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Z.H.P. Unlosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman

October 25, 2010

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

Nippon Ichi Software is known for three things: offbeat stories that break the fourth wall and all barriers of reason, deep and customizable systems, and games that practically never end. Usually, though, they stay within the turn-based strategy RPG space. With Z.H.P.: Unlosing Ranger vs Darkdeath Evilman, the team has ventured out into the roguelike space, and it feels right at home with the rest of their library. 

The story, which once again is quite crazy, goes like this: there’s a Super Baby. The Super Baby will save the world…somehow. So Darkdeath Evilman, who unsurprisingly is not a nice guy, is trying to kill the Super Baby. The Unlosing Ranger, who doesn’t, well, lose, is on his way to fight him when he gets hit by a car. You, a bystander at the accident, decide to become the new Unlosing Ranger, go fight Darkdeath Evilman, and lose pretty quickly. Now dead, you go to Bizarro Earth to go train, beat baddies and beat him. 

But no, for a while, every time you try to go back, you get beaten down pretty badly.

If you haven’t played a roguelike, here’s how the gameplay works: every step taken is a turn of sorts, and you have various items and weapons to use. You traverse floors of randomly-generated dungeons in an attempt to find the exit. In true NIS style, you also have ranged grid attacks that you can pull off. The problem with all this? It uses up your energy. It uses up the durability of your weapons and armor. You’ll need to replace them, and replace them often. 

That’s okay, though, because what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. For that matter, what does kill you also makes you stronger. The grinding in this game is incredibly intense and time-consuming, but it’s what fans of the company live for. Eventually you’re able to go back and take him down, but there are dozens of hours (at least) before that.

If you’re excited when hours of gameplay are a bullet point on the box, you’ll love Z.H.P. It’s not the most focused game, and the story, while good for a laugh, loses its charm after hours upon hours, but there’s a lot here. 

 

Ace Combat: Joint Assault

September 27, 2010

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

Ace Combat: Joint Assault is the latest entry in a series that has survived a few system generations now, so the gameplay is pretty well-defined at this point. You’re dogfighting over the skies of wherever you happen to be, using the various planes and weapons at your disposal. Unlike previous entries, this one uses real-life locations like London and Tokyo. (No, it doesn’t really matter.)

The options here are basic but myriad: the game defaults to third-person view, but there are first-person and cockpit views available. There are unlockable planes, interchangeable weapons and options to turn the heads-up display on and off.

The campaign is pretty bland. The writing is awful, the voice acting is painful at times and the general plot isn’t really believable as a motivation for war. That said, it’s irrelevant. This game’s about tracking down and shooting planes, and however it wants to frame the reasons behind tracking down and shooting planes is fine.

The real selling point for this game is multiplayer. The entire campaign can be played with three others, and the standalone multiplayer modes are playable with up to eight. (If you’re worried about finding seven friends with PSPs, don’t fret: Joint Assault supports Infrastructure mode as well as Ad-Hoc.)  

Joint Assault is a solid installment in the venerable franchise, and will please fans of the previous games. Just don’t fly alone.

Cladun: This Is An RPG

September 20, 2010

PSP / Reviews / by Justin Last Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Cladun‘s name is something of a misnomer. Cladun is a dungeon crawler that happens to have loosely related story bits between dungeons. Imagine Final Fantasy and Nethack got together and had a kid. Cladun is the newest in a series of new old games. The style is very similar to Half-Minute Hero and 3D Dot Game Heroes. There is a story, but the story is in no way, shape, or form the main draw of Cladun. I am thoroughly convinced that it only even exists because nobody would publish the game without a main story.

Mechanically, Cladun is pretty straightforward. You can walk, run, attack, and slide. Everything takes place in real time, and each dungeon is won by finding the exit. Take out the monsters or avoid them if that is more to your liking. Either is a valid way to complete a dungeon. As you play through the campaign many characters will become available to you. Any one of these characters can be used as the main character. All of the other characters are still useful (more useful than the main in some cases) as support characters. Each support character acts as a shield for your main character and some imbue special abilities that the main character can use. The system Cladun uses to manage the main character, his support characters, and all the bonuses and extra shield HP that they represent is called the Magic Circle. You will be changing mains quite a bit if you are interested in being as efficient as possible in combat because some dungeons are full of enemies that are resistant to all but one type of attack and only one of your characters has access to that type of attack. And that is okay – it serves to make combat more interesting, and it adds a layer of planning and strategy over what could have been a very shallow crawl through a purposefully antiquated-looking dungeon.

The Magic Circle with its slots that imbue different bonuses on different support characters works symbiotically with the random dungeon (Rangeon to use the in-game parlance) system. Each random dungeon has 100 floors, and you have input into the randomness. There are four exits from each floor in a Rangeon, and selecting each door affects things like monster difficulty, item drop rate, rare item drop rate, and so on. Choose an easy gate and the next floor could contain no monsters (or very easy monsters). Choose the wrong gate, however, and every monster is level 999. And when you are ready to call it a day and take your spoils back to camp a normal exit gate is never too far away (unless you went into a hell gate in which case you are dead).

If you grew up playing Rogue, Nethack and NES/SNES-era JRPGs, then Cladun will be a great addition to your PSP library. Just be prepared to neglect everything else you own because much like the Item World in Disgaea, Cladun‘s Rangeon has the perfect balance of risk and reward to grab you and not let go. 

Pros: Deep and rewarding party customization, random dungeon makes for great replay value

Cons: Magic Circle can take a while to learn, the story is presented as the main mode when it is clear that more development was spent on the Rangeon system

Ys Seven

August 27, 2010

PSP / Reviews / by Justin Last Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Much like the PS2 was last generation, the PSP is my go-to platform for Japanese RPGs. With Ys Seven, the folks at Falcom understand that they’re developing for a portable system, and it shows. You can save just about anywhere, almost all dialogue and cinematic sequences can be skipped (even on the first viewing), and combat flows quickly enough to feel at home on a device that might need to be shut off at any moment because the bus is about to arrive at my stop. 

The narrative is standard JRPG fare, but it’s hard to mark a game down for sticking to the standards of the genre. Ys Seven’s hero, Adol, finds himself thrust into an adventure where he’ll come face-to-face with dragons, screen-filling bosses with obvious weak points, FedEx quests, and seals that must be broken. What’s truly impressive is that Ys Seven manages to feel fresh and modern despite the by-the-numbers story. All games, but JRPGs specifically, have needed save anywhere (or nearly anywhere) for a good, long time, and Ys Seven makes that need a feature. Yes, you can always put the PSP into standby mode, but it’s great to see a developer look at the target platform and realize that their game may in fact be played in 10 minute segments.

I don’t usually prefer action RPGs, but Ys Seven’s battle system is simple and elegant. Taking a cue from rock-paper-scissors, your three party members are all very strong against certain types of enemies while doing almost no damage at all to other types. Adol and his sword are great against squishy enemies, Dogi and his armored fists are suited to armored enemies, and Aisha deals with flyers wonderfully thanks to her bow. Push square for a standard attack or hold and release for a charge attack. When you’re controlling Adol and all the soft, unarmored enemies are dead, simply press circle to switch over to Dogi to dispatch the armored baddies. You can only directly control one party member at a time, but the AI does a fairly good job of keeping your compatriots out of trouble. They won’t be bringing the house down on their own, but you won’t be traipsing back to town for a revive because they insisted on fighting with the wrong foe either.

After the dust clears you’ll run around and pick up loot. These components will be used to craft various useful items. The crafting system is pretty deep and every item you run across is part of a recipe so you’ll find yourself running around and picking up every shiny trinket dropped by the enemy. You never know when the next item dropped will lead to a new piece of armor and the skill that comes with it. You’ll want to use that skill quite a bit, too, so that you can continue to use it after you’ve traded your cloth armor for leather. I love unlocking skills for use later, and every item in Ys Seven has a skill associated with it that can be yours forever if you use it often enough.

Ys Seven won’t win any awards for visuals, though it is far from ugly. The soundtrack is the real standout here. I’m a sucker for violin music, and the game delivers it in spades. Play with headphones on and let the violin set the tone for your adventure through various dungeons full of screen-filling bosses who all require specific and varied strategies to take down. It’s on the short side as JRPGs go, but that’s okay. By the time your 25-hour journey is over, you’ll see that all you’ve missed is extra fetch quests and grinding, and neither of those were really necessary anyhow.

Pros: Battles are quick but strategic, cinematics can be skipped, and the AI is capable of keeping your partners alive.

Cons: The story isn’t breaking any new ground, and the visuals aren’t up to par with other PSP titles.

Disgaea Infinite

July 11, 2010

PSP / Reviews / by Justin Last Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Disgaea Infinite is Nippon Ichi’s attempt at turning the popular strategy RPG series into a “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel. The first three Disgaea games all featured well-written and entertaining characters in fun situations featuring well-written dialog. All of these things used to be window dressing for deep RPGs with an unending supply of dungeons and equipment, interesting mechanics, and multiple paths through the story.

I love Groundhog Day as much as the next guy, but repetition is only funny in small doses. Repetition doesn’t get as much of a pass in video games. Gamers are a fickle lot, and we don’t like to do the same things over and over. It’s bad enough when a game doesn’t offer anything new or evolve the gameplay at all – it’s a whole different affair when you’re genuinely watching and doing the same things over and over. Unfortunately,  that’s where the Infinite comes in. Overlord Laharl has been assassinated by way of exploding pudding, and it’s up to one lone Prinny to unravel the mystery. This Prinny has access to a magical watch that lets him relive events. He can also possess characters to influence their decisions and hopefully keep the Overlord from being laid to waste by explosive dessert.

This mechanic sounds fine, but it isn’t used in moderation, and much like late cases in Phoenix Wright games, solutions are often obtuse which leads to watching the same scene over and over until you stumble across the right way to progress the story. There are 14 endings, but some aren’t available other endings have been seen, and at that point you’ll need to replay complete segments of the game to see them. It’s possible to skip dialog, but since Disgaea Infinite is all text doing so makes it very simple to miss branching paths. 

If you like the characters and oddball stories of the Disgaea series then Infinite is worth playing through once, but you’ll watch the scenes enough times that the polish wears off and you’ll have no drive to see the other 13 endings. Disgaea Infinite is an interactive novel before it’s a game, and that’s okay if the characters and scenarios are entertaining, but watching those characters act out the exact same scenarios time and again in an attempt to unlock a new ending is cumbersome enough that the developers included a spreadsheet of branching points. When the player needs a spreadsheet to continue the narrative then something terrible has happened. When you finally know what all the decision points are it’s possible to breeze through the story quickly, but getting to that point takes a long time, and you’ll probably have shelved the game long before it happens. 

Pros: Great characters, interesting story the first time through

Cons: Scenes are entertaining once or twice, but you’ll be watching them many more times than that

Plays Like: A “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel

 

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