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.

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.

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.

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.

Spectrobes: Origins (Wii)

Spectrobes: Origins
Disney Interactive Studios

Anthony: From time to time, the primitive meathead gamer in me longs for a good, solid hack and slash game. Sure, they’re repetitive, but there’s always something to be said for being able to hit a button over and over and it make carnage happen. In my search for the next co-op hack and slash for us to play, I came across Spectrobes: Origins, which had the added benefit of being a monster-based RPG and having drop-in/drop-out co-op gameplay. While I won’t claim for a second that this is an excellent game, I’ll absolutely say we had a lot of fun playing it.

Tearing pages straight from Saturday morning cartoons and “Japanimation”, Spectrobes: Origins follows two young space.. somethings.. who control some kind of monsters called Spectrobes to combat an evil race of some sort. What that actually means is you control a character who fights with various weapons and can issue commands to explore and fight with various diminutive and hulking monsters. The “Spectrobes” are unearthed and excavated by the player, and can be controlled either issuing commands via remote swings or a second player.

Naturally, the plot is rather groan-inducing. That’s not from a lack of presentation though... oddly enough, the voice acting is very solid. But as you might expect, characters have very typical personalities, poke at each other with very childish jokes, and the story never really goes beyond “Beat bad dude.” They give a little exposition, but it doesn’t really mean much. That said, I’ve seen reviews actually dock the game for the plot, and to that I say.. what? I seem to recall a decade of Pokemon RPGs receiving 8.5-10 scores despite never having a plot more than “win badges, but don’t let bumbling bad guys get strong pokemon!” So let’s not be inconsistent and claim that suddenly the plot should matter in scoring the game.

The gameplay is the heart of everything here, and though there are a slew of minor issues and “huh?” moments with it, overall the news is good. Although the main character starts with very generic and some borderline unusable weapons, exploration in the world reveals a host of improved weapons that have special attacks, different combinations of attacks, status effects and elemental properties. If one thing surprised me most about the game beyond the graphics, it was the wide variety of different weapons you can get throughout the game.

In single-player mode, Spectrobes are commanded by swinging the remote to either send it out to attack or call it back to retreat. Timing the attack orders with the main character’s attack can produce different attacks and combos, which is an interesting feature, while special attacks are simply triggered with B. In two-player mode, the second character controls the active Spectrobe, and the retreat/attack options are disabled. Instead, the second player freely moves and attacks using the Spectrobe’s strongest attacks, and becomes the one to initiate special attacks. The only advantage single-player mode offers is that Spectrobes will teleport to and from the enemies, making chipping at threatening bosses a potential strategy. Otherwise, having a partner makes things infinitely easier and saves your wrist a lot of swinging.

The prognosis is similar for exploration. Alone, a player has to swing the remote to send a baby spectrobe to search for shining items on the field. It’s repetitive, and a little annoying in both hearing “Go!” repeatedly and having to wait for the Spectrobe to do its thing. With a second player, a simple remote point-and-click interface immediately unearths items, and is a vastly superior system to doing it solo.

Excavating fossils to spawn new Spectrobes is a pretty robust system that can be both fun and challenging while having huge benefits. All items start as a chunk of rock, but with a combination of tools like a world-destroying laser, an X-ray beam and gentle drill, you can unearth the creatures within. Then a very simplistic music minigame awakens them for use either as an exploring baby or an evolved, battling adult. Minimal damage and time elapsed results in a better ranking and higher leveled Spectrobe.

A moment should be taken to mention the graphics. This aspect went well above and beyond my expectations. Environments look nice and fairly pretty, but especially the scenes in space and the few limited CG scenes look excellent. On top of that, the models for the Spectrobes are unique and impressive looking. Each one starts out as a tiny baby, and ends up a miniature-Godzilla when fully evolved. They look cool, and all manage to have a good amount of personality and variety to their designs. Menus are cleanly designed and smartly work with either the remote pointer or button input as you see fit. I might’ve liked the weapon-change screen to load a little faster, but that’s a minor gripe.

It’s worthy of note that despite being geared at children, the difficulty is not quite at kid-level. Although you can keep up to six, the Spectrobes can never be healed in battle unless they level up... and as the game goes on, the main character’s damage output begins to pale in comparison to a same-leveled Spectrobe. Combine those aspects with enormous bosses that typically have huge area-attacks with little room to attack and dodge safely, and you have a game that just might humble you once or twice. Even normal enemies can pose a challenge if you don’t keep healing up and aren’t switching to the right elemental properties. I’d be impressed if some kid managed to tackle the impressively challenging final boss without a ton of exp-grinding.

Thankfully, they let you retry from the beginning whenever you wipe out to a boss, and typically provide save points prior to them, so it’s not like Disney hates children per se.

But let’s not kid ourselves, there are some definite flaws to point out. While the drop-in/drop-out co-op feature is great and very helpful, it’s baffling to me why they’d make the exploration so obtuse for a single player in comparison. And in battle, despite Spectrobes typically having a few attack patterns, a second player is limited to only using the strongest (and sometimes the slowest) attack available. Why limit anything? Stranger still, the very short instruction booklet doesn’t even cover the second player’s controls, despite the box advertising the drop-in/drop-out gameplay.

Oddly enough, you’re kind of discouraged from sticking with the same Spectrobes throughout the game. Because you can take up to six with you in battle (and realistically, you want at least five.. one for each element), the main character levels up much more quickly than his/her Spectrobes. Exp-granting crystals can be unearthed all over to help augment this, but especially as levels get higher, they don’t come close to offsetting this disparity in levels. The reason this discourages loyalty is that getting an “A” rank on fossil excavation nets you a Spectrobe of your main character’s level, and there’s no stat difference between a levelled-up Spectrobe and a newly born one. As a result, every 10-20 levels, you’ll probably just want to excavate a fresh batch of your current team to keep them appropriately strong, rather than try to grind and gut it out with each of the five-six members in your current crew.

A few more oddities... Special weapons are found throughout the world that are locked behind one of five elemental barriers, and are unlocked by a child Spectrobe of the same element. However, you can only have three child Spectrobes at a time, so it means you’ll have to backtrack to a save point/the ship to switch Spectrobes if you don’t have the right element.. silly. A few bosses guard literally everything, forcing you to use only the main character with an Axe for potential damage. Guarding as the main character is a little awkward, as it requires lifting the remote/nunchuk.. something not easily done when you need to quickly defend. And while it clearly marks the fossils you obtain as “New” or the name of the Spectrobe inside, you can unearth Crystal-containing fossils that are arguably pointless for the time spent, yet always say “New” instead of just telling you it’s a crystal. Why?

But for those oddities and flaws, there are some other pleasant things to report too. The game has a nice map overlay for navigating areas and finding the zones. Save points heal and are at placed at good intervals, with it not forcing you to redo mandatory battles within the same area if you backtrack. Encounters are often voluntary in areas when you’re looking to level up or charge special attacks. Switching Spectrobes in battle is easy, with it even showing you how much of their special attacks are charged as you scroll through.

There’s a lot of variety in the Spectrobes themselves, which made trying new ones and finding ones that Lauren liked to use quite addictive. The game length is a respectable 15-30 hours, with plenty of play value if you try out different Spectrobes or do the silly post-game quest. Slamming enemies with their elemental weakness is nice and satisfying enough... But gathering up your Spectrobes’ special attacks, and unleashing all in succession and watching a Boss’ HP bar shoot down... is pretty dang cool to do.

So this isn’t a world-smashingly amazing game by any means, and having played it, I still don’t know what a Spectrobe is nor do I have any interest in more of the storyline. With that said, I only look back on the game fondly, because it was pretty dang fun piling up a team of hulking beasts and having Lauren and I smash them in sometimes quite epic fashion. I’ve played better games that aren’t as fun, and guess what matters more to me in the end? Spectrobes: Origins is great, mindless entertainment, though much moreso with a partner. Plus, you can make fun of the corny dialogue together.

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Lauren: Every now and then, we crave a good co-op hack-and-slash game, even if it's almost completely mindless. Games like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance usually fit that bill, but surprisingly, a cutesy Disney Pokemon-esque title gave us a similar experience.

Spectrobes: Origins is mainly a monster-training RPG. I'll leave the main gameplay descriptions to Anthony, since I was just his monster co-pilot through the adventure. From the Player 2 standpoint, I can say that even the level grinding was pretty entertaining. You can swap between several different Spectrobes during battle in order to maximize elemental damage. The Spectrobes also have a special move gauge that fills up as they deal damage, which can then be unleashed with a tap of the B button and a silly Wii-mote pose. These attacks can be extremely useful on difficult bosses, since it's possible to charge up every Spectrobe's special move in advance, then unleash them all consecutively.

The graphics are very nice for a Wii title - pretty, though a little on the simple side. Environments are generally colourful with pretty details, especially the mountainous backgrounds. Each Spectrobe's appearance is impressively unique, from swordfish to cacti to a pair of dancing boots. The attacks and animations are also varied and fun to watch. The human character models are fairly simple in comparison, but it's not really a problem.

The story was the weakest point for me. It might not be fair of me to say that, since we knowingly purchased a Disney game that's geared toward kids, but it still bears mentioning. Don't expect an epic storyline - just the usual generic fluff with innocuous dialogue that tries a little too hard to be funny. Though the voice acting is generally quite good and features some very well-known actors, I found it to be a little less enjoyable because of the script.

All plot complaints aside, it was still a very fun (and even occasionally challenging) game to play. I got to explore, collect shiny things, and beat the you-know-what out of enemies with a variety of neat Spectrobes, and that kept us both entertained for many hours. I also got to feel like an anime character as I busted out various Wii-mote poses.

Class of Heroes (PSP)

Class of Heroes (PSP)
Acquire / Atlus

Review by Anthony

So, a popular Japanese game comes out in America, and immediately both consumers and reviewers are confused. Call it unintentionally misleading packaging, or just plain bad journalism, but Class of Heroes basically got lauded or utterly hated depending on what the player was expecting. So, let’s be clear: Class of Heroes is a modern recreation of dungeon crawlers such as Wizardry ala Etrian Odyssey and The Dark Spire. It is not a modern RPG. Just as that fact didn’t inherently make The Dark Spire or Etrian Odyssey bad games, neither does it for Class of Heroes. But it does, however, mean that the game has an extremely limited audience.

Class of Heroes is a more relaxed take on the dungeon crawler genre. The game follows you as students of Particus Academy, who must explore dungeons and travel to other lands and Academies to perform tasks and aid others. Six adventurers from a wide array of ten races and fifteen jobs can be taken along at once, though you can register multiple teams and rosters as you see fit. The storyline progressions through the completion of classes that begin as instructional, but eventually become fetch quests, item trading, and monster hunting.

What’s good:
- You can create a party from either gender of Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Felpiers, Sprites, Erdgeists, Diablons, Celestians, or Drakes. Depending on allocation of stats and alignment, these can become Warriors, Monks, Samurais, Rangers, Thieves, Ninjas, Kunoichis, Valkyries, Paladins, Alchemists, Clerics, Wizards, Devouts, Evokers, or Psychicers. Not only is that a pretty impressive lineup considering a six-member party setup, but the balance among these is excellent. Although it’s a good idea to have staples like healing or thievery, the combination of equipment, stat, magic, skills, and affinity differences means you can make your way through the game a myriad of ways.
- Exploration through the game’s maps, though necessary, is also well-rewarded. Though each dungeon and its labyrinth have set maps, the multi-tiered paths between each have various recurring maps that can be explored. Exploring these maps can be fun, as they can net you some nice money, items, and allow you to unlock doors with a “magic key” that in most cases, allows you to exit the map near-instantly upon entering it in future runs. This means your method of exploration speeds up and you get important items along the way; it’s a smart design.
- Every trail map has one or more points that allow you instantly warp home for free if desired. This can be an absolute lifesaver in a game such as this.
- Item handling is done quite well here. As your inventory fills up, unwanted items can be dropped, which makes them instantly available from inter-connected recycling bins located in every dungeon. That way, worthless items can be set aside to sell later, or it can even be strategically used to keep healing items available in all dungeons. And though it’s marked up, all shops keep items sold to them available for purchase later on. The dorm lockers hold an absurd amount of items too; storage is never an issue.
- Though rarely worth mentioning, Class of Heroes deserves credit for having some of the most creative and well-drawn monster designs I’ve seen in a game lately. Monsters look clean, well drawn, well colored, and have several unique takes on the types of creatures you expect in every RPG/dungeon crawler.
- Though dungeon crawlers may have among the most limited audiences this side of nudist motocross games, Class of Heroes may be as accessible as you’ll find within the genre. The early courses explain the game’s mechanics in good detail and with useful advice, item/equipment information is laid out with tons of detail, quests have adequate information for completion, and until late/post game, you’re rarely thrust into situations where specific monsters are overpowered to other inhabitants. This is all atypical for the genre, and may be a sign of modernizing the genre to new players.
- Being able to power up virtually all weapons and armor in the game with materials dropped from monsters in battle was a cool idea. It was pretty satisfying to get a good drop, then use a wad of hard earned cash towards turning a weapon into a weapon+9.
- There’s an unusually high amount of additional exploring and questing to do post-game. It’s not much different than the main game, but this could easily become a “desert island” game in how much time you could potentially spend with it.

What’s bad:
- Whether by design or not, Boss fights are plentiful and always anticlimactic. Every Boss I fought in the game was defeated typically in one turn by me using the party “Gambit” ability, in which your entire party teams up for a variety of functions. If a Boss isn’t killed instantly, they’re also unfairly strong, often easily wiping out one or more characters in a turn, with some having huge evasion and resistance. This may have been an attempt to make sure you create a party with good affinity to each other in order to unleash more Gambit attacks, but regardless, it made the Boss fights way too fast, regardless of the victor.
- Though the alchemy system in augmenting and upgrading items was great, the alchemy system in creating new items from Junk was lacking. The idea was good - you find a Broken Talwar in battle, you fuse some cheap iron into it and you have a repaired Talwar. The problem is, many of the junk items have ambiguous names, and without paying a bundle of money for crafting recipes, you a) won’t know what the junk item makes and b) won’t know what materials are needed to create it. And without the crafting recipe, even if you have the materials to make the item, you can’t see what jobs/races can equip the item until you’ve paid the money to make it. The result? The average player will hightail it to an alchemy guide/FAQ or do a whole lot of resetting to save cash. I doubt most players would be okay with just throwing money away to make items they won’t use, but the game seems to foster that.
- Though it’s a well-made game all around, there was really no reason for it to have a higher-than-average price of $40 as a PSP game.

What to be aware of: (I’m foregoing the “neutral” section for this review because these items are indicative of the genre but highly unusual for the average player)
- Not only is party member death a serious concern in that revival items are extremely rare and only the highest level white magic can fix it, but the longer a character stays dead, the more difficult it is to revive him/her. Although I never ran into the situation, permadeath and/or losing one’s entire party and starting over is a possibility.
- Without functional thieving skills, progression in the game will be more difficult due to many beneficial items being in trap-rigged treasure chests. Even then, bad luck can mean your entire party being brutalized or wiped out by a chest’s trap.
- Dungeons can be tame and straightforward or uncompromising chores depending on the layout. Some maps are laden with warps and tedious “find the right door” mechanics. Many have shock-tile traps that can seriously damage non-flying members of your party. Though a levitating spell fixes the previous issue, many dungeons have “anti-magic” zones that not only prevent spells from being cast, but instantly remove any spell effects you have active. You will be given the feeling occasionally that certain maps were designed just for the sake of being cruel.
- Aside from time spent in shops/labs working with items or managing your party, basically the entirety of the game is one big grind. There are very few puzzles, which are normally a common aspect of dungeon crawlers. To make it through to the end, you will be fighting hordes of monsters again and again, and for the most part, your tactics aren’t likely to change much from one group to the next. Repetition is a factor.
- There’s really no storyline of interest. Being a member of Particus Academy is akin to being asked to do several tasks, and eventually destroy an evil person along the way. A few modern references and silly bits of dialog can keep it more interesting, but the storyline is as basic as it comes.
- Stats will raise and lower somewhat randomly depending on your character’s race and job. This will sometimes make it very difficult to gain access to jobs with more restrictive requirements outside of doing so during character creation.
- The PSP’s ever-present lack of a “Load Game” option mid-game makes it not quite as ideal of a system for the genre, compared to the DS.

So we have a well-made game here that has some serious difficulty finding an audience in North America. Players expecting an RPG will likely be disappointed in what they find. Hardcore dungeon crawler fans may find the design too bright and forgiving in comparison to other titles. The niche here is somewhere in between. Class of Heroes is great for someone with a passing interest in the genre, as well as those who want a more robust and open-ended approach to the genre. There are less horrifying threats and challenges as in a game like The Dark Spire/Etrian Odyssey, and Class of Heroes comes with greater diversity in how you go about solving your challenges.

In my mind, this fits a nice mold in proving that dungeon crawlers don’t have to be only for the hardcore, text-based computer game aficionados. Sure, it’s still about little more than trudging through dungeons and cutting a swath through hundreds of monsters. But choosing the best way to build your party, putting them into action, and getting excited for a particularly good drop is quite addictive. If Class of Heroes can’t spur your interest in the genre, then stay very far away, because probably nothing will.