GrimGrimoire (PS2)

GrimGrimoire
Vanillaware/Nippon Ichi

Anthony: Man, Groundhog Day is pretty dark without Bill Murray in it. But at least this version has TV-enveloping dragons, right? Anyway, Vanillaware suddenly showed up on North American soil with GrimGrimoire and Odin Sphere. That’s all well and good for us, as GrimGrimoire is a unique and enjoyable title.

GrimGrimoire tells the story of Lillet Blan, a young mage pupil who comes to a renowned tower to learn magic through drawing runes. On her fifth day, tragedy strikes as most inhabitants of the school are murdered, while Lillet is sent back in time repeatedly and must find a way to quell the disaster. Battles are actually real-time-strategy, akin to a lighter version of older Blizzard Entertainment games. Aside from the story elements, nothing really makes this an RPG, despite Nippon Ichi’s distribution.

What’s good:
- The graphics... wow. Though everything in the game is 2-D, the artwork is done with exquisite detail, and even though told through mostly static 2-D scenes, there is extremely fluid animation that highlights subtleties in characters' breathing and gesturing. Backgrounds are also incredibly detailed, and clearly took a great deal of work to design. Battle sprites look very smooth and colorful, but the story scenes steal the show overall. Everything flows such that it looks like the characters and environments are teeming with life.
- The storyline, though 100% linear, is both unique and very interesting overall. The storyline starts out very lighthearted, takes a very dark turn, and then keeps a nice air of mystery throughout. The characters are interesting, and Lillet manages to be a pretty shrewd protagonist... eventually manipulating almost every character in order to save the tower and herself. Dashes of humor are thrown in and it flows together well overall.
- The tutorial battles early on are done well and help ease a player unfamiliar with an RTS into the system quite well. Restarting a battle also brings up a hint from the developers about how to clear the stage. While it may or may not be helpful, they certainly tried to help out.
- Also seemingly a nod to RPG players buying an RTS game, they included two separate easier difficulty levels aside from “Normal” to play through the game at no penalty. I found the game challenging but certainly beatable on Normal, but it was nice to see they didn’t just want to brutalize people needlessly.
- Especially as the game wore on, I found myself very impressed with the way they balanced the whole gameplay experience when it comes to the units you can use. Map capacity, mana, and which runes are drawn determine which units and what quantity can be brought onto the map simultaneously. Huge and expensive units like Chimeras and Dragons can be absolute world-destroyers... easily clearing out huge areas of enemies and structures alone. However, they can also be easily overwhelmed by sleep/slow spells or swarms of well-protected units. Any unit that seems too powerful has some exploitable downsides, and any unit that seems too weak can probably be used in a swarm alone or in conjunction with others to do devastating damage. Beyond that, each class tends to have good specialized roles, and coupled with four schools of runes with weaknesses and strengths to each other, this makes the problem-solving aspects and experimentation in the game very fun and intriguing.
- The wealth of bonus trial maps to play alongside the main game was a very nice inclusion to help increase the replay value of what’s otherwise a fairly short game. The New Game+, Scene Viewing and Skip Scenes features also helps keep things moving along smoothly if you feel like playing more after the conclusion.

What’s neutral:
- With every single stage covered in a “Fog of War” that you cannot penetrate without sending units out, as the difficulty increases, the game often ends up sending you situations where you’re better off playing a stage for a little while, learning what you’re up against, and then restarting so you can prepare for the situation better. There’s absolutely no scout/recon unit, and one can even cause serious troubles attempting to scout, as it can alert groups of enemies to attack that would otherwise remain dormant or not bother you for several minutes. The game even kind of misleads you, as early in the game, you typically fight professors who belong to a specific school of magic, and can thus attempt to build an army tailored to their weaknesses... only to find that later on, they’ll start dabbling in other schools just to screw with you. While there are plenty of stages that can be completed on the first attempt, several still take great benefit from, or practically require you to attempt and restart the battle at least once.
- Surprisingly, there’s a pretty notable lack of variety for battles in the game in regards to the areas and the music. Only slight differences in size, obstacles, and starting location ever truly differentiate the stage layouts... no noticeably different art, backgrounds or anything of the sort. Similarly, despite some good songs in the game, battle music is basically the same throughout the game. Even the somewhat epic final battle has the same music you’ve heard numerous times.
- Though the controls mostly work quite well, I found it odd that there is never an option to select different units simultaneously. If you want a set of faeries, demons and golems to attack a target, there’s no way to do that without grabbing each group individually and issuing the command. I know different groups have different commands, but given that most have at least “move” and/or “attack”, that functionality probably could have been included.
- While it does an admirable job of keeping track of numerous sprites on the field commencing their various actions, inevitably there is some slowdown from time to time. It doesn’t kill the game and it’s not overly frequent, but it does show up occasionally.
- Though the style lends it to multiple playthroughs and attempting the trial stages, if you intend to just play the story, this is not a particularly long game. Somewhere between 10-20 hours is all you should expect in that regard.

What’s bad:
- The lack of an in-battle save or suspend feature tends to hurt two potential aspects of the game. For one, it becomes unfriendly for pick-up-and-play gameplay, especially with story scenes that happen even before you have the option to save. Additionally, it exacerbates the problem of the “try, die, restart” mechanic of the tougher stages. This is abundantly clear in the case of some of the “stay alive for x minutes!” challenges, where almost no attack of coincidence may happen for the first 22 minutes, whereupon an unholy legion of doom comes charging towards your camp. It’s a lot of time to lose when things go wrong late in a stage.
- The tutorial battles went into great detail, but somehow missed out on describing what’s an absolutely necessary mechanic for the game. To beat most stages, you’ll need to draw your own runes and plan your strategy accordingly. For most of the game though, they supply you with multiple runes at the start of each stage, and never tell you when and how you can inscribe your own. Eventually I got to a level where I lost twice in depressing fashion, only to find out I could use different runes than were provided to me. Then I beat it first try without issue. Hum.

I’d say it’s pretty rare these days for an RPG developer to put out a RTS game, but putting my trust in them was not a mistake. GrimGrimoire is beautiful, tells a very intriguing tale, and has some pretty addictive gameplay. Though I’m done with the game now, I still remember some really cool moments in battles, and I enjoyed learning more techniques.

In the end, it’ll be the variety of units and the balance within that sticks in my mind as to what made the game so fun. Dragons have high HP, do huge damage to a large area, yet are painfully slow and vulnerable to sleep. Chimeras also do huge damage, are extremely fast, but can only hit physical beings and are much less durable than Dragons. Morning Stars are stronger than those one-on-one, but require mana as ammunition to attack, and are extremely vulnerable to units like Homunculi, Skullmages and Unicorns that prey on “astrals” like them. Grimalkins can immediately kill high-MP enemies and easily incapacitate large foes, but have no defense against multiple enemies. Faeries fly quickly and can protect themselves adequately, but are practically worthless if not in large groups. Much like Knights in the Nightmare made me feel, I almost want to just sit down and talk about the units, their nuances, and how I completed a specific level.

But I shan’t bore you any longer. GrimGrimoire is delightful... delightfully presented, delightfully challenging, and delightfully nuanced throughout. Recommended, if you can find a copy for a reasonable price.

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Lauren: Once again, I was the observer for this title, and I'd simply like to reiterate a few of Anthony's points. The "lighter fare RTS" style of GrimGrimoire helped to bridge the gap for newbies to the genre like us. I could definitely see the satisfaction of creating a complex setup and watching the carnage happen.

Example: Anthony said, "They gave me a lot of mana. So this is what I did." And then I looked up from my PSP to see that the battle area was 90% filled with several gigantic dragons overlapping each other. Awesome.

As expected, many famous voice actors brought their talents to GrimGrimoire, and they certainly did not disappoint. I also very much enjoyed the music, aside from the fact that the battle theme seemed to be the same throughout the whole game.

I was also very impressed with the graphics. The soft, colourful look of the characters and backgrounds were simply gorgeous. I was pleasantly surprised by the extremely subtle "breathing" animations of the characters during cutscenes. It was a genius idea to have only the character portraits do the talking in all scenes and battles, therefore bypassing the common RPG problem of "sometimes a character portrait / sometimes a tiny simple sprite that doesn't look much like its portrait". It made the whole experience seem smooth. And by the looks of their other games, Vanillaware has a very specific style of beautiful artwork. I certainly hope to see more of their work soon.

Mana Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy

Mana Khemia 2:
Fall of Alchemy
Gust Co. / Nippon Ichi Software

Anthony: There’s something wonderful about being pleasantly surprised. It happened when we picked up Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis expecting nothing but a simple fluff RPG to kill time; we ended up with a game in our top five favorite RPGs of all time. Now, having produced a sequel less than a year and a half later, Gust has surprised me by creating what’s now probably one of my top two favorite RPGs of all time. Mana Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy is an awesome RPG indeed.

Mana Khemia 2 is a character driven, episodic RPG that lets you follow the storylines of two separate characters and their workshop partners: Raze, a servant to a rich household who’s skilled in battle, and Ulrika, a poor southern girl hoping to learn alchemy to help raise an infant mana. Each character has his or her own storyline with different accessible characters, a few different dungeons, and different items to access. Some portions of the game directly overlap, with others being completely unique.

I had a few minor complaints with Mana Khemia 1, and I’m happy to say that they’ve been addressed in full. The infamous loading skips in the field and battle are fixed. The Day/Night cycle’s effects on monsters have been muted, while also giving you the option to camp at save points to skip time rather than just sitting around while the game runs. AP/levelling became basically useless in Mana Khemia 1 at endgame, but now levelling increases HP/MP and allows you to purchase stat-increasing items of your choice. And in general, item progression is better, including the introduction of unique minigames to gathering points.

Running two separate storylines to the a game is always a risky venture, in that inevitably not all players will try both, and with one always being arguably “better,” there are bound to be critical players who just picked the “wrong” one. The good news is that both stories have good elements and enjoyable characters, with each bringing bits of the overall plot together. Completing both gives access to an epilogue that’s charming and does a very good job of wrapping up both teams’ storylines.

The bad news is a player new to the series could be very easily misled by choosing Ulrika’s storyline first. While her story is important and perfectly fine overall, Ulrika herself is a less pleasant character through much of the game, and her team’s interactions with each other are generally just for comedic effect. Ulrika’s team spends a lot of time mocking each other, and has numerous scenes that exist just for humor and utter silliness alone... so it might lead someone to believe that the game just isn’t serious. That said, I rather enjoyed how they wrapped up her side of the story, and while Raze’s path has less humor and more drama, Ulrika’s team had us laughing on numerous occasions, and I’d never consider that a bad thing.

Items and recipes from the first playthrough can be immediately ported over to the other character’s storyline, which is a nice way of allowing you to see both storylines with much less time spent overall. It’s to that extent that I strongly recommend playing both storylines... but if you must choose, go with Ulrika for general absurdity and Raze for a more traditional RPG with humorous elements.

Gameplay, you ask? Well, more good news here. While the ever present Gust-brand alchemy system was good in Mana Khemia 1, it’s gotten some useful upgrades this time. For one, there’s no more unnecessary jumping between rooms to synthesize armaments and ingredients. An amazing feature included is that upon selecting a recipe ingredient you’re missing, the game immediately takes you to that item’s synthesis screen to create it. This is an incredibly useful feature that saves a ton of time in trying to remember what you need to make at any given time. Additionally, instead of sliding and choosing different special effects to equipment, all items now have their own intrinsic effects that are brought out by creating them at different ether levels. This gives a person more reason to experiment with the item itself rather than trying to come up with complex “this to make that to make this to make that” schemes.

This is all done with a very slick interface that shows you the stats, ether level bonuses and skills of each item you have available. As with Mana Khemia 1, these synthesized items get loaded into character-specific “Grow Book”s that allow you to augment their stats and abilities with AP earned from battles. The Grow Book’s presentation is simpler this time, no longer requiring items to unlock each other, and being a bit quicker to navigate at the expense of looking a little less pretty. Battles give AP bonuses for speed and taking no damage, which means the game has a basically endless cycle of rewarding the player for proper battling and synthesizing. Battles earn items/AP/recipes, items can be synthesized, synthesized items increase the grow book, AP is spent to power players up and now they fight better to earn AP faster. Players like me who really like to see the fruits of their labor will get it here in spades.

Battles are still a highlight, reminding me that the world of turn-based non-strategy RPGs is not dead. It’s hard to describe it all without getting into exhaustive detail, except to say it’s quite enjoyable. Characters have unique and useful abilities, you can use specific strategies for trying to delay and incapacitate enemies, and the Unite Mode > Intimate Strike/Guard > Finishing Strike system allows for an interesting risk/reward system in balancing when to go all out and when to play it safe. Characters in the back regaining MP and being able to choose how long you Defend for are still lovely features that I wish more games would employ.

Being a character-driven RPG, I’m happy to say that they’ve created another great cast of characters. The characters in the game have very amusing personalities, and we found ourselves really enjoying the special scenes even with characters we weren’t as attached to. The localization and writing really helps this along, with modern references and enough general absurdities to make Monty Python proud. If you prefer your RPGs serious and your characters to be brooding, silent types, this is probably not the game for you. If the idea of red ball calling himself “The Wandering Love Hunter” and possessing a cat doll to pick up women sounds more up your alley, then you’re in luck.

I’ve heard multiple sources complain that the music of the game isn’t as good as the first, which was full of many bouncy and absurdly catchy tunes. Having played through the game top-to-bottom, I wholeheartedly disagree. While it may have taken a little time to grow, several song of the very large soundtrack are either catchy, or just friggin’ cool. The various battle songs are awesome, and multiple character themes/wacky-situation themes are infectiously catchy. If anything, I feel they fleshed out the songs more, making them sound like complete songs rather than just silly interludes.

The voice acting is great once again too. I have little to say about it other than that they got very good quality voice actors again and that they play their roles very well. It’s still a slight bummer that the Japanese get voice-acted character scenes and we don’t, but hey.

Those used to Gust’s M.O. would assume not to expect a major graphical update, and they’d be correct. That said, they didn’t completely phone it in either. Yes, Gust’s games have some notoriety for frequently reusing sprites and monster designs, and that’s still true here. However, they also put a lot more attention into the design of environments in the game, the backgrounds, and have used more shading effects to give life to the various sprites. Battles look very cool, and some environments are just gorgeous in their 2-D detailed splendor. For some reason, they chose to upgrade this into the next-generation HD style graphics, and that means very, very small text for those of us still with antiquated box-TVs. No question, it’s hard to read stat and skill effects for battle. Sure, they’re still reusing sprites, but if it means they can crank out excellent games like this in the course of a year rather than make people wait 5 years at a time for a sequel of questionable appeal... I hope they’ll do it until the end of time.

If there’s anything for me to bemoan, it’s the fact that this style of game is going to remain out of the average gamer’s realm of appeal. The average gamer doesn’t want to play a completely linear J-RPG that focuses on humor and characters, and that even includes the ilk of the masses that have fallen in love with other NIS titles. Though I wouldn’t consider myself a niche-based gamer, Mana Khemia 2 is certainly a niche game, and it just happens to be some of the most enjoyable 80 hours of gameplay I’ve spent.

So, call me surprised again. I didn’t think I’d fall in love with the first game, and as quickly as the second game came out, I didn’t expect to be wowed again. But I got more than that. Mana Khemia 2 is a charming, fun game throughout, and it may be a long, long time before another game captures my heart in the same way.

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Lauren: As huge fans of the the original Mana Khemia, Anthony and I were pretty psyched about a sequel being released so quickly. And guess what? Gust nailed it. They combined everything that was great about the first and combined it with some very smart and convenient improvements. The end result is a colourful, fun game with an excellent character progression system.

By today's standards, the graphics are dated, but they're still nice for the PS2 era. They even look more detailed and colourful than the original Mana Khemia, and the character art is very nice. A lot of enemy sprites were recycled, but it doesn't take too much away from the experience.

The music is similar to the original - simple, happy, and catchy. I found it to be a little less catchy than the soundtrack of the first; however, the songs seemed to have a lot more depth to them. Great stuff overall. The voice acting is, once again, fantastic. A lot of well-known voice actors from the game/anime community signed on for this one, and they did a great job. I'm sure a few of them in particular had a lot of fun with their roles (specifically Pepperoni and Goto).

The story is interesting, and the characters are fun. Mana Khemia 2 has a lot of charm and a fantastic localization, much like its predecessor. A few old characters make amusing returns, and the new characters are well-developed and generally amusing. Once again, the hilarious dialogue is what really makes these games great for me.

Without going into too much detail, I'll simply say that the gameplay is great. It's fun, quick, and satisfying. What I love most about these games is how everything seems to tie together - levelling up in a dungeon nets you experience points, money, and new items and recipes, which then result in stat increases, new abilities, and more to do in your Grow Book. Because of this, exploring a new area always results in stronger characters on many different levels. The battle system remains simple with a fun character rotation system and special abilities associated with it. I keep saying the word "fun", but that's really the best way to describe so much about this game. It's rare that I can do that.

Mana Khemia 2 is essentially two games in one - Raze's story and Ulrika's story. Once you finish both, you can complete an epilogue that truly finishes the game. It took us about 80 hours to beat both storylines and the epilogue, so this was definitely a long RPG. Still, it doesn't overstay its welcome - the time flew by for us and it never stopped being entertaining. Playing through the second storyline is also easier and faster since a lot of the progress carries over.

Gust, you've done it again. Mana Khemia 2 is colourful, fun, and downright hilarious. I just hope they keep doing what they're doing, and props to them for keeping the ol' PS2 alive.

Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana (PS2)

Atelier Iris
Gust / Nippon Ichi

Review by Anthony

A few years before Lauren and I were wonderfully surprised by Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis, a little Japanese company called Gust made its first appearance on North American soil with a quirky game called Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana. And I had a passing interest in it that never manifested as far as me actually playing it. Well, fast forward four years to the present and here I am, finally getting to it. Call it an attempt to see the roots of a game we adored.

Atelier Iris follows the story of Klein, an aspiring alchemist who befriends people and mana on a quest to discovering the secret of a lost race of alchemists, and tries to simultaneously stop the world’s flow of mana from dwindling. Exploration takes place with a 3/4-view platformer design, battles are turn based affairs, and an emphasis is given on crafting and augmenting items through synthesis. The result is a pretty solid and enjoyable RPG that in the light of its more mature sequels, notably shows its age.

What’s good:
- Gust has a knack for making some of the most absurdly catchy and silly songs you’ll hear in RPGs, and I’m pleased to report that this is absolutely the case here. Numerous songs in different situations got hopelessly stuck in our heads, and they managed to break it up nicely with a few rocking tunes too.
- Some surprisingly high talent voice actors were recruited for the game, and as a result, the voice acting is very solid. Basically the entire main cast of Cowboy Bebop is here with roles of varying importance, and Crispin Freeman does a fantastic job as Delsus. Some lines are made more amusing in how they’re performed, which is great.
- In another case of “what you should expect from a Gust game,” the graphics are full of vibrant coloring that adds life to characters, enemies and areas alike. It’s all pleasant and sometimes even quite pretty to look at.
- The battle system, while certainly dated by today’s standards, was still pretty enjoyable to play and was well-balanced. Though the game starts quite easy, before long they’ll start throwing bosses and enemies at you that will cause you to question whether you were truly overlevelled or not. Each character has unique traits to him/her that will make or break their case for being in your main party, with no one being useless or overpowered.
- Atelier Iris is at its best when it doesn’t take itself too seriously. And the good news here is there are plenty of moments that fit the bill. The game not only breaks, but tramples on the fourth wall frequently, offering cute tutorials, amusing commentary on created items, and just some oddly silly moments in general. Why exactly is a chicken attending a theater performance?
- Exploration and item/mana collection in the field is pretty entertaining. Various ingredients and mana-laden items are strewn about all areas of the game. These can be collected, smashed, absorbed, climbed, or whatever the situation calls for. But simple things like absorbing some water elements so you can synthesize some healing items for free are satisfying, and plenty of those moments are to be found as you platform your way through the game.

What’s neutral:
- The concept of utilizing mana’s abilities in the field and in battle is an exercise of “almost, but not quite”. In the field, manas can be used to provide simple things like stepping stones, to services like healing or protection from monsters. The downside is many of these take annoyingly long to activate - you’ll probably want to not see the animations after the first few times. Equipping manas in battle can help increase stats and level skills up faster... but inevitably, some skills will max before others, and some manas seems borderline useless otherwise. Why would I want a mana that gives a few puny points of darkness resistance over a mana that restores HP and SP every turn of battle? They allow you to give gifts to mana as a way to keep them happy and energized after continued use, and although the system wasn’t a chore, it also wasn’t necessary. With the item limit of nine on every item, it was too easy to just continuously feed them overloads of junk items to keep them happy.
- The story is nothing to write home about. The good news is there are some enjoyable moments with the campy characters and villains. The bad news is if you strip away the humor and lighthearted nature, they do actually attempt a serious storyline, and it’s strictly by-the-numbers. Dwindling mana, villain trying to exploit it, yadda yadda. And if character development is important to you, don’t expect to find it here.
- There’s a whole lot of backtracking to be done in this game. I didn’t mind at first, but later on, when you realize that the bulk of all quests and storyline elements involve you going back to previous zones... well, it eventually got to be wearisome. It’s not entirely nonsensical, but not having you transported there makes it feel like it’s padding the playtime.
- Characters only get half experience if they weren’t in the front line after a battle ends. That’s kind of silly since you could have a character do all the damage, then they get punished if they’re switched out by the end. That said, even with that aspect and a fairly major character permanently leaving you with no replacement, it’s not too hard to make use of other characters, even if they’re lagged behind in levels.
- Between synthesizing items and crystallizing mana, there’s a lot of time you can spend in the game doing these side projects for filling up the item lists and powering up your items. That said, these tasks are slow, and not particularly fun to do. While mana crystallization can have pretty immediate benefits in your equipment, only a very small number of equipment pieces can utilize them, and without a guide, it’s trial and error to find out which manas make which crystals. Although synthesizing items can produce some pretty useful items and equipment, more often than not, it doesn’t do that. While you’ll get some cute scenes and fill up your collections, overall you’ll mostly be spending hours and hours making items that have absolutely no use to you. Unless you’re odd and constantly rely on items for healing, it can feel like there was no real purpose to spending hours and hours collecting and synthesizing items.

What’s bad:
- The maximum collected item limit of nine is inexcusable for a game that wants you spend so much time on item creation. Combine that with shops that inexplicably stock or run out of important items, and it can be an absolute chore to collect and make the items you need.
- The transfer points to get between major areas are incredibly important for navigating all the backtracking that needs to be done. Two big problems exist with it though. You won’t know until after you enter a transfer point if you can return to that spot you entered. That, in turn, leads to the problem of not having enough places to warp to. Although you can run through some areas fairly quickly, it still seems unnecessary when they could just give you a few more places to warp in the world.
- Sound sometimes randomly cuts out during voice clips. Other times, a character will have multiple lines voice-acted, then a few that aren’t, followed by a few more that are. It’s hard to tell if this was a bizarre writing oversight or the audio glitches causing it.
- Extremely grating voice work exists for enemy monsters and characters in battle. Hearing the game’s music was great, but some of the shrill sounds to come out of characters and monsters during battle were uncomfortable to hear.
- Pretty disappointingly short ending.

So this was an odd little game overall. The storyline was fluff, but a big helping of silly humor, fourth-wall jokes and intentional camp still kept it interesting. Of their two currently outdated elements - battle system and item creation, the battle system still felt enjoyable to me, while the item creation did not, despite being very robust for its time. Exploration was pretty fun, but the heavy amounts of backtracking eventually wore it down.

Overall, it’s a pretty solid RPG and quite a good offering for 2005. There are plenty of smile-inducing moments and a lot of enjoyable gameplay to be found in the main game, but this also came out before the much appreciated refinements to item creation and world travel. If nothing else, it’s a pleasantly short little game to pass the time that’s equally unlikely to make you break your joystick in anger as it is to inspire you to write fanfiction and doodle the character designs in your trapper keeper. Wait, what?

Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King (PS2)

Dragon Quest VII: Journey of the Cursed King
Level-5 / Square-Enix

Reviewed by Anthony

I think everyone goes through those moments in their gaming lives where it seems the rest of the world thinks the world of a game and you just don’t feel it. My latest installment to that saga was Dragon Quest VIII. I picked it up as a kind of time killer game that I always meant to play, remembering nearly universal stellar reviews for it. Then 70 hours of gameplay later, my main feeling was something like “..huh.”. Not anger, not joy, just some middle ground where I’d finished a long, decent game that was supposed to be an amazing one.

Dragon Quest VIII stays faithful to its Dragon Quest origins and follows a silent protagonist on his quest to defeat an evil entity who has cursed a once noble kingdom, in particular its King and Princess. It’s a traditional RPG through and through, even keeping completely random battles. Additionally, characters can be customized slightly towards specific weapons/spells/skills, and items/armaments can be fused into stronger ones. It’s a solid game that’s made very well but ultimately failed to draw me in.

What’s good:
- Though I’m no fan of the character artwork, I have to admit that the game looks great. The cel-shaded colors pop on the screen and the world always looks full of life. Backgrounds and environments look appropriate and it feels like they just fit very well with the game. Arguably one of the best graphical aspects is that of the enemy sprites. They kept very faithful to classic DQ monsters’ poses, yet animated them and brought them to life to great effect. DQ fans are sure to love this.
- My first thought with the high number of random battles, the different character development points, and the item creation system considered, that this game would be very unbalanced. I was very impressed by how well they balanced all of these aspects. Although guides may tell you to always stick with a specific weapon type per character, to absolutely make x item at y point in the game, or to collect every hidden medal... truth be told, I just kind of went by how I wanted to play the game, and the result is that I did just fine. Some battles were very tough, yes, but using good strategy, I was never unfairly brutalized, nor did I have to go insanely out of my way to level up. It’s moderately difficult, but a bit of work keeps it moving. I appreciated that.
- Being able to collect a monster team from the wild and battle with them in a tournament was fairly cool, but the fact that you could call them out in battle to take a few turns for your party was just awesome. Although the monster arena is a little frustrating with its poor, uncontrollable AI making terrible decisions for your team, the reward of being able to use two teams and get nice items from it was a great deal.
- Keeping all of the classic DQ sound effects for misses, level-ups and the like was a great touch. It didn’t feel too cheesy, and was another nice touch of gaming throwback.
- Despite being old-school inspired, the battle system was pretty solid. A healthy supply of buff and debuff spells rounded out regular skills and the ability to focus up one’s attack for bigger hits. Overall it had a good risk/reward system that played out well in coming up with the best way to beat the more threatening bosses.
- Although it was sometimes slow in practice, the staple DQ casinos were a nice way to earn supplemental income or rare equipment if you put in the time for it.

What’s neutral:
- We love good music in games, and given the crazy laud that was heaped on this game’s orchestral soundtrack, I was ready to be wowed. Instead, I had more of a feeling like all of the music was composed with an orchestra that gets bored easily and was performed with little context to the game itself. Music like the random battle song just feels “busy” with instruments playing all over each other. For the most part, songs feel very distant to the rest of the game, and rarely like they truly match. It took until very late into the game that I finally heard one that sounded pretty. Otherwise, the transitions and orchestral nature of music was impressive, but I don’t think it fit well at all.
- Everyone loves a dapper British accent, but full out cockney English accents? Yee. Performed well enough and all, but the characters’ accents were a bit grating and took a bit away from what was otherwise a pretty solid amount of voice work.
- Some of the characters border on likeable, but otherwise the whole thing felt a bit too cheesy. Jessica apparently had to change into a more revealing outfit to do battle, Yangus had a bunch of weird-attempt-at-cartoonish “comical catchphrase” moments, and while King Trode was occasionally funny, his lines and voice acting were just a shred too over-the-top at times. The characters have unfunny forced-laughter scenes that just elicited eye-rolls, though the ending at least had a couple of cute moments with King Trode and being able to still say “No” to some very obvious “Yes”-needing sequences.
- Treasure hunting progression is nice and all, but the whole thing of putting locked treasure chests in various parts of the world that need stronger keys is tedious. It’s one thing to remember a town with a hidden vault, but to remember to travel in x direction from y town when you have z key while random battles pester you is not fun. I would’ve rather they kept the treasure hunting aspect out of the world map.

What’s bad:
- It would be nice to know the skills you can obtain before permanently putting skill points into a certain weapon/type of abilities. Otherwise, you’re just hoping it’s something good or running to a guide for the list. This is compounded by the fact that some MP-requiring skills do less damage than regular attacks. Huh...
- As mentioned, having no AI control over the monster arena battles was tedious and annoying. It meant you could have a team perfectly capable of winning a rank, yet they’d continually make absolutely moronic choices that would lead to them losing. Sure, keep attacking the least threatening character instead of the one that revives him or their potent damage-dealer. You just sit and watch it happen for minutes on end... annoying.
- I feel like the game should’ve better been titled “Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed Fetch Quest”. Much of the game’s length is caught up in long treks through interconnected fetch-quests... here’s a particularly bad example: At one point, you reach a dungeon, and you’re told you can only get in with a certain item. They tell you to travel to a nearby town. You make your way there, find out bad stuff has happened and you should trek much further to another castle. In said castle-town, you find a prince is missing, and you have to scope around the large castle-town to find him, which takes a special trick aside from just finding his location. Then you’re sent on a mission to go collect an item from a dungeon. You do, then back in town, the prince runs off with it and you have to find him again. Then you’re given access to the item you originally needed, except oops, it has no power! Now you have to go to another area to find a sage. You then find out that you have to sail around a certain area and use the item in battle against a specific monster. Then you can continue back where you began. Friggin’ wow guys.
- Speaking of long treks, although the ability to warp between towns and out of dungeons is a huge benefit, still be prepared for a very slow natural running speed. Although dungeons, towns, and the world map are in pretty glorious 3D, they have your character run at a pretty slow speed throughout. Given that only towns are safe from random encounters, it means even “short” dungeons can take quite a while, or you could spend a good hour+ searching for that aforementioned missing prince. Eventually you get a way to move much quicker on the world map and a ship for sailing, but random battles still happen for both of those. It isn’t until the very end of the game that you finally get a way to travel the world quickly and free of battles.
- I know the story is never the strongest point in Dragon Quest games, but this one was still kind of painful. If it had been intentionally tongue-in-cheek I might’ve given it more lenience, but I’m pretty sure they were serious here. By the time they got to the point where they figured out a staff was evil, and it then kept passing hands and killing people while we sat around watching it happen, any sense of taking the story seriously fell out the window. Not to mention their emotional scenes usually involved characters you just met dying while your party lets it happen. Sigh.

I’m pretty sure there’s nothing wrong with me, but so help me, I can’t see any argument as to why this is supposedly one of the PS2’s best RPGs. Aside from great graphics and a well-balanced battle system, there’s no other single exceptional aspect to the game. Though I had fun at times in grabbing stronger equipment from the world and seeking out monsters for the team, the story never grabbed me (it even managed to annoy), and the game’s length was mostly padded with slow dungeon exploration through long series of fetch quests. Truth be told, I had significantly more fun overall playing the DS’s Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker.

That said, there is some charm here. Great monster art and sound effect throwbacks permeate, and who knows, maybe you’ll get attached to the cheesy characters. But on a system absolutely loaded with RPGs, even as cheap as this game is to obtain, I don’t see a ton of merit in picking it up for anything other than an inexpensive timesink.

Persona 4 (PS2)

Persona 4
Atlus

Anthony:
Hey Atlus, what happened? You see, we were so engaged with Persona 3: FES that it was an absolute no-brainer to pick up Persona 4 when it came out. We even played a preview of the storyline and got all excited, once again impressed by the introduction, characters, localization, and modern settings. And for a little while, we stayed enraptured. Then the other 75 hours of playtime left us somewhere between unsatisfied, to downright annoyed.

Persona 4 follows the story of an exchange student who transfers to a small town that’s suddenly gripped in a mystery as two bizarre murders take place one after another. Those who played Persona 3 will be immediately comfortable with the daily cycles, social links, and battle system. Atlus even managed to make an absolutely enormous list of improvements and corrections to the gameplay of Persona 3... a feat that still impresses me. Whether it was listening to fan complaints or recognizing their errors, they truly delivered.

However, this game is long, and mired in one of the absolute worst storylines and constant strings of bad writing/dialog I’ve seen in an RPG in years. The result, is despite Persona 4 being an excellent game, I absolutely couldn’t wait for it to be over, and couldn’t even enjoy the better aspects of it by the end.

What’s good:
- As mentioned, Atlus improved a ton for this game over Persona 3. Some improvements that immediately come to mind: Save points after school, an option to move to other areas instead of running, ways to make money outside of the dungeon, ways to raise stats in conjunction with social links, more variety in the types of social links, characters able to save you from killing blows, no pointless separation of party members in dungeons, no Reaper in the dungeon, no fatigue/illness levels in the dungeon, the ability to control your partners, no random taking away of and/or forcing characters into your party, clearer prompts to let you know the result of tasks or if social links are close to levelling, more ways to raise social links, allowing social links with male party members, ability to see what abilities do in the future and before swapping them, ability to dictate your party members’ skills, different characters in social links if there are multiple clubs to choose from, more options for things to do at night, condensing the unnecessary three melee attack types into one, options for faster levelling/less time needed in dungeons... I’m sure there are plenty more, but the list is just staggering, and it really showed their knack for making a sequel that improves on almost every aspect of gameplay.
- Aside from one glaringly common exception to the rule, the music in the game is great. While Persona 3 had a bit too much repetition, Persona 4 mixes it up more often, and has a lot of different tracks with unique styles to them. They’re almost always catchy, and I in particular love the boss battle music. The free CD was a nice touch too.
- Once again, they did a great job with the voice acting. Though I was far from thrilled with a lot of the lines they give the characters, I have to admit, the actors all did a great job of delivering them.
- The graphics are a strong point yet again. They added a really nice style to the menus and battles that makes everything look cleaner and still more modern. Characters have expressive portraits, and the town and dungeon environments look great.
- Although I mentioned it briefly on the huge list of improvements, it still bears noting that the overall RPG battling/dungeon crawling aspect of the game was vastly improved. Persona 3 had some overly complicated elements that didn’t quite work well in practice. Persona 4 streamlined where it needed to, simplifying the dungeon crawling and simultaneously increasing the amount of customizing you can do with your character and party. Going into the Tartarus dungeon in Persona 3 was a chore; going into the TV world dungeon of 4 was actually fun at times.

What’s neutral:
- A surprisingly high number of enemy sprites were kept utterly unchanged from Persona 3. Some of the new designs were cool, some weren’t, but in general it was clear they didn’t spend too much time on that aspect.
- Fusing Personas to get the right abilities is still a matter of constantly selecting, checking, de-selecting and re-selecting the Personas to fuse over and over and over until you get the right skills. It’s still repetitive, and given it’s even necessary for one character’s social link, can feel like a waste of time. What kept this from being a negative this time though (it made the bad list in Persona 3), is that they improved the fusion system otherwise... making the skill system more understandable, and only prompting for skill changes after fusion instead of randomly after levelling up.
- Later in the game, mandatory dungeons aren’t available until you learn more about a certain character. This amounts to running around town talking to random people until you find the right flags repeatedly, potentially spanning multiple game days of searching. While it makes sense story-wise, it was an obnoxious chore.
- They added a system this time where weapons and armor become available by selling drops to a shop, which will stock an item if you’ve brought him a certain quantity of a certain enemy’s drop. While it’s a nice thought for customizing which monsters you should fight and which items to work for, that’s basically impossible without a guide. Sometimes you need 4 drops, sometimes up to 10, and not only does it not show you how many you’ve sold to the shop, you’ll never be shown what quantity you need in general... and you also won’t know what item will be produced as a result! So without a guide, you may waste time getting 10 drops just to get yet another weapon for a character you don’t use.
- Taking away the analysis for monsters was kind of a bummer. Having to cast spell after spell hoping to find a weakness for each monster, and to sometimes find none or have them absorbed/reflected on you was pretty annoying. Not to mention the HP estimates from analysis were way off, so why bother?

What’s bad:
- Remember how I said the music was great with one exception? From the beginning to the end of the game, they constantly play this “mysterious” song that’s an uncomfortable, somewhat discordant sounding and repetitive piano piece over and over and over. It sounds unpleasant, and while that might’ve been the intent, by the fiftieth time you’ve heard it for any scene with anything remotely suspicious or bad happening, it may just drive you nuts. Although it was mostly just a nuisance, some very serious scenes near the end were genuinely detracted from by the presence of that dumb song.
- The quest system is the only gameplay aspect that I think took a serious nosedive from Persona 3. In the former game, the same person gave you quests, showed you the rewards from them, and told you what floors had which enemies necessary to get the right item for completion. Sound nice? It was. In Persona 4, random characters in the world at random times will have requests. You won’t know the reward, and you are only given a vague hint as to what monster can drop the item. On top of that, the hint you get only tells what dungeon, not what floor, and there’s a very good chance you won’t remember which floors had which monsters... especially if they want it from a monster you never even encountered. Plus, the quest drops are different from regular drops: they only sell for 0 or 10 yen, and the monsters will only drop those until the quest is over, making farming that area of the dungeon pointless while quests are active. Very weak.
- Never have I seen the quality of a game’s storyline spiral headfirst into the ground as bad as I experienced it here. In all honesty, the introduction and first few hours were very interesting. A murder mystery was about, some genuinely weird stuff was happening, and the characters were charming. However, the next... oh, about 60 hours of the game consisted of absolutely nothing of consequence happening. Your crew sits around talking about the mystery, waits until someone’s kidnapped, saves the kidnapped person, “wacky hijinks” happen between this, and it repeats over and over. And over. With very, very long scenes of nothing/stupid things happening. When all of that’s said and done and the actual plot exposition happens, it’s completely unsatisfying. Although they do tie up all loose ends in the story well, the plot revelations are terrible, unsatisfying, and even the bonus “true” ending path is laughably bad. Awful pacing, awful conclusion.
- Speaking of the story, this game also has some of the worst writing and dialog I’ve seen in an RPG. Scenes often contain every single character pitching in multiple lines to say the exact same thing, only for the same topic to come up 5, 10, 15, 20, and 30 hours later into the game. Some characters are quite likeable, but by the twentieth time they’ve fed you a line to make it obvious that Kanji isn’t smart, or that Chie’s either angry or not quite sure about things, it was very difficult to keep interest. Beyond that, the game was constantly feeding us stories that were a little too ‘convenient’, while simultaneously saying and doing things that left us wondering what the heck they were thinking. The characters are boneheaded and reckless in constantly thinking they’ve found the murderer to the point of absolute eye-rolling obnoxiousness, a cop has a serious lead on murders yet takes absolutely no action until his family gets involved, no one seems to question the person last seen with the deceased, a police house apparently has no surveillance, a doctor just stands and basically says “oh well” as a patient flat-lines in front of him, the killer goes completely unnoticed and acting natural for months, yet has developed no alibi and immediately freaks out when suspected, a hospital room with the prime suspect just happens to have an enormous TV he could escape into, another detective has a suspicion of the killer that is mentioned to no one for ages until after the killer is cornered, the new teacher just happens to be an innuendo-spouting tramp, every character will stand around pointlessly arguing with a shadow for minutes on end as though they’ve never seen it happen before, teenagers instantly come to grips with the fact that they were thrown inside a TV and nearly murdered by otherworldly beings as they spoke to an evil version of themselves, they have no qualms about risking their lives to fight murderous shadows, yet wouldn't dare stay out late trying to catch the kidnapper in the act, and it just so happens that a certain young party member’s plot development involves a shadow that humps a stripper pole to attack you! Absolutely painful.
- Speaking of the writing and the story, get ready to see a lot of it, and in big chunks at a time. As mentioned, this is likely a 70-90 hour game, and a good portion of that will be watching very long scenes with the characters. However, precious little of consequence ever happens in the game, so many of these scenes will either be a) Scooby Doo-level detective work of the characters incessantly talking, repeating themselves, and getting nowhere, b) “Cute” scenes that are just attempts to endear you to the characters (admittedly, there are funny moments), or c) Van Wilder-esque frat movie scenes clearly meant as fan service. Not only are scenes long and pointless, they outright refuse to give you save points between them, or the ability to skip them. Once we even had to just turn off the game mid-scene because we had work in the morning and a scene just kept going on forever and ever. I hope you don’t lose to the bosses either, or you’ll be set to do a lot of listening again before your next attempt. I could’ve gladly taken 20 hours less of scenes like those driving home the fact that the girls can’t cook.

I can go through a variety of emotions when I finish a game: pleased with how it wrapped up, bummed it ended so soon, neutral to the experience, and in rare cases, I can’t wait for them to end. The problem is, if I can’t wait for a game to be over, that’s always meant that it’s a bad game... until now. Persona 4 is a great game, and I absolutely couldn’t wait to be done with it. As much as Persona 3: FES took even longer to beat, I was genuinely interested in the story and developments up to the conclusion. For Persona 4, I wasn’t at all, and even as my efforts came to fruition, I felt even more disappointed with what I had done. By the end, I was just tired, and glad to shelve it for good.

That’s a real shame, because otherwise, the gameplay was spot on, the music was great, the voice acting was great, some of the characters were cool, and it overall showed massive improvements over the previous game. But this game brings to mind a classic problem with the length of RPGs. Sure, a 70+ hour RPG sounds great in that it’ll keep you entertained more for your dollar, but if it’s 70+ hours of a story you can’t get behind, you’ll probably recant your desire for a lengthy game. All of that said, I’m sure a lot of people will eat the characters and their silly scenes up. If you want a modern RPG that plays very well, you don’t have to look any further.

I’d just recommend shutting your brain down the moment any character talks.

---

Lauren:
This is another game that I'll have difficulty scoring. So many aspects of Persona 4 were done right, but then a few missteps soured my final take on the game. The graphics were slightly improved over Persona 3, and look great for the PS2. The music got even catchier than in P3, but as Anthony mentioned, the repetition of one particular "mysterious" song became so painful that it even detracted from serious story scenes. And while the voice acting was fabulous for the most part, some of the cheesier lines were hard to listen to. Of course, that's not the fault of the voice actors.

On that subject, the dialogue is both wonderful and awful. It's wonderful in that it's extremely well-localized, much like its predecessor. The young characters talk as you'd expect people their age to (for the most part), and even make references to contemporary things like MySpace and Livejournal. But on the other hand, some of the dialogue is downright painful, particularly when the group is working on solving a mystery. We were floored at how many times each character kept repeating the same basic ideas over and over again. It really did start to feel like Scooby Doo with adult themes.

The plot seemed intriguing in the beginning, got a little boring toward the middle, and did nothing but disappoint us in the end. So many things throughout the game - both in terms of fanservice and actual plot - seemed just a little too convenient. "Oh no, our teacher is forcing us to all wear bikinis! Oh no, our teacher is making us stay in a 'lovers' hotel! I guess we just have to go with it! Oh wow, the girls AND boys are at the hot springs simultaneously, like in Persona 3 and every anime ever!" Oh, Atlus. But even worse, the plot revelations were completely unsatisfying. I'm sorry, but "I was bored" is not a convincing motivation for a villain these days. It almost felt as though they'd made up the story as they went along, with disappointing results.

But all that aside, as Anthony mentioned, the gameplay was fantastic. So many great improvements were made over P3, making it a lot more entertaining to actually play. Along with that, it looks great and sounds great. Ah, if only the story had been as compelling as Persona 3. For better or worse, it's a very long game as well. You'll easily spend 70-80 hours on it, and a lot of that is tied up in repetitive scenes. Anime-RPG fans will very likely enjoy Persona 4, but those who are tired of plot and character cliches might find themselves a bit exasperated. Teddie was amazing, though.

La Pucelle Tactics (PS2)

La Pucelle Tactics

Nippon Ichi / Mastiff

Anthony: Sometimes when you discover a band you love, your first instinct is to go out and buy their old albums. Then you find out to your dismay, they didn't always have a good production value and weren't as good songwriters back then. Plus, now you're a poser for not having known them before they formed! But, sometimes you get to see an effort that clearly shows how they've progressed over time, and you end up enjoying it too. That's roughly the effect La Pucelle: Tactics had on many rabid Disgaea fans when it was released later in North America despite being a predecessor. Lucky for us, La Pucelle works not only as an aside to the Disgaea series, but it's a pretty enjoyable game on its own too.

La Pucelle is a strategy RPG that follows the story of Prier, a young priestess girl who serves the church as a demon hunter and energetically wishes to become the "Maiden Of Light". Battles take place on a 3/4 strategy grid and have a focus on both defeating enemies and "purifying" them and points on the map. Characters and monsters have their own unique abilities but can be taught other techniques through different forms of equipment. Those who have played the Disgaea line of games will be accustomed to the episodic nature of the plot and basics of battle, though overall the experience is much lighter on strategy and customization.

What's good:
- The characters are great here. Captain Homard especially is a very amusing character with several good lines. There's plenty of good-natured, funny moments throughout the game, courtesy of the likeable cast. Pirate kitties deserve extra mention for being adorable too.
- The level of customization is a good level for those who may have felt either overwhelmed or like they'd missed too much in playing a game like Disgaea. Spells and attacks used often will power up, and though unnecessary for completion, one can give characters and monsters extra spells by giving them equipment imbued with different elements. It can help you out quite a bit, but the difficulty is such that with proper levelling, one can cruise through the game without fussing over these aspects.
- The music, once again courtesy of Nippon Ichi's Tenpei Sato, is great. While there are a few less addictive tunes as some of his later works, the Rosenqueen shop and Eringa Valley music especially stand out as excellent tracks. Similarly, NIS got some surprisingly well known voiceover talent for the characters' voice work, and they do a great job throughout.
- The one "save the character" battle they give in the game actually doesn't have stupid NPCs that rush into battle and get themselves killed. I can't stress enough how thankful I am for this.
- Being able to capture, train, and battle with monsters found throughout the game was a nice touch. The system here was very approachable and allows you simple access to bolster your ranks in different ways.
- The shop surveys to customize the inventory was a nice touch.

What's neutral:
- Given that you can "purify" most monsters in the game to recruit them, yet not all types, it would've been nice if they had given you a notice that a monster can't be recruited, rather than you wasting turns purifying a monster to see no effect.
- Strategy RPG fans and Disgaea fans alike may find this to be a little "light" when it comes to the strategy elements of the game. La Pucelle is very forgiving; there is no penalty for dying in battle (a slight friendship loss for monsters only), the four equipment slots can be used for all kinds of items and none that are unique to characters, strong monsters can be recruited with fairly minimal effort, a very early stage can be rigged to get you tons of money and item levels, and often a workable battle technique is to cluster a ton of characters together so they'll all support and attack simultaneously. Even without experience playing Disgaea, strategy RPG fans used to a certain level of challenge may not find it here.
- The game's extra area, the "Dark World" is perhaps a bit too obscured as far as bonus dungeons go. Despite that it's readily available by obsessively wailing on your allies battle after battle, many people could easily play through without even knowing it exists. It's wholly unnecessary to do, but it might've been a good idea to introduce it as an option the way Disgaea had you go to the Item World briefly.

What's bad:
- Progression can feel somewhat stymied in relation to both characters and monsters in this game. While you can repeatedly use techniques to power up their effectiveness or range, in particular with characters like Prier and Homard, significantly stronger abilities become available in fairly rapid succession. Because few battles are endurance matches, it just means you'll likely completely abandon old skills you worked hard to level. The same is true for monsters... if you picked up a strong Giant Bat or Bear perhaps, and spent every post-battle section working up its stats so it will level up better and better... you may find a bit later in the game that an upgraded version of your monster is easily available that absolutely blows away the stats of the one you worked hard to raise. It can make your efforts feel pointless.
- The option to send monsters to the dark world for items was just confusing. The idea was that sending strong monsters to fight in the dark world was a way to get bonus items from the monsters you've recruited but don't want to use. If they're strong enough, apparently they'll earn you some useful items. However, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to what monsters succeeded or failed. Most often, we'd just get the message that the monster was killed or missing in battle, but for one random monster we recruited but never used, it managed to do well and earned us an item. Yet another monster of the same type, a much higher level monster, and a monster with a full happiness rating all got us nothing. The descriptions didn't help and experimentation only made it more confusing.

If you like strategy RPGs to be on the light side of difficulty, but still want some meat to the experience, La Pucelle's gameplay is a no-brainer. If you like RPGs to have amusing, lighthearted storylines and characters amid more serious elements, then again I think it's a good choice. If you prefer your strategy games to have the depth of Disgaea, or to have the need for very careful planning to win safely ala Fire Emblem, then La Pucelle's simpler take on the genre may be disappointing.

Personally, we tend to love all types of strategy games, and La Pucelle fit the bill quite well as a casual RPG we could easily both jump into. If nothing else, you can at least enjoy seeing happy kitty pirates.

---

Lauren: Despite playing La Pucelle Tactics many years after its first release, it was still my first Nippon Ichi RPG. I had tried and failed to play Disgaea after its convoluted introduction, so La Pucelle's simplified approach was very much appreciated.

The storyline was interesting and caught us off guard with a few of its plot twists. My favourite part about this game was most definitely the characters and dialogue. Excellent localization seems to be a staple of NIS games, and this was no exception. The voice actors all did a fantastic job of bringing each character to life. La Pucelle also deserves credit for making us both laugh out loud on numerous occasions - not a common occurrence with RPGs.

While seasoned tactical RPG players may find this title a little too easy, I still found it very fun to play, with a satisfying sense of progress. Playing La Pucelle can also make it much easier to understand the more complex battle systems of Disgaea, Phantom Brave, and everything onward. It laid the groundwork for many excellent tactical RPGs to come, but La Pucelle still stands firmly on its own with plenty of charm and many hours of entertaining gameplay.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS2)

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
Kojima Productions/Konami

Lauren: I generally dislike first-person and third-person shooters. I wasn't very good at stealth games like Tenchu or Splinter Cell. Action games are hit-or-miss for me, too. And don't even get me started on war games. Yet despite all that, I fell in love with Metal Gear Solid. Then Metal Gear Solid 2. And I don't know how Kojima/Konami keep doing this, but they pulled off yet another excellent entry in the Metal Gear series with Snake Eater.

There is something different about the Metal Gear Solid series that I haven't experienced in any other games. Perhaps it's the personality behind the whole experience. The characters feel like real people, the dialogue is absolutely hilarious at times, and sometimes the whole thing even feels a bit campy. It may also be the staggering level of detail and hidden references that they put into each game. Whatever the defining feature is, it keeps me coming back to the series for more.

I'll admit that I was skeptical at first. The initial previews for Snake Eater seemed downright bizarre. No radar? Camouflage? A jungle? ...Eating snakes? I thought Kojima had gone off the deep end, but as always, he knew what he was doing. Never will I doubt him again.

I can't say a lot about the story without getting into spoilers, but I can definitely say it was a great one. The setting is much further back than the last two Metal Gear Solid games, and there's another distinct difference with the characters involved, but it still manages to keep that "MGS feel" for the most part. The plot will definitely keep you guessing right up until the post-credits scene.

David Hayter's classic voice acting returns for our protagonist. He does a great job as always, though this Snake is understandably a little less badass than what we're used to. The new voice actors were also very convincing in their roles. The music is suitably tense, and the James Bond-style vocal song "Snake Eater" is amusing and fitting for the time period of the game. The ambient jungle noises are also very well done - I often can't tell if a bird is chirping in the game or outside of my window.

Most of the game is played in a jungle environment, which can provide both safety and additional danger. A more realistic stamina gauge has been added, and Snake needs to keep it up by eating. If he doesn't, there will be consequences such as an unsteady aim, slower health recovery, and a growling stomach, which can alert guards. Of course, you'll still find the classic rations here and there, but Snake will usually have to hunt for the rest of his food. You'll be scouring the jungle for snakes, rabbits, birds, fish, and so on. Of course, certain enemies will want to bite back, too, so there is a fair bit of strategy in this element of the game as well. Most animals will only last about one real-life day before their meat begins to rot, and this usually means you'll want to toss the meat or risk giving Snake food poisoning. Yes, really.

Adding to the theme of realism is the new "Cure" menu. Instead of simply having his health bar go down with every injury, Snake now has to take care of each one individually. You'll find first aid supplies throughout the game, and it will be very important to fix up your wounds, or else your health will not recover. This system gets impressively detailed; for example, a cut requires styptic, disinfectant, a suture kit, and a bandage, while Snake can rid himself of a leech by burning it off with a cigar, or remove a crossbow bolt from his arm by digging it out with his trusty knife. This guy can take a lot of punishment, apparently, but at least it's more realistic than chowing down on rations to fix gunshot wounds to the head.

The new Mei Ling equivalent is a lady by the codename of Para-Medic. She'll help explain the first aid procedures, as well as act as your field guide when it comes to animals in the jungle. In classic MGS style, this amounts to some very amusing conversations. The same goes for your weapons expert this time around. It's definitely worth calling both of them on a regular basis. I'm still amazed by the amount of radio conversations they put into these games, even though the casual gamer would miss out on half of them.

A new camouflage system has also been implemented. Depending on where Snake is standing, his outfit will give him a certain percentage which represents how visible he is. You can gather different outfits and facepaint throughout the game that will be helpful in various environments. Some hard-to-get camouflage pieces also have hidden additional effects, such as stamina recovery. There is definitely something thrilling about laying down in the grass with a 95% camo index, wondering if that nearby guard is going to see you or not.

And then there's the actual action of the game. Stealth is as fun and engaging as ever, but it's definitely much more challenging. Your precious radar is gone, and there's no way to get it back. You are given a sonar and two other sensors which can function in a similar way, but it's still not quite the same. You'll definitely feel somewhat exposed for the first while if you've become conditioned to the other MGS games. You'll be breathing a sigh of relief when you finally come across the familiar thermal goggles. Using advanced stealth techniques will become important, since alerts happen much more easily this time around, and caution mode lasts a very long time.

My main complaint with Snake Eater is the lack of a controllable camera. You can either move in third-person view, or look around in first-person, but you can't move in this way unless you're crawling. The analog sticks allow you to peek a little further in each direction, but it's still not nearly enough for sneaking up on some guards. You'll sometimes have to get only a few feet away from a guard before you can even see him, and by then, he'll probably spot you and sound the alert. This isn't as much of a problem once you get used to it and use the appropriate tools at your disposal, but it can seem pretty tough at first. I know that the remake, Subsistence, fixed this issue, and now I wish I'd purchased that instead.

The gameplay doesn't get boring. You'll be in a jungle, underground, in a cave, climbing a mountain, and then finally back to the familiar indoor environments. You can take enemies down with traditional weapons, or make use of the many new close-quarters combat techniques. The boss fights also add a lot of variety, and there are usually many different techniques that can be used to defeat them.

Another thing that always impresses me about MGS is the developers' attention to detail. There are countless additions to these games that the casual player will likely miss. For example, one boss in Snake Eater can be defeated in three ways - the traditional approach (which could mean several different methods as well), or by shutting off the game and setting the PS2 clock ahead a few weeks so that he'll die of old age, or you can snipe him when he is shown earlier in the game briefly following a cutscene. Just amazing. Never before have I seen details like this put into a video game.

The graphics definitely push the PS2 near its limits. Once again, the smooth real-time graphics are as gorgeous as those found in cutscenes. Everything is beautifully animated, from the characters' facial expressions right down to every single blade of grass.

And of course, there's plenty of reason to play MGS3 again. As always, there are many unlockable items and goals to aim for, including the usual infinite ammo item and stealth camouflage. The game is already a long one, taking most gamers 20-25 hours to complete the first playthrough. Not too shabby for an action game.

Metal Gear Solid 3 isn't just a decent prequel. It's an incredibly well designed game on its own. It's beautiful, it's challenging, it's fun, it's hilarious, and it's interesting all at the same time. The initial learning curve may be a bit steep, but I encourage all potential players to tough it out, because this one was absolutely worth it.

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Anthony: I was very late to the Metal Gear Solid franchise in that I didn’t play the original MGS until MGS4 was out. So, I can’t claim the same storied past with the series. That said, the fact that I eagerly play these games and love them now is a testament to the point Lauren made - there’s just something different and unique about this franchise. Third or first-person shooters have never been my thing, but just like Metroid Prime games will always have me breaking that rule, so too will games like MGS3.

Beyond the fact that it was amusing to see a young Ocelot and get more of the background on Snake and his history, the game was great to play. Keep in mind though, the difficulty is significantly ramped up compared to MGS2... guards are sent into alert much easier, caution mode takes much longer to end, and the lack of the soliton radar means you’ll be shuffling through various less effective equipment if you want the same effect. Couple that with a very unfortunate camera system that often makes it difficult to see things right in front of you, plus the new stamina/injury system included with your health gauge, and you have a significantly more difficult experience.

Does it matter? Not really. Early frustrations and camera-impeded areas aside, the game plays fantastically, and once again manages to be a part of an absolutely huge experience that no one will be able to discover every aspect of alone. Self-referencing humor, spoken dialog even for improbable unlockable items, crazily in-depth systems that allow you to blow up food stores so guards will complain of hunger to give away their position... A review can’t even begin to touch all of the easter eggs you can find in the game and how many ways to go about solving each stage’s challenges.

It’s just that kind of experience that makes you want to come back for more. MGS3 is an excellent continuation of the series that gives me fond memories even as I think about the hard parts that frustrated me. It makes me want to go back and play them again!

Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria (PS2)

Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria
Tri-Ace/Square-Enix

Anthony: It’s official - Norse mythology is awesome. It inspires tons of weapon names in just about every RPG ever, it gives Amon Amarth something to continually rock out about, and it spawned Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria, arguably the best game of the series and quite possibly a top five game of the best PS2 games I’ve played. Valkyrie Profile 2 truly took the series to the next level, with incredible graphics, a gripping story and some rather fun gameplay to boot.

Valkyrie Profile 2 combines 2-D dungeon crawling with 3-D RPG battles, an upgrade from the 2-D battles from Valkyrie Profile, but keeping many of the same elements. The story takes place in an alternate history from the original, and plays out almost the opposite of it too. The original Valkyrie Profile had you loyally serving Odin as Lenneth, seeing very detailed stories of the Einherjar you’ll train and send to Valhalla, while offering little in the way of a main storyline. The sequel has you playing as Alicia/Silmeria, defying Odin by attempting to send Einherjar back to Midgard, and instead has a broad main story and only snippets about the Einherjars' lives. While there was nothing inherently wrong with the original, the change in design is welcome.

What’s good:
- The story is very intense and engaging. From the opening scenes to the end, scenes are presented in wonderful 3-D animation and aided by excellent voice acting. This really helps add to the experience, as many of the events in the game will be very sad and tense in nature; at times I felt more like I was watching a suspense movie than a plot scene of an RPG. It comes together very well and had us very eager to see more scenes.
- The graphics are stellar, and represent quite possibly the best I’ve seen on PS2. Granted, this is not quite the graphical achievement of say, Final Fantasy XII, in that the world isn’t 3-D. However, because they’ve kept the world 2-D and saved the battles for 3-D, the environments, character models, enemies and their animations all look incredible. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a PS2 game that looks as pretty as this, and it really helps the experience.
- The decision to keep the exploration in 2-D was a good one, in that they were able to expand on the dungeon mechanics from Valkyrie Profile. While there were puzzles related to Lenneth’s ability to make crystals in the original, they’ve expanded on this to make puzzles where Alicia can freeze enemies/objects and switch places with them. This leads to a lot of navigation puzzles that surprisingly can be pretty fun to pull off. Further, the controls are tight and it’s fairly easy to avoid getting ambushed by enemies as a result.
- Battles are, in a word, satisfying. You can move your party or split two parties to move around a 3-D map, strategically moving and dashing to avoid enemy attacks and start up combos. The game has no active time system, as the enemies will never move when you don’t, and using this factor in combination with your AP gauge for dashing, attacking, casting spells, or using items makes up the bulk of the strategy. Further to the point - it’s really fun to attack. Characters have a set of attacks based on their weapons and your choices, and by timing them in your own preferred pattern, you can set up strings of combos, ground attacks, juggles, and more to punish enemies. When pulled off correctly, the combos look vicious, are highly effective, and are fun to watch.
- The sound package is great as well, as the music is good, the voice acting is great, and the sound effects really add a punch to the battles. There’s a lot of great voice acting to be found here, including some bonus dialog available when some Einherjar that have story links to other characters are placed in battle. Between that, the aggressive cries of characters in battle, and the resounding “thud” from critical hits and breaks, the battles get quite a lot of personality.
- Allowing a second player to take control of characters in battle was a genius and very simple inclusion that more RPGs should try to utilize. It was a blast to fight cooperatively.
- The bonus dungeon, the “Seraphic Gate” was great this time around. It’s well balanced: tough, but you’re able to level up and get good items within, and it’s full of very funny scenes.

What’s neutral:
- The game is nicely balanced in being functional regardless of the party you choose; once you realize that many main characters are added and taken throughout the game, the appeal of utilizing Einherjar (who never leave unless released) becomes obvious. Depending on your tastes and how you set up skills/abilities, you can make useful parties out of tons of different character combinations. However, the average player may be disappointed to find that he/she may have been shafted in Einherjar selection. The game doesn’t really make it clear, but when you find Einherjar in the world, you may be getting a randomly chosen Einherjar from an invisible pool. Further, the only way to get a different one is to save prior to finding them, and reload until you get the right one. This is a strange mechanic, as some Einherjar are clearly superior to others, yet that fact is not readily apparent when you receive them, and someone can blissfully go through the game not realizing he/she missed out on some of the better characters by luck.
- Oddly, one status effect that’s meant to be beneficial seems to not work properly. In Valkyrie Profile games, “Faint” was an effect you could give by brutalizing the enemy such that they’d lose a turn. However, this isn’t turn based, so Faint literally wears off after taking one step, and the enemy can immediately attack then. Chances are, once you’ve caused Faint, you’ve used up most if not all of your AP that you’d need to attack anyway, so that was an odd inclusion.
- Though the music is great, the same battle music plays through basically the entire game. You can change this in a New Game+, but still, mixing it up would’ve been nice.

What’s bad:
- This game is very guide-heavy. What this means is without an adequate walkthrough, the game may end up extraordinarily challenging and confusing to players attempting to venture out on their own. Skills are a good example... by linking various accessories and pieces of equipment, characters can gradually learn abilities over time that they can set to a character. These affect stats and performance in battle and have very significant effects. While the game gives you some vague guidance on how to unlock skills, most of these will only be unlocked by finding the correct type of rune combinations in equipment. This may amount to repeatedly breaking a specific body part of a random enemy until a rune drops and seeing if it helps you. How would you know this? You wouldn’t. Granted, it’s pretty fun to thrash enemies and see what drops, but some parts are very difficult to target and have low drop rates too, so a guide is extremely helpful in trying to figure out where to find runes. Similarly, you may find you’re suddenly up against a cluster of bees that you can’t do any damage to. Little did you know, the bees are ghost type, which means unless you have elemental attacks (a mage or some very specific archer attacks) or the Ghost Buster skill, you’d best run. Without significant experimentation or a guide, that would likely be very confusing. Further still, dungeons often require the manipulation of “sealstones” that can have beneficial or negative effects on your party and enemies in the dungeon. They can also be unlocked to bring into other dungeons. Difficult bosses may be scaled down significantly in difficulty by having the right sealstones set or carried, but unless you fight the boss yourself to figure out its attacks/characteristics, you’re in for a very tough ride without a guide to help you through it. And some extremely beneficial items for carrying sealstones are unlocked by doing optional dungeons that are missable and opened by speaking to a specific NPC at a specific time? Wow.

What we have here is a very rare RPG indeed. I can’t remember the last time I was actually feeling very tense about what would happen in a RPG’s scene, but this game made it happen. When you combine the great story with a gratifying battle system, a beautiful graphical package and excellent sound to boot, what you have is... well, one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played. Valkyrie Profile 2 is an incredible sequel indeed. I just strongly recommend playing with a walkthrough on hand.

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Lauren: Valkyrie Profile 2 was a pleasant surprise. The original VP was one of the many PS1 RPGs that I never got around to playing, so I didn't know what to expect of its sequel (technically a prequel). It ended up being such a gorgeous and well made RPG that I was left wondering why I'd never heard people talk about it. After finishing it, I'm even more baffled about this.

The graphics were astounding for the Playstation 2 - definitely up there with FFXII and MGS3. Backgrounds were incredibly detailed, and character models looked nearly flawless. The beautiful lighting effects throughout added an ethereal touch to the game as well. I also very much enjoyed the music all throughout Silmeria, from calm piano melodies to rocking dungeon themes.

Anthony already described the gameplay, and I'll leave it at that, since he actually "played" the game while I backed him up in battle with the other two characters. The co-op option was a lot of fun - not enough RPGs have a feature like that, so kudos to them for including it.

I can easily say that I have never, ever encountered an RPG as depressing or unforgiving in terms of removing characters from your party as VP2. There were several parts throughout the game where Anthony and I looked at each other in shock at what had transpired in a cutscene. The plot twists are done very well, and the story is excellent overall, but I can't say it's the happiest of tales.

The classic bonus dungeon was present here, and it lived up to the usual expectations. It was challenging and absolutely hilarious. The humour was especially welcome after the downer of a story, much like Covenant of the Plume. The scenes defy description, so it's probably best to experience these bizarre moments for yourself.

It may not be perfect, and it's certainly challenging, but there's really no reason for a traditional RPG fan to pass over this title. Hopefully we'll see a re-release soon like we did with Lenneth, because a solid RPG like this definitely deserves more players.