Month Overview: January

 Games completed in January:
 Castlevania: Lament of Innocence                          8.0
 Saint Seiya: Brave Soldiers                                    5.5
 Two Worlds 2                                                       6.5
 Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate        6.5
 Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning                            9.0

 Overview:
 Eh, Kingdoms of Amalur was fantastic and Lament of Innocence was a fun romp through Dracula's castle, but the rest was just so... so... average. Brave Soldiers was deceptively awful. I initially gave it 8.0, as I was having fun, despite how shallow it was, but the more I played, the more I realized that it just wasn't any fun. At all. Two Worlds 2 had the heart in the right place, but it just needed more polishing. Mirror of Fate tried to achieve a happy medium between Castleroids of old and the new LoS gameplay, but it didn't work as well as it should have. It's not a bad game, but it should've sticked to it's original formula.

 Game of January:

 Kingdoms of Amalur was the kind of game I've been yearning for a while now. Open ended and with a really good combat system. The main story was surprisingly good, specially when it comes to Western RPGs, and while some of the many sidequests got a bit repetitive, it always felt as if you had stuff to do.

 Runner-up:

 Lament of Innocence was really, really fun. Gameplay wise it was fun to play, with plenty of attacks to try out thanks to the orbs and the many sub weapons, and their combinations. But what was even better was just how well it captured the whole Castlevania essence, this game truly felt like a Castlevania in 3D. And it was done right to boot!

Now Playing: The Legend of Zelda- Four Swords Anniversary Edition

 It's not much fun when you only play Single Player.

 One of the first games I got on the GameBoy Advance was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and I always felt curious towards Four Swords. Y'see, this mode was multiplayer only, and I didn't know anyone else who had the game. Still, I could watch the starting cutscene and marvel at the new graphics. And now, about 10 years later, I get to experience the game which eluded me for years... somewhat.
 For this freebie, Nintendo added a Single Player mode(You can still play the older game... only in wireless mode, no online, sadness undying) which is what I will be tackling, and after completing the tutorial... this ain't looking good. At the outset, you can choose a partner of any color, which I thought was kinda cool, even though I wanted Red Link as my main Link, I still get to play as Rink. You play as both characters at the same time, however, Green Link is always in the lead(Godammit) while Rink(Or Bink(Blue Link) or Pink(Purple Link)) follows around... except that he only follows, he doesn't attack nearby enemies or step on nearby switches. He does help you when you lift enemies that must be thrown or pulled from both sides to be defeated, or when you push big blocks, he automatically helps you, however, in order to step on switches you have to press L or R in order to control either Link or Rink individually. When you take control of one of the Links, the other Link will remain motionless, he can't be attacked nor can he attack, pretty disappointing.
 I just got through the tutorial, and the game seems a bit boring. Seeing all the items and their possibilities, I'm sure that Multiplayer must be a riot, however, me and I'm sure plenty other people don't have a way to play it. Quite disappointing.

In defense of Lords of Shadow

 Because someone's got to do it.

 Being a fan of something is alright, we are all fans of at least one thing. Fanboys, on the other hand, are disgusting close-minded individuals who believe they speak for the majority and that their word is gospel. Fanboys hate change, fanboys hate it when someone speaks ill of something they like, and they derive pleasure whenever a competing brand messes up.
 Castlevania Lords of Shadows was released a couple of years ago, and it was a damn fine game. It didn't really feel like a Castlevania game, but it wasn't bad by any means. Castlevania fans hated it even before it was released, since it was different. I understand hating reboots, but these people pass judgement before trying the end result first-hand. This is what happened with DmC, it didn't matter if it was a good game, Dante had black hair so it was garbage. Haters will claim that "If you think this is about the hair, you are an idiot", but their problems can be boiled down to: "It changed, therefore it sucks". Dante's hair is black, therefore it sucks. Fanboys need to understand, that just because it's new or different, it doesn't make obsolete previous entries in the franchise, the older games will be there for them, forever. Don't like it, don't buy it, but don't judge it until you get it in your hands. But I digress, this is about Lords of Shadows and why it ain't so bad.

Art

 The character redesigns are fantastic. When I played Lords of Shadows, I instantly fell in love with Gabriel's brotherhood robes, and later, Zobek's. And when Mirror of Fate finally introduced the classic characters into the mix, once again, I fell in love. Many fans cite Simon being a ginger or a barbarian ebing stupid, but Ayami Kojima herself made Simon a redhead in Chronicles(Which is my favorite Simon design, by the way) and the Belmonts were, initially, presented as barbarians. Remember the NES games? Simon and Trevor were fully decked in barbarian armors, Simon's redesign in the SNES game was a barbarian too. It was not until Ayami started doing the art for Castlevania that the characters started wearing more elegant threads.

 And one has to remember that Ayami Kojima wasn't always the norm. She only became the official Castlevania artist after Symphony of the Night, but by Dawn of Sorrow Konami went for a awful generic anime direction. Luckily they went back to a more gothic style for Order of Ecclesia, the art wasn't as good as Ayami's, but it was pretty similar. Lords of Shadows goes for a different direction than any of the previous artists, and the designs mesh pretty nicely with the new darker, grittier direction for the series. Try as you might to deny it, Castlevania was always sorta goofy. Finding perfectly roasted chicken hidden behind walls, for example, or how about the colorful armor suits throwing weapons at you? Later in the series, Skeletons became a bit of a joke and they started introducing multiple variations of them, for comedic effect. Dawn of Sorrow had Maids with Vacuum Cleaners, and if you used their power against them, they'd hold their skirts as not to have them blown by the wind. Castlevania never took itself too seriously until Lords of Shadows, which is also the reason as to why so many of the enemies look so generic. I admit it, most enemies in Lords of Shadows were incredibly generic, but Mirror of Fate finally reintroduced many of the classic enemies, like the Fleamen/Hunchbacks, Meremen, Armors and Skeletons. They still lack the personality of their Classicvania counterparts, but that's alright, Lords of Shadows is a game that takes itself seriously, Castlevania is not.

Weapons

 The Combat Cross is pure genius. Let's level for a moment, a whip is not a very threatening weapon. I'm not saying it's a bad weapon, I'm saying that a whip is made to inflict pain, but not to kill. Lords of Shadow still had to pay homage to the classic weapon wielded by most Belmonts, so they got a fine compromise: A chain. It makes sense, in most games that allowed the Whip to be enhanced, it would eventually turn into a Chain-whip. The Combat Cross starts off as a chain already, and when the chain is stored, the weapon takes the shape of a cross. A holy item to fight foul beasts. The Combat Cross is a fantastic addition to the Castlevania mythos, it looks fantastic and it makes sense.

 Mirror of Fate also reintroduced many of the classic sub weapons, but used the Nintendo-censored versions. The Holy Water became the Oil Flask and the Cross was changed for the Boomerang, which makes sense since the Whip is now the Cross and in some of the older Nintendo games, the Cross was called the Boomerang. The Axe returned, as well as Alucard getting his Bat subweapon back. It was great seeing the classic weapons back.

Story

 Spoilers: Gabriel becomes Dracula. Story is a pretty subjective thing, unless you are a fanboy, in which case you already think it sucks. Regardless, I actually liked the story, and I loved the sequel hook at the end. I understand why many would call foul, as Gabriel was presented as Dracula, with no explanation as to why or how, but I think that it was a great sequel hook. I liked the story, so I wanted to know more. I wanted to know how. And I felt it was a fantastic twist to make a Belmont become Dracula.

 Mirror of Fate finally reintroduced Simon and Trevor Belmont, and the way they introduced Alucard was really smart. Alucard was Dracula's son, so it only made sense for Gabriel's son to become Alucard, and who is Gabriel's son? Trevor. Why Alucard fights against his father also makes more sense now than before, why he curses his existence too, as we get to see how it all happens, instead of being told(as is the case with Classicvania's Alucard).

 Regardless, this is pretty personal, I could tell you why I liked the story, but other people may dislike it for the very same reasons I do. And they are all valid opinions. Unless you are a blind fanboy. As to how it stands against the rest of Castlevania, it certainly is the Castlevania with the most depth and story thrown into the game, but Castlevania was never really about the story. I think that Rondo of Blood was the very first time we got more than and introduction and an ending, afterwards, Castlevania games began placing stronger narratives on their games. I'm not sayin that Lords of Shadows has the best story in any Castlevania game, but it's definitely the one that placed the most thought into it.

Gameplay

 Arguably the games' worst feature. As much as Mercury Steam hates the comparison, Lords of Shadow was very similar to God of War. They are different games, with different mechanics, but the way Gabriel and Kratos fight is very similar, at least on a visual level. What has no excuse, however, were the Colossus battles, which felt very out of place in the game. I think the only one that made sense within the world of the game and the story, and was fun, was the last one. What makes it even worse is that there are only three of these, so why even bother? Mirror of Fate toyed with the formula a bit more, and tried to mix Castleroid gameplay with Lords of Shadow gameplay to... rather mixed results. Mirror of Fate, by Castleroid standards, was not too good, but otherwise, it was fairly decent, just don't expect it to be a Castleroid.

 How does it fare against older Castlevanias? Well, the first Castlevania games were very original, but then again, the NES era was were most of the classic games were born, at least the ones that we remember fondly. What Castlevania did, few games did like it, there were similar games, sure, but none quite like Castlevania and it's sub weapons. But when people talk about Castlevania, they refer, most of the time, to Castleroids. Know where the name comes from? Castleroid or Metroidvania is the result of mixing Castlevania and Metroid together, this is a genre that was born after Super Metroid(Even if Metroid was technically the pioneer). Castlevania: Symphony of the Night borrowed all the elements of Metroid while adding new ones, like equipping different weapons or using items. What I'm getting into, is that some of the most beloved Castlevania games borrowed heavily from other games, specifically Metroid. Calling Lords of Shadow crap because it's a God of War clone is really stupid when Castlevania stopped being wholly original after Symphony of the Night. If Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is a bad game for being a clone, that makes most Castlevania games bad.

 Castlevania Lords of Shadow and CV:LoS:Mirror of Fate are not bad games, they have a lot of room for improvement, but they are not bad. It's OK to like or prefer older Castlevania games, it's perfectly fine to hate them after playing them, but to hate them for being different without even trying it? How stupid is that? And did you notice how the moniker Lords of Shadow is kept in every entry? This are not meant to be full reboots, but rather an alternate timeline of sorts, one that is not heavily burdened with entry after entry of adding or retconning stuff into the timeline. This is a fresh start, a different take on something you like. And if you don't like it, that's alright, your black-vested Alucard will live on forever in Symphony of the Night, and there's nothing Konami can do to undo it.

Review #90: Kingdoms of Amalur - Reckoning

 Unravel their fates, turn them into a hammer, and pummel them with it!

 I'm sure that by now, everyone has heard this game's story. Apparently, 38 Studios went way over budget, acquiring a loan from the State of Rhode Island, and needed to sell over 3 Million units in order to make a profit, which they didn't. Now both 38 Studios and Big Huge Games are gone, and the state of Rhode Island possesses the legal rights to KoA, which no one wants to buy. After all the hassle to get the game done, it'd better be good, right? Or is there a reason as to why no one wants to own the IP?
 Kingdoms of Amalur - Reckoning is a Western RPG in the same vein as The Elder Scrolls or Neverwinter Nights, but whereas most WRPGs have very shallow excuses for combat, KoA boasted of having a much more involved combat system. The game pits you as The Fateless One, a player created character that resurrects very early in the game, he knows nothing of his past, but having already faced death, he is the only person in Amalur that Fate has no control over. He writes his own destiny, and he can alter other people's as well. The story is very engrossing, and the game has a very engaging lore to discover. You have the Fae, elves if you will, that have a very different concept of death than humans, or the Gnomes, think dwarves, who strive for machinations and arcane-technological advancements.

 As with most WRPGs, you are given a huge open world to explore at your leisure, bar you encounter enemies way beyond your level. The game takes a few cues from World of Warcraft and Fable, as even though the world is pretty large, and you can go anywhere, there are set paths from place to place, and you can't jump, so no forcing your way through mountains a la Two Worlds 2. As you go from town to town, you can talk to NPCs in order to discover more about the place you are in or accept new sidequests. There are tons of sidequests, around 200, and early in the game you'll get swamped by them if you accept everything you come across. At times, you'll go from place A to B, in order to fulfill a quest, and when you get to place B, you'll come across even more sidequests! Kingdoms of Amalur is a game that just keeps on giving!
 Enemies are plentiful, your get Wolves, Giant Spiders, Two-headed orcs, Trolls, Skelletons, Mermen and a bunch of others, and The Fateless One can equip many weapons in order to handle them. You can equip two weapons at a time, one on the Triangle Button and another on the Square button. While you can mash your way to victory, you can swap weapons mid combos or perform special moves, both features unique for every weapon type, and perform better combos. Maybe use the Long-Sword launcher, which is pretty fast, and use the Daggers to juggle them while they are helpless in the air, and before they fall, use the Grapple skill to get them closer to you, again. Even mages and their Staves get pretty cool looking attacks! For defense, you can either roll out of harm's way or block attacks, in order to reduce the damage taken. If you are feeling daring, press block just before getting hit in order to parry their attack, and counter with yours! Right between the HP and Mana gauges, you have the Fate gauge, which increases as you defeat enemies or mix your many spells, skills and moves. Unleashing Fate makes everything slow down, and you gain a huge damage boost, defeat every enemy while under Fate and Execute the last one in order to gain a experience boost. It's pretty handy, although if you save it for bosses, you can cruise through the game pretty easily.

 Every time you level up, you can allocate one point into one of many different talents: Blacksmithing, Sagecrafting, Stealth, Mercantile, Persuasion and many others. These offer plenty of bonuses, from being able to easily persuade NPCs, displaying enemies, traps and hidden doors on the radar, crafting better weapons and armor to buying from merchants for less and selling for more! Then you get 3 points to allocate in any of the three branches: Might, Finesse and Sorcery. You can place all your points on one, or put point here and there, you get different Destinies according to how you spend your points, and all offer bonuses, so there's no penalty to building your character the way you want it.
 As fun as sidequesting is, most of them can get pretty repetitive. Go to point A, kill B, profit. Or maybe kill a certain number of enemies, go to point A and kill the boss that spawns. Almost every quests involve killing something, there are exceptions, but there are not many. The NPCs and situations are not very memorable either. Faction Quests, on the other hand, are worth following through to the end, you'll get nice bonuses and they present fairly interesting narratives, usually with different outcomes according to your choices. Oh, and glitches. I came across my fair share, including: Getting stuck in a spot. I could attack all around me, and tried using moves that relocated or made the character dash, but just couldn't get out of. Another one in which I couldn't open the door that led outside the house, leaving me stuck(Luckily, saving and loading cleared the issue) and once the game froze once I initiate a Fate Execution, so tread carefully and save often, luckily, the auto-save feature is pretty smart.

 The game is very colorful, and looks great. There are many different locales to explore which all look very pretty. Character models are not as good, hair looks like plastic!, but they are not awful by any means, and monsters look great. The armors and weapons are very cool looking, even if there could've been a few more of them. The art-direction is a mix of World of Warcraft and Fable, I quite liked it, it's a bit cartoonish but still holds some degree of reality. A bit. Voice Acting is pretty alright, with a game this huge, it's expected to have a wide range of performances, but most are pretty decent. Music is not bad, pretty fitting actually, but nothing you'd go out of your way to listen to.
 Kingdoms of Amalur : Reckoning was the kind of Western RPG I was looking for. A game with a large world to explore, the freedom to do what you want when you want, and a fun combat system to boot! The glitches I came across were very annoying, but I only suffered about 4 of them in over 40 hours of gameplay, I think that's not bad. Not bad at all.
 9.0 out of 10.

Now Playing: Grandia II

 I'm feelin' it.

 Just spent little over an hour on this game, and so far so good. The downer first: You start at level 10. I absolutely hate it when RPGs start you at a different level than 1, I mean, why start at something different? I WANT TO EARN MY LEVELS, DAMMIT. The good news? That lone nitpick is my only complaint so far.
 Combat is fun, the cancelling may become more interesting later when you get more party members, looking forwards to it! Graphics are on the simple side, but are very charming anyways, characters look fairly interesting too, without resorting to abusing belt placement!  Oh, and the "Action" music is great.
 Grandia II is looking like a winner, no doubt about it.

Now Playing: Code of Princess

 So underwhelming.

 Code of Princess was a game I was looking forwards to. Not only was it my first 3DS game, it was also one of the games that made me want to buy a 3DS. Expectations were high. So far, I'm incredibly underwhelmed.
 First things first, Solange, the main character, has one of the dumbest and most stupid designs I've ever seen. She follows the Japanese ideal of "It's sexy for a girl to be forced into useless drags because she has nothing else to wear and occasionally is shy about it". She looks incredibly stupid, and so do most females, at least Ali Baba is kinda cool. The real shame is the fact that the artist is really, really good, but his talent is wasted in this game.

 In the main story, you get to play as Solange, Ali Baba, Zozo the Zombie girl in white panties and the frail looking boy elf. The only character I liked was Ali, so I'm stuck with her, which kinda sucks since her play style is not my kind of style. Suffice to say, I'm not having much fun, which is a shame as the combat seems as if it could be good, I'm gonna wait until I unlock the option to play as the other characters before judging it, but so far, not good. Also, I'm still not totally sold on the graphic style they chose, it seems to be fully 3D, but characters look... 2Dfied so to speak? It's hard to put into words, but they look like high quality pre-rendered sprites.
 Bottom line is: I'm not feeling it.

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.