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The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky

April 13, 2011

PSP / Reviews / by Gerry Pagan Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Despite having immense popularity in Japan, the Legend of Heroes series has never enjoyed the same success stateside, in no small part to the lukewarm reception to the PSP Legend of Heroes releases in the US by Namco Bandai. While The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky was released in Japan in 2004, the massive effort that localizing it would require due to the enormous script resulted in no publisher looking to bring the game stateside for years. Taking up that mantle, XSEED struck a deal with Falcom to localize Ys Seven, Ys: Oath in Felghana, Ys I & II Chronicles and the entirety of the Trails in the Sky trilogy. This is great news for RPG fans, as Trails in the Sky is an excellent showing of things to come.

Trails in the Sky takes place in the Kingdom of Liberl, a world where orbments, magically-powered devices power all aspects of daily life: from the common streetlights to airships to more complicated combat orbments that allow people to use magic-like arts. Estelle Bright, the game’s main protagonist, and his adopted brother Joshua Bright are accepted as into the Bracer’s Guild, which is a local mercenary-type group that does jobs on request for all the local citizens, with branches all over Liberl. On their journey to become full-fledged bracers, they become involved in events that affect the history of the entire kingdom.

The gameplay starts off as nothing spectacular. Combat is turn-based and takes place on a movement grid, where you can move about to deliver attacks to any opponents you come by. While early battles don’t deviate much from simply using the attack command, each character slowly opens up their combat orbments as the game progresses, giving each new slots for new abilities and spells. These are completely customizable though, as characters can be tailored to fit your individual play style. You do this with a combination of stat-boosting, support, healing, status effect among other “quartz” that can radically change what a character excels at, outside of his default parameters and unique skills. By the end of the game, it encourages you to experiment with different abilities and arts on party members and plan out fights for the long-run with tactical decisions. In addition, the game has a “retry offset” feature that makes enemy encounters easier every time you choose to retry after a game over. This can be turned off for the hardcore players, but it’s a nice feature to have nonetheless.

Trails in the Sky’s strongest point, though, lies in its narrative. The whole cast is unique and likable, and while not entirely avoiding the RPG stereotypes, it plays them out well and expands on every character instead of making them out to look completely generic. Every NPC has something to say at all times, with text changing after every minor plot point in the game. Even the minor side quests have unique dialogue between characters and are very well-written. Trails in the Sky is extremely text-heavy, almost to the point of being absurd. As a result, it’s understandable that the only voice acting is done in one-liners and grunts during combat, as fully voicing a game with more than 50,000 strings of text is something I wouldn’t expect of any developer.  It’s safe to say that you’ll spend more time watching characters say things than actually fighting, so the more action-y type of player might be put off by that.

Another impressive feat accomplished in Trails in the Sky is the sheer amount of optional content. Even during the game’s prologue, you have 15-20 total side quests available during entirety of the chapter, though a lot of the game’s side quests are time-limited. The quests are highly varied as well, with quests ranging from escorting people to locations to using a cat dictionary to catch a smoking culprit. It’s highly unlikely for one to experience everything Trails in the Sky has in one playthrough without the use of a guide. While nothing stops you from going barebones and only playing through the game’s main missions, completing side quests is the only way to get some of the best quartz and accessories in the game, making it harder to not do side quests before progressing in the game’s plot.

This being only the first chapter in a trilogy, Trails in the Sky is nonetheless well-worth the asking price. You’ve got a minimum of 40 hours worth of content, and even more if you’re the compulsive completionist type that just loves to explore every nook and cranny, talk to every single NPC and do every mission available to them. It’s an excellent starting point for newcomers to the Legend of Heroes series, as well as the beginning of events seen in the to-be-released second chapter.

Dissidia 012 [duodecim] Final Fantasy

April 11, 2011

PSP / Reviews / by Gerry Pagan Make a comment! / Tweet it!

The original Dissidia: Final Fantasy is arguably the closest thing to the perfect fanservice game, given that not many series boast such a large amount of entries with different casts of characters. While the service was great though, the actual gameplay mechanics were far from refined, and what could have also been a top-notch game didn’t quite reach its full potential. Enter Dissidia Duodecim, a sequel of sorts which expands upon the game’s core elements and fixes some of the issues most prevalent with its precursor, though it also introduces some new issues that might put people off.

As with any expansion to a fighting game series, Duodecim has the standard fare of new characters, new stages, new gameplay mechanics, and in some rare cases, new story. Among these new mechanics comes the ability to assign an assist character, turning battles into a pseudo-tag-team affair where you can call upon your partner for offense or defense. In addition, party battles (which are fought in a tournament or a round-robin style) and world map have been added, further exploring the series’ RPG roots. The barebones “dungeons” from DFF have been reworked into gateways you enter while wandering around the world map, which no longer force any restrictions on you and can be tackled at your own pace. Do you want to beat the minimum amount of enemies and move on, or maximize EXP, items, money and points by chaining every enemy? Both options are available to cater to different mindsets.

The story mode for Duodecim takes place before the first game’s, highlighting the events that set the groundwork for Dissidia’s final battle. In a nice surprise, Square Enix actually re-did the story mode from the first game with Duodecim’s new mechanics and gameplay features, making it easy to see how the stories intersect and improving the previous game’s lackluster dungeons. On the downside, the new world map feels barren at times, as there’s nothing to do in it besides enter gateways and fight off random generic enemies. There’s hardly any exploration either, as most character stories involve going in a straight line on the world map until you hit the next gateway. It’s a nice touch and a step above the restrictive dungeon design in DFF, but it’s something that still needs work done to make it interesting.

There were key issues with the game’s main feature, fighting, that kept DFF from reaching its potential. While the game never punished players for engaging in aerial combat, it did nothing to encourage players to stick to the ground either. Since there were only 2 or 3 characters that excelled at ground combat, fights in DFF would devolve to permanently dodging in the air, dashing and just plain never touching the ground during the whole match. This has been reworked in Duodecim, as characters fall much faster, jumps aren’t refreshed after performing an air dodge, and most moves have been re-worked to discourage sticking to the air 100% of the time. The new characters nicely fill in the niche of play styles that hadn’t been implemented, such as the firearm antics of Laguna, summoning creatures ala Yuna or up-close brawling like Tifa and Prishe. All in all, the base gameplay has received enough fine-tuning to make it much more enjoyable, whether you just plan on beating up AI or duking it out locally with friends.

The presentation for Duodecim is also a step above its precursor’s, though given how harshly DFF was judged when it came to this, anything can only be an improvement. Characters are much more animated during cut scenes, the game’s lighting effects are much better done (given how every character in the first game looked like they were covered in a shiny aura), and the track list has at least doubled in size from DFF. Nearly every character has a song for wandering through the world map and exploring the gateways, all composed of either well-done remixes of classic tunes or straight rips of the originals. Add to this the extra alternate costumes for every character, all based on either original artwork or alternate clothing from each character’s game of origin, and you’ve got a game that further delivers on what was already one of best fanservice games created.

Dissidia Duodecim is not for the casual fighting game player. This is a game custom-tailored for the long-time fans of the series, those who already know who the entire cast is and their motivations for why they fight. It’s not a perfect fighting game, but you can tell that it has received a lot of polish and care from its developers. For $30, its well worth quite a few hours of entertainment, though without being knowledgeable with the source material, it’s easy to become tangled in the complex web of character relationships and struggles. 

Vertigo

April 8, 2011

PSP / Reviews / by Mike Clark Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Vertigo is a game where you attempt to race a “Xorb”, essentially a customizable marble, though a wide selection of tracks suspended high in the sky. Ideally, your goal is to go through all of the checkpoints and reach the end as fast as possible, with medals and point rewards for reaching this goal under certain times. There are infinite retries, four different gameplay modes between Arcade, Career, Time Trial and “Xorb Bowling”, limited multiplayer and so on. It sounds like a nice title at first. 

However, just because the tracks are high in the sky doesn’t mean this game is as heavenly as Icon Games has promoted it to be. More often than not the tracks you’re on have pencil-thin roads and railways for you to navigate. Sharp turns, sheer drops that do a disservice to the camera angles and few checkpoints create an environment where you’ll drive less like an F-Zero racer and more like a senior citizen: slowly and slamming the brakes every couple of seconds. At least, if you want to live that is. Otherwise you will end up dying repeatedly, having to sit through the literal five or so seconds it takes for your Xorb to tumble all the way down to the invisible “Out of Bounds” barrier at the bottom of each track; the same period of time that is added to your time as a penalty each time you die.

The Xorb by default handles decently enough, but the career mode adds in a tuning function to allow you to further enhance your Xorb’s statistics. While a nice touch in premise, the ease at which you can max out the Xorb’s stats makes going for the medals required to get the points used on stats superfluous. With the equivalent of one gold and two bronze medals I had the Xorb maxed out, and there’s 56 or so tracks to this game.

All in all, Vertigo is really only a game for two types of people: fans of marble games like Marble Blast Ultra and Switchball, and masochists who enjoy an unfair and harsh challenge. And while the portability of the PSP version can be better than the PC and Wii versions, the oddly-long loading times for a downloadable title may turn some people away.

Pros: Large amount of stages and game modes, many Xorb customization choices

Cons: Tedious and harsh gameplay, long load times, deaths take too long to sit through

 

Gods Eater Burst

March 30, 2011

PSP / Reviews / by Graham Russell Make a comment! / Tweet it!

The Japanese and American PSP communities are different. It’s just how it is. While they’re almost everywhere there, making multiplayer-heavy experiences a blast, it’s hard to get people together for sessions over here. It’s that one factor that holds back a solid Gods Eater Burst experience, and it’s important to understand that from the start, because it affects everything else. 

For those familiar with the Monster Hunter series, Gods Eater will be a similar experience. You take on quests and attack monsters, gain money, equipment and strength. The environment is a bit different; Gods Eater is clearly based on anime style, and it’s set in an intensely-desolate post-apocalyptic world that creates an interesting atmosphere for the battles. 

To attack, you use a weapon called a God Arc. It’s a living thing attached to your arm, and it can transform to a gun or a sword. (Which, as a concept, is really quite cool.) There are so many options with bullets, attacks, shields and such, that it’s intimidating but deep. Oh, and in case you were wondering about the name: your God Arc eats things. The enemy is called the Aragami, essentially “demon god,” and you eat them to get stat boosts and harvest items. It’s weird.

Anyway, the gameplay is solid, and there are a lot of things to do crammed into the PSP’s buttons. Gun aiming would benefit from another analog stick, since controlling your character and aiming with the D-pad can be a bit cumbersome. As a result, most will use it for sniping or run-aim-run-aim tactics.

The quests are fairly straightforward: kill this monster, acquire this thing, with the occasional special mission here and there. Everything is playable with up to three friends locally, and that’s where it really shines. Team tactics and camaraderie make things a lot more fun, and the game scales the difficulty well with more help. It’s when you don’t have friends to play when it gets a bit tough. The structure of the game accommodates all these people, and you lose a bit of engine curation and flash when you let things like that be possible. There are computer-controlled teammates who can join at times, but there’s no coordination and their actions are as straightforward as the enemies’ ones. 

With such a lush world (and it is rather impressive), it would have been nice to have an epic story, but it’s your standard quest-based game, and that means lifeless characters, awkward localization and a hub world that’s more utilitarian than thematic. Which is fine, because that’s not what these games are about, but it’s another thing that doesn’t translate as well to the American PSP experience.

So that’s basically it. If you can get two or three friends to also buy Gods Eater Burst, it’s totally worth it and you’ll have a blast. If you’re alone, it’s not quite the experience it should be. It’s just the nature of the genre, though online play or crafted story modes could help overcome it. 

Pros: Imaginative post-apocalyptic world, tons of gameplay options

Cons: Without multiplayer, it can lose some of its appeal

Jikandia: The Timeless Land

March 29, 2011

PSP / Reviews / by Gerry Pagan Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Coming from the developer who brought us Half-Minute Hero in 2009, Jikandia: The Timeless Land is a spiritual successor that borrows the 2D style and ideas of the original title while giving us a new experience. Jikandia is a 2D action-RPG, with platforming and dungeon-crawling being main focus. You select either a male or a female character at the beginning of the game, who can equip a wide variety of weapons as well as bring two party members along to any of Jikandia’s dungeons. 

Jikandia begins with a group of students in a subway car, which gets sucked into a portal to Jikandia, a land where time has long since stopped moving forward. A being called the Time Lord has forced time to move again, and it’s up to them to put a stop to his plans. The cast is varied and colorful, like a spunky girl who knows the name of one too many Lovecraftian cosmic entities, a cowardly younger brother with no spine to speak of and a bullied girl who somehow befriended a dragon in all but a few minutes. The interactions between the students are humorous and quirky, with any combination of party members you bring to each locale interacting with each other regardless of where you go.

Exploring Jikandia is done via dungeons, in which explore randomly generated rooms, each with a timer before you’re forced to move to the next room. Jikandia’s gameplay is unique in that the player is able to set how long he wants to spend in each of the game’s dungeons. One can spend 3 to 30 minutes inside a dungeon, with a boss fight always being in the next room once the timer reaches 1:30 mark. The longer you spend, the more you can prepare for the dungeon’s boss fight by collecting stat-boosting items, as well as increasing the odds of getting better treasure. It’s more than possible to clear each dungeon and rush through the game, but the later bosses can become much harder to beat before time runs out without proper equipment and stats gained.

That said, there really is nothing stopping you from beating the game in less than an hour. While there’s plenty of equipment to collect and some humorous events to see by replaying dungeons and playing for longer than 5 minutes, playing through similar looking rooms in a dungeon for 30 minutes can get really tiring and uninteresting  by the third or fourth go, especially when upon reaching a point where no dungeon offers a challenge. Jikandia works best when played in small 3-5 minute sessions, spacing out the repetition over time rather than doing it all at once.

While the style of the game is, like Half-Minute Hero before it, tailored for fans of the traditional 2D look, they could have spared some expense into having the great dialogue actually be readable. The text auto-scrolls without button press, and actually pressing a button moves the line being said to the next one, making it likely that you’ll often skip some lines of text while simply trying to get it all to come up at once. To make matters worse, dialogue often pops up while dungeon crawling, making it hard to read and pay attention to any enemies that’ll attack, as well as the timer for long to stick to a floor. There’s an NPC that’ll let you re-read any dialogue in the game, but the same problem with the text auto-scrolling, slowly at that, makes it frustrating to sit through and read.

All in all, Jikandia is a good RPG for those looking to play something for small sessions over a long time, without rushing through it. There are tons of items to collect and events to see, but playing it for too long can quite easily make you get tired of the quickly noticeable repetition.

 

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