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Shame, I wanted to talk about Front Mission but then it wouldn't be very objective. Anyway, here it goes:
Devil Survivor:
(I don't have a 3DS so I'll talk about the vanilla version) The game is divided into 7 days, in which you have to talk with your party members and/or others people in a way resembling visual novels, manage your party and battle to death with horrible creatures. Note that it is not possible to do everything in a single playthrough, many choices are opposed or can be missed. It also has a good deal of customization for your whole party, you can choose up to 2 different demons for 4 characters to give your group different strengths and abilities. In addition, unlike the rest of the cast the main character's attributes are decided by the player upon leveling up, allowing you to decide what he should specialize into (although if you screw up and put points in the wrong attributes, you're good as dead). In order to obtain demons though, you must get them through auctions (which are a nice feature but a bit wonky, they can be easily exploited once you know how the AI works) or with fusions (you choose 2 different Satanic Pokemons Demons to combine to get a different, more powerful creature which may know new skills and/or keep a few ones from the two fused demons), but the lack of a compendium makes the system very annoying, the moment you wish to create powerful creatures that require specific fusions that you must do everytime without an option of keeping spares, for not to mention the whole process is very expensive. The only way to get money (called Macca here) is through winning battles, be it storyline ones or random encounters (thankfully the latter are completely optional, in fact you can skip them completely if you want).
Meanwhile, the writing is okay, the game deserves a few points for making the different Chaos and Law factions believable and interesting, instead of making the Law guys a bunch of CATHOLIC NAZIS and the Chaos ones into LOLCHAOS cultists, even though the party members' writing quality is not that good (such as Yuzu, who remains an annoying, scared little girl, even when she's capable armwrestling ancient deities without breaking a sweat), but to compensate your actions may lock or change the plot, opening up different endings.
However, the game also has many flaws: Besides the lack of a Compendium, the balance is completely broken (forget about making your MC a physical powerhouse, physical attacks stop being relevant when the endgame arrives, while magic becomes only more and more powerful as time passes) and there are many bosses with completely overpowered abilities that exist only to fuck with you (including one case in which can only be defeated by the use of the MC doing a special physical attack, which may become really tedious if you don't put at least 3 points in Strength), but that's (f)Atlus for you.
TL; DR: It is a good tactical rpg title (assuming the animu style doesn't make you puke).
Radiant Historia:
SCO's review can also be applied for me, it is a more restrictive, traditional and lineal jrpg, but it's still has a nice few features. Specifically, the many dead ends can be fun to do just to see what Locke (the main character) does. In addition, the cast is somewhat more likeable than the average jrpg weirdos, moreso when the main character demonstrates actual intelligence and competence, for not to mention that the setting is quite bleak (at the end you don't really save the world, more like patch up what is left of it and hope that in the future the situation changes).
Lastly but not least, the music is quite good in my opinion. Here's a sample:
This is a DS list, not a 3DS list... and without easy import methods due to 3DS region lock, we can't play BD right now anyway so fuck Nintendo.
Here's my writeup on 4HoL I guess:
Ahh, 4HoL. This game has always been marketed as some sort of "the real spiritual successor of old-school" FF, which is something I've found weird. I don't recall FF3, 5 or Tactics being considered representative of the series. It's usually 6, maybe 7 if you're really pushing things. As far as I'm concerned, it's a thing of its own nature.
My love for 4HoL probably stems from it being an FF with a job system, which I have always found to be the best character building mechanic of the series. In 4HoL, this is the "crown" system. Each "crown" is a class with up to 4 abilities, which you gain by upgrading them with "gems" that are usually gained from enemy drops. Some of them get pretty esoteric, such as the "Monk", which isn't the traditional FF kung-fu fist fighter but rather its original meaning of "religious leader", a Taoist inspired class whose gimmick is that manipulating dead party members, or even his own death count where letting him die and resurrect several times can be used in an ability that deal major damage based on how many times he has done so in that particular battle.
Unlike most other games with class/jobs, 4HoL is strange in which except for one post-game bonus job, there isn't any "multiclass" features, which means you really have to take advantage of all features of your current class if you want to win battles. Outside of abilities, each class is also defined by their weapon and magic proficiencies (which you unfortunately need an FAQ to really figure out, although some can be reasonably deduced e.g Magic Fencer -> Swords).
Battles are interesting. Statistically speaking, it's not very complex. For example, MP (or Vancian spell stock etc) as a concept does not exist in 4HoL. Characters gain Action Points every turn in battle, and different actions cost different amount of "AP" to execute. This moves the focus of battles more on short-term strategy:
If you want to use more powerful magic, you have to save up your AP, but you might also need that AP for surviving or utility. How best to utilize your limited AP points for the current battle?
Not to say there isn't any long-term management: unlike many other games, strict inventory limits are in the game and even individual character have limited slots so you really got to think about which class abilities or magic you want to use. A single character can't "do it all", so to speak. So many JRPGs have an inventory limit where you can carry 99 of everything and trivialize items that it's refreshing to see a game where you actually have to think about things like that.
Not to say the other aspects of the game are ignorable. The game's aesthetics portrays a "fairytale"-like atmosphere that is lost in today's trend of slavishly aping Tolkien or "KEWL CYBERPUNK MIXING SWORDS AND GUNS" depending on which country's RPGs you're talking about. The plot isn't super :monocle: or anything, but the 4 titular characters are actually pretty well-written and their interaction is amusing to read.
It's a fun romp and isn't afraid to take a piss on itself sometimes, which is something Square Penix seems to be unable to do with their modern games and sure, 4HoL isn't SUPER SERIAL PLANESCAPE TORMENT 24/7 but you know what happened the last time Square took their videogame plot way too seriously? We get shit like FF13, and that's no good.
Actually, said plot does do a couple of cool things. Despite the colourful graphics, it's clear that the world of 4HoL is clearly in an Age of Decadence and decline, with each major towns/areas in the game corrupted by the great evils Bioware and Bethesda... I mean "the seven Deadly Sins"
Spoilers to follow:
In the first half of the game, you are dropped clues as to how each individual town has come to its sorry current state and the party fixes the problem as best as they can, but due to a time travel element, in the 2nd half, they actually witness the process of the decline as it is happening and act to stop it, thus changing the future.
The game isn't perfect, I would say the biggest problems with it comes down to a couple of things
1) The early game sections where you're forced to use solo characters in a dungeon.
2) Level scaling in the 2nd half of the game.
An enhanced remake of the original Super Famicon Front Mission, which was a fairly typical sprg with an added emphasis on strategy before the actual combat stages. The other stand out feature was that instead of focusing on the usual warriors/wizards theme, Front Mission was about giant mechs (reminiscent of Battletech). There are two scenarios you can play in, the beginner's campaign, which is the original campaign from the Super Famicom version and the advanced campaign which was added in for the DS remake. Both campaigns tell the same story from different points of view of the same war. Basically a military conspiracy story, that is relatively simple but has some interesting plot twists here and there. The new campaign reveals more about what was actually going on, tying up and explaining some things the original campaign didn't cover too well.
The gameplay itself is a mix between customizing your "Wanzers" before a battle, which consists of choosing which arms, legs, body, a variety of hand held and shoulder mounted weapons, and various backpacks to equip. Considering you get over a dozen characters, all of which have a fully customizable Wanzer, this can take quite some time and allows you to create a highly specialized force. The actual combat is fairly typical for an srpg, you move your force around on grid in an isometric perspective, engaging enemy Wanzers and various military forces in long/medium/short range combat. The enemy can only counter attack if they have the appropriately ranged weapons themselves. Each Wanzer has four health bars, one for the torso, one for each arm and one for the legs. If a health bar drops to zero the appropriate body part stops functioning (if the torso is destroyed the Wanzer vanishes). Each pilot you control gains XP from destroying individual body parts/participating in combat, and as they grow levels they learn skills. These skills can let you move further, target specific areas of enemy mechs, attack twice in one turn etc. Everything is turn based, with your whole team having a turn, followed by the enemy, a variety of objectives being used for most scenarios.
Last thing to mention is that the DS remake has a mildly better translation than the original, fully functional touch controls and the battlefields look much better than they did on the Super Famicon, although the pseudo 3D sprites take some getting used to.
Not too long? Going to have to revisit Devil Survivor to review it. Been a while so I can't remember how much is missing from the first game in the series compared to later entries.
Hm, I would rather have gushed about Dark Spire but sure, I can write a paragraph or two about EO1 in the next few days. Do send me a reminder in case I forget, as this one will be another rather busy week at work for me.
Valkyrie Profile CotP is the third game developed by Tri-Ace in the Valkyrie Profile IP. This is the first VP game where you control a mortal instead of a Valkyrie. Wylfred had his father's soul reaped by the Valkyrie as an Einherjar (Mortal Warriors, whose souls have been claimed by the Valkyrie). His father's death causes death of his sister by starvation and also results in his mom going crazy. Wylfred grows up and becomes a mercenary hoping to become an Einherjar himself get revenge on the Valkyrie. The first battle, causes Wylfred to become mortally wounded and he inadvertently makes a pact with Queen Hel, to gain power for his quest for Revenge. He receives a cursed feather, which had to be "stained black by sin" in order for him to receive power enough to kill the Valkyrie.
The game is played like a typical sRPG in isometric view... with a twist. You control up to four members in a tactical isometric battle grid, and cut-scenes progress the plot between battles. However, when actually attacking enemies, you get to play a rhythm mini-game, where depending on the weapon and skills equipped, you have to time multiple lows from the 4 characters using each of the 4 buttons (A,B,X,Y) for each character. The main trick is to surround enemies in formations, and time skills so that you build up the attack gauge to max and unleash powerful skills called Soul Crushes. YMMV with the rhythm component in a sRPG. It lacks the emphasis of terrain effects seen in other sRPGs.
The sin reaping mechanics with the cursed feather is interesting. You need to mutilating enemies beyond their death in the finishing blow to reap sin. Failure to reap sufficient sin leads to battles with very powerful assassins, whereas gathering enough sin gets you bonus experience and items. You can also meet the sin quota by "boosting" your allies with the plume. they become incredible killing machines for the duration of the battle, but they die after it. This leads to an interesting organic difficulty. Purposely collect less sin to face more challenging battles in the future, or kill your teammates to easily meet the sin quota. However, there is some nifty CnC with the use of the cursed plume. Depending on its usage, you get multiple ending. The best ending (which is quite bleak itself) requires you to avoid using the plume to boost (and kill) your allies... whereas overusing it too much may lead to a game over.
All in all a fun sRPG for the DS, without the overtly bright color palette moe art-style which I am not fond of. Some players may drop the game early due to the rhythm component of the battles, but that is a signature mechanic of the Valkyrie Profile series.
I didn't vote to get a homework assignment. Fuck this shit.
SMT: Strange Journey
It's a fairly typical SMT game, with more in common with SMT 1 and 2, and less in common with the spin-offs. Blob combat, good fusion system, good character creation. Difficulty isn't very high compared to others, but still provides a challenge if you don't grind too much. Pokemon aspect is still in and fun. It has more of a plot than the other dungeon crawlers on the DS, and the story features the standard SMT C&C. Very solid dungeon crawler. Doesn't try to reinvent the wheel, but this is the Codex so we think wheels are for fags. Good game.
Etrian Odyssey is a turn-based, first-person dungeon crawler developed by Atlus Japan. The game is set in a single dungeon that is several floors deep and divided into different strata, each with its own theme. Combat is standard JRPG-fare, with HP, MP, and Armor as straight damage reduction. The game also features a kickass soundtrack by industry legend Yuzo Koshiro, who was apparently monocled enough to actually compose the whole OST on ancient PC-8801 hardware.
Gameplaywise, what sets the game apart from others of its ilk (to be fair, the DS library isn't exactly overpopulated with first-person blobbers, but you get the idea) are the FOEs. These are particularly tough monsters that populate the dungeon and are most of the time strong enough to wipe out your whole party effortlessly when you first encounter them. They are visible on the overland map, so the player won't bump into them randomly, but they all behave differently: Some move arount randomly, others in fixed patterns, some actively chase the player, and some even don't move at all. FOEs make dungeon exploration a lot more interesting and tense, and it's always to later come back and kick them into oblivion, once the party has gotten strong enough to finally be a match for them.
One other very nice feature is the ability to draw you own maps ingame, which is a very welcome wave of nostalgia for those who still remember the days when graph paper was an essential RPG companion. But even for those who don't, it should still feel like a nice addition at the very least (and a sensible use of the DS' touch-screen functionality for a change), as it doesn't require much effort and is half-automated anyway.
Other than that the game has a very basic crafting system (as in: you sell monster drops to the shop and it will get new items in stock), a nice but not overly complex class system and status effects that are actually useful throughout the whole game (yes, even on bosses). The game also has a story, but it is nothing noteworthy takes a backseat to the actual dungeon exploration, which is not necessarily a bad thing in this genre.
While the game might seem rather challenging in the beginning, with most monsers two-shotting your inexperienced level 1 characters, the balance soon shifts in the player's favour and the game doesn't really become challenging again until postgame (save for a few bosses and FOEs). The dungeon exploration can get rather repetitive after a while, as the game never really takes off the kiddy gloves (spinners, teleporters, et al. are never used to full effect) and the FOEs and story segments alone don't shake things up enough. The game is also very, very grindy, which, considering the good but not great dungeon exploration, might make it overstay its welcome for some.
Overall, though, Etrian Odyssey is an enjoyable dungeon crawler and is worth checking out for anyone who is starved for a nice, semi-oldschool dungeon romp.
I know some of you are replaying the games for a better review, so I'll not complain about the lack of reviews so far.
I'm moving tomorrow, will spend like 2 weeks with little to no internet, so just keep posting and when I come back I'll gather them and point fingers at the procastinators.
Thx.
