Review #89: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate

 What a horrible night to have a curse.

 Castlevania Lords of Shadows was a fairly divisive reboot, some loathed it but some liked it. One of it's biggest detriments was how different the gameplay was from any other Castlevania. Mirror of Fate aims to return to the Castleroid/Metroidvania formula while retaining the new mythos and adding some classic characters to the mix.
 The game takes place upon 4 different time periods, each one with a different protagonist from the Belmont clan. The first chapter is a very short prologue/tutorial with Gabriel Belmont, the hero from the first game, as the protagonist. The next chapters have you playing as Simon Belmont, Trevor Belmont and Alucard as they try to stop Dracula, Gabriel Belmont. The story is nothing special, but the way they integrated the classic characters into the new mythos was fantastic and pretty smart. If you hated the LoS reboot due to it not being Castlevania enough, then don't even bother, you probably are not open to change and should probably stay away from this game.

 As for the gameplay, the game takes place in a 2-D plane with 3D graphics. While it does borrow plenty of elements from Castleroids, it doesn't exactly play like one. Castleroids are known for giving the player a huge map to explore with tons of areas inaccessible at first until you find a new skill or power up that let's you go forwards, usually requiring some degree of backtracking. In Mirror of Fate, each character has his own part of the Castle to explore, which means each map is a bit smaller than expected. And while there are areas you can't access at first, each chapter should take you 2-3 hours to clear, so you'll be getting what you need in order to find all the secrets pretty soon. The game is also pretty linear, for a Castleroid, exploration is rewarded with Hit point and Magic upgrades, but it's entirely optional, you always know where to go and, as far as story-related objectives are concerned, will never hit a road block.
 All four characters play almost exactly the same. The only real difference being the items and sub-weapons that each character, except Gabriel, come across. All whip combos and basic moves carry over from hero to hero, which makes sense as leveling up unlocks new moves. This also means that HP and Magic upgrades carry over from hero to hero. All in all, it doesn't really feel as if you are playing as a different character. Something I found pretty neat, is that every combo comes from the original Lords of Shadow game, and while some may consider it lazy, it does add a bit of continuity.

 When it comes to combat, it feels just like Lords of Shadows but in a 2D plane. You get two basic attacks: Direct Attacks and Area Attacks. Direct attacks are the strong attacks, and surprisingly, the fast ones, Area Attacks are slower and deal less damage, but cover a larger range. You can also block and even parry enemy attacks, or you can hold the block button and move to the sides in order to perform dodges. Even though it's played in 2D, the analog move is relegated to movement, the directional pad allows you to switch between sub weapons, which consume hearts(1 per use of any item) or toggle magic skills. Frankly, combat felt a bit slow at times, being a Castlevania in 2D I expected the more swift and fast combat from older games, but being a Lords of Shadow game, with combos, it does make sense that enemies can take more punishment.
 A very neat, even if slightly useless as chapters are not too long and areas not too large, is that you can place notes on the map, so if you come across a door you can't open yet or a gap too long to jump, you can pop a note(up to 50) to remind you of what type of obstacle you were facing. The game is not too hard, but you can change the difficulty at any time. Something that make take a bit of time getting used to is that there is no way to manually save your game. The game autosaves pretty frequently, and checkpoints are incredibly generous, but coming from previous Castleroids and Save Rooms, it took a while to get comfortable with. Speaking of getting used to, there is falling damage. Deadly falling damage. What kind of exploration-based Castleroid kind of game has you taking falling damage!? Regardless, that's one thing to keep in mind, so you can't just rush through rooms by falling through large gaps. Not that you can rush through, as loading times between each area of the castle are pretty long, specially for a portable game. Not cool. Lastly, the game has a lot of QTEs during bosses, heck, two of the most impressive looking bosses are QTE only. These are pretty annoying, and the button prompts are kinda small for a small screen, some of the longer QTE sequences can get pretty annoying due to it, at least button prompts do not change every time you retry.

 The game is beautiful. The new character redesigns are fantastic, pretty in line with Gabriel design's from the first game. Even better, while Lords of Shadow only had a handful of classic enemies, this game bring a lot of Classic enemies into the LoS continuity. Fleamen/hunchbacks are back, Possessed Armors, Skeletons that throw arc-projected projectiles, Mermen and a few more. And between all characters, you also get to use classic sub-weapons, redesigned for the LoS world. The Castle looks gorgeous, even if at times it may be a bit too dark. Character Models are pretty good looking, but the real icing on the cake are the cell-shaded cut-scenes, which look gorgeous, even if characters don't move their lips when talking. Oh, and I usually don't use 3D on games since it makes the FPS drops... not in this game, or at least not noticeably so, pretty nice. Voice acting is plentiful, and the whole cast does a pretty good job. Sadly, the music is nothing special, which is really disappointing considering that this is a Castlevania game, known for their phenomenal tunes.
 Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate is an alright game, it's competent and fun, but it does carry it's fair share of annoyances. QTEs shouldn't have been included, while it tries, admirably,  to be a Castleroid it doesn't just quite get it, and I'm not sure if the order in which you play the three chapters after Gabriel is the most... suitable one.
 6.5 out of 10.

Second View: Saint Seiya - Brave Soldiers

 I was wrong.

 After reviewing the game, I kept on playing, as I was having fun... or rather, thought I was. As I said, the fighting was very shallow, and I didn't delve too deeper into it, however as shallow as it was, I was having fun. Where lies the problem then? Well, the fighting is broken. Combos are basically useless, as pressing R1 while being hit, or a little before, teleports you behind your opponent no matter what. Having fun styling on your opponent with a long combo? Too bad, as they get hit, they build cosmo, get hit enough, and get a free teleport.
 And Special attacks are borderline useless, as most characters can't even combo into them since the start up is too long. Ikki's Flight of the Phoenix is one of the better special attacks in the game since it can easily hit airborne enemies, something that most characters can't even do. So, when is the best time to use an Special attack? To punish an enemy who is dumb enough to use an special attack. And Big Bang Attacks are almost useless. Every character's Big Bang attack deals the same damage, as far as I know, but the start up is different, either is very long or too long. Just like Special Attacks, you can't combo into them. so you must use it to punish stationery enemies. But then again, characters like Sagittarius Seiya has too much start up, making it almost impossible not to avoid it.
 What am I getting into? The gameplay is pretty bad. Highly surprising considering that the developer was DIMPS. All in all, I'm changing the 8.0 into a...
 5.5 out of 10.

Archile's Grab bag, Tuesday Edition

 New games !

  Shiny new package, full of loot, there's only one thing left to do....

  Get the right tool for the job.

  Cut cut cut cut.

  Street Fighter Alpha Antholgy: Street Fighter Alpha 3 is one of my favorite Street Fighter games EVER, and I've played the Arcade Version, PS1 version and GBA version. Regardless, I needed this game, and it comes with the Arcade version of the initial Alpha 3 release, all the Alpha games and Pocket Fighters. Too good of a deal, before Capcom got greedy.

  The Walking Dead: This is actually gonna be a gift, since he doesn't read this, I can post it no worries.

  Asterix & Obelix Kick Buttix: I never cared too much about Asterix and Obelix. I did like the show, and I might've read one or two comic books, but that was as a kid. But this game? I adored this game, even if it doesn't, but it should, have a multiplayer mode.

  Grandia II: Grandia II was a game I often saw in ads for the original, Dreamcast version. The closest thing I played was Grandia Extreme, which I liked but most critics didn't. Eventually I did play Grandia II, and I liked it, but my dying PS2 wasn't able to read the disc anymore....

   Street Fighter - Anniversary Collection: Street Fighter III: Third Strike is not only my favorite Street Fighter game, but one of my favorite 2D Fighting games ever(Just below Garou: Mark of the Wolves). And it includes one of the best versions of Street Fighter II, since you can mix and match versions of each character. Plus, I totally needed a legit Street Fighter II port.

   Flower, Sun and Rain: It's a Suda 51 game, do I really need to say more? Actually, this is an adventure-puzzle game, and every Suda 51 game I've played was an action game, so this is gonna be different. Hopefully the Suda 51 brand of different.

 Castlevania - Symphony of the Night: This was one of the reasons I opted for the PS2 instead of a Gamecube(Since I was kind of a Nintendo loyalist). I actually made a poster, filled with cut-outs from the game's original artwork, I was one excited kid! The game didn't disappoint, and so I really needed to get it back again.

The Worst: Lunar - Dragon Song

 A collection of bad ideas.

 Lunar is a series I'm quite fond of. I first learned of it during the N64 era, were I would see ads for Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete and Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete and would drool as I read through the add, cursing that it was Playstation only. Next gen game and I opted for a PS2, which gave me the means to get into the series. Lunar: SSC I quite liked, but Lunar 2: EBC is one of my favorite PS1 RPGs ever for multiple reasons, the fantastic characters with a main cast that gets a lot of development and their own character arcs, to neat story and gameplay segregation, initially Lucia's AI is very selfish, usually running and leaving you undermanned, slowly she begins to heal other characters than herself and by the end of the game, she prioritizes Hiro even over herself(which is tied to the story since they are the main couple) and, well, the story itself. And I know that I would like Lunar 3 if I ever played it.
 I rarely play bad games because I know what I like so I'm rarely stuck with blunders. Lunar Dragon Song was a game I had read a lot about it and knew about it's many flaws, but I liked the Lunar series, so I maybe I could ignore some of them. I couldn't. This game is like a collection of bad ideas, didn't they have any playtesters to tell them that it wasn't any fun? Even worse, did no one in the design team noticed just how bad these ideas were? It's truly baffling how they could come up with this concept and think it would be fun.

 I'll get the best thing out of this game out now, the main villain is named Ignatius, which is the most badass name one could honor their son with. But then again, rhe main villain isn't even the final boss and you don't even get to fight him. Ever. You just kill his pet, opens up a whole on the floor, Ignatius falls and refuses Jian's help. Oh yeah, spoilers, but it doesn't matter since the game is a torture to get through.
 The big one first: You have to choose if you want to get money or experience points before each battle, and no, you can't get both. What? What where they thinking? So now grinding becomes a two-fold task, since enemies level up with you, which I hate when games do it, since one of the most fun things you can do in RPGs is to go to older areas and see how strong you got(Which is, actually, a bit of a false sense of accomplishment  since mashing the "Attack" button rarely means you got better, heh.). Still, you are gonna want more experience to extend your MP gauges. Speaking of MP, Magic skills are fairly limited, with almost no offense-oriented magic available. Later in the game you get items that change one of Jian's special attacks Elemental affinity, but that means taking away an item slot, and most often than not, they are not even worth it.

 Combat is just the worst. You can't target enemies, that's right, there's a really dangerous monster among the group? Pray that your characters choose to gang up on him, otherwise they'll just go after whoever strikes their fancy. But there's a further annoyance, enemies can and will break your equipment. Bosses too. And this isn't just "Go to town and repair it" or what have you, once it's broken, it's gone for good. You have to go back and buy it again. Fun. Paired up with the fact that if a equipment-breaking enemy comes up with a group you can't even aim at him, makes combat potentially vexing. Scratch that, it's vexing all the time. There is a way to avoid equipment breaking... using the right enemy card. Enemy Cards are dropped at random while in "Get items but not XP" mode. Cards have limited uses and can't be hoarded. Remember how annoying the Draw system from Final Fantasy 8 was? This is worse. You can't possibly get 99 uses of an Enemy Card since you can't accumulate them, and they are dropped at random. Who came up with this? WHO THOUGHT THAT HIS WOULD BE FUN!?

 It can't get any worse, right? I mean, all of this is just incredibly rage-inducingly stupid, how can you get any worse? Easy, running takes away your HP. It doesn't matter where you are, if you want to move around faster than at a snail's pace, you are going to have to hold that B button in order to run. And do you know what else happens? The HP of the entire party drops steadily. After they get to 20% of their HP, it stops dropping.... and you stop being able to run. So now you are weakened and you can't run to avoid enemy encounters. Who the ****ing **** came up with this **!*?! The combat system is a mess and it's infuriating, but this? Who could EVER even ENTERTAIN the IDEA that this could be fun? It's not even challenging, it's just infuriating.

 The story can't even save this game, nothing could have saved this game, not even the Lunar licence. Lunar Dragon Song is a game I wanted to like, I wanted the Lunar franchise to come back, I just... Sigh. Lunar DS is a terrible game, it doesn't have a single redeeming quality, absolutely nothing. It definitely is one of the worst games I've ever played, right alongside Xenosaga II, but that's a story for another day.

Review #88: Two Worlds 2

 But... there's like only one world involved!

 Two Worlds was a terrible game, I didn't actually play since I don't have a 360, but it's reputation precedes it. For some reason, someone thought it was a good idea to make a sequel, this time a multiplatform release, and here is the end result.

 The game takes places... after the first game? It doesn't really follow any of the endings from Two Worlds 1, but it features the same three core characters. Regardless, Gandohar, the evil ruler from the first game, has captured the main character and his sister for over three years. Unexpectedly, a party of Orcs, who seem to have been enemies on the first game(The game doesn't really explain much from the first game), rescue the main character but are unable to save his sister. Free from Gandohar, the player must now traverse the land, it's only one world though, in order to obtain the strength needed to defeat Gandohar and rescue his sister. The story is pretty lame, there's a bit of a twist near the end, but you probably suspected a bit by then, and plenty of plot points, from Story-related quests, lead to nowhere.

 Two Worlds 2 follows the blue prints of every other Western RPG ever, you are placed in a very large area that you can travel at your leisure, barring a couple of story-related barriers, taking Quests from villagers, if you want to, or following the story-related quests when you see fit. Sadly, the game is deceptively short, when you are first thrust into the starting area, you'll have a fair share of quests, and a huge island to explore, what's more, there's plenty of areas that the Quests won't take you to, so they are entirely optional and may, or may not, conceal mini-dungeons. When Chapter 2 starts, you are thrown into a new Island(You can travel back to the first one whenever you want, but there's nothing new in there). It's a bit smaller, but there's even more quests than the first Island. Chapter 3 and 4 take you to the third and last Island, which has only a handful of subquests. You can explore it, if you want, but there's nothing to do there, nothing of consequence anyways. I was done with the game, 80% done(About everything but the horse races, more on that later) in less than 30 hours. The game is not as big as it looks.

 As with most games of this ilk, there's three major specialties, Rogue, Warrior or Mage. Combat, for both Rogues and Warriors, is pretty simple and dumb, like with most games of this kind, you get a couple of skills, Rogues can actually set up traps, and you can fight with bows, daggers, Swords, maces, Axes, y'know, the usual suspects. Mages, however, get a massive amount of options, by mixing different magic cards, you can create different spells, and there are hundreds upon hundreds of combinations with different, and sometimes hilarious, effects. Your character is not set on stone, with each level you can spend points wherever you like, you get 4 Points to distribute between Strenght, Endurance, Agility and Intelligence, plus 3 Skill Points to place in skills from any branch you want. As a whole, it's a good system and grants you plenty of freedom to develop your character however you like.

 It's not all good, controls are actually pretty clunky and often unresponsive. It may be due to how bad the framerate can drop at times, it's playable, but it can get annoying. The worst offender is Horse Riding, if you go too fast, the framerate will drop below double digits, making it nigh unplayable. There was this one mission that was a Horse Race on which I gave up since when the framerate dropped, it was impossible to steer the horse, which is a fight in it by itself as horse riding controls are awful, and later I discovered that there's a whole slew of horse-riding sub-missions. Yeah, I'm gonna pass. The Inventory is pretty lame too, you get a couple of tabs: Equipment, Ingredients and Misc(Magic Cards, Traps, Teleporters, etc), placed on a grid. It can get confusing, and while you can have three Item-Sets assigned to the digital pad, the game doesn't tell you which equipment pieces are being used by one of said sets, so you could potentially sell your equipment by mistake, heck, the game doesn't even ask you if you are sure that you want to sell your equipped items.

 Graphics are a mixed bag. Environments look downright beautiful, there's plenty of vistas to enjoy, character models on the other hand are fairly ugly and recycled throughout. It feels as if their proportions are off, the arms might be too short? Probably. At least the armors look pretty nice. Animation too is a bit wonky, some of the attack strings are pretty awkward to say the least. Also, all big enemy types, like Cyclops, share the same animations and it's pretty noticeable that they are just reskinnings of the same model. Even worse, the big enemies can fling you around, and if you fall over uneven terrain, your character will glitch( by stuttering) over the floor instead of getting up immediately, leaving you open for more attacks, not fun at all.  Music is forgettable, I don't remember a single tune from the game, and voice acting is passable, even if the protagonist tries too hard to sound gruff.

   So what do you make of Two Worlds 2? All the foundations of a good Western RPG are set and they are fairly functional, but it's still very rough around the edges. It's not a bad game by any means, but it needed more time in the oven, refining the controls, tidying up the inventory screens, creating more NPCs, toning down the motion blur when rotating the camera and the such.

 6.5 out of 10.

Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z is ruined. RUINED.

 Why would you do this!?

 I'm not the biggest Dragon Ball fan, but I've always had a soft spot for the games. One of the in particular, I loved, Dragon Ball Z: Legends, released for the PS1 and the Saturn, only in Japan. Dragon Ball Z: Legends had you play in a team of 3 against other 3 characters, or you could handicap yourself if you so wished it. The game had a fairly short, but fun, story mode, but after you were done with it, you had Multiplayer which was unbelievably fun. Even though dozens of Dragon Ball Z games have been released since, none has played even remotely similar to it.
 It's 2014, the latest DBZ games have been awful to say the least. Ultimate Tenkaichi, while it looks very nice, it basically plays itself and Dragon Ball Z Kinect is... it's a Kinect game, need I say more? Ever since Battle of Z had been announced, I've been hyped for it, it sounded very similar to Legends, and after playing the demo, I was looking forwards to it. It was different, but it shared some elements, and the gameplay was actually fun. Dragon Ball Z fans cried foul, though, they just couldn't stand no in-game transformations, but I couldn't care less, due to limitations(probably), Legends didn't have in-game transformations and it was awesome. Regardless, I was gonna buy this game at release. Was.
 So what has killed this game for me? For starters, Pre-Order DLC. And the worst kind, every retailer gets a different DLC, so you are gonna have to choose between the awful Naruto costume(A fairly inoffensive piece of DLC, which is the right kind of Pre-Order DLC, if you really must absolutely have it because your Publisher is a F***ing D****e.), Super Saiyan Bardock and Super Vegeto. Super Saiyan Bardock doesn't bother me nearly as much as Super Vegeto, 'cause y'see, Super Vegeto is a fairly vital part of the story. In the anime, Vegeto goes Super Saiyan to continue his battle with Buu, but in the manga, Vegeto is in his base state for a mere ONE panel, that is to say that Super Vegeto is a much bigger part of the story than Vegeto. And he is pre-order DLC. REALLY?.
 But DLC bullsh!t is not a deal breaker(Unless you pull a Capcom). Y'know what is? No offline multiplayer. In the words of the angriest nerd that you'll ever meet, what where they thinking?! Even worse, it seems that the only offline mode will be Story Mode. Who was in charge of this game? You do know that gaming evolves and changes formats, right? Alongside this transformations, SERVERS DIE, which means that at some point in time, a huge part of this game will be dead and unplayable. The game has no shelf life what so ever.
 Taking all of this into account, Battle of Z is no longer a day-1 buy for me, but a it's a day-it-costs-20-or-less buy. This game looked promising, heck, it's probably a good game at it's best, but it's a game with a death sentence.

Now Playing: Kingdoms of Amalur - Reckoning

 So far, pretty nice.

 Since I finished Two Worlds 2 a couple of days ago, it was time to start a new game. I didn't have much to choose from, but I figured KoA was long overdue. I've played little past getting out of the Mines, meaning I would still be playing the demo if this was the demo(Which it's not), but I figured it's time for my initial impressions. The game is pretty sweet. Combat is smooth and fast-paced, feels really good and the art-style is fantastic, reminiscent of the Warcraft Series. As for cons, not a single one but a few nitpickety things, like the avaiable faces for character creation being a bit ugly or not being able to sell stolen goods to common NPCs.