Knights in the Nightmare (DS)

Knights in the Nightmare
Sting / Atlus

Anthony: All right Sting, you win. I thought Riviera: The Promised Land was pretty creative, but apparently that wasn’t enough. Now I’ve just had my gaming mind violated by arguably one of the most unique ideas to get successful implementation in years. Tackling Knights in the Nightmare is bound to be a daunting experience in one way or another. Maybe bad, maybe mind-blowingly awesome, but somewhere along the road, you feel like Knights might be more complex than functional games are allowed to be.

Explain it? Dang. Okay... Knights in the Nightmare is akin to an unholy trinity of action, strategy-RPG, and shooter genres. In an overly simplistic nutshell, Knights is about using the touch screen to activate strategically placed units to attack moving enemies on screen and dodge their various “bullet” attacks. That’s an unjust oversimplification though, as aspects such as turn time, item/weapon usage, unit types, monster/unit movement, elemental properties, specialized recruitment, item fusion/strengthening, Law/Chaos modes, attack types, enemy reels, unit vitality, hiding, and skill holds are among a minor list of elements that just scratch the surface of all there is to the gameplay. The good news is it has an extensive tutorial, and impressively requires a deft combination of strategic planning and very careful live action. The bad news is it very well may be one of the most limited-audience games I’ve ever seen.

What’s good:
- Incredible artwork is found all throughout the game. Designs for each type of knight, the characters, the monsters, the environments... they all have extremely impressive artwork. It may very well be the best and most intricate work on a portable system to date.

- Unlike some complicated games, Sting is fully aware of the beast they’ve unleashed on us. In doing so, they added a live-action tutorial mode to start you out, a section with more text-based instructions on major gameplay elements, and a big additional section with tons of tips covering just about every aspect of the game. Further, when you get a Game Over, the game actually gives you a full, detailed paragraph giving you advice on what you did wrong and/or some things to look for in trying the stage again. They also give you options to retry a stage from scratch, keep going with the damage/kills you’ve made... or you can go back to the title screen and do free leveling to earn exp and items for your knights. If you miss the recruitment of some knights, they even provide you “Nameless” knights of a class you’re missing so you can still play the levels as though you’d recruited properly. And in the preview screen before battle, they even tell you the weakness of each monster. Clearly, they had the players’ fragile psyche in mind.

- To that point as well, the included “Easy” mode is very generous, allowing someone a significantly simplified experience that’s good for weaning you on the gameplay or just making the game less hectic, while still requiring proper strategy and execution.

- The packaging deserves special note for this game as well. Not only did the game come with a free music CD and an enormous instruction booklet for helping to understand the game, pre-orders also got a very large and extensive art book collection with notes from the directors and artists. It’s a great glimpse into the work put into this game.
- Despite the vast amount of information crammed into the item and unit screens in the game, they did a surprisingly good job of keeping it all manageable. A great deal of item/unit information appears on the top screen with instant loading, and all item/units can be instantly sorted by several categories. Aside from just scrolling through the sheer amount of them, I was impressed by how overall simple it was to work with.

- It probably took me until I was two-thirds through the game, but at some point, the stars truly aligned and I could appreciate working through all the intricacies of the game. No doubt, this game is so complex and unusual compared to pretty much any recent offering, that it will absolutely drive some players away, and make others shelve it in frustration. I even found myself taking a long break from the game because it just felt daunting to play it night after night. But as time went on, I started to understand the knights’ functionalities, enemy patterns, and the use of abilities such as hiding, skill-holding and hi-skills... before I knew it, I was really good at the game, and I was having fun despite its challenge. It absolutely made me want to go back and replay levels with the greater understanding I had.

- With a long main game, and the option to play the game again with your collected knights and/or play a different storyline, this game has a massive amount of replay value if you find yourself to be a fan. Knights is undoubtedly a great “desert island” game.

What’s neutral:
- The narrative is bound to get some mixed reactions among players. At its core, there’s a decent story here that’s rather sad, mainly because death, both literal and metaphorical, is arguably the most present theme throughout. However, there’s bound to be some confusion and head-scratching throughout, as after each scene, Knights plays story scenes that jump all over various timelines. Typically each scene is only prefaced with “x nights before/after y event,” so reconciling that in your mind to events z, a, and b, when you just spent 20 minutes frenetically piloting a wisp is tricky. It’s brought together more and more as the end comes, but with a whopping 47 scenes, there very well may be players that give up and start skipping scenes before that happens. Further, though they give the intriguing option to get snippets of back-story on the dozens of knights in the game, being only able to see it by pausing during battle is an odd inclusion. Battles are hectic and require a lot of focus, so many players will ignore this feature in favor of trying to carefully beat the level.
- Repetition is a doubtlessly a factor in the game. Like a strategy RPG, the story plays out the same through each scene... chapter intro, scene leading to battle, pre-battle dialog, battle, post-battle dialog, flashback scene, unit organization time, final chapter scene, next chapter intro... thing is, this exact formula happens 47 times. And unlike a strategy RPG, battles are often hectic, rarely unique, always time-based, and every single level has specific items that can only be obtained during the story battle. That’s a whole lot of being a Knight in the Nightmare. It’s worthy of note that you also fight a certain boss three or four times, and consider it’s basically the same fight each time, that’s kind of disappointing.
- Whether intentional or not, luck will undoubtedly play a factor in how each person plays the game. Because there are no shops or item creation, you are, in many ways, a complete slave to the weapon drops you get in game. In my own case, I had serious trouble getting weapons for the highly useful Lance Knight class, which led to me not using a valuable class often, and subsequently missing early key items as a result. The same can happen with having an overabundance or dearth of certain elemental weapons, or just not having enough of the right item to unleash the powerful and important Hi-skills. The leveling option and trying to kill as many enemies as possible can help, but neither removes the randomness.
- Boss fights will either be epic or a sticking point for gamers depending on how they see the issue. Normal fights have enemies whose attacks are small and might only take away 2-4 seconds of your time if hit. Bosses typically have enormous attacks that nearly fill the screen and require lots of practice to effectively dodge... and those attacks often take away anywhere from 9-20 seconds when you’re hit. It’s a pretty huge spike in difficulty, and it may either be fun or infuriating depending on the circumstance.

What’s bad:
- There are a couple minor concerns with using the all-touch-screen interface for battles. Early going, one frustration that may pop up is that the battle screen gets so “busy” with enemies and their attacks, that in attempting to dodge everything, you’ll inevitably activate knights and not realize it, often causing you to lose precious time unintentionally. That problem can eventually be rectified with practice, but what doesn’t change is that the fixed position on the right side of the screen for switching Law/Chaos modes, grabbing weapons/key items, and activating skill holding, rather than being mapped to any buttons, means that depending on enemy attack patterns, you can effectively be “trapped” on the left side of the screen from utilizing several functions that are necessary to win. Also, even practice won’t rectify how difficult it is to grab the correct weapon when a Knight is positioned right next to the item list.
- Surprisingly, there are a few odd oversights within. Before beginning a battle turn, you can tap an enemy to see its movement path - a practice that’s absolutely vital for selecting the right knight and weaponry to deal with it. However, if an enemy happens to be placed on a space with a knight, tapping the area will only bring up knight selection. Additionally, attacks can be rendered useless from changes in the height of the map...so it’s somewhat cruel that in previewing a knight’s range, they often show the maximum range, despite that activating a weapon actually reduces that potential range due to height changes. Weapons list a height range, but this is unclear in practice, as some attacks seem to hit outside of it or miss inside of the specified range.
- Maybe I’m just complaining, but I found the chest mimic situation a bit on the “jerk” side. Chests often have key items and need to be attacked a few times to open. Sometimes though, attacking the chest reveals it’s a mimic, which will bounce around an undetermined area and either escape the stage during the turn, or completely disappear when the turn ends. That means to appropriately deal with chests, you need to specifically try to open them at the beginning of a turn to allow time for a mimic, figure out a mimic’s pattern so you can try to attack it multiple times, and just hope that this is all doable within one turn (while enemies are attacking you) before it escapes. Kind of cruel.

Phew. Rarely does a game elicit this kind of reaction. At the same time that I find myself wanting to talk to people about all of its intricacies and how I personally dealt with x and y obstacles in the game, I find myself wondering what absurdly small percentage of gamers out there (hardcore RPGers included) will really go for this game... and further, what percentage will see it through to the end. It’s full of creativity, ambition, and a huge pair of balls, in introducing a completely new style of RPG gameplay while simultaneously not sugar-coating a thing.

All of that said, something that really stands out to me is that despite Knights single-handedly developing a complex genre, at no point does Sting ever completely throw its players to the wolves. The huge tutorial, easy leveling mode, options to keep going after a loss, providing “free” knights if you’re missing a class, generous Easy mode, and even paragraphs of advice when you die show that they wanted you to play and enjoy the game, rather than just watch you suffer.

In short, Knights in the Nightmare is a true behemoth of a game. It’s hard, it’s crazily complex, has a ton to explore, is pretty glorious when it all comes together, and may just have the most limited gaming audience I can imagine. If you’ve enjoyed Sting’s diverse offerings or just want to try something extremely unique and challenging, I absolutely recommend it. Similarly, I wouldn’t blame anyone who decides it’s not for them, regardless of whether it takes 5 minutes or 20 hours to realize that.

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Lauren: With Anthony's review in mind, I was essentially prepared to give up on Knights in the Nightmare after giving it a brief attempt. After I heard his stance on the game, I was intimidated. After I completed the tutorials, I was terrified. Character and weapon elements, attack ranges dependent on law and chaos modes, obstacles containing key items for recruitment and more weapons, knights that can't be attacked directly (except sometimes!), "effects", and so on. You have to worry about vitality running out, durability running out, and time running out. There seemed to be simply too much to bear in mind at any given time, which would be fine if it were a turn-based strategy RPG, but the action of Knights happens in real-time. I assumed that this game would not be for me after fumbling and panicking through the first battle. But, I gave it another try the next night. And the next night. And with some time and good coaching, I finally saw the appeal of Knights and excitedly saw it through to the end.

That said, it is still not for everyone. The scene-battle-scene-battle-scene formula never changes, and the dark story hops all around the timeline in a somewhat confusing manner. Even the music, while fantastic, gets repetitive due to this formula. And the voice acting was just "there", even bothering me when I realized that badass Maria has a high- pitched little girl voice.

But even so, I truly enjoyed this game. Its unique style was simply fascinating, and that allowed me to look past those flaws to happily continue the experience. And despite the odd pacing of the plot, it is a very engaging one that's made more convincing by fantastic artwork.

Let's get down to the gameplay, though. Anthony has done a great job of describing the many intricacies of how Knights works, so I will just add a few thoughts to that. Easy Mode makes things infinitely more manageable if you're concerned with learning how the game works first. As he mentioned, it gives you 26 turns for every battle, max MP at the start of each battle, warning signals when a big attack is about to hit, and apparently no Mimics. While that seems like a lot of hand-holding considering their forgiveness even with Game Overs, it's nice to know you're "safe" while learning the ropes and aiming for victory as though there's a serious turn limit anyway.

My major complaints with the gameplay are also in line with Anthony's. Accidentally activating a Knight while dodging is very easy to do, and quite frustrating because it causes a time penalty, which is the same result as letting yourself get hit. And again, when there is a knight in the top-right corner of the screen, it's always a struggle to grab the right item without activating him/her by accident. Finally, when you try to give an NPC a key item while a monster is on the same square, you'll undoubtedly have to wait until the monster decides to move.

Most battles can be very hectic, especially if you focus on obtaining key items and weapons from obstacles before fighting the enemies. As a result, activating a knight by accident or struggling to reach the right side of the screen to switch modes or grab an item can certainly mess with your strategy. It felt like the menu portions of the screen should have been kept separate from the action itself, but that's just my opinion. It took some practice to grasp the general strategy of the battles, but once I got used to the fact that time doesn't tick down unless you do something or get hit, the stress level went down. It's odd to think of a timer as not ticking down when it's right there at the top of your screen, but that's just another thing that Knights does differently.

Hellhounds and a certain boss are an exception to the "only the wisp can be hurt, and it only subtracts time" rule. These monsters can chomp away at a knight's Vitality, which is an extremely important stat. When your VIT runs out, you die. If Maria dies, it's game over. If a knight dies, the knight is permanently gone. VIT is consumed by actions in battle, and replenished with experience points or the "transoul" feature. However, the aforementioned monsters can attack a knight and rapidly deplete his or her Vitality if they spot him/her while activated. Just another intimidating feature of Knights in the Nightmare.

A slightly cruel addition was the method to obtain the "good" ending of this game. It's pretty vague, and thus far I've found absolutely no references to it within the game itself. Perhaps it will come after the completion of the alternate playthrough, but I can't confirm this yet. Regardless, the trigger to the ideal ending is on a seemingly random panel that has to be broken twice, earning it a well-deserved "Guide Dang It" tag on TVTropes. On that topic, however, a more positive note - Knights has many different endings and a completely separate playthrough with a different main character and battles, so the replay value on this one is incredible.

After feeling like I had to take a college course on Knights in the Nightmare, and then feeling like an utter failure during many boss fights just for getting hit a lot, I'm not quite sure how to recommend this game to you. I stuck it out and would now even consider playing through the alternate story, even though I'm still a bit intimidated by it. Even Anthony was still learning new minor gameplay aspects while helping me on my playthrough.

All I can say is bravo, Sting. Each game you create seems more unique, complex, and engaging than the last. While I can't recommend it to everyone, I think Knights deserves a chance for its interesting style alone.

Half-Minute Hero (PSP)

Half-Minute Hero

Marvelous/XSEED

Lauren:  After having experienced the typical RPG grind countless times in my gaming history, I was both intrigued and confused by the concept of Half-Minute Hero. An RPG in which quests must always be completed in 30 seconds, and then the credits roll? I spent the first mission running around like a crazy person, having absolutely no idea what was going on. And yet, I loved it. Once I got the hang of it, I became completely hooked on Half-Minute Hero.

Although I suggested that it's an RPG, Half-Minute Hero is actually several games in one, much like Retro Game Challenge with more flexibility. You start out with the option of Hero 30 (old-school RPG), Princess 30 (side-scrolling/top-down shooter), or Evil Lord 30 (real-time strategy). Once those are complete, additional games open up as well. All of these have a tongue-in-cheek plot driving them forward, and different reasoning behind the 30-second time limit for each stage.

Hero 30 is the longest of the games, and it's basically a high-speed parody of 8-bit RPGs. It starts out with your valiant hero failing to save the world from an evil lord's 30-second spell of doom. However, the Time Goddess appears and offers her help. (For a price, of course.) From that point forward, although you are technically limited to 30 seconds per quest, you can reset the clock at goddess statues and buy yourself more time. However, the cost for doing so increases with each use of the statue, making it impossible to continue on indefinitely. With this limitation, the quests happen like this: Goddess tells you about the quest, timer starts, you quickly level up on random encounters and visit the closest town (which stops the clock, thankfully). Buy equipment and/or heal and find clues about how to complete the quest. Reset your timer as necessary, continuing onward to other towns or dungeons and fighting monsters along the way. There is usually a puzzle involved, and once it's solved, you can defeat the boss of the stage. Although the average quest is straightforward and over within a couple of timer resets, the frenetic pace keeps things fun and interesting.

Hero 30 is laid out in a way reminiscent of early Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy titles. The graphics are intentionally pixellated and simplistic. Enemy encounters take place on a separate screen from the overworld map, and you don't have to do anything during them. Your hero just bounces off the monster until the stronger one wins. It's actually pretty hilarious to watch. Though this may make it seem like the battles lack strategy, the overall quest certainly requires it. You will have to carefully use your seconds and determine how best to spend your money when equipment, healing items, and timer resets are all very important. Due to our greedy goddess friend, money does not carry over from quest to quest, so the hero has to start fresh every time. Fortunately, equipment carries over.

Sound hectic? It is. But it's hilarious in its chaotic nature and easy enough to grasp after the first few tries. There are 30 main quests and 20 sidequests, which kept me busy for about 7 hours. Each quest also has hidden titles that can be unlocked by satisfying certain difficult or strange conditions. And finally, by defeating a total of 108 evil lords (which will require a bit of quest-spamming), a special challenging quest becomes available as well.

From the beginning, you are also able to ease into Half-Minute Hero with Princess 30 - a high-speed shooter. The storyline of this one is even more nonsensical than the last, but it doesn't matter because the gameplay is really fun. Your princess automatically moves forward (some levels are sidescrolling, others are top-down) with her army, firing off a spray of crossbow bolts as she moves. You control her speed and where the arrows are fired. Though most quests are pretty easy, a few will take longer than the standard 30 seconds. The Time Goddess' solution for this is a strip of red carpet in certain locations on the stage. Moving the army over this strip will give you some precious seconds back, while simultaneously robbing you of your hard-earned cash. (It's the only use for the money anyway, though, so you may as well use it.) All in all, Princess 30 was short, simple, and very funny.

And finally, there's Evil Lord 30. Your "hero" in this case is an effeminate evil lord who's attempting to save his cursed girlfriend. He is capable of summoning three types of creatures to fight for him. It ends up being a glorified game of rock-paper-scissors - you summon Enemy Y to eliminate Enemy X, Z to eliminate Y, and so on. Of course, the enemy is just as capable of destroying your units in the blink of an eye if you happen to have the wrong ones around. This one is a bit more challenging due to the increased strategy combined with the time limit. The evil lord also has his own limitations - he moves slowly (and thus can't make it to the Time Goddess shops quickly - yes, she has shops for this one) and his mana pool is limited. After summoning several creatures, the mana pool shrinks and anything summoned beyond that point is as weak as a paper doll. Resetting the timer fixes this problem, but being hit by an enemy worsens it. Because of this, I found a couple of the boss fights to be tough. Completing the few sidequests was quite important for strengthening the Evil Lord's mana pool for later story missions. To be honest, I didn't have quite as much fun with Evil Lord 30 as I did with Hero and Princess. Maybe I'm just not an RTS-er.

Upon beating the three regular play modes, another one unlocks - Knight 30. In a style similar to Ico, you (the knight) lead around a vulnerable sage while protecting him from enemies. You can take his hand and guide him away from danger, and drive enemies away with body slams or weapons. The knight himself isn't too much stronger than the sage - you'll find yourself dying on occasion. However, you can then guide your soul to the sage so that you can be revived. The main goal of all Knight 30 missions is to protect the sage for 30 seconds at all costs, after which he'll cast a Doom spell on all the enemies and end the stage. Knight 30 was my least favourite of all the games in Half Minute Hero, but again, that could just be personal taste. The humour seemed to get a bit muted at this point as well.

After Knight 30, two more challenges await. First, there is Hero 300 - a "quest" in which you have 300 seconds to beat the entire game. There's no Time Goddess for this one, so it's truly only 300 seconds. You'll end up spending a heck of a lot more time on it than that, however, unless you've watched a video walkthrough. The tough part is that there are many towns, dungeons, and branching pathways, and there are only a handful of paths that will actually safely get you to where you need to go, with the right equipment, and at the right level. Levelling is absolutely critical for the many sub-bosses throughout Hero 300, and especially for the final boss, but it must be done at the right time on the right enemies, else you'll risk failure. One level can be the difference between victory and defeat, and it can be hard to judge this without a guide or a lot of trial and error. There is a bit of flexibility, but still only a small margin of error in what equipment you should have and what level you should be by the time you encounter each boss. Of course, once you know what to do and repeat it multiple times, you'll be able to beat the boss with plenty of time to spare. The challenge of Hero 300 is finding out exactly what path to take without wasting a fraction of a second. I found the challenge quite frustrating after so many tries, but satisfying upon completion despite its somewhat rigid requirements. Beating Hero 300 gives you the real ending credits of Half-Minute Hero.

Finally, one last bonus quest - Hero 3. Yes, Hero 3. As in, 3 seconds. Thankfully, the Time Goddess is back and can reset your clock again. That's going to be very, very necessary. The quest is overall fairly short, but there are a few towns, a few equipment changes, and a certain amount of levels to obtain before confronting the final boss. So, you have to rush out into the field, try to get through one or two enemy encounters, and get back into town to reset the timer while making liberal use of the Dash button. Then, you proceed from town to town in the same way, trying to gauge what equipment to bother with and what level to reach before proceeding. This can also be tough, since the price of resetting the timer constantly increases and you'll eventually just have to go for it. It's also perfectly possible to get an instant game over because you misjudged the distance to the nearest town by a tenth of a second. But since only a little time goes into this quest overall as compared to Hero 300, I didn't find the losses frustrating. Beating it was also satisfying, and it was worth playing even just to laugh at the sheer absurdity of its concept. (Incidentally, returning to Hero 30 quests after completing Hero 3 was also very amusing in itself. Suddenly, it seemed like a very slow-paced game. Many times I found myself thinking, "Oh yeah, 1.5 seconds left? Plenty of time for another fight. 0.4 seconds? Oh yeah, I'll get back to town in time.")

In all its games, Half-Minute Hero has intentionally simplistic graphics. It's still very colourful, though, and fits in perfectly with the theme. HMH also features some surprisingly good artwork in story scenes and unlockable collections. Here's another surprise: the music is fantastic. Fantastic. From the epic title screen music to the cheerful overworld theme of Hero 30 to the head-banging metal tunes of Evil Lord 30, it's all absolutely wonderful. It's great to see such effort put into the art and music departments for a game that was intended to be completely silly.

At times, it frustrated me. Most of the time, I zoomed around having fun. And often, HMH made me laugh, either from its jokes or completely over-the-top nature. Apparently it only took 20 hours, but it felt like much longer than that, in a good way. There are two words I can use to sum up the entire experience of Half-Minute Hero: chaotic fun. Even if that concept doesn't appeal to you, I'd still recommend this game to just about anyone. There's sure to be at least a game or two in there that will easily make it worth your time.

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Anthony: I like a game like Half-Minute Hero for a few reasons. For one, it’s perfect for portable gaming, allowing for quick bursts of fun gameplay with absolutely no threat of not being able to save. For two, its modes offer pretty diverse gameplay, and even a decent slab of replay value if you desire being a completionist. And three, it’s just a good natured and silly game all around. For its mere $20 asking price now, you’d be hard pressed to get more pure entertainment for your dollar.

As Lauren highlighted, the fantastic music is the biggest surprise of the game. Some of the game’s songs genuinely kick butt, with others being quite grand and amusingly juxtaposed to the overemphasized pixellated characters. The second surprise was the unlockable artwork section, which had surprisingly detailed and impressive artistic renditions of… the silly blocky pixel characters? It’s odd, but a good kind of odd.

For anyone who plays, the inevitable question will be which of the games they like/dislike the least. I played all but Hero 300, and honestly I’d be hard pressed to say which I enjoyed most. Hero 30 certainly was the most “complete” game, but I also found a bit more satisfaction in Evil Lord 30’s battles simply because they required a measure more of challenge, even when it was annoying. Princess 30 is so fast and hectic that I can barely comment on it, but to that extent, I can see why it might be a favorite for players. Knight 30 was entertaining at times, but I felt like the gimmick really petered out as the game wore on, and was probably my least favorite as a result.

Hero 3 was a blast even though it shouldn’t count. I specifically avoided Hero 300 because I didn’t like the concept… wandering around for multiple 5 minute instances until I find the exact combination of things to do wasn’t really my idea of fun.

There are minor issues I have, but caveat this with the fact that regardless of these, the game is just plain fun. There’s a pretty hefty amount of repetition for each game: Hero 30 will always be Fight random enemies – find the flag – fight the boss. Princess 30 is always Hold attack button and move around screen. Evil Lord 30 is always Walk into ambushes and press the correct buttons. Knight 30 is always Dash away with the sage into a safe area. As a result, it’s almost better to mix it up between what you play, or the “this again…” feeling may kick in before long. Also, while hunting for bonus titles/items and better scores in Hero 30 is an intriguing venture, it would be nice to have a hint or two how to receive the bonus titles listed. Sometimes you can infer them from the title, other times I was utterly clueless even after multiple attempts. It’s worthy of note that Hero 30 has some pretty shrewd puzzles and secrets to be found if you put forth the effort.

The humor is well appreciated throughout. Some bits are just grin-inducing, but others illicit laughs just in their general absurdity and in finding excuses to have yet another quest appear. It knocks on the fourth wall and mocks the player to amusingly appropriate levels. As with any game that’s 100% parody yet has to keep making story/dialog, eventually the jokes wear thin and may just have you skipping scenes… but I’d rather skip scenes because a story is silly than it being groan-inducingly bad.

In the end, Half-Minute Hero was a lively jaunt through controlled gaming chaos. Any game that makes you feel like you have “plenty of time” with 1 second left to go clearly has a different approach to the world in general. It may not be particularly long, it may not be particularly deep, and its heroes are blocky pixels with 30 seconds of screen time, but dang if it isn’t a fun ride. Here’s hoping for a sequel.
 

Valkyria Chronicles (PS3)

Valkyria Chronicles
Sega WOW / Sega

Anthony: Sega made a what game? “Good” you say? Neat. Valkyria Chronicles coming out of nowhere and taking people by surprise turned out to be a pretty nice treat for everyone.

Valkyria Chronicles is a hybrid strategy/shooter/RPG game that draws few comparisons... maybe Worms if it were more strategy based? It follows the tale of Welkin Gunther, an aspiring teacher who finds himself caught in a war to save his homeland, but in a fantasy setting where a special ore powers machines and an ancient race called the Valkyria can turn the tide of war.

What’s good:
- The five job classes of troops were very well designed for the game. Scouts have a huge running/shooting range and are good at picking off troops but very vulnerable to heavy combat. Shocktroopers have more limited mobility, but are powerful offensively and defensively in combat. Lancers are very slow, but are the only unit capable of taking out heavily armored targets solo. Engineers can repair tanks/obstacles and disarm mines while having moderate mobility/shooting skill. Snipers have little range or defense but can kill almost every soldier in game with a single shot from very far away. Tanks are behemoths with incredible defense and firepower, but are slow and take twice as many action points to use. All are necessary to get through the game, and many will have specific points in the game where they truly shine and work together.
- In what’s a pretty rare occurrence, Valkyria Chronicles actually worked pretty hard toward giving your various non-story-based troops individual personalities of interest. They all bring different good and bad points to the fray, all have good individual voice acting, and they help make the experience more interesting. It’s worthy of note that Skies of Arcadia characters make useful cameos here, and that Jann is a hilarious character who should be in most games from now on.
- The graphics are done extremely well. Utilizing bright colors, cartoonish visualizations of battle, and “sketchy” art together makes for a very interesting combination. Animated scenes are particularly effective, all locations and characters look good, and it helps make a war story stay visually appealing.
- Great voice acting exists throughout the game. It’s good to see that companies aren’t skimping on getting the right talent for the roles, especially even as they fill minor troop roles. Music is also good, though it’s unfortunate that the battle themes rarely change.
- The game deserves credit for creativity alone, as the mix of RTS, shooter, and RPG gameplay works surprisingly well. To that extent, there’s a pretty solid variety in the battles themselves, from horrendous encounters with monstrous tanks, to long range scout missions, and to melee-heavy firefights alike.
- One thing that the game’s narrative does particularly well with, despite being a somewhat sugary JRPG storyline, is keeping the reality of war in perspective without resorting to cheap tactics. Some people die, others get injured, your non-story troops can permanently die, and there are some particularly effective scenes that highlight the enemy’s good intentions and human nature. Even some enormous big-budget RPG titles revolving around Ages of Dragons often don’t rise far beyond the “x is evil, destroy x!” narrative, so I found myself pleased with a number of well-done scenes.
- Levelling up all troops of a certain class simultaneously was a very good inclusion. Though it keeps the process simplistic, it means you’re not punished for trying out different units, which is especially prominent as some units become more or less useful as more traits are developed.
- They allow you to save mid-battle. Thank you, Sega.
- The system of using “orders” to augment a unit or multiple units’ abilities among certain parameters was a great idea. It can add some really shrewd strategies to various scenarios you’re up against.

What’s neutral:
- They rank you and give you bonus exp/money based on your performance in battle. However, the only factor they use to determine your rank is the number of player turns it took to beat the stage. I don’t like this for a couple of reasons. Aesthetically, in a game ultimately about killing people, considering many stages’ goals are simply to capture the enemy base, it’s strange to have a ranking system not at all based on your killing of people. On the other hand, especially with early stages, it basically requires you to throw out any semblance of strategy and just charge headlong towards the stage goal. This is especially notable considering the enemy’s movements, the area itself, and the units themselves are largely obscured until you get close by; it will happen often that you go several turns into a battle not realizing that you need an engineer, more scouts, less lancers etc.
- Loading mid-battle saves takes an extremely long time. Now you might want to avoid it, but if you want to go for A ranks in battles or want to avoid needless deaths and wasted turns, inevitably you will have to load battle saves numerous times. Because time and the use of your command points are precious, it’s unlikely that the average player will simply be “okay” with getting gunned down by a hidden soldier, missing a Lancer shot for the third time, or getting headshot between turns when the enemy could have missed.
- For what’s a perfectly acceptable and engaging story, I have a few problems with it. For one, certain evil characters are over-exaggerated to the point of parody. This idea that a major general is an uncompromising jerk who cares little for his soldiers is absurd and is clearly just set up so you’re glad to see him die. Meanwhile, a certain character or two that betray you practically look like Disney villains, making it pretty easy to see coming. Then the “sugary” aspect.... a random pig character comes on as a “mascot” and is basically completely pointless to the story (a war story, mind you.) Then the ending... well, everyone likes a happy ending, but it’s actually overly happy in my mind. I like the “x and y went on to...” happy endings as much as the next guy, but I feel slightly insulted if the results are “x won the nobel peace price, y became president, z is the most famous actor of all time, and v went on to save to the human race” etc.

What’s bad:
- There are some battle system areas I think need to be addressed. One is the camera: when aiming, it disables your ability to spin/adjust the camera, so I ran into several situations where scenery effectively blocked off my ability to see where I was attacking. Another is their hit detection: when very close to an enemy, it sometimes shows your attacks as being properly aimed, but when you fire, the character’s weapon placement changes to where you completely miss. Invisible edges of objects can sometimes block shots that appear to be right on target as well. Oops.
-The “evasion” system is a very cheap tactic that at very least needed some sort of percentage system to let you know how likely it is to trigger. Perfectly aimed shots and even explosions can be “evaded” by you or your enemy, completely nullifying any damage, and even allowing the enemy to counter-attack you for free. I found it an annoying system in that it wastes your precious turns and even can put you down in health or dead as a result. I would have tolerated the evasion system more, however, if they at least let you know how likely it was to trigger. Instead, it’s just like a nasty surprise that means it’s time to reload or lose a turn.

Whether the cries of “Buy a PS3 so you can play this game!” are warranted or not depends on how adventurous you feel. Valkyria Chronicles started a brand new hybrid genre here and it’s pulled off with very few of the rookie mistakes that are common when a company tries something new. The balance is good, it can be very fun overall, and it’s engaging with its variety and depth. All of this is complemented with a gorgeous graphical style, great voice acting, and good music.

It’s not a flawless execution of course, so don’t be surprised if you hit a few frustrations and “bad ranks that aren’t your fault” situations along the way. It’s likely the kind of game where you may want to try a stage partway to see what happens and then reload to try with a better setup. The storyline is solid and engaging, though it has a few odd moments of over-schmaltziness and Disney-esque hyper-characterizations. If you can get past those aspects, Valkyria Chronicles is pretty dang good game in every way.

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Lauren: From the moment we loaded up Valkyria Chronicles, we knew we were in for something special. The art style and music were gorgeous and captivating, and the storyline seemed interesting enough. Though I only participated in the first few battles (and became more and more surprised at the complexity of every battle thereafter), I'd like to comment on a few specific elements.

What stood out most to me were Valkyria's graphics. They are anime-style at the core, combined with 3-D effects and sketchy shading that results in a somewhat "gritty" style. As with Eternal Sonata, it's always nice to see next-gen RPGs that can do gorgeous graphics without resorting to brown photo-realism.

The music was simply fantastic and epic throughout the entire game. Similarly, the voice acting, which included many well-known stars, was very convincing. These elements provided a great background for the half-fantasy, half-reality based world of Valkyria Chronicles.

Overall, the plot was fairly strong throughout the game. My complaints include some generic bad-guy attitudes and a bit of schmaltziness toward the end, but those are minor. It was an intriguing story that surprised us a few times and successfully pulled off some genuinely emotional moments.

Valkyria Chronicles absolutely deserved its high scores and popularity. Of course it has occasional issues, but it's a strong tactical RPG and a great addition to the PS3 library. I hope Sega's similar endeavours in the future go as well as Valkyria did.

Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (DS)

Mario & Luigi:
Bowser's Inside Story

AlphaDream/Nintendo

Anthony: Maybe it’s my affinity for using the disproportionately huge and buff characters in games (which almost inevitably leads to them having a boring heart of gold) that makes a game like Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story so glorious. Why? Because for once, the huge, menacing character has no heart of gold, nor is he an unnecessary and unrelenting jerk either. With this game alone, Bowser has become one of the most likeable, charming, and delightfully antihero characters this side of Sin City.

Thankfully the good news doesn’t end there. In many ways, Bowser’s Inside Story is a success on all levels. As an RPG, it has cute story, great characters, and an engaging battle system. As an action game, it has varied exploration, minigames, and an impressive variety in the battling. I loved the original Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga, enjoyed Partners in Time (though I found it to be a slight step back) and can safely say that this was the most entertaining and fun entry in the series for me.

What’s good:
- The game looks great. Character sprites in the game are colorful, expressive, and have excellent animation. Nothing looks “beautiful” per se, but everything looks very good, and the exaggerated and comical animations really liven the experience.

- The game also sounds great. Several tunes will get hopelessly stuck in your head. Mario and Luigi’s exchanges of Italian-sounding gibberish and Bowser’s bellowing of “Showtime!” will elicit smiles. Everything matches well with the environments.

- The problem I had with Partners in Time is that the experience started to feel stale and more akin to a chore as time went on. Bowser’s Inside Story doesn’t give you much time to be bored though, as enemies are very unique and creatively designed, the exploration/platforming sections are frequently broken up with minigames, and both the Bowser and Mario & Luigi sections get ample time and play differently.

- “Creativity” is a point that really needs to be pushed here. Both in fighting enemies and especially with bosses, they really worked hard this time to create a memorable experience. Learning how to dodge and counter attacks from the lowliest fat goomba to the mightiest end bosses can take real creativity and can be really impressive to witness. Combining that with the wealth of clever minigames and truly awesome Giga Bowser fights especially give you a very diverse and unique experience.

- Beyond the fact that they’ve created a very charming antihero in Bowser with the game, bringing baddie Fawful back to the fray and juxtaposing them among a bundle of funny NPCs makes for a very funny RPG. This game rivals Paper Mario 2 as being one of the funniest RPGs I’ve played; it’s chock full of good natured humor among Luigi-bashing, Bowser-posturing, and Fawful-ramblings.

What’s neutral:
- Admittedly, there are some potential problems with the accessibility of the game. Success in battles is about 10% strategy versus 90% timing and execution. New enemies, and especially bosses will typically pound your characters pretty severely until you learn how to dodge or counter their attacks. That may be a point of frustration for some, especially since a learning curve is expected, but a boss may do a new powerful attack that’s tricky to dodge, hit you, cause you to be stunned, subsequently hit you again, and before you know it you’re near death. They’re pretty generous with recovery items as usual, but it’s admittedly not near as satisfying to chug mushrooms to win, considering the game is built around learning to avoid damage altogether. Some may find the platforming element of “Press A + B” tricky jumping with Mario and Luigi a point of annoyance as well.
- The minigames are an important inclusion toward making the game feel fresh and varied throughout. That said, they are mandatory, and this means inevitably some players will dislike specific games. I found the variety to be quite enjoyable, but making a game like this absolutely runs the risk of players thinking “not this game again!”
- Replay value is mostly good, but has a sticking point or two. The game isn’t particularly long, running 20-30 hours, but it’s also so crammed full of gameplay that it can easily feel like more happened in that time than 60 hours in other RPGs. Surprisingly though, the bonus content is fairly weak, with no new game+, and only a battle arena as a side challenge. Additionally, to have any chance of beating the arena completely requires backtracking with Bowser and Mario and Luigi to access an area just to level them a bit more. That’s not a particularly fun way to spend extra game time.

What’s bad:
- There’s no excuse for the fact that they’ve not only kept the “save points” system, but frequently made the saving points bafflingly far away from each other. Pretty much any DS game these days allows you to save anywhere, and for a game that doesn’t, there’s just way too much time and distance to cover between them. Stop that, Nintendo.

Oh hey, I actually kept this pretty short. I guess things just came more easily for me in regards to the game. Graphics are great, sound is great, gameplay is great, the story is funny, and the characters ooze charm all around. It’s not long, but the amount of variety in the gameplay makes the whole thing feel like you’re been hit with a gameplay freight train, though in a good way.

If you liked any of the previous games, the Paper Mario series, or action/RPG games in general, I absolutely recommend the game. It may have potential frustrations, but as an overall experience, it’s hard to beat. Bowser’s Inside Story is just plain fun.

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Lauren: As a lifelong Mario fan, I've been very impressed and amused by the many entries into the "Mario RPG" series, both on consoles and handhelds. Bowser's Inside Story definitely did not disappoint, even for someone who's not big on timing-based battles and mini-games.

The colourful graphics look great, especially on a DSi, as long as you don't mind the cartoonish style. Its backgrounds, character sprites, and animation flow together wonderfully. And as Anthony mentioned, the scenes with Giga Bowser look particularly impressive.

The music is often quite catchy, with some tunes getting caught in my head for days after playing. There's some nice original stuff here, with the occasional nod to old-school Mario games. And as always, there's not much in the way of voice acting, but the audio clips of Mario and Luigi talking Italian-style gibberish to each other are simply hilarious. Bowser's deep growls were a nice touch, too.

The gameplay is similar to that found in the first two Mario & Luigi titles. Your characters wander around the field and perform platforming actions to proceed. Enemy sprites appear on the map, and actual encounters occur in a different screen. All attacks and defensive actions require decent timing and practice to pull off. As a result, encounters with new enemies can seem somewhat tough, but after a bit of practice, they're much easier. The same goes for bosses, except you don't get quite as much practice with them.

But the real draw of Bowser's Inside Story, as with the other entries in the Mario RPG series, is the amusing dialogue. The story is silly, Fawful is as hilarious as ever, and the main characters' animations and sound clips are very cute. Of course, the story is simplistic, but refreshingly so.

Mario and Luigi lasted me about 30 hours. I ended up doing most sidequests and a lot of item-gathering, so that definitely added a few extra hours. As with most short and cute RPGs, there isn't much need to play it again, unless you're a huge fan.

Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story is a step above Partners in Time and just as fun as Superstar Saga. My only complaints are a sore hand from having to hammer on A + B frequently to jump, and some issues with the timing-based attacks, but that goes with the territory. It's a light-hearted, colourful, and funny title that any DS owner should try, as long as you don't mind some platforming in your RPGs.

Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? (PSP)

Prinny

Nippon Ichi Software

Review by Anthony

Phew. Okay, Nippon Ichi decided to stray from their general format of strategy RPGs with quirky characters and instead decided to punish their fans a bit. Not with a bad game, but with a game so difficult that it’s unquestionably landed in my top three most difficult games I’ve played in the last ten years, nestled gently alongside Ikaruga and The Dark Spire. This time, we’re working with a surprisingly good and enjoyable platformer that also happens to be scrotum-grindingly difficult.

Prinny: Can I Really be the Hero? is akin to fanservice in that it stars a sidekick-like character from its Disgaea franchise and is filled to the brim with references to its games. The gameplay is pure 2-D Platformer though, sending you through stages full of obstacles, enemies, harrowing jumps, and challenging bosses. The good news is with few exceptions, you can probably grin and bear the difficulty on account of the game’s reference-laden charm and satisfying “I finally beat it!” game mechanics.

What’s good:

- In a fashion very uncharacteristic of Nippon Ichi titles, the graphics and graphical design of the stages and characters are actually quite excellent. Backgrounds of stages look especially gorgeous, the sprites of enemies and bosses are well animated, and the game itself sports a nice bright, clean look to it in contrast to the muddy and grainy look of its PS2 titles.

- In a fashion completely characteristic of Nippon Ichi titles, the music is just fantastic and the characters all have excellent voice acting. There are numerous songs in the game, and many are spectacular, with some even having tunes that sound like they’re inspired by other Nippon Ichi soundtracks. With almost all dialogue voice acted, they did a great job of bringing life to the characters and even the minor bosses.

- In another fashion characteristic of their franchises, Prinny is full of laugh-out-loud moments both in the dialog between characters and their numerous encyclopedia entries on items and enemies throughout the game. As you might expect from a game about exploding sinner-penguins tasked to make a special dessert, it never really takes itself serious in the slightest.

- Despite the difficulty inherent in the game, the actual gameplay design is pretty shrewdly simple and deep at the same time. Prinny can jump, attack, pound the ground, pick up objects, dash/become invincible after charging and sometimes ride in special vehicles. That doesn’t sound like much, but there are plenty of nuances in how one can coordinate jumps, attacks, and ground-pounds to navigate the world. There are few truly unique gimmicks between levels, but they’re designed differently enough that it still remains fresh through its simplicity.
- They added an option where you can restart your game from the beginning with all the items/stage completion information you’ve collected at any time. This is a nice feature on two accounts: it allows you to play all 36 iterations of the regular stages without having to constantly redo the difficult final stages, and it gives an option to practice a different variety of stages before attempting to beat the game.

- The Boss fights in the game are pretty dang cool. They vary nicely between huge lumbering beasts and absurdly quick characters, and will inevitably lead to your doom numerous times. They’re very satisfying to take down though, and there’s a pretty good number of them stuffed into the game as well.

- I appreciated the fact that you could collect “records” that allowed you to select the background music of your stages. Especially for the more difficult stages, it was nice being able to listen to a tune you really enjoy.

What’s neutral:
- Prinny caters to an extremely limited audience. Prinnies themselves are very recognizable mascots, but only to people who’ve played the Disgaea franchise. And considering many of those gamers are RPG fans, throwing a platformer into the fray, much less an extremely difficult platformer is kind of a risky venture.

- Prinny’s difficulty is both a blessing and a curse. On the good side, this is a game that really makes you work. You’ll have to work hard to assess your situation and how to overcome certain obstacles, and it can be extremely satisfying to make it to the exit or take down a crazily difficult boss. The included bonus area of the Martial Tower is such a deviously hard and long level that it’s difficult not to marvel at their ability to design stages. On the bad side, the difficulty also borders on unfair at times. Prinny can take a few hits unless you’re on Hard mode, but considering certain enemies/projectiles can fly onto the screen without audio cues, and ground-pounding can sometimes eject a hidden bonus enemy from the ground that can immediately kill you if you’re in the wrong spot, absorbing a few hits won’t make up for the challenge inherent. Further, the final boss is absurdly difficult, easily being the hardest final boss I’ve played in any game, ever. It requires a ton of time spent learning a long string of pattern recognition, and multiple minutes of absolutely furious button-mashing mixed with perilous dodging. Wow.

- I’ve seen talk of the game having “bad” or “imprecise” controls and I really don’t see that. It’s a tricky system to learn, but it’s not the control’s fault. The only aspects I found odd is that you can’t attack while carrying an object, and instead have to hit a specific “throw” button to get rid of it. Also sometimes if you fall near the bottom of the screen, it won’t let you jump back up even if you normally could. Minor concerns overall.

What’s bad:

- While I’m sure making a brand new game outside of their usual genres was difficult, there’s just no reason for a $39.99 retail price on the game. That’s simply too high, especially considering...

- The replay value in the game takes a serious hit. Although collection aspects and bonus stages can add a lot to the game, there’s no getting around the fact that a single playthrough can run as little as 5-8 hours. In my case, I beat the game, played all 36 iterations of the normal stages, collected enough lucky dolls to beat the Martial Tower and Etna, and also played through the entirety of the included Asagi Mode. My total time in the game was still a little less than 20 hours though. Considering I did almost everything the game had to offer aside from obsessive collection aspects, that’s not a particularly good amount of time for a game that retails more than average.

- Similar to that point, the fact that three extra Download-only stages are available at a cost is kind of a raw deal considering how expensive the game is to begin with. No thanks, guys.

I don’t have much else to say here. Nippon Ichi proved here that they can successfully spread their wings into other genres; it makes me wonder what they’re capable of and what they may attempt in the future. Prinny is a funny, pretty, entertaining, extremely challenging, but short and overpriced adventure.

Dragon Age: Origins (PS3)

Dragon Age: Origins

BioWare / EA

Anthony: Okay. Considering “Western RPGs” have only existed for a few years now and have been outside of my personal console choices, I guess that makes me a JRPG purist. Because of that, despite what the gaming world would want from me, hearing the phrase “BioWare RPG” has no more effect on me than “RPG” does. But considering many consider BioWare saviors to the gaming industry with a Midas touch, combined with the fact that hey, the game looked pretty cool, I decided to give Dragon Age: Origins a try. And sure, it’s good; of course it’s good, but I’m coming out of the experience with no loyalty towards BioWare and no sudden desire to try more WRPGs either.

Dragon Age has you create a dwarven, human, or elven hero warrior, rogue, or mage that will start an origin story that ends with him or her joining a group called the Grey Wardens that fight an evil plaguing the land on a grand scale. Basically, think “Lord of the Rings” with funny characters and a lot of M-rated exploitation. Battles are almost hack-and-slash but tend to take place more like traditional RPG encounters.

What’s good:
- Good lord. Dragon Age very well may have set a record for the most recorded voice acting in an RPG ever. Beyond that, they got fantastic voice actors all around... vocal talent that often get starring roles in many games are but minor NPCs or characters that are in the plot for a whopping 20 minutes. It’s absolutely to the point where it gets daunting to listen to it all, and you could likely spend tens of extra hours in the game if you listened to everyone speak without skipping.

- If there’s one true thing I can take away from my first experience with a BioWare game, it’s that Bioware has exceeded any RPG I’ve played on one level... they truly created an entire world with this game. Most RPGs have a few towns, a planet, a brief bit of history and some backstory on the characters you meet. Dragon Age has extensive backstory on just about everything... characters, NPCs, minor incidents in the past, certain weapons, locations you’ll never visit, characters you’ll never meet, the history of organizations... it’s truly staggering. Clearly the time put into this development was enormous.

- There are some very enjoyable characters and dialog in the mix. Shale, Alistair, Zevran and Oghren will all provide some very amusing lines throughout the game. Beyond that, having certain characters in your party together will make various bits of dialog crop up as banter between each other. There are several of these for any combination of party members you can come up with, and sometimes even dialog among three characters at once. Some of these are for comedy, others give back story, and in general it really helps make them feel real. It’s a unique inclusion that I really appreciated.
- One thing the game has in spades is replay value. Each of the three job classes has multiple branches of magic, weaponry, specializations etc. that can be explored, and most party members are pretty unique and may make for combinations you’d enjoy tinkering with. Although it doesn’t affect much, the six potential origin stories provide different levels of background that can affect dialog later in the game. So in a sense, you can pick the same job and same race, and still have an experience that feels different; that has to count for something.

- They did a great job of making the game user-friendly to play. For people that aren’t into character building, they have auto-level up options. Every skill, stat, and ability has very detailed information for you to peruse such that there’s no mystery into what you’re doing. Further, though Quests sometimes have extremely detailed information involved in them, the game marks them clearly on your map and at locations so it’s not a Myst/Monkey Island-like scavenger hunt to complete.

- They scale enemies’ levels/equipment drops up and down depending on the timing in which you do events in the game, not by their areas alone. That’s a good way to keep a game both non-linear and reigned in simultaneously, giving you freedom to choose the order of events without being an overly open-ended “what next?” situation.

What’s neutral:
- Graphics aren’t bad, but they’re not great either. Environments are often bland, and though the character models are very good, the movements and gestures are very stiff.

- I’m fairly unimpressed with the battle system overall. I’ll start by saying that as time goes on, it gets a bit more enjoyable, as having a wealth of skills to use is a lot more fun than trading attacks and using one or two skills over and over. But in my mind, there are several problems with it. For one, it’s very, very repetitive. Strategy is basically a complete wash, as there’s no parry/guard system, and pretty much every single battle will be approached the same regardless of the enemies... the only real deviation from that was to run away from exploding enemies or attack the mages first if they exist. Character AI is surprisingly obtuse, requiring you to either switch to a character and issue commands individually, or to attempt to get them to follow a set of commands (see “gambits” from FFXII) you’ve set up. They have some basic AI you can adjust, but the only party command you can give in battle is to not move. This unfortunately means there’s a lot of “babysitting” you need to do to make sure your characters don’t kill themselves and do actually help remedy the “monsters on all sides of us” situation.

- Speaking of, the commands are both limited and frustratingly flawed. You’ll either need to waste the few command slots telling them to activate sustained abilities they should always have on, or you’ll need to check and activate them manually to not waste those slots. Further, some really dumb oversights exist, like the fact that it actually takes two separate command slots to tell a healer to heal an injured party member and heal him/herself if injured. Really? It’s also impossible to set a command for a healer to revive a dead party member. Aside from limiting the commands issued, you can’t tell a character to hold back on his/her skill use, so it’s very easy for a partner mage to burn through his/her MP in an instant, and either sit helpless or constantly chug your potions to fix it. Some commands are vague too... telling you to activate an ability if a target is “Elite” or “Boss” or “Elite Boss” or is a certain level despite that information not being readily available.

- Okay sure, most movies have schmaltzy moments that can make your eyes roll, but with such a deep and extensive world/story created, I really thought this would be kept to a minimum. Boy was I wrong. The word that kept coming to mind with Dragon Age’s scenes was “contrived.” Basically, characters will die and characters will betray you, and it’s generally painfully obvious that those things are going to happen. It becomes a bit silly after a while... if a character seems noble, he/she is going to betray someone. If a character seems to be in great spirits, he/she will soon violently die. It seriously got to the point where when reuniting with a best friend from the origin story, I said “at least they didn’t pull the obvious emotional ploy where he betrays me.” - only for him to betray me moments later. Sigh. It became very hard to take seriously.

- Characters have affection ratings for the main character based on interactions, decisions, and gift-giving within the game. However, it’s a surprisingly shallow affair for such a deep game. Some characters can be talked to a few times, given a few trinkets and wham, they’re in love. Sometimes characters will disapprove of actions, but you can just take them out of the party before doing so to keep from losing affection. I had a character get mad at me for letting someone out of jail, and I had to reload and talk to the jailed character more extensively to find out that he was a racist before I even understood why that happened. Characters are completely indifferent whether you’re sparing an orphan and sending him off to college versus stabbing him in the throat. Even some major events can happen where a longtime partner will leave or even fight you to the death. In one such event, I literally decapitated a party member we’d had for ages, and not a single character had any problem with it or even mentioned it. Odd!
- It’s worthy of note for a game that can easily run someone 40-90 hours of gameplay, there really is nothing to do in the game other than either fight things, talk to people, examine objects, or some conglomerate of those. Every quest in the game is some combination of those elements. There are a few inspired moments (shapeshifting in the Fade was pretty cool), but otherwise it’s smash/talk/check ad infinitum.

- Load times are very long. It’s a nice effort that they fill the load screens with information about the world and skills, but it doesn’t nullify the problem.

- Often you’ll have several dialog choices to choose from, sometimes several times within a conversation. Oddly, because there’s no karma system, most of the time it makes almost no difference whether you’re saying “Here’s all of my money; I wish you the best in life!” or “You are hated by everyone and will die alone, you lecherous slut.” to an infant. Sometimes it means the difference between money/items which led to a number of reloads for me, but other times it’s just pages of text and actions after actions with no result. It makes it feel somewhat pointless at times; I’d rather the story just advance than it have me give frequent input that doesn’t matter.
- Minor, but I felt a certain suspension of disbelief was necessary to go along with the story. If being a Grey Warden is such a noble thing, why is it that most of the game has me constantly murdering, committing treason, stealing, working with shady organizations, and threatening my way through the story? Similarly, many NPCs will act like their world has been instantly changed just by you delivering an item or even just saying a few words to them. Sometimes I had praise showered on me as though I’d given them a kidney, for saying a few words alone. They really drive points home!

What’s bad:

- There’s some surprising issues with poor balance among some of the job classes. Certain specializations like Shapeshifting are bizarrely useless, and in general, mage enemies are far too lethal in comparison to their melee counterparts. Not only can mages cast painful area of effect spells on your party, they can very easily render melee characters unable to move, unable to attack, or unable to be healed, all from a distance, all of which are potential death sentences. Further, to open chests and disarm chests specifically requires a Rogue, and they have to take points away from learning battle skills to be able to adequately do so... meaning if you want to open the numerous locked chests, you’re towing a theoretically weaker character around, or will need to take a return trip with the weaker character once the battling is over with.

- Inventory space gets used up very quickly and there’s no warehouse to store items, despite many one-time-only and/or unique items. Apparently a warehouse is given if you download $7 worth of bonus content, but that’s absurd. Having to pay extra money for a more manageable inventory system is an inexcusably dumb design.
- Similarly, having a character talk to me at length in game about a quest to undertake, only for it to require paid downloadable content was ridiculous. That’s especially bothersome considering this content was available when the game was released. So you’ve literally just purchased a partial game for full price. Awesome.
- Unfortunately, it’s clear the game was rushed to production a bit. Several exploits, bugs and glitches exist throughout the game. This includes some terrible slowdown at times with the PS3 version.

- There’s an annoying amount of items that can be missed permanently in the game for one reason or another. Sometimes it’s a situation where you’ll just want to reload to see if it’s worth killing someone versus scaring them off. Other times, it’s a very frustrating situation where you turn in a quest and are thus barred from obtaining another item. No question this is a way to boost someone’s likelihood to replay the game, but making it easy to miss a bunch of items is not the proper way to encourage replays.

Wow am I ever torn on a game like this. On the one hand, it’s true, playing a game like this is akin to experiencing a whole movie-like world come to life, and is certainly more grand and bombastic than the average RPG. The dialog is fantastic, and you could play the game ten times through and get a different gameplay experience every time. It’s clear BioWare knows how to make a game.

But none of that changes the fact that the story never truly gripped me, or that most RPGs I’ve played have much better party AI/command options, or that the battle system was pedestrian, or that the game had a surprising amount of glitches, or that 40-90 hours of gameplay is always killing things/checking locations/talking to characters, or that character interactions are pretty shallow, or that the most fun we had with the game was screwing with the character creation screen. None of those are deal breakers or particularly terrible issues; it’s just for a game that’s trumpeted as being a pinnacle of western RPGs, I didn’t expect so many design flaws to come with it.

Yet as I said, of course it’s good. There’s tons of character customization, the characters are very good, there’s plenty of questing to do, and it’s a mostly friendly design to people who don’t typically play RPGs. I just don’t buy for a second that this is somehow a game that should go down in history as a piece of legendary RPG excellence. From a longtime RPGer as myself, it’s a perfectly decent one that’s just bigger and louder than usual.

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Lauren: I'm not as experienced with western RPGs as I am with every other type, but Dragon Age sounded intriguing enough for us both to give it a shot. It's certainly expansive, from its areas to the depth of the virtual world's history, and it provided a lengthy playthrough.

I will start by saying that the voice acting is fantastic. Many, many famous voice actors are featured in Dragon Age, in both big and surprisingly small roles. The music was generally pleasant as well, always fitting with the atmosphere. The whole experience has a movie-like "Lord of the Rings" feel. That similarity continues through the game's background, history, and character races. But of course, Dragon Age was considered a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate, and Dungeons & Dragons was arguably inspired by Tolkien's creations, so I won't make any judgments on the subject of originality.

The depth of the character creation system is very impressive, allowing for many subtle changes in even the location and size of facial features. Although we had no interest in pursuing Bioware's signature "romance" side of the game for our main playthrough, the most fun we had with Dragon Age was making the most unbelievably hideous female character we could, then getting her intimacy scene with Alistair. Though hilarious, it was also disappointing to see how easy it is to charm a character. We just talked to him repeatedly and crammed his hands full of jewelled gifts, and got the scene within a surprisingly short amount of time. Not the most realistic approach if we're supposed to take this part of the plot somewhat seriously. Though on the bright side, I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard.

When I gave the game a go, I played as an elven mage. I found the battles and abilities to be fairly fun, but they grew tiresome quickly. The introduction also felt weaker than what we saw in the dwarf playthrough - specifically in the explanation as to why your character is given the title of Grey Warden. That said, the main plot of the game was quite good. BioWare has an excellent writing staff, and they certainly do not disappoint in this department. There is plenty of witty dialogue as well, especially from Shale and Alistair.

We played the PS3 version, which was unfortunately filled with graphical pop-ups and slowdown. I've heard that the PC version is much better when it comes to this, so you may want to lean that way if you have the option.

Objectively, I can say that it's a great western RPG. If that genre isn't your cup of tea, you should probably steer clear. I'm relatively neutral toward them, so my personal experience with it can be described in the same way. If you like BioWare or D&D, you'll undoubtedly fall in love with Dragon Age.

Fossil Fighters (DS)

Fossil Fighters (DS)
Nintendo / Red Entertainment

Review by Anthony

All right, now I’m mad. No, not that I spent money and time on a bad game... almost the opposite. I’m a grown man who’s been playing video games for decades now, and I just spent almost 60 hours of my gaming life playing a game where I’m a kid who battles people with dinosaurs. It’s the kind of thing that should be followed with me fuming about wasting my time, but the problem is, I had a lot of fun playing Fossil Fighters.

Fossil Fighters is about a rogue band of the legendary Japanese Yakuza clan who’ve abandoned traditional weaponry and have instead chosen to train and battle each other using weapons fashioned from fossilized bones... No? Okay then. Fossil Fighters follows an unnamed protagonist who arrives on “Vivosaur Island,” a land where they’ve made technology that animates prehistoric creatures from fossils and allows people to battle with them. Your character digs up fossils, cleans them so they can be revived, and travels to different areas collecting fossils, battling “vivosaurs,” and ultimately ranking up to continue the storyline.

What’s good:
- Although the storyline is a little on the absurd side, the good news is that the localization team made sure the game never took itself too seriously. The game has a good dose of goofy humor, at times quite funny but simultaneously makes you wish you didn’t laugh. It’s nice, considering most of these franchises have no respite from the painfully dull or kid-pandering storylines.
- I was very pleased with how they designed the whole aspect of collecting and raising vivo-.. dinos. Most monster sims give you tangible creatures that you can collect multiple versions of and raise each independently. Fossil Fighters instead takes any unlocked dino and represents it with a “dino medal” that’s permanently in your inventory. Having a dino medal in your party is the equivalent of having it ready for battle where it can gain experience/level up, and you can only collect one medal for each dinosaur. While that may sound restrictive, it’s a mild note of genius in my mind. Because of this, rather than having to collect and sift through multiple copies of dinos, you instead get a permanent one that can only improve and will always have set stats and abilities. Though restrictive, it makes the whole process much more streamlined, and allows for a much greater focus on battle strategy than micromanagement, skill selection, “catching a good monster” and other issues that leech time from players.
- A “gossip” character in town exists that helps clue you in to available sidequests, and a logbook you have with you always tells you what the next flag in the game is. Very helpful inclusions to finding the sidequests and not losing track of your next goal.
- Though the amount of fossil-cleaning you’d have to do in the game to complete everything borders on excessive, they did include an incredibly nice feature that few monster games have done to this extent. Many games have options to “drop off” monster eggs/newborns etc. for training, but instead, as you clean more and more, you eventually level up a robot who you can drop any number of previously-cleaned fossils off with to do your dirty work. By the end, he cleans even the most difficult fossils near-perfectly, he can potentially take your full inventory of 50+ fossils and be done in about 15 minutes, and the game automatically donates or integrates improved fossils into the system for you. Wow... great feature.
- The battle system is absolutely the highlight of the game. It’s creative, satisfying, addictive, and can be pretty tense. Battles use a team of three dinos picked from a team of five, and each team is placed into four “zones” for battle. The single “Attack Zone” up front where dinos do the most damage, are affected by allies’ and enemies’ support effects, and are vulnerable to negative status effects. Two “Support Zones” on the side where damage taken and given are reduced, dinos can support allies and are immune to status effects. And one “Escape Zone” where a dino in the Attack Zone can be voluntarily or forcibly sent to for two turns, making them invincible but unable to participate in battle. Each team gets a set amount of ability points to use per turn, will store unused ones for the next turn, and will get a huge boost if one of its dinos dies. Strategy and mind-games are abundant here, and it’s a pretty shrewd design because of it. Status effects can manipulate a team’s ability to attack and change positions, support effects can boost allies and/or cripple enemies, and using small attacks with points or storing up for big ones can make for drastically different strategies. Putting a mighty T-Rex up to attack and having allies boost his attack sounds good, but someone with a Knocking status effect could send it helplessly into the Escape Zone and leave one of your wimpier support characters vulnerable. You might want to swap a dino out to avoid being hit by a nasty support penalty, but then the enemy could trap you in the attack zone and brutalize you with a nasty poison attack for your efforts. It’s surprisingly deep, full of strategy, and quite fun.
- Having over one hundred dinos is a nice touch, and though there are many that function in a similar way, there’s a pretty impressive roster of dinos with different specialized roles and abilities to choose from. There are a couple that are objectively none too impressive, but the variety is still pretty nice overall.

What’s neutral:
- The fossil cleaning system in Fossil Fighters is a mixed bag. From the “good” aspect, I appreciate the system in which you earn slight, immediately-integrated improvements from better cleaning scores, rather than Spectrobes’ system where a minor error here or there means you lose several experience levels. From the “neutral” aspect, I found the design and use of the tools to be somewhat restrictive. Even the weakest tool can easily destroy the fossils, which is especially annoying when after gently tapping the touch screen multiple times to remove a tiny piece of rock, that the fossil immediately breaks for the half-second you touched it after the rock was removed. The heavier tools were nice, but worked in an odd way... sometimes you could easily remove big portions without harm, other times the same action seemed to cut a swath of destruction into the fossil. From the “bad” aspect, there was just too much cleaning to do. To complete your dino collection, you will need, at a minimum, -400- trips to the cleaning station. And if you’re thorough, it will probably be another 100 or more on top of that, as you also have to clean gemstones for sale, dropping fossils, rare bonus fossils, and sometimes may just want to improve on your current score. Each session is up to 90 seconds, so that really racks up a lot of repetitive playtime.
- I’m really torn on the (re)play value of the game. I absolutely want to commend them and put in the “good” section that there’s an excellent amount of post-game content. After the ending, multiple new areas open with a slew of new dinos to earn, there’s several bonus items to collect, and numerous characters fight challenging battles that were previously inaccessible. However, the balance is off, as the enormity and challenge of the post-game content could negatively influence one’s opinion of the game in perspective to the main game. The main game has a decent length, but until the very end there is little challenge to it. Opponents have fairly low-leveled dinos throughout the game, presumably to allow you to experiment with other teams. But if someone just focuses on using the same dinos all game, even if it’s a shoddy team, just the sheer force of a max level team may get them through most of the storyline unscathed.
- The story is just kind of there. Nothing deep, but it’s not insultingly bad thanks to them keeping it lighthearted. But again, like I said in regards to Spectrobes: Origins, let’s not pretend that the storyline actually matters in monster battling games, lest the Pokemon franchise deserve to have several high scores revoked.

What’s bad:
- The graphics.. well, they’re decent enough to make it into the neutral category. Everything’s very bright, and has a crude, jagged style to it, though I do appreciate that the characters have natural looking forms/proportions (I’m sorry, I just can’t take stubby, huge-headed characters seriously, FFIV DS.). However, the dinos have a saddening amount of palette-swapping to complement the 100+ number of them. In fact, there seem to only be a few models overall, and just several coats of paint/minor aesthetics tacked onto each. This is slightly exacerbated by the fact that the dinos’ attacks look only okay at best; at no point will anything “wow” you graphically.
- Though mostly well designed, they slipped up a bit and there are a few annoying issues with the game’s functionality. Pressing B takes you out of menus of course, but pressing B when exiting the dino medal selection screen immediately undoes your changes; annoying. When digging for fossils, a fighter always challenges you to a fight for jewel fossils, and may occasionally challenge you for a regular fossil that may be rare. The problem is you only ever get 1 experience from these battles, compared to the 3-6 exp those same-difficulty battles would be worth normally. That’s kind of a dick move, especially if the fossil isn’t rare after all. Finally, some fossils are “soft” and will be obliterated by a single hammer swing during excavation. That’s fine, but rare “dark fossils” exist that have an outer layer only penetrable with hammer swings... and they are also sometimes soft. That means it’s nearly impossible to excavate the fossil without smashing it to smithereens. That’s just pointless.
- Aside from digging/cleaning fossils and battling your dinos, there’s really nothing else in the game to do. It’s nearing Eternal Sonata’s level of linearity here. Sidequests kill time, but are generally just seeking out a bonus dino battle. You can expand your sonar/bag for collecting fossils which is nice, but that’s completely linear as well. There’s just not much to do, so if you can’t tolerate cleaning and/or don’t enjoy the battling, there is simply nothing else to keep you entertained.

So there you have it... I’ve written a ton about, and spent almost 60 hours of my life devoted to a silly title that I would’ve instantly passed over if not for its distribution by Nintendo. And even then, I know I’m not scoring it particularly high.. the graphics are a little crude with tons of palette swaps, the audio package is unremarkable, the story is kind of silly, and the game design coupled with the post-game content make a second playthrough irrelevant.

But dang it, I had a lot of fun. That fact is due entirely to the fact that the robust list of dinos to collect with the very impressively designed battle system made for a very addictive experience. It was very enjoyable seeing what a new dino’s skills were, and especially when it got to the post-game content, it was nice being challenged and using good strategy to take opponents down. But because there won’t be any Fossil Fighters tournaments or friends who own the game to play anytime soon, eventually I had to reluctantly set the game aside upon beating everything. That’s sad too, because the battle system is robust, balanced, and is so conducive to differing strategies and mind-games that it’d be an excellent competitive game.

I’d say if a $30 game keeps me entertained for 60 hours and I still think fondly on it despite it being anything but a blockbuster... that’s got to speak for something.