Disgaea: Hour of Darkness Review

Strategy RPGs have been seriously lacking in this blog, for some reason. It certainly isn’t because I don’t like them, because I do. Maybe it’s because I haven’t played all that many. Sure, it’s not been a genre that’s received quite as much attention in the JRPG world as the Action RPG, but there are plenty of great games of this type out there. Strangely enough, I tend to think of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness as the typical SRPG, even though it’s really not that standard for the genre. Oh, who cares, let’s just get into the thick of it.

The story in this game centers around Laharl, the heir to the throne of the netherworld. It doesn’t really have a plot, per se, but each episode (chapter) has a mostly self-contained story about life in the netherworld. That said, once all of the actors are assembled, you start to get into the real story, which is pretty gripping. What strikes me most about the story is the style. While it can have its emotional, dramatic moments, the game doesn’t take itself seriously at all. It parodies all sorts of anime clichés, to the point where there’s an episode preview of each chapter. What it boils down to is an affectionate look at the silliness in anime, fantasy, RPGs, and a few other things.

What really drives the story in Disgaea are the characters. Laharl is pretty funny with his little kid/evil overlord antics, and actually develops into an interesting tsundere (gasp!). I actually quite like Flonne, the angel trainee sent to assassinate Laharl’s father (who’s already dead…), because she’s really cutesy, sweet, and a total dork. No character list from this game would be complete without CAPTAIN GORDON, DEFENDER OF EARRRRRTH! Gordon is absolutely hysterical, with his kids tv show hero personality, and the way he constantly spouts off exactly the trite sorts of lines you would expect from such shows, play straight to the point of parody. But really, all of the characters in this game are great, including the villains, who do a great job of being sympathetic yet unequivocally antagonistic.

Now, Disgaea does have some truly innovative features to their combat system, but the base is pretty standard. You have a square grid, with the floor being of different heights throughout. You can have up to eight units on your team at a time, and on your turn you move them all into position. You can choose when to execute a specific action, which is sometimes very important. Once all your characters have gone, the enemies go. Simple, right? Well, things get complicated pretty fast. First off, you can pick up and throw objects and characters (even enemies) on the battle field. You can even stack up all of your characters in one stack if you like, though there’s not often much reason to do so. Then there are inanimate (in this game at least) colored targets called geo prisms, which add an effect, bonus, or penalty to squares that are flashing the same color (called geo panels) as the square the rest on. Utilizing the beneficial effects from these little guys is one strategic element, but the main point is that, if you destroy the geo prism, it turns all the colored squares it’s sitting on the same color that it is, damaging anything else that's on said squares in the process. Including other geo prisms. One effective strategy is to chain these attacks so that they remove all the geo prisms from the map, dealing massive damage to all enemies (and allies!) unlucky enough to be sitting on colored squares. This will usually result in a huge bonus, netting you extra items or money. Setting up the chains actually puts me in mind of a puzzle game, and that’s no bad thing in an RPG. Anything to take your mind off the grind for a bit.

While you’ll eventually have enough unique, story related characters in your roster to fill out a full team, you’ll want to make at least a few generic characters in the early stages of the game. There are several classes to choose from, from classics like warriors, healers, and mages, to some strange ones like scouts (who control geo prisms and panels) and prinnies (penquins that explode when thrown.) Each class can unlock more powerful versions of that class as well as totally new classes. You can also create monster characters like dragons, ghosts and scarecrows.

The final element isn’t very complicated, but it’s a huge part of the draw of the game. Each item in the game has an item world, which is a series of randomly generated levels with enemies. Occasionally you’ll encounter a specialist, who will improve the stats of the item. Anyhow, the world takes the format of a dungeon, where you descend to the next level when you get to the appropriate square or kill everything. The more levels you get through, the more powerful the item becomes when you leave it. Needless to say, some people spend hours powering up their items, trying to make the ultimate equipment.

There’s one rating that I’ve been itching to give a game for a while, and Disgaea is the game that deserves it the most. The replayability of this game is astounding. First of all, there are at least five endings that I know of for sure, and I believe the official count is somewhere around seven or eight. There is a new game plus feature, and there are a large number of ways to play the game, and a great variety of classes to use. Plus, the randomly generated item worlds give even greater depth, adding in some of the puzzle elements of the game that are actually lacking in the main storyline. Finally, although they are quite difficult, there are several sidequests and optional areas to explore throughout the game. In short, this game is one that you can “take on a mission to deep space, it’s that addictive.”

Now, overall, this is a great game. Normally I’d be skeptical when a game says something like “games of this genre are going to get a serious kick in the pants” but in this case, it’s kinda warranted. I think if you ask an American gamer to name an SRPG, Disgaea is likely to come up almost immediately. Definitely before Fire Emblem, a more established series in Japan. 9.8 is my final rating. I can’t put my finger on anything wrong with it, and it was definitely fun enough that I played it again after I lost 100 plus hour save (entirely my fault). It’s an excellent game, but for some strange reason I can’t bring myself to give it a perfect score. Maybe it’s because I didn’t find the class system to be as exceptional as the rest of the game. Whatever the reason, it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty close.

Fun Fact: Prier[e] from La Pucelle: Tactics is in this game, since Disgaea was released after La Pucelle in Japan.

Quick Tip: Get a scout as soon as you can. Their dark cannon ability allows them to summon a turret that can annihilate enemies of much higher level than you (like the ones you might find in a promotion exam), plus they can change the geo panels in an item world.

If you liked this game, you might want to ply one of the following games. Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories is more of what you liked from the original, with minimal updates. Final Fantasy Tactics is an SRPG in a similar vein to Disgaea, but with the typical Final Fantasy series flair, and a much darker plotline. The two Lunar games, Lunar Silver Star Story Complete and Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete have several moments where they dip into the genre parodying humor so evident in Disgaea.

Chrono Cross Review

Everyone loved Chrono Trigger. It’s not an exaggeration to place it as one of the best RPGs ever, at least using the scale of user reviews. So when a game that was supposedly a sequel to this timeless classic came out, everyone was expecting an enhanced, updated graphics Chrono Trigger. No, no one would probably say that’s what they wanted, since rehashes don’t tend to get good reviews, but that’s honestly what people were expecting. Instead, they got Chrono Cross. Is that really a bad thing?

So, the story of Chrono Cross revolves around Serge, who lives on the main island in the El Nido archipelago where the entire game takes place. He seems to be just an ordinary boy, but his life is turned upside down when he accidentally stumbles into another world where he died several years ago. Naturally, to set things right, he tries to repair the damage, aided by his friends.

And oh, the friends he has. There’s Glenn, the young knight in training (he can dual wield you know.) There’s Skelly, the skeletal clown whose bones you must find before you can recruit him. There’s Razzly, the fairy whom you save from a terrible hydra. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. This game has a ton of unique playable characters, more than pretty much any other game that’s not in the Suikoden series. And you can’t even get them all in one playthrough. It’ll take at least one and three-quarters playthroughs to get them all, and that’s over three separate save files. That said, development isn’t a big theme for most of them. There are three main characters who get developed pretty well, and maybe another six secondary characters who get some decent development in side quests and the like. The rest are pretty much just a funny voice to go in the script. Yeah, a bunch of them have funny accents, but is that really significant? Not really, although it is fun seeing their in-character reactions to scripted events in the story.

Probably the biggest disappointment to fans of Chrono Trigger was the way techs were handled in this game. First off, there are far fewer of them. Second, those few that there are, are spread among the huge cast, so very few characters have any significant tech action at all. One contributing factor was the way magic was handled in the game. Basically, you can equip magic in slots of various levels, with higher level slots being able to equip more powerful spells. These slots recharge every time you enter a battle. A character’s unique special attacks are usually limited to one third level tech, one fifth level tech, and one seventh level tech. Since these can only be used once per battle, and using a dual or triple tech consumes all three spells, it’s rarely worth it. Anyhow, to cast spells, you store up successful hits on the enemy. The attack options are heavy, medium, and light, ranked from lowest chance to hit to highest. Light hits charge one spell level, medium two, heavy three. It sounds pretty complicated, and it is, but you’ll get the hang of it once you’ve played the game for a while.

One thing that fans of the previous game weren’t (or shouldn’t be) disappointed in is the replay value of Chrono Cross. Not only do you get multiple endings depending on when you end the game, just like in Chrono Trigger, you also receive definite power ups, like the ability to speed up or slow down the game. Not substantially game breaking, it does make the game more fun the second time around, when you can just speed through dialogue and scenes that you don’t want to see. Plus, new game plus is the only way to unlock the full cast of characters. Why you would need to do this, since most of the characters are interchangeable, is another question. So, then, the rating is “not unlimited, but good enough to keep you coming for at least two playthroughs.”

Down to the tough part. Giving this game a sum value. Now, a lot of people were disappointed because this game really didn’t have much to do with Chrono Trigger at all. There are a few references, but that’s about it. It’s really more closely akin to Magical Dreamers, which wasn’t really released stateside, so whatever. I don’t think it’s fair to consider this divergence from expectation a bad thing. Really, what you end up with is a great game, which has an interesting story, good game mechanics, and solid replay value. So, I’d have to give this one 9.0 out of 10. It’s not perfect, there’s little to break up the normal gameplay, and most characters are sparsely developed if at all, but none of these factors are major in any way.

Quick Tip: There are very few (three) characters in the game who can steal, and each of them can only do so once per battle. When you fight the fire dragon, make sure that he’s in his final form before you steal, or you’ll miss out on the great item he has.

Fun Fact: When you get to the center of the Dead Sea, the tragedienne enemies will introduce themselves to you, as if they were competing in a beauty pageant. One of them is Richard, age 29, who’s protesting sexism in beauty pageants.

If you liked this game, you might want to look into some of these other games. Suikoden and any of the games in that series, since they also have tons of playable characters in them. Tales of Symphonia or Tales of Destiny II, both of which deal with two worlds having to learn to coexist. Dark Cloud 2 also has some alternate universe time shenanigans bullshit, so that’s always a fun possibility.

Vagrant Story Review

I’m not a Squenix fanboy. Duh. I also don’t have anything against the company, and especially not towards the old Enix. However, there’s no denying that Squaresoft had some excellent games made under it during the Playstation era, and one of those is what we’re going to look at today. Vagrant Story is one of those darker, cult titles that Squaresoft put out occasionally once upon a time. Which is one of the most compelling things about it for me. It’s not your typical Squareshit.

So, the story follows the exploits of Ashey Riot, Riskbreaker, as he travels through the ruined city of Lea Monde as he tries to stop a strange cult from penetrating the secrets of the city destroyed by ancient power. Along the way, there are several factions that Ashley has to deal with, none of them entirely on his side, and most of them firmly against him. Oh, did I mention that this entire game is happening a week in the past? Yeah, the first thing we learn is that Ashley is wanted for the murder of a prominent aristocrat. So, yeah, that’s a cool bit of unconventional storytelling there, good job. And, they would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for the characters.

So many characters! You just can’t keep track of them all. Especially since you only get to play as one of them. Ashley is purposely kept a mostly unknown element, though you do get insight into his dutiful personality. And, honestly, I couldn’t keep track of any of the other characters enough to write anything about them. Sorry. Still, there’s plenty of interesting dynamics and backstabbings. Really, it’s more that the side characters are too interesting than that they’re forgettable.

The combat system is entirely in real time. You have to get close enough to hit with whatever weapon you have equipped. Then, if you press the triangle, circle, or square button at the right time, you can add a chain ability, which adds another attack of some sort to your action. You can chain these however long you want, but your Risk raises with each attack, and the higher the Risk, the lower the chance to hit. There are also break arts, which are essentially special attacks, and magics, which should be self explanatory. You can attack or use magic at any time, but Risk makes it so you’ll need to budget at least a little.

Probably the best part of the game is the weapon synthesizing. By combining two weapons or pieces of armor, you can gain better (or at least different) pieces of equipment. Also, combining certain materials together yields a stronger material, which means increased effectiveness. Each time you use a weapon to kill an enemy, that weapon becomes more effective versus that type of enemy. You can add crystals to the weapon to increase its stats as well. So, there’s a lot of customizability inherent in the system, not even considering there are a staggering number of weapon types to play around with, from pole arms to one-handed swords to crossbows, each with their own timing for chain abilities.

There are puzzles in this game, but they’re mostly pretty meh. Not bad, and worth the few minutes of cogitatin’ they provide, but nothing to devote an entire section to. They certainly don’t contribute to the replay value, although you can open up the way to areas unreachable in the first playthrough if you play the game a second time. So, not a lost cause at all. You could always use a different weapon type on subsequent excursions for funsies. And, with that miniscule chance you can get a great material version of an amazing weapon early on in the game, it’s totally “play again to fuck with the game.” The only problem is that it’s a relatively short game.

This game is good. The story is dark and intriguing, the weapon making aspect is good for hours of gameplay, and it even has real content for those who want to replay the game. Now, I know that it’s weird, saying there’s a good story with too many characters to keep track of, but it’s like one of those old novels like The Count of Monte Cristo or The Hunchback of Notre Dame. There are tons of great characters, so many in fact that they blend together in the telling of the story. The only major complaint that I have with the game is that there are enemies that can easily instantly kill you if they use a certain attack. That’s just not cool. Anyway, the game’s overall rating is 8.3 out of 10. It definitely comes out ahead of the curve, but, well, it’s too limited in its scope to be a real powerhouse. The story is pretty linear, and there’s not much in the way of diversion from the main action of the game.

Quick Tip: For the final boss, you’ll want two things. The spell that negates the first magic attack leveled at you, and a weapon with good range that is easy to use chain abilities with. Basically, protect yourself from the magic attacks, and then get the longest chain possible.

Fun Fact: Vagrant Story is set in Ivalice, the same world as Final Fantasy Tactics, and theoretically also Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy XII.

If you enjoyed this game, you might look into one of these other games. Parasite Eve is also an action RPG with a dark tone, and a fun weapon customization system. Final Fantasy XII has a comparably intricate, politically grounded storyline. The Legend of Dragoon has a battle system that is much more rigid and turn based, but retains some good button press timing elements.

Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana Review

You know, I have a real soft spot for games that never received much acclaim. It’s really quite fun playing a game that not many people will, and I always figure that someone has to love these games. Unless of course they’re actually terrible games. But for a mediocre or average game, I like to give the underdog a chance. Today’s game is not on many people’s radars, so hopefully I’ll be able to get the word out about it. Now, Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana was the first game in the series to be brought to the US, and it apparently fared well enough that the entire series started showing up over here. The subsequent games will have to wait until I can find them somewhere. Until then, let’s start off the series right.

The premise of Eternal Mana is thus. In the not so distant past, alchemists led a golden age of civilization, and created the fabulous city of Avenberry with the help of the mystical beings known as mana. However, one day they tried to create an entirely new mana through which they could channel elements and create artifacts. The plan backfired, and the great city fell into ruin. Generations passed, and alchemist became scarce. Enter Klein, inheritor of a grand family tradition of alchemy, come to the town of Kavoc that sprang up to meet the needs of those adventurous enough to seek their fortunes in the ruined Avenberry. Along the way, the plot thickens, and Klein’s party becomes aware of a new attempt to harness absolute power so as to take over the world. Yes, I’d like one generic RPG plot please, hold the surprise twist at the end. Actually, the plot is pretty segmented, because a lot of the game is made up of apparently pointless fetch quests.

Well shoot. Looks like the story isn’t going to keep us playing. Maybe the characters will? Certainly not our protagonist Klein, because he’s boring and has stupidly overpowered protagonist powers. He’s the only one who can heal for most of the game, and the only one with access to a variety of elemental attacks. Lita, the leading female, is surprisingly decent, combining a good amount of upbeat energy with some quite somber interludes. Delsus is pretty funny, being the older guy of the party who enjoys wine, women, and… well, you get the idea. His interactions with Lita as the foil form some of the more interesting dialogues in the game. The villain and the rival miniboss squad are both underwhelming, with the villain being especially bland. His motivations are left entirely undeveloped, and really, you hardly see him at all during the game. There is a certain amount of anticipation in the game over acquiring your sixth party member, but it’s drawn out a little bit too long.

Let’s see, how about the game system? Battles play out in classic turn based fashion, with each character having their own special moves and passive defensive abilities. Most characters have a few attacks that can affect an area, so enemy grouping is also important in battles. Outside of battle, you can level up each character’s skill by spending skill points gained at each character level. Characters can be equipped with mana gain bonus points to certain skills when their mana accrues a certain amount of experience. In keeping with the alchemical theme of the game, Klein creates mana items from pure elements he absorbs from random junk lying around, and these disposable items form the backbone of his abilities. It’s a simple yet effective system, with at least the illusion of customizability.

Real customization comes in with the crystal synthesizing. Items called mana stone can be turned into crystals which can be combined with other crystals and/or attached to certain weapons and accessories, granting abilities to the weapon itself. It’s an intimidating system at first, since you can use any of your 9 or so mana allies to create crystals from the 11 mana stone types. Once you get the hang of it, you can get some pretty cool effects by combing various properties, assuming you have the patience to try out hundreds of combinations. Or you could just look at a guide.

Finally, this game’s use of mana abilities is worth mentioning. Most of the mana come with a special command. This might be something simple like destroying blocks, or it could be preventing damage floors from affecting you. Combined with a few standalone powers, they form a solid exploration and puzzle solving mechanic. Plus, there are things called growloons to destroy, and reaching a few of these beasties can be tricky.

Replay value is “zilch.” Really, no good reason to play this game more than once. There are a couple of missable items, which could make filling out the item collection impossible, but that’s about it. The game is pretty linear, there’s not much customization at all until the very end game, and there’s only the merest shadow of a carry over feature. Basically, once you beat the game, you can save after the credits, which opens up an optional dungeon. Take your time and get everything in one go, because you won’t have any incentives to go back.

The final numerical score for this game needs to wait just a second, because there are a few things that should be talked about. Shop synthesis involves giving shops ingredients and getting them to make items for you. In two of the game’s shops, this opens up interesting characters who aren’t directly related to the story, but instead provide some pleasant side stories. The item collector who will unlock music and images in exchange for finding sets of items in the game is another fun sidequest. These mitigate some of the unfortunate nature of the plot, and allow this game to be solidly fun instead of mediocre. The rating is simply 7.5 out of 10. It’s got okay puzzle solving and exploration, good enough characters, and surprisingly fun sidequests, but its story is lame, dungeons are ridiculously short, and there’s little in the way of strategy options until quite late in the game.

Quick Tip: If you have a limited supply of one element necessary for an alchemy recipe, one way to stretch things is to make only one item at a time. If the mana are healthy and happy enough, they will frequently make one extra item, so you can sometimes get two items for the price of one.

How I Broke Game: I gave Arlin a weapon with a holy attack, a fire attack, and a straight up extra attack. This made him do ridiculous damage, which was actually necessary for the optional boss at the end of the bonus dungeon.

If you liked this game, you might want to look at some of these games. Wild Arms and Wild Arms 2 both have quite similar puzzle mechanics, but the puzzles in those games are much better. Dark Cloud, and to a certain extent Dark Cloud 2 have weapon synthesis systems that are moderately similar to the one in Eternal Mana. Finally, Thousand Arms is another game with a similarly corny RPG feel to it.

Parasite Eve Review

I haven’t said it before, but it’s hard to make a good horror RPG. A lot of your genre standards simply don’t work in the context of an RPG. If you can theoretically defeat monsters just by leveling up, it’s not really scary, even if the monster designs are ugly. Also, jump scares are more difficult to pull off when you have random battles that require you to move things into a cutscene right before it happens. All told, you end up having to rely on creating a suitably creepy atmosphere, which can be much more challenging than using the tactics mentioned above. One of the few games that managed to pull off this combination of genres was Parasite Eve.

The basic plot of Parasite Eve is actually moderately laughable. The mitochondria within our cells rebel after  be awakened by an entity known only as Eve, who possesses an opera singer in New York city. Enter Aya Brea, NYPD officer (at 19????). For some reason, she’s immune to the mitochondrial attacks, and has to deal with all this shit. Strange as it sounds, it is a decently told tale, with a mystery element added in there. But really, you’re in it for the atmosphere, and the game doesn’t shy away from gory deaths, which only contributes to the dark atmosphere.

The characters are… okay. Aya is really stoic, but that makes sense, since she’s been through a tough life. It would make sense that she’s got some issues. Maeda plays the bumbling suitor, whom Aya ignores and the player comes to hate, since he fills your limited inventory space with useless junk. The villain, Eve, is pretty much content to just monologue and laugh menacingly, without much development of her personality or motives. She’s pretty much a giant space tick given a voice, so all she does is say how she wants to destroy humanity… because. The only thing to be said about the characters is that you don’t spend enough time with them for their mediocre development to grate.

What’s really good is the battle system. It’s pretty simple; you have an action bar, which charges up, and when it’s done, you can act, either by attacking an enemy within your weapon’s attack range, or by using items or what amounts to science magic. Until you choose an action, you can move around the battlefield, trying to avoid enemies’ attacks. You get bonus experience for avoiding attacks, so that’s the main point of battles. You do get experience and level up, but the meat of the advancement system is improving your gun. You can increase the attack power with items, give it abilities like acid or firing two bullets a round, or remove a feature from it and graft it onto another weapon. It makes for an entertaining system where you have to figure out how to get the most out of the weapons you find along the way.

This game does have excellent replay value. Its new game plus features slightly stronger enemies, returns to you your favorite weapon from the first playthrough, and contains an enormous optional area with strong enemies and equipment to be found inside. Still, even with that, it’s a short game, and so the overall rating is “decreasing marginal entertainment after the second playthrough.”

When I look at all the stats, it’s really not a terribly impressive game. It did good on a few specific tasks, like making a truly creepy RPG, and having a good weapon creation mechanic, but it failed in the area of deep story or characters. Unfortunately, the bad slightly outweighs the good, and it’s only getting a 7.0 out of 10 from me. It’s got an appropriate difficulty, but there’s just not enough here to make it more than a mediocre game.

Quick Tip: Shooting more bullets per action is not necessarily better. Each increase in the number of bullets fired by a gun decreases the damage per bullet. Plus shooting a lot of bullets takes long enough that you won’t be able to dodge easily. Around two or three is good.

Fun Fact: Parasite Eve (the game) was essentially a sequel to the novel by the same title, written by Hideaki Sena. Not many games come out that are based on a book, though a movie was also produced about a year before the game.

If you enjoyed this game, you might also want to try one of these games. Vagrant Story doesn’t feature the same ability to dodge enemies, but its real-time combat engine is quite similar. Shadow Hearts is another good example of the rare horror RPG, and a good one at that. Dark Cloud 2 is another game with a good weapon customization system. I haven’t yet played Parasite Eve II, so I don’t know if it lives up to the first game.

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.