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.

Type-0 Translation Teaser from SkyBladeCloud on Vimeo.

 

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.

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.

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. 

 

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.