posts by chris
chris

Pieces of a Perfect Game: Koei’s arduous slip into mediocrity

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Good strategy games can be hard to come by on consoles. The only company that reliably produces games in the genre is Koei, and, as I’ve noted before, their recent track record is not so good.

Koei is now widely known for their willingness to recycle old work in the form of Dynasty Warriors – to put it more nicely, they haven’t fixed anything that isn’t broken in a while. Their lesser-known, but longer-running, Romance of the Three Kingdoms series is now on its eleventh iteration. I haven’t gotten the latest one yet, because by now I’ve figured it out (took me long enough): Koei has a secret recipe for the ultimate officer-based strategy game, but they insist on releasing it a piece at a time. →  Uncharted Waters: New Horeadin’s

Brawl Web site reveals completely new material

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As some of you may have noticed, the official Smash Bros. Brawl website finally unveiled completely new material last week.

First off was the new character, Ike, from Fire Emblem. Ike comes without any warning whatsoever – although I’m hoping to see a lot more interesting and varied characters, I’m happy enough that they announced Ike suddenly – it implies there could be more announcements of this sort.

As a character, Ike sounds most like Roy. Some complain that Roy and Marth were too similar in Melee – Ike will only add to these complaints if both of the others return – but I disagree, as Roy and Marth play quite differently, despite how much their moves look alike. I think they can vary Ike’s move style considerably – wielding a two-handed sword, he might actually have more reach than either. →  Do a barrel read!

Final Fantasy Tactics to be retranslated

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A recent announcement by Square-Enix has left more than a few people amazed. The least surprising bit, probably, was that we would be receiving the PSP remake of Final Fantasy Tactics.

Somewhat more surprising was the fact that the game would be retranslated. Now… the original PSX translation of Tactics isn’t all bad. But it does suffer from a lack of editing (such as the mission where you were to “Kill Dycedarg’s older brother”), and is a bit awkward from time to time.

For all the game’s fans, however, this is a godsend. It’s a remake of a game that doesn’t try to go too far – it adds a few aspects, some new characters, et cetera – so if it were the same translation there would be more debate over whether or not to get it. →  Destroy All Articles! 2

Odin Sphere: not drinking the kool-aid

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Odin Sphere was released to a slew of rave reviews. Several called it the best PS2 RPG in years, and game forums everywhere were filled with topics full of praise.

A couple weeks ago I convinced myself I should try it out. And, in fact, for a while it was impressive. The graphics are quite nice, the voice options are great, and the story is enjoyable. The game is quite smooth, and controls pretty well.

You’ll notice I left out the actual system behind the game. It felt okay for the first couple hours. I figured I’d get used to it, and that soon enough I’d be planting Muggles and Napples in the heat of battle with the best of them. →  Now bear my arctic post.

Review – Steambot Chronicles

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Have you ever played a game for hours on end and then realized what you played had unbalanced gameplay, a clunky battle system, and very slow character advancement but you loved it anyway?

This happened to me last week. On a whim, I bought Odin Sphere and Steambot Chronicles. Though I might argue both games are guilty of these faults, in this case I am talking about Steambot Chronicles because it kept my attention better.
My question – Wouldn’t a better name be Trotbots?

I still don’t completely understand why, but I loved this game. It has a cliched anime look with cliched anime-type characters named after spices (the main character is Vanilla Bean), standard music (with a few exceptions) and clunky gameplay. →  All the lonely gamers, where do they all come from?

The wonderful centigame: Blizzard custom maps

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Every once in a while, I fall into a gaming slump. During these periods, nothing seems to keep me interested in most games I play. They’re either too long or too complex, and I yearn for something a bit simpler to pass the time.

And so, at some point I found custom or “use-map-settings” maps when playing Starcraft. I call them “centigames” – in honor of Wario Ware’s microgames – because they tend to last between a half hour and an hour but still invoke that ADD part of the brain. Through the wonders of Blizzard’s map editor and the “Trigger” system, which allows for unique maps to be programmed, there is a huge amount of games to play – still – for a game more than nine years old. →  Call me game-shmael.

Der Langrisser: Finally translated

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Lester shows Cherie what’s for.

When you hear “Langrisser”, you probably think of nothing at all unless you pay attention to Japanese-language games. Thanks to a small, talented, and dedicated group of translators, that is about to change. A group led by Derrick Sobodash has completely translated the Super Famicom game “Der Langrisser” into English.

First off: Der Langrisser is actually a remake of Langrisser 2. Why should we care? If you ever tried a little-known Strategy RPG for Genesis by the name of Warsong, you have played the first game in the Langrisser series.

Warsong is a tour de force of strategy, and could have been the start of a trend toward larger-scale SRPG battles. Unfortunately, Career Soft was the only company who maintained the trend with their Langrisser games, ending with the fifth entry (for Saturn and PSX). →  Read or die.

Retrospectives – Suikoden series, part 3

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Suikoden IV

The fourth game in the Suikoden series, putting it kindly, is the “black sheep.” It features more realistic graphics, nicer portraits, good voice acting, and a good translation. It takes place in a vast, thalassic island chain, which you roam on impressive Exploration Era-esque warships complete with rune-based cannon.

The sad part is that nearly everything else has jumped ship, so to speak. Though the game is quite pretty on the surface and has all the requisites to be a Suikoden game, it is highly regressive. Konami realized they had struck a “too complex” chord with its audience and took a few too many steps backward in an attempt to make things right.

Take the battle system of Suikoden 1. →  Ring of Read

An even more Smashingly little amount of information to Brawl about: Music

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Recently, the Smash Bros Dojo has opened its doors officially. Though much of the information is not new, updates are guaranteed to be coming every weekday from Masahiro Sakurai himself!
Unlikely to be the last surprise waiting for us inside a box.

Most of the information is stuff any fan of the games would know by now – such as how to play or information about the one stage that has been revealed.

However… if you look at “Music” there is a list of composers that is nothing short of formidable. Absolutely amazing.

The list itself gives examples of games the composers worked on, which is helpful for several names I didn’t recognize. Let’s take a look.

The usual suspects:

  • Koji Kondo
  • Masaaki Iwasaki
  • Minako Hamano
  • Shogo Sakai
  • Toru Minegishi
  • Yuka Tsujiyoko
  • Hajime Wakai

These are all composers who worked on several Nintendo games in the past or recently worked on big-name Nintendo games. →  Shadow of the Article

Dragon Quest IX no longer has internet multiplayer

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In yet another disappointment to fans, it has been announced recently that Dragon Quest IX will not have internet multiplayer as originally advertised. This comes after the clarification of the battle system that revealed it was the age-old Dragon Quest system with few changes.

The beanbag chair that stares back at you.

The game will still have wireless local multiplayer, for what it’s worth. This is particularly disappointing to me. Since I’m graduating from college soon, DSes will no longer be a common sight to me, and chances of finding people to play with might be a bit slim. Internet multiplayer would be much nicer, particularly if I could play with friends in other places. Even if I know Jay would probably just grief me every chance he gets. →  Ikari Warriors 2: Postery Read