Skies of Arcadia: Legends Review

So, some of you may have been curious about the game Skies of Arcadia (Eternal Arcadia in Japan) since I mentioned it in my little history lesson a month ago. Well, since I’ve got nothing better to do right now, I guess I’ll go into one of the few RPGs that I’ve played but don’t own. This game came out for the Dreamcast originally, but when that system died, it was ported to the Gamecube under the name Skies of Arcadia: Legends. What’s the difference? Well, Legends has some optional bosses, a few more things to discover, and some sidequests. It’s also got a lower random encounter rate, and removes one of the minigames from the original version. I have played both versions, but the Gamecube version is the only one I’ve beaten, so this review is for all intents and purposes about that game.

This game has pretty much the most stereotypical beginning ever. Princess Lei… I mean Fina is flying a small ship, then gets captured by the evil empire. Then a bold group of air pirates, including main character Vyse, save her. Then you get to help Fina with her task, which involves finding mystical artifacts, conveniently color-coded to correspond with the element they represent. Along the way, you’ll end up running into the empire frequently, since they’re bent on world domination. Pretty much standard fare. The world’s kinda cool, but also suffers from the need to mirror real world geography. There’s a Europe-land, an America-land, an Asia-land, and an Arabia-land. Since everything is located on islands floating in the air, airships are a must for navigation, and the game does a good job of making navigation interesting and fun. Since airships are not limited by being on a single plane, they can move in three dimensions, which allows you to get to all sorts of interesting places. It’s not too hard to find where you’re supposed to go, eventually. Even when you get lost though, you can still find discoveries, which are essentially curious sites with a little blurb written about them. These offer some inconsequential but still interesting background to the world.

The characters in this game are charming enough, but they’re no great literary protagonists. I’ve already covered Vyse, so I think I’ll mention Gilder, who’s an experienced air pirate with tons of tricks up his sleeve. He’s not cynical, like a lot of characters who play a similar role would be, which is refreshing, even though it means that there really isn’t much in the way of realistic (as opposed to idealistic) characterization in this game. Fina is pretty boring, being your typical quiet and compassionate healer chick. In stark contrast, Aika is a fireball tomboy, who has a high level of energy that makes more compelling as a female lead. The villains are mostly mediocre, falling into the typical array. The smart one, the honorable one, the dumb one, and the female one. Seriously, that’s about it. They play their parts to a T at least. The main villain is suitably scheming, and so is basically adequate. In the end, the characters are not sophisticated, but they serve their purpose quite well, and make for characters that you like, if not for any particularly compelling reason.

There’s nothing amazingly innovative about the normal combat system in Skies of Arcadia. The encounters, they are random. You enter commands, and then they are carried out in order of the speed of the characters involved. You do have the spirit point gauge, which recharges every turn by a set amount, and serves as the party’s power source for special moves. Also, you can change weapons’ element attributes at will. The elemental affinities don’t do much in battle, but they influence how you learn spells. When you finish a battle, each character is awarded experience points to each of the elements proportional to the number of weapons there were of that element when the battle ended. So, if there are two red weapons, a silver weapon, and a yellow weapon, you would get double red experience, silver experience, yellow experience, but no green experience. After a certain amount of experience, you learn the next spell of an element.

There are also ship battles, which follow some of the basic rules of normal combat. There’s still a form of the spirit gauge, which limits what actions you can take. Each character can be assigned to a specific time slot with a specific action, like evasive maneuvers or firing one of the cannons. The enemy ship does likewise, and so you tend to end up with a rock-paper-scissors arrangement, trying to figure out what your enemy is going to do, and using the obvious counter method. There are certain actions that can only be performed at specific times, like firing the harpoon cannon. Getting these situations to pop up requires you to choose the correct response when a strategy dialogue occurs. And since the amount of damage that you deal with the super weapon du jour is so high, ship battles boil down to waiting to fire the big one.

For replay value, I got nothing. No real customization options, no new game plus, no unlockable extras. Maybe if you missed something the first time around, but this game isn’t particularly unforgiving about when you get things done. So, this is what I’d rate as a “nothing more to see here, move along,” game for replays.

Well, what more can I say? No one aspect shines, and yet it’s a comfortable game to play. It’s easy some of the time, and quite hard at other points. The story is engaging, even though you look back on it and think “Wow, that sounds like a lot of pointless running around.” Frankly, I think this game is greater than the sum of its parts, which is why I give it a 8.7 out of 10. It’s got a large number of sidequests and optional bosses, and a number of fun characters.

How I Broke Game: So, for one of the optional bosses, the guy with the cat robot, I found an AI glitch for his minions. One of the two types has a healing move which it will use when an ally is at low health. I found that if there were two of the healing type and one of the other type, and both healers were wounded, they would accidentally heal the non-healer, so long as he was between the two. It was silly, and allowed me to beat the boss without using the super move that uses the entire spirit gauge.

Quick Tip: When you get silver magic, make sure to work on improving it quickly. The first resurrection spell you get from this progression doesn’t work 100% of the time, so you really need to get the better version ASAP.

If you enjoyed this game, you might have fun with one of these games. Tales of Symphonia is an all-around fun game, and shares a lot of the light-hearted appeal of this game. Grandia is another game which is all about exploring the world and adventure, without any of this silly angst that you see in other RPGs. Final Fantasy VII’s materia

 system is about the closest thing to the magic system in Skies of Arcadia, so if you liked that aspect of the game it might be worth a shot.

Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu Review

Whenever there’s a major trend, there are bound to be people who jump on the bandwagon. This was certainly the case with the Playstation, which had its fair share of RPGs that were shot out in response to the realization that the American audience could be convinced to buy them. A lot of these games fell by the wayside, but that’s no reason to avoid them. Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu was not only involved in the general RPG boom, it also participated in the monster catcher boom sparked by Pokémon. That’s twice the audience, right? Well, maybe… let’s not get our hopes up too high.

The story, artfully expounded in the dazzling opening cinematic, runs in the traditional, somewhat cliché vein of many such games. People live in a world populated by dangerous monsters, but the monsters can be tamed, your father was a great tamer until he disappeared, now you can follow in his footsteps, yadayadyada. What’s a bit more interesting is the darker tone that is added to this mundane premise. Take for example the fact that your character and his young bride are essentially pariah in your little village. Supposedly. You don’t get much chance to interact with the rest of the village in the game, so it’s mostly taken out of the manual. However, add in that each monster you catch forces your wife to take on its pain and you’ve got some nice dark tones for a not usually dark genre. Unfortunately, the game is ridiculously short, and so the plot elements aren’t really developed much. It really doesn’t feel like the game reaches a conclusion, just an end. Too bad.

The characters are… bland. The main man, Levant, is a classic silent protagonist with not much development. His wife Mahbu displays a few tomboyish tendencies, but not really. Even the vain trickster spirit Kikinak falls flat some of the time, and he’s by far one of the most interesting characters. The game seems mostly interested in exploring introspection on the nature of man’s interaction with nature than some kind of good and evil, and that trend is mostly carried by the dialogue of the characters.

The set-up of the game is pretty simple. You go from four base in the village to one of the forests, which consists of a specific three dimensional map with slightly randomized monsters at various locations. You navigate the map until you reach the boss area, picking up items and capturing monsters along the way. It’s kinda cool that Levant actually fights monsters himself, and for the first little bit of the game, he’ll be your strongest character. That doesn’t last long though, and you’ll have to catch some monsters sooner or later. Monster catching is almost exactly like Pokémon; you weaken the monster to low hp, then throw a cocoon at it and play music to try and capture it. You only get a limited number of cocoons each trip to the forest, so that’s a little different.

Probably the coolest part of the game is the way you can combine monsters. Each monster has an element, fire water wind earth, and a number of special abilities and spells tied to that element. You can combine two monsters with different elements, gaining one that has half of the maximum capacity in each of the original elements, and all of the spells or abilities. The order that you combine them is important, as some abilities are tied to physical features that may not be present in a new form. The way the monster looks is basically a combination of the two monsters you fused, with pretty good detail. For example, mix a blue dragon-like monster with a rainbow dragonfly monster and you might get a rainbow dragon with dragonfly wings.

This game doesn't really have much replay value. You don’t get anything new, and though there are quite a few ways you can make up your monster team, you don’t really need to start all over just to make new monsters. You can take on the Endless Corridor, but that’s all it is; an endless dungeon with no actual story attached to it, just monster catching. It’s pretty much just “Too short a game all-told with not enough features to lengthen playtime.” Oh well. Fortunately, it is pretty much a bargain bin game to begin with.

This guy just wasn’t that great. There were some cool ideas, and an interesting monster combination system, but the game was too short and too simple to make it worthy of much attention. It gets the pretty low rating of 6.8 out of 10. Think of that like a 1.8 out of 5, and you see the problem. It’s too bad, since it’s not actually a poorly made game. Quite the contrary. It just seems they spent the development budget in areas other than the script, and so were left with a game that had a decent script that was really short.

Quick Tip: Your monsters get healed slightly at the end of every battle. So, if you’ve got a monster who’s hurting, give him a break for a while, and he’ll recover eventually.

Fun Fact: A studio Ghibli character designer worked on Jade Cocoon, as you can sort of tell from the opening.

If you liked this game, then you might want to take a look at some of the following games. Jade Cocoon 2 is the sequel to this game, and though it doesn’t have as cool a monster creation system, it has some great references to this game, and it’s a much better game overall. Azure Dreams is the same premise, but with a totally different system that’s quite fun to play around with. And, of course, any of the main series of Pokémon games are a good choice, since they’re all great monster catchers, though they don’t have much of a story to go with their longer playtime.

RPG History

So, I guess to start out, I haven’t exactly been the best about updating on time, or even at all, in the past few weeks. For this reason, I’m officially switching over to a biweekly update schedule. Hopefully this will mean a consistent rate of updates. And, if I build up a sufficient buffer of completed games and reviews, I might switch back. Who knows? But for now, I’m going to do a special about the eras of RPGs, at least so far as I know them.

In the beginning, there was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. No, seriously. That is what most early RPGs were based on, at least in concept. Before the NES was released, most RPGs were personal computer affairs. I dub this era the Stone Age of RPGs. Basically, it’s prehistoric. I don’t know much about stuff that happened during this era. Well before my time.

On the NES, several RPGs were released. While they were technically unsophisticated, and involved copious amounts of grinding with very little in the way of plot, they were a start. Systems were simple. Level up, deal more damage, gain spells that heal or do more damage than a normal attack. Plots were likewise pretty cookie cutter. Play the self-insert faceless protagonist and quest at the behest of kings and prophets and whatever. Games like Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy set up some of the conventions that would mark the genre, while still retaining some of that olde timey speech and general approach reminiscent of previous text based adventures. This era is the Bronze Age. If you’re thinking in terms of comics, that might seem weird, but the bronze age was the historical period when the most rudimentary tools and technologies were first introduced, and the first civilizations began to flourish. Likewise, in the Bronze Age of RPGs, the first longstanding series originated, updating even more primitive game systems in the process. Again, this is an era I know little about, since it too is before my time (but not by very much). The preferred console for RPGs was… well, actually, it was still pretty much the PC, but no longer by default.

And then came the SNES and contemporaneous systems. With the 16 bit processing, the possibilities for RPGs suddenly exploded. With the better graphics, more expression could be added to NPCs and PCs, and the JRPG was born. Basically, the JRPG focused on generating a coherent and developed story over allowing the player to fully determine how they would respond to each development in the plot. This decision meant that stories could become more grandiose. Since the writers were no longer bound to write a multitude of dialogue for each scenario, they could focus more time on making plots complex and compelling. With multiple character portraits possible for important characters, emotional details were much easier to convey than ever before. It was during this era that several series got their beginnings, like the Tales series with Tales of Phantasia and Breath of Fire. Plots began to explore some deeply problematic theological, philosophical, and political issues, and there was a sense that each new story was groundbreakingly original. In a sense, they were, since there were few games that had sophisticated storylines up to this point. In that respect, this represents the Golden Age of RPGs, because it was the first time the genre came into its own and was something more than a tiny niche market. In retrospect, the console of choice for this era was the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. However, at the time, there was significant competition from the Sega CD add-on to the Genesis. Some of the series that landed on the ill-fated Sega system simply died, while others struggled on by being ported to another system. While I don't have really any direct experience with this era, so many of these games are classics that have been remade that I can claim a certain familiarity.

Well, for better or worse, Final Fantasy VII came out for Sony’s first video game console, the Playstation.  This one game pretty much changed the industry, for some reason. An incredibly successful marketing campaign has something to do with it, but it deserves mention that it was an exceptional game. Whatever the reason, the Silver Age of RPGs had dawned. Gone were the sparkly-eyed protagonists, full of energy and adventurous spirit. Gone were the bright, sometimes garish tones of the previous age. In their place, games focused on tormented heroes who had dealt with real hardship. Worlds became grittier, and villains became more evil, though occasionally less complex. Battle systems in this era became streamlined, with far fewer unique effects to be found on accessories and fewer unbalanced and exploitable elements. To compensate, many games became easier, requiring less level grinding. Games also became far longer. A good length RPG went from being 30 hours to be 60+ hours, and often required multiple game discs. Apart from the abovementioned example, some important series began during this era. The Persona series had its first entry (Persona) during this era, while the Suikoden series had origins straddling the divide between the this era and the previous one (Suikoden did come out before FFVII). The console of choice shifted dramatically to the Playstation. Not only did it gain the highly profitable Final Fantasy series, most other RPG developers released their new games for the system. Even some of the games for the less successful Sega systems saw new life on the PS, giving them a broader audience. Not all games followed the darker mold that typified the era, as there were quite a few that were throwbacks to an earlier time. This probably has something to do with the re-release of several classics from the previous console generation, on both sides of the console war.

It would be quite nice to say that the Playstation 2 with Final Fantasy X was when the next era started, but it’s a little bit before that. Things started to get rolling with Final Fantasy IX, but really, Dreamcast titles like Skies of Arcadia mark the truer beginnings of this era. Departing from comic conventions, I’m going to call this era the Pastel Age. With the rise in popularity of Japanese anime abroad, anime-style graphics quickly became the easiest way to sell an RPG. Plots took a dramatic 180 degree turn from the previous era, and once again focused on enthusiastic, adventurous sorts. However, with the classic plot elements firmly entrenched in gamers’ psyches, parody started to become quite prevalent in the scripts of games of this time period. Colors drifted away from browns and olives and towards pale oranges and blues. Despite beginning on the Dreamcast, the PS2 quickly became the console of choice when the Dreamcast foundered. A truly staggering number of RPGs came out for the PS2 during this era. Some significant series include the Disgaea series (Disgaea: Hour of Darkness) and the Dark Chronicle series (Dark Cloud), both of which displayed anime style graphics and a light-hearted if slightly tongue-in-cheek take on the RPG genre. This is the era that I started playing RPGs during, though I took time out to go back and look at older games pretty early on. It also deserves mention that WRPGs were beginning to make themselves known again, and some highly significant ones were coming out on both the PS2 and the Xbox.

This era has mostly run its course, but I’m really not too sure about what the current era holds. At some point in the future, when I’ve got money and time to look into RPGs coming out right now and even a year or two ago, I’ll write about this current era. Maybe this is the Indie Age, where independent games are king. Perhaps it’s a Dark Age, with lots of grimdark settings and suchlike. Possibly it’s some sort of Dragon Age.

Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete Review

It occurs to me that I might want to save some of those Playstation classics to review later on.... Nah, I think I’m just going to keep right on trucking. So, pointless rambling down, I’m going to make some enemies in this review. The game is Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete. I love this game. Then again, I really enjoyed shitty games like Ephemeral Fantasia, so I guess that doesn’t mean much. Anyhow, the follow-up to Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete had to be pretty impressive, since the first game was such a genuinely well-crafted project. Let’s dive back into the world of Lunar and look at what this sequel is all about.

The game is all about the adventures of the aptly named Hiro (naturally, this isn’t much of a pun in Japanese.) Hiro is a young man with a curious streak a mile long. The first thing we see him doing, stealing a jewel from an ancient ruin, shows that personality trait pretty well. Anyhow, one day, Hiro sees a strange light strike the mysterious Blue Spire. After making his way to the top, he meets a beautiful young woman who warns him that his world is in terrible danger from the ancient evil Zophar. Zophar strikes the girl Lucia down, and it’s up to Hiro to save both her and the world. Hilarity ensues. Compared to the first game, which had a relatively light-hearted plot, this one’s got a lot more darkness right up front. However, one of the cool things about the first Lunar game was precisely that it didn’t start a journey to save the world, and the villains were quite sympathetic. Lunar 2, by comparison, comes off as a little bit more clichéd. However, I will say that what it lacks in originality, it does manage to make up for with solid political intrigue and intriguing scenarios.

The characters of Lunar 2 are really pretty much all excellent. Hiro’s on the Top 10 RPG guys list, so I’ll skip him. Ronfar is a hard-drinking gambling priest, which I suppose is already moderately unconventional, but he also has a serious side, haunted by his past failure to save someone he cared for. Leo starts out as a typical lawful good/stupid who follows his god-given orders with gusto, until he starts to realize that he may have been on the wrong side the whole time. His solution to this conflict of interests is quite novel. Lucia starts off as an ice queen, but slowly starts to lose her analytical side as she learns more of the human world. Ultimately, she’s not terribly original, though it is amusing that she starts off as a super-powerful godling. I’d go on to talk about Jean, but I don’t want to dwell too much on this portion. Suffice to say, the characters are at least decent, and mostly endearing. They tend to add about one layer to a stereotypical character model, which results is slightly non-standard characters. Really, one of the unfortunate lacks is that the ultimate villain is… super unremarkable. He really is just and ancient evil working towards the destruction of all life.

The main combat system of Lunar 2 is basically identical to that used in the first game. You enter all commands at the start of a round, and characters act in order of their speed, with physical attacks requiring you to move up to your enemy first. The equipment still offers some cool tradeoffs, like choosing between a sword with huge attack power but only one attack or a less powerful dagger which grants extra attacks. Mixing things up a bit are the addition of crests. Each character can equip two crests. Crests have effects that range from increased speed, similar to what an accessory might grant, to elemental attack spells. Indeed, that’s the only way to gain access to the lightning elemental spells. What’s mega-cool is that the two crests a character has equipped interact, sometimes giving a boosted or altered effect. For example, equipping one chiro crest increases your speed, but equipping two guarantees that you act first each round. Or in another case, the seal crest normally grants you a spell that prevents an enemy from casting spells, but when combined with the warrior crest, your attack power doubles, but you can’t use any spells or special attacks at all. Experimenting with the various combinations is one of the most enjoyable parts of the game.

Replay value. Huh. Well, after playing through the game twice, I really can’t say that I had any good reason to. You get crests, which are the main method of character customization, at rigidly fixed intervals, so it’s not like you can really change how you set up your character for each dungeon. Basically, the rating is much like the first game. “If you missed something the first time, play the game again if you really need a 100% complete game.” There just isn’t anything that makes a new game particularly worthwhile.

Here’s the part where I’m going to get a little outrage, I suspect. I find that Lunar 2 is actually a better game than Lunar. I mean, the latter has great nostalgic value, and the former suffers from the concept no longer being fresh when it came out, but the sophistication of both the world and the combat system of Lunar 2 is mostly superior to the relatively simple system used in Lunar. As such, I’m giving Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete an 8.7 out of 10. There are some limitations that keep it from being an absolutely outstanding game, like the primarily linear storyline of the first two discs, and the total lack of any minigames or distractions from the normal gameplay. Still, these are minor complaints, and the game as a whole delivers a highly enjoyable, classic RPG experience with a few twists and a lot of fun.

How I Broke Game: Well, this is kind of a stupidly minor one, but the normal max for number of items carried is 20. However, I managed to steal an item and get one as a battle drop when I already had 19, getting me a total of 21. I have no idea why this worked, but it displays fine on the inventory screen, so it shows there’s not a hardwired limit of 20 items.

Quick Tip: When you get to the town that’s burning down (seriously, you’ll know which one this is when you get there) make sure to go all the way back down the other side of the tower dungeon before you proceed to the boss fight at the top. There are a few really useful items awaiting you that are missable, since you cannot return to this dungeon ever.

If you liked this game, maybe you should check out one or more of these games. Um, yeah, if you played Lunar 2 first, you should definitely play Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, since it is basically the same combat system and has similarly outstanding characters. Since it’s so similar to the first game, basically all of the games I mention for that title will also be interesting to someone who liked this game, so I’ll move on to a few other titles that are fun to fans of the series. Wild Arms is another fun RPG with some great characters, a traditional but still interesting storyline, and a cool world. Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is completely dissimilar in gameplay, since it is a SRPG, but the style of humor is the same, and the characters are fun.

Tales of Symphonia Review

So, it’s about time to take a look at one of those games. The one that brings a hitherto unknown series to the spotlight. It also happens to be one of the few Gamecube RPGs. Strange thing, but for a system that had so few RPGs total, the percentage of really good games is amazingly high. Or maybe it’s not so surprising. After all, I guess marketing an RPG for the PS2 was easier, and so a lot of borderline cases snuck in based on the idea that at least someone would buy it on PS2. Someone like me. Well, enough rambling. Tales of Symphonia review begins now.

The story starts off in a peaceful village school, where our protagonist, Lloyd Irving, continues the grand tradition of brave-but-dumb main characters. His friend, Colette Brunel, is a young girl who has been Chosen to be the savior of the dying world of Sylvarant. To accomplish this she sets out on a journey to revive the elemental spirits and revolutionize, I mean regenerate, the world. About halfway through, you learn that another world exists, that of Tethe’alla, which has its own set of summon spirits. If you’ve played any other Tales games, this plot should be immediately familiar. And, indeed, the foreshadowing in this game makes it such that there really aren’t that many big surprises in the plot. O at least, the big surprises come when the plot element is first foreshadowed, and not when said plot twist actually occurs. For all that, it’s an interesting tale, with plenty of fairly sophisticated issues of prejudice, balance, and redemption mixing it up with the more lighthearted character dynamics.

Good characters have been important in previous Tales games, but Tales of Symphonia features some exceptional personalities. In addition to Lloyd, who is good but dumb, and Colette, who is almost painfully bland (but still somewhat sweet), there are seven other playable characters. Zelos Wilder appears on the Top Ten Cutest RPG Boys list. Sheena Fujibayashi is the game’s resident tsundere ninja, who offers more volatile emotional makeup than Colette, partially due to quite different backstories. And of course there’s tormented-by-his-past Regal Brayant, who pulls out the stops in pretty bad-ass ways. Really, going into the other characters would take up too much time, but it should suffice to say that they are all well-developed and likeable. Really, the latter is the most important thing. You get attached to the characters in Tales of Symphonia, because you can be privy to a number of short skits, which are mostly tangential to the story. These skits involve the characters talking to each other, and give you a good insight into the character’s personalities. Quite apart from the playable characters, many of the ultimate villains are believable and sympathetic. At some instances during the game, you might wonder if you are really fighting for the right side, since the reasons the villains give for their actions are quite compelling.

In a fairly noticeable change from previous games in the series, Tales of Symphonia does not feature any random battles. Instead, you can see enemies on the overworld map or in the dungeons, and avoiding battles is as easy as avoiding touching the enemy. Unfortunately for those people who find random battles annoying, the battles in Tales of Symphonia are actually quite fun. Like in previous installments of the series, you can control one character at a time, and issue orders to the others. The action this time takes place on a 3D stage, though you can only move in two directions: towards and away from your currently targeted enemy. It looks pretty cool, and somehow feels a bit different from a strictly 2D perspective. An added bonus is that it’s actually quite fun to play this game with friends, and because it’s on the Gamecube, you don’t need a rare piece of hardware to play with three other friends (unless you count friends as rare. Or hardware.)

Quite apart from battles, some significant puzzles crop up in this game, and for perhaps the first time, the sorcerer’s ring is properly utilized. In basically every dungeon, you change the function of the sorcerer’s ring from shooting fire to shrinking you, shooting sunlight, or something like shooting even more fire. Naturally, the puzzles related to these changes are complex, and if not overly difficult, at least strong enough to keep your attention.

I may have said that Chrono Trigger invented replay value, but as far as I’m concerned, Tales of Symphonia perfected it. Not only does it have multiple endings, based on which character Lloyd has the closest relationship with, but there’s also a new game plus feature, where your grade accumulated over the course of the game can be spent on carrying various features over into a new game. Each character has two different skill trees, which you can only explore one of each playthrough. There are alternate costumes for all of the characters, and you can’t even come close to getting all of them during one game. The titles, allow you to customize what ability scores characters gain when they level up, which allows you to customize how you play each character in a multitude of ways. You want to make Genis, the squishy mage, into a close combat monster? Well, it’s tough, but you can do it. There are even multiple difficulty settings, which can give you quite a challenge on settings higher than normal. Basically, this game is “maybe not the only game you’ll ever need, but not too far off.”

Obviously, a scale is pointless if you never have an example of both the end-points. I don’t even bother having values less than five, because as far as I’m concerned, no RPG is ever gonna be worse than a mediocre game in the overall scheme of things (oh, the hubris). On the other hand, I can’t ignore problems with an otherwise perfect game. Tales of Symphonia is excellent, and pretty much as close to the perfect game as I’ve played, but I can still imagine that it might be better. It clocks in at 9.9 out of 10. The story, while quite good, is a little heavy-handed with the foreshadowing, and isn’t hugely original. But it’s enjoyable, so that’s not the main issue. The biggest gripe I have with the game is that none of the “minigames” are even remotely fun. Button pressing minigames all, and not even particularly sophisticated ones. Basically, if there were even one solid minigame that I would want to play more than once, I might be able to assign that perfect score.

Fun Fact: In Japan, they released a PS2 version of this game. It had a few extra costumes for characters, but was mostly the same. But, of course, they never decided to bring this game stateside.

Quick Tip: If you want to end up with anyone besides Colette at the end, focus all you attention on the one character you choose. Colette’s starting affection is very high, and basically anything you do will increase it.

If you liked this game, you might want to try some of these games. Tales of Destiny II and/or Tales of the Abyss are very good, and have many significant similarities with Tales of Symphonia. Wild Arms 3, for some reason, has a similar feel, and has a comparable amount of optional material to complete. Star Ocean: The Second Story was made by many people who had worked on the Tales series, and it shows in the relationship systems, the Action RPG battles, and to some small degree in the storylines.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl Review

I’m a huge fan of crossover, so it comes naturally that I would play a JRPG that focuses on this. Super Smash Brothers: Brawl features characters from a number of different games, a few of which aren’t even RPGs. I’ve been excited about reviewing this game for quite a while, so I’m just going to dive right in.

The story of Brawl starts with Mario and Kirby having a friendly competition. However, a weird airship shows up and spawns these purple thingies that start attacking. From there an epic quest begins to find the source of the seemingly unending swarm of shadowy creatures. One cool thing is that there’s next to no spoken dialogue in the whole game, which leads to a pretty unique style of storytelling. Overall, it’s a pretty good story, with lots of surprising twists, and a staggering number of characters.

The characters in Brawl, though they may hail from a large number of different games originally, are portrayed quite well. Not having played all of the games that they’re originally from, I don’t know for sure if they’re portrayed faithfully, but at least their interactions in this game are believable. King Deedeedee is an ambiguous enemy who actually manages to pull off a surprisingly authentic heel/face turn. Zero Suit Samus is a great strong female character who, refreshingly, isn’t some kind of sex symbol at all. Fox is a nice stand-offish character who actually ends up being pretty sympathetic. The only problem is that the characters are broken up into strict tiers of usefulness, where a character in a lower tier, like Metaknight, is strictly worse than a higher tier character, like Ganandorf. You can still have fun playing as a worse character, but the game obviously wasn’t meant to be balanced.

The battle system in Brawl is an action RPG type of thing. Each character has a number of normal attacks, which can be performed by pressing the “a” button and a direction. If you press the directional button and the “a” button at exactly the same time, you get a smash attack that is better in every situation. This takes a lot of practice, but it is worth it. Each character also has special attacks, which are triggered by pressing the “b” button and a direction. Most characters can perform a double jump, and a few characters, like Jigglypuff, can fly. You explore a mazelike set of rooms in two dimensions, height and length. Enemies appear on the overworld map, so no random battles. There are segues to boss fights, but that’s all that breaks up the action.

The only place where this game falls flat are the graphics. When it came out like three years ago, the graphics were pretty good, but that was like, three years ago. When you compare it to new games like Call of Duty: Black Ops, or Dragon Age II, it’s really kind of shitty. So, yeah, the level of realism in the graphics didn’t seem like a big deal then, but looking back on it now, it really decreases my enjoyment of the game.

The main story has a number of branches to it, based on which characters you choose to control/save, and a number of optional characters who can be pretty hard to find the first time through. You can even customize your characters by attaching stickers to them, which gives you a number of different ways to play the game. There’s even a couple of minigames to extend the playtime. The target hitting minigame is pretty fun, but the fighting game one is pretty bad. No one wants to play a fighting game with characters from tons of awesome games, so I don’t even know why they bothered to include this one. Anyway, the replay value on this game is “two should get you all of the story segments.”

The overall rating on this game is a painful place to go. I really want to give this game a high rating, because I think it’s a lot of fun. I still enjoy playing it, even if I’ve beaten it about two or three times. But, those graphics… Okay, if it had better graphics, I suppose I would give this game a 9.1. But, given the graphics as they are, 2.6. Really, in the world of RPGs, graphics are the most important feature. That’s why no one wants to play RPGs that came out even last year, because the new ones have much better graphics.

Fun Fact: If you get Mr. Resetti before you’ve reset the game even once, you get a different conversation.

How I Broke Game: So, apparently while you’re using Metaknight’s “b”-down attack to teleport, if you mash up on the “c”-stick quickly enough, you can stay in the teleporting mode indefinitely, and continue moving. This is pretty much only good for committing suicide, considering that Metaknight is such a shitty character to begin with, but it’s a fun little glitch.

If you enjoyed this game, you might want to try some of these other games. Tales of Symphonia has a pretty similar control scheme to this game, and an equally good story. Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, also play with the silent characters trope, though mostly just with Mario. And, of course, Call of Duty: Black Ops has much better graphics, so you’ll obviously like it a lot more. Super Smash Brothers: Melee, the predecessor, is also a good choice, though going from Brawl to Melee is a jarring shift, as the former is a much faster paced game than the latter.

Wild Arms 5 Review

So, we come to the end of Wild Arms. Yeah, there are a few spin-offs, and some sketchy accounts of a sixth game, but it really ends with Wild Arms 5 (The Vth Vanguard). Now, if you’d been playing them like I did, you’d be totally hooked by now. So I might be a bit more biased than usual with this one. That said, I still intend to give this game a fair score, even if that means remembering the things that were not so good about it.

Wild Arms 5 is the story of Dean, who wants to be an adventuring archeologist. Basically, as he’s exploring near his hometown, a weird something or other falls from the sky, nearly crushes him, and a hot chick pops out. What’s rather interesting is that the plot does not then become saving the world. Or, it does, but not saving it from destruction. No, we’re saving the world from racism! Corny as it sounds, it’s not too bad. Then again, it lives up to being pretty corny too. I guess I’m saying it’s so-so.

The characters in this game are okay, but not great. Dean is a stupid idealist hero, which is more annoying than anything else. His childhood friend Rebecca is much more likeable, being grounded and yet still a little naïve. Avril, the girl from the sky, is a classic ice queen, and yeah, that’s not so great. Greg, the revenge seeking maverick dude, is moderately cynical, but really, not enough to make up for the naivety of the entire rest of the party. They’re all voice-acted, which is mostly okay, except Carol, the loli, has the most annoying voice ever. Have any American games ever had a good loli voice?

Battles in this game are pretty similar to those in 4, but in this game, classes are something that you can move around. Basically, your summon medium is you class, with similar leveraging capabilities based on your accumulated levels as in 4. With a three member battle party, and a total party size of six, you end up with a moderate amount of redundancy in classes. Still, they’re varied enough that you will want to use all six of the classes when you get them. And, while any character can be any class, the special abilities of certain characters lend themselves to certain classes. For example, Dean does a lot of extra damage on critical hits, so having him be the physical attacker makes sense. Also, while the normal hex pattern returns for random battles, in boss battles, the battle space is frequently deformed. There are always seven hexes, but they might be arrayed in a straight line, or with a bottle neck of one hex separating two groups of three. It makes strategy more interesting, but frequently makes boss battles a little easier.

Puzzles in this game take two forms. There’s the puzzle boxes, which are essentially identical to those found in 3, and there’s the dungeon puzzles. Instead of each character having tools, or finding tools lying around, Dean’s gun can equip different ammos that do stuff, like freezing or grappling onto something or whatever. That’s about it for differences, the puzzles are mostly decent, with a few really hard ones and a number of moderately easy ones.

The replay value on this game is not particularly high. You can customize your characters well enough with the mediums, but you only get them gradually over the course of the game, so it’s not much to look forward to. Plus, this game is easy. You can get to the maximum level with little difficulty, spend those levels away for items at a particular shop, and bounce back up in no time. There are a few tough fights, but nothing to get excited about. Pretty much a case of “sure, you can try again if you want to troll the game by purposefully using sub-optimal combinations, but why bother?”

The overall rating on the game. Well, yeah, the battle system works pretty well, the characters are mostly decent, the story’s… okay, not a lot super special. I’d say that the most important thing about this game is that it is fraught with references to the previous games. Cameos of previous playable characters, bosses, even alternate costumes for the main characters. It’s not going to influence you if you haven’t played the rest of the series, but if you have, it’s excellent fan service. Okay, enough on that tangent, the rating is 8.3. It’s a solid, fun game, but nothing too exceptional. A good end to the series, but not the best game out there.

Fun Fact: All but one of the playable characters in previous Wild Arms games (including Alter Code: F) make cameos in wild Arms 5. Even the characters who only join your party temporarily. Who’s missing? Well, I’ll give those of you in the know a hint. It’s one of the characters from Wild Arms 2.

Quick Tip: There’s an accessory that will let you know with a tone when you move onto a hex that will have a treasure at the end of the battle. Find these immediately when you enter a boss battle. It’s usually well worth it.

If you enjoyed this game, you might like one of the following games. Well, pretty much the entire Wild Arms  series, honestly. Those cameos will start to make sense as you play through the series backwards I guess. Disgaea: Hour of Darkness and Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories have some great puzzle action, as well as grid-based combat. For no particularly good reason, Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King might be fun, because it has a similar exploration vibe to it, and equipment utilization can be fun to balance.