Review #94: Kirby Super Star Ultra

 A whole lot of Kirby in one!

  Kirby Super Star was a very popular SNES Kirby game that held many "sub-games" instead of one big Kirby adventure. And now(Actually, a couple of years ago), Nintendo decided to port it to the DS, adding Ultra to the title, and a couple of new extras.
 In the original game there was no real story to the game, besides a short, simple description of each activity, but now we get 3D cutscenes that kinda tie everything together, very loosely mind you. They are heavily compressed, but they look kinda neat, still, they add nothing to the overall experience.

 There are a total of 15 different "Sub-Games", 5 of them are minigames(Three which use the new Touch Screen capabilities). The other ten behave more like Kirby games but with specific conditions or goals. You get The Arena, in which you fight all the bosses, The Great Cave Offensive that focuses on the exploration aspect that Kirby games usually include, but instead of opening up new levels, you find hidden items, Dyna Blade which behaves like a normal Kirby game, without the exploration or The Revenge of Meta Knight that has many timed stages. Basically, they are all Kirby games that focus on different elements of your usual Kirby games, so to speak. It's an interesting take to say the least, and while none of the activities lasts too long, you can pick what you want, want to play as Meta Knight? You can do it. Wanna have fun exploring? Pick The Great Cave Offensive, want something more frantic? Revenge of Meta Knight it is.
 Gameplay is just as every other Kirby game, you eat enemies and gain their powers, if they have one. Each power has a nice variety of skills, so that's pretty nice, and exclusive to Super Star Ultra, you can create an AI-Helper(Or player, if you are playing in Multiplayer) from the power you currently have. The game is, overall, pretty easy, but there's plenty of replay value, Kirby is just fun to play, plus there's plenty of optional goals in some of the games. Plus, the unlockable True Arena isn't easy at all.

 The game received a graphical overhaul, most sprites were replaced by their GBA counterparts(Not a bad thing, they were really pretty) and some new ones were created. The end result is a much more visually pleasing game than the SNES version, colors are brighter and Kirby is rounder. On the sound front, you'll come across plenty of familiar tunes and a couple of new ones, and while I'd hardly call them classics, they can get quite catchy.
 Kirby Super Star Ultra is a fine little game to have on the go, but truth be told, I'd take a normal Kirby game over this one any day of the week.
 7.5 out of 10

Review #93: Grandia II

 Who let this port through quality testing?

  The Dreamcast had a somewhat small library, but full of quirky and unique games, and more than a couple of cult classics. Grandia II was born on the Dreamcast, and was later ported to the PS2, 2 years later. Spoiler alert: The port is atrocious, it wasn't a launch game and there was no reason to rush the port, so why did they mess it up so badly?
 In the JRPG you take control of Ryudo, a Geohound, a mercenary basically, who by some twist of fate wounds up involved in the resurrection of Valmar, god of Darkness. The story is nothing new, but what it does, it does pretty well. The game touches some interesting subjects, like not all Evil being bad or all good being, well, good, but it doesn't delve to deep into it, sadly. While the dialogue isn't bad by any means, heck it can be pretty colorful at times, some of it, particularly during the romantic scenes, can get pretty corny, I found myself laughing during them more often than not.

 As with every other JRPG of it's ilk, you are to go from town to dungeon to town, ad nauseam. There is no overworld, instead you pick a location from a map and travel to it. Even by JRPG standards, Grandia 2 is a pretty linear game, there are tons of points of no return, luckily, there are no valuable missables... which also means that there are no real valuables to be found. Some of the field areas can be pretty expansive, and some hold weapons or equipment pieces, but they'll get outclassed pretty quickly, which means that exploration isn't properly rewarded. Why explore if the next town will sell better equipment? Even more disappointing, there are no sidequests or secret bosses. There is an optional area later in the game that holds the worst equipment in the game(seriously), so why even bother?
 Combat is engaged by touching an enemy. The combat is, at it's core, turn-based, but it does offer a couple of nuances that make it much more interesting. On the lower right corner of the screen there is the action bar, when the icon of a character, or enemy, comes into contact with the red area of the bar, his or her turn begins and you can select a course of action. After selecting what to do, the character icon will travel to the edge of the bar and then execute the command, defending is instantaneous, attacking takes a very short while and magic or items take a lot of time. Now then, there are special attacks that you can use, so that if you hit an enemy while he is on the red area of the bar, you'll cancel their action(They can also do this to you!). It's a fairly interesting mechanics that adds strategy to the game, however, special attacks and magic are really strong, so the game doesn't really pose much of a challenge, outside of a boss or too. And as fun as it is, sometimes the CPU can be really dumb, and make to of your characters walk against each other, this can make you effectively waste a turn, as the character gets "tired" and won't reach the enemy. There are instances where they'll defeat an enemy and then hit the air for who knows what reason. It's understandable when you have two characters hitting the same enemy and one kills it while the other is attacking, but sometimes they'll perform the combo attack on the air. Not cool. And you have no control over either of these.

 When you win battles, you earn experience and three types of currencies: Magic Points, Skill Points and money. Money is used to buy items at shops, obviously, but the other points are used to tailor them to your liking. There are two special equippable items, Mana Eggs and Skills. Mana Eggs are items that grant your characters spells, there are about 8 different mana eggs, with different spell combinations, that you must level up with your Magic Points. Skills come from Skill Books, each Skill Book holds plenty of different skills that you level up with Skill Points or Mana Points, and these provide passive buffs to the wearer. Skill points are also (better)spent on the Special Moves of each character. Rule of the thumb is to max your Cancel-inducing single-target special and multi-enemy hitters. Cancel inducers to limit the damage bosses can deal and multi-enemy hitters to farm easily, as most of these can 1 hit KO them. It may sound like a hassle, but it's actually fairly engaging, and it's neat to be able to customize your party!
 As for the presentation, here is where it all comes apart. The graphics are awfully dated, even for Dreamcast standards. Environments lack detail, and character models are fairly simply and low-poly, they don't even have mouths. For what it's worth, the art-direction is really good, so you don't really mind it... until the frame rate drops. Frame Rate is awful, all the time. How this game got past quality assurance is beyond me. Walking around towns or most of the dungeons is done while under 30 FPS and can get pretty annoying. Battles too present framerate issues, and some of the worst moments are when you enter new towns and the camera pans around. So. Frigging. Slowly. These scenes last way more than they should thanks to this, and it quickly becomes vexing. This too applies to every single in-engine cutscene. Speaking of cutscenes, they present plenty of clipping issues, sometimes characters will even be missing parts of their faces during them. How did they let this through? At least the music is pretty good, and the voice acting is surprisingly decent.

 Good news: Despite all it's technical issues, it's not unplayable. The bad news? You won't have much fun. Technical issues aside, the game is fairly good, it's not fantastic, but it's an alright JRPG.
 5.5 out of 10.

Now Playing: Wild Arms 2

 "V for victory, suckah!" Lilka's the man... erm, woman.

 I finished Grandia II, cue in a congratulational orchestra, which means it's time for another JRPG, cue in Wild Arms 2. I just finished both Lilka and Brad's introductions, Wild Arms series(At least the ones I've played) have you play as each of the main characters, individually, before they join up, and left Ashley's for last. I'm happily content, the game is as fun as I remembered it too, and I just love how chunky the characters look in the 3D engine.
 Still, I remember being annoyed to no end by the Search function. Y'see, Wild Arms 2 wasn't gonna be like other JRPGs, oh no, they had to innovate, how? On the Overworld there is nothing, you have to press Square to have a circle cover the area around you, if you hit a town, dungeon or hidden item, it's permanently added to the map and the overworld... but you have to find it first, and I remember it getting quite annoying. Ah well, I was younger back then, and Wild Arms 3 kept this mechanic, and I don't remember having much trouble with it(Heck, Wild Arms 3 is one of my favorite JRPGs ever) so who knows?
 Oh, and Lilka is just the best "V for Victory, Suckah!".

Review #92: The Legend of Zelda - Four Swords Anniversary Edition

 If you ain't about multiplayer, just skip it.

 Four Swords Anniversary Edition is an "enhanced" port of sorts of the Multiplayer component of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Advance. Be warned, there is no online, and Multiplayer was the way the game was meant to be played, even if Nintendo did add some Single Player stages. But hey, at least it's free(And only available for a limited time!). As I had no one with the game nearby available, as I'm sure will be the case with more than a couple others, I was only able to play the Single Player mode and it's worth it, trust you me.
 Four Swords is not your typical Zelda game, the story is very barebones, but has Link coming into contact with the Four Sword, which divides him in four Links, and to top it off, Zelda gets kidnapped so the Links must team up and defeat the Wizard Vaati. There is no overworld here, instead the game is divided in many stages that, even though they contain Puzzles, Chests, Keys and items such as Bombs or the Bow, as one would expect from  Zelda, the focus is on gathering more Rupees than your opponent, Rupees here do not serve as currency but rather as points.

 In Single Player mode you'll be restricted to two Links, the Green one and another one of your choosing. You play as both Links at once, however, you'll always be in charge of the Green one as the other one follows you along, but won't attack or do anything else than following you. Actually, there are a couple of actions that require two Links, in which case the other Link will automatically help you. Pressing R or L let's you take control of either Link, as the other one sits down, he can't take damage but he won't attack either. You can press the X at any time to make the other Link warp right next to you, in case you need him. Honestly, it's pretty lame. Taking care of two characters is a drag, movement speed is pretty slow, and it would've been better if the other Link at least attacked when something came close to him, or to be able to select another Link as your main character.
 Unlike other Zelda games, you don't carry all your items, instead you'll find items on Pedestals that you can take, however, each Link can only carry one item, so you'll have to keep that in mind as well. See how it starts becoming a drag taking care of two Links, one of them always being dead weight, more or less? Items are your favorites, the Bombs, Bow, Boomerang alongside a couple of oldies, like the Cape(Behaves like the Roc's Feather) or the Pegasus Boots and the new Magnet. Puzzles are a bit simpler than your standard fare, and it makes sense as it's a Score-based Multiplayer game, but doing all of them by yourself makes them pretty lame. They look as if they would be fun alongside other human characters, but by your lonesome they become lame.

 There are four main levels, with about seven unlockable ones. Most of the main levels are pretty short, 10-15 minutes each, but some of the unlockables can take quite a bit more. Unlockable levels also tend to be much harder as well, however, unlocking some of the levels in Single Player is pretty annoying, as you need to amass huge quantities of rupees(5000+) on each stage by yourself, and this means abusing respawning enemies, a grindy and annoying task. Some of the unlockables, luckily the easy ones, are pretty neat, being throwback levels to the GBC(A Link to the Past), NES and SNES versions of Zelda, and the Links get the appropriate make overs!
 The Legend of Zelda - Four Swords Anniversary Edition is probably a good Multiplayer game, but the Single Player portion is both annoying and lame, even if it's free, it's hard to have fun with it.
 3.5 out of 10.

Archile's Grab Bag: Sick Friday Edition

 So I'm seriously under the weather, damned flu, but no flu or sore throat would stop me from retrieving my games. So I went and fetch them, like a badass.

  Package package package!

  CUT IT OPEN, YEAH BABY.

 Dem goodies, today I didn't get much stuff, but the first game I retrieved was unbelievably expensive.

  Tales of Destiny II: You... you expensive piece of...... YOU BETTER BE GOOD. YOU BETTER BE GOOD. It's a Tales game, it has to be good. Please be good.

  Wild Arms 2: A game I liked quite a bit in my youth, time to give it another whirl.

 Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy: I don't even own a PSP, yet, but I needed this game.

 Castlevania - The Dracula X Chronicles: I'm a Castlevania fan and this game, Rondo of Blood, has eluded me for years. The Remake and SotN port are nice bonuses though!

Review #91: Code of Princess

 Your experience may vary.

 Code of Princess is a beat'em up game, think Final Fight, in which you, as Solange de Lux, warrior princess, must save the world and kick a whole lot of butt while doing so. It's a simple game, with simple mechanics and a lot of different ways to play it.
 The game Single Player's component is made up of three different options: Story Mode, Free Play and Bonus Quests. Story Mode has fully voice cut-scenes during each of the 31 different acts(They are quite short) and has you play as one out of four characters, Free Play lets you play those 32(There's a scenario exclusive to different pairs in story mode) quests as any unlocked character and Bonus Quests which has 40 plus different quests for you to tackle. It seems like a lot, but each stage is only a couple of minutes long, barring a couple of lengthier ones, but they are the exception not the rule. The Story Mode is especially short, rounding up about 2-3 hours not skipping the dialogues, but it's a blessing in disguise. Finishing Story Mode allows you to use any character on the Bonus Quests, so you can play as the rest of the cast as soon as possible. Multiplayer, on the other hand, has a Versus Mode and a Co-Op both offline and online, but I won't delve too much into them(I couldn't really play them, but I don't care much about them).

 And you do want to play as the rest of the cast, because you might not like any of the four heroes. Y'see, characters vary a lot between each other, and have completely different styles. Ali, for example, doesn't get a Strong Attack string, but instead a lot of Skills, Zozo is a mage, so most of her moveset uses Magic and you can't just attack willy nilly. Characters are VERY different, and you may end up with a completely different opinion on the game depending on who you play as, so play around with the cast until you get a character that you like. Each character can be further customized as you level them up, you get points to spend on whatever stats you want, plus, there are loads of items with special effects to personalize you characters even more.
 Battles take place in multi-plane stages, usually three but they tend to vary, and you can change plane at will by double tapping up or down while blocking. Double tapping left or right while blocking produces a dodge. For offense, you get a Weak Attack and a Strong Attack. Some characters get strings on each button, some get special attacks done by imputing commands with the directional pad before pressing a button, and what have you. Every character plays very differently so buttons may produce different results, and while there are tons of characters, only the more human ones(And those that play a part in the story) get fully developed movesets, the rest feel like filler. You can increase the damage you deal by locking onto the enemy, by executing a lock attack(Y button) or by using Burst, which makes your mana drop at a steady pace, but you regenerate red health and gain double attack damage. Couple a lock on with Burst mode and your damage increases exponentially.

 As expected of this type of game, it can get repetitive, so they tried to spice things up by adding escort missions every now and then. They are impossibly vexing as the AI is borderline stupid, and very much suicidal. They tend to run straight to the enemies with no regard to their health, and you can't heal them, Ali is a must on this stages as she can taunt the enemies and draw aggro towards herself. Some stages can also get pretty hard, on the outset, so you'll have to mix and match your equipment to gain an edge, I actually liked this, made it pretty satisfying to get a character build that could deal with a once impossible mission. Funnily enough, once you level up your character to the late 50s, you can create some very powerful builds, the weapons that grant health regeneration while bursting are quite good.
 Don't let the cover of the game fool you, while the main character looks all kinds of stupid, the rest of the cast are more or less tasteful, even if the designs are nothing special. The graphics use pre-rendered sprites, think vanilla Donkey Kong Country, and they look pretty dang good, with pretty fluid animation. The backgrounds are a bit on the lame side, but they aren't hideous, at least. Don't bother with the 3D as the FPS will drop to unplayable levels. On the sound front, it gets the job done. Voice acting is surprisingly good, every scene is voiced, mind you, while the music is pretty serviceable.

 Code of Princess caught me by surprise. When I first started the game, I found it pretty lacking, as Ali was the only character whose design I liked among the main four, but her style just didn't mesh with me. Then once I started playing with one of the bonus characters on the Bonus and Free Quests, I started having fun. A lot of fun. So even if your first impressions are disappointing, just wait until you get to play around with the rest of the cast, characters play so different from one another that you are bound to find one that suits you.
 7.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Kirby Super Star Ultra

'salright.

 I finished Code of Princess! Yay! But I've yet to finish every Bonus Quest, so the review is still pending. Regardless, since I gotta spend time at the hospital, I decided to play something different. Something Pinkier, and Kirby just fit the bill. I'm awfully tired, so this will be kinda short too.
 I'm up to the Great Cave Offensive with 40/60 treasures so far, it's quite fun. I love how the Arena-type area is entirely optional, yet awfully confusing, I've two lives left to get every treasure, but I swear I will get it. Still, it's cool how it's optional, I'm gonna go through it since I'm that kind of guy, but it's neat how there's an entirely optional area.