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.

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.

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.

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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.

Phantom Brave (PS2)

Phantom Brave
Nippon Ichi Software

Anthony: Even though we beat Phantom Brave a while ago, it feels more timely than ever to have a review of it now that a Wii remake is coming out. But I’m not a collection freak, so it’s unlikely I’ll pick that up anytime soon, if ever. I’ll say straight up, we tend to love Nippon Ichi games. Sure, they take formulae, rarely deviate from them, and barely make any attempt to utilize a game’s hardware. But the fact is, they put out addictive games with storylines and characters we generally love. And with so many games these days trying to be ultra-serious and out-badassing each other, I’d much rather see a story about our feeble heroine Marona, than some dude named “Zephyr” doing cartwheels off a gravity-bike, wearing an impossible costume and using a gun-hammer-sword-grenade that can manipulate the space-time continuum. High five, Square-Enix!

And it’s just with that analogy that I wish to heap some praise on Phantom Brave. It had one of the most enjoyable storylines I’ve seen in an RPG in recent times. It was at times sad, at times frustrating, at times happy, at times funny, and really had an excellent knack for bringing the story to its conclusion. While the gameplay wasn’t much to go nuts for, the music, story, and supporting cast made it a very memorable game.

What’s good:
- Oh right, I already said the story. Well as I said, the story is a definite strong point. No, it’s not full of crazy twists, and it won’t try to blow your mind with a million different scenes of characters being stabbed by traitors... but it’s very, very charming, and has many scenes that are well ingrained in my memory for all the right reasons.
- The music by Nippon Ichi’s resident composer Tenpei Sato is fantastic. In fact, it has some of my favorite work to date. The song “Earth’s Step” that plays in some jungle-themed levels is just awesome.
- The variety of things you can do with your characters throughout the game is well appreciated. As with many NIS games, you can take the most basic, cruddy characters in the game and make world-beaters out of them, or you can use them as stepping stones to make universe-beaters if you want. From fusing abilities from random objects onto characters, or stats and abilities onto weapons, to transferring beneficial stat-raising “titles” onto anything and everything... you can really spend a lot of time making your party into exactly what you want them to be.
- I rather liked the Dungeon Monk system of creating random dungeons for you to explore, and also liked it more than say, the Item World in Disgaea or the Dark World of La Pucelle. You get to have a pretty good say over the type of world you’ll see, meaning you can make a clear distinction of whether you’re going in to collect a certain monster, level up, gather mana, or whatever your purpose. I spent a lot of time doing this and had fun in the process.

What’s neutral:
- The grid-less tactical system they put forth got them both praise and revile. The truth is somewhere between the two. On the good side, it makes perfect sense.. why would you need to restrict character movement? Using this, you can carefully line up attacks to do hit-and-runs or slam a group of enemies with a well placed attack without going an inch too far. On the other hand, they pretty much did away with the idea of ranged vs. direct combat, as mages and melee fighters alike will have to get right up in enemies’ faces to do damage early on, until they all get strong enough abilities where they don’t need to be close at all.
- The Confine system got similar reactions, and again the reality is somewhere between the two. You can definitely use strategically timed Confining to keep your long-lasting characters doing work steadily and your short-lasting characters coming in for short bursts of serious damage. But having later monsters that can have as few as two turns, and a system that can favor weaponry over character stats, while fighting enemies that never have to Confine, it can feel like somewhat of a shaft at times.
- I found it strange that characters could hold items that instantly changed their stats, yet holding an item that increases HP still meant they had to be healed that amount at the start of a battle.

What’s bad:
- I hate to put on my reviewer hat here, but the graphics are fairly meh. I don’t like criticizing this aspect since I know it’s not the real focus of the game, but the “this could almost be done on PS1” nature of the graphics is often apparent. It’s not without personality or prettiness, and I certainly don’t need pointless 60-second CG cutscenes, but it’s pretty raw even as NIS games go.
- With all the decisions related to the confine system, no movement map, character development, attacks available, etc... the game has a surprising lack of strategy for what’s described as a strategy RPG. With the lack of varied attack ranges, and with tons of abilities in the game that focus on doing damage to different ranges and areas, the idea of using defensive maneuvers or strategic character placement is nil. Characters can readily climb over whoever and attack whomever at will, so aside from some strategic throwing of objects (making a high defense enemy carry a defense-lowering item perhaps), most battles just come down to finding the shortest route to utter mayhem on the enemy. Fire Emblem, this is not.
- The game shows you an active list of turn order for the next several characters that’s very helpful. However, it’s a bit flawed; because the tossing and picking up of items can alter the Speed stat (higher speed means turns come much faster), sometimes it can give you a very incorrect reading of the turn order. Granted, I’m sure this is complex to program, but it can make an enormous difference in victory or defeat. If I’m holding a godly weapon against stronger enemies and it says I have the next turn, but then suddenly switches to an enemy... well then the enemy steals the weapon and I lose the battle. That leads to a few curse-inducing situations.

That means in the end, Phantom Brave is the kind of game I want to recommend to everyone, but know I have to caveat that. Many folks will not like this game. Graphics are very simple, the storyline is a simple story (told very well, though), and the game barely qualifies as a strategy RPG. So my best question is, have you tried other NIS games? If you like their style of innocuous, silly games with extremely open-ended gameplay, I imagine this will be right up your alley. But if you see “Strategy” all over the box and think, “Oh hey cool, I like games like Fire Emblem”... yee. Be cautious.

Otherwise, sit back, enjoy the story, enjoy the music, and enjoy making your little sprites into whatever kind of demigods you decide to focus them into.

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Lauren: I'll keep my thoughts on this one brief, since Anthony did a great job of summing up its pros and cons already. He played it while I observed, so I'll leave the gameplay comments to him.

I really can't compliment Nippon Ichi enough for the personality they put into their games. Their RPGs have been consistently cute, hilarious, and very well localized. Phantom Brave is much more innocent in nature than the diabolical characters of Disgaea and Makai Kingdom, but it has the sort of story and dialogue that just about anyone can enjoy. It's rare that we get emotionally involved in the plot of a game, but we really were glued to the screen during some scenes, hoping that something awful wouldn't happen to our poor main character. It's a beautiful little story, and the dialogue is sure to make you chuckle, at least.

The music deserves yet another special mention. It is truly an excellent score overall. Tenpei Sato is a wonderful composer, and he gave Phantom Brave a very unique feel. The voice actors did a fantastic job as well.

Here's hoping that they do a good job with porting the game over to the Wii. It was a fun and unique RPG experience that deserves to become more well-known.