11th October 2008

Tales of Vesperia (360) - Review

Namco’s first venture of the Tales series onto the current generation of consoles, Tales of Vesperia, will feature little surprise to those that have played the series before, not that this is a problem; the few touches on gameplay changes make for a familiar, yet new, experience, and the advantages of the new hardware help to make the presentation nicer.  For those that haven’t had a chance to experience the series, the game is very accodating to new users and is a good introduction to the series.  It still, however, has the usual stereotypical elements of a JRPG and is not going to convince those with an aversion to them to reconsider.

Review Helpfulness: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
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16th June 2008

The World Ends With You (NDS) - Review

cover The World Ends With You is a non-traditional RPG from Square Enix and Jupiter for the Nintendo DS that uses a battle system that involves a lot of use of the touchscreen.  There are a lot of gameplay aspects within the game, but the game itself is wisely crafted around those elements to allow you to use as many or as little of the elements as needed, effectively letting you drink as much of the game as you want but tempting you with better rewards if you take on the added challenges.  This approach, as well as the overall combination of tight gameplay, interesting story, and outstanding design, make this one of the most impressive RPGs that I’ve seen in a long time.

Review Helpfulness: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
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posted in action, jrpg, nintendo-ds, review, the-world-ends-with-you | 0 Comments

14th June 2008

Lost Odyssey (360) - Review

cover Lost Odyssey is a turn-based role playing game developed by Mistwalker studios and distributed by Microsoft Game Studios.  The game has a number of similarities with Blue Dragon, also from the same studio, in both looks, gameplay, and other aspects.  However, while it introduces a number of interesting game elements, the overall approach to the game as well as odd loading times for a next-gen console game make it very tedious to work through.

Review Helpfulness: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
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posted in Uncategorized, jrpg, lost-odyssey, review, xbox-360 | 0 Comments

31st May 2008

Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis (PS2) - Review

mana khemia cover

Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis is a spiritual sequel to the Atelier Iris series of role-playing games from Gust and publisehed by NIS for the PlayStation 2.  The game’s focus besides the usual combat is that of alchemy, using easily-obtained ingredients in new recipes to make more powerful items and battle equipment.  The game plays much like its earlier cousins, though adds in elements possibly inspired by other more recent RPGs such as Final Fantasy XII and Persona 3, helping to freshen up the series.  While it’s not a perfect game, it definitely is entertaining if you have enjoyed other games in the series.

Review helpfulness: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
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posted in Uncategorized, jrpg, mana-khemia-alchemists-of-al-revis, playstation-2, review, rpg | 0 Comments

7th March 2008

.hack//G.U. Volume 3 (PS2) - Review

v3-cover .hack//G.U. Volume 3: Redemption is the third and final entry in the second .hack series, published by Bandai-Namco, which allows you to continue your progress from the previous games in the series. The series ends somewhat predictably and not too impressively, and while there are some changes in the battle strategy that come about due to the higher difficulty of the monsters that you face, this also manages to help expose some of the weaker aspects of the game’s interface and hardware limitations that would have been nice to identify a couple titles back.

Review helpfulness: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
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posted in dot-hack-gu-v3, jrpg, playstation-2, review | 1 Comment

17th February 2008

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 (PS2) - Review

persona3-cover

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 is a non-traditional RPG developed and published by Atlus, which has several elements of old-school RPGs combined with dating simulation aspects to create a very unique game. While this uniqueness makes for a good starting game, it has a rather long time commitment to complete (70 hours or more) and suffers from being overly repetitive in gamplay and graphics about halfway through, unfortunately about the same time that the game’s story takes an interesting turn.

Review helpfulness: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
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posted in jrpg, playstation-2, review, shin-megami-tensei-persona-3 | 0 Comments

13th January 2008

Final Fantasy XII (PS2) - Review

ffxii-cover.jpgFinal Fantasy XII, the latest entry in Square Enix’s premier role-playing series, moves away from several of the common aspects of the series, such as replacing the common turn based system with active-time combat system that utilizes “gambits” to automate much of the gameplay, a broad character customization system through licenses, and a plot that seems more mature than previous titles. At the core, most of these elements work - they are fresh ideas, and for the first 10 or so hours, make the game really enjoyable. However, there are serious balance issues with the game that make the customization almost seems to prevent given any character a strong unique focus, and there is grinding — a lot of grinding — more than I felt has been needed in previous games to get past certain bosses, only to leave long sections that follow a cake walk.

Review helpfulness: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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posted in final-fantasy-xii, jrpg, playstation-2, review | 1 Comment

6th January 2008

Final Fantasy XII (PS2) - Mid-game Thoughts

Now that we’re in a gaming slump, I am going back to titles that I need to play through and finish; FFXII is first on my list, then Persona 3, then I plan to run through both KOTORs and Jade Empire, pending.

So I’m about 25+ hr into FFXII (around 70% complete) and I will say the game really forces you to grind more so than other RPGs of recent.  The mid-game bosses really require you to have your HP and MP up, as well as good defense and offense, and the only way to get all of those is to spend time in the fields to get the experience and then collect the loot to sell for gil as to get weapons and armor.  It’s a bit annoying after so many games where having characters not active in the party still earned experience, to come to FFXII where you need to rotate characters frequently to keep all their levels up, however, with the gambit system and this rotation, you learn to experiment with the automatic actions to make fighting, healing, and the like all nice and easy.

Still, of the 25 hrs I’ve played, at least a third of that is in the grind (returning to previous fields/dungeons either for hunts or just to build up XP), and that is an awful lot compared to other RPGs.  I already feel exhausted to this point in the game.

posted in final-fantasy-xii, jrpg, mid-game-thoughts, playstation-2 | 0 Comments

31st December 2007

Eternal Sonata (360) - Review

eternalsonatacover Eternal Sonata, developed by Tri-Crescendo and published by Namco-Bandai games, is an interesting variation on the usual Japanese RPG story. The game is based on the life of composer Frederic Chopin, using a dream world to represent people and places he would have known in his life, and incorporates much of his music into the game. The battle system is also interesting, combining typical turn-based with action-based combat along with other twists. While these features are done rather well, there’s a lot of repetition in the game and with too many player characters to choose from at times, it is very easy to fall into these repetitive patterns of play.

Review helpfulness: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
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31st December 2007

Blue Dragon (360) - Review

bluedragoncover Blue Dragon, developed by Mistwalker and Artoon for Microsoft, is pretty much a by-the-books turn-based Japanese RPG, which is no surprise given that the game design is lead by Final Fantasy alum Hironobu Sakaguchi. While there are a few unusual features that make for interesting character and combat mechanics, the overall game just runs excessively long without being engaging, as a result leading to the game feeling rather tedious to complete. Add in several graphics problems that I thought would never appear in a next-gen console RPG game, and the game quickly loses its charm.

Review helpfulness: 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
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posted in blue-dragon, jrpg, review, xbox-360 | 1 Comment

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