The day has finally arrived where the final major release for the 3DS family of systems has come out in the West, Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth. There will likely be a few more small indie games released for the system (much like there still are for the equally doomed PlayStation Vita), but the system is effectively a relic of the past. While this is a bittersweet moment, at least Nintendo already has a portable system out there to replace it, even if it is not in the same way. My larger concern is what is going to happen with this sub-genre of Dungeon Crawler RPGs, which has had a major Renaissance with both the DS/3DS family and PSP/Vita family of systems. Not only does the portability fit well with the heavy grinding required of the genre, but the touch screens have also made a fascinating impact by allowing you to draw your own maps. This has been particularly the case for the Etrian Odyssey series of games and their two spin-offs, Persona Q: Shadows of the Labyrinth and Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth.

Map drawing is a major feature.

For the Persona fans out there interested in giving this series offshoot a try, you should be aware upfront that it is primarily the Etrian Odyssey team at ATLUS who makes these games. As such, all the story beats are from the Persona games, but all the actual combat and exploration is from Etrian Odyssey. It works well, but if you are a fan of one and not the other, it is something to be conscious of going in. There is some small amount of auto-mapping that you can select from the Config menu, but that merely shades in where you have been and walls that you have stood next to. Any other map features, and there are quite a few, will need to be added by you. Thankfully in Persona Q2 they have made the map making even better than it was in Etrian Odyssey Nexus. There are more contextual symbols in this game that will alter on your map according to your actions. In other words, not only will you see whether the switch has been used in the above screenshot, but it will also show you if the Electric Gate is open. This adds the benefit of making the map even more useful, but it also allows them to have even more variety in the dungeons than in previous Etrian Odyssey games or Persona Q: Shadows of the Labyrinth.

Battle is first person, but should be familiar.

Wandering around in the dungeons is first person but anyone who has played Persona long enough, or the main Shin Megami Tensei series, should be familiar with that style. It wasn’t until Persona 3 and SMT 3 that they went away from the first person style, and several offshoots like SMT: Strange Journey Redux still use it to this day. Also like that latter title, the battle takes place in classic dungeon crawler style where you only see your characters when they enter the screen to attack briefly. They still use their signature Personas to cast magic, but never quite as obviously as they do in the main Persona series. Like in the first game, Persona Q2 takes place in an alternate world to any of the main story events. One of the primary ways that affects the gameplay is that the power of the Wild Card (featured in each series protagonist) no longer allows them to switch their main Persona. Instead it spreads across the whole team and allows everyone to equip a secondary Persona. The second one adds the primary benefit of being allowed to use a wider variety of skills, and it also adds a HP and SP buffer proportional to the power of the secondary Persona. The HP/SP Buffer is extremely functional in such a grind heavy genre because you enter every battle with those bonuses exceeding your normal stats and therefore can use an ability or two without it eating into your main HP/SP pool.

Make use of enemy weaknesses or you’re in trouble.

Because of the design philosophy of the developer, both Etrian Odyssey and Persona Q games tend to be a bit on the difficult side. As such it is even more important than in the normal series that you exploit the enemy weaknesses. If your characters hit an enemy with their weakness, that will cause the enemy to be Knocked Down. It will also allow that character to act first in the next round and use any skill with no HP or SP cost. If all enemies are knocked down in the same round, your party will do their standard group attack that you see in the previous three Persona games. Unfortunately if the enemies are not able to be killed with the All Out Attack, or you don’t knock them all over in the round, they can attack your characters back and also knock them out of their enhanced state. So you would miss your opportunity for a free skill next round.

Support Strikes have leveled up to Unison Strike.

In Persona Q2 the main cast is centered around the Phantom Thieves from Persona 5. As such it was important for them to bring over as much of the new combat systems as possible. They did have to remove the Guns from each of the main cast, because that would not work with all the other characters from Persona 3 and Persona 4 (Guns were a part of the first two Persona games, and most of SMT however). But they did bring over the new Fusion and Psychic elemental attacks as well as Holy and Curse attacks that are not just instant kills. As such, there is a much wider variety of weaknesses for the shadows to be susceptible to. That can be a little dangerous when you meet up with a new shadow, even if they aren’t a wandering FOE (optional mini-bosses observable on the map) or zone boss. Thankfully they have expanded the Support Strike system that has been used since Persona 4. A Support Strike is when a character not in your battle party joins in at random to knock down a random enemy on the battle field. This typically only happens after a character knocks down all but one remaining enemy on the field. But now they have added Unison Strikes, which can happen at any time even if the attack didn’t knock down the enemy. Support Strikes are typically only for pitiful damage, but Unison Strikes are some of the most powerful attacks in the game.

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Games that represent a series culmination can be difficult to review for a general audience. Ideally they should be built, from the ground up, for the fans of that series. That also hinges on how much of the development process was entered into knowing that it would be the final entry. All too often in any genre of entertainment, the cancellation of a series is sudden and there ends up being a perfunctory ending (famous examples being Metal Gear Solid V in gaming and Firefly on TV). But when you do know it’s going to be the final entry, you can build upon the entire series and come out with a satisfying conclusion (such as Uncharted 4 and Return of the Jedi). Of course, endings don’t always work out and can end up besmirching the reputation of the series as a whole for some fans (Mass Effect 3 and The Sopranos come to mind). Etrian Odyssey Nexus is the sixth continuous entry of the series, and the eighth if you include the two remix games. So there is quite a series history to compile into one final game entry.

EO games take full advantage of the Nintendo DS hardware.

It’s entirely possible that this may not be the absolute last thing we see from the Etrian Odyssey series of games. But by all indications it is, and even if it comes back it will have to change its form in some ways. The reason ATLUS appears to have developed Nexus with the explicit intention of creating a final entry has less to with series sales and more to do with the hardware that they are on. Almost more than any other series of games, the EO games are built from the ground up to take advantage of the Nintendo DS series of hardware. One of the primary appeals of the series has been using your stylus to draw out the dungeon maps as you explore. This is a modern take on the original style of dungeon crawler RPGs, where we used to use graph paper to draw out our own maps. With their new hybrid handheld console, the Nintendo Switch, the company is showing signs of discontinuing production of all SKU Nintendo 3DS models. And even if they were to still keep the handheld consoles going for a bit longer, there is no question that the audience has almost entirely migrated over to the Switch. So while I do hope that they find a way to make the series work in the future, there is no question that it will have to change if it’s going to. ATLUS knows this more than anyone, so they made Etrian Odyssey Nexus as a capstone to the best dungeon crawler series is many years, if not the greatest of all time.

The focus is always on the Guild more than a single character.

From the start of the game you will be on a flying city heading to the Yggdrasil Tree in order to unearth a sacred treasure said to create infinite prosperity for a country. Of course from the ground up that sounds quite suspiciously too good to be true, but it will be a long time before the foundation mission will be directly addressed. As a dungeon crawler series, the Etrian Odyssey games have always focused more on the dungeon design than the story, but there is a bit more story here than in all but the two remake games. In the previous games you are usually in a similar city, and also trying to climb the World Tree, but you will discover that this game takes a hard turn from that in interesting ways. Once you leave the confines of the city you will discover that there is a world map that will spread out all the various different labyrinths, slightly reminiscent of Etrian Odyssey IV, but without the ship travel. And, story-wise, you will also discover that the labyrinths surrounding the Yggdrasil are strongly reminiscent of some areas that you have seen elsewhere in the world. After several of these zones the player, and the NPC characters, will start to wonder why all these regions are suddenly appearing together in one place.

The world map and separate dungeons is a nice improvement.

My largest issue with Etrian Odyssey V was that they seemed to take a step back from the innovations of Etrian Odyssey IV. It was still a really good game, but I really missed the overworld travel and interactions. And most of all, by separating the various dungeons, it made them seem more diverse and interesting. Even from the beginning the dungeons of the EO games did change about every 5 levels or so, but it was still all just one major dungeon dive. With Etrian Odyssey Nexus they have made even more discrete dungeons than in any prior game. There have been some people complaining about the reused enemy designs and labyrinth looks, but that not only makes sense story-wise, but they also change the monsters enough to make it interesting. It ends up being a call back more than just a cost or time saving measure, which is an important distinction to make. Altogether players will be shocked at how many dungeons this game has, 14 main labyrinths and 10 side dungeons. The main labyrinths can be as many as 5 levels deep and the side dungeons are always 1 level but usually very large and with severely upgraded enemies that are most definitely optional (but feature some very strong upgrades as a reward, as well as new side story sequences). They also brought back many of the series classic dungeon mechanics and designs, but remixed them in interesting ways that will make you use your head.

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Jake Hunter Detective Story: Ghost of the Dusk is is a new visual novel that quietly made its way to store shelves as a follow up to Jake Hunter Dectective Story: Memories of the Past on the Nintendo DS. Something I did not initially realize was that what we know as the Jake Hunter games are part of a very long-running and successful series in Japan known as Tantei Jinguji Saburo. It premiered on the Famicom back in 1987 and has received various sequels and remakes throughout the years on several consoles and mobile devices. When it came time to finally bring the series West, Aksys Games released Jake Hunter Detective Story: Detective Chronicles, which included remakes of cases from the first couple of games. Unfortunately it wasn’t well received and a lot of content was cut. They released an updated version called Jake Hunter Dectective Story: Memories of the Past which included the missing content, making it a more complete experience. This latest entry, Ghost of the Dusk, is brand new and built for the Nintendo 3DS.

Ghost of the Dusk‘s story involves the titular Jake Hunter being called to investigate a murder at a seemingly abandoned house. He eventually solves the case and befriends the man who appears to own the property. However, he soon finds out that there is a bit more going on than meets the eye. I can’t really describe too much more since that will lead into spoiler territory, but I can say the game does feature a number of twists, some predictable but some more interesting. In contrast to something like Ace Attorney which offers a more light-hearted take on courtroom battles and investigations, Jake Hunter is played mostly straight and serious. There are some humorous moments like Hunter being so “old school” that he has trouble using a modern cellphone, but scenes like these are so few and far between that when they do appear it almost feels out of place.

What hurts the narrative is the localization. Aksys Games have changed a lot from the Japanese version. It’s not uncommon for some localizers to do this as Capcom did something similar in the beloved Ace Attorney franchise. At least in those games more was done to the story and dialogue to reflect those changes, so they make a little bit more sense. However, Jake Hunter is not as fortunate as many names and locations were changed. For instance, in the Japanese series the main character’s name is not even Jake Hunter but rather Saburo Jinguji. Even worse, the game features Japanese audio and fully voiced animated cutscenes where they stick with the original Japanese names during dialogue. It made one particular scene towards the end that was meant to be somewhat of a dramatic moment come off as just plain laughable as a character is screaming a name in Japanese. Meanwhile the subtitles feature a completely different name.

The game also seems to insist that it takes place in the US. It’s painfully obvious the setting is supposed to be Shinjuku in Tokyo. It’s a real shame that Aksys felt the need to change so much because I feel like it takes away from the otherwise solid atmosphere and worldbuilding the game attempts. It feels really weird when you have a bunch of Japanese style buildings, bars, and homes yet characters are talking in stereotypical Western pulp/noire manner. I didn’t think “Yoko” would be that hard of a name for Westerners to say to the point where it’s absolutely necessary to change it to “Yulia,” who happens to be one of the lead characters and a recurring one in the series.

If you can get past the localization issues, you’ll find that the gameplay, while simplistic, also has its share of quirks. During investigations you have to move the cursor and select an area of interest. You can use the stylus which is nice and precise, but of course you can also use the circle pad and buttons. The issue is that the game doesn’t do a great job at showing you what can and can’t be examined. It can be rather picky at times in regards to where exactly you have to click. There were a few moments where I got stuck because I apparently missed a certain spot on an object I already examined multiple times, simply due to the fact that I was examining it just a couple pixels away from where the game wanted me to. I should also warn you that it’s one of those games where talking to NPCs multiple times in a row will yield different results or, in some cases, you will not be able to progress the dialogue chain until you examine either them or your surroundings. To be fair, if you are familiar with point-and-click adventure games or visual novels, this is all standard fare so you’ll feel right at home. The game also has a built in hint system where Hunter will light a cigarette and “think” about what he needs to do next.

The game features a really jazzy soundtrack which does the job, but it’s nothing that will stick in your head hours later. My favorite song was the one used during the “talk profiles” where you confront a person of interest, interrogate them and try to get them to tell you information they may be hiding with the help of the evidence you have gathered up to that point. The character art is very detailed and I guess you could say looks a bit more “real” than your typical anime style art, thanks to clever use of shading to give a lot of depth to their features which make the characters stand out. The backgrounds are also drawn in a way to look more realistic. It all looks quite nice and compliments the relatively gritty nature of the story and atmosphere really well.

Jake Hunter Detective Story: Ghost of the Dusk will last you about 10-12 hours. This 3DS package justifies the $39.99 price tag by including a few bonus cases which are ports of mobile entries in the series. There are also hidden passwords to find throughout the main game that can be entered. These unlock all sorts of bonuses including sound tests, character profiles, interviews with the developers and a CG gallery. Overall Ghost of the Dusk is a decent visual novel that’s held back by a localization that tried a bit too hard to appeal to an audience that likely wasn’t interested in this kind of title to begin with. Aksys Games should know better and quite frankly this is concerning. I fear they may have written themselves into a corner and have to now stick with it in order to be consistent with future games. Case in point, a new title in the series was recently released for the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. However the game was rated in Korea as Jake Hunter Detective Story: Prism of Eyes, suggesting that they are intending on localizing this one and keeping the Jake Hunter name. Should that actually be the case, we might be stuck with all the pointless localization changes made in the releases by Aksys Games and that’s a shame. As for Ghost of the Dusk, I can recommend it to those of you who really enjoy the genre and are looking for one to play on the 3DS. It may not be the best the system has to offer, but you might enjoy it for what it is.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy provided by the publisher

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If I was able to go back in time to talk to my teenage self, one of the most shocking revelations would be that Final Fantasy is no longer my favorite video game series. Even though I didn’t really like Final Fantasy XV, it hasn’t really been a fall from grace that has changed my opinion. What has changed is the consistent quality of every successive entry in the Shin Megami Tensei series of games. After the release of my personal game of the year, Persona 5, there was just no denying that I was a total fanboy of this series. Even though my first game in the series was Revelations: Persona on the PlayStation, I have played almost every single entry since then no matter what universe it is in. As such, I had already spent a lot of time on the original Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey when it was released on the Nintendo DS. While it wasn’t a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination (in particular for its brutal difficulty), there was a lot to love about that game. So the news of a updated version of that game was definitely welcome.

This isn’t a Persona game, but the characters are still well developed.

One of the primary reasons Strange Journey stood out so much from other Shin Megami Tensei games is that it is an adult story starring exclusively adults. The only other game from this team that I can remember being so adult focused was Catherine, a game that came out years later. But instead of being relationship focused, the focus of this game is mostly on science and the power of human innovation. Also how those advances in human civilization can have a difficult time interfacing with the overall evolution of the species. In most of the SMT games science seems to cause more trouble than it is worth. The events of each game are almost always the result of some scientific pursuit gone awry. In Strange Journey, the Schwartzchild Sphere is the result of humans trying to advance past their nascent phase of deity worship. And science is the answer to the problem, instead of causing the problem. This is something that I always found quite refreshing about the game. At many points the story turns into competency porn (a term coined to describe entertainment which focuses on people that are great at something), which is something that I love. Another interesting consequence of this story subject is that the team formed is multinational instead of entirely focused on Japan. While the demons that you summon in every SMT game have always been multi-ethnic in their origins, the stories have almost always been centered in Japan.

Pro tip: be wary of angels, even when they bear gifts.

For those who have primarily played the Persona entries in the series, you may be surprised to discover that this game is much more like the main SMT series with its focus on character alignment instead of relationships. The original SMT: Strange Journey had three different endings and each one depended on your main character’s alignment when you reached the final dungeon (between Law, Neutral, and Chaos). All your individual choices you make during the game, and there are many of them, will sway your alignment towards the Law side or to the Chaos side. By responding in my natural way I always ended up far in the Law once I reached that point. So I always had to make a concerted effort to get back to Neutral in order to get the best ending. As I have discussed in other reviews, the general Western tendency towards viewing things in Black and White is not an Eastern way. As such, you should generally expect that Neutral or Balance is the best path in almost any Shin Megami Tensei game. This game actually makes that choice even more relevant by making your two closest compatriots in the Investigation Squad tie directly into your alignment choices (nothing further on that to avoid spoilers).

The dungeons are decidedly old school, but still fun.

Like the main series of games, the battles happen in first person view so you never see your characters in the battle screen (unlike Persona). Also like the main series, this game’s battles can be brutally difficult if you aren’t careful. There are ways that this updated version addresses that (more on that below), but on Normal and above difficulty you still have a fairly high chance of getting wiped out if you aren’t paying close attention. The main reason is that your main character is a huge liability. In the original version of this game, if the main character is killed or turned into stone it’s game over. You will never have any additional human party members, it is always your one character with their Demonica and 3 summoned demons. This is a very old school approach to RPGs, and that also applies to the dungeons in general. This game could also be classified as a dungeon crawler, it has all the hallmarks of that sub-genre. But this is still a very good example of a dungeon crawler, the maps are a lot more interesting than other examples of that genre that have come out years after. There were certain dungeons that were difficult enough to become frustrating, but those issues have also been addressed in Redux.

A Switch version would have been nice, but there are advantages to a dual screen.

So what all was added to Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux, and is it enough to justify a 2nd purchase for those of us who played the original game? The first thing to get out of the way is that this game is much more like Persona 4: Golden than it is SMT IV: Apocalypse. There is additional content that changes the game. But everything from the previous game is still there. There are 3 additional endings, but you can still choose to end the game with one of the original 3 endings. Like with P4:G, there is an additional story character that has been added and an end game dungeon that also changes the game’s ending. However, one improvement even on that fantastic game is that there is also a major new dungeon that has been added for you to play through during the main game story as well. The Womb of Grief opens up very early on in the game, almost as soon as you reach the 2nd Sphere. It is a 6 level dungeon and each subsequent level becomes available for you to explore as soon as you upgrade your Door Unlock App or your Door Find App. There are several reasons you will want to explore this new dungeon fully. The first is simply that it is the best designed dungeon in the game, and it’s quite fun to explore. But more than that, you also get new demons from that dungeon that were never in the original game. Some of them are fairly minor, but there are also super powerful boss level demons that become available through Special Fusion.

Even better than that, you will find a lot of new Forma in this dungeon that will give you some good gear and even better Sub Apps. While this game tempered the difficulty of the original by including a new difficulty selection, the main aspect that improves on the original is the new formulas that you gain in this dungeon. Examples of some great sub apps: one that allows you to not game over if the Main Character dies but your demons survive the fight, one that warns you before you step on a teleport panel or trapdoor, one that shows you where hidden doors are when you pass them (instead of having to always look at the walls), and one that completely removes all panel effects such as poison/damage/sleep. There are others, but those are game changers. The other subtle way that it makes the game easier is that your levels will shoot up well beyond what they were in the original game just by completing each massive floor.

Alex is the crux of the new story.

The mysterious Alex, who is very hostile towards your character, is the focal point of the new additions to the story. For most of the game she is entirely focused on making roadkill out of you, so do not take her lightly. What you do about her from there will affect which of the three new endings you are able to access, at least to my knowledge. Unfortunately I only had the time to be able to test out one of the endings, but I have a good idea of how I could have gotten at least one other. The nice thing about Alex is that she really helps patch up one of the major complaints over the first game, which was an abrupt and seemingly meaningless ending. That, along with the difficulty, are the two things that you will find most often complained about with Strange Journey, even though it was a generally well received game. She looks cool even while beating your ass, so that is a plus. But the farther you get into the game and the more you see of her motivations, it may make you sympathize with her. She is certainly the hero of her own story, it’s up to you to decide whether you side with her or not.

After so much time with Pokemon For Adults, it’s hard to go back to the other.

There are some minor graphical improvements and the music seems to be a bit more clear. But the largest improvement in that department is the fantastic opening cinematic and a few scattered cinematic scenes that were added in this version. You can easily tell which scenes were from the original by how grainy they are. But they are still functional. The new demons, some completely new to the series, all have wonderful art. It might be a negative to some that there is no English dub, but frankly I always play SMT games in Japanese so that doesn’t effect me at all. And the voice acting is quite good, especially for a portable game. This is a very long game, it took me just over 110 hours to see as much as I could with one playthrough. But there are additional regions you can go to in New Game+, also additional demons that you can battle and then fuse. So 110 hours is probably about half of what I will end up spending, especially if I want to finish out my Demon Compendium (it’s at 94% currently). I definitely consider this game well worth the $39.99 whether you played the original or not. They took a game that was really good, but rough around the edges, and made it what it always had the potential of being. I enjoyed Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse slightly more, but they are both masterpieces and two of the greatest games on the Nintendo 3DS regardless of genre. I’m not sure when the ATLUS SMT team will make a genuinely bad game, but it’s not this one. They are on an amazing streak and should be applauded for it.

Review Score
Overall

Review Copy Provided By The Publisher

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I’m not going to claim to have known much about The Alliance Alive going into it. I knew it was an RPG published by Atlus, and developed by FuRyu, but that’s more or less where my familiarity with it ended. It’s a successor of sorts to The Legend of Legacy, sharing much of its team with that game. I never played The Legend of Legacy, so everything I know about it is second-hand; I went into The Alliance Alive with a truly fresh perspective.

Alliance Alive is set in a world after a large-scale war between humans and a powerful race known as Daemons, a thousand years prior to the story’s beginning. The humans were defeated, and the Daemons sealed the world off from the sky with the Great Barrier. The world was further divided into five realms on four separate continents, separated by a dangerous, corrupted, cross-shaped area of ocean known as the Dark Current. The story begins with a boy named Galil and his childhood friend Azura, living in the city of Svalna in the Rain Realm. Azura wants nothing more than to see the blue sky, which at that point is nothing more than a legend. The early parts of the story jump between the perspectives of three main groups of adventurers, hailing from different realms of the human world, before they meet up and the story begins for real. Once the world truly opens up – roughly 20 hours in – the player is tasked with building an alliance between the world’s five human guilds to fight back against the Daemons. Galil and Azura team up with fellow Svalna resistance members Renzo and Barbarosa, the eccentric Daemon noble Vivian and her butler Ignace, and the Burning Realm’s young inventor and scientist Tiggy with her power suit Swan Song.

I really wish it was easier to see myself on the world map.

I found that the early portions of the game somewhat sell it short. Although the game is never truly open – there’s always one place you have to go before you can visit later areas – it gives a much greater sense of freedom, as the game puts you in charge of the five guilds. You can gather new guild applicants and guildmaster candidates as you explore the world and talk to NPCs, building various guild towers at specific points in the world and assigning your applicants to the various guilds. Each guild provides its own benefits, which increase as you assign new members to it. In addition, being close to guild towers during combat has them sending you aid in combat. The openness is nice and never feels overwhelming, even after you realize that it’s more or less just the illusion of freedom.

Weapons are divided into eight categories, with seven (as well as unarmed) usable by everyone with the other usable only by Tiggy. Each weapon type has a series of skills associated with it, which a character awakens gradually by using a weapon type in combat. In addition to gaining new, stronger skills, using a skill repeatedly will also cause it to advance, growing stronger when used in specific positions in combat. The formation of your five active party members can be changed, placing your team members in three different lanes and giving them positions divided into attack, defense, and support categories that provide different stat boosts. Through combat your party members’ HP and SP will increase, seemingly at random intervals, as well as gaining Talent points, or TP. TP can be spent on Talents for each weapon type as well as magical Signimancy or Sorcery, although Sorcery is only usable by Daemon or Beastfolk party members. The Talents have effects such as reducing SP costs for skills, increasing position bonuses or improving skill acquisition rates; as well as miscellaneous effects such as reducing enemy detection ranges in the overworld, improving SP recovery rates in combat, or reducing prices at stores.

Tiny foxgirl with a huge sword.

Combat otherwise is pretty standard, aside from the formation and position systems. Each character’s skills are sorted into categories: the two weapons they have equipped, Signimancy or Sorcery they can use, unarmed skills, retreat, and whatever other items they have equipped. In order to use consumable items in combat, you need to equip them individually, or one of the pieces of equipment that let you access your full inventory. When a character has their HP reduced to 0, any further damage dealt to them will reduce their max HP, which gets restored after sleeping at an inn or guild tower. Aside from the unusual advancement system, there’s not much to criticize here.

The advancement system is strange; actually using TP doesn’t seem to have much immediate effect, and it feels like the main way of becoming stronger is by making stronger spells cost less to use. Aside from HP and SP, base stats never increase permanently, but they can be temporarily increased or decreased depending on a character’s equipment. While I found the system confusing at first, it grew on me as I progressed through the game and advanced my characters’ skills and Talents.

Most of the game plays out like this, which I’m fine with.

The Alliance Alive’s visuals are pleasing, with incredibly varied environments to be found throughout the different Realms, although I found the enemy variety somewhat lacking, with many just being palette swaps of others. The characters are done in a nice chibi style, with flashy weapon designs and some very pretty pre-rendered cut-scenes. The towns have an interesting almost hand-drawn style, although it sometimes makes it tricky to tell where you can and can’t walk. I also found that the camera angle in the overworld was too low and zoomed too far out, and although it can be rotated it’s not possible to change the camera angle in other ways.

None of the dialogue in The Alliance Alive is voiced, which is odd during the pre-rendered sequences, which have subtitles and seem to play out as though they were voiced even though they aren’t. The music is fine, but ultimately forgettable. There’s no regular battle theme, with most regular fights just using the regular overworld music for the area. As well, the music seemed to be really low in the audio mix with all the in-game volume settings maxed out. I had to turn up the volume quite high on my 3DS to be able to hear the music, and even then it still seemed too quiet compared to other sounds with the default settings.

As much as it seems like it should be voiced, nothing here is.

The Alliance Alive doesn’t seem particularly difficult or unforgiving, unless you choose to tackle superbosses or particularly powerful enemies. Optional content comes mainly in the form of optional party members and advancing the guilds, each of which provides their own benefits. Otherwise fights are generally fairly straightforward, provided you keep your team up-to-date with new equipment as you progress. Unfortunately, the game is quite stingy with money, meaning that keeping your team properly equipped is difficult aside from the few times that a character will give you large sums of money all at once. The Talents that reduce store prices and increase the money to be made by selling items become a necessity later on.

Alliance Alive is a well-made classic-style RPG. It has endearing characters and an engaging story, as well as some great, colorful visuals. It has its quirks, like the unusual and sometimes unclear progression system, and the ultimately forgettable music. Also, some of the button layouts in menus can be unusual, such as pressing the L button to confirm when creating a new formation while it’s not used for that function anywhere else. After a slow start, it picks up as it adds more layers to the story and opens up the diverse world. My single playthrough took around 40 hours, but it can go longer depending on how much time you spend grinding or doing optional content. It’s a solid game for $39.99 USD if you’re into RPGs, provided you’re interested in learning about its unusual systems and mechanics.

Easily the prettiest area in the game.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy provided by publisher.

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The original Radiant Historia released at an odd time for Atlus. Like many of Atlus’s titles around the time, the original Radiant Historia never released in European territories, meaning many Europeans like myself never got around to playing the original game. With this enhanced port releasing for the 3DS in the twilight years of its life, Europeans will finally be able to play this game without importing, as well as everyone else who missed out the first time around. I decided to take this opportunity to check this game out for the first time.

The boxart for the original Radiant Historia. It released in Japan and North America exclusively for the DS.

Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology is at its heart a time travel story. You play as Stocke, the rightful holder of the White Chronicle. The White Chronicle is a magical book that allows Stocke to travel back to significant moments in recent history as well as an alternate history in order to progress through both timelines as you seek to put an end to your current situation. The wider story arc is that the nations of Alistel and Granorg are at war and you must play your role as well as finding a way to stop the desertification of the continent where Radiant Historia is set. The plot starts slow but begins to expand significantly the further in the game you go. Radiant Historia tells a very touching story that calls back to traditional RPGs. Furthermore, there are plenty of emotional tear-jerking scenes that aid immersion the farther in the game you go. Due to there being two timelines in the main world, depth is added to the story. Characters that die in one timeline are alive in another and vice versa. Items you cannot acquire in one timeline can be easily obtained in another.

We can always rely on good ol’ Thunder to kill a robot chicken.

Perfect Chronology adds a third timeline compared to the original two in the DS release. The “possible history” has you meet Nemesia, a historian also seeking to stop the desertification. She has you enter variations in history based on the original history (the DS timelines) to recover Artefacts. The character development is expanded on with items obtained in the Possible History triggering new events at certain times in the Main History. Unfortunately, I couldn’t finish the Possible History, however I am sure that doing so leads to a new ending in the Original History. However, Atlus has designed the game so that the story can be told in two ways. You can either play through all of the Radiant Historia story content before doing the additional story content exclusive to Perfect Chronology or you can play through the game with the additional story content woven into the story. I chose the former as that was recommended to new players.

These two characters, Lippti and Teo, serve as your guides throughout your adventure.

The gameplay is turn-based RPG style with an emphasis on positions. The enemies appear on a grid of nine squares. The further back the enemies are, the less damage they will take from physical attacks. Enemies can be pushed around either vertically or horizontally depending on the skills each party member has. Enemies can be pushed into each other and damage can occur on every enemy when you hit it with the same attack. You can also change the turn order, have other party members support you, as well as use the Mana Burst system, thus adding strategic depth to gameplay. Ailments like fear, paralysis and petrification will be familiar to those that have played other Atlus games. You will need to master the battle system quickly as Radiant Historia is a challenging yet satisfying game on the higher difficulties. By contrast, the “Friendly” difficulty makes the game significantly easier. I would argue that it makes it too easy. I had played a bit of the game on easy to get a feel for the new accessibility settings which are becoming increasingly common in Atlus games. Battles are a cakewalk and aside from non-optional battles, you don’t have to fight a single enemy on the field. In fact, you can kill every enemy by attacking them with your sword and gain all the experience points required.

Enemies will take less damage if they hide behind shields. Best to take the shields down first.

Graphically this game looks pretty good for a late-in-life 3DS port. The atmosphere is detailed with plenty of variety. It is reminiscent of traditional RPGs. The character portraits also are well drawn and have a good amount of detail. It fits the atmosphere well. Many fans dislike the new artstyle used in this port, however I personally prefer them to the portraits in the original. Notably, the original character portraits have been cut out of the game and sold as DLC. This is a big no-no, especially as some fans didn’t like the new art when the title was first revealed. The music also has a good variety of tunes. Composed by Yoko Shimomura, those who are familiar with her work already will feel at home listening to the music. The battle themes are particularly interesting.

The new CGs are very good and well drawn. There aren’t many of them but they all appear in key moments of the game’s story.

That said, I felt there were a couple of other questionable localisation decisions surrounding the game. For instance, the game does not include the Japanese audio, hence this game is dub only. The dub here is very good and one of the better dubs to be made by Atlus, however the option for Japanese audio should still be included for those that want it as most other publishers are as consistent with this as possible. It’s even more odd considering Atlus have started bringing over Japanese audio for some of their other games such as Persona 5. Secondly, it feels like too much game content has been cut out of the base game and added as DLC – namely side missions, and both chibi art and the original character portraits. It’s questionable, especially as this game is labelled as a “perfect” edition of the game.

The Kindom of Alistel is the most industrialised and urban compared to Granorg and Cygnus, the other two major kingdoms on the continent.

To conclude, Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology is a brilliant game. It is a time travel story done well with lots of depth. Traditional RPGs like this are becoming rarer these days, hence games like this are to be treasured when they turn up. It took me 45 hours to clear Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology before spending another five hours on the Possible History. If like me you missed the original DS release this title is not worth missing out on the second time around. I suggest that you pick it up if you are an RPG fan. In other words – an essential title.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy supplied by the publisher for review purposes

The post REVIEW: Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology appeared first on oprainfall.

Any video game series of sufficient length will show that progress is never a straight line. There are a couple main reasons for returning to the well of your past, and certainly Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth applies to one of them. The more positive spin on reversal in idea progression is that you are perhaps returning to your series roots as a way of hearkening back to the old days and capitalizing on some of the nostalgia within your particular franchise fans. A good example of this is happening very soon with the extremely popular Call of Duty franchise, going back to World War 2 for the first time in many years, a move applauded by most gaming sites that you’ll run across. The less positive spin on this return to old ways is as a corrective measure for what many people felt was your franchise going a bridge too far. Often this reasoning for stepping back will be obfuscated by a large amount of PR spin, so it can be difficult to nail down if that is really the cause, but one of the most famous examples would probably be Final Fantasy IX as a response to fan reactions to Final Fantasy VIII. While many people were still fond of the setting and story of Final Fantasy VIII, it is still difficult to this day to find many people who are fans of the spell drawing or junctioning systems. I feel like Etrian Odyssey probably falls into the latter category in this case, even though five games is not nearly as long running of a franchise as either of those previous examples. It has been interesting reading some of the online chatter surrounding this release among the series fans because previously I did not realize that many people did not seem to like the direction that ATLUS took in Etrian Odyssey IV, because I truly loved that game (much more than our website reviewer did at the time). And that has really affected the way that I have reacted to its sequel.

The Yggdrasil Tree is back, and it’s time to climb.

It’s not particularly surprising that they removed the extra mode of transportation, the boat, for their next entry. But what was more surprising is that they did not take any cues from the Untold remakes of the first two games, or Etrian Odyssey IV, and add in any extra story. In fact, the game in the series that this title most resembles is the non-remake version of Etrian Odyssey II. Right from the beginning you will see the similarities when you open the game up with finding out that the Yggdrasil Tree is back as the central focus, and you are just one guild among many who are climbing the tree to test your mettle and become famous in your town. There is no existential threat that you know of, and people generally enter the labyrinth just to hunt for materials and food. No one has been beyond the 3rd Stratum of the Labyrinth in the known history of the town, so the Yggdrasil Tree has remained just a curiosity of the people living there. And, that is about the sum total of the information that you are given.

As you journey higher into the dungeon you will find a few special adventurers that have made it to the 2nd and 3rd Stratum, and they will fill you in on some more personal details. But really the only minor clues to any past in the labyrinth are done through the many sidequests that you can take as you climb (usually 2 per level of the labyrinth). That was true all the way up until about the 5th Stratum and definitely the 6th (about 90% of the game), and while I am not going to delve into spoilers, I do need to make one or two points about the end game. If that would have been truly all the story there was to this game, it would have knocked my score down a bit, possibly one full star. While I recognize that as a hardcore dungeon crawler at heart, the Etrian Odyssey series used to not have any story at all. But that had changed in the series over time, and I really did like that change. So, thankfully, when you do reach the end of the game, and especially the 6th Stratum (which only unlocks after you beat the main game), it was refreshing that I started to get more of a story and a lore that set this game apart from EO 1-3.

Drawing out your map on the 3DS is still super satisfying.

Okay, that is enough for now about what this game isn’t—it’s time to address what it is. The Etrian Odyssey games are really known for two things: drawing out the map using the DS and 3DS stylus, and their brutal difficulty. For the former, this game is actually a little bit better than previous entries. Those options you see with the map drawing above are obviously collapsed to their most widely used features. But you can drag out each of those tabs (particularly the bottom one) and have access to a wide array of symbols that you would want to denote on your map, many of which are exclusive to several Stratums that you will visit. A Stratum is a specific area of a labyrinth that is set apart and grouped together as part of a particular theme. This was true of every Etrian Odyssey game, except for Etrian Odyssey IV which just had separate dungeons instead of separate Stratums. The standard for the older games was that you had 5 Stratum in total and you would map out each floor of the labyrinth as much as possible before you moved on. Inevitably, each floor would have an area that was blocked off by a locked door, requiring a Master Key, or by an impassible blockade that you would have to wait until you completed the game to come back to. In that way each level of the labyrinth was actually about double the size that you initially thought it was, but you may not have known that unless you engaged in the post game content.

So I was rather shocked when I discovered the Master Key in this game by exploring in the 4th Stratum. It turns out that only the first three Stratum have those locked off areas, and even though there are a couple stronger creatures in them, they do not represent the post game content. Instead, after you defeat the initial final boss and roll the credits you just continue on as if the credits never happened and you can enter a 6th stratum beyond that. And I would strongly recommend you do so, because while the 5th Stratum is interesting and a little different than other EO games, the 6th Stratum is way different than anything that has ever been seen in the series. It was, in fact, the highlight of the entire game for me. It is actually very interesting that both of the previous two dungeon crawler RPGs have chosen to make the most different and most interesting dungeons only available after you finished the game, Etrian Odyssey V and Mary Skelter: Nightmares.

FOE are back, and it wouldn’t be EO without them.

As to the famous difficulty of this series, that is mostly still applicable in this game, but with a few changes. It’s perhaps not surprising that there are now two difficulty modes, Basic and Advanced, which you can choose when you start the game. A little surprising for this series is that you can actually now change the difficulty at any time from the Options Menu. Basic is a little easier than Advanced, and Advanced is closer to the difficulty that you are used to if you’re a fan of the series. But the largest change in the Basic difficulty is that each time you enter the labyrinth you are given one chance to redo after a complete party wipe. It still should be pretty rare to completely wipe though, because not only are the enemies a bit easier with a few less instant kills, but you can run from almost any enemy. You can even run from FOE enemies, so really it’s only Stratum end bosses and special quest battles where you are ambushed.

The FOEs are very large enemies that you can see move around on the map (as you see above) and you will generally want to avoid them until you are of a power sufficient to take out the end boss of that Stratum. But they are actually a little easier this time around, even on Advanced difficulty. Particularly for some party compositions, as long as you can mitigate their increased damage, it’s not really all that difficult to take them out. My standard way of taking out each Stratum was to fill in the map as completely as possible on each Floor until I reached the 5th Floor of that Stratum and reached the final door before that Stratum boss. You are always given a warning when that happens so you don’t accidentally stumble into their room, and at that point I go back and defeat all of the FOEs in each of the previous floors, collecting their monster parts to upgrade my gear to the boss killer levels. That remained true until the last half of the game, the 4th Stratum and beyond, but I’ll go into the reasons for that soon.

More Dungeon Crawling on Page 2 ->

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I’m probably the last writer at oprainfall who should have reviewed Creeping Terror. Not because I don’t like horror, mind you. I’m inexplicably drawn to it and find it fascinating when done well. No, the reason it shouldn’t have been me is because I’m easily terrified. Of the dozen or so horror games I personally own, I have beaten about four of them. I get drawn in early on with the chills and thrills, and those same scares later have me cowering in a corner (figuratively speaking). It actually took me a year to beat the original Dementium after I started it, and that’s like a 6-hour game, max. But I wanted to prove to myself that I could improve my track record, so I took it upon myself to review Creeping Terror. Published by Aksys and developed by Nikkatsu, mebius and Sushi Typhoon Games, it’s the story of a group of friends who go to a rumored haunted house and quickly find things spiraling out of control. The question is, was Creeping Terror the perfect game to motivate me? Or should I hide it in the corner of my room?

The game starts out pretty calm, with notes of Scooby Doo camaraderie between the group of Arisa, Bob, Emily and Ken, but then gets tense and creepy very fast. Early on protagonist and affable exchange student Arisa gets separated from her friends and finds herself waking up in a mysterious cavern. Here the game teaches you how to interact with the touchscreen and basic controls. You can access them either by pressing X and then using the D-pad or by using the stylus, but when I was in a hurry, I used X since doing so freezes whatever is currently happening, which can give you some much-needed breathing room. Using either control setup, you can access 4 things – your inventory of usable one time items, key items (which work automatically in the right situation), informative files and your handy map. The other key element of gameplay is making use of limited light to navigate shadowy corridors. Your only source of light is an app on Arisa’s cell phone. The catch is, as you use it, the battery slowly drains, and once it’s depleted, you’re literally in the dark. Besides making things harder to see and inherently creepier, the darkness works against you physically. When you have the light on and run across some debris in the path, you will automatically avoid it, but if the light’s off, you’ll trip over it. Which wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for the last aspect of gameplay – the chase sequences.

C’mon Arisa, just let the nice man show you his shovel!

There are plenty of pulse-pounding chases peppered throughout the game, and there are various antagonists which want nothing more than to corner and murder you. Being that this is a horror game, you can’t kill these foes (you can stun them temporarily if you have a stone handy), but can only escape and hide from them. As you walk through the game you will come across designated hiding spaces, and all you have to do when you encounter them is press A, and Arisa will turn off her light and duck and cover. However, if you don’t hide fast enough, the foes will find you, and if you don’t wait long enough for them to leave the room, they will resume their attack. Thankfully, there is a saving grace, and that’s the evasion skill. When a foe catches you, it’s not instantly game over. You’re given a chance to rapidly press the A button to throw them off you and temporarily stun them, letting you run for cover. However, you can’t rely on this, since successfully evading them costs you stamina, and while being chased, your health and stamina are the same meter. Essentially, that means that each time it will get harder to fight back and harder to run away from them. So your best bet is still to run and hide quickly. For that reason, it’s very important you keep mental track of hiding spaces you find and dashing to them when you need to get away. You can do so by holding R to run, but that drains your stamina as well, so it’s a delicate balance of cat and mouse.

Though the map is small, you can use the stylus to maneuver around and see interconnected rooms. You can also use the tabs to open up maps for other areas you’ve explored, which is quite handy for when you need to backtrack. I appreciated that the map has icons to show you which doors are locked and which corridors are impassable. Most importantly, the map keeps track of the rare safe rooms, where you replenish your health and phone charge automatically whenever you return. My one complaint about the map is that it doesn’t identify hiding spaces, though I can understand that perhaps doing so would take away the element of horror when being chased. However, I would have appreciated some notepad functionality so that, if a player wanted, they could denote key things about rooms themselves. One way that the game exceeded my expectations is that you can save your game at any time, so long as you’re not being chased. This makes the game feel more open-ended and helps give you the freedom to explore, though if you get lost, you can check your current objective on the top of the touch screen.

For better of or worse, Creeping Terror hearkens back to old-school horror with a limited inventory (you can only hold 6 things at a time) and no discernible way to store extra items. Furthermore, items can be used even if you don’t need to, so be extra careful with food rations and phone chargers. I would have even appreciated the option to drop items I didn’t need on the floor, to help make room for others. Another tribute to horror games of yore are the many files you’ll find scattered around. These vary from newspaper clippings to journals and more, and they provide great backstory to the sinister events surrounding the story. I won’t ruin anything, but there is a lot more going on than just a haunted house, and the deeper I got into the game, the more intrigued I became. Best of all, there are multiple endings to the game. I only got the basic ending and wasn’t able to resolve all the plot threads satisfactorily. So if you find yourself getting drawn in, you’ll have some replay value to keep you going.

In a game like Creeping Terror, atmosphere is everything, and I’m happy to say it delivers. The heavy darkness that coats every surface makes it so you never feel truly safe, and the adept use of lighting provides fantastic contrast. I also like how the game uses occasional visual cues to warn you of impending danger, such as fog rolling in. However, don’t make my mistake and get cocky, since the game does keep you on your toes by playing with your expectations on a pretty regular basis. While the game isn’t visually stunning, neither is it ugly. It merely makes use of what I refer to as PS2 graphical standards, which is fine for a portable experience. However, one area that I was blown away was the 3D. I rarely use the 3D toggle on my 3DS, so you can imagine my surprise when I turned it on and found it enhanced all the things I most enjoyed about the game. The tension and menace are palpable with the 3D turned on, and it served to make the experience more enjoyable and polished. While you can pick the game up on Steam, for this reason alone I would recommend you get it on your 3DS.

On the sound side of things, the game mostly does a good job of keeping you startled and wary. The ambient noises, such as whistling wind, creaking doors and even the heavy pad of Arisa’s shoes help draw the player in. I like how there is no real urgency to the music until a chase occurs, which cranks the energy all the way up. The only sound that felt out of place to me was in the Mansion area, and it’s what I refer to as the “purring flatulence” sound effect. I can’t describe it better than that, but you’ll know it when you hear it. It didn’t ruin my immersion, rather it provided a release for my stress as I cautiously made my way around, trying to avoid contact with constant threats. And while the game doesn’t include voice acting, it has surprisingly solid localization. There are no hokey misspellings that take away from the mood, and I’m very happy about that.

Overall, Creeping Terror was a revelation in my horror gaming experience. In my 4-hour playthrough, I was constantly on edge, yet kept putting one foot in front of the other in my attempt to find out what was actually happening. Though I did manage to get Arisa safely home, I didn’t get the best ending, so I will assuredly be playing it again very soon. If you’re a fan of horror and own a 3DS, Creeping Terror is a bargain at $8.99. Aksys has published a winner here, and I hope they continue to bring over unique and creepy titles.

Review Score
Overall

Review Copy Provided by Publisher

The post REVIEW: Creeping Terror appeared first on oprainfall.

Culdcept Revolt is a hybrid between a card game and a board game from developer Ohmiya Soft. This game is in commemoration of the series’ 20^th anniversary, originally starting on the Saturn. We’ve only had a couple games in this series localized, and we didn’t get the last one, so it’s nice to have this one.

The protagonist of our story wakes up with amnesia, and the first order of business is to teach him how to play a card game. Pretty soon you find yourself in the company of a group that calls themselves the Free Bats, a group of rebels opposing the local government. People that can use these cards are apparently special, and the Count of the city has ordered all such people be killed. The story from there involves trying to restore your lost memories and escape this heavily guarded city.

The gameplay in Culdcept Revolt is fairly simple to learn. You move around a board, which has tiles corresponding to the elements of fire, earth, water, and air. When you land on one of these tiles, you can summon a monster from the cards in your hand. If an opponent lands on a tile you own, they have to pay a toll. You can level up these monsters, which increases the toll they have to pay. It’s not too dissimilar from buying property in Monopoly.

Unlike Monopoly though, if you land on an opponent’s monster, you can instead challenge them for its ownership. This brings you into a little duel between their monster and a monster of your choice. You also have item cards that can augment your monsters health and strength, giving you an advantage. If the monster and the tile they’re placed on are the same element, this also gives a boost to their health points. The more monsters you have on one type of element, the bigger the boost will be. There are spell cards you can use that can do things like changing how you move around the board, or do damage to opponent’s monsters.

The goal here is to acquire a certain amount of magic points before your opponents do. You get some magic points from summoning monsters, and doing things like making complete laps around the board. The best way to get them though is from opponents landing on your properties and having to pay a toll, or you landing on their properties and defeating their monster.

If that sounded too complicated, don’t worry, Culdcept Revolt does a really good job of easing you into it and slowly introducing all its concepts. Once you get just one game under your belt, you should be good to go. Even though the game is simple, there is quite a bit of depth to it. Like any good card game, you need to build a deck intelligently with cards that can work together.

In the story mode, most matches will be one on one, but there are also 3-way and 2 vs 2 games. I think I preferred just one on one though. The biggest reason is just that you don’t have to wait so long for opponents to take their turn. Depending on what they do, turns can last quite a while. The 2 vs 2 games are pretty interesting though, and allow for different kinds of strategy. You can interact with your allies’ monsters and they can interact with yours.

One thing I really liked about the cards, which helped a lot in my deck building, is that each one has a little blurb on how to effectively use the card. Some are better at attacking other monsters, some are better at defending, some receive buffs in certain conditions, etc. It’s very beginner friendly in this way, and allows you to better strategize. Forming strategies is often fairly easy. Card elements tend to have a natural synergy with each other. Fire and earth work well together, and wind and water work well together. Some items or spells only work on monsters of certain elements or get bonuses. Using cards that work well together is key to building a good deck.

There is a ton of content in this game. The story is broken down into chapters and each one has main quests and side quests. Main quests propel the story along while side quests flesh out the characters a little bit. Once you beat the game, you also unlock post-game chapters and a slew of challenge chapters. It will take you quite some time to work through all of it. I recommend focusing on the main quest line at first, as the side quests were noticeably more difficult.

Being that this is part card game and part board game, luck can be a pretty big factor to deal with. This is particularly the case in the early game when most of your cards don’t have any kind of elaborate abilities. Sometimes it can feel like your opponent drew just the right card or had just the right dice roll to snatch victory away from you. For just random matches, I don’t think it’s a very big deal. When you’re in a story mode setting though, and you’re trying to make progress, it can be frustrating at times.

Visually, the game isn’t exactly pushing the 3DS hardware. There is some decent looking pixel art for the cutscenes. When you’re in a game, the boards all look very simple. The monster fights also don’t have a whole lot going on either. The character portrait art is very good, however. A fight consists of just a 3D model of a sword, fist, or some other weapon attacking the other card. At the very least, this means fights go by quickly.

The music is composed by Kenji Ito, who you might know from some of the Mana and Romancing SaGa games. The music here is definitely pleasant to listen to. The only issue is that matches are generally a minimum of half an hour long, and you get one song looped throughout the whole thing. As good as the music is, I can’t say I enjoy listening to the same thing for so long.

Overall though, I had a lot of fun with Culdcept Revolt, and I think the mechanics of board games and card games are blended really well. The story took me probably 25-30 hours to beat, but as I mentioned before, that’s practically just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what this game offers. I’m gonna be keeping this game on my 3DS for a while, I suspect. For $40, if you want a card game and don’t want to worry about microtransactions, this could certainly satisfy.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy was provided by the publisher.

The post REVIEW: Culdcept Revolt appeared first on oprainfall.

It’s a little hard to believe that it’s been 13 years since we got a proper Metroid game. The last traditional adventure in the series was 2004’s Metroid: Zero Mission, itself a sort of prequel and remake of the original NES game. Since that time, the series became more experimental, and flirted with the 3D first person shooting found in the Prime series as well as the incredibly divisive Other M. And that’s not to mention the unmentionable Federation Force, a game I still maintain doesn’t belong in the series. With Samus Returns, we got not only a return to form, but also the second intensive remake in the series. While I had played some of Metroid II: Return of Samus, the handheld adventure Samus Returns is based on, it frustrated me with several archaic design choices and hardware limitations. With Samus Returns, the experience is totally reimagined, with streamlined new mechanics as well as revamped and totally new boss encounters. The question is, does Samus Returns herald a new beginning for everyone’s favorite bounty huntress? Or should Samus curl up in a Morph Ball and power bomb the series into oblivion?

The adventure begins with a brief recap of the events of the original Metroid, presented with beautiful hand drawn art. Mother Brain may have been put down, but the threat presented by the Metroids still looms large, so Samus is sent by the Federation to SR388 in order to wipe them all out. That’s all the backstory you get, and really all you need for motivation. The series has always lived or died on atmosphere, combat and exploration, and all are on plentiful display here. The game will give you little hints and nudges in the right direction, but you will mostly have to rely on your own wits to find your way through, with some small provisos. One are the Metroid altars. When you first find them, you will be notified of a certain number of Metroids you need to hunt down to lower the purple miasma and provide a route to a new area. You can also return to altars after defeating at least one Metroid to plug in their DNA and reveal the location of any nearby Metroids.

Go on Samus, just roll into the statue’s gullet to get your new Aeion ability… Totally trustworthy.

The other feature that helps simplify things falls under the auspices of the brand new Aeion abilities. These work like any other upgrade, and must be first found in order to use them. There is a nice variety, ranging from tactical to combat, but the very first you get makes exploration a bit easier. This is the Scan Pulse, and it sends out a sonar pulse that reveals a bit of the map around you, as well as revealing hidden destructible blocks in your immediate vicinity. While I was worried this would make exploration too easy, I still got lost plenty of times. The Scan Pulse only serves to light your path, it doesn’t show you the way forward. Furthermore, since all Aeion abilities rely on a special meter, you won’t always have enough juice to activate them. Having said that, the Scan Pulse was always my go to ability, and the other Aeion abilities I only used when I was absolutely forced to (usually for puzzle solving).

Besides the Aeion abilities, there are a number of other improvements and changes to the experience. First, and perhaps most enjoyable, is the new counter attack. By timing it just right, and waiting til an enemy is about to connect with you, you can uppercut foes with your gauntleted fist, stunning them and allowing you a moment to unleash a torrent of firepower. I admit I was initially worried about MercurySteam handling the development of the game (Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate was fun, though it wasn’t really the Castlevania I love), but they have more than proven their skill to me in Samus Returns. The counter could have been one note or overpowered, but I found it nuanced and fun. I appreciated you could activate it a little early and still make it work, but also liked that it wouldn’t help you much when multiple enemies swarmed you at once. Best of all, it can make boss fights a little easier, but doesn’t remove the challenge. Another nifty new feature is the free aiming. By holding the L button, you can aim your cannon in any direction, allowing Samus to snipe pesky foes with ease. Though it does occasionally become a chore to hold the L button, especially when the game requires you to also hold the R button to select missiles, overall I had few complaints.

These guys aren’t so tough if you counter their attacks!

While the game isn’t what I would call linear, it does offer a distinct flow. You get to a new area, are told how many Metroids to hunt, find them as well as requisite suit upgrades, kill the Metroids, then return to the altar to reveal the way forward. The one nice thing is you won’t be able to get to a new area without finding the upgrades you need to progress. So if you’re worried about getting stuck, don’t be. I feared I had missed the Grapple Beam in Area 2, and thought I needed it to get anywhere in Area 3. As it turned out, I already had the upgrades required, and was able to find an alternate route using my nifty Spider Ball. Making things a bit easier is the return of Save Pedestals. You’ll note I didn’t say Save Room, since in Samus Returns, these are found out in the open. Further differentiating them, these Save areas don’t fully heal you or replenish your ammo. Instead, you’ll find separate terminals to charge your energy, ammo and Aeion meter. Though it would have been nice to have these all in one terminal, their separation does add a bit more challenge, and encourages you to get better at countering foes, since doing so successfully rewards you with more health and ammo. Lastly, this game takes a page from Castlevania’s playbook, and offers Warp Pedestals. These make backtracking much less of a hassle, and I hope they show up in future 2D Metroid games.

More Samus on Page 2 ->

The post REVIEW: Metroid: Samus Returns appeared first on oprainfall.

One would be forgiven for mistaking Chicken Wiggle for a mere Mutant Mudds clone. After all, it has the same artist, the talented Jools Watsham, as well as others from Renegade Kid, now under the umbrella of newly founded Atooi. It also shares a retro aesthetic with the platformer series (as the title screen says, retro roots, modern mojo). However, I can say with confidence that, despite some passing similarities, Chicken Wiggle is very much its own game. The only question then is, how enjoyable of a game was it?

The game starts simply enough, with a crazed witch astride a pogo stick (which I wish was incorporated into the epic boss fight) capturing chickens for some unknown reason. As she hops up a beanstalk towards a tower in the clouds, one of her captives drops free from her bag, and happens upon a lone worm. These are the titular heroes Chicken and Wiggle, and instead of turning upon each other, they defy the natural order and team up to rescue the captured fowl. It’s simple, and it’s really all the motivation or plot you’ll need.

Totally normal behavior, nothing to see here…

Unlike the simple premise, the combat is surprisingly nuanced. If Chicken was by himself, all he could do is hop and peck at foes right next to him, but with the aid of Wiggle in his backpack, all sorts of new options appear. Much like a proper Belmont, Chicken can whip his worm ally at anything in his path, opening up grappling options and temporarily stunning enemies. Pretty much any flat surface can be grappled to, with one small proviso – you can only extend Wiggle four blocks in any direction, and while you can hang from the ceiling forever, grappling to horizontal platforms will move you right to them and then drop you. Though things start pretty simply, you’ll quickly find yourself grappling to the ceiling to avoid invincible foes, whipping disappearing blocks in mid air, and all sorts of other crazy maneuvers. That’s before you take into account all the devices and costumes which mix things up. While there are too many to list, an example of a device is a hot air balloon, which takes you 10, 20 or 30 spaces before dropping you, or the accordion like block which, when whipped, extends towards you, and is pushed backwards by your pecks. As for the costumes, there’s a handful, but my favorites had to be the Demo Hat, which lets you break anything with your tiny beak, and the Jet Pack, which lends you a handy double jump. The game regularly introduces more items and hazards as you progress, and before you know it, a game that starts out very easy becomes surprisingly challenging.

The world of Chicken Wiggle is split into 8 areas, all with a different theme (Cloud, Treetop or Slumber, for example), composed of 5 standard levels and 1 Ghost level (much like in Mutant Mudds, these were especially clever). While all you technically have to do in order to beat a level is find and rescue the caged chicken ally at the end of each stage, you’re provided replay value in the form of collectible golden diamonds and letters which spell out FUN. I admit I was initially disappointed to discover that collecting all the items doesn’t serve to unlock anything, which is always a bummer. However, this didn’t bother me much for a couple of reasons. First of all, I still appreciated the extra challenge that went into finding all the hidden collectibles in each stage, and for another, Chicken Wiggle’s Level Editor more than made up for any lack of bonus stages.

Quite frankly, the Level Editor is what makes Chicken Wiggle well worth that $14.99 price tag. While the base game is good, the challenge and longevity will vary from person to person. I probably could have beaten the game in 5 hours or less and felt a little underwhelmed, but the Level Editor kept me coming back again and again. It’s a stroke of genius to incorporate such a robust and intuitive feature in a simple platformer, but I’m very glad Atooi did. All it requires to make a level is a stylus, a sense of creativity, and a willingness to drag and drop items from folders. Though it’s on a smaller scale, it’s no exaggeration that it plays much like Super Mario Maker. I instantly grasped how to use the Editor, and while I was surprised by some items which don’t appear in the main quest and perplexed by the function of a couple others, I was happy (and even a little overwhelmed) by the bounty of design choices. Not only can you you make any level you want on a huge canvas, you can also choose what sort of objective governs it. While you’re more than welcome to make levels where your only goal is to rescue your buddies, you can also make levels where you have to collect all the diamonds, find a key to escape, or even levels where the goal is to find and destroy all the foes. Once you’ve created a stage, you have to beat it yourself and then you can share it with the world. The possibilities are endless, and I’m very happy to hear we’ll be getting more official Atooi levels uploaded after the launch of the game. If you like user generated content, you’ll be playing Chicken Wiggle for a long time after you beat the main game.

While I encountered no bugs or glitches in my 9 hour playthrough, I did have one minor complaint and a couple of curiosities. While I love the Level Editor, I do wish you could open up levels you’ve beaten in the Editor, just to see how they were built and to better emulate Atooi and other creators’ smart design. But perhaps that was a programming hurdle that I can’t appreciate fully. Another thing I noticed was that enemies on screen freeze when you swing Wiggle, and stay frozen until he returns to you. At first I thought something was wrong, but quickly realized it was an intentional design choice. It was just strange that the game didn’t explain it when it demoed the control basics. Another oddity was that, in addition to pecking in the four cardinal directions, you can also peck the screen. Yes, Chicken Wiggle breaks the 4th wall (kind of). While it’s true I didn’t utilize the 3D much during my campaign, I did turn it on just to see how it looked while pecking the screen, and got a laugh out of it. That sort of quirk adds a lot of charm to the experience, much like the game saying “Eggcellent!” every time you beat a stage.

Some fun levels let you turn ghostly so you can fight bad spirits!

As far as the visual design, I was really pleased with the game. The pixel work is fantastic, displaying a colorful, cartoony world full of flying catbats, football helmet wearing eyeballs and all sorts of other delightful nonsense. Though the game perhaps skews a bit toward the younger audience, there’s still a lot to enjoy for the young at heart. On the topic of sound, my opinion changed depending on which world I was on. Each theme has a different soundtrack, and while I really liked some, such as Dusty Old Tower and Tubular Tower, others didn’t quite resonate with me or felt too low energy. The sound effects themselves suited the action, and never outstayed their welcome. They may not have wowed me, but they also didn’t detract from my experience.

In the end, I was very happy with Chicken Wiggle. While comparisons to Renegade Kid’s previous works are unavoidable, I felt it differentiated itself enough and more than made up for any deficit with the expansive Level Editor. While it’s true I was a little disappointed by the total lack of unlockable content, I found myself drawn into this strange new world, and desperately hoping for a bigger and crazier sequel. Atooi has proven it still has that magic touch when it comes to retro styled platformers, and I hope this is just the first of many successful new games. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have more levels to make!

What are you waiting for? Get playing!

Review Score
Overall

Review Copy Provided by Developer

The post REVIEW: Chicken Wiggle appeared first on oprainfall.

It might seem strange that someone who has never played a typical Pikmin game (despite picking up Pikmin 3 for my Wii U) would have been excited to try Hey! Pikmin, but that’s the case here. The reason being, this 2D outing reminded me strongly of another 3DS game, Chibi-Robo! Zip Lash, which I greatly enjoyed. There are two questions with Hey! Pikmin then. Is it more than a clone of Zip Lash and does it do a good job of translating the Pikmin appeal into a portable adventure?

Let’s get one thing out of the way, there is no grand story motivating Captain Olimar on his quest. He’s traveling home when he warps right into an asteroid field, damaging the Hocotate and sending it plummeting to a nearby planet. While Olimar and his talkative mechanical co-pilot the S.S. Dolphin II survive intact, the rest of his ship isn’t so lucky. It’s completely out of fuel, so Olimar sets out to find a substitute fuel source. Remarkably, the Dolphin II picks up a signal from an energy called Sparklium (depicted like a glowing yellow or orange acorn in game), and with 30,000 of it, the Hocotate will be shipshape once more. Best of all, the planet is rich with another peculiar resource, the plant like minions known as Pikmin! Blowing his whistle and mustering his troops (or slaves, depending on how dark you want to look at it) Olimar begins his journey to get back home.

The game itself is split into various sectors, each of which have several areas (including secret ones you unlock with alternate exits) as well as boss fights. Each of the early sectors introduces the special uses for different colored Pikmin (Red is fire proof, Blue can safely travel in water, Rock can shatter crystals etc.) and most sectors also have a theme. The first sector, Brilliant Garden, plays it safe with lots of plant life and few hazards, while Sector 4, Ravaged Rustworks, is composed of hulking mechanical devices. Each sector stands out from the rest, though some themes do get reused, such as cavernous underground labyrinths or underwater trials. The diversity of the stage design will keep you on your toes, but more strategically important are the Pikmin you find within.

For example, say that you’re in a fiery stage with scorching flames blocking your way. If you have Red Pikmin, they will safely stomp on the flames, smothering them so you have a path forward. But what if you have Blue Pikmin instead? Well, that likely means you’ll have to find an alternate path through water to progress. Some of the most clever areas turn your expectations on their head, such as one in Ravaged Rustworks where you are completely bereft of Pikmin until halfway through, and then once you find some, you have to work your way back to the beginning to reach the exit. Another creative ice area throws Olimar on a sled and arms him with Winged Pikmin, which he hurls at foes and massive snowballs trying to trample them both. But don’t worry too much if you lose Pikmin along the way, as you can usually find replacements hiding under rocks or shrubbery nearby, and a quick blow of your whistle will send them running your way (failing that, you can summon extra ones using your amiibo).

One thing the game does incredibly well is reinforce how much Olimar depends on the Pikmin. Without them, all he can do is walk and hover briefly with his jetpack. That’s it. You’re defenseless against foes without Pikmin to hurl at them, and you also can’t pull on leafy levers, push boulders out of the way or myriad other activities. So the game encourages you to keep your Pikmin safe and manage them carefully. They can get lost if you jetpack away from them, and they can also get destroyed by foes or level hazards. Olimar has to do his best to wrangle them with his whistle, as well as pick the right Pikmin for the job.

More Space Slavery on Page 2 ->

The post REVIEW: Hey! Pikmin appeared first on oprainfall.

Platformers are my bread and butter, which makes it strange I never bought Runbow on the Wii U. I tried out the demo and thought that the game was a bit too easy for my tastes. However, I was fortunate enough to get the chance to demo Runbow Pocket at PAX last year, and found myself really drawn in by the more challenging levels they had on display. So when I heard that Runbow Pocket Deluxe was coming out, the physical 3DS version with most of the DLC thrown in, I got excited. I might have avoided Runbow originally, but physical editions make everything better. The question then is how did 13AM Games’ colorful adventure translate to the small screen?

Let’s get the plot out of the way real quick, as there isn’t much to speak of. Monochromatic Satura is jealous of colorful Hue and Val having fun without her, so she somehow draws everything into what appear to be old movie posters. Our two heroes jump in to stop her, and we’re off to the races. It’s not much, but I don’t need much for platformers either. It’s not a RPG, so I didn’t come in expecting complex characters or scenarios. What a platformer lives and dies on is its gameplay, so let’s discuss what’s available in Runbow Pocket Deluxe.

Poor plain Satura lacks color, but not style.

The primary mode is Adventure mode, where you go into the four posters, each of which represents a different themed world, such as the prison oriented Break-Out or the jubilant Lost Luau. Each of those worlds is split into 30 levels, bringing Adventure mode to a grand total of 120 levels (plus one last stage you unlock). While the game doesn’t hold your hand and explain the mechanics much, most of them should be pretty intuitive if you’ve played any platformers. You can bash foes, double jump, triple jump with a punch and dash straight ahead by pressing the attack button twice in succession. That last one took me a while to master, as there is always a small break between you activating the dash and actually dashing, which made me generally opt to not use it.

You use all of your skills to try and beat each level as fast as possible, with the goal of meeting or beating the par time to get the most medals. Most stages can be beaten in half a minute, though some, like the Satura stages, can be longer. Stages either consist of grabbing the trophy, beating enemies or collecting coins. At this point you’d be forgiven for thinking it all sounds pretty basic. It would, except for the fun twist of the game, which is how color affects everything.

Beat all the stages and the movie poster will reveal itself.

Most every stage alternates between several colors that swipe across the background. These aren’t just for looks either, since if you can’t see a color, it doesn’t exist. The color swipe can erase structures, shield enemies and much more. It’s hard to accurately describe all the variations, but suffice to say, the game is constantly colorful chaos. While Adventure mode does tend to slowly get more challenging the farther you go, there are occasional huge spikes in difficulty that surprised me. Generally I was able to beat a level with the maximum of three medals, but some stages I was lucky to get the bare minimum of one medal from. These tended to be stages where I was thrown to the ceiling and had to keep track of my controls, or stages where I had to wait on hazards to get by safely. I would say that most levels are totally fair, but they do cater more to the hardcore platformer enthusiast than the optimistic newbie.

Each world in Adventure mode has one stage devoted to Satura, and those are essentially longer portions that end with you fighting your way to her. She has tons of traps and hazards to keep you from simply running up and bashing her on the head, but for the most part these sections of the game felt underwhelming. The only truly epic boss fight against her is in the hidden final level of Adventure mode, only unlocked by beating every other stage. While I can understand not wanting to make these sections overwhelming, I would have almost preferred an entire stage of me fighting against Satura, much like the sole epic boss fight of Satura’s Space Adventure.

Speaking of the DLC, Satura’s Space Adventure was a much shorter but also much more satisfying jaunt than the standard Adventure mode. Only composed of 36 stages, it nevertheless felt more varied, fun and challenging. It introduces new mechanics, such as portals, tractor beams and much more. The way Space Adventure progressed also felt more satisfying to me, and even though it was shorter, I felt I had accomplished more at the end of it. The music for Space Adventure was better overall, sounding like a corny space drama inspired soundtrack from the 60s. While the music was okay in Adventure mode, it sounded more subdued, even when I had the volume all the way up.

This fine fellow represents the most epic boss fight in the entire game! Well worth playing Space Adventure to face him.

Though I enjoyed both Adventure and Space Adventure modes, by far my favorite was the hardcore Bowhemoth. You jump inside the gullet of the titular monster and have to jump, punch and dash your way out. Best of all (or possibly worst, depending on your preference) the game doesn’t save in Bowhemoth, meaning your goal is to get through it all in one sitting. To keep that from being a nuisance, you never have to restart from the very beginning, as this mode generously implements basic checkpoints every time you reach a new area. This was by far the most challenging part of Runbow Pocket Deluxe, and I loved it for that. I spent just under 50 minutes making my way through Bowhemoth, with a ton of deaths at the end, but it was all worth it when I finally was victorious!

Besides these three primary modes, there is a multiplayer portion of the game. It’s fortuitous that I don’t judge a game much on the multiplayer, as every time I tried to join a game I was unable to find anyone online. While I know for some people the multiplayer is more important than the single player experience, I felt the single player in Runbow Pocket Deluxe was robust enough to justify only buying the game for that.

Sometimes reaching that requisite time can be a huge challenge.

Graphically speaking, Runbow Pocket Deluxe is a pretty game. While I feel that porting the game to the small screen affected the size of the character sprites, I never had to squint to see what was going on. The constant use of color keeps you motivated to play one more level, which is a good thing. What was less satisfying was how in some of the cutscenes the edges were blurred unattractively. The music is a bit of a mixed bag. The sounds in basic Adventure mode were fine but subdued, whereas in Space Adventure they were incredibly catchy and Bowhemoth was deliciously ominous. The music was definitely more good than bad, and the punchy sound effects helped me time my jumps and dashes well. I only had the sound drop out in one level unexpectedly, which did result in my death, but this was a minor problem I never encountered again.

While I did enjoy my eight or so hours with the game, it wasn’t without some problems. I found troublesome glitches which threw me off my game. For example, a couple of times I thought I was far enough away from an enemy and it bounced me backwards suddenly. Worse were the times I stopped running as if I hit a wall when there was nothing in my way. In some of the stages that required precise triple jumps, I would sometimes land on a flat surface and slide off. Though these aren’t deal breakers, as they weren’t constant issues, they did happen enough to frustrate me. Lastly, the load times in the game can sometimes bog things down, as they can take up to 10 seconds. Considering most levels can be beaten in half a minute, that can take you out of the action too much. It’s my hope that 13AM Games might be able to patch some of these issues at a later date. Runbow Pocket Deluxe is still a good game, but fixing these issues would make it truly great.

As far as replay value, there’s a surprising amount in the game. The medals you obtain in every level unlock tons of content, such as art and even new characters. 13AM Games has a ton of amazing cameo characters here, with my favorites being Shantae, who is somehow more cute here than usual, Shovel Knight, in his usual blue glory, as well as Xeodrifter, Gunvolt and Commander Video. As if those skins weren’t enough, you can also unlock tons of costume parts to further customize your avatar. And nothing motivates you to keep improving quite like the constant trash talk you’ll get every time you die. Hearing things like “You should see the hard levels”, “Are you insane yet?” or “Failure, delicious failure” really motivated me to cut a few more seconds off my best times.

These cameos make the Runbow experience even richer.

Overall, I really had a great time with Runbow Pocket Deluxe. It provides a pretty meaty package for just $29.99, including the base game and all the DLC besides a few costume options. Despite some annoying gameplay issues I encountered, it still ran pretty smoothly and I never experienced any real slowdown to speak of. 13AM Games has made the definitive platformer for every Nintendo fan out there. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go back and get the rest of those medals!

Review Score
Overall

Review Copy Purchased by Author

The post REVIEW: Runbow Pocket Deluxe appeared first on oprainfall.

For a while now, I’ve been toying with the idea of making my own game. However, the process of doing so is incredibly daunting; even for simple games there’s a lot that goes into it, making it all seem overwhelming at first. However, getting into RPG Maker FES seems like a good place to start, for me and for anyone else who wants to get into making their own RPGs.

This is not the first entry in Enterbrain’s RPG Maker series to be released on a console, or even the first of the console entries to be released in English. However, none of the prior handheld entries were released in the West before FES. The majority of the series is on PC, most recently with RPG Maker MV which was released in October of 2015.

One thing to know from the start is that, as is perhaps inevitable for a Nintendo 3DS version as opposed to PC one, RPG Maker FES is not as robust as RPG Maker MV or earlier editions. The database size is smaller, the customization options are more limited, and the diversity of games that one can make is bound to the availability of DLC which, at the time of writing, has not been revealed. However, RPG Maker FES is still surprisingly in-depth for what it is. One can consider it the RPG equivalent of what Super Mario Maker is for platformers, a toolbox full of pre-made components out of which budding developers can assemble their own games.

That being said, there’s still a fair amount of customization to be had here, including map layouts, NPCs and their dialogue, party members and their classes, growth rates, and monster arrangements. All visual and audio elements are chosen from a list of presets, which cannot be modified or replaced with custom assets. Unfortunately, as of the time of writing, only fantasy assets are available. However, it seems like assets for other settings may be released as DLC once the game has released, due to the presence of a “category” list when looking at available graphics and tilesets. The visuals and music themselves are high-quality and there’s a lot to choose from, even if they’re somewhat generic for Japanese fantasy RPGs.

The player has free reign to customize maps, events, and encounters within these limitations. It is these tools that the player uses to create their own world and story, provided you stay within the relatively low memory limit for a given game (with a single character, three maps and only a few events taking up 11% of the available memory).

However, the game isn’t necessarily always forthcoming with technical information. In particular, since the game lets you set stats for characters and enemies, it would be helpful if the game gave us the damage calculation formula. It’s possible to make do with the information at hand – using preset characters and monsters to attempt to approximate the formula – but it can make it difficult to determine where starting stats should be. The entire experience shows just how difficult balancing a game can be: making sure encounters are difficult but not a constant meatgrinder, figuring out how expensive items should be versus their effectiveness, working out growth rates compared to how monsters advance, and so on. Some of the translations are also somewhat dodgy, with occasional grammatical and spelling errors sprinkled throughout the game. Most explanations on how different event types work come through the samples provided, leaving the player mostly on their own to experiment. Some explanations are given in the manual for the game, but they’re mostly obscurely worded, and the best explanation really is by example. Most things aren’t too difficult to figure out once you have a sense for how the program works generally, but being left in the dark at first can be overwhelming and confusing.

RPG Maker FES probably won’t allow you to make the game of your dreams. The customization options are too limited and the available space is too small. I certainly wasn’t able to – mainly since there’s no ability to customize the combat mechanics outside the standard turn-based variety, and only fantasy assets are available at first – but there’s still a lot to be had within the base package. Even though I never finished the game I started working on, I was still able to spend several hours exploring the options at my disposal, to learn that I didn’t have access to as much as I would have liked. At $39.99 USD, it’s a great entry point for people interested in game development to put some of their ideas to the test. However, if you want something more robust and fully customizable, you’ll be better served by the more expensive RPG Maker MV. If you want to see what RPG Maker FES can do, the RPG Maker Player app will be available for free at launch, allowing anyone to download and play games others have finished and uploaded, including possibly my game Wanderer if I feel like finishing it. The lower price point compared to more sophisticated RPG Maker software positions RPG Maker FES perfectly as an entry-level title for newbies to game development wanting to try their hand.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy provided by publisher

The post REVIEW: RPG Maker FES appeared first on oprainfall.

Being a Fire Emblem fan never used to be so complicated. Before, you fell into one of two groups. Either you lived in Japan and experienced the series from the beginning, or you lived in the West and got introduced to it later on the GBA. For us living in the US, it was a sort of niche badge of honor to not only be familiar with the series, but to be a fan of it. After all, this was a hardcore strategy game, and for quite a while American gamers weren’t seen as capable of tackling those. For a while the series made a name for itself, but was still only marginally popular. Enter Fire Emblem Awakening, and later Fates, and suddenly the series was not only saved from the brink of obsolescence, but has exploded into a sort of prominence previously reserved for such well known names like Mario, Link, and Samus Aran. Suddenly it was cool to be a Fire Emblem fan, with one caveat—the fandom was split once again, between those who grew up playing the classic games and those who started with, and quickly grew accustomed to, all the nifty bells and whistles introduced in the recent entries. As an example, Fates really held gamers hands by allowing very easy difficulty selections and implementing other gameplay features to broaden its appeal. Now we have Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, a remastered port of an NES Fire Emblem game never released outside of Japan. This entry looked to be unapologetically old school, especially since the original was seen as a divisive entry, much like Link’s Adventure. This was an experiment to bring the series back to its roots, but was that a smart decision? Or should the series have remained in the future, and left Fire Emblem Echoes in the past?

Alm and Celica’s turbulent relationship is one of the highlights of the experience.

The story of the game revolves around two main protagonists, Alm and Celica, children who grew up in the same small village together. Their happy, simple lives are quickly thrown out of balance, and the young friends are suddenly separated. Several years later, their continent of Valentia is in disarray. In ancient days, Valentia was split between two warring gods, Duma and Mila. They split the land by divine accord into a northern and southern land, and vowed never to break that boundary. In Zofia, the people lived in splendor and had the advantage of prosperous natural bounty, while in Rigel, the people had a martial bent, focused on strength and conquest. Now, something has broken the divine accord, and both lands are thrown into chaos. Monstrous Terrors roam the land, brigands profit from misery, and the earth is barren. In Zofia, the King has been murdered by his own chancellor, and Alm is called to the Deliverance to try and save his home. Meanwhile, Celica is on a search for the Goddess Mila, who seems to be ignoring the needs of her human children. What you should be able to tell just from this brief synopsis (besides the fact it reminds me fondly of Sacred Stones) is that Fire Emblem Echoes has a much better plot than either Awakening or Fates. Awakening felt like a succession of unrelated tales while Fates was two incomplete halves of a whole story, neither very satisfying on their own. Echoes, by contrast, was the strongest story I’ve had the joy to experience in recent history. This could be because it felt more focused right from the start, though I’m sure it’s also because the protagonists weren’t avatars or suffering from amnesia. Alm and Celica have distinct personalities, as does every character in the game, villain and hero alike. Beyond that, I enjoyed how the themes of nobility, the lure of power, and the duties of gods and men was addressed in the story.

One of the recurring themes in the story.

Any fan of Fire Emblem will tell you that the most important part of the game is the strategy, and that’s where Echoes becomes a bit controversial. Many series staples, such as the Weapon Triangle and marriage/children mechanic, are totally thrown out the window. Meanwhile, the archaic method of paying HP to cast spells or activate skills was reintroduced from the old Japanese games, something I had never experienced firsthand. I admit I was worried by these changes, but I tried to keep an open mind. Luckily, it turns out that the game mostly worked fine. Spending HP to cast spells or activate skills felt much more balanced and fair than I feared. In fact, it makes the game more tactical as you have to keep track of your health, so every move counts. One bonus of this was that since each magical attack has a different health cost, if you reduce a Mage’s health low enough, they will be rendered unable to cast any spells, and thus powerless (unless they cast Nosferatu, which has zero health cost). Another feature I enjoyed was that during battle, your DEF or RES stat directly affects how much damage you take. For example, if an enemy is about to attack you with a physical weapon that does 20 damage and you have a DEF of 5, you’ll only take 15 damage, if it connects. I loved this feature, as it removed guesswork from battle calculations, other than wondering when critical attacks were going to trigger (sometimes a 1% activation rate felt more like a 40% rate). Another way combat is different is that there is no weapon proficiency, though you can upgrade weapons at the Blacksmith. I actually really enjoyed this, as maxing out proficiency was incredibly time consuming, and I’d much rather spend gold and silver to make my weapons more powerful. Additionally, when any unit has an item equipped, you will slowly unlock skills tied to that item. The catch is, every character learns different skills, even if they have the same item equipped. Since you never know what those skills will turn out to be, it’s always a toss up whether it’s worth it or not. Also, magical units will learn spells automatically with nothing equipped, but with the same caveat of not knowing what they will learn until they learn it.

Meet my favorite new Pegasus Knight!

The confusing thing is that even though every unit has a weapon equipped from the get go, you can still equip a new weapon. For example, if a class wields a sword, you’ll always have a sword to attack with, but you can also equip something like an Iron Sword or even a protective item like a shield. This was one system I felt wasn’t streamlined very well, though it did occasionally yield amazing skills like Plenitude, which heals the unit based on the damage you inflict. As for the Weapon Triangle, while I didn’t miss it, the strategy being more than robust enough, I still feel that it perhaps should have been included. However, the upside of no Weapon Triangle is that Pegasus Knights weren’t nearly as fragile, as only archers with the Anti Flier skill were a threat. As for the marriage mechanic being gone, I frankly didn’t miss it. There are still plenty of fantastic support conversations, they just occur during battle (another throwback to the GBA FE games). Plus, previously I usually didn’t use my children units until very late game, and then I only did so when trying to take on incredibly challenging DLC missions. Without that and many other features, Echoes felt leaner and more focused than many of the recent Fire Emblem games. However, that’s not to say that every aspect of the game was met with my approval.

The support conversations are outstanding in Echoes. Also, I found a new purple haired vixen!

Early in the game, you can only control either Alm or Celica’s team individually. A couple Acts in, you’re given the opportunity to control them whenever you feel like it, though you aren’t allowed to completely ignore either team. You will encounter roadblocks as you traverse the map, which means you need to accomplish something on the other character’s route. This is where the issue of balance comes into play. Whereas Alm has a wealth of diverse units at his disposal early on, including a handful of villagers and many Deliverance soldiers you recruit in rapid succession, Celica starts with a very small team of Mages. That might make you think Celica’s route is harder, but in reality her team of Mages quickly became my stronger team. Since there was less of them, they were all more leveled up. Alm’s team reached a point around mid game where half of them were useless and the other half could more than hold their own. The villager units quickly became obsolete, and I was forced to class change them early to make them useful. While it’s true the game doesn’t force you to recruit every unit you encounter, it felt silly not to use every weapon at my disposal. Just be ready to lose units as Alm or make frequent use of Mila’s Turnwheel, the most magnificent new feature in the game. Mila’s Turnwheel lets you literally turn back the clock, undoing individual attacks or a whole turn of combat (just so long as the main character isn’t killed, then it’s still game over). The catch is you can only use this feature so many times per battle, and it can only be refreshed by praying at Mila statues strewn throughout the new 3D dungeons (more on those later). By finding Cogs hidden throughout the game, you can increase the number of times you can use the Turnwheel on any given map. Mila’s Turnwheel was especially useful since I was playing on Normal/Classic, and I wasn’t willing to lose my beloved units (until the very end of the game, anyways).

Always make use of these fountains in Dungeons. They will increase a specific stat a number of times before they dry up.

Also on the topic of balance, the distribution of healing items seemed unbalanced in the game. I found way more on Celica’s route than Alms, which was unfortunate since Celica had a ton of healers compared to the one Alm had starting out. See, there are no shops to buy items at, and besides occasionally taking an item off an enemy, all items, weapons and more are only found in two places—exploring villages or delving into dungeons. Essentially, if you are too low on healing items, your best bet is to grind in dungeons, breaking pots and boxes and hoping you find enough supplies. Any time you enter a village or abode, you can examine your surroundings and find many useful items, as well as talking with units to get background information. If you feel like exploring, you are also welcome to take on simple sidequests which reward you accordingly, increasing your renown and sometimes even netting you a new character.

Meet the world’s best (or worst, depending) archer, Python.

The 3D dungeons are another way to expand your coffers, just at the risk of a little combat. You control Alm or Celica as you explore these well rendered areas, and will come across shambling monstrosities and many other threats. Once they see you, they’ll hunt you down mercilessly, but you can slash them to get the initiative at the start of battle. The other way dungeon combat is different is fatigue. As you explore, your units get more and more fatigued, and if they reach a certain point, their health is cut in half and their stats are reduced temporarily. To cure fatigue, you can feed them consumable items or pray at a Mila statue, offering various items to get better additional effects, such as refreshing Mila’s Turnwheel. However, since team Celica found more healing items, Alm’s forays always felt more frantic and challenging. It’s worth noting as well that Mila statues are where you class change now, and they don’t require any specialized item, just that your character has earned the right to change by leveling up enough. Just keep in mind the routes to every Mila statue are guarded by fierce beasts and brigands, so caution is always important.

More Echoes on Page 2 ->

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Finally, the 2nd of the Nintendo 3DS Dragon Quest ports sees the light of day in the US. Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King took a significant amount of time to reach our shores, and for a game this beloved, it was a difficult wait. It did seem a little strange that it took longer to release this title than it did the complete overhaul of Dragon Quest VII, but to be fair there were still large changes to this title and also a significant increase in English voiced dialogue over the original game. But in the end, it’s far more important to get a release right than it is to rush it out. Especially when the game in question was considered one of the greatest RPGs of all time when it was originally released on the PlayStation 2.

I still have this box kicking around.

Looking back on the 2005 release of Dragon Quest VIII, it’s pretty easy to see why it would be such a successful game. But before its release, the general tone in games media was an overall shrug. We had missed out on the entire SNES generation of Dragon Quest games, and Dragon Warrior VII hit with a resounding thud when it was released in the United States. There were really only two bits of excitement that I read about in the pages of the major magazines (I know, real print seems novel now). The first minor excitement was that the new Square Enix merger was allowing them to bring in a bright new developer Level-5 to work on the game and update the series to a more modern style. Level-5 is a very famous developer now, but when they were given this project they had only released Dark Cloud, and they were working towards the release of its sequel. Even stranger than that, the greater excitement surrounded the included playable demo of Final Fantasy XII. In hindsight, that may seem quaint. I’m one of the few RPG fans who actually consider Final Fantasy XII a better game than Dragon Quest VIII (although it’s a close one, even for me). But the combination of the very pretty new aesthetic and the wonderful English dub turned a generally very niche series into a certified critical darling.

The two new playable characters were NPCs in the original.

When a game is almost universally considered a classic, messing with that formula is fraught with peril so that is what most of my review for this title is going to be about. With Dragon Quest VII I spent a lot more time talking about the game itself, rather than what was changed. And that made sense for the previous entry, because finding an actual review of the original game (or even someone who had played it to completion) was exceedingly difficult. But this is a game that almost every RPG fan who was old enough to own a PS2 has played. Not only that, but Dragon Quest VIII and Final Fantasy XII are very famous in the industry for having possibly the two greatest English dubs of all time. This game was also extremely memorable for really making the most of that gorgeous Akira Toriyama art style. It was not the first game to make use of “cell shaded” graphics, but it most definitely popularized the style.

Several scenes were fleshed out more.

The most obvious change to the game was that you can now see every enemy wandering around the field (other than while riding the boat). In the first game you could only ever see the Infamous monsters on the field, but that did pave the way for visible enemies in Dragon Quest IX, and then these previous two remakes. That does tend to make the game a bit easier merely because you can avoid enemies with less difficulty, but it ended up having an almost game breaking effect as well. In a traditional Dragon Quest game, much of your power leveling comes down to fighting metal slime enemies (of various types). Previously the effectiveness was mitigated by how rare these enemies were and by how fast and hard to hit they were. They still remain a bit difficult to kill (although both of the two new characters have slime obliterating abilities), but they are no longer rare at all. You can just stand in a location they are known to appear, rotate the camera around a few times until you see them on the map and then kill them. I’ve beaten Dragon Quest VIII a few times on PlayStation 2, but I’ve never been over level 65 (and that took me over 150 hours). Due to this change in enemies all my characters were level 99 at 80 hours of gameplay. That is virtually game breaking for such an old school RPG.

More Questing on Page 2 ->

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Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns is the third installment in the Story of Seasons game series. In it, you play as a nameless farmer who you can edit ever so slightly, who has dreams of becoming a big time farmer much to the dismay of his father. He reluctantly agrees to help, and he sends you on your way to your uncle so that you can learn from a professional how to be a farmer. Along the way to becoming one, you meet many colorful characters, all with unique personalities. Who knows, you may even find a new wife/husband in the process.

The gameplay is pretty run-of-the-mill for fans of farming simulators, such as myself, but it does have a few minor tweaks that make playing this game all the more worth it. For starters, you, your house, and your farm are all very customizable. You can mix and match things as you please, so long as you have the space and materials required to do so. Resources are a little grindy to get in the game, but as you upgrade your tools, which I highly recommend doing right off the bat, they become easier to obtain. You get a lot of different clothing options to better change the character to suit however you think they should look. These require materials as well though, so be wary of that. You can also get a wide variety of pet breeds to choose from when you obtain one, which is wonderful for animal lovers, who usually don’t have a say in the matter. As an added bonus, the pets have different byproducts and abilities, just to make getting them that much more fantastic. This game really shines in the farm customization, because you’re free to reimagine the layout, what buildings exist, and also where they go. This makes the farm 100% yours and unique, which makes the player feel like they’re playing their own way.

As the name suggests, you don’t just have one town to discover. There are three completely different towns, each with their own theme and focus. You have the starting town of West Town, which of course is a western themed village. Their main focus is on mining. The second is Lulucoco, an exotic town with a heavy reliance on fishing. Lastly, the third one is named Tsuyukusa and is an Asian-influenced town which is farming centered. Your job is to build the bond between the three towns and unite them, which in turn gives you a better chance to prove your father wrong and become the farmer that you and your mother always knew that you could be. You build the rank by shipping items to the various towns and by doing part-time jobs for them.

Part-time jobs are small things that you can pick up to help earn a little bit more cash, as well as increase your rank. They usually just involve delivering items between players, shipping certain items, pulling weeds, or pressing certain buttons. The only flaw I find with this is that some of these are very tedious to do and don’t really require much in the way of skill. Plus the jobs can only be accepted for that day only, meaning that you don’t usually have time to grow the resources required to ship or whatnot. No worries though; they repeat very often. The only other downside is that whenever you do certain jobs, it takes you to the place where the job is located, meaning if you accepted a job in Lulucoco chopping wood, then you’d have to walk all the way back to West Town just to take another job. This is a very menial task that just seems to be there in order for you to waste your time. There are ways to fast travel, but it takes a while to unlock them.

For me, the game functioned exceptionally well. The framerate was nice and even, the visuals and art design were absolutely beautiful, and the music was top notch for a game like this. I really felt immersed in the experience, and it’s been awhile since a farming simulator has caused me to feel that about a game. However, this game is not perfect. The controls really drag it down. They’re very simple, but for some reason felt really clunky to me. I’d find myself constantly consuming or throwing an item which I intended to give as a gift. I also didn’t like the fact that the D-Pad wasn’t an option to use for movement, as the constant use of the circle pad made my thumb cramp up and I’d have to set the game down.

Those weren’t the only problems, though. There’s also a cutscene that plays every single day, both when the shops open as well as when they close. It’s nothing major, but it really takes away from the experience when you’re forced to sit through that menial cutscene repeatedly. Speaking of cutscenes, I also didn’t like the fact that there was no way to speed up the text. For me, it moved far too slow and when I pushed on the bottom screen to make it auto advance, it moved far too quickly for me to see it before the game skipped to the next line of dialogue. Again, a small issue, but one I feel slightly hinders the enjoyment.

Overall, this game isn’t the greatest farming simulator I’ve played, but if you can get past the slightly clunky controls and minor inconveniences, then I would really recommend picking this game up. This game is massive, with the story taking me over 70 hours to complete. There’s just so much that you can do in this game, from customizing things how you want, to cooking dishes, and even competing in the various festivals that the game has to offer. The game is only $40, and you get a lot of content for that rather small price. Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns is great for both new comers and old fans of the genre alike, so give it a go if you have the urge to farm.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy provided by the publisher.

The post REVIEW: Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns appeared first on oprainfall.

2016 was a rough year to be a Nintendo fan. Sure, there were still great games coming out but they were few and very far between. In the interim, that led me to do some extra work and cull through all the indie 3DS and Wii U games for hidden gems. And I do mean hidden, since any game not directly published by Nintendo usually gets almost zero publicity. It can be difficult to tell the great games from the shovelware at times, but I value my spider sense when it comes to finding hidden treasures. That same instinct was blaring loudly at me when I saw the 3DS game Polara.

I really loved blasting through these hoops!

Released digitally in 2016 on the 3DS, Polara looked to me like the love child of Ikaruga and Bit.Trip.Runner. The plot revolves around a new defensive infrastructure being put into place by a shady totalitarian government. You play as Lara, the person who tests the system using her fancy suit on behalf of that same government. As you progress, the story unfolds gradually in the form of comic panel cutscenes, which are actually pretty cool despite being a bit contrived. Luckily, while the plot isn’t the best, the game shines in the actual gameplay.

In order to test the defensive system, Lara’s suit is able to switch between blue and red polarities. This allows her to evade danger, since threats of the same color don’t touch her. This is a beautifully simple premise with expert execution, as the only things you can do are jump and change color (using the shoulder or face buttons). Lara will constantly be running forward at the same gait, and your job is to use her fancy suit and your quick reflexes to get her safely to the end of each level. It starts out pretty simply, just changing color to avoid things, but as the game progresses the difficulty gradually spikes, while introducing new twists like gravity switching based on your color.

Shit gets real when Polara goes topsy turvy.

Beyond just getting through the levels themselves, there are also some very challenging boss fights thrown into the mix. I admit I didn’t anticipate these, and I really enjoyed all of them. They smartly made each composed of multiple sections, and between them you automatically save your progress (these save points are also strewn about in the regular levels). Considering one hit will instantly kill Lara, that’s a very welcome design choice. Of the 50 or so levels, there were about 4-5 boss fights, and each of them was distinct and challenging. They did a very good job of keeping me on my toes in between the standard levels.

This guy gave Lara a run for her money

As if that weren’t enough, there is also a ton of replay value in Polara. Each time you beat a level, you unlock the letters POLARA and a special item. By playing through that level again, you can obtain those letters and that item. By doing so, you will gradually unlock additional gameplay modes, such as Gravity Wane, where you have to constantly shift your color and corresponding gravity to collect coins. It’s a lot of fun, and considering there are 5 other extra modes, there’s a surprising amount of bang for your buck.

Much as I enjoyed the game, there are a couple areas that weren’t as satisfactory. Firstly, though I don’t mind the graphics, the backgrounds were very flat and emotionless. While they change it every few levels, none of them really amazed, and some even fell into the trap of distracting me from what I was doing. The music is a bit more varied, as some levels have great tunes, and others almost put me to sleep. The biggest issue I found was when the game would occasionally hiccup and slow down while I was playing, usually when a lot of stuff was happening at once. This didn’t happen all the time, or even very often, but it did happen enough to make it problematic. Considering your reflexes are all that keep you alive in a game like Polara, it’s a cardinal sin to have anything impact those reflexes.

Gotta be the right polarity to grab those letters!

That said, I really enjoyed my time with Polara. I was even shocked to learn it had originally released on iOS and Android a few years back as a mobile game with touch controls. Luckily, it seems very well suited to the 3DS family, and I hope to see more great games from Hope This Works Games Inc and Circle Entertainment in the near future. Polara isn’t perfect, but I got 5 hours of fun out of it, and that’s not including all the time I’ll be spending collecting letters and going for a Flawless score on every stage. I highly recommend Polara for any 3DS fan looking for a fun action game. You’ll more than get your money’s worth.

This is what victory looks like!

Review Score
Overall

Review Copy Purchased by Author

The post REVIEW: Polara appeared first on oprainfall.

I LOVE the Dragon Ball series. When I heard of this game and found out Amazon was sold out, I immediately just bought it on the Nintendo eShop! Though as I’ve grown older, more of the flaws have stood out. This was the case with Dragon Ball GT and Super, along with some of the films. The games were great as well, such as Legacy of Goku 2, Budokai 3 (my absolute favorite) and a couple others. The Xenoverse games felt like a return to form for the series, but it only brought about more frustration than actual fun thanks to grinding needlessly and other problems. Dragon Ball Fusions, in the meantime, seemed like pure, ridiculous fun, embodying everything I loved about the Dragon Ball series. The lack of marketing for the game, plus the censorship, were worrisome. I was convinced by Kirran of TFS Gaming to pick it up after he streamed the game, and later learned from his friends on one video that the game would release a month early. But can this game live up to my expectations? Let’s find out!

Will my wish for a good game be granted!?

The story follows Pinich, a young Saiyan boy, and their rival, a silent character that you can create and control; more on that later. They are hunting Dragon Balls, and once gathered, decide to wish for the universe’s greatest martial arts tournament. Their wish is granted, leaving nearly every part of the Dragon Ball universe fused together into floating islands, separated only by barriers the heroes must break to advance. Along the way Goten and Trunks of Dragon Ball Z/Super, the kid Goku of Dragon Ball, and Pan from Dragon Ball GT join you in the main story, and are some of the only characters to comment on the situation. You can recruit many more through side quests or  battle (again, details to follow). Some characters from Dragon Ball Super also appear, all the way up to the Universal Tournament Arc with characters such as Hit, Champa and more. Even Towa and Mira from Xenoverse also show up.

The story is fairly simple, taking advantage of multiple universes to create several new characters for side quests and challenges. It’s never overly serious, especially when fusion is one of the biggest driving forces of the plot. There is still legitimate drama here and there between the main character and Pinich, but it never forgets to be humorous or put characters in interesting situations. For example, the kid Goku from the original Dragon Ball thanks Omega Shenron since, despite him being evil, it was only thanks to the Dragon Balls that a lot of events in the series could happen, such as the revival of Krillin or even Goku’s journey. The game also doesn’t push Goku as the big main star and problem solver like Xenoverse or Dragon Ball in general do. The focus is on your journey, along with Pinich’s development, creating a very good tale for the two fighters. Though anyone who gets annoyed at power levels might be a bit peeved at some moments, such as the aforementioned kids taking down really big heavy-hitters at the end of some series, yet running away from Broly. There are also some localization issues, as some dialogue cannot fill the text window, and was cut off as the sentence ran over. This doesn’t happen too often, but it is annoying.

Nappa and Raditz even manage to be an entertaining tutorial.

The presentation of Dragon Ball Fusions is surprisingly good for the 3DS. While not the sharpest visuals, everything is easy to identify, though some models do feel shrunken down. As stated before, you can create your own character among five races: Human, Saiyan, Namekian, Alien, and Offworlder. There are male and female sets of each, (barring Namekians), and there is a small bit of customization compared to Xenoverse. There also seems to be a mistake, as the Alien race women have the ears of Majin/Offworlders but the female Offworlders look similar to Supreme Kai. It was a confusing change I didn’t understand. Unlike Xenoverse however, you can change the color scheme of any set of clothing you get, especially if belonging to another character, to create something more pleasing for your eyes.

There are also seven areas, each fairly big to fly around, fight enemies, and occasionally find other side quests. What surprised me is that the game runs so smoothly, rarely slowing down (if ever). You can rest assured your experience will be a smooth one, complimented with bright colors. The animation for attacks are quick as well, helping to keep battles from dragging on. Sadly, if you were hoping for some recognizable music from the series, you may be disappointed. Still, the battle themes keep a good beat with the guitar, matching the action really well. The same goes for more intense music during more serious moments, like when an enemy beyond the team’s power comes into the fray. Could be worse. We could have gotten Dragon Ball GT’s rap theme. There is the occasional flying mini-game as well, where you have to fly through rings in order to solve certain quests. Unlike Superman 64, flying feels solid and good, barring one little obstacle later in the game. Traveling never got tedious, especially when the game includes fast travel. Though depending on your level, you may also attract other fighters towards you when flying faster. Fights never dragged on, so this never felt too annoying unless my battery was going to die, but I feel that’s a commonly held sentiment among 3DS fans..

Your team is initially small, but will expand soon.

Gameplay revolves around up to five fighters battling at once, usually in a ring of a circle or a rectangle. Each character is represented with a small face and bubble in a turn meter below that moves from left to right. Once a character icon makes it all the way to the right, they will get their turn, and can choose from some options. The first is to try and punch their target. When doing this normally, with a melee special move or a Zenkai Attack, you must choose where to attack from, while the enemy tries to predict and block you, making sure you do much less damage. Should you manage to hit the middle section behind their blocking range however, you’ll do extra damage. Knocking your foe into the walls tends to send them out of the area for a second, taking extra damage by colliding with a building or a mountain. Doing this will reset their turn at the far end of the gauge, making them wait all over again to try and attack. Although there are some maps where they will just be knocked around like pinballs. You can also knock enemies into each other or into allies for extra damage, and then they’ll knock the foes in other directions. It feels satisfying when knocking so many foes into others and your allies!

Then there are ki attacks, and the way these function are entirely dependent on what type of character you have. The blue speed types can hit enemies in a line, though their range is limited. Yellow technical fighters fire energy in a circle, hitting groups of foes at once. Red power types can only hit one enemy, though they tend to do the most damage. Ki blasts are unblockable, but it’s much harder to knock foes out of the ring, or into each other. There is also a triangle of what each fighter is weak to, so keeping a balanced team of speed, technical, and power is necessary at all times. When doing all of these attacks, there is also a chance for your allies to support you by launching a melee attack just before your strike, though it sometimes felt random and I was never really sure what the trigger for it was.

However, you must also account for special attacks. A lot of these are taken right from the show despite not having the exact same name as a move seen in Xenoverse or the Budokai series. For example, Blast Cannon looks a lot like Final Flash. Each one has a few factors to consider, such as range, attack power, buffs and debuffs and even stat boosts just from having the move equipped. They are also ranked from C, B, A, S, and finally G, as are individual characters, to represent how strong they are. You can only have three equipped on each character, and they can only learn some moves after passing a certain level. In order to get better moves, you can knock foes out of the ring while KOing them, though this isn’t always reliable. You can also buy techniques from a machine by using energy gained from winning fights or by using play coins. I found the machine more reliable but the drops, while random, were usually better. This was sadly one of the worst parts of Dragon Ball Fusions, though not crippling. Fortunately, if you get techniques you are unable to teach someone, you can save up to 30 for later. Also, with regards to the censorship, it was distracting how swords were replaced with sticks. At least stuff like the spirit sword or ki blades are not censored.

Some of the special attacks are a treat to watch, especially for enemy reactions.

Enemies can also do the exact same thing to you in battle like resetting your turns and using special attacks. When using a special attack that is a ki blast, there will be a moment where you or the enemy can choose to use a special move to create a beam struggle. By rapidly tapping A, you’ll determine who will win. At first this is easy, but gradually grows harder by late game. Though if you counter with a beam of your own, one that usually has a large radius, it will only hit one enemy, so sometimes just letting it hit you might be the better strategy. Other things that can be done on a turn are charging up ki for future attacks or checking an enemy’s stats to see what moves they have. Depending on who you bring to battle, you can also perform a fusion to create a much more powerful character. For example, Goten and Trunks can form Gotenks, greatly increasing their stats and even giving them new moves. Transformations however are sadly treated as separate characters, and most cannot even be used in fusing with other characters aside from the main character.

More Fusion on Page 2 ->

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Back in 2007, a lovely game with the title Hotel Dusk: Room 215 was released for the Nintendo DS. It was an emotional and mysterious adventure game with a very distinct art style. Unfortunately, I never had a chance to play its sequel Last Window, due to it never being released in the United States. Some time after the release of Last Window the developer Cing unfortunately closed its doors. Now a few years later, we have Chase: Cold Case Investigations ~Distant Memories~, a new game from some key Cing staff, sporting a similar style to the games that came before it while working with a new setting and cast. Does this new title manage to live up to the past efforts developed by Cing, or is it just a disappointment?

As soon as I started, the introduction cutscene immediately set a dramatic mood with some chilling music playing while introducing us to the main characters of the story, as well as showing some brief animations of the events we’ll be investigating. The music and art style for the game immediately reminded me of past works like Hotel Dusk, and only made me more excited to play. The art may lack the water color look and animation of Hotel Dusk, but the anime style and character designs are immediately recognizable and initially drew me to the game. The character portraits look great but don’t animate very often. The music is also excellent but there are only a few tracks. What is here is very catchy, all mellow tunes with lots of piano and bass. If you’ve ever played Hotel Dusk, or any game developed by Cing, you will likely feel right at home with both the art and music in Chase. I certainly found them to be the more memorable aspects of the game.

After the intro montage, we are introduced to the two main detectives, Shounosuke Nanase and Koto Amekura. These two work on solving investigations that have gone cold over the years. One day while bored on the job, our two detectives receive a phone call regarding a case involving a death in an explosion at a hospital 5 years prior to the story which may not have been an accident like it was originally said to be. Intrigued, Nanase and Amekura decide to gather all the information they have on the case and attempt to determine if this explosion really was an mishap. Throughout Chase, you’ll be reading a lot of evidence and reports on the case, investigating crime scene photos, as well as interrogating witnesses and possible suspects in order to learn the truth about what happened during this event.

When investigating crime scene photos, you’re presented with a still picture on the bottom screen that you can interact with by tapping on specific spots of the picture. Most of the time when you’re presented with this, it’s a matter of either examining everything you can for clues or checking a specific spot to progress forward. There is one instance near the end where you only have one chance to select where Nanase wants you to point to and if you get it wrong, its game over. Thankfully, you can save at any point so it’s really not that big of a deal.  While these sequences do provide a bit of interactivity in the story and are interesting to investigate, they are very brief and not used often.

Throughout the story you’ll also be given many different dialogue choices during key moments where Nanase and Amekura are either compiling evidence or interrogating suspects. During each of these segments you are given a set number of chances to pick the right options or questions to ask during your investigations. As long as you’ve been paying attention to the story, you’ll likely find these segments very easy but despite that, it was pretty fun interrogating possible suspects and learning more details about what really happened during the incident five years ago, and just how interconnected everything is.

The overall story, while interesting, failed to make any kind of impact with me. Due to the games extremely short length, the characters never really had any chance to develop, which unfortunately felt like a huge missed opportunity. There is one instance where some hints about something unrelated to the investigation is troubling Nanase, but it’s never explored outside two very brief moments. The story is definitely enjoyable at times but just as it starts to get going, Chase unfortunately ends with a very unsatisfying cliffhanger ending that sets up a possible future sequel.

Throughout the story you’ll interrogate several key witnesses and suspects.

Chase: Cold Case Investigations ~Distant Memories~ is not a bad game by any means but there just isn’t much to it. Unfortunately the journey lasts less than an hour and a half, which doesn’t give it enough time to develop to a point where you’ll really care about the characters and events. At only $5.99 on the Nintendo eShop it’s certainly not bad, but I also feel you can get much better for only a few dollars more. If you’re a fan of Cing’s previous works like I am, I’d say give it a shot. I just hope we manage to get a sequel of some sort in the future that can develop what is here even further!

Review Score
Overall

Review copy provided by the publisher

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