jrpg

Quick Impressions – The World Ends with You

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I’ve put around five hours into The World Ends with You and besides the “I cut myself to see if I can still feel pain” emo moniker I am very pleased. The battle system makes use of both DS screens simultaneously and though movement of your character via stylus is sort of spotty, everything ultimately works together nicely. The music is absurd Japanese pop that’s both infectious and terrible and the graphics are very stylized – this is one of the few DS games that has a AAA presentation and Squeenix deserves praise for actually trying. Of course the game flopped in Japan and will likely follow suit worldwide, so their effort will be entirely unrewarded and they will realize what a huge mistake taking a chance was. Life is back to normal.

The translation is very well done and includes a number of inside jokes. “Spoony Bard” pops up as well as a reference to Fawful’s glorious dialog in Super Star Saga (food of choice + “of your doom!” →  Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this post!

A survey of 2007s role playing games

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Last year was a fairly interesting one for RPG fans. Some of the biggest names in the genre finished their PS2 swan songs long ago, and went off in search of new platforms. This left 2007 as a year for new ideas and lesser known series to take root and grab the hearts and money of fans. 2007 may not have had a big new Final Fantasy, but perhaps that is a good thing, as it allowed these other games to stand out, rough edges and all. While it comes a bit late, the following is an assessment of some of 2007’s biggest RPGs from both Chris (vl’s resident RPG expert) and Christian (who continues to look for the genre’s masterpiece). We also included FF12 in the mix. It may be a bit old to us modern folk living in 2008, but it is such a major departure from Square’s usual offerings that it deserves a bit more discussion on the site. →  Now bear my arctic post.

Review – Shiren the Wanderer

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Shiren the Wanderer is the video game equivalent of Candide. Think of something that can go wrong and it will, but not in the normal “I locked my keys in my car” kind of way. Like its literary inspiration, things don’t just not work out, they go absurdly wrong. As in “I locked my tiger in my car but forgot to unstrap my newborn child from the baby seat” wrong.

Shiren meets so many untimely deaths so often that it seems the game is mocking you. The most ridiculous deaths at least allow you to join in the laughter. For example, on the last level of the game a minotaur picked me up and threw me into a corner, then proceeded to pick up and hurl another minotaur at my head, followed by an undead mage, followed by the final boss itself. Had the mage not already sealed my ability to use items I may have stood a chance, but in the state I was in all I could do was wait for each of these enemies to take turns pummeling me. →  Did I do that?

Review – Opoona

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If a game contains art, is the game itself art? Is it moral for the local populace to manipulate an alien child into doing their bidding? What in the hell does that old engineer want with a sand weasel? These questions and more are asked in Koei’s latest published game, Opoona.

Reviews have not been altogether friendly to Opoona. I am here to tell you that yes, it may well be a horrible game. It has an occasionally annoying camera, a bad translation, and it’s easy to get lost even in the first dome-city. I am also here to tell you that I still really enjoyed Opoona despite these flaws.

But is it art?

I’ll get the bad parts out of the way first. First off: No voice acting. Sorry. I didn’t care; hell, I didn’t even notice until I realized the whole game sounds very uniform and ambient. Nothing breaks it up. Some people think this is a negative. I’m just glad they didn’t give Opoona and his siblings horrible squeaky voices. →  NiGHTS into REaDS

Gamestop and the Classics

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Despite the title, this blog post is another update on the (awesome) shenanigans going on with Atlus USA. About two or so weeks ago, Atlus quietly reprinted some copies of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. It was so quiet that not even Atlus employees that often float around the Internet knew the details. The only reliable retailer that seemed to have it was Play Asia, but now we know quite differently. Turns out that a reprint was done for both Nocturne and Digital Devil Saga, and according to some Gamestop employees, almost every store was getting one copy of each game, brand new but labeled (and stickered) as used. Naturally this caused much rejoicing among the Atlus Faithful, and both games as well as Persona 3 FES are the top selling PS2 games on the ‘Spot’s website.

Initially, there seemed to be nothing bad at all about this news. I broke the bank to get my own copy of Nocturne, and since Devil Summoner and DDS2 are common enough to find, this is a chance for people to obtain every PS2 SMT with relative ease. →  Contains 10% more consonants than comparable articles.

Review – Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn

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Sequels suck. Prequels putrefy. And spin-offs spin out of control. And yet, so often when a story we enjoy ends, whether in the terra-forming of Arrakis or bodily ascension to heaven, we are reluctant to let go. We refuse to accept that resurrecting something so that it can go on eternally is usually a bad idea (I’m looking at you evangelicals.) The exceptions, (and there are a few: Godfather II, Red Dragon, The Simpsons, The Bible Goes West) prove the rule. So, when one of these quality exceptions of a continuing storyline comes onto the scene, especially in our medium, I think it’s time to take a holiday from derision and give the credit where it’s due. Such is the case with Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. So, sit back and let me tell you about the shining dawn of a radiant path in brilliant storytelling and those who have strayed from the light.

Blah blah blah.

Gamespot gave Radiant Dawn a 6.0, calling the plot of the game “terrible,” and the IGN reviewer, despite having given the game an overall score of 8.0, complained about the “extremely simple storytelling that makes use of only a backdrop and some character art.” →  You lost me.

Non-Review Footnote – Persona 3:FES

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Last week marked an interesting release on American shores, as Atlus shipped out Persona 3:FES. FES is both an expansion pack and a revision to the original P3 – it mainly serves as an epilogue chapter to the story, but was also served with the original game as a “director’s cut” that added new goodies to the entire quest.

This kind of release is very rare on consoles. For example, whenever Square releases an International Edition of a hit RPG, you can be sure this nation won’t see it. Yet for whatever reason (likely due to success of P3 last fall), Atlus decided to grace us with more of this excellent game, rather than leave Western fans out in the cold as happens so many times. Not only that, but the price is only $30! Of course, this decimates whatever high prices the original P3 might have held on eBay, but that isn’t any sort of price compared to what we’re getting. →  It was the best of games, it was the worst of games

Review – Phantasy Star 2

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A little over a year ago, I attempted to play through the original Phantasy Star. It was a trying experience, considering there is little in the way of direction or newbie-friendliness in the game. In the end, cuddlier JRPGs prevailed and I lost interest shortly after recruiting Noah.

Last month, I finished a play-through of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and was looking for something else to play. I checked the Wii Shop, expecting once again to find an update with two, maybe three bland-looking clones of games already on VC. “Hmm”, I thought. “Phantasy Star 2…” a quick check around had me somewhat concerned. Most of my friends who enjoyed the Phantasy Star series told me not to even try. I shrugged and figured that if nothing else, my 800 Wii Points (which are no doubt all the more valuable due to the declining dollar and the burgeoning economy of Wiiville) will have gone to support classic RPGs.

A couple of hours later, when I told Jay I had started playing, his first words were “I’m sorry”. →  This post are sick.

Review – Final Fantasy: Revenant Wings

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Like many gamers, I yearn for the mighty games of yore. In my case, I’ve been craving a strategy RPG. Tactics Advance, Shining Force on the GBA–I was hunting around for these games in hopes of something that would occupy my time and fill me full of tactical goodness during my daily commute.

Of course, this led me to ignore NEW games that I could be searching for. So it was by complete accident that I got a copy of Final Fantasy: Revenant Wings. I was about to travel, and needed a new DS game. I saw FF: RW, and decided “I’m a Square fanboy, and it’s an FF game… I should get it!”

Great, a chocobo. Square’s creativity truly knows no bounds.

Imagine my surprise when I found that FF: RW is a real time strategy RPG, and a good one at that. Combining a battle system that is nicely varied (though it’s sometimes hard to execute orders) with the things that FF lovers expect (such as cut scenes and extensive side quests) FF: RW is an excellent game. →  Get lame or get out.

The Trouble with Tactics

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As I’m sure you can tell by my previous articles, I love RPGs and strategy games. It should follow, then, that I love the Strategy RPG genre. Just like peanut butter and pizza. Although I like some SRPGs, I have some issues with the genre, particularly the Tactical subgenre. By “Tactical”, I mean finer-scale games where you manage each individual taking part in battles.

For example, I started up Shining Force a couple months ago via the wonders of Virtual Console. I began noticing occasional oddities; enemies with low agility would move twice when my high-agility archers never got a move in, for example (Hans was useless anyways). Levels would either be quite useful or really suck.

You can’t tell from this picture, but the priest and thief are horribly under-leveled.

It may be sacrilege (and I expect to be hanged by sundown), but I didn’t especially enjoy it. To be fair, though, I no longer enjoy the original Final Fantasy 1 or the first Mega Man either. →  The Last Readment