from the overarching plot of the first game even though they take place parallel to each other that you can easily understand what's going on.

You can pick up the translation patch here:
http://vc3translationproject.wordpress.com/

Wednesday 19 March 2014

Gaming Progress Report - March 19, 2014


Castlevania - Lords of Shadow:

Been playing this on and off for weeks now, mainly basing my playtimes on whether or not my PC wants to recognize that my PS3 controller is plugged in or not. As a rule I tend to dislike spectacle fighter action games like this, stuff like God of War and Darksiders have always bored or frustrated me to the point that I don't finish them, but somehow this one held onto me til the end and then some.

I think it must have been a combination of the setting and the incredible music, but I powered through and finished not only the main game, but both DLCs. Unfortunately, the DLCs were kind of weak with the 2nd one being downright infuriating (I died more in the first 10 minutes of the 2nd DLC than I did throughout the whole of the main game), but they were important top finish to see the whole story.



Warhammer 40000 - Dawn of War II Gold Edition:

I'd been wanting to play this game for ages now, after getting a hell of a lot of enjoyment out of the original Dawn of War and its expansions. I was somewhat wary when I heard that they'd removed the base building aspects of the game (that being probably my favourite part of any RTS), but so far it's been fun enough and I've cleared the main game and moved on to the expansion. I've heard that the 2nd expansion helps a bit with the whole being locked to a squad for an entire mission thing, so we'll see when I decide to pick that one up.

The way the missions are handled is kind of cool, sort of a mix between the two styles of the original Dawn of War, but I'm not big on the infinitely repeating defensive missions, and the whole corruption system in Chaos Rising seems more like a pain in the ass than anything else. So far I've managed to keep my entire team pure, but so few decent weapons and armor drop, and it feels like whenever a really good upgrade does appear it's always corrupted.

Sunday 16 March 2014

Lost Planet - Colonies

I finished this a couple days ago, and I'm honestly not sure how to feel about the game. I started off disliking it pretty profusely, but as I played more it began to grow on me. By no means is it a great game, and I'd hesitate to even call it a better than average game, but it was clearly engaging enough to keep me playing til the end.



Story:

Honestly, the game doesn't have a whole lot of story. The basic premise is that colonists on this planet EDN-something-something came under attack by insect like creatures (called Akrid), and upon killing them discovered that they produced thermal energy inside their bodies which was important due to the planets frigid climate. Unfortunately, humanity has been unable to set up any real permanent colonies on the planet due to attacks by these creatures, and are also making very little progress towards terraforming the world to be more suitable for habitation.

The game starts off with the main character, Wayne, getting caught in a bungled raid of some sort which ends up with his father being killed and Wayve being the lone survivor of the group. He's found by a group of three people working to eliminate the Akrid and decides to stay with them for whatever reason and help. Eventually the group gets tangled up fighting with snow pirates and a corporation called NEVEC along with the Akrid, and there's the usual save the world arc towards the end.

The story is campy and hard to take seriously, and throughout the game I was reminded of Zone of the Enders repeatedly with the way they went about progressing the plot, but maybe that was just me. Anyway, the game's story is lukewarm at best, and the main character is downright boring.




Gameplay:

Lost Planet is a third person shooter, which I like. Unfortunately, it almost feels as if the game isn't sure what kind of shooter it wants to be because it drops you in these expansive areas but your mission goals are always extremely specific. There's no multiple routes to accomplish something, just literally go from point A to point B and kill everything in between. I get that they wanted to make it almost Monster Hunter-y for the multiplayer (which is even more pronounced in the sequel), but I feel as if the campaign is just needlessly large in scope when really they could have lowered the scale and polished the experience a lot more.

The shooting itself is pretty standard, handling more like Earth Defense Force than Gears of War in that there's very little aim assist involved. The weapon variety is pretty lackluster, and I found that the regular rifle was the best weapon in most situations. I had most of my fun when the mechs were involved, and to be fair they did quite a good job of making the various suits feel and look different. I think I'd have enjoyed the game more if it had just been the mech combat, honestly.

Visually the game is pretty damned gorgeous, especially when you consider it came out in what, 2008? The snow physics and the fur on the characters' coats was rendered beautifully, so the devs should be applauded for that much. The audio is another story. The soundtrack was essentially non-existant, I can't remember a single track from the game and it's only been a couple days since I finished it. You've gotta have a memorable soundtrack if you want people to think back fondly on your games, developers!



Summary:

I'm not sure what I expected coming into this game. It's got two sequels, so it had to have been well received, right? To me it just feels that instead of going for this weird hybrid of traditional third-person shooter and Monster Hunter style multiplayer they should have focused on one or the other. The game isn't awful, it's just confused. I suppose it's worth playing if you wanted to get the backstory before moving onto the other two.

Friday 14 March 2014

Backloggery - For The OCD Gamer

If you're like me (and you probably aren't), you play way too many video games and over the years forget which ones you have or haven't completed. In ye olden days I used to keep a spreadsheet with all the games I'd beaten and when saved on my computer at all times, but this is the year 2014 so I'm here to bring you THIS:

The front page, where you can see the most recently updated backlogs

The main page of my personal backlog


As you can see, the Backloggery is a site where completionists can list all the games they've played or beaten over the years and show them off to friends. The site allows for showing the number of achievements in a game you've beaten, listing DLC, adding small reviews and notes and more. There's also a friend system where the right side of your main page is updated each time a friend updates their own backlog, and this is great for keeping up on what your friends are playing or how far along they are in a particular game.

So yeah, give it a try if you're as anal about keeping track of what you've done as I am, and feel free to add me while you're at it! My Backlog can be found here: http://www.backloggery.com/verranicus

Wednesday 12 March 2014

Gaming Progress Report - March 12, 2014


Shining Ark:

Still chugging through Shining Ark! I just made it to Chapter 4 yesterday, and while I still adore the art style I'm beginning to lose my interest in the game. The battles are really, really short and have massive chunks of text both before and after them, and it's really not doing much to hold my attention. That said, the ship battles are pretty great and I wish they happened more often. Having to balance using the cannons while fighting enemies off your deck is tense and these fights were the only point I even came anywhere close to dying.

The game keeps throwing new characters at me that are essentially inferior to the ones I have in every way. I rotate them around for variety but elf chick and dog dude are miles more useful than the others.



Lost Planet:

So, this game. I've been wanting to play this since it was first announced for PS3 back in the day, it looked like a fairly cool 3rd person shooter, which I'm definitely into. The reality, however, is that the game is just kinda boring. Rather than a well scripted 3rd person action game with fun gameplay it's ended up being something of a slow, monotonous slog from the start of a mission to the irritating but easy boss battle at the end.

At the very least the game still looks great despite being several years old, and while the boss battles are kind of lame, they're still great to look at. Plus, the game has giant robots, and I'm pretty sure everyone knows how I feel about those.

Tuesday 11 March 2014

Final Fantasy Type-0 Translation - Release Date Announcement

 

So for the longest time now I've been following the fan translation project of Final Fantasy Type-0, salivating at the thought of play a new Final Fantasy game that doesn't belong to the awful XIII sub-series. Generally I would check the most active forums that handle that sort of stuff once a week, and imagine my surprise when I check a day or two ago to find a dozen new pages of jubilant and raving people going on about a supposed release date. The supposed date is August 18th of this year, though I wouldn't be surprised if it changed as these things often do. Many people were happy to have a concrete timeframe, but just as many were irrationally angry that the game wasn't being released much sooner given that it's currently being beta tested. Personally I can wait, and I'm glad to no longer have to check those websites all the time, but it will be tough to stay patient given how much I've been wanting to play this.

Here's the teaser trailer that the translation team released, and yes, I plan to do a playthrough of this the moment it gets released.

Sunday 9 March 2014

Last Ranker

From the videos and screenshots I'd seen of Last Ranker I wasn't especially impressed, and I was really only playing it to check it off my my backlog. I expected a dull and clunky if somewhat unique RPG, but what I got was sooo much better. Never before has a slowly dropping number captivated me so much.



Story

As always when it comes to Japanese games, I have to say that I don't understand the language completely and basically get by on what I've picked up from playing imported games since the SNES era, but with help from a guide on GameFaqs I think I got a general idea of what was going on.

Last Ranker follows the story of Zig, who leaves his home village after becoming tired and disillusioned with their way of life and opts to travel to the city and join with an organization called the 'Rankers' that are all about rising in the ranks and training strong fighters. He eventually gets caught up in the plots of the corrupt 'Knights of the Seven', who are the top seven fighters in the city and essentially in control of the government, and later does the whole save the world thing.

I genuinely liked most of the characters in this game, especially the villains. I've always been a sucker for well done evil organizations with gradually strengthing members as you go up the hierarchy, and Last Ranker managed to have them all be at least somewhat interesting and fun to come into conflict with.

The animation quality of the characters was pretty great

Gameplay:

Last Ranker has a pretty unusual battle system when compared to the usual JRPG, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Rather than just have a menu that you navigate to select attack, magic, item, etc, Last Ranker uses a more action/timing based approach, almost similar to Super Mario RPG/Paper Mario.

You can assign abilities to certain buttons such as attack, guard and the like, and in combat you're encouraged to do what you can to time your attacks for when the enemy drops their defenses, guard powerful attacks, use special abilities to interrupt your opponent when they try to do the same, and so forth. All in all it makes for a more engaging and tense system than the norm, and it goes a long way towards making the otherwise bland (there are very few unique monster types) random encounters fun.

The best part of the game, at least for me, is the rank indicator that's always at the top of your screen. This number keeps track of Zig's standing in Last Ranker and steadily goes down as he defeats other Rankers like himself. It became something of an obsession to see this number go down, and each Ranker battle was a pure joy with a few exceptions (enemies that constantly counterattack were really irritating).

One of the many 'boss' encounters, with Zig's current rank at the top left

Summary:

Last Ranker was the first Japanese PSP RPG I picked up when I started binging on single player games recently, and was good enough to get me hooked all the way to the end and leave me wanting more. Presentation was great and the gameplay was varied enough that it never felt like I was grinding. Audio-wise it was a mixed bag, but there were more good tracks than bad. Definitely grab this one if you're looking for a JRPG that's just a little bit different.

Saturday 8 March 2014

Gaming Progress Report - March 8th, 2014

My girlfriend has been away for the weekend visiting family so I've been able to burn through more games than I would otherwise, and despite feeling generally ill over the past few days I actually managed to check a few off my backlog and beat them.



Costume Quest:

This little piece of awesome had actually been sitting on my backlog for years with me constantly telling myself I'd get to it eventually. Let me tell you, it was worth the wait. Costume Quest easily blew my expectations out of the water and I was so entranced by it I even grabbed the lone DLC and played through that as well. I think I blew through both in a combined total of 4-5 hours, but I enjoyed every minute of them.

Why can't they make more console style RPGs for the PC? They don't even have to be serious affairs like Final Fantasy or whatever, this game proved that! I'd love for more games like this to be released, because it's getting harder and harder for me to play newer console style RPGs on actual consoles (on account of my not having any of the new ones).




Homefront:

I almost feel like I'm doing a bad thing by putting this average-on-its-best-day FPS in the same update as Costume Quest. But yes, I played and finished Homefront. It looks and handles identically to every other modern military FPS, but it's single player campaign was somehow even shorter and jankier than Call of Duty and the like. A real shame, too, because the setting for the game was fairly interesting, and the introduction sequence actually had me pretty well hooked despite it being completely unrealistic.

Apparently a sequel is in the works despite the average to negative reviews the game got, though, so maybe that will improve on a lot of the things that held this one back.


Thursday 6 March 2014

Sol Trigger

This game, oh man. It took me days, maybe weeks to find a build of PPSSPP that worked properly with this game. One version would have freezing issues, another wouldn't play certain audio tracks, the next would play all voice audio at the lowest volume possible, and so on. Thankfully, I think it was worth the effort.


Story:

Sol Trigger is in Japanese aside from some of the menus and character names having been fan-translated, so I can't say that what I gathered of the story from playing it is 100% accurate (in fact I can promise you it isn't), but after reaching the end I feel as if I got the gist of things.

The game takes place in the city of Kaiserhald, where the eponymous resistance group 'Sol Trigger' fights a secret war against the Machine Church who rule everything. The Machine Church uses a power source called Sol to power everything from streetlights to horrible robot monstrocities, but what the general populace doesn't know is that Sol is extracted from living people, and thus the reason for the resistance.

You play as Farel, who leads Sol Trigger after the initial leader is killed during a mission, and embark on a series of operations to disrupt the Machine Church's harvesting and manufacturing of Sol. Things obviously get more complicated than that, but I'd like to avoid anything to spoiler-y.


The cutscenes in the game are amazingly well done

Gameplay:

Sol Trigger handles very similarly to games from the Shin Megami Tensei series, with a first person view during battle and a system that maps out the fairly convoluted dungeons as you explore them. Where it differs, however, is what makes the game so great. Animation quality for just about every ability is superb, and I found myself using abilities that may not have been optimal just because they looked cooler. Abilities even change appearance once you've leveled them up to their cap, which gives a bit more incentive to varying how you play.

Another unique aspect of the game is that you can use your parties Sol (basically MP/SP) to power up their abilities. Say ability A cost 50 Sol to use normally, you could power it up to use 75, 100, 200, etc. and the damage or effects it did would vary accordingly. Very cool, and it allows for a much greater range of control over how you handle your battles.

One negative I will say is that there are two characters in both halves of the game that are so game breakingly useful that you're almost forced to use them in your party 100% of the time despite always having a decent sized group to switch in and out. Cyril with her group wide defense/attack buff and heal over time along with Sophie/Wilma's ability that eliminates the Sol cost of the groups other attacks are just leagues better than most of the alternatives, so not using them feels like deliberately handicapping yourself.

Despite the first person battle system, abilities all have really nice looking animations

Summary:

If you can get past the fact that the game is in Japanese, I'd say this is easily one of the best JRPGs on the PSP. It managed to keep me interested throughout and there were even some genuinely emotional moments here and there. Definitely pick this one up if you can.


Wednesday 5 March 2014

Gaming Progress Report - March 5th


I'm actually at a point right now where I have way too many games going at once and I'm in pretty desperate need of hard drive space, but can't pick any one game to delete because I haven't finished any of them yet. I should just buckle down and pick one, but I'm indecisive by nature. Anyway, some thoughts on a couple of the offending titles.

Unrelated to what I post below, here's a link to my youtube channel. I upload far too much and I'm always happy to get new viewers: FlamingGnats' Channel - YouTube



Defiance:

This should be the perfect game for me. 3rd-person shooting in an MMORPG setting with Guild Wars 2 style public events? Hell yeah, that sounds awesome, and for the most part it's not half bad. However, my first foray into the PVP side of things kind of left me with a bad taste in my mouth and I haven't felt like logging back in for a few days now. 

Essentially the PVP is dead, but those dedicated enough to wait out the 10+ minute queue times to get into a battleground are treated to being consistently killed in a single shot by people with literally 50x their EGO rating, all sporting the same semi-automatic sniper rifle and stealth ability. This has apparently been a major problem for the game for a while now, with most of the community abandoning PVP altogether because the devs have done nothing to fix things. I don't blame them, and I won't be trying it out again.




TESV: Skyrim:

Yes, I'm going to play this again. I spent a good chunk of yesterday downloading far too many mods and I just finished installing them all this afternoon. I've done this many times in the past and have only ever beaten the game once before (and even then, I ended up rushing through the main story about halfway through) so hopefully this will be different and I will be able to complete everything. I'm hoping the fact that I have a much better GPU now than I did the last time I played will make it easier to get into the game, but we'll find out for sure soon enough.

Tuesday 4 March 2014

Earth Defense Force - Insect Armageddon


It was literally less than an hour after I posted my last update that I finished this beauty, and while I could have updated the progress report then and there, I decided to put it off because why not. Anyway, Earth Defense Force is a long running series of action games in which the player controls an infantryman that's faced with the task of purging the earth of thousands upon thousands of giant ants, spiders, flying saucers and all manner of other nasty things. That's really all there is to these games, seriously. 

Story:

The game takes place in the near future, in and around the city of 'New Detroit' during an alien invasion. Apparently these hyper advanced beings decided that the best way to wipe out humanity was to drop supersized versions of household pests all over the place. You play as a soldier in the titular EDF who's been sent in to wipe out the enemy in the area. That's about the extent of the story the game gives you, and outside the small snippets of dialogue you get from your handler and the scientists who talk into your headset the game might as well be devoid of a plot entirely. 

I think there's some sort of really loose tie-in between this game and  Earth Defense Force 2017 for the Xbox 360, but it really only ever boils down to "aliens bad, shoot them with guns". Not even the ending is safe from this, as it literally just cuts back to the main menu after you finish the final mission. Apparently if you beat it on the hardest difficulty it changes slightly, but that's something I'll never be attempting.

Ironically, these small enemies were the hardest to handle

Gameplay:

Now this is where the game shines. 99% of the time you're going to be in 3rd person mowing down wave after wave of giant insects and flying saucers with your squadmates (who when controlled by the AI are of dubious help), but you also get access to tanks, turrets and the occasional mech to keep things fresh. The game starts you off facing basic ants and slowly ramps up the variety of enemy until you get to one of the later missions and you're battle giant metal ants, spiders and wasps while a 50 story tarantula bombards you from above and flying saucers zip around taking pot shots at you.

It gets very chaotic, and the fights -can- be a bit drawn out from time to time, but the whole premise is just so badass that more often than not you're way too into what you're seeing to realize you've just been shooting the same machine gun at the same enemies for the past few hours. I can only imagine the game is even more fun if you manage to find friends to play with, but the community has long since moved on to newer entries in the franchise (in fact, a brand new game in the series was just released a day or two ago!) or new games entirely. Such is the fate of most multiplayer shooters that aren't Team Fortress 2 or Counter Strike.

A fairly typical scene in Earth Defense Force

Summary:

While quite different from my usual fare of RPGs and obscure import titles, I had fun and I'd still say Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon deserves a play through, -especially- if you can rope a few friends into playing it with you. That said, the graphics are somewhat dated and you might be better off just grabbing the most recent entry in the franchise.


Monday 3 March 2014

Gaming Progress Report - March 3rd

Since I'm not quite ready to throw together another review or article about any one game in particular, I thought I'd just leave a few snippets of information regarding the games I'm currently playing instead. I'll likely use this format as a way to space out reviews and give myself time to get them all edited and such.

Shining Ark:

I had been wanting to pick Shining Ark back up for a while after I'd done the little teaser for my youtube channel, which really only consisted of the first quest, but was continually sidetracked with other things to the point that I'd basically forgotten about it. With Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon X finished, however, I figured now was as good a time as any to get back into the game.

Unfortunately, the Japanese wiki for the game has been down for some time now and with it the only quest flowchart or anything even approaching a guide I've been able to find after hours of searching online. So I'm flying blind, and while I'm sure I'll be able to make it through the main story without any problems (already on the 3rd chapter), it's a bit frustrating to constantly be walking past NPCs with that little frowny face over their heads because I can't figure out what the hell they want me to do with their sidequests.

WHAT DO YOU WANT??

Regardless, I'm having a decent amount of fun with the game, though I'm likely to slow down with my playing and focus more on PC games so as to avoid burnout. It's so facerollingly easy and the quests are incredibly repetitive, I'm sure if I wasn't a fan of the franchise and art style I wouldn't have the patience for it.




Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon:

The only other game I've really been playing the last couple of days has been this beauty, Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon. From what I've gathered online it's considered one of the worst entries in the franchise, but I'm having a decent time of it. The last EDF game I played was for the PS2 (the name escapes me), and I'd forgotten how good they were at making giant ants destroying low resolution cities look awesome.

At this point I have maybe two or three more missions before I've beaten it and can start uploading my playthrough to youtube, and I may toss up a full review tomorrow. 


 

Sunday 2 March 2014

Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon X


Today I finished the main game/storyline of Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon X. There's still a whole bunch of post-game stuff to do like dungeons and unlocking more costumes, but I rarely if ever touch those parts of games unless it's something people on my youtube channel really want to see, or it's a game I'm absolutely obsessed with (Mass Effect 3, Borderlands 2, etc). Regardless, I got about 20-25 hours out of the game and for a portable title that isn't bad at all.

As a huge fan of the Tales franchise I was pleasantly surprised at how much I ended up enjoying the game. Coming in I knew it was more of a dungeon crawler than one of the mothership titles, but the always fun combat and the whole costume system went a long way towards keeping things varied. I also appreciated that it actually tried to flesh out the characters and backstory of Tales of Phantasia, whether it made the games better or not.


Story:

To expand a bit on the story, the game follows a set of twins named Dio and Mel after a magical dresser (yeah) gives them the power to become warriors/wizards/etc. by putting on various costumes. Naturally it doesn't take long for something horrible to happen that sends the children travelling through time to meet and group up with the cast of Tales of Phantasia in an attempt to put things right again. As mentioned above, the games story wasn't it's strongest point and the ToP characters essentially became mutes with no impact on the story about 2/3rds of the way through. Still, the ending managed to make me a little sad and angry, so I guess they did something right.

The characters of Dio, Mel and their adoptive mother Ethos were really the only ones worth caring about at all. The ToP cast mainly appeared just to get the kids from point A to point B and fill out the party, the secondary villains were fairly bland, and you don't even know who the Big Bad is until you're an hour or two away from the end. They try to flesh out Dhaos some more I guess, and there's the addition of the time travelling woman Rondeline, but since I haven't played the ToP remake with her in it I only caught bits and pieces of her story. Also, Norn is horrible and probably my least liked Tales villain.

 God, you're awful

 Gameplay:

As is typical of a Tales game, the battle system is a huge part of the appeal, and this slightly varied version of the LMBS doesn't fail to deliver. It handles pretty much identically to the other 2D Tales games (other than Rebirth), save for the unique costume system. Using this, the twins can swap between  (either at will in towns/the world map or using an item when in dungeons) 80 or so outfits that each handle completely differently from the others. Granted, some costumes are direct upgrades over others, but they still get a unique list of artes to work with that keeps things fresh. There was maybe one occasion in the entire game where I was locked to an outfit, and it was for 10 minutes tops, so the sheer number of options leave the game open to be beaten however the player wants.

Battle aside, the standard world map has been replaced with a hand drawn picture and a list of destinations, which while disappointing makes sense given the games focus on the dungeon crawling. Towns were fairly varied but I found I rarely had any reason to visit them, getting most of the items I needed by fighting and finding few if any sidequests in them to make them worth running through more than once.

I suppose if I had to point out the biggest negative I saw in the game (besides NORN), it would be the audio. Most of the tracks were reused or remixed from Tales of Phantasia, which in my opinion had a lackluster soundtrack to begin with, and any actual original tracks weren't memorable in the least. A real shame, because games like Tales of the Abyss and Tales of Vesperia has some really catchy tunes that I still find myself humming today. The voice acting was decent, nothing more, though I'll give them props for having the skits fully voiced when other Tales games cheaped out and left them silent.


An example of the games battle system, a variant of the traditional Tales LMBS

Summary:

Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon X has a lot going for it despite being a spin off game, and once you get past the fact that it's about half the size of a mothership title in the franchise and accept it as a dungeon crawler with a Tales skin, it's damned fun. I'd definitely recommend it to a fan of the series, and of the RPGs available on the PSP it's one of the better ones. Below you can find my complete playthrough of the game, if you can't be bothered buying it yourself.