Ys Seven is done! I literally could not put the game down. Some sort of review-ish like blob of text coming up later.

8/31 edit: Ugh, I better get this in before I snag Valkyria 2. I’ll try to keep this short.

Ys Seven was pretty amazing. As a long-time fan of the series, I was a bit worried about the direction they were going with when they introduced the party concept. I mean sure, Adol always receives help from the locals but he was always the one fighting solo when the time came. After 30 hours on Nightmare, I didn’t really care. It does make a lot more sense story-wise. I think I’m just happy to see Falcom try something a little bit new now. It does lower Adol’s badass factor though.

Worries aside, the only complaint I have is about the difficulty. They let you select any difficulty off the bat, which was really great, so I went to Hard first but then I switched it up to Nightmare. While it definitely was very challenging, it didn’t seem on par with previous games’ Nightmare. I’m not quite sure if it had anything to do with the fact that you now have three characters to work with (giving you three HP bars to work with) or if it was the amount of items you were allowed to work with. On Nightmare this number is 3 for single heal items, 1 for multi/ressurect items.  As the game progresses you gain access to stronger versions of these, so you’re eventually able to build up a huge array of healing items for each boss. I’m not that great at the series despite my love for it – I didn’t know about Flash Guard for the entirety of the game, and pretty much every boss drained most if not all of my items, so I kind of imagine someone who knows what they’re doing having a decent amount of leeway.

Other than that, everything else was pretty awesome. The music (there was never a time where Falcom let me down in this department), the fast-paced yet simplistic gameplay… I guess the story can be called a weak point but Ys has never been known for it. It’s very cliche and Zelda-esque. Really, everything you can expect from Ys is there and that’s all anyone who cares about it will ask for.

If you’re someone who is unfamiliar with the series, I think it will be very fun if you enjoy ARPGs. It wouldn’t be the first thing I’d recommend though, just because I prefer people start from the beginning, especially with the excellent Ys I&II Chronicles port coming soon.

I don’t have much time to talk about Metroid: Other M, but I am done with it and I’ll say this: totally underwhelming. I don’t regret playing it, but there’s so many things to bitch about in comparison to its good traits that I wonder if I should just admit that I hated it. I’ll elaborate more when I get some free time.

Ahem. Let’s get some ranting on (semi) recent news out of the way first, shall we?

Where is everyone else?

Arc Rise Fantasia is hitting the shelves tomorrow (though I hear it’s been at the stores for some time now) along with StarCraft 2. Good luck with that competition…

I won’t be one to pass judgement on the entire localization just based on a few videos, so I’ll say this. If you’re looking for that awesome RPG for the Wii, Arc Rise Fantasia is IT (until they decide to bring over Xenoblade). If you can’t stand the voices, they’ve included a Voice Off option. I can’t recommend it enough just based on how fun and challenging the battles are, but hey, the voices just might ruin everything so it’s up to you. Or maybe an undubbed version will come out soon. If there was any game that seems like would benefit greatly from an undub, its Arc Rise.

Alternatively, you can just pick up the import and play it in it’s full glory. You just might not be able to understand it.

PERSONA! Wait, what?

Next, Metal Gear Solid: Rising. Starring Raiden. Note the completely different tagline: Lightning Bolt Action. We’ve known these details since 2009, and yet people still complain about the series “taking a different direction”? Give it a rest, folks. We just got what was basically MGS5 last month – soak that in for a couple of years and I’m sure we’ll have 6 (5, whatever) in some form soon enough. Personally I’m more interested in the next Zone of the Enders, which is still far into the future according to Kojima.

More recently, Ar Tonelico 3 was finally officially announced for the US, but under the very atrocious name “Ar Tonelico Qoga”. This is something I really, really don’t understand. Yes, I get it. Qoga is Hymnos for “end”. One, how is Qoga in any way, shape or form better sounding/looking than 3? And two, thanks for spoiling it for me? Seriously – what the hell, NIS America. I’d love to see what kind of explanation they have for this one, because to me it seems like there was no reason at all for the rename other than to make the logo look dumb. This is almost having the same effect on me as hearing Arc Rise Fantasia’s dub for the first time.

Below is the best I could do without going insane to get the Japanese and American logos to match up, but it still illustrates my point well.

Really guys? Really? Look at all that awkward space you’ve created!

And for those of you who are thinking “Who gives a crap? At least we’re getting it localized!”, let me give you a hypothetical example. Let’s say Square Enix decided Final Fantasy XV was going to be the last Final Fantasy ever, and they release it as “Final Fantasy XV” in Japan. Then when it comes time for localization, the Square Enix USA team decides that hey, since it’s the last Final Fantasy, let’s go ahead and rename it “Final Final Fantasy”. Does that not sound ridiculous to you? Don’t make this a trend. /nerdrage

Anyways, let’s get on with the July overview. First up, Deathsmiles!

This picture is here just because I love Windia’s expressions.

I’ll mention this every time I talk about ‘em, but I really do suck at shooters. But that doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy the hell out of them. This game is everything I expected it to be. As of this post date, I’ve found the time to seriously get into this and it’s been paying off very well. I absolutely know I can 1CC this (if I avoid Death Mode at least), because I pretty much did it in a co-op game with Scin already (he died early that attempt). Efforts to 1CC with Death Mode activating haven’t been very great though…

Oh, I play as Rosa, by the way. I actually think I might have stuck with Casper if it wasn’t for this weird bug where I can’t see her shot on co-op/360 mode. Didn’t matter if it was her light or heavy shot, the beams just weren’t there – only the beginnings of them. But now I’m totally used to Rosa so it’s too late now!

I actually started Deathsmiles up on the first of the month and I was totally excited to get into it, but like I mentioned in a previous post…

“…some sorta RPG gets released and steals me away…”

In this case though, it’s something I’ve already played – except from a new perspective! I clocked in at about 100 hours, maxing out all of my Social Links and beating both Theodore and Margaret. I didn’t get a chance to do a second cycle in P4 so I could access Margaret, so it was nice to see I could fight her here now. Fighting Elizabeth was something I never did in the original either, but since I found out Theo was pretty much the same deal, I feel like I got to fight her too.

Speaking of the Theo fight, I guess it was too much to ask Fuuka’s VA to come back for a couple of lines.

Who, indeed…

Persona 3 Portable’s female protagonist (FeMC, MShe, Hamuko, Minako…let’s go with Minako) is definitely a different feel than Minato. She’s a lot more energetic and outspoken, and can be quite bold in the romance department. Overall, I think her choice selections are a lot more fun. Then again, I haven’t played the original in about three years… but I don’t think my memory is that bad in this case. Her unique Social Links were a lot of fun to see play out ( Saori & Rio (and yes, I finally made that into an emoticon).

There were two links in particular that were quite creepy though – Justice/Ken Amada, and the Hanged Man/Maiko. I know what you’re thinking… Maiko, creepy? It’s not her, it’s her dad. I think it was around the last rank up where Maiko’s dad recognizes you and chats with you for a bit about her, and then tries to ask you out. Ken is kind of the same, always wondering if you have a boyfriend or if he would be good enough for you. Crushes are sweet, but the way he went about it sometimes kinda disgusted me. It doesn’t help that I don’t like Ken regardless so maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

Anyways, despite having already played the ‘essence’ of the game before, I still found it fun to play through with the new changes. I’d definitely pick P3P as the definitive version of the game (until you want to play FES, which is strangely missing). There’s a few people out there that disagree though, and that’s where my next little rant comes in.

I think the most common gripe I’m seeing is that people think it’s too easy, going as far as to call P3P the “inferior version” of Persona 3 and recommending the original over this. I definitely agree with them on the easy part. I played through on Maniac difficulty and aside from the insane Compendium costs, it felt no different than the first time I played through P3 or FES: The Answer.  A lot of people attribute this ease to the ability to directly control each party member now like P4, but I think they’re focusing on the wrong thing here. Instead, monster damage/HP should have probably been increased even more.

Why?  The original P3′s AI was ridiculously frustrating at times, creating a high artificial difficulty that just did not need to exist. Yes, obviously you can make the AI work, and you can also work through the AI’s mistakes – as anyone who beat the original can attest to, but did that magically make the game more fun? Not really. For any number of times the AI did something correct, there was always one time where the AI fucked up – and that’s all it takes to get you killed in Persona. The game still retains the random lethal crits and Hama/Mudo when the game knows you don’t have a Homunculus, etc., for those of you that love that sort of thing in place of frustrating AI decisions.

Don’t get me wrong though. I’m not against artificially inflating the difficulty of a game… when it’s the player’s choice. I do it all the time by attempting bosses underleveled, with no item usage, etc.. The original P3 shoved artificial difficulty down player’s throats; we didn’t know any better. Now, P3P offers you a choice: you can work with the AI which is on by default, or you can switch it off and let your own mistakes get you killed instead of the computer.

Oh, if you’re wondering who I used, take a guess.

It sure is, Aigis.

Be happy for Atlus, I’m sure they’re bringing in more newcomers to the world of Persona with P3P.

Coming up next month, it looks like some Castlevania: Harmony of Despair, the highly anticipated Ys Seven, Metroid: Other M, and Valkyria Chronicles 2. Oh boy…

Still proud to have a poster of this cover.

The verdict? It’s pretty decent. It’s one of those games that you don’t really mind playing but also don’t think too much of afterward. The story is extraordinarily cliche; every twist can be seen from a mile away. The soundtrack was decent but suffers from the same thing as Star Ocean 4 – no outstanding tracks that I liked in particular.

The battle system was fairly interesting, deviating slightly from the standard with skill customization, regenerating MP, Burning Auras and the ability to completely opt out of the game’s rock-paper-scissors Affinities. The most unique part of battle though was probably also the most unbalanced: Transforming. There is a fine line between challenging and ridiculously easy in the game, and Transforming basically pushes you across it – especially when you can do so multiple times in one battle when you acquire multiple gems for your Armlet bearers. Granted there are some cases where it does feels like they balanced around Transforming (the optional stuff in particular is probably a good example, if you’re attempting it at the appropriate level), for the most part this is not the case.

There was some other stuff I hated about it but I don’t even really care to recall them. Moving on…

Note the strange absence of the tag “Tactical Espionage Operations”.

Next up was Peace Walker. Pretty fun – especially if you like kidnapping recruiting people to build your base, because there is a TON of that. The boss fights were also a blast, though a tad lengthy in some cases. Not too much else to say about it really… It’s a pretty solid game for the PSP, and designed appropriately as the missions are (with the exception of boss battles) typically short and sweet. If there was anything to gripe about it, it’d be the fact that it was on the PSP and not one of the major consoles.

Last but most definitely not least, Xenoblade. I’m feeling a bit reviewy and ranty so get ready for something a bit lengthy and probably all over the place. I’d also suggest taking a look at this article if you want a decent overview of the game itself.

First things first, the most noticeable and prominent feature of the game is the the setting. Everybody in the Xenoblade world lives on one of the two gigantic gods: the Kyoshin and Kishin.  Traveling across these vast “worlds” is quite a breathtaking experience (and yes, you do get to travel across both of them) and is a testament to the vision Monolith Soft had for the game – a massive world, filled with life and tons of content. It’s the kind of world that incites the player’s desire to just go off course and explore every nook and cranny. I’m pretty sure this was mentioned in an article somewhere but it’s true – in Xenoblade, if you can see it, you can go there.

I think an appropriate, fairly recent game to compare it to would be Final Fantasy 13.  Whereas FF13 was designed to be extremely linear. Remember the Archlyte Steppe? Or to put it in more familiar terms: the huge, wide open area filled with quests and monsters that the game thrusts upon you after so many hours of linearity? Many areas in Xenoblade are similar to that – right off the bat, which was really just a breath of fresh air. Not only are they as expansive as the Steppe, but they all have built-in transportation (that you don’t have to unlock like Cie’th Waystones) in the form of Landmarks, scattered across each area in more abundance than Waystones. All you have to do is find them, and you can teleport back to that Landmark via the map whenever you please.

Helping greatly enhance the Xenoblade experience while you’re caught in your wanderlust is the music. Although Shimomura and Mitsuda have few tracks credited to them (they’re great), the soundtrack does not suffer from their absence in the rest of the OST. Why? The ones who contributed greatly to it (ACE+ and Manami Kiyota) did a spectacular job covering the bulk of the game.

I previously enjoyed ACE+’s work on the Japanese MMORPG Emil Chronicle Online (known back then simply as the group ACE and the indivdual Kenji Hiramatsu), who proved then that they could create environmental pieces really fitting of whichever area you happened to be exploring. They applied the same philosophy to the areas of Xenoblade, whether it be the upbeat tunes of the sunny and lush “Gaur Plains” (one of my absolute favorites) or the desolate piano notes of “Snowy Mt. Valac / Night”. They’ve also rocked out some excellent battle tracks like “The One Who Gets In Our Way” and “Mechanical Rhythm”.

The other half of the soundtrack comes from Manami Kiyota, who (correct me if I’m wrong) seems to be a complete newcomer to composing – credited as a performer on the Black Mages’ third album and the 2004 Final Fantasy Song Album. Kiyota covered most of the tracks that were used for cutscenes – ambient, atmospheric stuff – the majority of which I can’t really say I liked or disliked just because a lot of the situations they’re used in just need some non-intrusive music to set the mood. However, there is one very notable track by Kiyota which made me look forward to her next work: “Xanthe” – the final boss track. It’s one of those tracks that isn’t up in your ears, shouting “This is the final battle!” (not that I don’t enjoy that) but still manages to be epic and amplifies the pressure on you in the game.

Onto the battle system!  While it does have some unique facets, let’s focus on the common items first. From the start, you can see many similarities between Xenoblade and MMORPGs: seamless battles, auto-attacking, a hotkey bar for your Arts (all of which have some sort of recast time), enemy ‘conning’, and Hate (even incorporating taunts and hate reduction abilities). But that’s where the resemblance ends.

You can read all about the rest of the details of the battle system here (same article), because I don’t want to blab on about the game’s inner workings.

I felt right at home with the way things were set up in Xenoblade, especially since a lot of the hassle of a normal RPG isn’t there:

• Normal fights are short and sweet.
• You can save anywhere you please.
• There was no need to worry about MP or healing up after a battle.
• Retreats from normal battles are as easy as running the hell away.
• Dying just sends you back to the last Landmark you saw (no penalties!).
• Dying during a boss battle lands you right back in front of said boss, minus the cutscenes!
• For the most part, the AI is competent – they’ll generally revive and heal you as needed, and work with what skills you assigned them.

What they don’t mention in that article though, is that recovery items are non-existent. You will be completely at the mercy of the recast timers of your heals. This can be a pretty big pain, because early on it limits your ability to use different party members well. A few characters get a light heal to provide minimal support, but the game’s true healer is Carna, so for pretty much all of the early game and boss battles you’re kinda stuck with her. Later on as you get more powerful, you’ll be able to switch her out with someone more offense oriented and get by with minimal heals on normal monsters at least. Bosses might be possible too, if you were to learn a certain secret Monado Art…

The inflexibility of the party doesn’t stop there. Although you can switch out Shulk whenever you please, chances are you’ll want to control him during a boss battle. The reason is simple – he has Monado, and Monado is immensely helpful 99% of the time. Even though you can see Visions while Shulk isn’t even in your party, he is still the best at preventing them, and even better when you’re controlling him since you won’t have to waste a Party Gauge bar every time a Vision comes up using his Monado Arts. It’s not like he’s a bad character though – he’s pretty awesome. He’s even one of the characters that comes with a light heal. I just wish things weren’t so bad without him.

Continuing on about the zero recovery items… should one of your party members fall, you can go up and revive them if you have a Party Gauge bar available. They can also revive you if you happen to fall and there is a bar available. But the moment you die and there are no Party Gauge bars left, it’s game over. But like I mentioned before, death isn’t that bad. An actual game over screen does not exist for Xenoblade.

While the game does have a ton of things to keep you on your toes during battle, most of it doesn’t matter while you’re just killing normal monsters, which kinda left me bored of fighting at some points. Since you have a limited Art set of 8 plus your Talent Gauge Art, without things like Visions to spruce up the battle I felt like there wasn’t much variety. The inability to switch characters mid-fight compounds this. Then again, I think I can say there eventually isn’t much variety for pretty much every RPG I’ve ever played, so I’m not sure how valid of a point this is.

Although it isn’t too wise to do it early on, switching the character you’re controlling does provide a fair amount of fun because every character’s Talents and fighting styles are somewhat unique – my favorite being Melia’s element summoning and releasing. Definitely give this a try when you feel comfortable enough to switch; it’s a nice change of pace.

There’s also a ton of stuff I didn’t mention still, like Gem Crafting and Skill Trees – both of which add a ton of depth to the customization of your characters. Skills will provide a variety of boosts to your characters, and you can share them with your other party members. Just how many you can share and equip will depend on your level, number of Unique Monsters you’ve slain, and the level of your bond with them. Don’t neglect this! Skills can unlock some powerful bonuses, like the ability to equip Heavy Armor! There are also more Skill Trees you can unlock by questing, which generally provide better bonuses than the original three you start out with.

With Gem Crafting, sometimes it’ll be hard to get the gems you want (especially when you don’t have a comprehensive wiki listing what drops what yet) but customizing your armor with gems is pretty substantial amount of your team’s power. This will become even more apparent when you’re fighting the numerous end-game Unique Monsters that far surpass the final boss’s level and even your own maximum level of 99.

What else am I leaving out… ah yes, the story! I’ve never been one to say much about the quality of the story of games, and I’m not about to start now. There’s only so much you can expect from an RPG these days. Xenoblade’s is fairly straightforward; you’ll find a lot of common tropes when dealing with the human(oid) characters in the game. This doesn’t stop it from being highly enjoyable though. What really sets the game apart from anything else is… scratch that. I can’t figure out a way to phrase this without totally giving away the best part. Sorry! Anyways…

In the placeholder post before this I mentioned that the game took me about 70 hours, but I played for a total of about 150. Or at least I think I played for 150… it’s probably a bit less like 140.  Stupid 99:99 timer limit! Anyways, the extra 70 hours or so was spent on my second playthrough, doing all the crap I had neglected the first time around like Questing (there is a TON of quests, even that might be an understatement) to build up my Kizuna Gram so I could Trade for rare items for my Collepedia, and rebuilding Colony 6 up to 100%.

This time was also spent leveling with the help of all the end-game monsters scattered throughout the world, and preparing to fight those extra Unique Monsters I mentioned earlier. My goal was to be able to beat the level 120 dragon at the peak of Mt. Valac. Scinder and I were definitely confused for a while on this one. Level 120? When the max level is 99? Eventually we learned that through some hardcore customization, we could overcome the level gap. Even with what I thought was decent prep, he was a serious challenge (at least the first time he was) and I was glad to have spent the time to be able to defeat him.

There was a time where I thought their decision to rename it from Monado: The Beginning of the World to Xenoblade was a bit odd. Sure, it has Tetsuya Takahashi behind it (the “Xeno guy”), but to name a game Xeno without it actually being related to the Xeno series we all love seemed a bit like blasphemy at the start. After putting that much time into the game, I can safely say that it was worthy of the rename. Some of common items between the games are fairly obvious. Mentioning some other aspects would be fairly spoiler-riffic though, so you’ll just have to figure that out for yourself.

Hopefully Nintendo decides Xenoblade is worthy of localization and maybe you’ll see it soon. I, on the other hand, have lost faith in decent localizations for the Wii. Ignition’s work on Arc Rise Fantasia was probably the nail in the coffin on that.

Coming up next, me oozing love for Deathsmiles and hating on anyone who hates the changes to P3 in P3P.

Let’s see… early in the month I finished up Monster Hunter Tri with Scin, after putting in about a good 230+ hours into it (single player & farming included). Seriously fun stuff, even though searching for some of the High Rank materials can get pretty grindy.

Beating Alatreon for the first time was 40 minutes of pure intensity.I think all of us were pretty much out of potions by the end. As we went on and did it for the other members of our hunting group, we all got better at fighting him and only dipped into our regular potions every subsequent attempt (except for our last one where you could just feel everyone was a bit tired, so some bad shit happened there).

I found it a bit odd that the mission to hunt Deviljho came after Alatreon, since Alatreon kinda requires a lot more focus. I know you can encounter him during other quests in the previous tier but honestly, who is going to go out of their way at that gear level to fight him alongside whatever random monster unless they’re desperate for his gear? I think adding one of his regular quests into the end of the previous tier as key quests might have made a bit more sense.

I’m not that big on playing MMOs in foreign languages (actually subscribing to them anyways, as opposed to just beta testing) so I hope Capcom continues to consider setting up Monster Hunter Frontier over here. They’ve got a lengthy post detailing why it’d be pretty costly to set up but I think eventually when the fanbase is built up even more, they could do it successfully. That means make more console versions and localize them, Capcom!

But enough about that, let’s get on to the major news this month- XSEED is bringing a ton of Falcom PSP games over to the States, starting with Ys Seven! I totally forgot the order they’re coming in, but other games being localized include Ys I & II Chronicles, The Oath in Felghana, and the entire Sora no Kiseki trilogy. It’ll be really nice to finally play Sora no Kiseki full translated, even though it’s going to be on PSP. I’m still pretty sad that Seven hasn’t been ported to PC yet (will it ever be? I could have sworn they said that was their intention in one of the initial newsletters announcing it),  but honestly at this point I will take whatever I can get. More people will be exposed to the awesomeness that is Ys, and maybe this will help fund a transition to HD console games (Adol battling bosses in HD 3D, can you imagine?).

One of my other favorite Japanese developers, Gust, has already made a great transition from PS2/PSP to PS3. While initially they did not take full graphical advantage of the system with Atelier Rorona, they’ve stepped it up a notch with Ar Tonelico 3. Both games have seen decent success – enough to fuel Rorona’s localization and Tonelico 3′s soon to be announced. Now they’re taking it even further with Atelier Totori, which just looks so absolutely beautiful I get goosebumps thinking about it. To be able to recreate the character designs like that is what every cel-shaded game should aim to do. Well, I guess it doesn’t hurt that they have some great designs so ripe for recreation in the first place. Rorona and Totori are so cute! It”s pretty tempting to import Totori but I guess it’d just feel wrong playing it before the localized version comes out – not to mention that by the time it’d get to my house it would no doubt collide with….

…Deathsmiles!　A horizontal Cave shooter OMG! I’d like to point out right now that I am in no way, shape, or form actually good at shooters (i.e. being able to 1CC them with total ease) but maybe that’s because I don’t put in the effort and practice for long enough to get good at them. I usually get into the mood for shooters and I play it non-stop for a while and then some sorta RPG gets released and steals me away… when I end up getting back to it I’ve pretty much unlearned everything. Despite that, I still find them to be great fun and I’m extremely excited for Deathsmiles. I kinda forget what else comes out in July aside from SC2 Retail at the end of it, but more than likely I’ll be dedicating the whole month to beating every mode of Deathsmiles with the magic of online co-op. I hope this option comes as a standard to all 360 Cave ports, but oddly their most recent releases just don’t have it. Vertical shooters have it tough in the age of HD widescreen awesomeness I guess. I’m getting chills just thinking about playing it on my 60″ HDTV.

Anyways, with all that being announced I’ve decided it’s time to actually GET a PSP, probably sometime early next month. There’s a tiny dry spell between when SC2 beta ends and Peace Walker which will be perfect to get into one of the many PSP games I’ve never played. Or so I thought, I wrote that before they announced that the beta would be extended. I think I’ll just considering it ending on the 31st anyways; I’m satisfied with the amount I’ve played over the past couple of weeks.

Expect some streaming to happen with some of that PSP stuff later~!

Whew. We’re now into the second quarter of the year. Let’s talk Q1~! (as briefly as I can)

Bayonetta – Already covered this. (It’s awesome.)

Mass Effect 2 – Having played the first shortly before the this came out, I was pretty excited to delve in again so quickly. I played Vanguard for both games, and the differences were quite substantial due to the ammo and class revamps (Charge, anyone?). And lucky for me, they decided to let us start the game out on Insanity from the get-go so I didn’t have to play through twice.

Despite collecting characters being most of the game, I still thoroughly enjoyed the game and the difficulty Insanity had to offer. Charging is probably one of the most funnest things in the game, whether it be to blow someone off their feet, smash a husk or a robot into pieces upon impact, or just to create a kinetic barrier out of desperation during a crazy battle. I used my favorite from the the original, Tali, for all of the game along with Grunt until I got Legion. Dual Combat Drones! I can’t imagine how I would have handled those relentless Harbingers on Insanity without Combat Drone distractions.

Combat aside, I liked the new cast of characters. Mordin in particular was my favorite. The story built up nicely here – enough to get me excited for the conclusion in 3.

P.S.  Probe away. Probe launched. Launching probe.

White Knight Chronicles – This is a game I wanted to play ever since I saw the first trailer back in what….’06? Has it really been that long? Japan got it in ’08 and finally NA got it this February. I’m not sure what took the game this long to get to us. It barely got to us before FF13 did, with FF13 being a relatively recent release in Japan. WKC on the other hand, had already been out for about 2 years there. Was it worth the wait? Short answer: not really. The overwhelming problem consists of two things: slowness and lack of variety. Vague, right? However, those two things describe almost every aspect of WKC.

I had a huge detailed rant about the details I hated but I decided to cut it for the sake of brevity. In essence, the game is a worse version of FF12 (graphics aside). There is one thing in the combat system I’d like to comment on though – WKC’s Action Chip and combo system. The two go hand in hand – you need Action Chips to make lengthier combos. The problem is that you don’t gain Chips fast enough for you to use decent combos with relative frequency. Also, the knight combat seriously lacks variety. Is it too much to ask for some Xenogears gears-style action, complete with some sort of Infinity mode? Or maybe have us create some combos for the knight as well? There’s so much wasted potential here.

The online aspect is Monster Hunter-ish which is nice, except in order to advance in ranks you’re forced to repeat the same quests over and over until you rank up to gain access new ones. The lack of variety here is slightly alleviated due to some quests having different outcomes depending on choices/randomness, but it wasn’t enough to keep ranking up from being tedious.

I still kind of enjoyed this, even though the story kinda just ends abruptly because they’re doing the whole direct continuation thing in the next game. I can only hope the sequel is fixing a lot of the problems that kept it from being great.

Bioshock 2 – Better than the first? With the addition of Big Sisters, I think it was certainly more fun/challenging. They’ve also gotten really good at that whole first-person storytelling thing. Not much else to say here!

Final Fantasy XIII – Again, already covered this!

Resonance of Fate – a.k.a. Resonance of Reanbell! Can you tell I’m still a bit irked about the name change? Honestly, Vashyron sounds worse.  Anyways… this was really fun. Leave it to tri-Ace to come up with a pretty engaging and rewarding battle system. The game isn’t without it’s flaws, however. Of note,  the introduction to the mechanics of the game is basically them dumping a huge in-game manual on you and saying “Here, read!”. Luckily you can get actual tutorials in the nearby Arena next to the first town.

Side missions seemed to be the bulk of the game, leaving me wondering just how long the game is if you just skipped all of that. Without the extra money and items from the side stuff though you could be looking at a substantial ramp up in difficulty later on…maybe.  I did get through the majority of the game without blowing all of my money on customization so maybe you could still get through the game if you were smart with your special ammo.

Thinking about it now, there were two things that never got old for me in this game. One of them was buying clothes for Reanbell and dressing her up. She’s too cute to resist! The second was the combat! Not just because every attack is pretty much a John Woo-ish action movie sequence, but because there’s a surprising amount of strategy involved for some of the tougher fights – especially if you want to say…maintain a high Bezel count while simultaneously building your Resonance meter and still keep yourself alive and in a prime position for activating that tri-Attack (I’m not even gonna try to explain any of that, if you played you should know). Probably the only thing that sucked about combat is if you ever went into Critical Condition, which most of the time is just completely unrecoverable from. The only solution is to not suck so you never enter Critical Condition in the first place, but sometimes attacks don’t go as planned or the enemy does something you weren’t expecting so it’ll happen.

Anyways, pretty darn enjoyable once you get into the battle system. There actually isn’t that much else to the game, even story-wise. I can only imagine what kind of game it would be if they improved on everything else.

Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening: Provides some new and rather interesting information into the world of Dragon Age. Unfortunately since this is just an expansion, it keeps the same mechanics as the original game. As a result, there isn’t much of a challenge in terms of difficulty. Can I get a setting a notch or two above Nightmare, Bioware? I also much preferred the original cast. All we get here is Oghren. Blech.

I’m definitely missing something here, but I’ve run out of time. After Dragon Age, we’ve hit a bit of a break which was covered with some StarCraft 2 and awesome shooters like Mushihime-sama Futari and Espgaluda 2, we hit a bombshell of a game – Monster Hunter Tri. Which comes out today! Not sure if I’ll be streaming or not, but Scin and I are already online.