Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love Review

Every console deserves one final, great send-off game right? Sure, sometimes there are games that come out for the console afterwards, but the send-off game is the last one that’s any good. The game doesn’t have to be the best game for the console. It just has to be a game that is better than anything else that’s come out in the past couple of months. Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love, is that game for the Playstation 2. Just from reading the premise on the back of the box, you can tell that this game is going to interesting. Interesting doesn’t necessarily mean good, however, and the first Sakura Wars to hit the United States has some significant problems. Whether its high points can overcome these problems is what we intend to discuss right now.

Sakura Wars really has two battle systems, because it is both a dating sim and a strategy game. We’ll start off by looking at the dating sim aspect of the game. You take the role of Shinjiro Taiga, a young ensign from Japan. Arriving in New York, you find that the unit receiving you is less than pleased with you. Apparently, they were expecting your much more famous uncle, who is the star of previous games in the series. All of the female party members pretty much start off hating your guts, and it’s your job to show them that you’re up to snuff. Whenever you get time off, you can wander around to various locations in New York City, where you might encounter one of your teammates. If you do, you’ll frequently be treated to one of this game’s mediocre minigames, or better yet, get some dialogue options. Do well enough, or answer right, and the girl in question will start to like you more. The dialogue is frequently hilarious, whether you choose the best option or not. It’s probably the best dating sim to hit the mainstream American market, not that that’s saying much.

The other battle system, the strategy part, isn’t so hot. When you get into a battle at the end of every chapter, your characters get into their steam-powered mecha and fight crime. In this mode, you have a certain number of energy bars, which are expended while you move, attack, guard, and charge your sp for special attacks. So long as you don’t do anything else, you can move around with no penalty, simply regaining the expended bars when you get closer to your starting point. You can normal attack up to five times as part of a combo, and if you want to start again (assuming you have enough energy) you’ll start a new combo. Special attacks are powerful, but mostly consume your sp, and you can only use them once per battle. Joint attacks attack each enemy in a straight line between you and your partner, dealing damage based on how close the two of you are. See, that random dating was worth something. As the leader, Shinjiro can declare three styles: all-out attack, balanced, and total defense. There are times when you’ll want to use the other two, but mostly the default of balanced is best.

The missions frequently take the form of “destroy x and y so that you can attack the main form before it retreats. Mince, slaughter, repeat.” While there’s a little variety, like a mission where you have to save statues or defend your base of operations from suicide bombers, the battles are frequently pretty dull, and no amount of enlivened voice acting is going to stop you from fervently wishing that the boss would just die so that you can get on with the story.

Speaking of the voice acting, there’s a fun little thing about the Playstation 2 version of this game. You can play with the original Japanese voice cast or the English dub. The Japanese cast is pretty good, but the American cast does a decent job, and gets various characters’ accents across better. This reviewer was particularly fond of Diana’s English voice, because it perfectly fit her role as the party healer. On the other hand, Mexican loli Rosita is absolutely awful, sounding nearly as Russian as Mexican. The music is good, with several pleasant, jazzy tracks, and some excellent, energizing battle themes. There are even some decent somber pieces, which help set the mood when the story takes a turn for the darker.

This game is not hard. At all. If you do even decently at the dating sim part, the battles should pose little difficulty. Occasionally you’ll run up against a tactical snag or make a bad decision, but it’s quite unlikely that you’ll want to start a battle over again more than once or twice throughout the entire game. If you don’t mind losing points with a character when you let them die, it’s even easier. The completion time for this game is barely over 20 hours, which is short, but not too short. Fortunately, there’s ample reason to replay the game, as beating it not only unlocks a dialogue skip feature, but there are at least five character paths to explore, and innumerable dialogue options. So, that’s a solid “one for the money, two for the show, three to go steady, and six for the lols.” You might end up sandbagging a bit through the battle sequences, but the dating sim might actually be enough to keep you going that long.

Well, there you have it. I loved the Playstation 2 as much as the next guy, and I feel this is a good game to think of as the last. It wasn’t the most original thing out there, and it certainly wasn’t challenging, but it had lots of heart. The sense of humor evident in its production helps to overcome a lot of the trite material, as it’s always amusing to see a game go totally over the top.My overall rating for this game is 8.5 out of 10. It’s hilarious, fun, and pretty well localized. The voice acting is solid, with the exception of one character. The gameplay isn’t the best around, especially for the mecha battles, but it does pretty much everything else quite well. With this game, I feel I can truly say “So Long, My Love,” to a great old console.

How I Broke Game: Well, once I figured out that you could move as much as you wanted before you attacked, I used Subaru’s first turn to rescue two of the three statues you need to during her chapter’s first mission.

Quick Tips: Some times the best option is to say nothing! When you don’t like any of the choices, or you’ve tried them before and they didn’t work, try letting time run out. It occasionally is the optimal choice.

If you liked this game, you might want to check out one of these games. Persona 3 and Persona 4 almost have as much dating sim in them as this game does, and the RPG parts a much better. The humorous approach are remarkably similar to those found in Disgaea: Hour of Darkness and Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories. I guess Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria has a somewhat similar battle system, though it’s much more difficult.

The Legend of Dragoon Review

              HARPOON! Ahem. Excuse me as I get a few things off my chest. Cool Boogie! Flurry of Styx! Pursuit! Okay, I think I’m good now. So, yeah, The Legend of Dragoon. That game that was supposed to be a Final Fantasy VIII killer. It’s been a long time since I’ve reviewed a Playstation game, and this one’s going to be interesting. A long awaited game comes out and… nothing. Not awful, not raves, nothing. Apparently this one sold well enough that it merited greatest hits, but… no one seems to give this game much notice. Or at least, that seems to be the case for me. So, let me remember this game for you.

It starts out with a promising cg scene showing a village being burned and an army unit running through. They find a girl, test her with a glowy stone, and take her into custody. With voice acting. Hah! Take that Final Fantasy! We have voice acting in our game. Neener neener. When cut to our protagonist, Dart, as he returns to town, he is saved from a dragon by a mysterious stranger, named Rose. He makes it back to his village to find that it’s been burned down and his childhood friend Shana has been kidnapped. So, he sets out on an epic quest to save Shana, save the world, save Shana, learn the secret histories, save Shana, and right wrongs. Oh, and save Shana. It’s not a great story, but it might have been alright. There are some interesting myths associated with this world, and a number of the locations you visit look like they could be interesting. It’s really hard to tell, because a horribly mangled translation mars the whole project, and makes it so the story does not flow. The dialogue is stilted, and, when not outright grammatically incorrect, sounds awkward. It ruins the mood when the characters talk with a strange mix of over-formality and poorly-used informal speech.

The characters suffer from the same transration plobrems, which damage characters to one degree or another. The main character is pretty okay, if bland. He is completely oblivious to the fact that Shana has the hots for him since forever, and apart from that, he’s full of hot-blooded determination. Shana is the worst. Literally her only purpose in the story is to be kidnapped and serve as a thing for you to rescue. She’s not even an interesting character. Prince Albert has some interesting conversations acting as the well-educated ruler of a country, assuming you can understand through his awful translation. Meru is actually pretty good, because her perkiness makes it such that weird translations fit her character. Rose is good at being dark, brooding, and somewhat mysterious, and even seems to have suffered less bad translation issues.

It’s a good thing the battle system of this game is good, or it would have been a total bust. Each character has a number of “additions” that you can equip before battle. These additions are basically the normal attack of this game. Whenever you attack, you have to press a button (usually the X button, but occasionally the O) at the correct time. If you hit all of the timings correctly, the attack does significantly more damage, nets you more sp, and ends with the character announcing the name of the addition. In case you were wondering, that's what was with the beginning of the review. The voice acting on the attack names is definitely "so bad it's good." Anyhow, sp powers your other major battle ability, the titular Dragoon Spirits. Once a character has a Dragoon Spirit, they can transform into a Dragoon. Each turn in Dragoon form costs 100 sp, so mastering additions is very important. Dragoons can attack or use magic, and their defense power is doubled while in Dragoon form, as well as boosting all other abilities. This is the only use of magic in the game. Otherwise, players use attack and healing items. In this game, defending not only reduces damage, it heals 10% of a character’s hit points. It’s a good mechanic, as it gives you a reason to use the guard command, which is pretty much neglected in many RPGs. The various additions are really great, because each one deals a certain amount of damage, hits a certain number of times, and grants you a certain amount of sp per hit. They’re set up so that none are strictly better than any others, since even ones that do more damage and more sp gain frequently have more hits, so more opportunities to mess it up. Though there are some that you’ll find you want to use more frequently, it’s nice that you have to weigh the pros and cons. Similar balancing occurs in the equipment sector, where many weapons and armor have special abilities that make up for slightly lower power levels. It’s obvious that a lot of thought went into the equipment in this game, and the uniqueness of the items is another high point. Dragoon form is somewhat underwhelming, as it removes your ability to heal with items or guarding, and forces you to attack in some way each turn, even if the enemy has a counter attack. There’s a number of battles that you are heavily discouraged from using Dragoons in, making Dragoon form less a super form and more of a gimmick.

This game is very long. Four discs of long. Each disc will take at least 15 hours to complete, and probably several more. Part of this stems from the “random” battles, which are encountered after a set distance traveled. Most areas are set up that simply walking through the area will trigger at least one battle. Battles are fun, but they can get tedious if you’re just trying to get from point A to B. That, and the complete lack of any significant customization for characters, or a new game plus feature, or even many sidequests doesn’t help this game in giving players cause to replay it. Thus, this game is pretty much “nah, no thanks. Once was enough,” on replay value.

Well, it’s hard to tell by looking at all the things wrong with this game, but it is not exactly a terrible game. The game systems are balanced, so that there’s a decent amount of strategizing available to you. While the game is pretty easy on the whole, there are some boss fights that are remarkably challenging. If there had been a good translation of the mediocre story, it would have made for a pretty good game, where the battle system carried some of the weight of the story. However, with the translation as bad as it is, the story and characters are pretty much dead weight, and so the battle system is the only thing you look forward to. I frequently found myself becoming impatient during story sequences, because I wanted to get back to the battles. So, as it stands, the game gets a 7.2 out of 10. It’s still not a terrible game, but there are enough problems that I can’t even give it an average rating. It’s severely underwhelming for all the hype it’s given on the back of the case.

Quick Tip: On the ghost ship, make sure you play the treasure chest combination segment until you get an Ultimate Wargod. It’s a very useful accessory for when you just can’t quite seem to get a certain addition to work out.

How I Broke Game: So, I figured out that an enemy called OOPARTS frequently appears on the map stretch between the prison  and halfway to the commercial city. It’s fast, and frequently instakills your party members and runs away. If you defeat them though, you get a spirit potion and 600 gold, which is very handy for buying some snazzy equipment.

If you liked this game, then you might get a kick out of one of these games. The Shadow Hearts series (Shadow Hearts, Shadow Hearts: Covenant, and Shadow Hearts: From the New World) has a similar timing based battle system. Final Fantasy IX has a somewhat comparable high fantasy genre, with a world that is equally populated with interesting locales. Final Fantasy VI has a good amount of unique items, and lots of good ways to deck out characters with equipment.

Shadow Hearts Review

       It feels like I’m forgetting something. The month of pre-Final Fantasy X on the Playstation 2 has come and gone, but some of you might notice the absence of one game. That game is Shadow Hearts. It came out just a little more than a week before Final Fantasy X. Talk about cutting things close to the highly publicized debut of an incredibly popular series competing in the same genre. It’s a little bit too bad, because of all the games that came out on the system before the big FF, Shadow Hearts felt the most complete. Dark Cloud  is the only game that came close to feeling this complete, with the gameplay being really well balanced, but the story kinda got shoved in at the end. I guess I’m getting ahead of myself. On to the review of Shadow Hearts.

Things start off with a newspaper article about a man getting brutally murdered. You then cut to a girl riding on a train in Manchuria. Okay…. When this well-dressed gentleman walks down the aisles, killing all of the soldiers he meets, with pretty good amounts of blood, you definitely get the feeling that this story is going to be a little darker than your standard RPG fair. And, all in all, you’d be right. Shadow Hearts is rated “M” for a reason, and it’s not the sexy pantyshots. The game sets out to be a horror RPG, and it really does nearly as good a job as you can do with that concept. It gets legitimately creepy at times, and the story doesn’t shy away from grisly scenes. Otherwise, there’s not too much that’s terribly exciting about this plot, except possibly that there are two endings. There’s the bad ending, which is the default (and canonical ending). There’s also the good ending, where you have to defeat a couple optional bosses. For the most part, you travel around the snazzy alternate history Europe and Asia busting ghosts and destroying demons, trying to figure out what the people chasing Alice really want. Most segments play out like a particular ghost story, and that’s not so bad. You’ve got locales like a ghost village in China, a haunted bathroom, and an insane asylum. Yeah, you heard me, haunted bathroom. The game definitely has its own, ah, interesting sense of humor. Gives it a little bit more personality, so it’s not a bad thing.

The characters are pretty good. Yuri’s an amusing anti-hero, who manages to be tormented and sardonic without either element undermining the other. Alice manages to avoid being just another dumb healer chick, narrowly, by actually doing useful stuff and being overall pretty practical. I mean, she doesn’t just mope when around when she hits a bump around halfway through the adventure, she actually goes out and exorcises ghosts. The others are okay, with Zhuzhen (this game’s crazy old person) and Margarete Zelle (actual historical figure) keeping up the humorous banter quotient and Keith having a surprisingly blasé approach to life. The game’s antagonist does a good job of making himself despicable, enhanced by his maintaining the appearance of civility throughout.

The combat in Shadow Hearts is obviously meant to be pretty original, and to some degree it succeeds at this goal. Every action you take requires you to use the “Judgement Ring.” Basically, a cursors sweeps once around a circle with various zones marked off on it. You have to press the X button when the cursor is in one of the marked zones, called hit areas to execute the action. This system allows there to be two types of status effects in the game. Character status effects, which are similar to those in most RPGs, and ring status effects, which affect the way the ring works. For example, some effects increase the speed at which the cursor rotates, or make the ring smaller and harder to see. The other mechanic in the battle system is the Sanity Points system. Every character starts each battle with maximum SP, and loses one each turn. When the run out, they go berserk, attacking the enemies and allies randomly until the battle’s over. While this might not sound altogether bad, they also don’t receive experience from the battle if they end it while berserk. It doesn’t come up too much in random encounters, but SP can make boss battles rather difficult. In the end, it’s a nicely blended action and turn-based battle system. You get all the time in the world to choose your attacks, but you still have to pay attention when you get around to executing your actions.

Well, there’s an interesting dilemma to replayability. You have two different endings, and a new game + sort of feature. On the other hand, there’s not much that you can do differently for a lot of the game. You only barely have enough party members to choose a party in the first half of the game, and it’s not like you can customize character development too much. You can play around with accessories to some degree, but that’s only an option a bit later in the game. I guess this game’s replay value is something on the order of “at least 1.5 times to make sure you get both endings, probably two times just to make sure you get everything.” Believe me, you are going to miss things your first time through the game unless you are consulting a walkthrough pretty seriously.

I said this game feels the most complete of those that came before the FF. I guess that means that the story for this game was exactly what it was meant to be, the battle system was appropriately balanced and fleshed out, there were sufficient sidequests, and the capabilities of the Playstation 2 were adequately probed. Shadow Hearts did not, in other words, feel like a game that was rushed through certain stages of development before the creators were entirely satisfied with the results. So, that doesn’t mean that it’s a great game. Don’t get me wrong, Shadow Hearts is a very good game. It gets about 8.3. Not quite excellent, but very close. You might notice I rate it more highly than all the other early PS2 RPGs last month. It simply is a well-written, properly tested, and overall swell game. Even though the game came out just before FFX, it didn’t feel like it was being shot out to capture the market before the bomb hit. It seemed more like that’s when it happened to be finished. In a lot of ways, it’s similar to how Wild Arms was to FFVII.

Quick Tip: When you start getting lottery tickets, talk to everyone and try to find all 15 lottery members. There are six in Asia, and ten in Europe. Not only can you get some awesome items, but if you miss even one you miss out on an excellent item.

Fun Fact: Margarete is based loosely on the real historical Margarete Gertrude Zelle, who was accused and executed in France for being a German spy during World War I.

If you enjoyed this game, you might be interested in one of these other games. Shadow Hearts: Covenant is a direct sequel to Shadow Hearts. While it’s a little less on the horror end of things, it has a much better design for character customization and the combat system in general is more sophisticated. Not to mention that you get a special benefit if you have a completed Shadow Hearts save file. The Legend of Dragoon has a similar timing element to its battles, and a bit of similar playing around with accessories that you can do. Parasite Eve and Parasite Eve II  are also horror-based RPG that aren’t too bad, though they’re both moderately short games.

Final Fantasy X Review

Happy new year! What, you didn’t think I was going to build up the pre-Final Fantasy X Playstation 2 without getting to the main event itself did you? You may have guessed, but I’m not exactly a final fanboy. I like some games in the series, and like other less. Where does X rank in? Well, I’m not going to tell you. Yet. That’ll be another article. For now, let’s just look at the iconic series’ first entry onto the PS2.

Final Fantasy X starts out with a flashback, where the main character asks you to listen to his story, while the camera pans across the party camping out in the ruins of a city. Then you cut to the main character, default name Tidus, playing the silliest sport since Quidditch. This turns out to be a flashback in your flashback so you can flashback while you flashback. Confused? So is Tidus, when he comes to in some ruins and gets rescued by scuba divers. Eventually, he ends up washed ashore on the island of Besaid, where he meets most of the party, including his love interest, and sets out on a quest to save the world from the terrible monster that destroyed his home hundreds of years ago. For all that it’s a cookie-cutter plot, there is some decent political intrigue going through this game, and mildly interesting twists which, of course, I’m not going to get into.

The characters are mostly meh, with Tidus being pretty annoying and bratty for a main character. Wakka’s got his Hawaiian accent, Kimahri’s all stoic, and Rikku’s almost painfully chipper. The real up note is Auron. Everyone says it, but I’ll repeat; Auron is a badass. He always wears those shades, carries that booze for all he’s worth, and is the only one who consistently calls all the other characters on their idiocy. There’s a lot of that going around in this game. The villains are pretty bland. Really, they just want to destroy/rule the world. Nothing much to see here, move along.

The gameplay is pretty solid. Battles are turn-based for the first time in a while for the Final Fantasy series, but the pace doesn’t slow down much because of the way all the enemies and characters are animated. They never stop moving, and do a lot more than just bob up and down. Anyhow, characters’ abilities are an interesting mix of class and customizable. When a character gains a sphere level, they can move one space on the sphere grid, a massive board-game-like map of abilities and attribute bonuses. They all share the same map, but locks at various points make it so characters are stuck in a particular role until the locks can be removed. So at the beginning of the game, there are distinct character roles, while by the end of the game you can mould your characters however you wish. It satisfies both types of players, and that’s a pretty hard thing to do.

The replay value of this game is pretty limited. Sure, you can understand what the Al-Bhed are saying if you collect the primers on your first playthrough, but that’s not much. The character customization system means that you’re going to be stuck with characters who look pretty much the same at the beginning of the game, so there’s not much you can do to change things up until late in the game. I’d say this game is a “once through, twice only for the most devoted of completion whores.” It’s a fun game and all, but let’s not kid ourselves, there’s no particular reason to play the game again except for nostalgia, which you either have or you don’t.

Final rating? Well, I’ll try to be fair. I don’t want to get hate mail over this, because I know some people really like this game, but I also don’t want to underrate this game. It’s well-made, represents the first RPG on the system that made extensive use of voice actors (Shadow Hearts had some, but only occasionally), and set the standard for the system in terms of RPGs. Well, enough talk, this game gets a 8.2 out of 10. It’s better than your average game, and certainly better than most if not all of the other RPGs that preceded it on the system, but in the grand scheme of things, unremarkable. Unremarkably good, but unremarkable nonetheless.

Quick Tip: You might be tempted go straight through someone’s sphere grid. You might want to wait around at some lock spheres until you get key spheres to open them, since you can get to some potent abilities or combinations of abilities by doing this.

Fun Fact: Wakka and Kimahri have the same voice actor; John DiMaggio. He also voices Bender from Futurama.

If you liked this game, you should take a look at one or more of these games. Final Fantasy XII has good visuals and voice acting, a system of leveling up that is somewhat similar, and a plot chock full of excellent politics. The whole Xenosaga series (Episode I Der Wille zur Macht, Episode II Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Episode III Also Sprach Zarathustra) gets you into the story really well with gratuitous cutscenes, and there is some degree of customization of characters in it as well. Tales of Symphonia has a similar initial premise for the story, and has a similarly staggering array of sidequests.

Ephemeral Fantasia Review

Continuing with our month of pre-Final Fantasy X Playstation 2 games, I’m going to talk about one that was not quite so good as one might hope. It was originally slated for Dreamcast, but got a port to the Playstation 2. Now, just because it was going from a system with less impressive statistics to one that was more solidly established, that doesn’t mean it would be a bad game. If you ignore graphics, like I usually do, it’s quite possible that great battle systems and stories can make such a game really great, even though it might not stand up to contemporaneous games. No, there’s a very good reason why Ephemeral Fantasia is a sub-par game.

The opening of the game follows our silent protagonist, Mouse, as he lands on the island nation of Pandule. Apparently, he’s there to perform at the princess’s wedding. His talking guitar-thing, Pattimo, reveals that the two usually engage in theft as well as performance. He’s met by female stri- oh, wait, that’s the female guards uniform? Ooookay… well, there’s a pervert somewhere in that outfit’s past. Well, whatever. You meet the princess, she’s all melancholy and doesn’t want to marry the guy, who totally can’t be a villain. No one with long silver hair is ever a villain in an RPG. Nope. So, you decide to save the chick, and then Sephiroth-wannabe freezes your behind in place, and when you wake up, you’re coming in on the boat you sailed in on. And it’s five days before the wedding, just like when you arrived. GROUNDHOGDAY! And so, you have to figure out how to make people remember previous iterations and so on. It’s not a terrible story, though it’s not very original even in the RPG world.

Well, now that we’ve got the story out of the way, let’s dive right in to where this game fails. Because of the time sensitive nature of the plot, you have a watch that ticks away the hours. An in-game hour occurs in an out-of-game minute. So, you’ll frequently have to reach spots in town or around the island in what works out to 8 minutes or less. That’s tough, but should be doable. What really makes things problematic is that the island, its main town, and all of its dungeons are set up like mazes, making it very difficult at first to figure out where you’re going. To compound this problem, you have to find pieces of the map to even be able to access a bird’s eye view of your location. So, the first several times you run around the island, you’re going to be late for everything. When the margin for being late is a matter of minutes, or rather seconds, being on time is extremely difficult. And because being on time is how you make the plot advance, things get dicey fast. The quests you have to do to change events on the island, unlock characters, and so on, are hindered by lack of hints, mediocre translation at times, and simple obscurity of what you have to do, quite apart from the necessity to be on time. And if you haven’t reach a certain point in the quest by the end of the week, all your hard work poofs with the next time reliving the week. AAAAAARGH! This is easily the worst aspect of this game, making things controller-breakingly hard in a seriously annoying way.

Now, the characters are actually decent. The royal guard Rummy, who meets you when you first get to the island, has a crush on another character, which causes her to try to murder a romantic rival, until you can stop her. Kyte, the fisherman (who wields fish as his weapon, by the way), has his tragic issues resulting from memories of his comrades who drowned during a mysterious ship wreck. There’s also the leader of the bandits, Galhint, who already knows about everything, but goes along with the script out of fear for his cohorts. Even the villains are pretty sympathetic, with the main baddy having a very legitimate reason for setting things up the way he had. Sure, there’s some characters who are a little bland, like Ano the magic scientist, who doesn’t do much. The characters who are well done, however, are pretty well done indeed. What is especially impressive is that each character has an almost entirely different combat style that makes it so no two characters use exactly the same strategies. The status effect user, who inflicts negative status effects on enemies, is useful against normal enemies, while the buffer character has some good skills for boss fights. There’s a character who has terrible physical skills, but has the best healing magics in the game. And so on. There are characters you may not like as much, but it is easily possible to use each one effectively.

Talking about the battles reminds me that the battle system is quite good. It’s a system similar to the active time battle system, where you wait for all of your characters to charge up before they can act. However, there is no simple “attack” option. Each character has physical skills that frequently deal damage, but can have other effects, like healing or stat buffs. Each of these skills has a different energy rating. The higher the energy rating, the longer it will take a character to act again in battle. And each skill levels up as you use it, which can unlock other skills, especially when the multiple skills are at certain levels. There’s also magic, which you learn at certain character levels, and cost magic points to use. You also have a party level, which dictates the max hp and mp of the characters, while character level dictates defense and attack power. There’s also an incredibly complex elemental system, but I won’t get into that too much. All you need to know is there are four elemental houses (so to speak) with three tiers. There’s an extra 13th element, which just adds to the confusion.

Replay value is another area where this game falls flat. There’s tons of characters to use, and a number of fun minigames that can only be played for a certain portion of the game, but there’s a lot of busy work involved in trekking around the island. Plus, you’ll have a lot of trouble getting through the game in the first place because of the difficulty resulting from poor design. So, I’d give this game “play it once with a walkthrough handy.” The beginning of the game is horribly difficult and annoying, but as you approach the middle and end of the game, there are some great rewards for you, in the story and the battle system. So, if you can get through the early bit without raging, the latter portion of the game is quite fun. The best way to do that is to follow a walkthrough pretty religiously.

So, yeah. This game’s one of them where the premise is pretty decent, but the execution ruins it. And really, it’s only because of one area of bad design. Still, the game’s major failing, the time based puzzles, is the focal point of the game, which means that you can’t really ignore it. So, right down to it, this game’s got a rating of about 7.2 out of 10. I enjoyed it a lot, but I referred constantly to a walkthrough, and even when I did, there were some frustrating parts. It gets as high a score as it does mostly because the battle system is really good, and the characters and story are adequate to good.

Quick Tip: Power Jump is the most useful skill in the game. It allows you to jump to any map square that you have found. You get it by having Rummy use diving kick, which she learns from using hi-kick, from hard punch. Get this skill as early as humanly possible.

How I Broke Game: I beat the final boss with Rinna and Lloyd-L. The loli with no good attacks and the princess with no good attacks or spells. To be fair, I wanted to use Rindrinna, but she froze the game every time. Probably a glitch.

If you liked this game, you should try one of the following games. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask is the same groundhog plot device done well, with better-designed puzzles and dungeons. Final Fantasy VI has a similarly large cast of unique characters, each of whom are quite usable in their own right. Okage: Shadow King is an unexpectedly good choice for those who liked Ephemeral Fantasia, because they both have their quirkiness, and both of them have a bit more challenge than your average mainstream RPG.

Okage: Shadow King Review

 

What would happen if you got Tim Burton to make a console RPG instead of a movie? Well, it would probably suck. But, looking at the pre-Final Fantasy X PS2, there’s one game that has a similar aesthetic to some of Burton’s works, especially “The Nightmare before Christmas” and “Corpse Bride.” That game is Okage: Shadow King. This game, though not hugely popular, has quite a vibrant fan base, making this a definite cult classic. But why is that? Well, let’s dive in and find out!

The story starts you off in the role of Ari, a boy with a weak presence. After his sister gets possessed by a ghost, causing her to speak only pig latin, Ari valiantly “volunteers” to sell his soul to Evil King Stanley Hihat Trinidad the XIVth. In exchange, Stan removes the curse, leaving in its place the lesser curse of a pink shadow. From there, Stan orders Ari to help him in his quest to regain his rightful title of Evil King by defeating lesser fake evil kings, so he can once again terrorize the world. It’s not your typical jRPG plot, though it does have some classic elements, like a princess who you have to save, collecting pieces of something or other to make a greater whole, and the fact that your main character is a chosen one with extra-ordinary powers. But… well, come on! Pink shadows? Saving the world for evil? This game’s plot is, well, quirky.

Quirky is a word that describes a number of things about this game, especially the characters. There’s Rosalyn, the expert hero who, because of a run-in with Stan, wields a parasol to hide her pink shadow. Or Linda, the Teen Idol Evil King, who takes over a whole town by, using her songs to make them idolize her. Or Epros, the Phantom Evil King, who uses playing cards as weapons and always talks in rhyme. He does it all the time. That’s right, those are all playable party members. Fortunately, though each of them has significant quirks, they rarely get annoying, because this game does not take itself seriously at all. You can’t help but chuckle at the characters, because, while their facial expressions aren’t as graphically sophisticated as in, say, Final Fantasy X, they just look funny. Stan is especially over the top, with puzzled, angry, and even default facial expressions looking just like a jack-o-lantern.

Right. Enough of that, on to the battle system. While you’re walking around on the map, ghosts will appear and try to chase you. If they catch your back, you’ll be ambushed, and if you catch their back, then Stan will ask you some questions, and if you get them right, he’ll attack the enemies for you. His questions are on the order of “How would you describe the bowel shaking terror that I inspire,” which sometimes leads to hilarious responses, even when you’re actually answering correctly. You might think that you can just avoid battles period, if you’re good, but the longer you go between battles, the faster and more frequent ghosts become, so eventually you’ll get caught. When you do, the system is pretty standard. Wait your turn, enter command, added to queue. Enemies and allies can act simultaneously, so it’s a little different, but  basically, your standard active time battle system.

You’ll want to get used to the battle system, because if you don’t (and even if you do, to some degree) this game has a wonky level curve. In most RPGs, you can advance to the next area immediately after defeating the boss, with only mild difficulty. If you take the time to buy new equipment, the next area will be almost easy. In Okage, if you get all the new equipment for all of your characters after beating the boss of an area, and then venture into the next area, you’ll be annihilated within around three battles. What it all boils down to is, level grinding. Get used to it.

Replay value is a tough call. You won’t see a sequel of this game, so you might play it again to get the most out of the world that you can. Plus, there is a relationship system hidden in the game, so you can experiment at finding different ways to do things. But, then again, the large amount of grinding might put you off, especially since there is no new game plus. I’m going to have to give this one a “play it again once in a long while, but not frequently.” It’s a fun game, but its issues make it so you really only want to relive the story, not the gameplay.

Well, I guess it’s time to get down a rating. Okage is a game that drags you into the world, and makes you sad when it’s over. Since there’s no sequel, you’ll have to settle for whatever the fandom has cooked up or replay the game. Really, it’s almost enough to make you forget how much of a pain power leveling was. So, as far as numerical ratings go, this guy gets a 7.6 out of 10. Just a hair above average (remember, 5 is the baseline for an RPG for me, so it’s something like 2.6 out of 5). I really like the plot, the characters, and the art style, but the gameplay is mediocre at best. Still, it’s fun while it lasts, and part of the thrill is looking forward to the next story segment. That might just get you through the grinding.

Quick Tip: During the part of the game when random encounters don’t happen (you’ll know when that is), you should take the time to try and find all the tiny gears you can. It’s annoying, but not as annoying as searching while ghosts blow you. Woo woo.

If you liked this game, you might give one of these games a shot. Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, has the same irreverent quality to it, and also has a pretty fun little world. Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is very much in the same vein. A tongue in cheek approach to RPG conventions, a look at the bright side of the dark side, and fun characters. Thousand Arms, again for a lot of strangeness and laughing at RPGs.

Dark Cloud Review

At the beginning of most console’s lives, it’s not entirely clear what that console is capable of. Like, how could it possibly be better than the last system? Then a new game comes out that really showcases the new capabilities, and you go “Wow.” For the Playstation 2 RPG fans, many would say Final Fantasy X is that game. They’ve got a definite point. But there were earlier RPGs on the PS2, and the one I’m going to talk about today is Dark Cloud. This action RPG looked, to some people, like “just a way to kill time until FFX came out.” I’d like to take a quick look at this early PS2 game, to see what it did in a pre-Final Fantasy X world.

Dark Cloud starts out with a cutscene showing the villain reviving the Dark Genie, who had nearly destroyed the world long ago. Cut to our main character, peacefully enjoying a village festival. The Dark Genie strikes, and the entire town and everyone in it is destroyed. Or are they? An old geezer named the fairy king tells you that they’re all just sealed in big rocks, and that you can free them and rebuild the world. The rest of the game is basically you going from town to town, meeting people as you rebuild their homes. It doesn’t seem like much of a story, until the very end of the game, when you’re treated to a kinda cool fairy tale style story. No, I won’t spoil it, just letting you know that there is a little more depth to this game.

The characters are… well, kinda bland. They get a little dialogue during the time when you meet them, and after that they’re completely undeveloped. It’s too bad, because you’d think that some of them would have the potential to be pretty interesting, like the literal cat girl, the moon rabbit mech pilot, or the genie. I guess you get a little bit of personality from their minor battle noises and their play style, but… yeah, not much going here.

The main game follows this flow. You go into a dungeon, find seal rocks (Atla) rebuild as you can, get a new party member halfway through the dungeon, all while upgrading your weaponry. The dungeon floors are randomized, meaning you could end up with the exit right in front of you. You need a key obtained by defeating one randomly selected monster though, so no luck manipulation speedruns here. The biggest issue is that you’ve got three separate gauges that you need to keep track of per character. Character HP, thirst, and weapon HP. When Character HP runs out, you’ll have to leave the dungeon or switch to a different character. When thirst runs out, you’ll start taking damage every couple of seconds. When weapon HP runs out, your weapon disappears. This is especially worrying since powering up your weapon is the main form of leveling up in this game.

Ah, yes, the weapon level up system. When you use a weapon to defeat enemies, it gains experience and eventually levels up, though you have to trigger this level gain. Each weapon can equip a certain number of “attachments” which get absorbed during a level up, permanently adding to the capabilities of the weapon. You can also “build up” weapons after meeting certain prerequisites (fire element 15, beast attack 10, magic power 7, etc.), which evolves the weapon into a stronger weapon with higher max values. Some weapons have special abilities, which you’ll want to add in to other weapons by “status breaking” a weapon and turning it into an attachment. It’s pretty well laid out, but if you want to get a really powerful weapon, you’ll have to put in a fair amount of grinding.

Combat in the dungeons is adequate. You’ll probably want to use specific characters for specific enemies, because each character has a form of attacking that help kill certain enemies but makes killing others really hard. There’s some annoyances in combat, like trying to dodge attacks and the lack of a guard mechanic. It does at least have a lock on feature, which is a good thing. All in all, it’s good enough, but not perfectly polished.

The other main aspect of the game is the town building, which works something like a puzzle, where you have to fit houses and things around the requests of the residents. This can get pretty tricky, when three houses have to be around one thing in a certain orientation. Still, a seasoned player will have these puzzles solved without undue walkthrough consultation.

And now to talk about graphics. Wait, what? No! The game has graphics, they work for what they were intended, seeing the game, and that’s all you need! It’s no Final Fantasy X, but who cares?

Would I play this game again? Well… probably not from the beginning. This game rates more like “why play it from the beginning again? Almost everything good about the game is still accessible on my old save,” on replayability. Still, you might pick it up to finish up that optional end dungeon.

Well, it’s been an interesting voyage into an early PS2 RPG. For better or for worse, a lot of RPGs take their cues from the Final Fantasy series. Dark Cloud, however, came out before Final Fantasy X, and so entered onto the PS2 with a clear field. Though it’s got some failings, it does a lot of things quite well. The final rating I’d give for this game is 8.0. It seems to be really uncomplicated until the very end, at which point the rather weak story kicks into high gear. However, the character whose psyche you get the most insight into isn’t the main character. He’s not even playable. But the weapon upgrade system is good, the dungeon crawling adequate, and the world building simple and interesting.

How I broke game: When I played this game, I got Steve and a durable weapon while going through the first dungeon. Pretty lucky, but who cares? Well, I upgraded Steve to Super Steve, and then, going through the final dungeon, got another Steve. Lol.

Quick Tip: When combining weapons with canceling abilities, the one that is already on the weapon takes precedence and remains, meaning that you need to add the good ability before you add the bad ability.

If you liked this game, you might want to look at the following games. Legend of Mana has a similar world building mechanic, a weapon-making system, and an action RPG system. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is just a great game all around, and has similar combat strategies and complex boss fights. Dark Cloud 2  is just Dark Cloud with a graphics update (big whoop), voice acting (… okay), a little more of a story, and polished mechanics.