Reconnecting with Final Fantasy X, in HD!

Emotional nostalgic rambling inside. This ones from the heart.

Final Fantasy X is something special for me. It came out during my first major transitonal point in my life, which was highschool. Almost everything around me in real life was all new at the time. New building, new friends, new experiences. I had a new social life in the real world, and my social life on the internet was just beginning as well (I was quite addicted to Phantasy Star Online version 2 at the time, and met many awesome new friends). What me, and both my online, and offline social life had in common is that mostly eveyrone in my inner circle of friends were all playing Final Fantasy X at the time of its release.

This game brought me, and many of my friends that I'm still very close with to this day, together. We bonded becauuse it gave us something to initially talk about on a grand scale. It opened the doors, helped us break our intiial shy barrier, and eventually talk about other things and become closer friends. It made the shift from grammar school to highschool so much easier for me, and far less lonely and stress filled.

Every day during home room in school we would just talk about where we were in Final Fantasy X, share some side quest secrets, or just talk about “that awesome scene” or what music we thought was awesome. And then every night, around 10pm I'd log into Phantasy Star Online v2, and chat with my friends there, about the game too, making jokes about the games silly villain, Seymour. I'm still good friends with one of them to this day :3

Those memories aren't the only reason I love it though.... its a legitamately good game, with a story that I loved a lot. The way the relationships between Tidus and the group evolve from an awkward obligation to help someone who's lost, to an unbreakable bond of trust that they all share by the end of the game. The way the story shifts from following some tradition of saving the world temporarily, to exposing all the lies and corruption behind it, and breaking the cycle so everyone can live peacefully and safely, without having to sacrifice people for only a temporary fix to the problem (Sin).

The game just has so many memorable moments, even that infamous laugh scene (yeah I like it :P). And then there is the love scene that Tidus and Yuna share in Macalania Woods... even 13 years later, that scene gets me emotional. The way they build up to it with the scene before it, Yuna having lost her faith, after exposing all of the lies, to feeling the struggle of not being sure if she wants to continue her journey. Just the conversation she and Tidus have, of Tidus telling her to not do it, and all the things that they could do if she just didn't do it, to her realizing that just doesn't seem like a realistic possibillity, it all just hits her. The love scene of Tidus and Yuna kissing and clinging to eachother under water... the music, the special effects, the atmosphere, the way they bond in this scene is just so … magical and beautiful. It kind of feels like something out of an old Disney animated movie, but better to me. I really love this scene, and I know I'm not a lone in this. Suteki da ne is a beautiful song, and perfect for this scene.

And then theres the ending... which also got me emotoinal, even 13 years later. Tidus's confrontation with his dad was very emotional to me, as I had many issues with my own father growing up, but nowadays we get a long great. Just seeing Tidus say he hates his dad, only to find all of the spheres thruought the game that show that his father actually did love and care about him , despite him being terrible at showing it. When the time comes for the final battle against his father, Tidus's emotions got the best of him... and my emotions also got the best of me <3 I suppose because I know where he is coming from with his feelings... so its very relatable with how I used to feel growing up. I never realized how relatable this was for me until now, I suppose because I'm older, I have a better thought process and understanding of things.

And then thers the actual ending... of Tidus disapearing and Yuna saying she loves him. Tidus's face just looks so crushed when he hears that, because he know he doesn't have much time. Right at that part, I just started bawling like a baby, both in 2001, and again in 2014. I suppose I am a sucker for a love story, but I really love the bonds between the characters in this game.

I think one of my favorite scenes in the game though, is when the group gets to the moonflow, and sees all the pyreflies around a lake. Tidus mentions he wants everyone to come back here when its all over, so they can enjoy just watching the pyreflies. Everyones reaction is just... silence, and just staring off into the distance, because they know at the end of their journey, Yuna is going to die, to temporarily fix the problems with the world. Its just a very subtle scene that I never noticed until my replay of the game in the HD version, and thought that it was really cool. Subtle direction like that, are some of my favorite things in storylines.

Theres just so much to the game, plot wise, but also gameplay wise. The main story is pretty straightfoward (literally) and very easy, but the post game stuff is where the real challenge comes in, and a lot of preparation was required for me to beat some of the games super bosses (which are mostly new for anyone in America, since we never got some of this content) and thats really where the games mechanics shine. Having to customize your armor with certain abilities, and the things required to be able to even make these abilities, it requires a lot of work and honestly looked overwhelming and tedious before I started to actaully work towards it. Once I actaully did all the work...(capturing monsters, winning an annoying as hell chocobo race mini game) I actually felt that it was worth it , and made it feel satisfying when I managed to beat 4 of the dark aeons (didn't beat the rest of them because I couldn't even hit them :P) .

When I actually went to fight the final bosses of the game, they were just a joke in terms of difficulty because of how much I became overpowered from gearing up for the dark aeons. I actually de-equipped my ultimate weapons because I wanted to at least enjoy the battle for a little bit, even if the final boseses were doing almost no damage to me.

Music is also one of the games highest points for me... so much so that I actually own the original release of it from back in the day. The HD remaster version of the game contains an entirely (?) redone soundtrack using real (?) intstruments for the songs. At first, when I heard the new version of the songs that I grew up with, my nostalgia goggles immediatley slammed in front of my eyes and I hated the songs. Though.... as I actually played through the game, hearing the new songs, I came to realize that they weren't all bad. Some stick out as not as good as the original, or just down right awful to me,but a lot of them were pleasant, and changed my initial reaction to the songs. I was mostly okay with the music in the remaster. One song in specific, I actually like way more then the original (To the end of the Abyss, I think its called) its very relaxing, and has a nice melody to it. The original isn't bad, but this version of that song was really nice on my ears, and one I listened to on loop for a good while! All in all, the remastered soundtrack is not bad, and it does excell in some moments, but I do wish the option for original music was there, but its not a deal breaker, for me. Its still the same game that I love!

It was rea`lly nice reconnecting with a special game from my early teen years, and I think I have even more of an appreciation for it now, since I never went as far as I did with the post game stuff as I did now. Back then, I just leveled up the sphere grid a lot and then beat the game, but didn't bother with the side stuff, like I did now. It was a lot of fun and am kind of sad its over now. I'll have to revisit it again one day. I'll probably play Final Fantasy X-2 in HD soon, but not right away!

Dino Crisis 3 - Final thoughts

Yeah, this game existed... lets talk about it a bit...

Dino Crisis 3 is a weird game... a really weird game. Taking away everything that the first two games established, and doing something entirely different, that I have no way to describe other then saying... its really weird I baught this game 10 years ago when it came out, being a huge fan of Dino Crisis (especially the second game) I wanted to play it, even though it was getting a mostly negative rep, I still wanted to play it. I played about half of the game and thought it was okay, but got side tracked by games that were way better. I also thought the game was too hard back then. Fast forward to 2013, I hook up my old original Xbox and decide to play some old games that I never finished...Dino Crisis 3 being one of them, and as of last night, I actually finished it. Like I said, this is a really weird game. It takes place in the far future, in an abandoned ship in outer space.  The plot is really weird, involving dinosaurs in outer space. For what its wroth the plot is presented fairly decently (but its still kind of stupid), with nice looking cutscenes adn good voice acting. If you ignore the fact that its dinosaurs in space, the story line is a fairly typical science ficiton story, that seems like it may have been heavily inspired by 2001 A space odyssey. The plot takes it self rather seriously, and I kind of feel it misssed the oppurtunity to have fun with the premise of dinosaurs in space. The story overall is obviously not the focus of the game (or the series really) but its stupid, yet kind of interesting at the same time. Like I said this is a weird game... On the gameplay front the game fares slightly better. Instead of a tank like control system used in the first two games, your character controls a lot more standard, without having to rotate around like a tank. I never minded takn controls personally, but given the way this game is designed, tank controls never would have worked, so thats fine. Probably the most fun thing I can say about this games gameplay is the jet pack that you are equipped with. The jetpack is absolutely a blast to control, allowing you to jump, hover around, and and preform long hover jumps to reach new platforms. You can also shoot while riding around on your jetpack, which is makes dodging and attacking dinosaurs a lot of fun. The only downside to this is the games camera... this game probably has the worst camera in any game I've ever played. The camera constantly obscures your vision of enemies, and you often will get hit by enemies you weren't sure were around. The only real way to know if theres an enemy nearby is when the battle music is playing (but enemies spawn even while you're fighting other enemies), looking in first person (which will probably get you hit by an enemy that is close to you), or fireing your gun and hoping the lock on locks on to an enemy. The third option works well enough, when you're using normal bullets, becuase you have unlimited ammo for that... it doesn't work so well when you are using different types of bullets, that aren't limited (some enemies go down way faster & easier with different bullets, and the unlimited bullets are extremely weak). Then there is the platforming that I mentioned earlier, with the jetpack. The camera angle often ruins the fun of this, often making it difficult to impossible to judge the distance of jumps or even the height of jumps... and it can get really frustrating, really qiuckly. The platforming is something that could have actually been a really fun part of this game, but the camera angles ruin that possibility most of the time, which is a real shame. Back to to the combat, it has some decent options to it, with three different bullet types. There is machine gun bullets, which are incredibly weak, but unlimited. Enemies generally take a lot of shots to go down with this, especially one enemy later in the game.  Spread shot, which is pretty much this games version of a sperad shot , shooting several bullets at once. This is probably my favorite bullet type for normal enemies, since it shoots out several shots with one bullet, and if you go close to an enemy and use it, they will go down in about 2-4 shots. Lastly there is the laser shot, which is strong, but slow, and I find it takes anywhere between 2-5 shots for normal enemies to go down with it, but on boss fights, its pretty much your best option, as the other two won't really dent the bosses much. There are also 3 sub weapons, that are pretty useful. The temptest, Juggernaut and inferno. Tempest is my favorite of the 3, it homes in on enemies and blasts them with lasers, and kills them quickly. Juggernaut is pretty much a physical attack version of the tempest, and works alirght, but not as effective in my opinion. The juggernaut explodes, but it doesnt' really home in, so using it can take a bit of strategising. I mainly saved it for bosses. All 3 of these are also used to unlock security doors that reqiure you to use "X ammount of" one of the 3. The game has an upgrade shop system too, but its not really anything special... you can upgrade your health bar and your jetpacks energy level, and your maximum amount of each item you can hold, but they can be pricey, so you probably won't get all the upgrades on the normal difficulty, unless you grind. Most of the time, I spent most of my money on replensihing my stock of items, but i did manage to make my life bar rather large by the end of the game! The spaceship that the game takes place on is a rather interesting place honestly. You constnatly activate what this game calls "formation changes" which changes the ships entire formation, making rooms change length, shape, what doors are locked and unlocked, or even completely turning them upside down. Some areas can only be accessed by preforming certain formation changes. Its a lot less complicated then it sounds, and is a rather linear process, and the game always tells you when you need to preform a formation change. I like the idea overall. Probably my favorite part of this game is the music. There is a lot of really nice ambience in the game, especailly later on. The battle and boss themes are nothign to right home about, but if you like ambience, then the soundtrack is definitely something worthwhile in my opinion. The voice acting is surprisingly decent too. Overall this game is really weird...and really disapointing as a complete product. It has nice ideas, and I think the jetpack was executed perfectly, but almost everything else, especially the camera bogs down the entire experience. I'm still not sure why the developers decided to make this game the way they did, when they had a fantastic foundation from the first two games set up, but I was able to ignore the fact that this game was a huge departure, but even on its own, its just a mediocre game with good ideas, that are burried under terrible camera angles. The game took me about 8 hours to complete on the normal difficulty, and I felt the difficulty was medium to hard. It could have been a lot easier if it wasn't for the cheap shots I got a lot of the time due to the camera angles. I don't really recommend the game, but there is some enjoyment to be had here I guess... mostly with the jetpack.

Tales of Xillia - Final thoughts

Out of all the Tales games I have played, Xillia is probably the one that I enjoyed the most.

The frst time I booted the game up, the game actually just started almost right away. No title screen or anything like that, just straight to the opening movie! After a brief opening movie, you get taken to a character select screen, where you can either chose to be a young man named Jude, or a woman named Mila. Each character character follows the same over all story, but certain parts will offer a different perspective, when the party splits up or gets seperated. There are a few parts of the each characters story that are exclusive to each character, and it probably is recommendded to play as both characters to get the full story. I say this because, I played Mila's story, and at a certain part of the game, I was seperated from the entire party, and when I found them again, it was in the middle of a big event, that I had no idea what was going on. To catch up with what was going on, I decided to check out what happened leading up to this part in Judes story, on youtube. (I don't have the time or desire to play again as Jude).

The story though, is really good. I don't think I've ever enjoyed a Tales games story this much (closest would probably be Vesperia for me) The plot this time was actaully considerably more serious, and dark then what I was expecting.  There were a lot of unexpected dark turns in the story, specifically a very specific scene late in Judes story that was extremely well done, intense, and quite emotional. As usual for the Tales games that I have played, the characters are good and their interactions are fairly well done. The characters themselves all have their own problems, and flaws, but to me, I think the two characters that really shined the most were Elize and Alvin. Each of them are deeply troubled, and have very interesting backgrounds and development. Alvin may seem typical at first but as the story goes on, I felt his reason for doing all things he does was rather sad, and the story has a few good cutscenes involving him (Especially right before the last dungeon!).

Theres actaully a lot of cutscenes in this game, and it kind of surprised me. I wasn't expecting as many as there was, though thats not a bad thing! The story had a lot of time to develop and I felt it was well done. The voice acting is fairly well done too, and most of the game is voiced. Though, Milas voice actress is a bit flat on her preformance, and  may not click with a lot of people. I didn't think she was terrible, or unbearable, but I definitely felt she was the weak spot of the voice acting!

As for the gameplay, the battle system is probably the most fun I've ever had in any Tales game.  The attack animations, the special sklls, the sound design for attacks, it all just feels really great. Much like other recent Tales games, the battles take place on a seperate 3D field when you come in contact with an enemy roaming around the fields.  Once in battle, you can play as any of of the games 6 characters, and they all play different and have their own variety of special skills that you can do. For regular attacks, depending on what direction you hold the analog stick, your character will do a different move set when pressing the X button (for example when you're holding up on the analog stick, you can extend your attack into the air. One of my favorite attack setups with Mila was to do that, and then slam the enemy on the ground with one of Milas attacks that made her leap down and slam her sword in to the ground, which made some spikey rocks come out on impact!)

New to the battles is the ability to link with another character in your party wtih a simple press of the dpad. Doing that will link you with one of your characters, and each character has their own unique abiliity / benefit for linking. (Like Alvin will stun enemies who are constantly guarding your attacks, Jude will pull you up and heal you when an enemy knocks you down)  It will also give you different special link attacks. Whenever you do a special skill while linked, sometimes you will recieve a little notification on screen, and if you press the R2 button while that prompt is up, you'll preform a linked attack with whoever you are linked with, and they are quite effective, and definitely something you will utilize throughout the game. Occasionally, during a link attack you may even see a prompt that says Chain Attack, which will let you start another linked attack if yuo press the special skill button during that prompt ( I think) Though I was only able to sucessfully pull this off a few times, I probably wasn't doing it right though. The link system was really cool though, and it added more variety when stringing up my attacks in battle.

In addition to the special skills that your characters can use in battle, you can also learn a whole bunch of passive skills that offer a lot of great things to help you out in battle. Things like upping certain stats by 5-10%, cutting down the time it takes to escape a battle, or my personal favorite, one of the character Leias skills enables her to make it so whenever she uses an item, its effect will go to the entire party, instead of just one person (though it cuts the items effectiveness down a bit). Theres a lot of different passive skills to equip to your character, and I felt it made a nice difference as I went on in the game and earned new ones.

Theres also a load of side quests that you can do that get you some items that will let you customize the looks of your characters, as well as get some extra money. I liked the way the side quests were handled in this game. It was very easy to spot an NPC who has a quest for you as they all have big green exclamation points over there head, and the quest is usually something easy like "bring me x item" or "please kill x monster in x area". I think what I liked the most about the way the side quests were handled though, is that the games main menu has an event log where it divides everything thats happening in the game, from detailed summaries of what has happened so far in the story, or logs of what side quests you have completed , and currently are doing! Its a great way to stay organized and not lose track of what you are doing, especially if you come back to the game at a later time and need to catch up.

As I mentioned earlier, this game handles its character growth compeltely different then the rest of the series. In the games main menu, one of the options is called the Lilium Orb, which is where you will be upgrading your characters stats and special skills. The orb looks like a giant spiders web, and it grows larger the more you meet certain upgrade conditions (the conditions are always learning certain skills in your current progress of the Lilium orb). The web contains many little nodes that are all connected together by the web. Each time your character "levels up in battle" they just get 2-5 lilium orb points to spend on the lilium orb.  If you've ever played Final Fantasy 10, you'll definitely be remindeed of the sphere grid when you see the Liliam Orb! (Though I think the sphere grid was done a bit better) There are many different types of nodes on the lilium orb, ones that raise your HP, attack power, defense power, special attack power,  learn new skills, etc. 

At first I thought the lilium orb was rather limited in its progression, since you are given a limited amount of each type of node in each growth cycle of the orb, but as the orb expands, it gets bigger, and bigger, and you will feel more like the characters stats are more customizable.  I liked the lilium orb, but at the same time, I also found myself not really upgrading my stats all the time just because after awhile, I just didn't want to open the menu and manually do all the growth, especially later when leveling up becomes a lot easier and more frequent. Its not annoying, but it gets a little tiresome. Its still a good level up system, and I liked that they tried soemthing new to give a more personal customization to your characters.

Graphically, I think the game looked pretty good for the most part. The character models looked great and nicely detailed, the towns looked nice as well. The only downside for me was most of the game outside of towns felt rather barren and empty. A lot of the games open fields between towns (which replace the games typical world map, which is fine with me) feel empty, and uninspired, just plain roads with monsters and loot placed about them. They aren't horrible and I've certainly seen worse, but I just felt they weren't that interesting to explore or look at , outside of findingi treasure.

The games dungeons are kind of not that great either. There are a lot, and I mean a lot of copy and paste rooms througouht this game. Every towns sea port looks exactly the same. Rooms inside dungeons look exactly alike, or have very bland design. Not every area is like this, but I want to say most of them were sadly. The one place I did like though, was the Kijara Seafalls. That area looked really pretty in my opinion, and had more atmosphere then what most of the game had to offer.

Musically, Its kind of what you would expect from a Tales of game, if you've ever listened to the music in them before. Its nothing outstanding, mostly just music you feel like you've heard it many times before. Very few tracks in the game stood out to me sadly, except for a few piano pieces, and the spirit realms music. I suppose the random battle music is alright, but nothing to write home about.

Overall though, this game is truly great and I had so much fun playing through it. The battles felt so fun, and the story was addicting. The game for the most part, is pretty easy on the Normal difficulty, save for a few bosses. I finished the game in around 50 hours , and enjoyed almost every moment of it. If you like RPG's or are just looking for a fun game witih a good story, definitely look into Tales Of Xillia! I'll be looking forward to Tales of Xillia 2 in the West next year!

-Ashley

Shin Megami Tensei IV - Final thoughts

Shin Megami Tensei IV is probably one of my favorite games of recent times.

Being a huge fan of the series, Shin Megami Tensei IV was probably my most hyped game this year, and it absolutely did not let me down.

RIght off the bat, the game began with a bang, offering an eerie intro showing several different scenarios / outcomes that you just know are going to come into play later on, and with some moody music to really set the mood to it. Kind of surprisingly,the game starts with a much different feeling then other SMT games that I have played, but within a few hours, it quickly becomes more familiar SMT, and the lead up to it, and the reveal kinda just made me feel like "what", but in a really good way.

I absolutely loved the games plot, plot twists, and characters. A lot of people seem to either not be into the plot, or think the characters are bland. I personally thought the characters were good. I liked the main cast, especially Walter, and felt they were well written and well vioced. The game balances its plot and gameplay rather well, not making the plot too heavy, and not makign it too light either.  Theres enough scenes to keep you interested in the plot, and none of them are especially long either.

One of the things I enjoyed most about the plot, is that you are constantly asked questions during many of the stories scenes, and based on your descisions throughout the game, as well as one big choice later in the game, you will be put on one of three end game routes (Law, Chaos, or neutral), which reflect the way you have answered the games many questions.(I went Chaos this time, but plan to replay the game and get the other two routes as well) I think thats really cool, it offers lots of replay value to see just what may have been happening on the other side of the fence, that you chose to go against. I never really appreciated these morale questions in the other mainline SMT games, possibly because I was younger, which makes me want to go back and replay them one of these days. (Even though I loved those games, I want to try them with different routes other then neutral!)

The games biggest strenght however, is in its gameplay, (and atmosphere, which is part of the playing experience in my opinion!) The gameplay is fairly straightforward for anyone who is used to / has played an SMT game before. The battles are in first person, with some nice 2d sprites of the enemies on the screen. I see a lot of people being disapointed about the battles being in first person (Like Soul Hackers, or Phantasy Star 1) but really, the battles are probably the most fun I've had in turned based battles in awhile, its just that good. The sound effects, sprites, animations, all coming together feels really great. Probably the most important thign to achieving your victory is firuging out what kind of attack your enemy is weak to, and then exploiting the hell out of it because, in the upper right hand corner, you have several icons, which dictate how many times you and your party members can attack in that phase of the battle... but if you happen to exploit an enemies weak point (or land a critical) you will gain an extra attack in battle! However, if one of your attack misses, you will lose two oppurtunities to attack, and if you use an attack type that your enemy either nullfies, drains, repels, you will lose all of your chances that are left to act in that phase. (Anyone who has played SMT: Nocturne, or Digital Devil Saga, will be familiar with this) This also applies to your enemies, as they will also try to exploit your weaknesses, and things will go south, very, very quickly. There are a lot of things you can do with this sytstem, making the team to take down a tough boss, it cane make even the toughest of bosses, become an absolute cake walk.

Which brings me to my next thing to discuss, building your part, also known as demon fusion. Thruought the game you can speak to almost any demon you encounter in battle, and request them to join your party. I think that demon negotiation in this game is a lot bette then it was in other SMT games that I played, mainly because I felt it was just simpler to get them in your party, cause thehy are mostly greedy, and just demand items most of the time (though they still ask you questions, and you will piss them off half the time with your answers :P). Once they're in your party, you can either keep them as is, or opt to fuse them with other demons, and create new demons, with new weaknesses and resistances. Its a key feature to the game that really can either make the game much more difficult for yourself, or much easier. The best thing to do if you can't manage to beat a boss, is to think about the kinds of attacks he uses, and see what demons you can fuse to see if yuo can find something that will either nullify his attacks, or at least take much less damage to that kind of attack. It offers a lot of strategy to the game, and I've always loved this aspect of SMT games.

Each time your main character (you) level up, you gain what are called "App points" which you can trade in for a bunch of different passive abilities and upgrades. Things like recovering MP when yuo walk, having more skill slots for both you and your demons, being able to have more demons at a time, and many other things. It offers a lot of nice customization to the game, as you can get some really nice skills that are a really welcome addition to the series.

The first 10 or so hours of the game felt pretty brutal. Even someone who has had a lot of experience with the series for over a decade, was having a bit of trouble (perhaps I just had to get used to it again, or the begining just really is hard!) But after the first real boss of the game, I felt the game got fairly normal in terms of its difficulty. I never really felt like it challegned me, but I also never really felt like it went easy on me. Things can still go south extremely fast if you're not watching your enemies attacks, and changing your weakneses! As well, when you beat the game, you do unlock Expert mode, which I assume will be much harder! Though, there are two things that make the game significantly less frustrating. First being the fact that you can save anywhere, so no morel osing 2 hours of grinding (which sadly, I have had happen many times in SMT games, because I get greedy). The second being the fact that its no more an instant game over if the main character (you) dies in battle. I have to say this is a nice featuer, as I probably would have had many more game overs then I actually did. It does lose some of the edge in battle, but at the same time, I'm grateful for it.

There are a number of side quests in the game too, that are all fairly straight forward, usually either asking you to defeat X demon, or retreivee X item (though there are some excepttions). Doing these quests nets you some nice items that you can sell for some money, some good exp, and some times even a fair amount of cash. I didn't complete every single quest in the game, as I was really much more interested in seeing where the story was going, but I did do a decent amount of side quests, as you don't get money from simply winning battles (in most cases) so I did them mostly to get money.

As I said before, the atmosphere in this game is really graet. The begining of the games atmosphere isn't really too interesting (aside from the intro), but once you reach the point after the games first "real" boss (about 7-10 hours in) the games atmosphere becomes much, much more interesting, and detailed. I really had a lot of fun exploring the levels, and to my surprise , some of the araes in the game are very large, which I wasn't expecting. I won't say the games atmosphere is as intense or detailed as SMT: Nocturne, but its absolutely interestingfor the most part, though there are a few dull spots.

The music in this game is absolutely awesome. It feels a bit closer to older SMT titles, but at the same time feels different and fresh. The composer that has done most of SMT games for the past decade, did not compose for this game, instead we have a different person, and he did a superb job. I actaully would go so far as to say, it feels refreshing to have a different sound to the newest installment. There are even a few remixes of past SMT games music, but as far as I could tell, most of it was new. Some stand out songs for me, included Mikado battle theme, Battle theme 3, tokyo overworld, infernal tokyo (especially infernal tokyo!!!) and many of the creepy ambient themes that occured in some cutscenes, or in darker areas later on in the game.

This absolutely is a must have / must try game for any one with a 3DS and likes RPG's.  The story is very interesting, the gameplay absolutely excellent, and the soundtrack is extremely catchy! I think I would go so far as to say that this is probably going to be my game of the year, as I really enjoyed it that much, and don't foresee anything else coming out this year that will take my interest as much as this game did.  The game took me about 40 hours to complete on the normal difficulty, in the Chaos route. I intend to replay the game on new game + sometime later this year and try to get the other two routes!

-Ashley

Shin Megami Tensei Soul Hackers - Final thoughts

Its been a long time since I wrote an actual final thoughts article, and what better game to make a come back with then the incredible Soul Hackers for the Nintendo 3DS?

Before Soul Hackers came out, I thought I would wait on the game for a little wihle (despite being related to my beloved Shin Megami Tensei series) mainly because I don't have a lot of money to spare for new games at the moment. However, once Soul Hackers came out, I unsurprisingly caved and bought the game a few days after its release.

I was also a little unsure about if I would enjoy the game or not. I generally find that first person dungeon crawlers are not for me. Its nothing against them, but they are not my cup of tea, for the most part (aside from a few exceptions). Despite that, I went for the game anyway, and was so happy I did.

Soul Hackers is a phenomenal game, and one of my favorite this year so far. The storyline is a fairly straightforward and enjoyable tale of a group of hackers saving the day from a society up to no good,The cutscenes are fairly short and straight to the point, but provided enough character development and depth to please me. I found the characters to be very likeable, with well written voiced dialogue. Almost the entire game is voiced, too.  The voice acting is pretty hit or miss, with more hits then misses, thankfully. The main characters Hitomi and Nemissa are my personal favorites, and probably the highlights of the games vocal performances.

On the gameplay side, its also fairly straightforward. The game is entirely in first person, whether you're exploring in the field, or in a battle against demons. Like I said, I wasn't sure about this before playing it, because I wasn't exactly a huge fan of the first Persona, (but I didn't hate it either), but I always have loved the first Phantasy Star (which is also in first person). The options presented to you in this game though, are what sealed the deal for me. First person exploration can feel overwhelming to me, however, in Soul Hackers, you are given what is called a COMP, and on this COMP, you can install various "apps" which will give you advantages in many different ways such as auto mapping an area (the game will show you the entire dungeons map, including traps) an ability to save anywhere, and much more. Of course, you don't HAVE to use these if you prefer the challenge of only being able to save at save points, or exploring the map yourself. For me, I sadly don't have the time or patience to do that at this current time, so I opted to use save anywhere and automap, and found it to be an extremely nice, relaxing, and fulfilling experience!

The games dungeons are just complex enough to make you think, but not so overly complicated to a point where they are frustratingly difficult. There is one dungeon towards the en of the game that does require a bit of going back and forth a lot, but I didn't particularly mind it so much, because it provided battles a long the way, so I got some much needed experience points along the way.

Speaking of battles, the battles are simple, fun, and balanced just right so it won't be too easy, nor too hard (on the normal difficulty, which you can raise or lower during gameplay!) Whenever you're running around on the field, you'll get into random battles against demons. You can either chose to fight them, or talk to them. Fighting them is your standard first person turn based gameplay, where you just see a simple animation of the attack you are using. But the simple animations, plus the great sound effects that accompany these animations make them feel very satisfying. Whenever an enemy starts to get weaker, your damage numbers color will turn yellow, and when their almost dead, they'll turn red. Its a great way to indicate just how far along you are in the battle, and a great way to know whether or not you can be a little reckless!

If you chose to talk with an enemy, you can negotiate with them to etiher give you an item, or even have them join your party. Each demon has their own personality, and even if you're talking to the same demon type you were talking to previously, they will most likely have a different personality, unless its the same demon you were talking to before (in which case, they might even recognize you!). Though as usual with these games, the demons can trick you into giving them a lot of money orr items, and then run away and not join you at all. You can even make a demon really mad depending on your response, and they won't talk to you at all anymore, but instead attack you.

All of your party members aside from the main character (you) and Nemissa, all of your party members will be demons that you either get in the wild from talking to them, or you get from fusion, which is when you fuse two or three demons together to create a new one. Fusion is probably where you'll be getting most of your preferred arty members from, as you'll need to do this to get demons that are more in line with your two human characters levels, stats, and abilities. As usual, with all SMT games, their is a Demon compendium which makes a record of all the demons you had in your party, so you can always resummon them whenever you use them in a fusion, but wanted to continue having that demon in your party as well.

There are two types of currency in the game, your regular money (which I think is yen?) that you will spend on equipment and items for your two human characters. The other is MAG, which is used to summon demons in to your party (when you're not using a demon you have, they are stored in your COMP, and you have to summon them). Whenever a demon is in your party, walking around in the field will also consume MAG, whcih varies from demon to demon. Most demons require about 2-10 MAG for each step you take. Its not too big a deal, because the game hands out so much MAG after every single battle, and there also demons you can fuse called Zeed, which require 0 MAG to summon, and have in your party. Generally, I used My two human characters and one Zeed for dungoens, while boss battles, I brought out a full party of good demons, and found that it worked out very well.

Another reason you will probably want to use Zeed's for your normal battle lineup is that Demon's have a loyalty meter, and many different personalities that may or may not like recieving orders, or doing the specific kind of attack you want them to do. They may outright disobey you and not attack at all, or chose a different attack then you wanted. There are items to raise your demons loyalty, and the game does tell you what each personality type prefers to do in battle, but I couldn't really remember all of it, so I just stuck with Zeed's for normal dungeon exploration, and awesome demons for boss fights. It worked really well, and the game was pretty easy on normal difficulty, for a SMT game.

Graphically , the game looks ok. Its nothing spectacular, but it is a port of a Sega Saturn game that came out in the mid 90's, so its understandable. Its not going to wow you, but it certainly gets the job done. The character models on screen during cutscenes are a bit blurry and dull, but the characters portraits that appear with their dialogue look good, and do a great job of showing you what the characters actually look like. There isn't really any 3D to speak of, it just makes the text boxes pop up a little bit, so this game is best enjoyed with the 3D turned off (especaily since the game is about 30 hours long for the main story, so you'll want that 3DS battery to last as long as possible!)

The music in the game is so GOOD. This is my kind of music right here. Awesome synth music, that feels very atmospheric and ambient! Playing this game was made even more of a delight thanks to the awesome music it had. Some spectacular highlights of the games soundtrack are the world map music, Algon Headquarters, and the boss music, to name a few. If you like ambient, or synth music, you will probably be happy with what is offered in this game!

Soul Hackers is really an awesome game. I absolutely enjoyed it from start to finish, and never really felt a moment during the 30 hour story where the game was dragging on, or got boring. The whole ride was fun and entertaining, and I absolutely would reccomend it to anyone who has a 3DS, enjoys dungeon crawling, or likes Shin Megami Tensei, and its spin offs!

Phantasy Star & Phantasy Star Generation 1 Replays

I beat Phantasy Star 1 back in 2003 when it was released under the Phantasy Star Collection for the gameboy advance. Despite it having an extremely frustrating game save glitch that would shift to a blue screen of death whenever you tried to save when the games music loops (trust me its fairly frequent) I managed to beat the GBA version of the game, and really loved it a lot.

Fast forward 3 years to 2006, and I decide to buy both Phantasy Star Generation 1 and Generation 2 for the ps2. (I'll talk about Generation 2 in a later write up). Playing through that, in Japanese only (since it was never released officially outside of Japan) was a fun, and frustrating, although manageable, experience, for reasons I will list later on in this write up.

Fast forward to 2012, since I became much more financially stable, I decided to start buying the original, complete cartridges of the old Phantasy Star games. I have a working Sega Genesis, so I could play the other ones, but no master system to play the original Phantasy Star. Fast forward one last time to 2013, and I buy a master system at a local game shop (Digital Press) and can finally play through my cartridge of Phantasy Star! Much to my surprise, it still has its original save game battery in tact, and it still works perfectly!

Playing through it again after all these years felt absolutely great. Phantasy Star is probably my favorite of the 4 original Phantasy Star games. I'm not sure what it is about it, but I really love it. The dungeons are difficult to navigate, the game doesn't really tell you what to do, the towns people give you cryptic hints, and there is a random battle almost every step. Despite all of this.... I really love it, even more then the other 3 original. Maybe its the basic and simplistic, but very solid battle system that does it for me. I like the sound effects that each attack does, I like seeing the enemy HP on screen go down, I like the attack animations, all of it is just so straight forward and easy to get into.

Despite only being 1 year old when this game came out, I can appreciate the impact it had at its time. The first person  3D dungeons may all look the same, just with a different color, are pretty impressive looking.  Every enemy has an animation where they actually make at least some kind of animation when they attack, rather then just a still picture that flashes and a sound effect. The over world graphics are nice and full of vibrant colors too. There are even a few cutscenes throughout the game, mostly occurring at the begining of the game , and when you meet up with your new party members.  The cutscenes themselves are nicely detailed still pictures that do a great job at showing what our characters that we're playing as look like (because the American boxart sure does not do the best job at that!).

One of the cool things about the game is that there are 3 different planets for you to explore, and dungeon crawl! Each planet has their own specific climate, Palma being the green planet that has forests, grass, and lots of water. Palma is home to humans. The second planet is Motavia, which is a desert planet that is home to a race named Motavians. They're these little guys in brown coats and blue fur. The last planet is the ice planet, Dezoris, which is a planet covered entirely in ice and snow. Dezoris is home to the Dezorians, which are a race of tall green skinned people. Each planet brings their own unique feel to the game. Though, Dezoris can be a bit of a pain tro explore due to the way its set up. On Dezoris, to get anywhere, you need to take a series of caves before you can get to where you want to go. The caves are all very straightforward and almost impossible to get lost in, its just, you'll play through the same cave several times just to go from one place and back. Its not TOO big a deal, but it can get a little tiresome when you're trying to get some things done, but its not really that big of a deal.

I admit to playing the game using maps and a walkthrough, which is something I don't really like to do for any game, but for the RPG's of the time, I do think its necessary, at least for me.  The dungeons are all in first person, every area looks exactly the same, so it just gets very confusing as to where you are....(don't take this as a complaint! Because I like this!) However! There are things you can do to help yourself out.. You can draw your own maps in real life, to help guide you. If you use the compass item in the game it will tell you  what way you're facing, so it will help you draw out your map! I actually didn't know this back in 2003 when I played it, but was happy to know about it this time, because I would often forget where I was on the map after a random battle occurred.

The game is fairly easy (battle wise) the enemies aren't too tough as long as you are always upgrading to the newest equipment (which can involve a moderate amount of grinding, but not TOO much!)  However, exploration wise and knowing where to go, is where the games true difficulty lies. Games from this era did not hold your hand, and I really like that. It makes me feel like (despite using a guide for knowing where to go) I could explore where ever I want in whatever order I wanted, provided I am able to reach the area with my current tools. I wish I could have experienced the game when it was new, just to get that feeling of awe with something completely new again.

Now on to Phantasy Star Generation 1's replay! Right after I beat the original, I loaded up Phantasy Star Generation 1 on my ps2 (which since then, has had a fan translation released!) so this would be my first time being able to play that game in English! I was super excited!

Despite a lot of people not liking the remake when it came out, I really liked it when I played it, though I prefer the original, even after playing it in English.

Generation 1 is mostly the same game, but with a faster battle system, more developed story, and remixed dungeon layouts. It does take some liberties though. Probably the biggest liberty, and the biggest complaint that most people (myself included) is that you have to do everything in a specific order now. You can't freely explore the game and just find the games items. If you try to do something before you can, or before talking to several NPC's several times in a specific order, you won't be able to progress. It can get pretty confusing, at least, back in the day before the fan translation. Most people seemed to have trouble getting the Road pass item very early on the game. Its a lot easier to figure these things out in English, but sometimes, it can still be a little confusing or misleading.

Still, the remake is a lot of fun. The gameplay is a lot faster and doesn't take as long to level up and gain money. Rather then being in first person, the battles now have character portraits from behind,  much like Phantasy Star 2 and 4 had on the Genesis. The animations for the characters and enemies in battle are pretty good considering this game was a low budget title. I enjoyed the battles a lot. They're just as basic as the origianl, except now they have one new feature, which is Elemental Crystals. You can buy these items in the games first town, Camineet, and equip several to your character to give you some extra magical spells at no MP cost when used. The catch is, the crystals will break after awhile. You can also mix and match crystals together to create new moves, though I didn't find this feature very useful outside of two combinations, which is Cure + Storm crystals make a Lightning Storm spell that does some nice damage as well as paralyzing the enemy for three turns. The other one is Heal + storm, which creates a spell called Photon, which will fully restore one party members MP in battle, an absolutely invaluable ability!

The battles are pretty easy for the most part, though there are some fairly threatening bosses in the later half of the game, and even some of the random battles can pose a fair challenge, though not too much if you use the Shield spell.

Most of the games challenge comes from the dungeon layouts. Much like the original, the dungeons are first person 3D corridor labrynths that are just as tough to find your way through. Thoguh unlike this one, every dungeon doesn'tl ook all the same, they look closer to the kind of area that they are. For example, a cave looks cave like, while a prison looks a bit like a prison. There is on item though, that makes dungeon exploring a LOT easier this time around. That item is the Atlas, which, for 120 steps, will provide you a mini map in the upper right corner to see where you've been and where you are going. Its absolutely invaluable to have these as the compass no longer tells you what direction you're facing.

As I mentioned earlier, the story is more fleshed out and the characters have a lot more personality and dialogue with each other. The story in the original was good, and the story in the remake is good, too.

I absolutely love the 2D graphics in the remake. They are vibrant, pretty, and a pleasure to look at. The character sprites are cute, and do a great job representing their character's design. I thik the only complaint I have in this department is the anime art style used in this game is very, very cheap and lack luster looking. I love anime, but the art in this game just looks off, which is unfortunate.

I really enjoyed my replay of Generation 1, especially now that it was in English this time. When I played through it in Japanese, I would constantly get stuck and not sure what to do, so I would just end up flying to every town, talking to everyone to try to get new dialogues to progress. Some how, I managed to beat it this way in Japanese, and was glad I didn't have to do that again in English. The game does a good job at telling you where to go next, its just sometimes you have to talk to NPC's in a specific order, and several times until their lines repeat to progress.

Both the original and remake are so great, and I'm happy to have replayed both of them back to back so I could relive some classic games that I love, as well as accurately evaluate how the remake compares to the original. If you like old school style RPG's you absolutely must play Phantasy Star 1 and/or its remake, Generation 1!

Went to a local game store called Digital Press today. Extremely impressive store, TONS of awesome retro games, retro game consoles, and other really cool stuff. The workers there are also sweet! As you can see, I bought myself a SEGA Master System, with Shinobi and After Burner. Now I can finally play that Phantasy Star 1 cartridge I bought awhile back :)

Persona 4: The Golden rambling thoughts

I'm not going to write a full review on this one, rather, I'm going to ramble a bit about how awesome it is.

Persona 4 was one of my favorite PS2 games, it had a fantastic story, fantastic music, and really loveable characters that had a ton of personality. I had actually been craving a replay of the game for quite awhile, but I forced myself to hold off on doing so, so I could really appreciate the game again when "The Golden" version came out for the Vita.

I'm really glad I did, since I hadn't played the game since early 2009, it felt almost like a new game to me. I had forgotten a lot of the plot points, a lot of the development, and most definitely a lot of the social links. It felt so good to play through the game again.

Everything (as far as I could tell) from the PS2 version is in tact. Its the same great storyline, the same great gameplay (though easier, In my opinion.), same great social links (if you don't know what these are, think of small optional cutscenes with  characters in the game where you grow your relationship with said character. If they're a character in your party, they'll also gain new abilities from doing these) but on top of that, there is so much new things added.

There are two new social links, one with a character who already existed in the game on PS2, and one character who is completely brand new to the Vita version. The existing characters social link provides a very interesting perspective on the story, especially in the last few ranks of the link, which will lead to a brand new ending for the game.

The new character, Marie's social link is alright. I didn't care for it very much at first, but I suppose it grew on me in time. Completing her social link will open a new optional dungeon at near the end of the game that is a fun dungeon with a few gimmicks (your SP will be halved after every battle, and you can only use items and equipment that you find in the dungeon itself) but even with these gimmicks, the new dungeon is extremely easy and I felt it was a little too long (At least, it felt long, maybe because it was too easy?) Despite that though, the dungeon is a great addition to the game with some decent atmosphere, and awesome music. The dungeons conclusion also allows for some more story elaboration, giving new insight on the games main antagonists, and plot points, so its absolutely worth doing. Marie definitely became a much more likeable character (for me) in the scenes that happen during, and after the dungeon. The boss of the dungeon also contains a really, really awesome new rendition of the main boss theme!

Other then that, there are a ton of new cutscenes that really add to the characters personalities, and make you love them even more. I actually got emotional when it was the end of my journey and I had to go around town and say goodbye to all the main characters. The best part about all these new scenes is almost all of them are fully voiced and don't feel like they're just tacked on, or an after thought. These really feel like they wee always a part of the story. They're not just new scenes,  characters will mention the events of them before, and after they happen, woven seamlessly in to already existing cutscenes of the game. A lot of work went into this, and it really shows.

One feature in this version of the game, t hat I hope all SMT games in the future adapt, is the "Search" feature during fusions. In most Shin Megami Tensei games, and its spinoffs, you can usually fuse demons together to get more powerful ones. In this, the "Search" feature pretty much gives you a list of every single Persona that you can make  with the current set of Persona's that you have. Its a fantastic and streamlined way to fuse, and immediately just lets you know what you can make. I really liked this feature and always used it, rather then clicking on all of my Persona's to see what this Persona + this Persona would make. It saves a lot of time and also let me see all of my options, that I may have missed otherwise.

Another new addition to the game that was interesting was the online features the game has. Every day that you live in this game (you live day to day life for an entire year) you can touch a little blue button that says "Voice" in the upper left corner of the screen that will t  ell you what other players of the game did in their game on that same day. Its a really great feature and its also a great way to see what some of your options are to do on each day, since you can grow your relationships with many different people on certain days. Its especially helpful for one of the new social links, since this character is only available on very specific dates of  each month.

The other network feature is the SOS button during dungeons. It basically allows you to send out a distress signal when you're running around a dungeon (not in battle0 and other players can answer your distress call, which will basically act as a "cheer" when you enter a battle and restore some of your HP and SP. The more people that respond to your distress call, the more HP and SP will be restored. Its a neat little feature, but I didn't really find it to be all that useful, as you don't get a lot of HP or SP back, even if several people answer your distress call (which not many people ever did whenever I would use it) Its a neat feature, but not really necessary at all.

One thing I will say about the game is its a lot easier then the PS2 version, which for me is a good thing. I loved the difficulty on the PS2 version, but I don't think I would want to go through the frustration again. Probably the best part of the readjusted difficulty is if you die during a battle, you can chose to restart the exact floor you died on. You'll retain all the exp and items you had from the moment you entered that  floor, so you'll only lose the exp and items you got from that specific floor, rather then losing every bit of exp you had gotten from the last time you saved. It made the game a lot less frustrating for me, as I remember losing a lot of my grinding by a stupid mistake on the PS2 version. Another nice feature is if you exit a dungeon, you can chose to continue from the floor you were last on, rather then having a specific checkpoint floor like on the PS2 version (at least I think that's how it was)

There was a little more then a handful of new  songs in the game too, and they were all really great. My favorites would have to be the new dungeons theme, as well as the song "Snowflake", which plays during the winter time. Its a really pretty melancholy Winter song. One of the more interesting additions to the soundtrack, is an 8-bit version of the boss battle theme, which plays during The Void Quest dungeon, which is  fitting since that dungeon has an 8-bit theme going on. Though, I will admit, the 8-bit version of the boss song did get on my nerves after awhile. Its still a cool , and welcome addition to the game regardless.

Persona 4 The Golden is much more then just a Vita port of the game, its the definitive version of Persona 4. It adds so much meaningful content to a game that already has so much to it already. Not only that, but its probably the best game (in my opinion) that has been released for the Vita in the West. If you have a Vita, absolutely buy this game. I won't say go out and buy a Vita for this game since you could easily buy the PS2  version for probably a lot cheaper (unless the value of the game has gone up? I don't know), and still get a fantastic experience with a lot to do, unless there are other Vita games that you want, of course!

Going to start blogging about games again :)

Its been a long time since I've blogged about my gaming fun. For a few months, I have been busy with work, and had little to no motivation to blog about video games... a friend has recently unintentionally inspired me to start blogging again though, so look forward to new write ups from me sometime soon :)

Excuse me, that dlc that you bought for Trinity Universe that is supposed to increase the amount of experience you get, which one is it? I'm running into a similar problem and I feel I may need it.

Hi there, first off I would like to apologise for taking a few days to answer your question! I have been inactive with this blog, but am going to get started with it again soon...!

Anyway, I loaded up the game for you to see what the item was, the item is the  Exp Charger, which I believe comes with the "Super Galaxy Pirate Pack" DLC for the gameHappy grinding, and watch your characters levels fly up in no time :P

Tales of Graces F final thoughts

Tales of Graces F is a great RPG, with very likeable characters, and a simple, engaging, and fairly long story. I definitely felt it was worthy of the 65 hours that I put into it.

I bought this game on release day, but it has been sitting in my back log for a few months, but lately, I have been in an RPG mood, so I decided that it would be my next game!

One thing that almost everyone (be it friend or review publication) has told me before I played the game is that the first 4 or so hours of the game are "horrible and it gets way better after that". Personally, I don't see it. I absolutelylovedthe first few hours when all the main characters were kids. It just felt so innocent and adventurous. It was a cute, and fun light hearted storyline that made the developments of the characters as adults that much more interesting. To be honest, I thought the beginning of the game was my favorite part of the game, really.

Without the beginning of the game being about the main cast as children, I don't think the main game would have worked as much as it did. Once the adult chapters of the game start, you start to see how all the characters have changed, and all these awkward and tense moments coming up between them all. Its really well done in my opinion, and it really made me appreciate the length we got to see these characters as children. The game really starts off strongly, in both the childhood story arc, as well as the adult one. The characters, in my opinion, are likeable and they have good chemistry together.

For me though, the games story did get a little dull around the middle of the game, and I was starting to lose interest for awhile. Though, towards the near end of the game (I think it was chapter 6 or 7) I started to regain my interest, especially when we learn more about the main villain. Overall I thought it was a good story, despite me losing interest for a little bit in the middle.

After you beat the game you get a new chapter called Lineage and Legacies (also known as future arc) That added a pretty good amount of story and content to the game. I thought future arc had a pretty good story as well, and felt like a good follow up to the games main plot. The characters were still just as interesting, and it even contained some new and interesting developments for certain characters that I won't mention, for spoiler reasons.

The battle system in this game is pretty great too. Its kind of difficult to describe, but once you're in battle you're placed in an open 3D arena, but you don't run around freely in that arena. You are placed on a linear line where you can move towards your enemy, or back step on that line. However, you can side step into different parts of the field by holding the square button (which also blocks enemy attacks) and press the left analog stick left or right, which will put you into a different line of the field. It sounds confusing when I write it, but I really am unsure of how to describe what I'm trying to talk about. Side stepping is also a great way to avoid enemy attacks, and start attacking them from behind while they're still in, or recovering from their attack animations (I did this most of the time) You can also change the line you're in by changing enemy targets, which you will then be on a straight track that leads to that enemy. I remember being very confused when I first played the Japanese demo of this game, because I couldn't figure out how to move around in the field, but really, it doesn't take very long to get used to at all.

The battles themselves feel really great. Instead of just spamming attacks and using TP points for special skills, the game has a stamina bar called CC. You are free to do whatever you want, how much you want, as long as you have CC. All of your main attacks use a certain amount of CC, and when its used up, you have to not press any of the attack buttons so it can fill up again (it fills up really quickly). The number of CC you have is all based on the weapon you have equipped. Weapons will have a minimum and maximum number of CC that they will give you. Battles usually start off with the minimum amount of CC a weapon can give, but as you attack more and build up combos, your number of CC will increase for the duration of that battle. I really like the CC system as opposed to the old TP system in most Tales games. It lets you use special attacks as you please, without having to worry about restoring TP points, it just feels really free and satisfying.

Speaking of satisfying , is the way this game handles regular attacks, and special skills. Regular attacks in this game are called A- Artes, and there are a number of differentee combos you can make with A-Artes. As you learn new ones, you can change what your regular attack is by holding the Up/down, left, right, or not holding down any direction at all. Depending on the direction you hold, you will preform a different move set, and you can even change the direction you're holding to go into a different move set even if you started off on a completely different one, thus letting you mix and match your combos how you see fit. I think other Tales games had something similar to this with regular attacks, but I don't think it was really ever to this degree (I could be wrong! As I said in my Vesperia write up, my experience with Tales games is limited to only a few of them!). Special attacks are called B-Artes, and generally work the same way, except that their combos are not as long as A-Artes, and generally feel like they are meant to be strung together to make your own kind of combo.

While I didn't play as every single character in the game, the ones that I did play as, all played very differently and each felt unique and satisfying. Most of the game I played as the main character, Asbel, and thought he was pretty fun to play as. Though I did try out Hubert and Sophie as well. I think Hubert was my favorite to play as, personally. His A-Arte combo's are really awesome once you have all of them, and his double saber weapons are really fun and his attack animations with them are very cool.

In battle there is also a meter on the left side of the screen called the Eleth meter. Half of it is for you, and the other half of it is for the enemy. When one half gets full, an Eleth break occurs. If its your half that is full, you will temporarily have unlimited CC (which is great for attack SPAM!), enemy attacks won't make you flinch, and you can even preform a unique special attack called Mystic artes, which do a lot of damage to the enemy, and look pretty cool as well. Though, you can't really spam mystic artes, once an Eleth break occurs, another bar shows up that fills up as you attack enemies during an Eleth break, and once it reaches the top, it will have a number 1, and then start filling up again, all the way up to number 3. There are level 1 mystic artes, level 2, and level 3, and depending on what level the attack is, that is what number the bar has to have to be able to execute that attack.

The battles over all are really a lot of fun, and I had a blast playing the game most of the time. The game is very easy on the Normal difficulty setting for the most part, but there are a few hard fights, and when this game decides to get difficult, good god does it get difficult. There were only a few boss fights where I felt this game got really difficult, though. One of t he oddest things about the games difficulty for me , was the final dungeon and final boss. The normal monsters encountered in the games final dungeon werewaymore difficult then the final boss ever hoped to be for me. Not really a gripe, I just found it really weird.

The way you learn new abilities is pretty neat. You have these things called Titles, and when you equip them, they also come with 5 skills for your character to learn. Usually things like an A or B Arte, stat bonuses, and bonuses to that specific arte. At the end of each battle you gain a number of SP points for your titles, and each skill on the title has its own amount of SP before that skill is learned. It works really well for me, and reminded me a bit of Final Fantasy 9's skill system, but in that game you learned skills from equipment. You'll gain more titles as the story progresses, as well as when you just do certain things in battle. Its a great skill system, and if you don't like it, you can actually tell the game to just automatically equip titles for you, if you're not the kind of person who wants to do that kind of micro management.

One thing that sets this game apart from other Tales of game is that there is no world map to be found in this game,, instead you have small areas that lead from one destination to the next. I liked this system, as it felt like the world was a bigger place then it actually was, and there is a fast travel system that lets you pay a small fee to hitch a ride from one town to another. Even if you don't use that system thoughh, the areas between destinations that replaced a large world map, are very small, and don't take much time to navigate through at all.

There is also an interesting system called Dualizing, which lets you combine two items to create something new. You can also use this system to make your weapons and armor stronger, and even create new equipment a well. I didn't delve into this system too much, but I did use it regularly for equipment, as there are many different items you can combine with your weapons to give them attributes like more strength, or an increased minimum CC for the start of every battle.

There is also a cool system called the Eleth Mixer, which allows you to place an item inside of it, and it will keep making copies of that item as you travel, and battle. Its a cool system, and not unlimited, so it won't break the game too much. Some items require a lot of "Eleth" before the mixer will even create one of them, and the odds of it creating items vary based on what the item is as well. You can level up your mixer too, the more you use it, and the more it levels up, the more Eleth it will have to create items. Once your mixer is out of Eleth, you have to either use an item  to restore its Eleth, or recharge it at a store. Its a neat little system, and very usful in dungeons if you're running low on healing items, you can stick some in there, and it will create more as you travel through the dungeon!

Visually I found this game to be really beautiful. I absolutely loved the bright and vibrant colors of a lot of the areas. The character models looked really great too, very smooth, with nice colors and designs. The characters mouth movements are not really that good, but its nothing that  takes away from the game in anyway at all, its just noticeable, but no biggie.

The level design on the other hand is a bit dull for the most part. There are some truly beautiful parts in the game, like in the beginning of the adult chapters, you go though a sea cave, and one part of the game has a side view window of the ocean and it just looks so pretty. But a lot of the games dungeons really don't look all that interseting to me (for example, Strahta ruins, fendel tower). Its not a big deal since the battle system is so fun, but more interesting and pretty areas would have definitely been cool.

On the sound end of this game, almost all of the game is voice acted, and  there are very fewscenes that are not voiced at all, and the ones that aren't, genereally are not that important anwyay. The voice acting is really great too. All the characters usually deliver their lines well, and I overall liked all their voices. Though, Pascals voice really did annoy the crap out of me sometimes, but her voice over all is not bad. Just sometimes... I wanted her to shut up :P

The music however.... I can honestly say that I really did not enjoy this games music. I think there was only 3 or so tracks that I enjoyed, and they were all ambient ones (the song "About the sleep stopping progress" for example). Overall the music is not going to make your ears bleed or anything like that, its just really bland and forgettable. I almost never mute games and put on some other music, even if I don't like the music in the game, but this game, I almost always did it after listening to what each areas music had to offer.

Overall this game took me about 50 hours to complete for the main story, and then another 15 for the future arc which becomes available after you beat the main story. It was definitely worth my time and I liked it a lot. The game has a lot of content to see, even after you beat the main game. I definitely would recommend it if you like RPG's, anime, or just are looking for something fun to play.

Hey there! I saw your post about playing Fatal Frame 2 Wii edition. By chance are you from Europe? Or from America? If America can I ask you how you played the game. Sorry to bother you!

Hey there, sorry for a long time to reply! I am from North America and have a North American Wii. I played a legitamately bought copy of the European version, and use a program called Gecko OS to boot my imported games. You need to soft moddd  your wii with the Homebrew channel to be able to use Gecko OS first. Its fairly easy to do (I was freaking out when trying to do it, because I thought it would be hard and I'd break my wii before Xenoblade came in the mail) but it really only took about 2 or so minutes to actually do. I won't say how to do it on here, but its very, very easy to find out how to do it :) Good luck if you do try to go about doing it!

The Last Story - final thoughts

This is the best game I've played this year, and one of the best games this generation, to me. I don't have anything else to say in this intro, other then that.

I'm not sure where to even start with this one. Much like Xenoblade last year, this game really made me feel something. Something I have truly missed with gaming. I've played and wrote about a lot of really great games on this blog, but this one (and Xenoblade) truly stand out for me. They both are the kind of game that just appeals to every single factor I look for in a game. Fantastic, emotinally moving storyline, amazing cast of characters that really feel like they care about each other, a great battle system, great music, and so on. The Last Story is the game that I needed this year, and is my personal choice for my game of the year (I don't think it will be topped this year, in my book of personal preferences).

Its insane that we almost never even saw this game released in North America. Its kind of sad that we had to pretty much beg for this game to be even released here. The games quality speaks for itself in my opinion, in a good way. I was originally going to import this game from Europe just like I did with Xenobalde last year (though I purchased the US version too, just to support it) but luckily short before the European release, one of my favorite publishers, XSEED stepped in announced that they would be delivering this wonderful game to us this summer, so I held off on importing.

This game is not only special in the reguard that its a great game, but its special for two more reasons. The first being that two of my favorite people are apart of this game. Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy, and Nobuo Uematsu, the composer for many of the Final Fantasy games. Sakaguchi realy knows how to make a story with characters that are likeable, and interesting, and I just really love his work... (Final Fantasy IX and Lost Odyssey <3) and Uematsu makes some really wonderful music. The second reason this game is also special is because, we as gamers came together to get this game released in North America, since it previously was not going to. Even the games producer said that he truly believed this game would never come out in America. Now we have it, and that, is truly something special.

Now the game, I thought about what part of the game to start with first for awhile, the story, or the gameplay. Both are equally awesome and well done, but I think I will start with the story, because this games story is something that I feel shines, and for me, stories of this caliber are rare lately!

This games story really, is damn good. The characters are all written so well, and thats really where the story shines. The characters and writing of the over all story really set this game aside from everything else coming out right now. The characters chatter between each other in cutcsenes, and during gameplay is so witty, and flows really natural, it really makes the characters loveable. This is probably the best cast of characters that I've come across this generation, personally. Every single character is distinct, has a ton of personality, and develop really well. You won't know about all of their backstories and pasts, but to me thats really fine. The way the game is written works really well for them, because its written in such a way, where you can tell what kind of person they are, and fleshes out their personality as the game goes forward. The characters relationships alone are worth buying this game for, they actually speak and talk like real friends do.

Aside from the characters, the overall plot is great too. A lot of the story arcs are not new,(breaking out of prison, pirate ship smuggling, etc) but its the way they are written, and played out that make the story worthwhile. And what a worthwhile story it is. The story starts off slightly slow for the first few hours, but its characters easily manage to keep you interested in seeing more of the story. Once the story does start moving forward though, its quite a trip. Stories of love (well done love story, not forced at all), friendship, war, and much more. Its really well done and I can't praise it enough. Its the kind of story that I would love to see more of, and I don't mean that in terms of subject matter, I juts mean in over all attention to detail and writing. This games story is fantastic, and I can't praise it enough. Not to mention, the games story and gameplay still go on for about at least 2 more hours after the final boss is over, tying up all lose ends, and showing off some really well done, moving, scenes.

On the gameplay side, this games battle system plays like no other Japanese RPG that I have ever played before. The battles in the game are a unqiue blend of action RPG, stealth, and a few other genres, even a little bit of third person shooter (though light). In battle, there are many different things that you can do. You can run up to yuor enemy head on and attack with a regular physical attack, or you can even chose to sneak around and hide behind cover and shoot them with the main characters crossbow (though its not always an option). I generally don't care for cover based games, but since its not a major factor in this game, I found it quite fun. The cover system isn't juts for shooting though, you can shoot an enemy before a battle breaks out, and it will confusingly start walking towards you, which you can then aim the analog stick in their direction, and press the A button to preform a move where you dash out from cover and slam them with your sword. Its really a satisfying move to do, and you don't even need to do the crossbow luring part, you can just do it whenever both you and an enemy are near the cover. Its one of my favorite moves to do in the game.

Aside from that, you can also use the cover to take out enemy archers, or mages. There are a lot of different types of crossbow ammo, aside from the regular ammo. Thigns like wizard killer ammo, which does massive damage to mage enemies, which is great for sniping pesky mages before you even start a battle head on. There is really a lot of strategy to the game, if you want to play that way.  You don't have to, the game is easy enough if you don't, but to me, the game just felt so much more satisfying being diverse in my way of going about things.

Aside from cover, there are other things in the environment you can use. You can command your party members to break pillars to make ceilings collapse on enemies, which is always fun. As you level up the main character in the gamae, you'll get more new abilities for him to use , all of which are different and feel very satisfying when you pull them off. My favorite two are the vertical slice, which lets you run up walls and then aim a circle around a group of enemies, which then the main character wil jump off the wall, and slam his sword on to the group of enemies. Its a great attack, but sometimes running up the wall can be a little unresponsive, and by that I mean, that you won't always run up the wall. Sometimes you need to keep running against a wall, or stop running completely, just to get up a wall. Still, its an awesome attack. My second favorite attack is the parry counter attack. Later on in the game, you'll learn the ability to repel enemy attacks if you press the block button at just the right time during their attack, and the counter attack that you get to do for successfully blocking at the right time feels extremely satisfying, because it doessomuch damage to the enemy, and I often felt this was the most effective way of defeating some enemies who just block your regular attacks relentlessly.

Other then that, every time one of your party members uses a magic attack, in addition to doing damage to the enemy, it''ll also create a circle that corresponds to the element of magic used. You can use these circles for a number of different things. If you run in the circle, your physical attacks will also gain that elements attribute, dealing elemental damage in addition to physical damage. It can make a pretty decent difference, especially on enemies that are weak to it. The other thing you can do with the magic circles is dispel them, and when you do that, you will cause a status effect to the enemy. For example, when you dispel a fire circle , the enemies defense will be lowered for a certain amount of time, and if you dispel an ice circle, the enemy will slip and fall to the ground. It adds even more strategy to the game and really helps on some bosses who have very high defense, and need their defense broken. The way you go about dispelling these circles, is through one of the main characters special moves called Gale. Its not a very strong attack, but it does knock enemies away, and much like vertical slice, you can control where you're aiming the attack. The only difference is , when you use gale, it pauses the battle to let you chose where to do the attack. Another cool thing is, you can use Gale to dispel enemy healing spell circles, which will constantly restore their health as they stand in it. This also works both ways, you can actually dispel your teams healing circles as well, but instead of canceling the heal effect, it will heal your entire party for a lot of health, regardless of weather they're even near the circle or not. It helps a lot for when you're in dire need of healing across the board!

Lastly in the gameplay department, is the main characters main ability to gather all the enemies attention to him. When you press the button (the L button on the classic controller) the enemies will shift their attention (most of the time) to the main character, and focus their attack on him, while your party members can do other things like attack the enemies from behind, or set up healing circles. You can also tell them specifically what special skills you want them to do after a few hours of gameplay.

The bosses in the game are really great to, lots of variety in the way you have to fight them. Hammering them with attacks isn't always the way to beat them. Sometimes you need to lure them to a bridge and have your party members destroy the bridge with their magic, and sometimes you need to break their defense by hitting their head and making them vulnerable for you to get hits in that will actually damage the boss. Their are a lot of different tactics to the games bosses, and they are a blast to fight.

The music in the game is really great too, but then again, I expect that much from Uematsu. While a lot of it may not be as listenable outside of the game like his other stuff ( a lot of it still is!) it fits the mood of the game perfectly and make the games many exciting moments, feel even more exciting.  I think the thing I like most about the soundtrack, is its one of those games with a main theme, that the composer puts the melody of in many of the games songs. I really love it when composers do that, it juts makes the music feel so much more exciting, and makes me feel so pumped to continue playing! It also helps that the main theme song for the game has a great sound to it.  Some of the soundtracks highlights: The Tone of the Town, One who Rules All, Dance of Death, and Tobaru Mono, especailly Tobaru Mono!

Artistically and graphically, I think this is one of the Wii's strongest looking game. Its not as vibrantly colored as Xenoblade, but the darker color scheme fits the games mood, and makes everything look good. The environments are highly detailed and look great. The areas themselves are pretty small and linear, with the exception of the town, which is huge, very detailed, and populated by a ton of NPC's that really make the town feel lived in, and feel like a real town. The actual architect of the town is really great too, its a very real looking town, and doesn't just feel like "another RPG town". It has a life of its own, and its probably one of the best towns I've ever had the pleasure of exploring in an RPG.

I think the only downside to games beauty and massive amounts of detail in the environment, is the game has a fair amount of slow down during battles, but realy only when there are a ton of different magic circles on the ground, which in that case, I recommend dispelling them, because then the slow down pretty much disappears.

Lastly, the game even has a multiplayer aspect to it. I usually don't bother with multiplayer in games with single player, as the story mode is all I'm usually interested in, but since for once, many of my friends bought this game too, I decided to try it out with one of my best friends. There are two different modes in the multiplayer, Death match, and Co-op. Admittedly , I only played one round of death match, so I can't properly tell you if its great or not, and if its balanced, but I will say, even though I got my ass royally kicked in the round I played, I had fun with it.

The co-op however, I played many rounds of with my friend.  What the co-op is, is a few select boss fights from the story mode, but super powered. The bosses are pretty tough, and you will probably either want a full party, or at least a near end game or even new game + gear (the multiplayer transfers your equipped gear from the story mode, but not levels, just the gear.). The boss battles in the multiplayer are a lot of fun, but I will say, its not something that will probably keep you occupied for a long time, but its absolutely a fun mode to spend a little bit of time in!

Over all, The Last Story is my choice for game of the year, I loved it so much, and I think that's evident in everything I wrote here. The game as a whole is fairly easy, with the exception of a few bosses, and new game + also ups the levels of the boss fights considerably, to be more challenging. The game took me about 26 huors to beat on the first playthrough, which I felt was good enough, because the story and game felt complete, and extremely satisfying. If you have a Wii, Japanese RPG fan or not, look into this one, because there is nothing else like it, and the way it blends all the different genres of games together successfully, make it a game that needs to be played, and appreciated!

Kingom Hearts Dream Drop Distance final thoughts

This was my must have game, that pushed me to buy a 3DS finally (And I absolutely adore the handheld), and I have absolutely no regrets. Click read more for the rest of my thoughts!

I absolutely adore Kingdom Hearts. It has some of my favorite gameplay ever, incredible music from Yoko Shimomura, Disney (I'm a huge Disney fangirl), and really stylistic flashy action, backed up by, in my opinion, a pretty awesome, although complex, storyline.

Kingdom Hearts 3D is no different. This game was so awesome, I want to replay it again already. It has everything I love about the series, in one nice, portable game. Much like Birth By Sleep, this is a more traditional Kingdom Hearts game, rather then buried under somewhat bleh mission based gameplay (358/2Days) or card based (Chain of Memories). Even though I liked those two games , I prefer the more straightfoward gameplay of Kingdom Hearts. Travel to a Disney World, beat up bad guys. This time you'll be playing as both Sora and Riku, each with their own story and each covering their own specific areas in each world (some rooms are repeated between the two, but not too many.)

The gameplay in 3D feels just like Birth By Sleep but more refined. It uses the same combat deck system as BBS, which is that the A button on your 3DS willalwaysbe the regular attack button, while X will always be your magic or special skill, or item (and you through these skills with the Dpad. . You can equip a number of different spells and special attacks to your deck, and your decks capacity will increase as you progress through the story. Every special skill, magic attack, and item will have a cool down time after used, so there is no MP here to speak of. I greatly prefer this system that started in Birth By Sleep, and hope it continues in every Kingdom Hearts game to come.

There are also a bunch of new additions to make the combat even flashier, the first of which is called "Flow Motion" this is a really cool, fun, and super flashy and stylish way of fighting. It allows you to use the environment around you, things such as spinning around on a lamp post slashing enemies as you spin around, and then jumping up in the air and doing a super powerful downward slam with your keyblade. Another thing Flow Motion lets you do is jump on walls and then glide all over the place. During this glide you can chose to attack the enemy which does a cool thrust towards the enemy and then another downward slam. My favorite part of flow motion though is constantly jumping up walls to get up really high to find hidden treasure chests (because flow motion lets you continuously jump up walls until you hit the top of the map!) or just jumping up really high and then gliding super fast around the map, I think I did this at least 70% of the time while I played, it was so much fun and cool looking. Another neat thing you can do is grind on rails! Its really a lot of fun and I hope the next Kingdom Hearts game has it. These  examples aren't the only flow motion's available , but they are the ones I felt were most noteworthy.

Next up is a system called Reality Shift. These are basically a unique special ability you can do in each world (each worlds Reality Shift is different) I don't want to call them quick time events, but its the only comparable thing I can think of to best describe them. They are done with the stylus though, not buttons. For example, in the Mickey and the Three Musketeers World , when you are able to do a reality shift (as far as I know it happens randomly when you damage an enemy enough, but I could be wrong) you can swipe the touch screen in the directions they tell you and it does a special ability to the enemy. In the Tron Legacy World, you can use the reality shift to hack wall turrets in a variety of different ways, like changing their bullets to health replenishing orbs, telling them to self destruct, or even attack other enemies. Its a neat little system, that took good advantage oh the 3DS's touch screen. One thing that you can do in just about any world is use Reality Shift on a barrel, to throw it at an enemy, and sometimes, even throw an enemy at another enemy! I didn't really use Reality Shifts  as much as I did with flow motion, but they were still a welcome addition to the gameplay.

This time around, your party members will be these creatures called Dream Eaters. You get these guys by creating them using various different materials. You can make them either from a recipe, or even just try your luck at creating one with random materials. Its really straight forward, no complicated synthesis here. The game shows you what Dream Eater you're going to get if you don't use a recipe, so its really a nice stress free system. The dream eaters in battle are alright, they perform well enough, though I would have liked to have some Disney characters in my party, but its not a big deal, since I know Disney characters will be around in my party again in another Kingdom Hearts game soon.

Dream Eaters are pretty important to have too, because each dream eater has their own little progression tree, which will give your character new abilities and stat bonuses, which can be purchased by points that your dream eaters gain during combat, or you can gain them in a weird virtual pet like mini game where you pet and poke them with the stylus.... which I didn't bother with that much, it kind of got old fast for me, I just used them in battle and it worked well enough. I really felt the dream eaters were well implemented , because they didn't feel overly complex and I never felt like "oh man, I really need to get better dream eaters, because I'm stuck at this part!" the game is balanced well and  making new dream eaters makes it easy to get dream eaters with a skill tree that will benefit you.

Lastly, Dream eaters also have their own little special attacks that you can execute by clicking on their icon on te bottom touch screen once a purple bar is full. These attacks are pretty cool for the most part, for the dream eaters I used. Some of them were lame (bouncing up and down on a fat dog to crush enemies wasn't really that fun, and neither was rolling around on top of one like standing on a ball) One noteworthy thing though, each dream eaters special is different for both Sora and Riku!

The bosses in this game are some of the best in the series, if not the best, specifically, the last like 5 or 6 bosses in the game. They were such an exciting rush of adrenaline, and the perfect difficulty level, in my experience. All of the last boss fights in the game felt like an even match, and were nice and challenging because of that. Not only were they super fun, but they really looked and sounded awesome too. Awesome looking arenas, awesome looking effects,incredible music. I really can't wait to see what the next game in the series will do for its boss fights, because these were so good.

I think the only downside to the gameplay is this new system thats related to the story called dropping. Theres a bar under your HP that depletes as you explore the games area, and when  ever that bar depletes, its time to forcefully switch characters. It didn't bother me as much as I thought it would, but I definitley could have done without it. On the plus side though, when you change characters, and change back, you will be in the exact position you left on, so you don't really lose any progress, unless its a boss fight, which then, you have to start it over. Though, you can always drop right after dropping, there is no limit really. Like I said its related to the story and does make sense by the end, but it can feel a little intrusive when you're fighting a boss. Luckily though, this goes away during the final boss fights.

The game doesn't just play great, it looks great too. I would say this game looks close to being on par with Kingdom Hearts 2 (or maybe even in on par). It looks fantastic on the 3DS's screen, and the 3D was the first I've ever experienced, so I thought it was pretty good (though it did make my eyes water a bit because I'm just not used to something like that) I can't tell you how it stacks up to other 3D, because this was really my first experience with something like that, but I was totally impressed.  I think the level design is probably better then any other Kingdom Hearts game too. The areas feel more alive then the other games in the series, and each area is really large, larger then any area in any other Kingdom Hearts game I'd say. They were fun to explore and find lots of hidden treasure!

The story in the game focuses on the Disney worlds for most of the game, and it actually focused on them a lot more then they have in the recent Kingdom Hearts games. It feels more like Kingdom Hearts 1 in that respect, because there is a lot of story to be had in each Disney World, and it was really enjoyable. It even made me want to see Hunchback of Notre dame and Tron Legacy, two movies I have never seen before! Towards the end of the game though, is when the main storyline of Kingdom Hearts starts to progress, and it was a little confusing at first (it wouldn't be Kingdom Hearts if it wasn't confusing :P) but once I started to figure it out, I thought it was pretty good, not as strong as Birth By Sleep, but good, and I felt that it definitely set the stage for Kingdom Hearts 3, and I feel its going to be one crazy awesome story and game because of that.

Lastly, the music in the game. Holy wow, Yoko Shimomura continues to amaze me with her music. Shes definitely becoming one of my favorite composers. Each world in the game has awesome music and awesome battle music, which is something I usually feel is just average  in the other games in the series. However, just like the rest of the series, the boss music tracks are amazing. Seriously, she out did her self this time with the boss fight songs in this game. There are about 5 or 6 final bosses in the game, and each one of them has their own, incredibly awesome songs, filled with familiar melodies of past Kingdom Hearts songs, mixed with all new melodies. Some seriously noteworthy songs in the game are: L'Impeto Oscuro, LOscurita dellIgnot, The Grid, and many more. Its really an awesome, awesome soundtrack, and at the rate shes going, I really can't wait to hear her work for Final Fantasy Versus 13 and whatever the next Kingdom Hearts game is!

This game seriously was awesome, and it definitely left an impression as my first 3DS game, and my first 3D experience. I absolutely am so happy I bought the 3Ds and the limited edition of Kingdom Hearts 3D. The game over all took me about 20 hours to complete, and I felt the game was mostly pretty easy, with the exception of the last few worlds in the game, and the last few fights of the game. Truly awesome, flashy and adrenaline pumping gameplay and music, I really think this game is worth checking out. If you're not familiar with the Kingdom Hearts lore (theres A LOT) the game does have a little glossary that explains the events of past Kingdom Hearts games and terms to catch you up. I'm not sure if it does a good job or not since I am familiar with all of it... but it is there if you're interested in this game, and have not played any Kingdom Hearts game before. Though, just know, that all of these glossary entries aren't' available at first, and are added to the glossary as they are referenced during the cutscenes.

Truly awesome game, and I loved every minute of it. I cannot wait til the next game in the series! Actually... I still haven't played Re:Coded, I think I will go do that soon, just to get some more of that awesome, flashy Kingdom Hearts gameplay ;)

Chantelise final thoughts

My friend was kind enough to purchase this game for me on steam as a gift during the steam summer sale this year (along with two other games, which I will play and review in the future). I decided to play Chantelise first, since it was a game I had my eye on for a little bit, and it looked like a fun and simple hack and slash game.

As soon as I started playing the game, I felt a big rush of nostalgia. Chantelise has a feel of its own, but the actual look of the game, and overall tone of it, just really reminded me of an old Playstation 1 game. I mean this in a good way, its a really solid game, with a classic look & simple control.  The game wastes no time getting you into the thick of it, after a short intro scene, you are dumped right into the combat tutorial, which is short and simple, and really the way I love a tutorial to be.

The gameplay is very simple, and in a very good way, since at the time I just was really looking for a fun simple game where I could mash the attack button, and this game certainly satisfied that craving. Its a very basic hack and slash, with satisfying sound effects to go with each hit. But aside from mashing the attack button, you can also hold the attack button down for a charge attack, though I found this to not be really all that useful. You charge attack can change depending on elemental crystals that you can equip, which change your weapons attributes, but again, I didn't really find this very useful, other then the dark elemental crystal, which absorbs enemy HP and heals you with it, when you do the charge attack. It kind of makes the game extremely easy, and I didn't use it until frustratingly dying to the final boss for several hours, which he became incredibly easy after using this gem. (I was tired of dying so much :P)

You also have magical attacks which Chante, your little fairy sister will use on command. The way it works is enemies drop many different elemental crytals that you can pick up a maximum of six at a time. A simple press of the button will use one of those crystals and a magical attack that goes with the color of the crustal that you used (fire is a red crystal, etc). At first, you can combine two crystals at once  to create a stronger magical attack, but over time, after advancing the story, you will be able to charge up to 3 crystals at once, and eventually 4. Ideally, you will want to combine two to four of the same crystal to get a stronger attack of the element you want to use. However, there isn't anyway to scroll through your crystals to chose which ones you want to use, it all depends on the order you pick them up in, so you will want to use caution and pick up the right crystals in the right order, so you will be able to use the spells that you are wanting! Its no big deal, but in heated moments, when you actually pick up the wrong crystal when you're trying to form a healing spell, things get a little tricky, and I unfortunately died a few times because of it (mainly in the final fights).

The way of progressing your character in this game, is all based on equipment when it comes to things like attack, defense, magic, and magic defense. You'll generally find equipment in chests on the field, or buy them. Mainly, I bought most of the stuff that I used, as the shops add a lot of good stuff as you progress the story. For your health, your main way of raising it will be to buy and find called Filaments. There are many different kinds of them, and some will raise your health more then others. Its really important to raise your health, because the enemies in this game can get pretty tough. It should be noted though, the more  you buyanyitem in the store, the more money it will cost the next time you buy it, and the same goes for selling items (the more you sell an item, the less the sell price will be worth when selling it).

Like I briefly mentioned earlier , the enemies can be tough, but I don't really think the game is as tough as I have heard from many people. Its definitely not easy, but as long as you upgrade your equipment you should be alright. This is the kind of game that getting a slight attack or defense boost, will make a huge difference in how much damage you receive from enemies, so the defense stat is really important in my opinion.

Some of the boss fights in the game are pretty intense, but also very difficult. Some of them are difficult in a fair sense, some are in an unfair. Specifically, I speak of the dragon boss. It flies around a lot, and you need to be locked on to it to be able to shoot it down with magic, but in this game, you can't rotate the camera up to get an easier lock on. However, during this boss fight, there are non stop barrage of spawning enemies (they don't do much attacking to you) that constantly get int the way of you trying to lock on to the boss, and even when you try to scroll through enemies with the lock on change feature, it often never even bothers to change to the dragon, even if you're right near it. It was a frustrating battle, but its manageable at least.

Like I stated before, visually the game reminded me a lot of an old Playstation game in a good way. Simple 3d backgrounds that I wouldn't say are the best looking, but not ugly either, with cute 2d sprites moving on a 3D plane. I like the sprites in this game a lot actually, sure they aren't as smooth as games today, but they look nice, move and animate well also. Since the game has simple enough visuals, it should run on most peoples computers too. As far as the cutscenes go, they are all standard text boxes with anime character portraits. The character portraits are cute, and the characters are nicely designed. And thankfully, the text boxes have very large text that make them easy for someone like me to read (I get overwhelmed by text boxes with a lot of text, and small writing, I like big text and only a couple words per line).

Music wise, I would say this is probably the weakest part of the game to me. The music isn't bad, its just I don't think its very memorable. I don't remember any of the music in this game, except for the one track in chapter 2 I think it was, that plays on the way to the volcano area. I only remember it because I really could not stand it at all, it was really bothering me for some reason. Other then that, the music wasn't bad, and I remember liking a few tracks while playing... I just can't remember what they sounded like.

This isn't a very long game at all, it took me about 12 hours to finish, and thats mainly because I spent about 3 or 4 hours dying at the final boss. I reached the final boss at about 8 or 9 hours into the game. Its a challenging game, but its a fair challenge (for the most part) and its a really fun game, that also doesn't cost a lot of money at all. If you enjoy simple hack and slash games, I really do recommend booting up steam and looking into this one. Its only 14.99 if I remember correctly, and its a good buy for that price range!

Fatal Frame 2: Wii edition final thoughts

Technically, the game I'm reviewing is called Project Zero 2 wii edition, since this is the European version of the game, as there is no current US release date for the game as of yet. With that out of the way, this game is seriously a wonderful remake of an old PS2 classic.

9 or 10 years ago when I played this game on the ps2, I enjoyed it, but I was my least favorite of the Fatal Frame/Project Zero series. I couldn't tell you why, since its been so many years, I still liked the original though. Now all these years later, a complete remake was released for the Wii, and I actually liked it a whole lot more then the original, and feel it was a fantastically wonderful survival horror game, in a world where survival horror games are unfortunately almost completely gone.

This game feels just like the original did, just a lot more tense and it looks as if it uses the Fatal Frame 4 gameplay & graphic's engine. The story and cutscenes seem to be done in almost the exact same way as the original, just a few differences here and there, but its all remade from the ground up. It really is a true to its roots remake.

The gameplay feels just like it did in Fatal Frame 4, with an over the shoulder camera system. It works great for this kind of game I think, because its so slow paced and tense, having the camera so close to you really slows things down (in a very good way) and makes trying to get out of the way of ghosts quite tense and nerve wrecking. With a quick shake of the Wii mote or nunchuck, your character will preform a quick turn (I personally recommend using the Wii mote for this, the nunchuck in my experience is not very responsive in this games case, or FF4). The quick turn is always essential to a survival horror game, as it helps you turn around much quicker then turning regularly would, and you need to make use of this very often when fighting the ghosts in this game.

The combat in this game, at first, didn't feel as refined as Fatal Frame 4s, or any of the other FF games for that matter. I really hated it at first, actually. It felt really weird to me, and the lock on really was not helping. The lock on in this game really wasn't worth using at all in this game. It doesn't really...lock on. It kind of puts the ghosts on the side of the screen, rather then putting them in the middle, to help you aim your camera at them. Because of this, the ghosts constantly get out of range, and interupt your cameras charging, or if your camera is charged, and you decide to take a picture to blast them, they will get out of range of your camera, and then you just wasted time and film. After a bit of disappointment, I just decided to stop using the lock on, and sure enough, I started liking the gameplay a bit more.

With the lock on aside, the gameplay feels good, its not any different from any of the other Fatal Frame games, but that's what I like. You press a button to ready your camera when ghosts are attacking, you aim the camera at them in first person, and the camera has little symbols that charge up while its aimed at a ghost, and you can chose to shoot whenever you feel you've charged enough. The higher the charge, the more damage you do. You also get different kinds of Camera Film, which the higher the number, the more damage it does. You have unlimited film for the weakest type of film, but itsextremelyweak. Its weaker then it ever has been. I really found using that film to be only useful when a ghost only has a tiny bit of their health bar left and you don't want to waste better, limited film on such a tiny amount of health.

You can also upgrade your camera, and once I got some better upgrades for my camera is when I really started to enjoy the game a whole hell of a lot. You can upgrade things like how fast your camera charges, increase how much it can charge, the amount of damage it does, and how many times you can use a special ability Lens. These lens's have special effects like slowing ghosts down, doing a huge blast of damage, weakening their attacks, and so on. At first, I really couldn't figure out how to use these, or change between them (since you can equip 3 at a time) And as far as I know, the only way to use them is by using the lock on with Z, and hitting the C button when you have enough energy to use them. I may be wrong though, and if I am, please let me know! As far as switching between them, I couldn't figure out how to do that, and the way things went when I used them, it seems the game uses all 3 equipped lens's at once? I really am not sure, but that is what it felt like to me. I didn't really use the len's all that much, until near the end of the game when some of the battles got tough.

The puzzles in the game are exactly the same as they were in the original, including the solutions (as far as I know, I tested it with one of the puzzles, and the solution was the exact same as the original PS2 and Xbox versions). The puzzles themselves, few what few there were, were alright, not bad or too cryptic to know what to do. They were fun little brain teasers and a welcome addition to the game.

The exploration and atmosphere in the game is great and extremely rich in detail. The areas all have their own stories to tell, just like all the other Fatal Frame games. Tons of notes , non hostile ghost encounters, and radio messages to see, hear, and read to help detail everything that went on in the areas you're currently exploring. Each area feels lived in and you get a lot of insight on who lived in the areas, and what was going on in their lives before whatever happened in this games story, happened, and its all intertwined with one another. A large majority of the ghosts have their own story too, that you can read about too.  Its really great, and if you dig games with really rich atmosphere, you won't be disapointed.

The game didn't scare me , but it did make me feel tense. The atmosphere build up and ambiance definitely help add to the feel of tension. The game wasn't as claustrophobic as Fatal Frame 4, but the atmosphere in this game really makes you feel tense. There are also a few moments in the game where you are chased by a ghost that can't be killed, and if this ghost touches you, its game over. These moments are short, but extremely tense, and I can really see these parts terrifying someone who is scared easily. Hiding in a closet with a ghost that can kill you in one hit walking around, calmly shouting at you, is definitely an extremely tense situation to be in, because you know you need to leave that little closet at some point...

The graphics engine used in this game also makes the original games atmosphere look so much better. Everything looks so detailed, eerie, and well done. The new over the shoulder camera angle also really helps the atmosphere come to life and really lets you see how detailed everything is, and how the flashlight illuminates the dark areas. The areas are laid out the same as they were in the ps2 version, but everything is remade from the ground up, its really impressive looking, and its probably one of the best looking Wii games available, and unlike Fatal Frame 4, which was beautiful, but only had a few different colors, this game is a lot more colorful!

On the sound end, the music is exactly the same as the ps2 version. Its probably the only thing that wasn't remade, or enhanced, or remixed. I don't know if -all- of it is exactly the same or if there are any new tracks (aside from the new ending theme song), but I do know a lot of it is the same as it was on ps2 (just watching a few videos of the original confirmed that much) But it doesn't matter, because the originals sound design is amazing. The ambiance in the game is so graet, and contributes so much to the atmosphere. The quiet sounds of the atmosphere, to the really, really intense ambiance when a ghost is attacking you are all so great, and I really recommend this game be played with the subwoofer cranked all the way up if you can. The new English voice acting is also pretty good, and I personally found it to be quite superior to the original PS2/Xbox voice acting (not that it was bad or anything, I just feel this one is better).

Story wise, its the same as the original, except for a few new scenes and endings (based on what I saw when I played through the game). The story is great and a lot simpler then Fatal Frame 4's story (which I loved, but also found a little hard to follow and needed the help of Fatal Frame fan wiki's), but this story may be a lot simpler, it still has a lot of depth to make an impact and be memorable. Its a great story, and its worth experiencing.

Overall this was truly fantastic remake. I loved this game despite my initial feelings of the game. Its a great remake and its a great game, Fatal Frame fans and new comers a like who appreciate survival horror games should have a lot of fun with this one. The game took about 11 hours for me to complete on the normal difficulty, and I felt the game was moderately challenging, at least more so then the original. Some of the ghosts in the game are actually pretty challenging. Hopefully Nintendo of America makes the decision to release this game in the US, but if not, I highly recommend importing the European or Japanese versions of the game, and playing through it if this sounds like something you would enjoy!

Ys The Ark Of Napishtim (PSP) final thoughts

Between this game, and Ys Origin, I have been playing lots of Ys games lately... and why not? They are really wonderful, and fantastic games that are just a lot of fun to play. Despite it being a somewhat bleh port of a great game, I enjoyed myself with the PSP version of Ark Of Napishtim.

I've been hearing for many years from Ys fans that this particular version of Ark of Napishtim is a really poor port. Sporting long load times, not so great framerate, and heavily compressed sound. All of that is true, but I found myself able to get passed the long load times, the framerate was a little bothersome at times, but I'll get to that later in a little bit. The game it self is almost perfectly playable on the PSP despite all of that, though its probably not the best choice to make if you can play any other version of the game.

The game itself really is great though. Its the first game that used the gameplay engine that Ys Oath in Felghana and Ys Origin use, and it does show, but its still an awesome experience, even if it isn't as awesome as the other two. The gameplay itself feels like an old school top down action RPG, but with 3D fields and 2D-ish sprites. 

The fighting in Ys is simple, you'll find three different elemental swords thruought the game. One representing Wind, one Fire, and one Lightning. Each one of these swords feels and attacks differently, and has their own magic attack that charges up and can be unleashed once your gauge is full. The wind one is pretty balanced. It does good damage, attacks at a good speed, and has a little twirly whirlwind attack at the end of its 4 hit combo. The fire sword is slower, only has a 3 hit combo, but is the most powerful. You can also hold down the attack button for the fire sworwd, and Adol will charge up and unleash a very , very useful attack that hits the enemies in your way several times. I found this to be one of the most useful attacks in the game. Lastly, the lightning sword, is fast but weaker then the other two, and when you attack with it many times, it does a lunge forward with electricity surrounding you. I personally almost never used this sword, I didn't much care for its attack animations, the way it felt when controlling it, or its magic attack. I only used it when you absolutely need to, which is only once or twice in the game.

You can also upgrade your swords using an ore called Emel, that enemies drop. Upgrading your swords increases their strength, and gives them their magical skill. Later upgrades also give them the ability to regenerate their magical gauge over time!

One of the biggest drawback of the games lower framerate, (or at least I think that it is the framerates doing, because this problem does not seem to exist in the PS2 and PC versions of this game)  is it feels very difficult to hit enemies sometimes. Adol seems to have lost a lot of frames in his attack animations compared to the other versions of the game, and it just feels like hes all over the place. I constantly and I mean, constantly, found myself having a lot of difficulty trying to hit enemies, and it was very frustrating sometimes. Its not always apparent, but its definitely noticeable as you play the game more and more. I was able to get past it, but I think next time I will opt to buy the PC version of Ark Of Napishtim, so I don't have this problem.

Unlike Oath and Origin, this game doesn't have the no healing item thing. There are a bunch of different healing items in the game, that drop from enemies, chests and you can buy them as well. You can use them from the main menu, or equipping them to a quick item button. Though, during boss fights, you can only use whats equipped to your item slot, as you can't access the main menu during boss fights. I was only able to equip one type of healing item at a time, but I have read that you are able to find an item to increase that. Not sure if its true, as I never found it myself. I think I personally prefer the healing system in Oath and Origin for some odd reason, it just  felt satisfying, but this game is balanced with healing items in mind, so you will be needing them quite often, so its all good.

The only negative about the gameplay I can really complain about is the platforming. I just didn't like it... at all. I loved it in Oath in Felghana, and Origin, but I really just didn't like it in this game. There are a lot of precise jumps that are very frustrating and annoying to get to. I found myself missing the jumps very frequently and very often and it got really annoying after awhile. Most of the time the platforming is for an optional item, which most of the time I just flat out gave up on trying to get, which I don't really like giving up on things in games.

The bosses in the game are good, but a little underwhelming. They aren't as interesting, fun or exciting as the ones I've come to expect from Ys games, but at the same time, this was the first time they used this engine, and the first Ys game that Falcom made in such a long time, so what is there is good enough. Some of them provide a pretty crazy challenge though.

Graphically the game looks kinda muddy and blurry on the PSP. Its a great looking game on the PS2 and PC, but on the PSP it just looks grainy, and washed out. Its really not optimized for the system at all, and the text in the text boxes is extremely small, and difficult to read. R's look like A's, its just really not optimized at all, and should have had a lot more work put in to it. Still that said, its still all readable.

Story wise, its an enjoyable story. Its a good enough story with great characters as is always the case with the Ys games. To me, Its not as interesting as some of the other Ys games I've played like Ys II, but it doesn't have to be. It doesn't contain the voice acting found in the Ps2 version of the game, but I don't think I mind that at all. I like no voice acting when the games story is just text boxes. I can read the text much faster then someone can voice it, and I don't think the text boxes generally do the acting justice. Well that, and the English voice acting in the PS2 version wasn't exactly... all that.

Sound wise, the soundtrack is absolutely freaking awesome as always with Ys games. Absolutely awesome synth, guitar, and violin music. Its this games music actually, that got me interested in playing the series in the first place. (Strange how I just NOW play this one after playing all the others huh?) Though like I said , the sound on the PSP version is very compressed. Sound effects sound muffled. The music doesn't suffer that much from the compression thankfully, but its noticeable if you listen to the soundtrack and the PSP game,

The load times are fairly lenghty, but I don't think they are as bad as people say ... that is if you have a PSP 2000 and 3000 model with UMD cache'ing on, if you don't, then well, the load times are definitely awful. If you do have a 2000, or 3000 with UMD cacheing on, then the load times are fairly short. Noticeable, but short. You'll need to wait for the initial load times, but once its in the PSPs memory, its really only about 2 seconds or so between screens, sometimes more, sometimes less. I will say its worth noting though, that sometimes whenever you level up, or use a magic spell , or for whatever other reason, the game freezes and has to load that animation / sound. That doesn't happen very often though, but it happened to me at least 5 or 6 times through my playthrough

Ys Ark of Napishtim is another great Ys game that deserves to be played if you like these type of games. I will say if you can play the ps2 or PC version of this game, go for those. The PSP port of the game is absolutely not optimized for the system, and didn't seem to have a lot of work put in to it. Its playable by all means, but its definitely not the "ideal" way to experience this game. Its a shame too, because Oath In Felghana's PSP port was absolutely flawless, its a shame that this one couldn't be too (though Oath's port came years later). The game isn't too long, probably about 15-20 hours, and its difficulty was pretty difficult in my opinion, but managable.

If the PSP version is the only version you can play, I recommend looking in to playing PSP version of Oath In Felghana instead, if you can. If you really want to play thisgame though, and PSP is your only option, well, by all means, its playable, but I recommend having a PSP 2000 or 3000 with the UMD cache option turned on if you want to be able to have a much less frustrating experience.